Do Not Drill Holes in This House
I don't hear anything.
That's probably not good.
Yeah, probably not.
Oh, I know why.
Dumbass, your headphones aren't plugged in, and they're still not.
So whatever you're saying, I can't hear.
Hi, I'm back.
How's that?
Better?
It turns out that works a little better.
Oh, God, please don't put that in the show.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What are the odds of that?
Hmm.
Vince Pavlish writes in and says, I'm a lawyer and the feedback you got about subsequent remedial measures may have been misleading.
No way.
A lawyer related law thing misleading.
You don't say there are a lot of exceptions to the rule to the point that the rule is basically pointless.
And if Apple made a statement that the old keyboard was defective, that could and would definitely be used against them.
obviously the case would never go to trial and this would just be for settlement value or whatever uh it survived a motion to dismiss your initial intuition was probably right and they aren't saying it's a fix for legal reasons the law is complicated i was just waiting for this email so nice it's so nicely tied up in a little bow so straightforward one lawyer emails and it's like all right now wait wait for it wait for it and the next lawyer yep
And in fact, Josh Fenton, the lawyer who wrote the first one, wrote to me earlier today.
I think he didn't copy the feedback address, but he wrote to me earlier today saying basically he wanted to correct this, that he made a mistake in not telling us that apparently this does not apply to product defect cases in California.
specifically that so uh so yeah definitely uh there definitely is no reason for apple to come out and say we fixed it because it sucked before uh because that could be a problem for them oh man that's funny
and finally since we only added days worth of follow-up to accumulate uh is it a non-tech i think that's how you pronounce it i hope uh has an article wherein they state intel 10 nanometer production update systems will be on shelves for holiday 2019 so no time soon i read i read that headline and i started reading the article i'm like oh i find out when this thing is going and i realized like midway through the article wait that says 2019
I thought it was going to be like, well, you know, we're in summer now.
And by the time winter comes, they'll just be, you know, they'll just be getting out their first 10 nanometer chips.
And then maybe Apple will have them in the new year.
And then I go, wait a second.
We're in 2018 now.
They mean next winter.
And that means that Apple won't have anything with them in it probably until 2020.
Assuming they hit all these targets, not looking great for Intel.
And by the way, Intel, even when Intel is working normally, even before this 14 nanometer stall that they've had here,
they still never hit their deadlines.
The fact that if they're saying after this massive problem they've had, they're saying by holiday 2019, what that really means is spring 2020 at best.
If they're lucky, and as many, I think we pointed this out in the last show, but we've got more people reiterating it.
So Taiwan Semiconductor has their seven nanometer process working right now.
Right now it's working.
Yeah.
And yes, it's about the same as Intel's 10 and yada, yada, yada.
But it's just this is bad.
This is really bad.
And apparently we're like the this winter's or this fall's iPhone is probably going to have processors made on that process.
Right.
Yeah, that's that's the expectation.
And that's, you know, then boy, what a what the hell the benchmark is going to look like?
You know, we need to keep revisiting Geekbench and see, you know, the successor to the iPhone 10 and the iPhone 8 with its A12 system on a chip in it.
Will it be faster than all of Apple's laptops?
I know it's going to be bad.
So I'm curious, you know, just like ballparking here.
On a John Syracuse-patented infinite timescale, I think we can probably all agree that on an infinite timescale, Macs will probably not be using Intel processors anymore.
They probably will have switched to Apple-created ARM chips at some point, right?
Or they will cease to exist.
That's the other option.
Right, okay.
But one of those things... So assuming Macs continue to exist into infinity, which I know is wrong, but just for the sake of the thought exercise...
you know will max eventually switch to arm chips over infinite time uh this specifically switching to arm chips i don't know like we keep getting all the fan mail from the people who are into um i'm gonna forget what it is you guys remember like the uh their uh sort of arm ish risk architecture that's like open source no well open source hardware has not done very well in the mobile era
It's like a risk and then like a Roman numeral or a letter.
Anyway, ARM seems like a safe bet.
Again, if you're, you know, placing money on them leaving Intel and going to something, ARM seems like a safe bet because, you know, risk V. I don't know if it's a five or a V, the chat room says.
Anyway.
that they would go to ARM.
But something like an open source instruction set or an Apple proprietary instruction set, we talked about that on a past show, those are strong second and third choices, right?
So ARM is the obvious one, but I don't think it's a slam dunk because Apple doesn't own ARM.
I mean, they could just buy ARM if they wanted to, I suppose.
I don't think they have much reason to.
Well, there is a little bit... I mean, so they have an architecture license and they can kind of do what they want, but it really...
kind of flies in the face of owning control the most important technologies yada yada so yes they are making their own stuff but at a certain point arm has a certain amount you know arm has a certain amount of power over them not that they're going to crank up their prices or whatever but it's kind of like a google map situation it's like you know i'm sure everyone's happy as long as they're happy but they make a you know it
if our makes a wrong move in their own directions, like Apple's like, we'll drop you in a second.
We can make an arm like thing in two seconds or, you know, or we'll just buy, like, don't even try it.
Don't even think about it.
So if I'm a smart, they'd just be super nice and careful with that.
But,
You know, and that's the obvious choice, but I don't I don't wouldn't you know, I wouldn't count out.
I think there's a strong second or third choice of some other architecture or Apple's on architecture.
All right.
So let's let's modify the question.
And so on an infinite timescale, can we agree that assuming Macs continue to exist, they will probably switch away from Intel to an Apple controlled or Apple created architecture?
Or an architecture where Apple designs the chips.
Yes.
Right.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Casey?
Oh, I think absolutely.
I think it's only a matter of time.
Okay.
So, now, same question.
Ten-year time frame.
Yeah.
I think so.
John?
It...
Right now it's looking pretty strong.
Like right now I would say yes, but things change pretty quickly.
And if Intel, like, you know, this is just one generation we're talking about.
So say Intel blows it for 10 nanometer and it's a big problem and they're really late, but Apple decides to tough it out.
you know it's getting progressively harder each shrink right and that road's going to end eventually too we talked about the end of morris law in a past episode so it could be that if apple decides to tough it out and in the next round intel is back ahead of everyone else for whatever reason they make all the right choices where previously they made all the wrong choices that would push the time horizon over 10 years so i don't think it's a slam dunk but i would give it you know coin toss
I would say at a 10 year time interval, I would say they are probably not using Intel chips anymore.
And when I say Intel, I'm also including other x86 licensees, which is, you know, AMD right now and probably no other ones ever again.
So anyway, so I'm saying no Intel or AMD processor in max in current model max in 10 years.
What about five years?
You know, it's funny you say that, because as you were asking this question of John, I was thinking to myself, hmm, when do I think it would happen?
Or even just like when, what is the time interval at which it becomes likely to be the case that they'll drop Intel?
By how many years does it become more likely than not?
Yeah, and that's obviously really hard to say.
But to put things in perspective, I thought to myself, you know what?
You should say that you would take the bet that I think it will be in the next five years.
But then the second thought I had is that every time I bet anyone just a friendly wager on anything, I always end up losing.
So that means it cannot be in the next five years because I'm confident it probably will be.
But no, I think...
If I were to wager a guess, I think between 5 and 10 years is when I would, sitting here today, expect it to happen.
But that's based only on sticking my thumb in the wind and very little else.
I think it really depends.
It's lumpy.
It depends on if the 10 nanometer thing is enough.
If the 2020 Apple Arm rumors are true...
And a 10 nanometer thing is enough to get them, you know, like it'll be earlier than five years, right?
It'll be 2020, as the rumors say, right?
Because if this is what finally breaks the relationship, this current run of crappiness, then I feel like you're not going to make it to five years.
But if you make it to five years, suddenly the odds that you make it to 10 go up, because that means they were going to ride out this 10 nanometer storm, and then maybe the next, you know, Intel does okay with the next one, right?
So I feel like it's not, the probabilities aren't evenly distributed.
Uh, like if 2020 comes and goes with no hint of an arm transition, it's probably going to seem like Apple decided they're just going to ride this out.
Right.
And come out the other side and I'm, you know, Intel 10 and I mean, it will be fine and everything like that.
And of course it's still the Mac pro problem, you know, that we have to talk about during like that.
So if they make it a couple of years into this, suddenly I think their odds of making a 10 go up.
but i i have no problem believing the vaguely sourced 2020 arm rumors right so uh it's a slightly different uh probability curve all right so now since we're getting on to short time horizons i think we have to separate into two questions question number one is when does the first arm mac get released and question number two is when does the last intel mac get released
hmm uh i i would think they would do the transition kind of the same way they've done all their other transitions like they haven't really the overlap period hasn't been particularly long in most of the transitions i know the wild card factor is the tim cook overlap deal where where you know tim cook's apple loves to just keep selling the old one forever and ever and that could play into the transition but i don't think that's because i'm not saying when will they stop selling the last intel mac when will the last intel mac be released
Yeah.
Because they'll keep selling it for 10 years later.
It'll be the Mac Mini and they'll keep selling it forever.
I don't think they'll sell them new for that long.
I'm hoping they won't sell them new for that long.
Yeah, I don't think they'll be that big of an overlap because they really just want to get these transitions over with for this type of transition.
It used to be they wanted to get all transitions over with really fast, but that ship sailed a long time ago.
But a thing like this that's developer-facing, I feel like they're going to want to...
Why would you keep them around?
There's so much incentive.
Take the MacBook Air, for example, the Mac that just won't die.
There's tremendous incentive to switch that to ARM.
Forget about that it's old and creaky and slow.
It will be so much better.
Even if they just rip out the guts and still keep the case the same, still have a non-retina crappy screen on it.
If you put ARM in that thing, the battery life would be really good and the cost would go down.
Yeah.
honestly that doesn't solve problems they have in that lineup it's already pretty inexpensive and the battery life is great but it would be so much better and so much cheaper like how that intel cpu versus how much it costs them what are those like the the a11 system on a chip which is probably about faster or as fast as what's in the macbook air now in both single and multi-core that costs them like uh five or ten bucks or something and the intel cpu is like in the hundreds it's ridiculous
Actually, it's funny.
There actually is a profit motive for them to switch to their own chips because they'd be a lot cheaper.
I mean, even if you include their fixed costs of designing each one, they're probably still way cheaper than buying them from Intel because Intel chips are not cheap.
Yeah, and they get to spread the cost of developing them, especially in the laptop line.
I'm like, look, we're making these chips for the phones anyway, and it's not too far a stretch to go from the phone to a laptop.
Yeah.
figuring out how to get your money back for the uh the mac pro and the imac pro arm chip that's a little bit trickier but i guess they just charge five thousand dollars and who knows how much the mac pro will cost and that's how they make that money up so casey when do you so when do you think the first arm mac will be released like how many years from now
I think it'll be in the next five years.
Again, based on nothing but gut, I think it'll be sooner than we think.
I think it'll be sometime in the next five years we'll see the first one.
Where the first one appears, I'm not sure.
I'm currently inclined to say it would be the MacBook Air, you know, MacBook Adorable part of the lineup.
Something portable, something... Well, the MacBook Adorable is not cheap, but you know what I mean?
Like the low-powered portable...
I think it'll be in the next five years, somewhere in that part of the range.
I don't see it being like, oh, we have a brand new Mac Pro, and guess what?
It's all ARM.
I just don't think that would happen.
I don't think the 15-inch MacBook Pro would get it.
I think it would be an adorable Air or something new that replaces one or both of those, probably close to five years from now, but within the next five years.
John, when is the first ARM Mac?
Isn't that the same question as when they will switch to ARM?
No.
Why is it not?
Like, how many years from now do you think the first ARM Mac will be released?
That's the question I was answering with the transition.
Like, I feel like, you know, when I was saying that I believe the 2020 rumor is plausible that 2020 would be the first ARM Mac shipping.
Or when I say that if they go past five years, then suddenly 10 years becomes better because they've proven they're going to stick it out for 10 and maybe Intel does better the next size down, right?
Then whatever, you know, 2028 or whatever would be.
All right, so it's the same as my other question.
I don't see the distinction between when is the first versus when do they switch.
All right, so you Syracuse with the question.
All right, I'm going to say the first ARMAC is, I'm going to go a little aggressive.
I'm going to say it's within two years.
Oh, that is bold.
I think they can do it.
That's the 2020 thing, right?
That's within two years.
Yeah, and I think it might even be faster than that.
I mean, probably not, but I think within two years is somewhat likely, if not more likely than not, that the first ARM Mac will be released.
And I agree with both of you.
I think they would start at the low end because that would be the easiest ones to basically just take the same chip that goes on an iPad and put it in the smallest MacBook, whatever it's called at that point.
That I think would be a no-brainer.
As for when the last Mac would be released...
Or the last Intel Mac.
I'm sorry.
I would say that's most likely to happen within... So if I'm saying two years is when this transition starts, I think modern Apple, considering the Mac line, there's no way in hell they complete the transition in a short time.
This is a long, painful transition, just like Retina and just like SSD.
And I'm thinking this transition happens over the course of probably three years.
So I'm going to say first ARM Mac in about two years, last Intel Mac in about five years.
I think the pro line is the thing that could, yeah, I know that's what I was alluding to with like how long does it take for them to go all SSD, all retina, like, and they still haven't done it.
Um, but I really think the pro line is more likely to drag them out rather than just like laziness because it could be again, especially if they're on the accelerated timeline of like 2020, um,
They just haven't had time to replace the Xeon with anything.
And they're just fine with saying, okay, well, the pro line is going to be Intel until we can make a chip that can deal with Xeon until we can, you know, like that's, that's so much less of a priority than all the other things that they build and so much more complicated than the,
reusing and slightly enhancing phone chips that those would be the ones to linger that it's like we haven't gotten around to it pro users don't care anyway in fact pro users don't like architecture transitions they got to rebuy software and crap and things aren't optimized for it and so those things would just linger and you know three to five years even where it's like when is apple going to replace those things in the high end as the low and silly creeps up on it in performance or whatever
Although here's a question about the low-end ones.
So say they go ARM on, you know, the laptops and stuff.
The MacBook Pros have a T2 in them, which is like an A10-ish thing.
Did these laptops end up shipping with two ARM processors?
One doing all of the SSD encryption and the hey dingus stuff.
Well, why not?
I mean, iPhones ship with the motion coprocessor thing plus the main coprocessor.
Right.
But the M7 is tiny and weak, and the A10 is not tiny and weak, right?
So it starts to look a little bit silly to have an A12 and an A10.
inside the case well that's the system cpu and this one does touch id drive encryption and hey dingus that seems like could you just could you make like a could you do it all on one arm chip that's a little bit bigger or would you would you shrink down i don't know if you can shrink down the t2 maybe it's as powerful as it needs to be
It would be interesting to see what that architecture looks like.
They could certainly make a single even larger system on a chip that handles all those functions and just has different execution units and different things inside it.
It would be interesting.
I think the delineation between the two would end up being somewhat synthetic.
And what I mean by that is I think perhaps to start it would literally be an A10 or whatever approximate equivalent thereof.
uh in addition to the main cpu but it wouldn't surprise me if within a couple of years you know it is just one system on a chip that has a completely separate subunit subsection you know or something else that that handles the stuff the t2 handles and even though it's on you know one uh i can't think of the term looking for not a pcb but you know it's it may physically be one unit with one socket
But internal to that unit, and I think this is what you were saying, John, it has like two very different, and I don't want to say cores, but very different pieces that only interconnect in certain ways, much like the T2 is with the Intel processor, but obviously those are not the same unit.
It would be, you know, this kind of synthetic delineation where it's all in the same socket, but it's doing two completely different things and can only talk in certain ways.
Because that's kind of the whole point of this is keeping them separated.
You know, you got to keep them separated.
i was thinking they'd all be on the same die just because they'd have so much more room that's what i was looking for thank you thank you there you go i don't think they do they still do the multi-die packages is intel still having those i haven't been keeping up i don't i don't know if it's those i think apple does though it's because don't they don't they put like ram and stuff in the same package as the cpu and everything but i don't think it's on the same die
So what happens to Thunderbolt then?
Because I only have lightly paid attention to this.
And I know that recently, and actually the chat room was just talking about this, they sort of kind of open-sourced, Intel sort of kind of open-sourced Thunderbolt.
And as far as I knew, it was Intel and Apple that kind of were the people who built Thunderbolt or whatever.
How does that work on a non-Intel CPU?
Are there problems?
And I'm genuinely asking, like, is that a problem with an ARM CPU?
Would that work or would they have to go something else?
Not a problem that money can't solve.
I mean, this is related to like... So, say Intel... Say Apple does leave Intel.
Intel obviously doesn't want Apple to leave them.
They make money off of them.
They're a good customer.
They buy expensive Intel parts.
You know, whatever.
Intel also wants more of all sorts of other kinds of business.
So, I'm sure Intel was very happy about Apple's spat with Qualcomm.
And Apple's reportedly not going to use Qualcomm chips at all in its next round of phone products, which is...
You know, that's a lot of money.
And what are they going to use instead?
As far as we know, Intel is the only alternative.
Of course, Apple's making its own radio chips eventually, too.
But I'm not sure if that's going to happen this year.
So if Intel still wants to make money from Apple, could they, you know, it's not like Intel is going to say, well, if you're not going to use our CPUs, we won't sell you anything.
What they'd say instead is, please buy our modems.
Right.
Please, please buy our cell phones, which, by the way, someone wrote in to tell us that Intel actually does use TSMC as a fab because Intel can't do analog stuff.
So all their radio chips are fab by TSMC, which I think is fun.
But like Intel wants to sell them something.
So you can make a deal with Intel and combine the Thunderbolt licensing and dealing with all that intellectual property and throw in there that you're going to get to make the cell radio chips for the next two lines of iPhones or whatever.
A deal can be made.
An arrangement can be come to.
Money will solve this problem.
No problem.
Intel is not going to hold a grudge and turn down Apple's money.
Apple has a lot of money.
So I feel like Thunderbolt...
Is not an issue that I mean, I'm sure if you control the money at Apple, you have to deal with it and finesse that relationship.
But boy, a mountain of money can solve a lot of problems.
Thunderbolt matters a little bit today.
A few years ago, Thunderbolt didn't matter at all.
A few years from now, it's logical to think that Thunderbolt might not matter then because something else will matter.
There is a need for there to be these nice, high-bandwidth, high-speed ports on computers pretty much all the time for things like high-speed storage externally, monitor connections externally, stuff like that.
But it doesn't need to be Thunderbolt.
It can be something else.
Apple can use USB.
They can use...
They can invent their own thing.
They could piggyback on someone else's standard, which is more likely what they would do.
There are lots of things.
You can't say like, oh, they can't make this laptop because it doesn't have Thunderbolt.
I mean, hell, already the MacBook doesn't have Thunderbolt.
They already sell laptops without Thunderbolt, and they sell just fine.
Technology moves.
What is relevant today, what you think is required today, is not necessarily what's going to be required by tomorrow's Macs.
Makes sense.
I mean, hell, Thunderbolt already today is everywhere and almost no one cares.
Almost no one ever uses it.
The vast majority of the time, those Thunderbolt ports on those laptops are being used to take power in or send power out.
And they're also used to deal with the lack of ports.
Like that's the magic of Thunderbolt.
It's like all these people with Thunderbolt docks that is essentially their one port docking station to make up for the design of laptops.
If the laptops had more ports on them, Thunderbolt would be less important.
But by Apple making the choices it has made, Thunderbolt actually I think is more important than it would normally be.
for a lot of MacBook Pro owners.
Yeah, that's fair, actually.
But again, there are other standards that could come along that will come along.
Thunderbolt won't be the port that everyone cares about, assuming everyone ever does, forever.
It's the port that we have this year.
And we've had it for a few years before this.
And we'll probably have it for a few years after this.
And then we'll use something else.
And that something else could be something Apple controls.
We are sponsored this week by Squarespace.
Start building your website today at squarespace.com slash ATP.
Enter offer code ATP at checkout to get 10% off.
Make your next move with a beautiful website from Squarespace.
Now look, these days you need websites all the time for lots of different things.
Maybe you're starting a new podcast.
Maybe you want to start a new online store.
Maybe your needs are simpler than that.
Maybe you just need to make a content site with a few information pages about something you're making.
Maybe you want to do a photo gallery, show off your artwork.
Whatever the case may be, Squarespace makes it so incredibly fast and easy to make a beautiful website no matter what your skill level is, whether you are a beginner, whether you're a total novice, or whether you're a programmer.
It doesn't matter.
Squarespace is probably right for you.
Try it and see for yourself.
I always tell people this.
Next time you need to make a site or next time you want to start a new project, go to Squarespace and give it like an hour and see how far you get.
The reason I tell people an hour is that for most people, that's all you need to either be finished or to be like almost finished with your new website for your project.
And you'll be shocked quite how nice things can look.
and how little work you had to do to get there.
Because it really is professionally designed templates, and it's super easy to drag stuff around, change colors, change fonts, whatever you want to do.
You can design your own logo in Squarespace.
You can buy your own domain in Squarespace.
There's so much functionality built in.
All of it is with intuitive, easy-to-use tools.
So check it out today.
Start a free trial site with no credit card required.
You can see what I'm talking about.
You can try actually building a site without paying a dime.
Go to squarespace.com slash ATP to get started.
And when you decide to sign up, make sure to use offer code ATP to get 10% off your first purchase.
Once again, squarespace.com slash ATP and use code ATP at checkout when you decide to sign up to get 10% off your first purchase.
Thank you so much to Squarespace for sponsoring our show.
Make your next move with Squarespace.
We've had this in the show notes for a couple of months at least.
And this went around very briefly.
I guess it was in May.
Nick here writes, "...I think that Apple's increasingly austere take on industrial design has made them better at shipping products that feel almost invisible.
I appreciate that.
It reduces the hardware to a tool, but not an appliance.
Yet I think Apple's products feel even more approachable than they used to because so much of what they make is entirely straightforward."
They don't need to mask the complexity of the software with a layer of gumdrop plastic.
In many ways, the software has become simple enough that the hardware can reflect that.
And this was kind of summarized as, most especially by MJ Tsai, what happened to Apple's whimsy?
And a gentleman by the name of Marco Arment commented on this via Twitter.
He said, it tragically passed away in 2011.
We all really miss it.
So, what happened to Apple's whimsy, Marco?
When did it go away?
You just quoted him telling you when.
I have a better question.
As relatively new Mac users, what are your memories?
When you think about whimsy or fun or things related to that type of thing with Apple, what comes to mind?
What's your earliest memory of knowing that the Mac was a whimsical, fun, delightful experience?
Well, I can absolutely murder you by telling you the first thing that jumps to mind is the iPod, and it had nothing to do with Macs at all, which I know makes you deeply upset, but I mean it.
I mean, I was aware of Macs.
I'd used Macs off and on growing up, but I mean, they always seemed like...
I don't know, the thing that those other people used.
And I don't know what other people means in this context.
Maybe smarter, maybe more attractive, maybe weird, maybe nerds.
I don't know.
But not me is what I knew.
And it wasn't until the iPod, almost said iPad, it wasn't until the iPod that I started paying attention.
And I remember, and I think I told this story relatively recently.
The first iPod Nano was, I think, the first Apple product I ever owned.
And I lusted after that thing so hard.
And I just couldn't believe something so small could do so many things and hold so much music and be so good to use and so fun to use.
And that is my first memory of just being truly and deeply impressed by Apple, because obviously iPods had existed for a while at that point, but I never was really that interested in them.
They were big.
They were clunky.
They I mean, they had hard drives, actual hard drives in them.
But once the Nano came around, that was the beginning of the end or maybe the beginning of the beginning with regard to my relationship with Apple.
Oh, I didn't mean to narrow it to Mac.
You know, I just sometimes say Mac instead of Apple, because that's what I'm thinking about.
But yeah, but what about them was whimsical?
What about them was playful?
I mean, for me, it was the sleep LED on the Mac.
Ooh, that's good too.
My first Mac was a PowerBook G4, and...
And there's a lot of that machine that was very delightful.
I mean, there's so much of it that was just incredibly cool and nice.
I mean, part of it was, you know, features of OS X, like, you know, much to the chagrin of old Mac people.
I love things like the genie effect.
I was just about to say that.
Get out of my head.
Much to the chagrin of old Mac people.
Everybody loved the genie effect.
A lot of Mac people thought that was like cheesy and stuff.
But anyway, I thought the same as you.
No, everybody loved the Genie effect.
Really?
Go watch the presentation when he showed it.
The oohs and aahs.
The Mac OS itself had a bunch of software whimsy to it.
That wasn't just something to serve a function.
That was something that was like...
animation decoration, basically.
It was like dessert.
It's like, this is unnecessary flourish, but it's delightful and it makes people smile.
It actually served anti-function.
It made it slower to minimize windows, but we did it anyway because it was cool.
The sleep LED, though, was interesting because it was like, here's this little detail of this product that has been very overly designed to serve... Again, overly designed to serve no...
bullet point or feature checklist function.
Does it have a sleep LED?
Yes.
Making it do the pulsing thing so it looks like it's breathing serves no purpose except to make people think it's cool and to make people smile.
And that to me is kind of like the heart of...
I think what this question is asking about what a lot of us feel is missing in a lot of the recent things from Apple is not necessarily the exact same things or the exact same styles of things, but those little details that were done that would make you smile.
about how it would give you a little moment of delight and they would be totally unnecessary and serve no marketable or checklist item feature value at all, but were just cool and would make you think, wow, this thing is cool.
I love this thing.
And that's what got us into this platform.
That's what got us all loving Apple products so much.
It's stuff like that.
It's details like that that would just give us those little moments of delight.
So let me give you a brief counter argument.
What about Memoji then?
I mean, is that not whimsical in the Animoji that preceded them?
We haven't gotten to debating whether Apple's whimsy has departed or decreased or what the cycle count is.
I was just trying to think back to what was your first experience with it and what do you remember as whimsy?
Because I think it's a different – depending on when you came into Apple, you might have different answers, especially if the question is –
is apple more whimsical now than it was in the past so your your baseline both of you is around the same time is that whatever that level of whimsy was the uh you know the well i guess well you didn't get a chance to answer casey but like what what about the nano was whimsical was it the colors was it that it was you know cute uh no i think it was the the
I guess the cuteness, I don't know how to verbalize it.
It was just the first thing that Apple made that looked like it was really and truly fun and maybe without compromise.
Because and admittedly, I'm recalling something that I had.
What was it like 14 years ago?
But my recollection was that there was almost no compromise involved.
Like it was tiny.
The battery lasted a really long time.
It worked with Windows, which at the time was important to me.
It held a whole bunch of music or more way more than anything I had at the time.
And so it was something that was fun to look at, fun to hold, fun to use and was basically without compromise.
well i was gonna say early on iphones were the same way but no that's not true at all they had plenty of compromises so i don't know i guess that's the best way i can describe it is that it was without compromise but you also have not answered the question john like what was your first i'm starting to think casey is immune to whimsy but then again he was a pc user for a really long time and an os2 user so there may have been some permanent damage done oh at some point and and an ibm kid so boy yeah the deck was stacked against him
Because you haven't really described, I mean, Marco accurately described a thing that is definitely whimsical.
You've described the first Apple product that definitely attracted you to it, but maybe not the most whimsical.
But anyway, I was asking about early appearances because for people who are saying, oh, Apple has lost its whimsy, they're comparing it to some point in the past where they remember it being more whimsical.
And, you know, so my answer to this, like, you know, backing into the same question of, like, early memories or whatever, is that, again, there's some word for this, but I forgot.
The curse of old age, right?
So I've been using Apple for so long that it's not just like there was the old times and the new times.
There's many, many cycles that we've been to.
Yeah.
i've seen the cycle of apple whimsy oscillate a few times back and forth so the current the current movement in whimsy is just is viewed in that context and i have to compare it like are we really swinging so far away you know are we in a very the deepest valley ever or this is just another valley and thinking back it's always seemed to me that and maybe this is to get us to the topic of you know how things have changed uh in in recent years that
Apple's hardware whimsy has oscillated a lot.
And it never got really, really high until the Jobs 2 era, until the iMac and the colors and branching out into different kinds of hardware.
That, I feel like, was the strongest swing the hardware has made toward whimsy.
Obviously, we're very far away from that peak now, right?
You know, with the candy-colored iMacs and everything, and now everything is, you know...
glass and steel um not glass and steel glass and aluminum uh but there's still a lot of it there but the software had always carried never gone through a particularly deep valley from the very beginning of the mac to the you turn the thing on and a little happy face on the computer that you're looking at comes on the screen for the very first thing that appears on the screen or even just like the the floppy disk with the
software has been the way that Apple has expressed, the way the whimsy of Apple has come through most strongly.
And no matter what happened to the hardware, even when it was all the Snow White design language and we had the Mac 2CI thing and everything was pinstripes and buttoned up and business-like or whatever, the software was still entirely fun and playful and the CD player came in different colors for no reason and balloon help was in there.
These little, you know, cartoonish speech balloons and the control strip looked like a little zipper and slipped in and out.
that was sort of like the heart and soul of Apple, the software.
You couldn't stop it.
Back when people had names in the credits of the applications and they had fun about screens and there was Easter eggs and there was a little flying iguana flag flapping in 3D.
No matter what happened to the hardware, the software was there.
And I feel like
When the Jobs 2 era, there was this weird inversion where the hardware got very whimsical and playful and fun.
You know, hugely so.
You had the cube, you had the colors, you had, you know, all the iPod stuff.
Just very, very fun.
But the software, you know, Mac OS X aside, started to shift in the direction of being less playful.
iLife was definitely playful and delightful and whimsical.
And so was the operating system.
But now look what has happened over the years.
All the Ili stuff is way less playful than it used to be.
Much more buttoned down and simple and austere.
Or dead.
Yeah.
The operating system, which used to look like Candyland, right, in the early days of MAGA was saying, it's slowly, slowly, progressively gotten more flat, more simple, less garish, right?
And I feel like this current...
you know the hope from the jobs to air until now has been has seen the biggest the most whimsical hardware and the least whimsical software ever the personality of individual people does not come through in the software apple makes and the personality and aggregate is definitely more buttoned down right up until i think this year with dark mode and accent colors is the first tick swing in the other direction of whimsical software uh the hardware if you look at all the hardware not just mac hardware
it's been hanging in there like they're you know the the phones come in fun colors the watches all the watch straps or whatever there's still plenty of fun to be had in the hardware so i don't feel like we're at like a really deep valley i just feel like we you know we're not at the peak we were with the the candy imax but we're not in a particular trough either unless you look at a particular thing like oh the macbook pros are super boring why don't they come in colors like the macbook does or whatever
But the software, I feel like, really has been in a big downswing in recent years and is, on the Mac anyway, just starting to tick up a little bit with a little bit more fun.
So I'm not entirely on board with the idea that Apple's whimsy has disappeared.
And I think if you have that impression, you may be focusing too closely on one particular aspect, whether it's just the hardware and just a particular product line or whatever, like Casey said or whoever brought up Memoji.
If you look at a specific area, Apple looks like its old self.
Like, look at this silly thing where we do these keynote things where we can put these weird emoji heads in our face and stick the tongue out and stuff.
Totally whimsical.
100%.
But if you look at the design of Apple's laptops, especially the Pro laptops, they're just boring and the same.
And even the phones.
If you don't look at the back, like that was one of the articles that was linked here.
Look, I laid all these phones on the table and they all look like black rectangles.
Yeah, flip them over.
People, they make all sorts of cases with holes in them and shiny red things and yellow bumblebee stuff and all the, you know, it's where you find it, right?
They're not going to put it on the screen.
The whole front of the thing is a screen.
But, you know, just look at the backgrounds that they have on the screens, the animated backgrounds, the weird different patterns and lock screens that they put on there.
I'm not I do not subscribe to the theory that Apple's whimsy has disappeared and we're in a giant trough.
I just think it is an oscillation.
And there was a big inversion between hardware and software at the start of the jobs to era.
But I think we're you know, I think we're just wiggling back to the normal average eventually.
I see what you're saying.
I don't know.
It feels as though Apple is growing up and or is stepping into the shoes of the big guy.
They're no longer the also ran.
They're now the big kid on the block.
And it also just feels like more maturity.
This analogy may make no sense, but it's the best I can think of.
When I was 16, I had mostly used or been given my dad's Saturn SL2.
And if you follow us from all the way back in neutral, this is the one where the wheel fell off when I was driving it.
What color was that one?
It was purple.
It was the weirdest thing.
But anyway, the point is I – actually, this is not going to help my case.
I really should abandon this and beg you to cut this all out, but I know you won't.
Anyway, what I really wanted in the world as a 16-year-old, all I wanted in the world is to change the gauges in the dash from a black background to a white background because I thought that was so cool.
And God, I hate myself for bringing this up right now because I'm just feeding into your –
into your whole thing, Marco.
But anyway, I really wanted white gauges.
I just thought it looked so cool as a 16-year-old.
All I wanted in the world was white gauges.
And of course, my dad, who was an adult, said, no, you're not doing that.
That's a stupid thing to do.
And he was right.
And I feel like that was the 16-year-old me, whereas the 36-year-old me is horrified at the
And I think some of that is just growing up, right?
And I think that's a lot of what's going on with Apple.
And I think that some of it is, like I was saying a moment ago, they're arguably the big player in this space now.
I mean, granted, not by unit sales.
Obviously, there's way, way, way more PCs than there are Macs.
But it seems like the only people that are making any money, for the most part, is Apple.
And the only manufacturer that anyone's really interested in
I mean, yes, I know there are PC users who are very much into Windows, blah, blah, blah.
But even amongst my friends and family that do not have Macs, it seems like nobody's really a trendsetter except Apple.
And so now they're playing it much closer to the vest because they're the big guy now and they're older now.
Hopefully that makes some amount of sense.
Maybe it doesn't.
I don't buy that one, though, because Apple has been a thought leader in design, to use that lovely phrase, for so long.
In fact, they seized those reins by being extremely whimsical with hardware, which is why our irons were all teal and translucent.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They do set the trends and directions, but it doesn't have to be away from whimsy.
It can be towards whimsy.
And, you know, like I said, people who subscribe to the theory that Apple's whimsy has gone away have to look selectively.
Look at everything have to do with watch bands.
They're like...
All they do is come up with fun things to do.
The watch bands blending into the background with the pride one with those little lines and everything.
It's entirely whimsical.
Almost everything on the watch is whimsical because a lot of it's just not functional.
It's just about like, hey, I want to see pictures of my kids or Mickey Mouse taps his foot or whatever.
honestly i don't i i disagree on the watch i strongly disagree on the watch well you're thinking of the hardware design of the watch not the software though no no i'm thinking i think the watch is whimsy especially on the software side the software side of the watch is whimsy is almost as if samsung tried to be whimsical oh come on
It's not coherent.
There's a whole lot of it that isn't whimsical at all, that isn't even well-designed or that isn't very functional.
It doesn't have to be well-designed or coherent.
Whimsy is the opposite of that.
It's just something, like you said, something just done for the fun of it.
It's like they're buying Whimsy.
It's like, let's pay Disney, or have Disney pay us maybe, who knows, to have the Toy Story characters or Mickey Mouse on there, tap his foot.
Yay, Whimsy, done.
Meanwhile, the whole rest of the watch UI is, you know, not...
But just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not whimsical.
Yeah, I'm with John.
I think your mechanical watch, I don't want to use the word snobbery because that's way more negative than I mean, but your preference for mechanical things that are considerably simpler and cleaner, I think is clouding your opinion of the watch in this case.
I don't think it has to do with the mechanical stuff.
I mean, I agree that it's incoherent.
I'm thinking of something that's not functional and kind of incoherent, but definitely whimsical, that stupid honeycomb screen on the watch.
with the apps that is entirely whimsical and looks cool and is fun but doesn't work and is bad and they should get rid of it right so whimsy and goodness do not go together that's true of a lot of things that have been whimsical with apple products over the years uh so you know and i was just thinking of the watch specifically but again the backs of phones the fact they make the red ones the fact that they change the finishes right and make the gold and the rose gold and the shiny black and and
you know like there's only so much room for you to do it because again it has to be functional in a way um and then for the software same type of thing like obviously there was a big i'm gonna get to the theory that i haven't seen anyone espouse yet in the chat room i'm surprised i'm sure it's in one of these articles that was whoa a roof leak like months ago earthquake no a roof leak that's not good all right that's better than an earthquake you're fine that's a lot of water
I have experience with this.
Take evasive action now.
I'll be right back.
I'm going to get something to put this water.
Just need an umbrella.
Oh, my word.
See?
It can happen to anyone.
You never know.
You should do something about that house, Marco.
Yeah, yeah.
Where were we?
I don't even know.
Anyway, we can continue this with that, Marco.
He'll be back and I'll pick a book.
No, the theory I was referring to is the idea that when Johnny Ive took over software, all the fun went out of it.
So, you know, the iOS 6 to 7 transition, Johnny Ive was responsible for relentlessly simplifying their hardware to take all the unnecessary features out of it to make it plain and featureless.
And when he also took over software, that was the iOS 7 transition, which definitely was less whimsical than iOS 6.
Uh, and so you could put that as the villain and like, that's when it really happened because he, all of his hardware design started to getting more simple and featureless and plain and just the essence of the product.
It's just the screen.
We don't need any buttons.
It's just like the most elemental, simple form.
The pencil is just a cylinder that comes to a point.
There's nothing on it anywhere.
Forget about trying to clip it onto something.
We don't want that.
Right.
And the same thing with the software.
And I think there was a zig in that direction, but they've zagged back at a
Does Johnny Ive love Memoji?
Was he jazzed about dark mode and letting people change accents colors?
Maybe.
Maybe he's come around.
Maybe it was just a particular direction, but it definitely seems a hard move in the opposite direction.
So the point now where I feel like the hardware...
in certain product lines is continues to be somewhat whimsical and fun.
And the software has turned a corner and is trending in that direction.
And so on the long view, I feel like there have been oscillations and there were some big ones and there was a definite switch between hardware and software.
But if you average the whole line out, it doesn't turn into a slope that suddenly goes down or suddenly goes up.
We are sponsored this week by Casper and the Wave mattress.
For $100 off your Wave purchase, visit casper.com slash ATP100 and use promo code ATP100.
Terms and conditions do apply.
The Wave is the new, most innovative mattress from the sleep experts at Casper.
It is the first mattress of its kind to relieve pressure at 36 different points so you can feel relaxed in ways you never thought possible.
And like all Casper mattresses, the Wave has advanced temperature regulating technology.
This helps you sleep cool and comfortable without overheating during the night.
Only the Wave has five layers of superior foam, including a cushioning top layer for maximum comfort.
The Wave is Casper's biggest breakthrough in sleep technology for exceptional comfort and deep restorative sleep.
It gives you support in all the right places.
Whether you're a back, stomach, or side sleeper, it supports you correctly to give you the relief you need for a good night's sleep.
And thanks to the Wave's patent-pending contouring system, it adjusts to your body and your natural curves, and it's designed to keep its original form for years to come, no matter how much time you spend on it.
All of this is an incredible value compared to similar high-end mattresses on the market.
You should try it for yourself.
I sleep on a Wave.
They sent me one, and honestly, we love it.
And anytime we travel, we really miss our Casper mattress at home.
The Wave, I gotta say, it's a really great mattress.
All Wave purchases also come with in-home white glove delivery and setup for free.
So you don't even, even though Casper is great at that, you know, they make delivery super easy on all their mattresses.
They make setup super easy.
Just you can do it yourself.
You can carry it up the stairs.
It comes compressed in this box.
And then if they, you know, if you don't like it, if it's not for you, you can get, you can return it.
No questions asked within a hundred nights risk-free trial.
And the Wave comes with in-home white glove delivery and setup for free, as I mentioned.
So you don't even need to deal with carrying up the stairs if you don't want to.
It's wonderful.
For $100 off your Wave purchase, please visit casper.com slash ATP100 and use promo code ATP100.
That's casper.com slash ATP100 with promo code ATP100.
Terms and conditions do apply.
Thank you so much to Casper and the Wave Mattress for sponsoring our show.
What do you think, Marco?
He's just trying to keep water away from his computer.
I would like so badly to pay attention to this conversation right now, but between the time that John started talking and now, a massive thunderstorm started.
I had to run around and close all the windows in the house because no one else is home because they all went out drinking without me.
some amount of water might have gotten on gruber's five thousand dollar review laptop from apple and uh and and so i went and ran around closed all the windows uh that's exactly the laptop you want water to get on though it's apple review laptops not yours not your problem give it back to them yeah and now it's water cooled so it won't overheat uh
And then while I finally sat back down and started listening again, and then I noticed there's a, I felt like a little splash in the back of my arm.
Oh, God.
Turn around, and there's a wet spot on the floor.
Now, Hops is in here, but, you know, I trust him.
And he was sitting back there a little bit ago, but isn't anymore.
And I mean, now I know why, because the wet spot wasn't him, turns out.
Now it's dripping.
Now you can actually hear the water.
Hang on.
oh oh oh my that's that's not desirable yeah so that's that's the drip now um and so i had to run out get a tupperware bucket you know you know container to for the water to fall into um although now i'm realizing i'm going to be hearing that sound for the rest of the podcast so maybe i need something smaller for the water to fall into we can't hear it when your mic's not next to it so it'll be no problem
I've also discovered that the door upstairs that opens up onto the deck does not go all the way to the floor, and water is coming under it.
So the upstairs landing is a little bit damp.
Has it never rained on this house before?
Okay, so this house has been a rental for a very long time.
And when you have a rental, the idea is to put as little money into it as possible over time and to just max out bedroom space.
And most people who are going to use a vacation rental are going to use it for like a week and then never again.
And so it doesn't really need to be great.
It certainly doesn't need to be maintained.
And one of the ways they've saved money over time is by fully enclosing a four-side wraparound porch and turning all those into bedrooms.
That is what I'm in right now because one of them has become my office.
When you enclose a wraparound deck that's very, very old and you make it into rooms, you kind of ignore the fact that like deck roofs usually aren't made to the same standards as interior roofs.
So that's problem number one I'm encountering right now, which is why my elbow got wet.
And why Hopps temporarily had something blamed on him that was not his fault.
And the other problem that one of the reasons the deck door upstairs lets water in, which is the same reason the front door lets water in, because all of the wood everywhere along all four sides of the house is very, very rotten.
Because one of the ways they save money over time is by not putting in any gutters, drainings, or eaves anywhere.
Neat.
So when it rains, as it's doing very much right now, the water simply flows down all four sides of the house.
It runs off the roof and the deck, and it just flows down the sides of the house.
and of course gets all over you know we have to close the windows when it rains because you can't leave them open because there's no eaves or anything so the rain just pours in there's literally like a waterfall down like you can see like when it rains you can kind of see like this waterfall coming down the window all the windows in the house oh my word and uh
And of course, the front door has the same issue where the water falls down on the patio in front of the front door and splashes under the gap that's under the front door because the gap used to be not a gap, but it rotted out because of all the water splashing in front of it.
And so we bought this for the location.
Well, I would maybe consider moving all the laptops to the house part of the house.
And maybe my iMac Pro.
Is it out there too?
It's in the office, which is, you know, former Porsche.
Not a great plan there.
No.
So is this literally the first time that like the roof has ever had a leak in it?
It's the first time I've been here for it.
When you're not there, water is just flowing in, but it evaporates by the time you arrive.
Yeah.
Like I imagine if I like, you know, tear up the carpet right here where the water is landing, I imagine I'm going to find some, you know, discolored wood from all of the times it has ever rained.
Oh, yeah.
All right.
So do we want to try to bring do we want to come back to the whimsy conversation?
We just we just putting a fork in it.
The only thing I have to add to the whimsy conversation is, you know, this kind of gets back to Marker's complaints about the watch and whimsy not being the same thing as being good.
Another place where there's lots of whimsy and modern Apple.
is siri oh god and that good old siri snark where you try to ask it something and siri has a funny response and that's whimsical and people don't like it sometimes sometimes so that's that's part of the reason like you know the trend away from whimsy and software and stuff is like if individual people who get to put their names in the credits make the software and they do some fun thing or they have some feature or whatever
It can go too far.
And some aspect of an application can be playful in a way that people find annoying because they just want it to be utilitarian and they don't want to, you know, Apple hasn't done this for the most part, but everyone has seen applications like this where someone has an idea to make a part of the UI, quote unquote, fun.
uh especially if you can't disable it like it makes a honking noise or it does a little animation and it's an operation that you do all the time and like siri uh every time you ask it to do something coming back with a even if it's just a too verbose thing or being too friendly or whatever it can be annoying so uh whimsy is not necessarily a formula
for good and delight that's just the best case worst case scenario when something is whimsical and playful you just wish it would get out of your way and do what it's supposed to do and that's where johnny ive appears in his white world and says see if we had reduced it to his essence you wouldn't be having this problem
Oh, my word.
All right.
Marco, do you have any other parting thoughts on this since you were running around the house most of this segment?
Well, what was one landing spot on the rug has now become three landing spots in the rug, and the bowl I picked is not quite wide enough to cover all three of them.
Oh, no.
That's the way leaks work.
They don't stay.
I didn't realize I should have gotten three bowls and all three of them having some kind of soft landing area so I wouldn't hear the drips.
Well, at least when it lands directly on the carpet, I don't hear those.
Oh, goodness.
Maybe we should make this a short show.
So maybe you shouldn't add any further commentary on whimsy.
yeah i mean i i want it's so funny when this is happening behind me you know it's whimsical water leaking through your roof it's great whenever you see some whenever you see like someone in like an old shack or something in a movie and you want it to be like a whimsical like uh you know forest dwelling or whatever and it rains there's a little bucket with a drip of water in it because that's fun and delightful and homey and whimsical so you're getting the whole experience now
I should probably install this silicone keyboard cover on my new MacBook Pro.
Immediately.
That's not going to save you.
So Pericles in the chat suggests drilling a hole in my MacBook so it can drain like my air conditioner.
But then you're going to get out the drill and go to do it, and you'll see this big yellow sticker on the roof of your house that says, do not drill holes in this house.
And then promptly remove it and continue drilling.
Oh, gosh, that's good.
That's a good amount of water that's filled that bowl so far.
I would say... Do you want to get another bowl?
Do you want to get another bowl?
We can wait.
What color is the water?
Is it like brown and gross?
No, it appears... I mean, it's sitting on a brown, gross rug, so maybe it's a little bit hard to tell, but... And it's sitting inside.
You know, like those... The color of like...
Rubbermaid or Tupperware containers from the 80s.
It's that color container, and I'm pretty sure that container was from about the age that the roof is.
Yeah, I'd say it's probably about 10 ounces of water already in that bowl.
Oh, my word.
This is what you'll take a picture of to make the podcast art for this.
portion there should take a picture right now actually this is giving a whole new uh spin to uh tiff's double rainbow picture she was taking what does it mean you know what it means it means you're gonna have water in your house soon it's a flooded house oh my god not not good at all do you need to get more bowls or can we do some ask atp
oh we can do some sktp this the this tupperware bowl has i i have it under the spot that most of the water is falling on so only there's only some small drip spots in there i mean look the whole floor nerd is rotten anyway now and i know that i know that now so it's like well it gets a little bit wet and you should count yourself lucky that this this what this leak has the courtesy to fall someplace that is not like directly on top of your computer that's true yeah although i think i just felt a splatter on my leg that's not good
Well, it may be approaching, but I'm saying, like, the trips usually don't care.
And if it was going directly on top of your computer, your options, especially on your iMac, like, that's bad.
I have a sheet over in the other side.
I mean, sheets aren't... No, yeah, you should try, like, a garbage bag.
Yeah.
Or tarp.
You have a tarp?
I might do that when I go to bed tonight, actually.
When you go to bed, you bring that thing into the bedroom with you.
Yeah, that's probably the bedroom.
But not someplace you'll trip over when you get up in the night to pee.
Yeah.
oh my word yeah you may be overestimating how much free space we have in these bedrooms oh god we were sponsored this week by simple contacts there are a million things demanding your time contact lenses should not be one of them simple contacts lets you review your prescription and reorder your contacts from anywhere in minutes
We'll be right back.
It gets carefully reviewed by a real licensed doctor.
You receive a renewed prescription.
Then you order your own brand of lenses.
They have all the brands you're familiar with and all at great prices, making vision care simple, accessible, and affordable.
With simple contacts, you never have to leave home to get your prescription renewed or to order more contacts.
No more doctor's offices or waiting rooms.
And it's fast.
The vision test is self-guided and takes less than five minutes.
It's way faster than making an appointment somewhere even, let alone going to it.
It uses your camera and microphone to capture the same information as an office visit would.
And then a licensed ophthalmologist reviews every exam carefully to make sure your eyes look healthy and your vision hasn't changed from your last prescription.
Once again, they offer all the brands you're familiar with.
They have options for astigmatism, multifocal lenses, colored lenses, and more.
The exam is only $20, much cheaper than a typical auditor appointment.
Standard shipping on the contacts is free, and the contacts are priced competitively.
Although, this is not a replacement for your periodic full eye health exam.
So check out Simple Contacts to renew your prescription and reorder your contact lenses in minutes from anywhere at simplecontacts.com slash ATP20 and enter offer code ATP20 at checkout to get $20 off your lenses.
That's simplecontacts.com slash ATP20 and code ATP20 for $20 off.
Thanks to Simple Contacts for sponsoring our show.
Oh.
Let's do some Ask ATP before Marco gets electrocuted.
Bronwyn Erb writes, I have many portable external drives and they keep filling up.
What is the best?
Is that with water or something else?
What is the best solution for storing large video files?
Drill holes in them.
That'll do it.
The Synology sounds very complicated, but is it the next best step?
I am hugely biased.
So the three of us got sent one or two, depending on which one of us you're talking about, one or two Synology units several years ago now.
And I am so in love with my Synology, I cannot even begin to describe it.
And I'm in love with it enough that if this thing died tomorrow, I would spend the truly obscene amount of money that it would cost to replace it because I am that in love with it.
A while ago, I was trying to convince a friend of the show, Todd Vaziri, to get himself a Synology.
And I was writing or I had written a post describing the bare basics of what you need to know in order to have your own Synology.
I will link that in the show notes.
I don't know that that's necessarily the next step, but it is certainly a great next step.
But there's other things in the middle, like you could do something comparatively simpler, like Drobo, which I've heard about half the people I know have Drobos love them.
And about half the people that I know that have Drobos friggin hate them.
So take that for what you will.
But again, I mean, Synology did send us those those units, you know, we didn't pay for them.
But I love my Synology and I would absolutely pay for it tomorrow if I had to.
um john what would you do if you had a lot of external drives that were overflowing and what would your next step be so this question says that they you know keep buying external drives and they keep filling up i think the next step is like something like a nas like because if you you know my advice for storing stuff is yeah good external drives they can be really big and they're cheap and you know that's the way to do it but if you keep doing that and they keep filling up and you're frustrated by the fact they're filling up some kind of storage solution where you can add hard drives and especially that you can replace them with larger capacity ones you know
So it's having some kind of raid or other, you know, shared data arrangement.
That's that's the next step.
And Synology sounds complicated and it's very capable.
There's a lot of things you can do with it.
But I've always been impressed by, you know, not just Synology, any of these things, even like the free NAS stuff or whatever.
It's it's not as bad as you think it's going to be.
it takes a little bit to think about and set up, but once it's up and running and doing the thing that you wanted to do, especially if you just want it to serve as a big bucket of bits to store stuff, like you can do it.
It's, and in my experience, it's, you know, it's been very reliable.
Uh, and, uh,
you know you don't you don't think about the initial setup happens and then that's that so if you keep filling up external drives which is a much simpler solution the next move is some kind of box with a bunch of disks in it and you have a lot of choices and yeah you have to do research and stuff but uh like casey i have totally come around on it and i will i'm i can't go back now like if my synology dies i'm buying a new one yep marco
Are you still there or are you underwater?
Marco, what do you think?
Yeah, the drips are getting louder.
The bowl is filling.
So you may not have opinions about overflowing external drives, but what are your opinions about external overflowing bowls?
No, so I think, I mean, if you take the question as written, how do you store even more video files, even more large video files than what external drives can hold?
Then, yeah, sure, you know, something like a Synology or other NAS type solution is the way to do that.
But that's, you know, if you're filling up external hard drives, I mean, external hard drives, you can get those, what, up to like 10 terabytes now?
Yeah.
So if you're filling those up, you're going to fill up a Synology pretty soon, too, because a Synology is a box with, like, eight hard drives in it.
Well, you'll fill it up one-eighth as fast, won't you?
I guess, but, like, that, you know, that, it basically, it brings more problems.
It's one, and it's, and, you know, the Synology, you know, I still have the one that Casey mentioned that, you know, that we all got as freebies thanks to their generosity, and
I use it.
I don't really think about it much.
It just is there.
It's like a big archive drive for me and TIFF.
And it just kind of serves a couple of minor roles.
But for the most part, it's just like a big archive drive.
And it's our time machine host drive.
And so it's nice for that.
And I don't ever really go update it, really.
I'll remember to do it maybe once a year.
I'll go update the software on it or whatever.
But for the most part, it updates itself.
It keeps itself going.
And I don't really ever have to know about it.
I keep it in my garage.
It runs there year-round, 24-7, and it's fine.
So, you know, it isn't a whole lot of work to keep it, but it is just like one more thing.
It's one more, you know, avenue of complexity.
It's one more thing that you have to buy, and, you know, these things are not cheap.
You know, I think empty, it's something like $1,000 or something like that for one with a bunch of bays in it.
Mm-hmm.
A bunch of disks, that's probably another $1,000 for large ones, if not more than that.
So you're putting a lot of money into this thing, and it's another thing to manage, and it's another thing to maintain, and it's another thing that might have security issues that you need to worry about or hear about or get patched or whatever else.
You add a lot of complexity to this.
And then you have this big, loud – well, yeah, it's kind of loud.
I mean you have this big box full of disks that are probably loud somewhere in your house that you have to maintain and leave on and pay for the power for and everything else.
So it's a pretty large solution.
But instead, I would say before you jump into that, I would ask yourself, is there any way I can find a way to need to keep fewer or smaller video files forever?
You know, is there some other way to address this problem?
And I don't know, you know, what Brahman's needs are here.
You know...
It could be that they're storing source video files for video creation projects that just can't be down-resed or anything else.
But if it's the case of storing Final Cut working files or video project files, what format do those have to be in?
Do they really have to be stored in ProRes, where it's this massive, minimally compressed or uncompressed source file?
Or is it...
Can that be stored as the final output file?
Do you need to store all the sources?
Do you need to store all the sources in the highest format?
Can they tolerate compression once they're a certain age old?
Things like that, just to avoid needing to store such massive files and quite so many of them.
Because if you're going through terabytes and terabytes, those are pretty significant needs for somebody who's trying to like, for not like a video production company for like just one person.
That's pretty substantial.
And so if there's any way to deal with just addressing the problem of do you really need to keep all these?
And do they really need to be as big as they are?
I would try to solve that or really take a hard look at that first.
And if you really, really can't do it, then I guess a Synology or something like that.
But it's such a heavy solution.
Exhaust all other possibilities first.
I don't disagree with you, but man, you should try the Synology.
It's really great.
It's expensive, but it's really great.
All right.
Chris Tucker Meir writes the following, and this is verbatim.
Serious question, despite the obvious jokes.
How do you decide when to replace personal computers or devices?
New one every X years, fixed annual budget, keep them until they die or can't run the latest OS, gut feeling on a case-by-case basis?
And I was thinking about this for myself.
And first of all, I had to stop giggling about all the jokes I wanted to make.
But secondly, generally speaking...
I replace computers very, very, very slowly.
Not as slowly as John, but pretty darn slowly.
I bought my iMac that I'm using now right before I started my last jobby job.
So that was the beginning of 2016.
So this is two years old now.
And I think the graphics card may be going or it needs to reinstall, but that's a whole different issue.
Moving on.
The last laptop I bought was the MacBook Adorable, which I bought just over a year ago.
That one's a little bit of a special case because I will probably buy a new one the moment a new one comes out just because I want that sweet, sweet speed, whatever improvement a new one would bring.
But generally speaking, before that, I hadn't bought a laptop since 2011, I think.
We were talking about this last episode, actually.
Yeah.
Whenever the high-res anti-glare MacBook Pro was a thing, that was the last one I had bought.
And this was when SSDs either weren't a thing or were so prohibitively expensive that they effectively weren't a thing.
So I don't buy computers very often at all.
That being said, John, you buy one once every, what, 15 years?
i feel like this thing this question you know uh serious questions about the obvious jokes but the jokes aren't jokes there there are actual answers like we all have all three of us have different uh decision making about when we decide to replace a computer and that's the answer to this question we make jokes about it because sometimes you know other people's habits seem silly or whatever me taking a long time marco buying everything you know uh casey tolerating his computers doing bad things
Right.
But those are literally the answers.
So I feel like if you listen to the show for a long time, you kind of know how we all decide.
Like, I feel like I can answer for all three of us and no one way of deciding when to buy a new computer is right or wrong.
But he's just asking us what they are.
So for me, as I think you can tell for all these tech things in my life, I'm always trying to buy.
like what i think is like a winner product like it's it's not the very first it's not the very last it's not the one that totally needs to be replaced it's not going to be the model that everybody hated like i have criteria that are important to me and i'm looking for the computer that fulfills them and you know i've been waiting on my my personal mac the one i'm using right now for a long time because
Apple just hasn't made one that feels like it's up to snuff.
And my decision-making is I don't want to buy an in-betweeny model if I can at all help it.
I would have been perfectly happy with a 5K iMac or an iMac Pro.
Those would be great.
They'd be way better than what I'm doing.
But I'm like...
but you know and especially they've kind of been leading me on with the mac pro thing it's not what exactly what i want i want a computer that's like the one i have but newer and if eventually it was clear that apple was never going to make one yeah i would have bought an iMac pro like that would have happened but apple has continued to string me along and just when i was about to give up they had that apple event in april and said we're going to make a new mac pro so i've been waiting for that but that's that's my philosophy same thing with televisions like i'm
Or even cars like I, you know, I need probably needed a new car sooner than I bought one.
But there was a generation of Honda Accord that I just didn't like.
It was, you know, I had driven them as a loner.
I thought they were ugly.
I didn't like how they they the interior looked or felt.
I felt the ride was weird, like they weren't, you know, so I waited like I will.
I will.
I would rather wait.
and get a product that, that I feel like I'll be happy with both initially and over the longterm rather than a buy immediately.
And for other, you know, other computers in the house, like, cause I'm not the only one who has one here.
I'm mostly kind of like we do with a car.
So use them until it's clear that they can't,
fulfill the needs anymore like the disc is too small the thing is too slow like whatever i don't i don't keep them you know encased in amber and say you're you're gonna run you know snow leopard forever because it's the only one that that makes you fast i just keep operating the operating system and if it gets too slow i buy a new computer um but for the most part i want to get mileage out of my stuff i want to buy a pretty good one i want to use it for a long time and i replace it when it's needed and you know so my wife's got the 5k imac
uh i think the thing will make me replace that is it's got a one terabyte internal drive and i'm always pressing up against the edge of that eventually i'm gonna have so many photos because i keep all the originals on my computer uh that it won't fit anymore and that is going to prompt me to buy her a new probably a new 5k imac um so yeah the answer the answer varies but i definitely am looking for the best time to buy a computer that's going to be in for the long haul same thing with my cars and televisions
So, Marco, every five minutes?
I mean, yeah, I basically buy a computer whenever, you know, for a desktop.
I actually am fairly conservative because typically when it comes to desktops, I buy like the biggest, fastest one that I can when I need one.
And then I try not to upgrade that until there's something meaningful to upgrade to from there.
The high-end, like most Macs these days, it doesn't move that quickly.
And when you buy super high-end, when you buy super fast stuff...
there's a lot less need to constantly upgrade it.
People like Casey, who own the MacBook Adorable, they always want the next one because it's barely powerful enough to function.
And so when the next one adds 10% more performance, they're like, oh my god, please, anything.
And they go buy it.
Which is actually kind of a funny incentive for that product.
Yeah.
Apple always has an incentive to keep it not that great.
And yes, I know it's Intel's fault.
Anyway, when you buy high-end stuff like John's Mac Pro, today we can make fun of John's Mac Pro because all of our phones are now faster than it probably, but
When John bought it 50 years ago, it was a really great computer for like five years after that.
And it still was good even after that.
It was like you couldn't get much that was faster than that for a long time.
So there was no reason for John to buy a new Mac Pro for like the first four or five years of owning it because there really wasn't that much that was better than that one that would have been available.
And so you would have been spending a lot of money to get something only, you know, a little bit better.
Because when you buy it at the higher end, like...
There's not much more headroom there for products to go in the next few years.
And it's a long time before yours becomes irrelevant or prohibitively slow or prohibitively limited in other ways.
So that's what I do on the desktop.
The desktop is I buy pro desktops whenever possible and I use them for a while, usually between two and four years.
The laptop side, I change fairly frequently.
On average, I think I'm about once a year, maybe, for the laptop side.
And part of that is because I have been dissatisfied with so many of the laptops recently.
I've been waffling between different ones and
I try one, then my needs change, or then I have a different idea of how I want to use it, or I decide that I hate it because it's terrible, and so I sell it, and then change to a different one to see if that one will be good and will keep me satisfied for a long time.
But that's obviously not something that most people need to, want to, or are able to do, so I'm not going to say that's a good strategy for anybody.
It's certainly not very efficient.
It's only because I've been so dissatisfied that I'm trying to find something good.
And finally, I would say that, you know, the idea, you know, what Chris asked here was like, do you buy a new one every X years?
Do you have a fixed annual budget?
And I would say those aren't great approaches because anything based on like, I will evaluate this decision every X years or I will evaluate this decision, I will apply X, you know, dollars a year to my computer pool and, you know, drain it when I feel like it.
The problem with those approaches is that that assumes that computers make linear progress over time and that whenever that interval comes up, whether there's enough money in the pool or whether it has been your X years for your upgrade interval, that assumes that that will be a decent time to buy a Mac or to buy your next computer or whatever that is.
And that's simply not how this works in practice.
And of course, in recent years, this has been getting even more extreme with the duration between updates of a lot of products.
But
That just isn't a good strategy to tie yourself to a fixed timeline in a market that doesn't follow a fixed timeline or even a remotely linear one.
So for instance, you don't want to buy something right before it's probably going to be upgraded if you don't have a pressing need right then to have it right then.
If you can wait, wait.
But even things like not every generation is significant.
I mentioned my desktop moves.
The last desktop I bought before the iMac Pro was the iMac 5K.
I jumped the gun on a cycle.
I had a trash can Mac Pro and I was planning on using it for years.
But instead, the 5K came out and changed everything because it gave me desktop 5K resolution retina, which I didn't think would be possible for a few more years.
And it was such a compelling package that I changed my plans and just got that and sold the Mac Pro and actually paid for the entire iMac, or at least the majority of it with the profit.
And so I jumped the gun because conditions change in the market.
But then after that, one of the reasons I kept that 5K iMac for a little over three years is because...
the newer ones that had come out after that weren't better enough.
It wasn't a big enough gain from what I already had because I had bought this great computer until the iMac Pro came out.
And the iMac Pro was so good and it was so much better than what I had that I could actually get something that was like two or three times faster and had a few other benefits as well that I'm like, okay, now this is a good time.
But if I would have said, I'm going to buy a new desktop every three years,
I would have bought the 5K and then I would have bought the, you know, the version of it that's, I think, still the current version now.
But I'm going to miss the iMac Pro because it would have been too early.
And so you have to pay some attention to what's actually being released, what the actual products are, what the cycles are, if you want to optimize for it.
Now, if you don't care, that's a different story.
If you don't care, first of all, you probably aren't listening to our show, because let's be honest.
But that's another story.
Or if you're desperate, if your computer broke and you need one, and the update isn't likely to come out for six months, fine.
Then get whatever you can at the time you get it.
And sometimes we all have to do that.
But...
If you have flexibility in your timing, it's way better to actually look at the market and make judgment calls based on conditions as they happen, as opposed to just saying every X year, I'm going to replace this with whatever I can find at that point.
Yeah, I think I very much agree with that.
And if you need a tool with which to evaluate that, it's not great and you miss a lot of context.
But the MacRumors Buyer's Guide, which we will put in the show notes, that's a really good way to just kind of get a rough guess for is it a terrible idea to buy this computer right now or is it an okay idea or is it a great time to do it?
So it's worth checking that out if you've never seen it.
All right.
Finally, we have a bit of a throwback, which I am kind of excited about.
Rob Mathers writes, on the surface, Swift obviously addresses the spirit of Copeland 2010, but does it address the specifics?
Is it really moving along the, quote, higher level language, quote, progression?
So, Copeland 2010 was an article that, John, you wrote in, what was it, 2005, where you said, hey, Apple really needs to get on this new language bandwagon and do it pretty much yesterday or there's going to be problems.
And you kind of laid out, here's what I think that new language needs to be able to do.
So, did they do it?
Are we good now?
Is everyone happy?
Yeah.
People ask about this from time to time, and it was actually a series of articles, and then I did a follow-up article actually in 2010 about it.
And I think I asked and answered in there, but those are all old articles at this point, so people haven't seen them.
But yeah, Swift pretty much hits every single point in a surprising way.
I knew they'd have to do something, but you think, well, maybe they'll do something that is more like an evolution of Objective-C or
You know, they wouldn't go all the way to have a very, very different language, not just different in syntax, but difference in semantics and all sorts of new features and like everything that Swift is.
Right.
I think everyone was caught by surprise by what a break Swift was, despite the fact that early on they were really downplaying.
They're really playing Swift up as it's not that different from Objective-C before kind of like Swift came into its own.
It's like, no, really, it's pretty different.
It took a couple of years for that.
The only area, I think the reason people ask this is they think, well, Swift is not very dynamic and it has these aims of extending itself down to be capable of low-level stuff as well.
And all that is true, but it still fulfills all the requirements.
Definitely a new syntax, new language model, you know,
it still has the ability to have unsafe pointers and stuff like that but they're called unsafe like when you just use the language regularly you're not dereferencing pointers you do not have to worry about accidentally scribbling all over memory you scribble all of memory you're definitely doing it on purpose in swift uh so and it's not a loosey goosey uh you know
everything is dynamic type of language like, you know, Ruby or Pearl or JavaScript or something like that.
And maybe that's what people think is like, oh, it's not, it's not like Lisp and it's not like a small talk.
It's, it's more like a, you know, a fancy C plus, but it is, it is higher level.
It does fulfill all the criteria for the most part.
It doesn't run on a virtual machine.
That's true.
But it's close enough.
Like it's, it's never, there was never going to be, you know, a fantasy language that,
uh fulfilled all of my hopes and dreams exactly right and the fact that swift came as close as it did is is like you know a miracle beyond my wildest dream so absolutely it addressed all the problems of copeland 2010 it came at about at a reasonable time like i i in my copeland 2010 revisited article i explained why i thought that 2010 came and went and nothing happened and there are good reasons for it uh i
yeah so sorry to sorry to disappoint if you're looking for some kind of controversy but they did it it was called swift it was great i was there did you get a t-shirt i was i was just you know caught everyone my surprise all right we actually have a bonus ask atp this week uh late breaking news uh let's see ted hardy writes hey casey how's the new dave matthews band album
which actually came out like a month or two ago.
Hey, buddy, how's it going?
I actually don't have too much to say about it.
It's good.
I've listened to it more than I expected.
I don't typically listen to studio albums that much, but it's good.
The very first song, what was it called?
Samurai Cop, I believe, is a very rare example of a Dave Matthews Band song that's lyrically decent.
And it's also a very rare example of me paying attention to the lyrics of any song I ever listened to.
um i think that's very good um i'm obviously very very biased but uh virginia in the rain is also very good although i think my favorite of all of the tracks on the album might be again and again which i just think is very very good but it's weird not having boyd uh on the album it makes sense that boyd is not on the album but it's good uh not my favorite not my least favorite it's good what did you think about it marco
Dave Matthews Band remains an important part of my music collection.
Well done.
You're so mean to me, but well done.
He plugged that quote.
He didn't even say important.
He said it remains a product in our lineup.
No, but I think he said important in an email to somebody.
Oh, maybe.
Maybe important got added once he had more time to think about it.
Oh, my word.
All right.
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Casper, Squarespace, and Simple Contacts.
And we will talk to you next week.
Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A
Oh my word.
Do we have time for a post show or do you have to go?
What's the state of the world?
The rain has slowed to the point where the roof leak appears to be inactive.
That's good.
So I think we have, and I already ran around and closed the windows and drawn off John's laptop.
So I think we're okay.
The floor upstairs is still very wet, though, from the door leaking water under it.
But I'm choosing not to fix that right now.
Yeah, that seems not good.
I'll deal with that later.
All right, so as we record, I have not yet posted my next Casey on Cars video, but by the time this episode is released, it will be out.
And I have sent you to advanced access to said video.
Can we call it a screener?
Yes, actually, I guess you can.
Because it makes us feel really cool.
Yeah, yeah, I sent you guys a screener.
It was on Blu-ray.
For our consideration.
Is it Watermark?
Because I already uploaded it somewhere.
You took my joke from me, John.
You took it.
I was going to say, it's watermarked and everything.
I already made a DivX out of it and put it on BitTorrent.
I tweeted it as an animated GIF.
Is that okay?
Yeah, it's totally fine.
No copyright intended.
No, yeah, exactly.
Oh, DivX, that's a throwback.
Well done, Marco.
Oh, man.
Anyway, the next version of Casey on Cars, this has become more and more obvious as I've been tweeting and Instagramming more and more about it, but I was...
uh given for a week a volkswagen golf r which i mispronounced approximately 305 times during that video yeah casey casey you you've been you've been doing so well on the podcast and i watched the video i'm like what happened i know but i thought you had turned a corner you've been practicing on the podcast you've been nailing it every single time like ready to watch this video he's gonna nail it and nope you did not you you've regressed
I know.
Sometimes I did.
Sometimes I didn't.
The voiceovers were usually much better.
No, no.
You never got it right.
Not a single time.
No, the voiceovers were better.
The voiceovers were better.
But anyway, listener of the show, Andrew, was able to facilitate this for me.
And I'm not sure where his Gary the Privacy Clown kind of threshold is.
So I don't want to say much more than that.
But it was extremely kind of him.
And and I very, very, very much appreciate it.
And I was I had the pleasure of meeting him at WWDC, which was also excellent.
So thank you very much, Andrew.
Yeah.
So you guys have seen the video.
I have talked to you somewhat about the car.
What do you want to know?
All right.
So we're going to assume we're going to spoiler gong this, whatever we're doing.
We're going to assume that people have watched the video and we're going to talk about your conclusions and the content of the video.
So, you know, spoiler exhaust backfire or something.
And here we are.
So basically, if I can summarize your thoughts back to you, because obviously that's productive.
No, no, that's fine.
That's fine.
I feel like, you know, so your opinion of this car seems to basically have been... By the way, it was a good video.
I really liked it.
You know, I think you were concerned about it might be a little bit long, but I think it actually worked.
Like,
It is long.
So the version you showed us, the screener that we received for our consideration, was about 18 minutes.
When I first saw that, I thought, oh, that probably is going to be a little bit long.
But it didn't feel long when I was watching it.
It felt just like, oh, okay, this is Casey talking about a car.
And there was never a point where I'm like, geez, how much longer is this?
That never came.
production value wise you're getting better you're getting a lot better it was really pretty solid there were a few minor things that I noticed I wish that transition was a little bit rough or the audio in the car was not ideal but otherwise it was pretty good
Honestly, it's hard for me to judge you relative to other YouTube car videos.
I don't watch any of those things.
So I don't know what the style... And I watch it embarrassingly small amount of YouTube videos total.
So I don't know what the style of YouTube videos, especially YouTube car videos, is.
I'm not sure I do either, but I take your point.
So with that grain of sand aside, with that bucket of leaked water aside, I liked it as a standalone thing.
I can't compare it to what's out there, but I can just say it in absolute terms.
I liked it, and I was impressed by it.
And you continue to have a much stronger grasp on narrative and story arc than I think most people do when they make videos.
Certainly than I do when I make video.
But I...
I was impressed by just how coherent the whole thing was and how much sense it made.
Audio-wise, video-wise, it was great.
Video-wise, I don't really think I have any complaints about anything.
I was pretty impressed with how good it looked and everything.
Audio-wise, the parts we were standing in front of the car where you have the lav mic worked out really well.
Yeah, it was a little windy on one of the days, which was a little unfortunate.
But otherwise, I was pretty happy with that.
Yeah, and I heard there was one big wind noise that you heard in one of them, but I only heard one of those.
I only noticed one of those, so that was pretty good.
I was being kind in the sense that I was watching it on the built-in speakers of my laptop.
Because I had a busy night preparing for my house to explode.
Yeah.
And I didn't have time to like sit down on my computer.
So I watched it on the laptop on a couch, which I thought like, okay, this is a real world environment.
This is how most people watch videos.
Most people are not watching YouTube videos on like studio headphones, you know?
But so, so in the context of your audience, it sounded great.
The vast majority of the time, the only things that didn't sound ideal were the parts in the car, which you know already that like where you, where you were clipping a little bit and it was a little bit quieter than the rest of the video.
But other than that, it was fine.
And I do think that should be solvable by, as I mentioned last episode or two episodes ago, that should be solvable by gain adjustments.
That's probably where that's happening.
Well, yeah.
And actually, I have purchased a Sennheiser G3 setup, which is a wireless level ear mic, which apparently is the go-to standard that everyone uses for pretty much everything with regard to level ear mics.
I have not received it yet.
I bought it from B&H when they were having a sale, so that comes Monday.
Additionally, a different listener was kind enough to send me a Samson equivalent thereof, which all happened simultaneously.
So I'm going to try that out and see if that works any better in car.
Because like you said, Marco, externally, I think it was mostly fine.
I mean, it wasn't perfect, but it was mostly fine.
But in the car, I ended up using the mic off the GoPro that was closest to my head because that was actually the best option I had, which will tell you how crummy my options were.
So I'm going to try...
one or both of these.
And hopefully one of them will be a little better in car.
Cause that I think is my weak spot right now from an audio perspective is that in cars, just, it's just bad.
And I mean, it's a crummy environment to record, right?
Like it's not, it's not a very conducive environment to getting really clear, you know, noise free audio out of a human's voice or, you know, out of a human body.
But I do feel like,
I am getting a little bit better with regard to audio.
And I do think I'm definitely getting medium better with regard to video.
I'm really happy with how the multicam setup worked out.
I didn't know if that was going to go well or not, but I'm really happy with how that went.
And maybe my editing choices were great.
Maybe they were terrible, but I'm at least happy that I can now, I now have a new tool in the toolbox in which is, you know, having two different GoPros pointing at me and flipping back and forth between them in the edited version.
Yeah, that part actually I thought worked pretty well.
Again, there were one or two cuts where I was like, oh, that's kind of a weird cut.
But otherwise, it worked really well.
And most of the time, I didn't even notice that you were using multi-cam, which is what you want, basically.
You don't want people to be noticing it, right?
And I was able to
It raises the production value, the perceived production value of the video significantly when you have multicam.
It makes it flow better.
It keeps people's visual interest more.
And it looks like a bigger production value result.
And so I think that all works really well.
Cool.
John, all right.
Now that I'm built up, tear me down.
I think I have all the same comments as I had on basically all the past videos.
I did notice the video on this one looked like look a lot better, especially comparing to your first one, like in terms of there wasn't any scenes where like the highs were blown out and everything like everything looked very clear.
The video looked, you know.
crisp and like you know it just looked good and you picked like i guess good sunny days to do it on so all that was great the audio my main complaint in the audio is i mean you're gonna say like oh yeah so the in car was hard and the out of car was better but like i was thinking watching it like would this video actually be better
if all of the audio was like a medium worse like it was the inconsistency of the audio because you'd go from the outside and be like how pleasant i'm listening to casey talk and you go for the inside it's like what the hell is this right and then you go back to the outside and it's like the consistency like consistency at a level six is better than 10 3 10 3 you know what i mean yeah and i don't and you do have to improve the audio in the car somehow you got to talk to demuro because i'm sure he's not using expensive crap but he sounds better in the car than you do so you got to figure out what the hell he's doing is he's doing it like an hour
i have asked in the past and in the past he said he was just using the onboard mic on his iphone 10 but i tried where is where is the phone well and i that maybe that was the missing piece i don't know and and but i've since since i asked and again this was like months ago since i asked i've seen him using lavaliers again so i'm not sure and i don't and i don't like i'm a big fan of demeros like everyone has their problems i do he does but
By and large, I'm a really big fan and I'm trying not to like totally fanboy all over him and be like, oh, tell me all the stuff you do.
I just want to be just like you, please.
Can I be just like you, please?
You know, so I'm trying to like play it cool, even though I'm very not cool.
So I want to try these two, these two new level here, see if they do any better.
And if neither of them do, then I'm going to probably have to reach out again and be like, dude, please help me.
Yeah, you got to come up with someone or you just got to do a voiceover for it.
And speaking of voiceover, the second thing, again, a consistency issue, not so much a quality issue.
I think all your voiceovers were good and all your stand-ups were good and everything, right?
But there was a different difference in like cadence and energy level between the live and the after.
And even some of the after stuff were different from each other.
And again, consistency, like it has to feel like an even, has to feel like one, like the same thing.
It's kind of like, you know...
Like if you try to insert a section into a podcast later where like three days later we decided we need a segment and we recorded all our voices sound a little bit different, our energy is different or whatever.
That was the same in this video.
You got quieter and calmer and then you got more animated and it was just too much variability.
And I don't know how to even that out other than to say, and this is what everyone was trying to suggest you do or whatever, but it's like up to you.
Like one way to do it would be,
don't talk so much live like just do all the talking later uh that's what that's one way you can do video obviously you're not going for that which is why i'm saying you just got to figure out a way to get it to work um again i'm just repeating comments from last time but it's worth repeating them stop looking at the camera when you drive for the love of god just never look at the camera when you drive oh come on i just glance it's not that no don't glance we don't need to see you we're seeing you drive drive
Like, I don't think that's a style choice.
A, it's a safety thing.
And B, it's, you never have to look at the camera.
It's fine.
We just want to see, we're watching you drive, right?
We're watching your hand shift.
We do not need to see you glance at us all.
So I think you're fine with that.
I felt like this is, this is like, it doesn't, again, not necessarily a style thing, but like, I felt like I didn't see as much of the car as I wanted to, which may sound crazy because you have all this footage of this car, but I feel like, do I feel like I know what the Golf R looks like inside and out?
And maybe, you know, there's I don't know, like, I don't know if the answer is a gimbal or it's like, you know, you always need more, you know, B-roll footage or whatever.
I know what you look like standing in front of things and a little bit of what you look like driving.
I wanted to see more of the car, even when you were talking about the wing and how the wing is like, like not as ridiculous as his ugly wings.
the whole time you were talking about that i wanted to see like close-ups of this wing that you're talking about yeah okay that's fair and you did you did have a cutaway shot of the wing and you showed it but it was so brief and then the rest of the time i was you talking by the wing like show me show me all these things like yeah that's the things the things that you you have shots of but you don't realize like they go by fast and watch them like i wanted to see that weird flip up thing where like that you used to open the trunk and you showed it you had a you had a shot of it but it felt like it went by too fast as i i wanted to see more of that because it was weird so you have to assume that
When people are seeing the things you want to show us, we're seeing them for the first time.
So maybe like slow it down and or like linger on it longer than you think, because that's the only time we're going to see that that latch and that thing.
My question is like the camera is in there, but it's also the latch.
So do your fingers hit the lens of the camera?
And I couldn't tell because it all went kind of went by too fast.
oh that's an interesting point the answer is no but i i totally get what you're driving at though and so i don't how does that work though if it flips up like is the camera like does the camera not there when you well no it's it's it's that the camera is still within the body of the car and you're putting leverage on the vw logo itself does that make sense so you're not so your hands or your fingers are kind of tucked up directly against the vw logo while the camera is still within the the rear body panel that was a really poor description but does that make
makes sense yeah i like that bit about the sensor thing and behind the the you know the logo because i never would have guessed that that's a detail like i haven't seen any place else and that's a great that that type of thing is a great detail show in fact i saw a golf when i was walking the dog after watching this video and i saw that it did have the sensor thing because it wasn't an r and it was probably like previous year right so this must be actually a new development so that was all great um those wheels are hideous you're so right
Oh, thank you.
Oh, thank you so much.
Honestly, I disagree.
No, they're not for me.
I think the style of wheels that Casey wanted on it, that he showed in a little caption, which is nice, although they should have been bigger, was, I think, a little bit dated looking.
Interesting.
And the new ones, I think, are, I mean, I wouldn't say that they're the coolest wheels I've ever seen, but they look fresh.
They look new and modern.
they do look more modern but i just i don't like that style i'm not this just doesn't it doesn't appeal to me and i also think they're a little oversized like i'm not like so yeah i couldn't get a good look on like you know how thick is the tire versus the the rim it's a rubber band the modern trend of rubber band tires
I was about to say exactly that.
On the brand new wheels, it's rubber bands around the wheel.
On the prior generation Golf R, it's Golf.
I have to, God, I don't know why it's so hard for me.
Anyway, on the prior generation Golf R, there was another inch of sidewall, if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah, because I'm looking at a press picture of it now, which is a little bit like, you know, it's perfectly lit so you can see and it's turned slightly.
And those, boy, you could not have those in the Northeast.
You hit one pothole with that.
Those rims are bent.
It's done.
I think we're going to see a swing back in a different direction because a lot of modern cars across all price ranges come with these very low sidewalls and people are damaging tires and damaging wheels and popping tires.
I think there's going to be a swing back in car advice for people.
If you have the option of the ridiculously huge wheels and you live in New England or someplace with weather or potholes, maybe get the one size down.
You'll...
I'm still living in fear of the fact that I might have two bent rims and I'll have to, you know, when I get four new tires for my car to deal with the slow leak that I have in two of my tires, I don't want to find out it's actually the rims because they're expensive.
Yep, that happened to me on the BMW.
It's expensive, and I don't want to find that out, but it may be true.
Anyway, back to the video.
Yeah, more pictures of the car, more inserts, even things out, consistencies.
But I feel like consistency is more important than overall quality because when you have the really, really good segments, it just contrasts with the bad audio and the really bad segments, whereas it was just in the middle the whole way.
And I didn't think it was too long at all.
I thought it was fine.
Like I said, I could have dealt with seeing more of the car.
Uh, yeah, no, I think, I think you're, you know, everything's progressing here.
You just need to do more of these videos.
Um, and my, my general advice, and this is kind of style advice is I, I prefer video.
It feels like you're kind of treating these videos a little bit like a blog post that you read out loud while driving.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
you can be telling that same story that you told, but while it's going on, like I want to see the car and I'm interested in your experience of the car and how you feel about it and seeing you use it.
And like, you know, that type of thing.
I'm less interested as I'm less interested in you giving me your comments when the only thing on the screen is you and a car that I'm not seeing different parts of.
okay yeah that makes sense oh i appreciate it and you definitely had much more of that in this one than you did in the past ones like i could feel that but i'm still i'm still feeling sometimes like uh when i'm watching uh one of the other car videos of the channels that i watch like they cut so fast away like they are they never linger on anything for you know never linger on like just a talking head for a long time it's always like this part of the car now this part of the car and this part of the car and i drive just and again it doesn't even have to be related right
So I feel like your presence is not as needed as you think it is in these videos.
Your voice is needed, but your presence should be felt behind the camera by, you know, directing it.
Yeah, and that's actually what you just said a moment ago about, you know, a cutaway being relevant.
That's actually something I struggled with on this video earlier today when I was doing kind of my final couple of passes.
I can't remember which exact shot it was, but there were a couple of places.
Oh, I think it was when I was showing the drive by, you know, when the car was actually in motion and you're outside the car looking at it.
I was showing that before I had done any of the ride along footage and.
previously when i was you know planning this all out and working in final cut my intention was to never show the car in motion prior to me getting in the car and starting to take it from a drive there's no reason that we're not going to be confused by the content of the air and and that's how is that car driving who's driving it there's nobody in it because he didn't get in yet oh my god
But I mean, I joke, but I was trying to, and I don't remember if it was you, John or Marco, that said, you know, there's an arc to this.
And in my head, the arc was, I am not driving now.
I will be driving later.
You shouldn't see the car moving yet.
And I agree with you that I think I need to do a better job of letting go of that.
And I
Well, both of you, I think, said, you know, if I'm talking about something I need to focus on and focus on it for longer, I agree with that.
But additionally, if I'm not necessarily talking about a specific piece of the car and I just want to cut away to something else, that's okay.
And I think what I need to work on for next time is...
I do have a fair bit of B-roll, but I don't think I'm good at figuring out what B-roll can I show that's not just swooping over part of the car over and over and over again.
And I think I need to get better.
Some fast swoops, some slow swoops, some zooms.
You don't need any swoops.
It doesn't even need to be relevant.
The trick is it just needs to be like visual wallpaper.
One of the best examples, surprisingly, because I watch a ton of these videos, is Destiny videos.
Lots of Destiny videos
have like they're talking about something like oh here's an upcoming change in the game and here's what i think about it right what the hell do you show when someone is saying let me tell you what i think about an upcoming change to the game uh you know the worst thing you could do is show a slow scrolling web page showing like the announcement so what people do is they just show footage that they have
And it used to be that I used to see in the videos like, oh, I don't have any footage, so I'm just going to show you some footage of this last whatever match that I played or the last raid with friends or whatever.
People don't even say that anymore.
They just say, I'm going to talk about this thing, and they just run footage of Destiny playing, hopefully interesting footage that keeps your attention, but has nothing to do with what they're saying, like absolutely nothing to do with what they're saying.
Yeah, yeah.
and that's the extreme and it works.
It works fine.
You have relevance.
You like, you're talking about the car.
You're going to be showing the car.
Like, I don't care that like, Hey, he's not talking about the car turning into the car is turning.
Like, I just want to see the car.
I want to see.
And it's tough with the outside ones.
Cause you can't, you don't have a drone that's following the car and it's hard to get external footage or
whatever i want one so hard i want one so hard john but yeah i know i know like but it i understand it's hard to get that kind of footage but don't you did it in a few spot you were talking about like driving the car and you were showing i think it was when you're showing different angles from driving whatever and it's clear that you were showing footage that was not you talking like you were talking over footage that you had and that was great i'm like yes exactly that there was this you know it all came together i felt like where you know i felt like i was
i felt like i was watching more like like a tv show like put together professionally by a giant crew because it's like i'm hearing your voice i'm hearing the story i'm seeing exciting footage that isn't directly related to what you're saying it was like it all gelled that was i think that was a great section and earlier when you were trying to do the same thing before you got in the car that felt a little bit clunkier but i saw you going for it so you're getting there like you're doing it there you know just keep keep going in that direction and just keep you know keep trying to do it don't back away from it even if it feels awkward a few times
yeah i appreciate it that makes sense i mean everything both you guys have said makes sense and i'm pleased that you're not deeply uh bothered by like the length or or the audio or anything so no no anything i think you could have gone longer like i'm willing to hear more of what hear and see more about this car and you especially the end with the whole upshot this is what we need to talk about now you're like oh i've decided what my next car is going to be so what what's what's the deal here
so about that um at the same time that i was deciding you know what is the conclusion here because i filmed most of the introduction and most of the footage fairly early did you film multiple endings to throw off the press yeah as it turns out uh the the conclusion i showed you guys is not my real conclusion my real conclusion is i hate this car um no i uh i filmed the conclusion i think thursday and the car went back on a friday morning
And when I reached the conclusion that I think this will be my next car, because you really should watch the video if you haven't yet, listeners.
But the summary is that there are things that are missing on this car.
It does not have a sunroof.
It does not automatically park itself.
It doesn't have true self-driving on the highway or anything like that, like even Aaron's Volvo does.
Yeah.
But it has basically all the bare minimum things that I really want with the exception of sunroof.
And it has an overabundance of power.
And perhaps more interestingly than the overabundance of power, it has a really great four-wheel drive system that seems to laugh in the face of physics.
And that ability to just plant your foot and twist the wheel and just not give a crap and know that the car will figure out how to get you through that turn is
is just intoxicating and and kind of the the the real uh i don't know party piece or the the real interesting part of the conclusion that i came to which i said on the video was that hey you know i love a sunroof and the gti which is a less powerful version of the same car has a sunroof and it has self-parking and it has you know some of the other things i wish this car had
But the thing of it is, is that I'll miss a sunroof maybe six months a year, maybe eight or 10, or according to John, you know, 51 weeks of the year because there's no winter here.
But I will miss that power.
If I had a GTI, conversely, I would miss the power of the Golf R every time I got in the car.
Golf R. Golf.
Every time I got in the car.
And so I think if I were to buy a car tomorrow, I think I would be buying a Golf R.
That being said, as I said last episode, which may or may not have made the published version, I have been having many conversations with Aaron about what we should do about cars.
And the current working conclusion is maybe we could be a one-car family.
Maybe.
maybe that'll work you don't have an office to go to anymore it should work shouldn't it and so i think what we're probably going to do is carmax the bmw because it's just sitting there rotting in the driveway right now uh carmax the bmw and then just see how it goes i mean sell it to carmax for clarification yeah
Yeah.
Sorry.
I'm assuming everyone's an American who's done this before.
CarMax is a place that they'll buy a car from you, even if you don't buy a car from them.
And so and it's very easy.
It's no hassle.
I understand that I could get a better price for that if I sold it myself or perhaps sold it through different means.
But the advantage of CarMax is it's like one of those trade in places online places.
Some of whom have sponsored the show in the past, you know, you just send them a device and they give you a check and maybe that check isn't as much as you'd like, but it's super easy.
Well, CarMax is that same thing.
You bring in your car, they look at it, they hand you a check right then if you decide to sell it to them.
So anyway, so we're probably going to sell the car to CarMax, the BMW to CarMax.
Try being a one car family for a while and see how it goes.
And if it goes well, maybe we'll stick with that.
If it doesn't, then we have to have a tough conversation about, you know, should I really be buying a $40,000 car or should I just be getting like a beater that I can use in a pinch if need be?
And I don't know the answer to that question.
Or a Honda Accord, which you still haven't test driven.
That's true.
But I'm surprised you didn't yell at me for my Accord dig, speaking of.
That was just for you, John.
Did you not even notice it?
But you don't know anything about Accords.
You've never even driven one.
Too old for an accord, yeah.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Or not old enough for an accord, actually, is I believe what I said.
No, you said too young for an accord.
You're not too young for an accord.
That's the problem.
Yeah, I know.
That is the problem.
We can see the gray in that beard.
It's funny you say that.
There were two places in the video where I made a joke about how old I was, and I said in one of them – well, I did the same hand motion in both –
But in one of them, I think I said that much is obvious.
And what I cut away from, because you couldn't really tell on the video, is I was like pawing at the corner of my beard and my sideburns, which have gone very gray.
And so the joke was going to be, look at me.
I'm so old.
I have all this gray hair.
But you couldn't really tell on the video.
And so because of that, I actually put in like other B-roll filler shots.
So it didn't look really stupid.
Like, why is he grabbing his beard and his sideburn?
What a weirdo.
Well, yeah.
That's all right.
More gray than I do in my beard.
That's probably true, actually.
Oh, one more thing.
I, again, this is personal preference, but I would like it if you retired the top of the parking garage because it's not particularly scenic and I need variety.
I thought about that.
And actually, the place where we did the drive by.
um that's a park somewhat nearest us don't be creepy and that i think might be the next backdrop when you were driving i was like look at all these beautiful locations everything's green it's sunny you can go anywhere and i'm looking at concrete yeah that's fair the idea at the time which i think i'm wrong but the idea was i want the background to be as like nondescript and maybe even boring as possible so that you're not attracted to the background you're attracted to me in the car and
But I think you're right.
I think I certainly need to change it up, even if I don't retire the parking garage.
But I have a couple of ideas of where I can do this.
So I think that's fair.
But no, the car is great.
The car is really, really great.
I was stunned by how easy it was to drive, which seems silly.
But as I said in the video, anytime you drive a clutched car, you know, a three pedal car,
The place that the clutch catches is different.
The way the gearshift works, it just feels a little bit different.
And for me, it usually takes me at least a few hours, if not a few days, to really, really get used to how a car feels and be able to drive it with real, real, real confidence.
And it was stunning how quickly I was able to grasp it in the Golf R. I felt within like 10 minutes that I was as good in it as I was in my BMW that I've had for six years, which was super cool.
And in general, it's a really well-built, really well-made car.
I got it with 700 miles on it.
The car was almost literally brand new.
I returned it with something like 1,000 or 1,100 miles on it.
And I loved it.
I really did.
That kickdown switch on the accelerator, though, that's really weird.
Isn't that weird?
I've never seen that before in my life on a stick shift car.
That's the thing.
So my BMW is of an era where BMWs had a kickdown switch.
Granted, I haven't driven my BMW in like a month, but I'm pretty darn sure it doesn't have a kickdown switch.
Aaron's Volvo absolutely does, but it's an automatic.
Why does this thing have a kickdown switch?
It makes no sense.
It seems like a thing they could leave all the stuff in there, but make it so you don't feel... Disconnect it from the mechanism if they just want to save part sharing or whatever.
Can you explain what that does?
Yeah, so in the interest of brevity, I didn't go on and on about it in the video, but...
Basically, the way it works is in an automatic car that's geared.
So you wouldn't see this in your Tesla, but I bet you Tiff's car has it.
If you push the pedal all the way to the floor, you feel a stop and you feel like that's it.
That's the floorboard.
Okay.
But if you push a little bit further and it shouldn't require an overabundance of effort, but, you know, you have to push.
Then there's like a little click and it goes just a hair further into the floor.
No, well, not literally into the floorboard, but you know what I mean?
Like it goes even deeper.
And what that indicates to the car is...
Yeah, actually, in a lot of ways.
In a lot of ways, that is actually a character.
First you click, and then you push harder to get a deeper click.
Yeah, exactly.
No, seriously, you're spot on.
And what that does is, in an automatic, what it'll do is it will...
Force the car to downshift as low as it can possibly go, you know, given the car speed and whatnot.
And it'll also, of course, have been floored.
So you're saying to the car, I want as much as you can give me, you know, give her all she's got, Scotty.
And that is a really convenient thing in an automatic, say if you're going to pass or something like that, or for whatever reason, you really need all the power the car has now.
But that makes no sense in a manual transmission car because you're the one controlling the gears.
It's not going to shift for you.
So what is the purpose of this kickdown switch?
Did you read the owner's manual?
Does he have to serve some other purpose in this car?
I glanced at it and I did not notice anything.
I should have looked one more time, but I didn't notice anything.
And I think it's just a part spin thing is my understanding.
But I have not verified that.
Anyway, but I love the car.
And if you haven't driven one, I highly suggest it.
I have driven a GTI in the past, which I made brief mention of in the video, and I might be getting one as a press car, maybe.
The problem that I have with the Golf R, which I didn't want to belabor too much in the video, but I did mention, is that it feels every bit of its $40,000, which is good.
And also a little bit bad.
Like, it feels like a $40,000 car.
In some ways, it feels better.
In some ways, it feels maybe not like a $40,000 car.
Where's my sunroof?
But anyway, the GTI that I drove, it was a $30,000, $32,000 car, something like that.
And it definitely felt like it was way nicer than a $30,000 or $32,000 car should be.
Because it had basically everything the Golf R has except less power and two fewer driven wheels.
Yeah.
but it the switch gears all the same it has a sunroof it has automatic parking you know in so many ways it felt really good actually the one thing the gti doesn't have that's a big deal is it does not have the digital dash which i actually like the digital dash but i can totally i could make an argument that the digital dash is terrible uh but i actually like it and so the gti doesn't have that but otherwise i left driving that gti which i drove for literally 15 20 minutes
I left that GTI thinking that is way nicer than a $30,000 car should be.
And so if you're interested in this sort of a car, you should definitely try the GTI.
And if that is fast enough for you, just buy it on the spot.
And if it isn't, or if you live in a place that has a lot of snow, then look at the Golf R because that's just the GTI, but more.
I think you should give the GTI serious consideration because the way you talked about both cars, first of all, you can say GTI.
Touche.
That's a fair point.
And you also, you seem to like, it almost seemed like you were trying to rationalize the Golf R because it's like faster and the better performance version.
But it sounded like you'd be happier with a lot of things about the GTI.
You know, you are not the first person to have said that.
And there is a lot of truth to what you're saying.
But I would always miss it, though.
I mean, you justified in the video, you know, you brought up a good point, which is, you know, you kind of did that with your BMW.
Like, you didn't save it for the M3.
You got, like, 335 instead.
But first of all, what you got was a car that in many cases is faster than the M3 at the time.
I have a feeling, despite all the problems you've had with it, you would have had more with an M3.
And...
You know, it was still a pretty amazing car and it was more practical in a few ways.
So if you wanted to go either way, I could encourage you.
I could justify it.
I could give you reasons for either direction that you might want to take here.
Based on what you said in the video, I think you probably would be happier with the GTI.
And John can stop making fun of the way you say things.
That is true, and that may be worth it alone.
He still has to say Golf, right?
It's not just the GTI.
No, you could just say GTI.
I'm pretty sure.
I mean, this is a trim level.
Yeah, I mean, it is a trim level of the Golf.
So John is technically right, but if you say a GTI to anyone... You would never need to say it.
Exactly.
You can't just say, hey, I got a new R.
Right.
Exactly right.
Because then I have an R8, don't I?
That's what I have.
You know, you very well may be right.
You very, very well may be right.
And I still stand by what I was saying, that I would miss that power in the Golf R, but I wouldn't always miss the sunroof.
However...
I absolutely think you may be onto something.
And the other nice thing is, if we decide that we want to go a ever so slightly more frugal approach, and assuming we get a second car at all, you can get a lightly used GTI with CarPlay for not a tremendous amount of money, for like $25,000, $30,000, or maybe even less than that.
Wait, isn't that pretty close to the price of the new one?
Yeah, it's close.
It was like $30,000, $32,000?
Yeah, somewhere in that range.
And again, I mean... At that difference, you just get the new one with the new warranty.
Yeah.
Well, that's also true.
But I haven't looked into how much a used GTI is.
But my point is just that, you know, when you go used, it could maybe be literally half the cost of a new R. And then that changes the calculus a little bit.
You know what I mean?
So...
I don't know.
I'm not sure what we're going to do.
We may end up doing nothing, but I don't know.
It's, it's like I said, the end of the video, it's a great problem to have, right?
Like I get the, the reasonably, reasonably affordable GTI and I'm happy, or I get the, the R and I'm happy, you know?
So one way or another, or I just don't get anything and I'm, and I'm very sad, but I'm also less broke, but we'll, we'll see how it goes.
But yeah,
All in all, I had a lot of fun with the car.
I really enjoyed the car.
I really enjoyed making the video.
It was stressful.
It was hard because I wanted to have it done by the time we record this on Friday evening, which I did, but that was tough.
And I'm glad I had the deadline for the record because that forced me to really get it done and not just dilly-dally for a week.
But, you know, since we got back from London, we had a few days where I mostly relaxed.
And then that Friday that we got the Friday after we got back was when I got the R. Then I spent all of the following week basically being a ghost and just filming nonstop.
And then this week was the week after where all I did was edit nonstop.
And so next week, I feel like I need a vacation at this point.
Next week, I am very excited to maybe crack open my iOS app that I haven't looked at in like six months and maybe write some code and just be relaxed for a little while.
Because I tell you what, this whole fun employment thing, it's been a lot busier than I expected.
Right.
Which, again, is a good thing, but I'm sleepy, man.
Yeah, like when you first go independent, you think you'll have all this time and then life fills it.
Yep, life finds a way.
That's a reference, John.