I Cut Them Up in the Air
Casey:
I was at Wegmans, which is one of our local grocers, this past weekend.
Casey:
And we went to get some lunch and then do just like a spot of shopping to get some essentials before we go to my parents for the holiday.
Casey:
Welcome to the life.
Casey:
As always, we have to start with some follow-up and we have a headphone bump slash dongle that one of us wants to talk about.
Casey:
And oh my, this is large and in charge.
Casey:
This is for, is this the phone that you can break into components or whatever?
Casey:
No, this is the Andy Rubin phone.
John:
Yeah, it's hard to keep track of which doom to failure non-Android, non-Apple phone this is.
John:
But that's not what the point of this thing is.
John:
A couple shows back, we were talking about the thickness of devices and the difficulty fixing the headphone port on the very, very thin new iPad Pros.
John:
And I surmised that they should add a headphone bump.
John:
uh then there might be android phones that already do that so a couple people sent like a samsung phone that didn't really have much of a bump but like the phone tapered at the edge except it you know it tapered severely to come to kind of like a pointy little edge but the headphone jack was like a little bump on the pointy part but that bump didn't actually extend out past the the full thickness of the thickest part of the phone so that doesn't really count this thing however definitely counts as more of a uh i don't know headphone tumor headphone lamprey
John:
It is the Essential Phone, which apparently doesn't have a headphone jack.
John:
I actually don't even know if it has one because the sales pitch of this is that it is quote-unquote audiophile quality headphone jack.
John:
So it's a thing that includes... I have many opinions about that.
John:
feel free yeah it includes an audiophile grade amp that can drive audiophile grade headphones bottom line is it's it puts a headphone jack on your phone and it does so by attaching a thing that is about the same thickness as the phone magnetically to the back of the phone and then even though the thing that attaches to the phone is the same thickness of the phone there is above and beyond that a cylindrical lump coming out of it for the headphone jack
John:
so this is one heck of a headphone bump uh and by the way uh this device that magnetically attaches to your phone and adds a headphone jack costs 115 or starting at 14 a month according to the lovely financing link that's on the the web page 150 you mean yeah i was gonna say it is not 115 it's 150 i said 50 i'm just a mumbler
John:
115 dollars 115 dollars oh sorry uh yes 150 dollars uh so i thought this product was hilarious and it is uh definitely probably the biggest headphone bump we're ever going to see on a phone because it more than doubles the thickness of the phone marco are you jealous of the limited edition digital audio convert converter on the essential phone nope not even a little bit but it's going to deliver one of the best mobile audio experiences available today
Marco:
good for it it will see it will fulfill it will fulfill the role that most not all but that most quote audiophile gear fulfills which is it'll be a wonderful expensive placebo to people who think they need it and can hear it
Casey:
Oh, I love you.
John:
Will people still be able to fit it in their pocket with this thing on it?
John:
Because honestly, like you really have to look at the pictures attached to the phone.
John:
But you're imagining you can't even like it makes it huge and it's not symmetrical.
John:
So it's just one corner of your phone is now more than twice as thick.
John:
So how do you even put that in your pocket without knocking the thing off?
John:
Because it's just connected with these two little magnetic pin thingies.
Marco:
Well, the only people who are even going to buy this phone at all are like rich tech jerks who want to try everything.
Marco:
And even most of them won't.
Marco:
But so you have you already have like, you know, a high end audience for this because people who actually can only afford to buy like one phone every two years are not going to take a risk on this dumb thing.
Marco:
They're going to get like a mainstream phone.
Marco:
So this, you know, it's only going to be rich people who buy this and they're going to be plugging in at best.
Marco:
you know, if they use this headphone adapter, they're going to be plugging in like giant headphones.
Marco:
So it's already not going to be used in their pocket when headphones are plugged into it.
Marco:
So it's not really a problem.
John:
The styling on this phone, by the way, it is styled like the iPhone 5 and like the new iPad Pro.
John:
So if you want to see a brief glimpse of what next year's flat edge iPhone is going to look at this essential phone and just close your eyes and don't look at the giant thing attached to the corner of it.
Casey:
You know, it makes me deeply happy to hear Marco talk about how the entire audiophile industry is based on placebos.
Marco:
No, I didn't say all of it.
Marco:
I said most of it.
Casey:
Well, okay, fair.
Casey:
You know, I can't tell if it's one of those things where I am genuinely ignorant and really just haven't experienced the difference between... And I'm making this up because I know nobody actually thinks that gold-plated... Almost nobody thinks that gold-plated cables really make a difference.
Casey:
But like, you know, maybe it's just that I...
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
Maybe it's the thing where I just haven't experienced a real gold-plated cable in the real environment when it would make a big difference.
Casey:
But so much of audiophile culture and the chase to chase down all of these little...
Casey:
teeny incremental improvements that that i feel like so many of them swear makes a world of difference where i am sure if you did a scientific test none of them would be able to tell the difference between one and the other or maybe like maybe there's like super hearers in the same way that they're super tasters like john so maybe there are some that can really hear the difference but man i i i don't buy it my dad and i think i mentioned this on the show
Casey:
His stereo is fairly old now.
Casey:
It's probably 10, 15 years old.
Casey:
But at the time in which he put it together, it was a world-class stereo system.
Casey:
And it sounds phenomenal.
Casey:
But I am quite confident that the little tweaks that most audiophiles swear by would make almost no difference.
Casey:
And it just is hilarious to me the amount of money that audiophiles will willingly light a flame just to get a supposed incremental difference that is almost imperceptible, if not actually imperceptible.
Marco:
Yeah, that's basically it.
Marco:
I mean, there are certain things that matter.
Marco:
The biggest things that matter are the source material, like the recording that you are playing and the format it is in, although only to an extent.
Marco:
So the source material and the transducer, which is either the speaker or the headphone.
Marco:
Those things matter a lot.
Marco:
Everything else matters either only a little or not at all.
Marco:
But people are always seeking that high.
Marco:
You want to have these amazing experiences where you're just like, oh my god, this sounds incredible.
Marco:
And you occasionally get those, like the very first time you hear an amazingly recorded album or you're in your house all quiet and you're listening on awesome headphones, drinking a beer and listening to amazing music.
Marco:
These experiences do happen, but they don't happen every time.
Marco:
And so you're always thinking, oh, maybe if I just upgrade this thing, upgrade that thing, tweak this thing, tweak this thing.
Marco:
This is very susceptible to placebo effect, and people are willing to pay lots of money to get lots of crazy things to tweak their setup to try to basically achieve those highs again.
Marco:
And no amount of money will ever solve it.
Marco:
Nothing is ever complete.
Marco:
No one ever has their, quote, grail that they're done with forever.
Marco:
It's a market that people will go to obscene lengths.
Marco:
And because the placebo effect is so strong, and because this is so hard to measure objectively, people think that their stuff works.
Marco:
They think they're hearing a difference.
Marco:
And one could argue, therefore, it is working for them.
Casey:
Fair point.
Marco:
But yeah, the reality is almost all of the stuff that audiophiles buy or use or say you need or say they can hear the difference with is BS.
Marco:
Not all of it, but almost all of it.
Casey:
Moving on.
Casey:
I forgot to mention that last episode, which, by the way, the feedback on last episode was really, really lovely.
Casey:
And I know I speak for the other two guys in saying I really appreciate it.
Marco:
Yeah, thank you very much, everyone.
Marco:
We got a lot of kind words congratulating us on 300 episodes and reminiscing about some good old times and wishing us very well.
Marco:
So thank you very much.
Marco:
That was really cool.
Casey:
Yeah, it was very, very nice of all of you.
Casey:
And I had asked kind of jokingly, but kind of seriously, hey, I wonder what the total length of ATP is.
Casey:
And I forgot to put this in the show notes, but I just looked up the first tweet that I had seen about it.
Casey:
And this is Jake Bathman on Twitter.
Casey:
Do you think he mispronounces that Jake Batman on purpose?
Casey:
You know, just because that's what I would do anyway.
Marco:
I would lead into it.
Marco:
I would say like, yeah, I'm the Bathman.
Marco:
That's awesome.
Casey:
The total ATP length, according to our favorite superhero, is 23 days, 6 hours, and 40 minutes.
Casey:
And I believe that was inclusive of episode 300.
Casey:
That, of course, also includes ad reads and things of that nature.
Casey:
But nevertheless, that is a significant amount of time.
Casey:
And I still remain kind of proud of us and also kind of appalled as well.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
That's so much talking.
Casey:
But anyway, now you know.
Casey:
And knowing's half the battle.
Marco:
Thank you.
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Casey:
Nick Donnelly wrote us an email that I thought was interesting, and I'm going to try to make this quick, but there's a lot of bullet points.
Casey:
And what he was writing about was the Surface Go.
Casey:
And so he said, the Surface Go is interesting for these reasons that everyone seems to have missed.
Marco:
Wait, can you summarize quickly?
Marco:
What is the Surface Go?
Marco:
Is that like their iPad convertible tablet, the newest one, or what?
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah, you know, I understand the question.
Casey:
I think it's more laptop than iPad.
Casey:
So obviously a Surface is intended to be both.
Casey:
And I'm probably wrong about this because I'm out of the Microsoft world now.
Casey:
But actually, I guess I am wrong because I'm looking at the Surface Go marketing page, which is...
Casey:
Anyway, it is shown... Yeah, it's so easy to enter.
Casey:
It appears that this is being marketed, at least to this picture, as more of an iPad thing.
Casey:
I am wrong.
Casey:
That it does not have a keyboard...
Marco:
Yeah, it looks a lot like an iPad Pro, but with a huge bezel.
Casey:
Yeah, actually fair.
Casey:
But certainly, all snark and jest aside, one of the advantages of the Surface is that it can be a true-to-form Windows computer.
Casey:
You can attach a mouse, the keyboards have trackpads, and it can do regular Windows-y things.
Casey:
And so Nick Donnelly wrote us an email, and again, this is a little long, but please bear with me, and he said, the Surface Go is interesting for these reasons that everyone seems to have missed.
Casey:
Microsoft perfected MagSafe with a thin cord coming from the back as well.
Casey:
uh it has a 10 inch screen so it's about ipad size it has a usbc port it has face face id which is of course called windows hello that works well and is amazing on a laptop or tablet it runs full windows which is in contrast to the maybe limitations of ios i'm not looking to get into a turf war let's just roll with it and it also has a touchscreen has an excellent keyboard cover as stable as apples but with much more travel the keyboard costs a hundred dollars man that sounds cheap
Casey:
and is backlit.
Casey:
It does have a touchpad, which is kind of cool.
Casey:
The touchpad is very close in quantity to the MacBooks.
Casey:
It has a kickstand built into the back of the device, so you can stand it up without needing a case at all, which is great.
Casey:
It has a micro SD card slot.
Casey:
Hi, Marco.
Casey:
Which you can throw extra memory in if you so desire.
Casey:
So Nick said he put a 256 gig card in for 60 bucks.
Casey:
Because it has Windows, it has file management.
Casey:
It has a pen that is very close in quality to the Apple Pencil, as per Nick.
Casey:
And it needs a new battery once a year.
Casey:
The build quality, according to Nick, is exceptional.
Casey:
But here's the kicker.
Casey:
It starts at $350 and the higher end model with keyboard is about $550.
Casey:
Given that I just torched $1,300 for my iPad Pro.
Casey:
Oh my God.
Casey:
I could have had almost three of these things for one iPad Pro.
Casey:
I could have had a day Surface Go, a night Surface Go and a weekend Surface Go.
Casey:
It's too bad it runs Windows.
Casey:
Am I right?
John:
That's it.
John:
It's also performance-wise, I'm sure it's spanked by the iPad.
Casey:
That's true.
John:
Yeah, probably.
Marco:
What this looks like is a wonderful low-end iPad Pro-like tablet for office workers who want to run Windows and Windows apps and Office apps and stuff like that.
Marco:
It doesn't look like a high-end device at all, but that's fine.
Marco:
A lot of people want that.
Marco:
A lot of people want a low-end device for their portable because they don't need higher than that.
Marco:
And they don't want to pay for higher than that.
Marco:
That's a totally valid reason.
Marco:
But yeah, the big thing for us is if this thing can't run the OS that we want to run, whether it's iOS or... Look, I'd take iOS over Windows any day.
Marco:
If I was traveling, I could only take one device and I could take either a Windows PC of my choice.
Marco:
Or an iPad.
Marco:
I'm taking the iPad every time because I can't do anything on Windows.
Marco:
I can at least do a lot on the iPad.
Marco:
But it's all about what ecosystem you're in and what your needs are.
Marco:
This does look like it has a lot of good advantages over the iPad, over any iPad at any price, let alone the Pro.
Marco:
I wish the iPad was a little more willing to do some of these ugly but functional design tweaks, things like the kickstand, which is ugly and we all made fun of it, but it's actually really practical in use.
Marco:
And having a few more ports and having some memory expansion slots and everything, that would be really nice on the iPad.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And Apple will probably never do those things for various mostly aesthetic or philosophical reasons.
Marco:
So yeah, this thing does look really cool in a number of ways.
Marco:
It does seem like it's probably a pretty good value, but it doesn't run the OS we want to run.
Marco:
And that's not a small thing.
Marco:
That isn't just like a checkbox feature when you're making a comparison grid and you're like, oh, well, this one runs Windows, this one runs iOS or macOS, and that's just a feature on a bullet list.
Marco:
Like, nope, that makes or breaks the product.
Marco:
Like, if you...
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
like he compared like in his example he's like he's like he could move to china and it would be less disruptive to his life than switching his operating system and that is to me that's not hyperbole to me that's i'm like yeah that's that would actually be correct i would agree with that statement like it really is that different
Marco:
When you do a lot of work on your computer or your mobile device, you have a lot of apps, you have workflows, you have history, you have documents, you have software investments and everything.
Marco:
Changing operating systems is not a small thing.
Marco:
That's why you see all the tech nerds who see this cool Microsoft hardware sometimes.
Marco:
They'll talk about it.
Marco:
They'll say, oh, I would love to try that sometime.
Marco:
Some of them even do try it sometime, but almost none of them actually stick with it.
Marco:
And the reason why is because Windows.
Marco:
It's not a small thing.
Marco:
So I wish Apple would give us cool hardware and cool choices like this.
Marco:
Choices that they don't usually give us.
Marco:
That'd be awesome.
Marco:
And I applaud Microsoft for pushing hardware forward in ways that Apple can't or won't.
Marco:
But ultimately, I find the entire Surface line of products...
Marco:
mostly irrelevant to me and also kind of saddening at the things that Apple won't do that I would like them to try.
Marco:
But none of that makes me actually want to buy one.
Casey:
I can't help but wonder if this is – if a form factor along these lines –
Casey:
would be Apple's way of dipping its toe into ARM Mac OS, which I doubt.
Casey:
Like, full stop, I don't think this is the way they would go.
Casey:
But it is an interesting thought exercise.
Casey:
You know, what if they released basically an iPad, but instead of coming with iOS on it, it came with Mac OS, and maybe the keyboard folio cover, whatever they're calling it these days, had a trackpad on it in addition to, you know, the keys and whatnot.
Casey:
And
Casey:
I feel like that would be really appealing because one of the things I've liked about the iPad Pro is it feels very computer-y when I have it in landscape with the keyboard out and blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
But whenever I'm done doing composition with the keyboard, I can flip the keyboard around back.
Casey:
And I think Mike said this recently, maybe on Upgrade, that I now have the best fidget, not spinner, but the best fidget toy in the world because I can mash on the keyboard keys while the...
Casey:
They're behind the iPad.
Casey:
And I can use the iPad as an iPad, as a classic iPad, I guess I should say, as a consumption device.
Casey:
And I could see how that would be really, really cool to have macOS in a form factor like this.
Casey:
So I think Nick is right.
Casey:
I agree with what you said, Marco, that as it is today, the Surface Go is not terribly interesting to me.
Casey:
But I can see how, especially if you are already into the Windows ecosystem, this would be tremendous.
Casey:
And I know most Windows users that I still converse with.
Casey:
That sounds way worse than I mean it, but you know what I mean.
Casey:
I have Windows friends.
Casey:
Yeah, I do.
Casey:
I have green bubble people.
Casey:
No, but most of the Windows people that I still talk with.
Marco:
I really don't have Windows friends, honestly.
Casey:
Well, we have we have a mixed family in the sense that Aaron's family is all PC and Android and it makes me sad.
Casey:
But anyway, anytime I speak to any of them that they seem to all love their surfaces, surfy, whatever.
Casey:
And I think I would, too, if there was an Apple or a Mac equivalent of this, I think I'd be really into it.
John:
i don't know john does this like deeply offend you this this thought i don't think you're thinking through your idea of of like what you basically described as a terrible mac laptop because you can't you can't take a mac laptop and then like get rid of the keyboard and use it as a tablet because mac os is not a tablet os you can't use mac os with your finger the controls are too small they require too much precision in doing stuff it's just not a touch os right so i think that doesn't work um
John:
i know a lot of people who have uh things like this at work and they like them and i see them use them and they use them kind of like a again a slightly worse laptop uh because if you don't use ever use this in tablet mode you'd be better off with macbook one or the equivalent pc notebook if you only ever use it in notebook mode
John:
Who wants this folding, kickstand, floppy, cruddy keyboard?
John:
Just get yourself a laptop.
John:
The whole idea of this is that, that's why we're talking about it in the context of an iPad, is that this, you know, if you had an iPad with a keyboard with a trackpad on it or an adjustable kickstand or a thicker version like this that was cheaper and, you know, like, these are all ways to make the iPad better and then getting, you know, setting aside the OS issues of what this OS can do that iPad OS can't because this is essentially Windows and iPad OS's
John:
ios which is still limited in many ways as compared to desktop that's the that's the the correct comparison for this i don't think there's any reasonable comparison for mac stuff because until unless mac uh has much more accommodation for touch it's entirely useless in tablet mode in tablet mode you need to run ios and then in laptop mode you could you know there there are trade-offs either way um yeah getting back to what marco was saying about how this is not you know
John:
not a substitute for people who want ios or mac os it's kind of like the same conversation that we mostly don't have anymore it comes up far less frequently than it did uh which is why are you buying insert non-laptop mac here i could build a pc for half the price is twice the performance and we bring it up occasionally in the context of the mac pro still true like every one of these quote-unquote high-end macs from the mac mini to the iMac pro to the macro with the exception of the crazy good screen on the iMac pro and 5k iMac
John:
mostly without exception you could build a faster pc for half the price uh but of course then it would run windows and unless you're gonna do hackintosh which has all home uh you know been of problems we don't even talk about it we don't even say oh marco i heard you got an iMac pro why didn't you build a pc for half the price it's not the same thing right but when it comes to ipads
John:
It's like, well, that's the same thing, isn't it?
John:
It's a flat screen that you touch and has a pen.
John:
And it's like, it's the same differences on the Mac side.
John:
Like you either want Windows or you want Mac OS or you need Windows, you need Mac OS.
John:
The only time it becomes effective, which is a topic that's lower down in the list that we may or may not get to, we talked about in the past, the Surface Studio.
John:
Like if all you do all day at work is run Lightroom and Lightroom runs on both platforms and it already runs some like,
John:
weird Adobe cross-platform GUI toolkit and that's all you ever do is spend all day in that application then maybe you can switch from one OS to the other because it's less of a factor in your life because all you do is you're basically using it as an appliance and if you can get a Surface Studio Pro but you can't get anything that's close to that on the Mac and you that's how you like to do whatever your work is whether it's Photoshop or Lightroom or whatever some cross-platform application that makes it viable but for the Surface Go I don't think this is really
John:
In competition with the iPad among anybody who hasn't already, you know, chosen an OS ecosystem.
Casey:
Yeah, I agree.
Casey:
But I just thought it was an interesting thing to think about.
Casey:
So thanks, Nick.
Casey:
And then final piece to follow up.
Casey:
We talked last week about ISH, which is a kind of Linux on iPad app.
Casey:
just engineering masterpiece as far as I'm concerned.
Casey:
It's still early on.
Casey:
Well, anyway, the author of ISH tweeted at us saying that he had just tuned into the ATP FM podcast and heard about YouTube DL or YouTube download not working.
Casey:
The author says, I'm working on Python support and the next test flight build should have that working.
Casey:
I also noticed that somebody, I think it was Caleb Hicks, was complaining, well, not complaining, but had noted that FFmpeg was also not working and there is now an issue in GitHub for that too.
Casey:
And if you recall, this all stems from me saying that one of the small list of things that I still would like to have my Mac for is running YouTube download.
Casey:
And I got a lot of helpful people reminding me that shortcuts will do this sort of thing in certain cases.
Casey:
But YouTube download is actually a poorly named app because it downloads lots of things from lots of places, not just YouTube.
Casey:
And I use it many times to get shows off of network television websites.
Casey:
And it would just be nice to have for occasions when I don't feel like SSHing.
Casey:
really expect that either of these would ever really work on an iPad, but hey, sounds like there's a prayer and that's pretty cool.
Casey:
So I just wanted to point that out.
Casey:
And if you haven't tried ISH, I mean, it is very early on and not a lot works, but holy smokes, I can't say enough how cool it is.
Casey:
So you should definitely check it out.
Casey:
We'll put a link in the show notes.
John:
i was trying to look up the geekbench scores for the uh surface pro i think it's less than half the the score in both single single and multi-core and surface go we're talking about which is even which is different yeah microsoft service yeah sorry i said microsoft service go i'm seeing like single cord score on the mid 2000s and a multi-core score around the mid 4000s oh my god that's awful yeah what is the ipad uh
John:
the new ipads are uh yeah we're on 5 000 so double that for single core and 16 000 approximately it's approximately half the speed of the of the ipad pro it is less than half the price to be fair yes yeah like like it costs about as much as if you buy a keyboard and a pencil for the ipad pro right right if you buy lots of accessories or you can get an entire service go
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Casey:
So I've been on a similar journey as the folks from Connected, where I've been going through photo management apps like it's my job.
Casey:
And I started, I believe, with EverPix and then Picture Life.
Casey:
Maybe I got that backwards.
Casey:
It doesn't matter.
Casey:
And eventually I settled on Google Photos, which I fell head over heels in love with.
Casey:
And this is where all the real big Apple fans say, how can you give all your information to Google?
Casey:
What is wrong with you?
Casey:
Blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
I understand the tradeoffs.
Casey:
But at the time, and I mostly stand by it to this day, I am willing to make those tradeoffs to get the unbelievable search that Google offers.
Casey:
And some of the neat things that it does, like going through pictures and taking out the color in the backgrounds and making a stylized photo, as they call it.
Casey:
It just does really cool stuff.
Casey:
And I really like Google Photos.
Yeah.
Casey:
However, I hate the new... What is it?
Casey:
Google Drive Uploader?
Casey:
Backup and Sync from Google is what it's called on my Mac.
Casey:
And it is a piece of monkey crap.
Casey:
You see, a few months ago, it...
Casey:
Up until a few months ago, there was a Google Photos backup that you could run on your Mac, and it would happily backup files from your file system and throw them onto Google Photos.
Casey:
And if you're somebody like me who treats his file system as the one true and ultimate canonical source of all his photos, that was perfect.
Casey:
Also, that file system, it should be noted, which will become important in a little while, is on my Synology.
Casey:
The Synology gets backed up several different places.
Casey:
The photos specifically get backed up onto a physical hard drive that's moved off-site.
Casey:
I have plenty of backups.
Casey:
I like having them on the Synology, though, because I can get to those files anywhere easily.
Casey:
And it is the only place where I'm willing to sacrifice about 600 gigs or whatever my photo library is now.
Casey:
It's really big.
Casey:
It's the only place I'm willing to sacrifice that much space.
Casey:
So a few months ago, Google Photos Uploader, whatever I just told you it was, became backup and sync from Google.
Casey:
And that thing is a piece of garbage.
Casey:
It hates the fact that I have a network share for where all of my photos are.
Casey:
It's constantly losing connection to it.
Casey:
Even though the mount on the Mac is fine, on my iMac, it's fine.
Casey:
The mount is there.
Casey:
I can access it no problem.
Casey:
But Google...
Casey:
Google's piece of garbage app gets confused constantly.
Casey:
I've also noticed that it was continually creating, and I'm pretty sure I've narrowed it down to Google, continually creating additional folders in my file structure.
Casey:
So my file structure is a folder for each year, in each year, a folder for each month, and then in each of those folders is all my pictures.
Casey:
And it was continually making duplicates for some reason.
Casey:
So I would have in my 2018 folder, I would have one, one space open paren, one close paren, one space open paren, two close paren.
Casey:
And I'm
Casey:
Almost positive that this is Google Photos.
Marco:
Does it run Discovery, D?
Casey:
It may as well at this point.
Casey:
It is such a piece of garbage.
Casey:
And because of that, I am looking to get off of Google Photos expressly because of this native app uploader thing.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
I am aware that if you are in an all iOS world, I don't even need this thing because it will suck them directly off my phone and upload them and that's fine.
Casey:
However, I am not living in an all iOS world.
Casey:
I have a big camera and that's where I take most of my best pictures.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
I thought to myself, you know what?
Casey:
At this point, it may just be time to bite the bullet and look at iCloud.
Casey:
Or what is it?
Casey:
iCloud Photo Library?
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Because I've heard a lot of people that I respect and that I trust say, you know what?
Casey:
I swear it's good.
Casey:
And so I started down the path of, okay, what do I need to do in order to get iCloud Photos working?
Casey:
Which means I need to embrace the Photos app on my Mac, which I used to use years ago and I haven't used in a long time because I was always using EverPix or PictureLife or Google Photos or what have you.
Casey:
Well, it turns out that the Photos app, to the best of my understanding, and I would be overjoyed if this ends up being user error, but to the best of my understanding, the Photos app will only really operate the way I want if all of the photos are on a drive that is physically connected to your computer.
Casey:
Because I looked at the preferences for photos on my Mac and there's importing checkbox, copy items to the photos library.
Casey:
And this is in the context of iCloud Photo Library.
Casey:
Under that, it says only items copied to the library will upload to iCloud Photos.
Casey:
And so what ends up happening is if I'm understanding everything properly, the only way for me to get things into iCloud is...
Casey:
from my Mac is if I have, if I now string an external hard drive to my Mac and stick all my photos there, despite the fact that they're sitting two and a half feet to my left on my Synology.
Casey:
But because that's a network share, it's not good enough.
Casey:
What do I do, guys?
Casey:
What do I do?
Casey:
well how big how big is your photo library like six or seven hundred gigs oh much uh how big is your hard drive your internal hard drive one terabyte and you can't fit the six or seven hundred gigs i don't want to even even somebody in the chat just said apple.com slash mac mini well done uh but no i i don't want to sacrifice three quarters of my onboard drive just for photos like that's the whole reason saving it what are you saving all that space for
Casey:
I don't know.
John:
I don't think I even have that much free space at the moment.
John:
Something more important than photos that you're going to fill.
John:
I see how it is.
John:
If you've got other stuff, you've got other stuff.
John:
But if it's free space and you're just trying to save it for the future.
Casey:
I do not have enough space.
Casey:
I have half of that space available.
John:
What John is saying is you don't love your children enough.
Casey:
That's exactly what he's saying.
John:
Anyway, so I explained this to you already in Slack, but for the people on the
John:
podcast i was in a similar situation in that i had my photo library on the internal drive my internal drive was a terabyte and my library is getting bigger and bigger and there were other things on the drive eventually i ran out of room and i had to take my library and move it elsewhere now the fact that you keep your library in the synology i know you like that because the synology's got lots of space but that's not really the best place for your photo library for a couple reasons one unless you've replaced all the spinning disks in your synology with ssds your synology is slow
John:
as compared to an ssd internal or like attached or whatever um and two the fact that your sonology is big and has lots of disk space makes it an ideal place to have a second copy of your photos in your house so i think your photos should be either on your internal hard drive attached to your mac or on a drive attached to a mac and they should be backed up to your sonology which is also in your house as a second local backup
John:
So what I did when my internal drive filled up is I bought an external SSD.
John:
It's bus powered.
John:
It's a little USB thingy.
John:
And that's where I moved my photo library to.
John:
It's connected to the back of my iMac.
John:
It's very small.
John:
I don't have to plug it into anything except for the iMac with a very short cable.
John:
It's not a big deal.
John:
Uh, and that's where my photo library is.
John:
And I use the photos application.
John:
Eventually it might, if I fill that drive, I can replace it with a bigger drive or more likely replace it with an iMac with like a four terabyte internal drive.
John:
And I go back to internal because having an internal is great because the internal drives are really fast.
John:
Uh, I mean, maybe not in your private iMac, but certainly on the iMac pro they're really, really fast.
John:
And there's nothing better than, you know, my, my photos library has like over a hundred thousand photos now.
John:
it's nice to be able to have that direct attached or even better internal drive.
John:
It reduces load times and helps scrolling through.
John:
So that's what I think you should do.
Casey:
And that's actually exactly what my plan is.
Casey:
I just wish it didn't have to be the case.
Casey:
And what I've put into my Amazon wishlist since it's holiday time is, I don't know, some sort of external SSD.
Casey:
I basically thought, well, I need about three quarters of a terabyte now.
Casey:
I have two children that I take too many pictures of.
Casey:
So I have a
Casey:
And maybe this isn't the best one in the world, but I arbitrarily landed on a Samsung T5 portable SSD with two terabytes for about 400 bucks on Amazon.
Casey:
And I figure if nobody is feeling extraordinarily generous during the holiday season, hey, Santa, then I will just buy that as soon as the holiday season is over.
Casey:
And I will do exactly what you said.
Casey:
It bums me out that Google Photos, that the uploader changed.
Casey:
And OC is saying in the chat that anything Google Drive related is apparently a piece of garbage, which is really unfortunate.
Casey:
But yeah, this backup and sync from Google is just a straight dumpster fire.
Casey:
And it bums me out because otherwise I really love Google Photos.
Casey:
And it just bums me out that Apple is very particular about the way in which you store the photos.
Casey:
Like we were talking in Slack about how I believe the drive that the photos are on need to be like HFS Plus or God knows what other file systems.
Casey:
I ultimately... APFS.
Casey:
APFS.
Casey:
Okay, it doesn't really matter to me one way or the other, but the point is it's hyper-specific, the scenario you need to be in.
Casey:
So if you're not storing it on the internal drive on your computer, it gets very picky very quickly, and that really bums me out.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
I think the answer, like you said, is an external SSD and just grow up and deal with it.
Casey:
But man, why can't I have my cake and eat it too?
Casey:
Is that so much to ask?
John:
You can get a new iMac with a bigger internal drive.
John:
You can have your cake and eat it too and everyone won't be happy again.
John:
I quite understand the problem you're having with the Google Uploader because I'm using that same Google Uploader.
John:
And granted, I don't have my photos in like a hand-arranged directory.
John:
So if it's making weird stuff in there, I don't know.
John:
But I point the Google backup thing at my photo library.
John:
And I've run it that way for, you know, in the old version, I ran it that way.
John:
And then the new one, I run it that way.
John:
I don't, you know, it may be missing some photos and maybe doing weird stuff, but I'm pretty sure that it isn't messing up the photos application.
John:
Right.
John:
So first, do no harm.
John:
If it's doing weird stuff inside there, the photos application doesn't notice or care.
John:
And every time I look in Google Photos and I'm looking for a particular photo, I find it like if it's missing photos or if it's doing something weird, you know, it's not crashing my computer.
John:
It's not causing huge amounts of CPU to be taken up.
John:
Like, I mean, maybe it would be different if I was using a laptop or something.
John:
This is plugged in all the time.
John:
So I am using that backup utility and I think it is about the same as the old one was.
John:
Both of them.
John:
love to tell me that they uh can't make heads or tails of my raws so they say these 2 000 items couldn't be uh like uploaded into google photos or no it says something like they couldn't be imported into google photos but they've been stored in google drive what it's trying to tell me is that it has transferred the bits related to those but that if you go to the photo the google photos web interface you won't see them as photos because it doesn't understand the raws
John:
And they're just like the Sony RAWs.
John:
I don't have that many RAWs, but I have enough that it loves to tell me about them.
John:
So I don't put too much stock in it.
John:
It's like my third or fourth level cloud backup.
John:
And I'm just, you know, as I said before, I put so much metadata into the Apple Photos application that iCloud Photo Library is my real first line of defense because that preserves all that metadata.
John:
So I hope Apple Photos works out for you.
John:
I still suggest you back up all those photos from your local Mac two feet away to your... I can't believe you have your Synology two feet away.
John:
I wouldn't be able to stand that noise.
John:
But anyway, two feet away to the Synology.
John:
It's not quiet.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Mine's in the basement.
John:
I never hear it.
John:
It's very far away from me.
John:
Yeah, mine's in the garage.
John:
That's where it should go.
Marco:
There's a very thick layer of cinder blocks and insulation between me and mine.
Casey:
See, you know, ladies and gentlemen, this is why it is sometimes good to be me, because I respect the fact that the two of you can be so deeply bothered by fan noise and things of that nature, but I just don't care, and it is wonderful.
John:
It's not just fan noise.
John:
Like, the Synology, like...
John:
at least mine anyway at this point you can hear the fans and also because it has so many spinning drives oh yeah you can absolutely yeah it's got it's got basically like buzz like you know body cladding buzz from again i was just an analogy of a car with a stereo it's too loud for it that it's starting to shake the body panels but i don't care it's in the basement i don't hear it it's completely silent from here
John:
no you're absolutely right but uh i don't know i i think part of the problem is i don't feel like wiring a cable all the way down because my garage is on the opposite side of the house and a floor i know my my basement it is on the opposite side of the complete opposite side of my basement but i ran that cable and i fished it up into this room and i strung it around the outside of the room underneath the baseboard and it comes right back up you're a better man than i switch yeah
Casey:
Anyway, in the grand scheme of things, this is not a very big problem and things could be so much worse.
Casey:
But it really bummed me out in no small part because I really love Google Photos.
Casey:
And what you were saying about metadata, I don't have very much metadata in no small part because I've been going through these services like water.
Casey:
but I, I did take the time to make a lot of these, a lot of like albums in Google photos.
Casey:
And it's really going to make me sad when I inevitably give up on that.
Casey:
And I don't know what's wrong with my Google photos upload or whatever it's called backup and sync from Google.
Casey:
I don't know what I'm doing wrong, except other, except perhaps that it's on a network share and that's, what's making it so angry.
Casey:
But one way or another, um,
Casey:
And it's really making me sad that Google Photos doesn't seem to be doing what I need it to do anymore.
Casey:
And I really, really, truly in my heart believe it comes down to this god-awful uploader.
Casey:
And I tried running the old one a little bit longer, even though they said it was, you know, sunset or end of life to whatever ridiculous California-ism they said.
Casey:
And it didn't seem to be working anymore.
Casey:
Again, maybe it was user error.
Casey:
I'm not trying to say it was not me.
Casey:
But it just didn't seem right.
Casey:
It didn't seem like it was uploading anything.
Casey:
And I'm just...
Casey:
I'm sad, you guys.
Casey:
I want my Google Photos to work again.
John:
I have a couple of Google Drive-related stories that are relevant to the Photos thing.
John:
So when I had to do that switch of like, oh, you filled up your internal drive, now I've got to move Photos to my external drive.
John:
So I bought an external SSD.
John:
I just brought a one terabyte.
John:
I'm continuing to live on the edge.
John:
I'm figuring we'll get a new iMac before I actually fill this one at the rate of expansion.
John:
But if not, I'll just buy another one.
John:
Anyway, I copied the Photos library there, and for a while I left it on the internal drive.
John:
But, you know, repointed, made the system.
John:
This is the thing you have to do in photos.
John:
Like you hold down the option key and you can select the library you want and you have to designate one, the quote unquote system library.
John:
So I made the system library, the system photo library, the one on the external drive.
John:
And I used it that way for a while without getting rid of the one on the internal drive just to make sure everything was okay.
John:
I also then had to tell the Google backup and sync thing, stop backing up the photos library on the internal drive, which wasn't changing anymore.
John:
I was no longer touching that library.
John:
It was like my umpteenth local backup, which was like, you just stay there.
John:
I'm never going to touch you again.
John:
And, you know, Google backup thing, start backing up the thing on the external drive.
John:
And as far as Google backup is concerned, it had never seen those files before.
John:
So I was like, oh, yeah.
John:
Here is 100,000 photos that I've never seen that I need to upload.
John:
And so it went along uploading those things.
John:
Okay.
John:
What that means also is that now on my Google Drive, I had two entire photo libraries.
Casey:
Oh, no.
John:
One that was the old one and one that was new.
John:
Now, Google Photos, to its credit, understands that the photos are duplicates.
John:
And I didn't suddenly have two of every kind of photo because it understands photos.
John:
So it's not like I'm not going to show you two other things.
John:
But Google Drive...
John:
Like when you look at this is difficult to do in the Google web interface, but you can find like the drive view of things.
John:
Like you can see you can see the files that are associated with Google photos in the drive.
John:
And it would show me like photos that iPhoto library or whatever the hell the file name extension is for the iPhoto library.
John:
Show me two of those.
John:
One of them is the old one that hadn't been modified.
John:
Well, one of them was the new one.
John:
So I'm like, OK, well, now I have I have double double backups.
John:
I had to, by the way, expand my Google Drive to be like two terabytes to fit all this.
John:
But anyway, so when I was satisfied after a month or two, like the new library and the external drive is working.
John:
Everything's great.
John:
It looks good.
John:
I could finally ditch the internal one.
John:
So on my Mac, drag that photos library thing on my internal drive to the trash.
John:
And if you are a sucker, hit empty trash because that will take a year and a day.
John:
If you're not a sucker, go to the command line and, you know, rm minus rf tilde slash dot trashes slash my photo library, whatever.
John:
Like, I just let rm delete that thing.
John:
Still took a while.
John:
And suddenly I had 700 gigs free on my internal drive.
John:
Yay.
John:
Whatever.
John:
Like, it's great.
John:
And then I said I should get rid of that space on my Google Drive as well.
John:
So I went to Google Drive's weird file viewer interface of your photos and I checked off like a checkbox next to the photo library that I'm sure was the one that I didn't want based on the modification dates.
John:
And I hit the little trash can icon.
John:
and it disappeared but of course putting it in the trash doesn't actually delete it just puts it like like on the mac in your trash so you can view your trash in uh google drive so i went to the trash view and at the top of trash view it has well you can select individual items and delete them individually like permanently but you can also at the top if you find somewhere in one of these menus is an item called empty trash like good empty trash boom when i go to empty trash and it spins a little bit and throws up an error
John:
And then like nothing disappears from the view.
John:
And I go empty trash and it spins and throws an error and nothing disappears.
John:
Then I'm like, oh, let me try this.
John:
Let me try checking a bunch of checkboxes.
John:
And then say permanently delete these ones I've checked.
John:
And it says, okay, I'll do that.
John:
And they disappear for a second and then half of them reappear.
John:
And there's like 100,000 files that I need to get rid of.
John:
I spent a while trying to figure out if I could get Google Drive to empty my trash of these items.
John:
And every time I would tell it to either empty the entire trash or select several hundred checkboxes and tell it to, you know, permanently delete those items, it would appear to do so.
John:
They would disappear from the screen, but then they would reappear.
John:
So I, you know, I emailed Google support about this and they're like, well, sometimes when you tell us to empty the trash, the files don't actually get deleted for 48 hours or yada, yada, yada.
John:
Like some, some weird story about, you know, eventually consistent blah, blah.
John:
They didn't say these words, but that's what I'm thinking in my head.
John:
You know, our backend might not reflect the changes.
John:
So even though it keeps showing you the files are there, they're not.
John:
So come back in 48 hours.
John:
And of course, then I forgot about it for two weeks.
Yeah.
John:
And then I came back two weeks later and I said, oh, yeah, they wanted me to check back in.
John:
I checked back in and guess what?
John:
Like the files were still there.
John:
So I emailed them back and said the files are still there.
John:
But then at this point I had given up ever getting this to work because I'd Googled around and tons of people had similar problems.
John:
And I just went through basically like 100 items at a time.
John:
and manually deleted them until i actually did drain the thing because you delete them and half of them reappear and then i'd select more and delete them half and reappear and luckily it's 100 000 items but they're in a hierarchy of whatever the weird hierarchy the google photos thing does with this you know weird folder name so i didn't actually have to check off 100 000
John:
I did eventually drain it to the point where the trash was empty, but at no point did the actual empty everything from the trash button work.
John:
So I think Google Drive is not prepared to handle the volumes of files that I was throwing at it.
John:
I would call that a bug.
John:
uh i'm sure they closed my case as resolves because they said do you still have a problem i'm like no i manually selected checkboxes for an hour and got rid of them all myself like great problem solved how was your support experience like fix your damn thing when there's a button that says empty trash just make a note of a job and the job should be everything that's in the trash you go delete it eventually i don't care how long it takes i don't care how long it takes for it to be consistent across all of your replicas and blah blah just do it don't make me be the job that anyway uh so
John:
And then eventually I got my free space back.
John:
So I'm back into a steady state with my photos library and external drive, which honestly is the state I was in for a long time before.
John:
And so I'm kind of used to that.
John:
Only now the drive is really, really tiny and silent and much, much faster.
Casey:
I think your world is my future.
Casey:
It's just a matter of time.
John:
Here's another advantage, by the way, that I think about with this.
John:
If the house is on fire, and really you should be getting everybody out, but if you're going to grab one thing, grab the tiny little SSD, just yank it right off the cable, and now you've got your family photos.
John:
Your entire photo library on one easy-to-grab thing.
John:
I can't carry that iMac out.
John:
I'm not like Marco with his case or anything, but I can...
John:
I can perhaps grab one tiny little SSD and yank it off the computer and leave the house.
John:
You wouldn't stop to safely eject it?
John:
Nope.
Casey:
Oh, that wouldn't be interesting.
John:
You don't have that kind of time.
Casey:
The house is on fire, literally.
Casey:
You know, it's funny you say that.
Casey:
I have thought a lot about how if our house, God forbid, was aflame, that I would...
Casey:
Definitely make sure Aaron and the kids were fine.
Casey:
And if I had even a second to do anything else, I would rip that Synology right out.
Casey:
It's too big.
John:
You can't take the Synology.
Casey:
Oh, I absolutely would.
Marco:
You would unplug operating hard drives and just pick it up while they're still spinning?
Casey:
I absolutely would because given the alternative of guaranteed loss, I will take possible loss.
Casey:
And my life is on that box.
Casey:
I mean, again, it's backed up many different places.
Casey:
And so it wouldn't be catastrophic, I hope, knock on wood, that, you know, if it did break.
Casey:
But if I had the choice between grabbing that thing and hopefully saving myself hours upon hours upon hours of angst and frustration...
Casey:
Even if I lost a drive, you know, hypothetically, I would still be okay.
Casey:
I would absolutely just yank the darn thing out of the wall and run downstairs with it.
Casey:
I've thought about that a lot.
Casey:
And I agree with you, John, that in a perfect world, you know, there's a lot in that synology I would be sad to lose.
Casey:
Quite a lot, actually.
Casey:
And it's all backed up.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
You're absolutely right that the number one thing I would be devastated to lose would be the photos.
Casey:
And that's why every month I make an exact duplicate of all of the photos on that drive onto a external little two and a half inch spinny disc drive.
Casey:
And then I send that to, I send that with my parents, you know, cause I usually visit once a week.
Casey:
I'll send that with my parents to their house to keep for the remaining three weeks of the month until it's the
Casey:
When I make another duplicate of all those photos.
Casey:
So hypothetically, in a worst case scenario, I would lose a couple of weeks of pictures and no more.
Casey:
But that is the sort of thing that keeps my weird nerdy brain up at night is, you know, what would I lose if this house goes up in flame?
Casey:
What files am I losing?
Yeah.
John:
And to be clear, I have like seven cloud backups of all this stuff.
John:
So it's not like I'm worried about losing the only copy.
John:
It's just that that copy that's attached to the external drive has all the metadata, the canonical copy.
John:
And because it's formatted as APFS, it has periodic snapshots that are being taken place on it.
John:
So I can just yank it out, content that even if I have hosed some part of the file system, one of the snapshots from like an hour ago is internally inconsistent and I'm fine.
John:
magic of file systems and honestly yes and before we get all this email of saying never take anything just leave the house we're assuming a scenario where like an upstairs bedroom is on fire and smoke hasn't even entered the downstairs and everybody is safely out of the house i would take the drive with me on my way out the door not when like i'm fighting my way through flames to get it do not re-enter a burning house to get anything out of it ever unless it is like a child or a dog
Marco:
I don't know why you guys worry so much about your data in your house.
Marco:
Honestly, I have so much online backup that I would not worry about that at all.
Marco:
If I had a lot of time to go back into the house if it's burning and everyone's out and safe, the whole family, the dog, everyone's out and safe, and I have enough time to go back in and get stuff...
Marco:
i think the first thing i'd get would be like you know jewelry second thing would be like my like important documents like my passport and everything that are just like a pain to replace come on no you don't get that stuff i would never first of all never go back in we're saying on the way out we're saying no but we're saying like if we have time to go back in and you know it's still you think you think you have time but you don't know you have time the ceiling could collapse it
Casey:
You think you know, but you have no idea.
Casey:
This is true life.
John:
I would not save passports or jewelry or anything like that.
John:
I don't have anything nice, so that solves that problem.
John:
It's just because you're on the way out the door and you only have one second to grab one thing completely thoughtlessly.
John:
It can't be a heavy thing, Casey.
John:
This analogy has to be something the size of a deck of cards that you can yank off in two seconds on your way out the door.
John:
The only reason I'd be doing it is because I know how much time it would save.
John:
I don't have my photos metadata
John:
Well, did I see?
John:
Do I have it?
John:
Yeah, I guess I have the photo library.
John:
All right, I do.
John:
Fine.
John:
I have multiple online backups of the photos metadata.
John:
But the drive would be really convenient because if I have to restore 700 gigabytes from the backup service of my choice, it's going to be really slow.
John:
So that's it.
John:
That's all I would do.
John:
I don't even need to take my wedding album or anything anymore because we digitized those negatives.
John:
So I'm all set.
John:
Oh, you're old.
John:
Negatives.
John:
That's right.
John:
We got the negatives.
Marco:
I would say also like, you know, going back a little bit, you know, a little bit closer to the ground now to this topic.
Marco:
Generally, I find like a good rule of computing happiness is to do as much as you can with the stuff built into the platform that you're on.
Marco:
And so like in this case, like one of the reasons I don't use Google Photos and I know it's I know people like it and it's good.
Marco:
Good for you.
Marco:
One of the reasons I don't use it is because it requires this weird app to be installed to upload all my photos on my Mac.
Marco:
And I just don't want to do that.
Marco:
My experience with apps like that is that they don't care about the platform enough to make a good app.
Marco:
And I don't want that running on my main computer.
Marco:
Now, I do have an advantage that Casey, you should probably consider because you like buying new Apple stuff and rationalizing it.
Marco:
So I'll help you out here.
Marco:
This would be a good case for a Mac mini to basically replace your Synology or at least replace this role of it.
Marco:
And you have basically have the Mac mini have the entire photo library on it and run Google's awful uploader on it.
Marco:
So it's working on a local disk.
Marco:
And then you on your iMac only have the optimized version that doesn't have the full-size versions of all the photos on it.
Marco:
One of the things I use my Mac Mini for is I put software on it that I need to be running all the time for something.
Marco:
That includes things like my dumb iSCSI initiator, which I don't recommend to anybody ever, but I'm running it, and that's how I use my Synology in a useful way.
Marco:
It also includes things like my Fujitsu ScanSnap software.
Marco:
that it's just this ugly icon that has to always be running in your dock.
Marco:
And I had it running on my dock on my main computer for years and I always hated it.
Marco:
And so I can now put this on this computer and it's kind of isolated from software updates breaking it because that computer is still running low Sierra.
Marco:
And there's no reason for me to upgrade it.
Marco:
That's kind of like the computer.
Marco:
It's kind of like how I use Chrome on my main computer and
Marco:
as like my Google and Facebook sandbox that is isolated from my computer.
Marco:
Like the Mac mini is just a bigger version.
Marco:
It is like my Mac OS isolated sandbox that things that need to run on a Mac, but don't necessarily need to run on my Mac and that I don't want to run on my Mac.
Marco:
So that's a perfect place for this kind of thing.
Marco:
So if it will work well with a local disk,
Marco:
and you don't want to run on your main Mac, which I totally would understand and would support, a Mac mini server might be a good option.
Marco:
It could also be a way better Plex server than Synology could be.
Marco:
And generally speaking, I have just found software from Google is awful.
Marco:
Google's really good at server stuff and web stuff.
Marco:
They're terrible at local software.
Marco:
Same thing with Amazon.
Marco:
For a while, I tried Amazon's music store, whatever the Amazon version of iTunes Match was called, which I think is recently discontinued.
Marco:
anything with that Sonos software is also awful any company that I need to run their server software or their uploader on my Mac has a really bad track record and I would rather just not use those services than have to run this horrible software all the time and depend on them making a really good Mac client because for the most part these big companies just can't and won't do that
Casey:
I think you're exactly right that Google's bread and butter is absolutely server-side stuff and web stuff.
Casey:
And certainly Google Photos, the parts of it that are great, that's because of the server-side stuff and the web stuff.
Casey:
That makes perfect sense.
Casey:
But yeah, you're exactly right that these native apps, even the one that I loved that worked well,
Casey:
was a piece of garbage as a native app.
Casey:
And this new one that doesn't work is also a piece of garbage.
Casey:
You can tell that it's using some sort of god-awful cross-platform UI framework.
Casey:
It's just bad.
Casey:
And I don't know.
Casey:
I don't necessarily agree that a Mac Mini is... Well, not to say that it's necessary.
Casey:
I shouldn't put words in your mouth.
Casey:
But I don't know that it's really the right answer because that's a solution that starts at...
Casey:
$800 more than the $400 I was already going to spend because I need the $400 hard drive no matter what.
Casey:
And then adding $800 worth of Mac mini on it just for funsies seems unnecessary.
Casey:
But I also agree with you that rather than leaving my, my iMac on 24 seven, which is what I do, it would be way nicer to just have that little Mac mini over in the corner somewhere and
Casey:
being my plex server being my photos server so to speak or whatever the case may be so yeah if i if i somehow stumble onto you know a thousand bucks whatever the case may be if i hadn't already you know lit fifteen hundred dollars on fire on this ipad maybe i would do that but um but yeah for now i don't think it's necessary even though it would be nice and convenient and so like i said i think i'll just get that that two gig uh or just i'm sorry two terabyte ssd when whenever the time comes
John:
Why are you going to banish that Mac Mini to the corner?
John:
You know, you just put it on your head as a hat.
John:
The sound won't bother you.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Whether you like sweet or savory or chocolate or fruit, there is definitely an RX bar for you.
Marco:
The new mango, pineapple, chocolate, hazelnut, and peanut butter and berries flavors are really good.
Marco:
The classics like chocolate sea salt and coconut chocolate and mint and chocolate chip, peanut butter, those are all really good too.
Marco:
There's seasonal flavors that change out every few months, and none of them have any artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, or fillers.
Marco:
They're great for things like breakfast on the go, snacks at the office, something to keep in your bag when you travel.
Marco:
And they've also now debuted Rx Nut Butter.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thank you so much to RxBar for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, and it's time for Ask ATP.
Casey:
And we start with Cameron Kerr writing, what would you like Apple to change this time around with the x86 to ARM transition?
Casey:
Maybe timelines, transition layer, excuse me, translation layers, developer hardware, etc.
Casey:
Was there anything from the PowerPC to Intel transition that could have been done better?
Casey:
I wasn't around for that in the sense that I wasn't a Mac user at the time.
Casey:
So shrug, I have no idea.
Casey:
And I think, Marco, you're in the same boat.
Casey:
Is that right?
Marco:
No, I was indeed around for that.
Marco:
My first Mac was right before that.
Marco:
It was a PowerBook G4 aluminum in like 2004.
Marco:
And this transition happened in 2006.
Marco:
So yeah, I was actually around for that.
Marco:
And my second Mac was the first generation of white plastic Intel MacBook, which was
Marco:
Had some minor issues with the case, but overall was an amazing machine that was an amazing value and amazing performance for the time.
Marco:
Anyway, so I actually think the PowerPC to Intel transition, from my point of view just as a user, at the time I was not an Apple developer.
Marco:
I'm still not really much of a Mac developer, but at the time I was even less of one.
Marco:
And so I don't really... I didn't see the developer story side of it.
Marco:
I just know the customer side of it.
Marco:
And for the customer side, it was pretty good.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
there was such a big performance gain in the transition that Rosetta actually was not too bad.
Marco:
So Rosetta, for anybody who wasn't around or is too young to have remembered, Rosetta was the translation layer.
Marco:
It was basically a PowerPC emulator that ran your old PowerPC apps.
Marco:
Technically, I don't think it was actually an emulator.
Marco:
It was some kind of translation thing.
Marco:
But basically, it let you run PowerPC apps on Intel.
Marco:
Not that slowly.
Marco:
Not as slowly as full-blown emulation.
Marco:
So it was actually a pretty reasonable compatibility layer.
Marco:
It worked pretty well.
Marco:
I don't think there were any apps I had that didn't work in it that needed it.
Marco:
But ultimately, there weren't that many that needed it.
Marco:
Most apps updated fairly quickly or within a year, and it was fine.
Marco:
So the transition then was going to way faster hardware with really good value Mac options available.
Marco:
and software that caught up pretty quickly.
Marco:
So it was actually, in my opinion, from my point of view as the customers, again, I thought it was a really easy and well-done transition.
Marco:
Like, I think it didn't seem to have any downsides.
Marco:
So there isn't much I would change if they were doing the same thing again.
Marco:
The only thing is, like,
Marco:
We're in a different world now.
Marco:
That was 12 years ago.
Marco:
Things are very different now.
Marco:
Any transition to ARM that happens in the foreseeable future probably would not have a massive performance gain over the equivalent Intel chips at the time.
Marco:
Intel's having problems, but their chips are still really fast at the high end and fairly decent, but maybe getting less decent at the low end.
Marco:
I don't think an ARM transition is going to bring...
Marco:
such a massively in performance, that a translation or emulation layer like Rosetta would make sense to be able to run x86 apps on ARM at any reasonable speed.
Marco:
I think maybe they would enable it, but it probably would be pretty slow.
Marco:
Probably wouldn't want to really do it for much.
Marco:
So assuming that's not as present, it would rely heavily on apps being updated pretty soon after it was unveiled.
Marco:
And that's a really tricky thing right now because 12 years later, Mac apps aren't getting everyone's full attention anymore.
Marco:
Both Apple and the developers of the apps that we were using back then and that we're using now on the Mac have split attention between the Mac and iOS.
Marco:
And the Mac usually loses that battle for most of those developers.
Marco:
Usually, if you have to prioritize which one you spend time on and you code on, usually iOS wins because the market is bigger.
Marco:
And so I do worry how long it would take Mac apps to update for a new architecture, even if it was relatively easy.
Marco:
I wouldn't expect it to be a big technical cost to most apps.
Marco:
Most apps probably in the last transition probably removed any assumptions about byte order and any processor architecture specific things in their code.
Marco:
Most people are coding at a higher level than that kind of stuff now.
Marco:
Anyway,
Marco:
and have made any necessary changes in previous transitions or in having a cross iOS and macOS code base.
Marco:
So the actual work for the developer who is updating an app is probably going to be pretty small, but that still relies on the developer updating the app and recompiling it and resubmitting it to the App Store if it's an App Store app or republishing it to their site if it's not.
Marco:
And that I just think is going to take a while because Mac apps are such a low priority for so many developers now and so many of them have been abandoned or almost abandoned.
John:
So I've been through all the transitions Apple has done, and one of the reasons I put this question in here is because when thinking about it, I couldn't think of any terrible things that happened during the previous two transitions.
John:
And so I think the situation Apple is in is that...
John:
it should be shooting for uh the performance that is already done twice like that's its goal do as well as you did in 68k to power pc and power pc didn't tell now arguably in 68k to power pc there were some things that you could say that they might have done better uh in particular they didn't uh
John:
They basically didn't port their operating system in its entirety for a really, really long time.
John:
They were kind of a victim of their own success.
John:
They had such a good system for fat binaries that had both kinds of things in them and for the ability to mix and match code from the different architectures that they use that ability in the operating system to avoid having to rewrite crusty parts of their operating system.
John:
I mean, there's probably 68k assembler still lurking around in there at the time of the transition.
John:
For a really long time, tons of parts of the operating system were still 68K code, and they got away with it because they made the transition so easy for everyone, even including themselves, right?
John:
In the Intel transition, they were better, right?
John:
They didn't have this thing where parts of the operating system were running in Rosetta for long periods of time.
John:
People did port their apps.
John:
They did it even better the second time around.
John:
um the third time around if they do another transition i'm not quite as down in marco on the ability to do emulation i think uh that especially if intel can't get onto its 10 nanometer process that they could have enough of an edge to make uh you know emulation or you know binary translation or whatever
John:
not have horrendous performance and that could get us along for a little while but as you saw with the this wasn't an architecture transition uh but like the uh classic mac os to mac os 10 transition where they had a place where your old apps could run for a while but they were pretty good about eventually getting rid of that and we lost a bunch of applications there but it's like well this is the new world and you've you know bring your apps along or you're gonna left behind and
John:
As Marco pointed out, that was a different world where there was a lot more effort being put into Mac applications.
John:
But the point still stands that Apple has set the bar for itself.
John:
To their credit, they are the only company, I think, that has ever done anything like this kind of transition in the same type of platform.
John:
Arguably, game consoles do this type of transition all the time, but game consoles, especially historically, have not been like PC platforms.
Yeah.
John:
backward compatibility being so important and it's just a different market right so i would almost not count those transitions even though in the modern era they're becoming much more like that and backward compatibility is more of a selling point for the back catalog and they do all this crazy emulation stuff or whatever but there's no like apple is the best in the world at these type of transitions and it's done
John:
you know granted only two times but that's a lot in the grand scheme of things considering microsoft has never done it despite arm on windows right they've never like turned over their whole user base and now no one ever runs windows and x86 anymore and ever like no one is running mac os on power pc or 68k because it doesn't run it only runs on intel the current version of mac os only runs it into only apple as tim cook would say has done this so
John:
Apple's got its work cut out for it.
John:
There is nothing about past transitions that they should be, you know, that they should think about and do better.
John:
They should just think about, can we do as well as we did last time?
John:
If they could match the Intel transition, it would be a smashing success.
John:
So that should be their goal.
Casey:
Anonymous writes, I'm in my late 30s and have been a geek since childhood.
Casey:
I've been discovering programming on my 286 and GW Basic and Pascal in the DOS days.
Casey:
And with a multitude of hobbies, I never ended up pursuing a career in programming.
Casey:
My experience is elsewhere, primarily with servicing technology, customer service, and software quality assurance.
Casey:
I absolutely love quality assurance for the ability to break things down.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I'm going to take this one by one and I'll let us round table each of them.
Casey:
Do you guys think it's too late to switch this career?
Casey:
I don't think so, but that's easy for me to say because I never made the switch and I've been in it since I was in college.
Casey:
My first real job was a development job.
Casey:
I think it is generally...
Casey:
a little bit harder to get a job in development especially an entry-level job when you're older because typically older developers are well first of all not usually developing anymore usually they're managing and b it's just not something you see very often but i i wouldn't say it's a bad idea i just think that the the odds are stacked slightly against you but i don't know marco what do you think about that one piece of this question then i'll like i said i'll go through the other pieces in a moment
Marco:
I mean, I'm also in my, quote, late 30s, so I can see this as somebody who's my age.
Marco:
So I too, like Casey, have not had the experience of migrating into this field after school and everything because I started when I was a teenager, basically, and I went to school for computer science and was working in the field since right after college.
Marco:
But I do think that of all the many different fields that you can possibly work in,
Marco:
being a programmer is possibly one of the easiest ones to get into at a, you know, a quote later age, even though I know we aren't that old in grand scheme of things, but like, yeah, like it's actually a lot easier than a lot of fields because there's no required certifications.
Marco:
There's no required schooling, uh,
Marco:
It's the kind of thing that you can self-teach, which just sounds like this person actually has self-taught to some degree, at least in the past.
Marco:
So you can self-teach.
Marco:
There's lots of resources to learn how to do it.
Marco:
You can do it with the computer and tools and everything you already own without massive new investments of anything.
Marco:
There is no degree that you need to get.
Marco:
There's no certification you need to buy or get, no test you have to take.
Marco:
And most importantly, the people who hire programmers, some of them care whether you went to school for it and whether you have lots of experience behind you.
Marco:
But from what I've seen, most don't.
Marco:
Most employers of programmers care about one thing.
Marco:
Can you do it?
Marco:
And maybe secondarily, what have you done?
Marco:
Now, the second one is going to be a problem for you if you don't have a lot that you can show that you've done in programming.
Marco:
But the first one will help you get there.
Marco:
If you can just show that you can do it, and if you were able to self-teach on your 286 with GW Basic, you can do it.
Marco:
Because that was not easy back then.
Marco:
There was no Stack Overflow back then.
Marco:
And so if you can do that, you can self-teach.
Marco:
And so I think you can do it.
Marco:
You won't be able to necessarily land any job you want.
Marco:
You're going to have to take what you can get at first.
Marco:
Take whoever will hire you as an entry-level position because you won't have a lot of experience doing this.
Marco:
But if you can learn programming on your own, which you totally can, and it seems like you have, then you can get a job in it.
Marco:
It's one of the best fields for that.
Marco:
In fact, of all the programmers that I've worked with or met or even know currently,
Marco:
I would say most of them don't have a degree in computer science.
Marco:
Most of them went to school for something else and came to computer science later.
Marco:
And maybe not in their 30s.
Marco:
Maybe it was in their 20s.
Marco:
Some came in their 30s.
Marco:
It's a pretty open and welcoming field if you can actually do the work.
Marco:
What your past is and what your experience is matters a lot less than can you do it or not.
Marco:
So I think you can do it.
Marco:
As for what language you can pick, it doesn't matter.
Marco:
Pick whatever you want.
Marco:
Languages change really every few years.
Marco:
If you can learn one, you can learn them all.
John:
Marco can't follow instructions.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
He can't even follow instructions on his own podcast, let alone when I try to get him to follow instructions.
Casey:
All right, John, let's concentrate for a moment on Is It Too Late?
John:
No, it's definitely not too late.
John:
I think Marco covered most of the points, though.
John:
The one I would add is that even an entry-level programming job pays pretty well, right?
John:
So unlike other fields where the entry-level jobs pay crap and you have to work your way up, if you essentially have basically zero practical experience, but you have a skill and you've learned a language and can demonstrate some proficiency and you get the bottom-rung entry-level programming job, it's still pretty good pay compared to the bottom-rung entry-level, like,
John:
you know copy editing job or whatever like like so many other industries the entry-level job uh this is the problem with going into a new career when you're older if the entry-level job doesn't pay enough to support whatever life you've built for yourself at the age of 30 40 or 50 or whatever maybe you have a mortgage or obligations or kids in college and you can't afford to change careers because you'd be taking a downgrade in pay from you know
John:
10 years or 20 years experience in field a and then you change it to field b and you've got to start back over again the entry-level salary isn't enough to support you that's not true in programming even the entry-level jobs pay usually an obscene amount of money given uh exactly how valuable entry-level programmers are to companies sometimes um so yeah you can you can totally learn it you can totally uh
John:
Switch to it.
John:
In your advanced age of late 30s.
John:
It's not coal mining.
John:
It's not like you're going to be, oh, my arthritis in my late 30s means I can't pick up these large bales of hay or whatever manual labor.
John:
That's a weird coal mine.
John:
You'll be okay.
John:
I was switching to farming.
John:
I was trying to think of like...
John:
A job where you need – even something like a contractor or like construction, like where your physical age and abilities is a factor in the job, programming is not as big a factor.
John:
You're typing on a keyboard.
Casey:
It's fine.
Casey:
Agreed.
Casey:
Would you recommend schooling or self-paced lessons?
Casey:
I don't think it really matters as long as you can, and this is what I think Marco especially was saying earlier, as long as you can prove that you know what you're doing.
Casey:
And I've heard mixed things about those code boot camps.
Casey:
I don't particularly have any horse in that race, but I can tell you that...
Casey:
I went to a four-year school for computer engineering, and I feel like I learned more about what it's like to be a professional engineer in the first three months of my first real job than I did in the four years prior.
Casey:
And so that's why I would say schooling isn't necessarily compulsory, but...
Casey:
It is a pretty reliable and consistent way to say, here is a document that says I have learned X. So, you know, in the case of me, I have a document that says I have learned a fair bit about computer science and electrical engineering because of my personal estimation.
Casey:
That's what computer engineering really is.
Casey:
And for Marco, he has a document that says, I've learned a lot about computer science.
Casey:
And that can be kind of an equalizer to some degree.
Casey:
But ultimately, I don't think schooling is necessary.
Casey:
It's just something you're going to want to be able to point to something that indicates and proves that you can do it.
Casey:
So it could be an app in the app store.
Casey:
It could be a website.
Casey:
It could be
Casey:
GitHub stuff.
Casey:
GitHub profile, yeah.
Casey:
Actually, one of my favorite things to see from the role of an interviewer is somebody with a decent GitHub profile where I can look at their code and see what they actually do to write code.
Casey:
So any of those things are fine.
Casey:
Marco, any other thoughts on schooling or self-paced lessons?
Marco:
I think formal schooling, like getting a computer science degree, if you're already in your 30s, I would say that's not going to be a good return on your investment.
Marco:
I think that's something that it's fine to do when you're 18 and you get qualified, you get your first job.
Marco:
I don't think it's...
Marco:
In this field, I don't think you need it, as I said earlier.
Marco:
I know very few working programmers who have a computer science degree, and I would say once you're already established in the job market, you're in your 30s and everything, I don't think it's a good use of your time or money.
Marco:
Maybe something more trade-oriented, like what you said about boot camps.
Marco:
Again, I've never...
Marco:
experience these things, there's probably a lot of them out there that aren't very good and that are kind of just scammily taking your money.
Marco:
So I would maybe do some research on those to see if those help or even if you need them.
Marco:
You might not need them.
Marco:
But I would also say if you are applying for a job at almost anywhere –
Marco:
and you show up as the 36-year-old who doesn't have a lot of programming experience at all, but just knows a lot about tech stuff and wants to get into it and maybe is self-taught, you won't be the only person applying for that job who is exactly like that.
Marco:
It's easy to...
Marco:
overrate everyone else's skills when you just pay attention to the stories you hear online or to what people say and to what companies say, like, we hire the best of the best.
Marco:
And you look at the requirements and it's like, oh, we require 10 years of experience and this language is only five years old.
Marco:
It's easy to talk yourself out of even applying or even trying because you think, I can't get that job.
Marco:
The reality is most people applying for that job don't fit those criteria, don't have the qualifications, and even the person who ends up getting hired for it has a pretty low chance of actually satisfying all the quote requirements on the job posting.
Marco:
So don't let that talk you down or discourage you.
Marco:
Also,
Marco:
Don't think that every employer for a programming job is going to give you a Google-style interview full of coding on a whiteboard and solving algorithms and everything.
Marco:
They're not.
Marco:
Most of them don't do that.
Marco:
Most of them are like, we need somebody like yesterday.
Marco:
Can you start right now, please?
Marco:
We're desperate.
Marco:
We are overwhelmed with work or something or we're in some kind of mess.
Marco:
We need to add some programmation to this project.
Marco:
You seem competent.
Marco:
Can you show up on time and code?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Okay, you have a job.
Marco:
That's most of the actual jobs in the industry.
Marco:
It's not like you're not solving problems of going to Mars and needing a PhD and having a crazy Google brain teaser interview.
Marco:
But it's easy to think that's the whole industry.
Marco:
So I would say, you know, just try to jump in and try applying for jobs that you're not quite qualified for and just see how far you get.
Marco:
You can learn on the job.
Marco:
You'll be fine.
Marco:
And you won't be the worst programmer there, I bet.
Casey:
Yeah, and to build on what Marco was just saying, you know, it was just a few months ago that I was interviewing people to join...
Casey:
the team that I was the technical lead on.
Casey:
And in my personal opinion, and I don't think I'm the only one who thinks this, I would much rather have someone who knows enough to sort of kind of get their job done, but is really enthusiastic about it and is really enthusiastic about learning and,
Casey:
Rather than the hotshot coming out of school that knows everything about everything, because that hotshot coming out of school is going to be opinionated, but also ignorant.
Casey:
And in all likelihood, well, obviously I'm stereotyping a bit, but you know, opinionated, ignorant, and also unaware of their own ignorance.
Casey:
And that's the problem.
Casey:
And so I would much, much, much rather have someone who is enthusiastic and knows that they don't know a lot than someone who knows a whole ton of
Casey:
But it's just kind of like, yeah, well, this is my first job of 30, so whatever.
Casey:
I'll do my two years and get the hell out of here.
John:
I lost track of where we are on this question.
John:
Is it like schooling or lessons?
John:
No, I don't think you need the schooling.
John:
The thing about the schooling or the lessons is I think one of the most important questions you have to answer if you find yourself in this situation is, is programming a thing that I actually enjoy and I'm good at?
John:
Yeah.
John:
And if you're at the phase of thinking, well, I always wanted to get back into it and to get advanced in my career, I'd need programming skills.
John:
You know, should I do it?
John:
You have to find out whether you like programming as a career and whether you're good at it.
John:
And you could find that out in school, which would be an expensive, time-consuming way to find out.
John:
Or you could find that out by trying to do some kind of programming project on your own.
John:
Like, you need to have some...
John:
in most cases, you need to have some kind of skills going in.
John:
You don't have any previous job experience.
John:
Maybe you don't even have any projects that you've done.
John:
Maybe you haven't contributed to open source, but you need to do something with yourself to say, oh, I can program, I can do this, and I find it fun.
John:
Because once you've crossed that hurdle, then it's just a matter of finding someone who's going to give you a chance.
John:
But if you don't do that...
John:
And you find someone who's willing to hire you, and then you get in there and you realize, oh, I actually don't like programming.
John:
It's kind of annoying.
John:
Like, programming might not be what you think it is.
John:
Like, so many careers, until you're actually doing it, you're not entirely sure.
John:
Like, you make it like the idea of programming, but the reality might turn you off.
John:
So find that out ahead of time.
John:
And, you know, I don't think you need to go to school to find that.
John:
I think you're probably much more efficient to find that out on your own.
John:
And the last place, since this question is going along, what language should I begin with?
John:
It doesn't matter.
John:
Language doesn't matter.
John:
I mean, you can...
John:
If you want to become an expert in a language and learn a language, you can choose one based on where you think you want to apply based on the companies that are nearby or whatever.
John:
But in terms of learning to be a programmer, it absolutely doesn't matter.
John:
Like when you're learning to be a programmer, you're just learning generic skills that are going to apply to any language.
John:
When it comes to choosing languages...
John:
if you have a target company in mind and that company does entirely like server side software and Java, and that's what you've got your heart set on, or there's five companies like that, then yeah, learn Java, but you're not doing that to learn programming that you're learning that you're doing that to land a job.
John:
And, you know, some companies will hire you even if you don't know the language was like, Oh, you can learn the language on the job.
John:
It's assumed that someone who is a programmer,
John:
Especially an experienced programmer can learn any language on the job.
John:
And sometimes they'll hire people, you know, say somebody, some company is working in a very obscure language.
John:
They'll hire people and they don't have any expectation that anybody knows this language because it's like mumps or something.
John:
Or Perl.
John:
yeah well there's more people know pearl than mumps but anyway and they'll hire you and say if you know a language that's similar but i haven't seen jobs like that too like if you know like ruby python or whatever and you're like well what do you use like it doesn't matter if you know any of those languages you're fine because that's kind of the kind of language we do here so don't get hung up in the language thing that is like the least important uh sub question in this question
Casey:
Yeah, agreed.
Casey:
The only thing I would build on that to say is if you're trying to learn programming, then you should definitely have a task that you're trying to complete in the language that you're using.
Casey:
So for example, when I wanted to learn Node, I wanted to build a blog engine.
Casey:
And that gave me a specific thing to concentrate on to help me learn Node rather than just being like, hey, man,
Casey:
it would be cool to like, I don't know, learn Node and stuff.
Casey:
And that's really too open-ended for most people that I know.
Casey:
So having a specific task, maybe it's you want to see something on your own iPhone.
Casey:
You want to see something on your Mac.
Casey:
You want to see something on the web somewhere.
Casey:
Having a specific task is very, very helpful.
Casey:
And I agree that...
Casey:
If you have a company in mind or what have you, then try to follow whatever stack they use.
Casey:
But John's right.
Casey:
Ultimately, the language is irrelevant.
Casey:
It's just that you can do these sorts of things.
John:
You just proved that point about learning Node because if you had learned Node with the idea that it's going to be important for a job that you're going to have, you don't know that anymore because Node changes every two weeks.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
I don't know anything about Node anymore.
John:
Node didn't even have async await when you were learning it.
Casey:
Nope.
Casey:
Sure didn't.
Casey:
Yeah, one of the things I'd like to do one of these days is actually rewrite my engine in a modern version of Node to teach me a modern version of Node because I'm so behind now.
John:
And then it'll change two weeks later and you're knowledgeably worthless again.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Marco, any final thoughts on this one particular question?
John:
Node sounds awful.
Casey:
It's, you know, it was fun at the time.
Casey:
This was four years ago or something like that.
Casey:
It was fun.
Casey:
I think John's done a lot more of it a lot more recently, which I think is in the topic list for, I don't know, 15 years from now.
Casey:
But I like it.
Casey:
I also don't have the visceral hatred of JavaScript that most people do, probably because I just haven't been burned by it like most people have.
Casey:
But I think it's fun.
Casey:
I don't know, John, any quick thoughts on Node?
John:
It does change really fast, but the good thing is that most of the changes are for the better.
John:
The bad thing is you're starting out from JavaScript, so there's only so far you can go.
John:
JavaScript is really kind of a mess.
John:
It makes me sad, but the performance is really good, and the fact that it changes like it's a double-edged sword, it is frustrating, but...
John:
you know going from like i've only been doing node for a couple years now and going from like month to month and same way like again they said they added async await in this version what like this changes everything throw out all that crappy code change it all like things like that happen frequently and it's kind of exciting and fun which is why everybody keeps writing these people who can't program keep writing these crappy packages and uploading them to npm repos and poisoning the world with their bad software but that's separate separate topic
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And our final ask ATP, Dave Altizer, Altizer, Dave A writes, do you, any of you use bagel slicers?
Casey:
If so, do you recommend that guillotine kind or one of those slicer holders?
Casey:
Any particular brands you recommend?
Casey:
I have used the bagel guillotine thing.
Casey:
I don't know if that's the official name or not, but whatever.
Casey:
I hated it.
Casey:
It always just smushed the bagels.
Casey:
I thought it was a piece of trash.
Casey:
I would say just get a very long, very sharp like bread knife.
Casey:
We have one from cut,
Casey:
I believe that I think we were sold when Aaron's little brother was briefly doing that in college, as most college kids do.
Marco:
As most Cutco knives are sold.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
And it works great.
Casey:
And just make sure you don't cut into your hand.
Casey:
You know, flip the bagel when you're about halfway through it.
Casey:
And other than that, that's all you need.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
You cut it that way?
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
Oh, my.
Casey:
I haven't cut myself yet.
Marco:
I haven't cut myself yet.
Marco:
Oh, jeez.
Casey:
Anyway, what do you do, Marco?
Yeah.
Marco:
Okay, so if you don't want to deal with the knife question, bagel guillotines are fine, provided your bagel is not too stale or underbaked.
Marco:
If it's either stale or underbaked, it will squish when you push down with the guillotine instead of being cut.
Marco:
Also, it probably helps if the guillotine is relatively modern and sharp.
Marco:
It's supposed to sound like a 30-year-old one that you find.
Marco:
The guillotines have different shapes in them.
Marco:
Some of them have like the single slanted blade like an old guillotine would have.
Marco:
The better ones come to a point, like a little triangle.
Marco:
Those are better if you get those.
Marco:
To avoid crushing the bagel down into the guillotine, the best technique for those is to push down really hard and really fast so that it doesn't have a chance to compress.
Marco:
It just punctures it really fast.
Marco:
And those kind of slicers are totally fine.
Marco:
There's no shame in using them.
Marco:
There's some advantages to using them instead of cutting, which I'll get to in a second.
Marco:
I am a cutter, though.
Marco:
And the reason why is, as I've mentioned somewhere before, I had a job at a bagel shop in high school.
Marco:
And I cut a lot of bagels working the line at a bagel shop and cutting bagels for everybody who would order a dozen or order a sandwich or whatever else.
Marco:
So I've cut many more bagels than I'd say the average person.
Marco:
Bagel shops don't use bagel guillotines because you can do it with a knife really well and really easily.
Marco:
So Casey's right.
Marco:
The best kind of bagel cutting knife is a long, straight, serrated bread knife.
Marco:
It should look ridiculous.
Marco:
It should be pretty long.
Marco:
I'm not talking about a serrated steak knife, a bread knife, a real bread knife.
Marco:
Whether it has the pokey thing on the end doesn't really matter because you're only using the side.
Marco:
The correct technique to slice a bagel safely is to lay it flat on the cutting surface, put your hand on top of it flat...
Marco:
And cut right to left or whatever.
Marco:
Cut straight across as you are holding the bagel flat.
Marco:
So your holding hand never has to move.
Marco:
If the knife keeps going straight through, you just cut the bagel faster.
Marco:
You don't get cut.
Marco:
That's how to cut a bagel.
Marco:
The only downside to that is that if you have a bagel that's covered in seeds, some of those will be transferred to your hand.
Marco:
There's some mitigating things you can do.
Marco:
You can flip it over and hold the bottom, which tends to have fewer to no seeds.
Marco:
You can put an insulating paper towel between you and the bagel if you want to do it that way.
Marco:
And that is the one area where the guillotine is better.
Marco:
The guillotine will lose fewer seeds off of a seeded bagel typically than any kind of handheld cutting option.
Casey:
I agree that, you know, bagel on counter, hand on bagel is the best way to do it.
Casey:
But I don't know, man.
Casey:
As long as you're not an idiot, you can do it in your hands.
Casey:
John, what do you think?
John:
Bagel guillotines, guillotines, sorry, are ridiculous.
John:
I don't think I've ever even seen one in real life use a long bread knife.
John:
For the squishing on the counter thing, I think that makes more sense in a situation where speed is more and where you're being asked to cut many, many bagels under time pressure, like if you work in a bagel shop.
John:
But at home, I do it the artisanal way that Casey described.
John:
I don't lose any seeds.
John:
I don't squish my bagel against the counter.
John:
I cut them up in the air, and I'm able to carefully make sure that each half is exactly the right size, and one isn't bigger than the other, and I don't actually go slightly on an angle, because I take my time, and I do it carefully and slowly with a long bread knife.
John:
Do not buy bagel gillotines.
John:
I wouldn't buy it under any circumstance.
John:
Get a bread knife.
John:
Learn how to use it.
John:
You'll be fine.
John:
You're not under time pressure.
John:
It's not a race.
John:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, RxBar, and Betterment.
John:
And we'll see you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
John:
They didn't even mean to begin.
John:
Because it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
Casey:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
They didn't mean to.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Marco:
We could talk about Thanksgiving.
Marco:
Yeah, so we did a top four Thanksgiving side dishes, I think, a couple years ago.
Marco:
Do you guys have any different opinions on Thanksgiving?
John:
I don't remember what your terrible opinions were on that episode.
Casey:
I could not agree.
Casey:
I could not agree with that description more.
Casey:
I cannot remember what your terrible opinions were on that episode, but...
Casey:
No, actually, Aaron and I were talking about this because we are doing my family Thanksgiving this year.
Casey:
We alternate back and forth.
Casey:
And my mom and dad are lovely people, but chefs, they are not.
Casey:
And so I think actually Wegmans is doing our Thanksgiving dinner, if I'm not mistaken.
Casey:
And so...
Casey:
Aaron and I were talking about the sorts of things that we would want to see and would miss that probably won't be there.
Casey:
I actually prefer ham even in Thanksgiving over turkey.
Casey:
I know most people find that to be blasphemous.
Casey:
Stop it.
John:
Talk about Marco's terrible opinions.
John:
What are you doing?
Interesting.
John:
We're talking about Thanksgiving food, and you start with, I prefer ham to turkey?
John:
This podcast is over.
Casey:
I don't really like turkey.
Casey:
We made it 301 episodes.
John:
You don't really like turkey?
John:
Keep it to yourself on Thanksgiving.
Casey:
Well, but a lot of times there's ham.
Marco:
Anyway, but... Look, I've eaten a lot of bad turkey in my life, but I would never substitute it out for ham.
John:
It's Thanksgiving.
John:
Even if the turkey is bad and dry, it's the one day a year you're eating turkey.
John:
Do not be the person who's like, you know what?
John:
I prefer ham.
John:
Let's make ham for Thanksgiving.
John:
No, don't make ham for Thanksgiving.
John:
See, like so many other holidays, you make ham.
Casey:
Yeah, that's what's great about ham.
Casey:
It works anywhere.
Casey:
Anyway, ultimately, that doesn't matter.
Casey:
But the point I was trying to get to...
Casey:
is that we were trying to figure out, you know, what would my mom probably not – which really I mean Wegmans.
Casey:
What would she not bother with?
Casey:
Ham.
Casey:
One thing – oh, no, she'll have ham.
Marco:
What will Wegmans not make you for Thanksgiving?
Marco:
Ham.
Casey:
Maybe you're right.
Casey:
I think she said she's going to have ham, but you might be right.
Casey:
But the thing that Aaron and I are most sad that we're pretty sure we're going to miss out on is green bean casserole.
Casey:
So, you know, green beans with like – I don't know.
Casey:
What is it like –
John:
I'm going to get out that big map of the most disproportionately represented Thanksgiving side dishes.
Casey:
Oh, yep, yep, yep.
John:
Green bean casserole was on the list, but guess what region it was?
Casey:
Up near you?
John:
I'm going to guess south the south.
John:
Green bean casserole is good.
Casey:
Yeah, it's great.
Casey:
And especially when you put the little French's fried onions on top.
Marco:
So one of the best reasons to make green bean casserole is because you need to then buy a little can of those French's fried onions, but you don't need the whole can.
Marco:
preach so then for the next like two weeks you can like open the cabinet and just like grab a little handful super good oh you get me you get me so hard um why can you have such good taste on that and yet on so many other things this is the southerner and the ohio boy bonding over green bean casserole for give action no it's it's the midwest the green bean casserole uh the south was mac and cheese
John:
oh yeah mac and cheese is required are you kidding i don't think i've ever seen mac and cheese at thanksgiving oh you're missing out you gotta go blow the mason dixon line no this it's common like this map up we'll put a link in the show it says 538 it's which side dish is most disproportionately represented so it's like these side dishes are had everywhere but it's like who has green bean casserole a higher at a higher percentage than everyone else in the country and it's the midwest
John:
Guess what the entire western half of the country, their disproportionate Thanksgiving side dishes, can you guess?
John:
A burrito with avocados in it?
Casey:
Wasn't it salad?
Casey:
I would never have guessed it.
Casey:
Salad.
John:
Salad.
John:
That's like everything from the Midwest on.
Marco:
I like salad, but I would never waste stomach space on Thanksgiving on salad.
Marco:
Right?
Casey:
I mean, I will admit, maybe not concur, but I will admit that my preference for him is a little bit barbaric for Thanksgiving.
Casey:
But can we all agree that salad is just wrong?
Casey:
I mean, that's just not right.
John:
You can have a salad with Thanksgiving dinner as one of the dishes, but the fact that it's disproportionately represented in it, like it's on more people's table than in the rest of the country, which shows they just love salad over there.
John:
You can have a salad for breakfast on Thanksgiving, and then you're fine for the day.
John:
No, I'm going to tell you your solution to your Thanksgiving problems, Casey.
John:
Okay, here we go.
John:
You are, well, yeah, that's...
John:
You are now a somewhat unemployed, but still an adult with two children and you're married and you have a house and multiple cars and sometimes a drone.
John:
I think it may be time for you to start hosting Thanksgiving and letting your poor parents come to your house and then you can make whatever you want.
Casey:
That is a good point.
Casey:
That is a good point.
Casey:
But the thing is, every other year— All Velveeta, all the time.
John:
Nothing but Velveeta.
John:
Velveeta and ham.
John:
If you host Thanksgiving, you have the leeway to do that.
John:
And then you're not in the position where you're complaining about how your parents aren't cooking the things that you want because you're a grown man now, and you should cook them Thanksgiving.
Casey:
That is true.
Casey:
However, my parents much prefer being in their own domicile than anyone else's.
Marco:
Newsflash, everyone's parents prefer to stay in their house for Thanksgiving.
Marco:
That's how parents work, but eventually you got to convince them to come.
John:
No, eventually parents don't want to cook for a crowd of people.
John:
That's what they don't want to do.
John:
Oh, you're lucky.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
See, I don't think Marco and I are at that point, or I should say our parents aren't at that point quite yet.
Casey:
Um, but in any case, I, the, the, the nice thing with Aaron and I is that her mom is the like very traditional, you know, green bean casserole, um, uh, mashed potatoes, which are about half butter and half potato.
Casey:
Uh, the, the, what is it?
Casey:
Um, sweet potato casserole, whatever it is.
Casey:
And that's not what it's called, but you know, the sweet potato thing that has like, you know, mushroom, uh, not mushroom, um,
Marco:
Yeah, it's like canned yams and marshmallows on top.
Casey:
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, we're saying the same thing.
Casey:
Anyway, so in Turkey, and I think she usually does ham because half of her family also wants to have ham as well because I'm not that crazy.
Casey:
Thank you very much.
Casey:
But anyways, all the stereotypical stuff is always, always, always, always at Aaron's families.
Casey:
And so every other year, we get the completely fulfilling Thanksgiving.
Casey:
And on the off years, we get the lovely but maybe not every single thing we wish we had Thanksgiving.
John:
Another reason you should start practicing is that someday all of your parents will be dead and you will have to make yourself Thanksgiving.
Casey:
Well, then I'll just call Wegmans.
Casey:
Isn't that what we learned?
Casey:
It'll be exactly how you remember it.
Marco:
One strategy that we developed when we were going through Thanksgiving drama with parents and everything is you don't have – so if you have to have Thanksgiving at a certain house that is maybe not the better of the two,
Marco:
You know, yes, we all love our parents equally, but yeah, we love some of them more on Thanksgiving.
Marco:
And so on the off years, you don't necessarily have to have only one Thanksgiving meal.
Marco:
You can have a good Thanksgiving meal like the previous weekend or the next weekend at the other house and have all the things you would have made for that.
Marco:
But you just have, you know, you have your good Thanksgiving meal on a different day.
Casey:
You know, I was remiss earlier, I forgot to mention that one of the requirements for Thanksgiving is an Erin apple pie, and she is cooking that, or baking that, I should say, this year.
Casey:
That was my mom's request, in fact, when Erin asked, what can we bring?
Casey:
And mom immediately said, apple pie.
Casey:
So yeah, Erin's extremely tasty apple pie is also going to be on the menu, and I'm very excited about that.
Casey:
John, what do you consider to be, let's channel robot or not, what is your canonical Thanksgiving Day feast?
John:
My stuff is weirded up by the fact that my whole family is Italian.
John:
Right.
John:
So we still have all the traditional Thanksgiving stuff.
John:
We don't have ham for crying out loud.
John:
But like we have antipasta in front of every family Thanksgiving family meal period like we just do.
John:
So we have antipasta and then we have like, you know, minestrone soup and then we have a full turkey dinner.
John:
Why do we have that?
John:
Because we just do.
John:
We used to have at my grandparents' house, and even when my parents did it, we would do the fruit and nut course before dessert.
John:
It doesn't matter what the meal was.
John:
It would be bracketed by all this Italian-American food, and we still do that.
John:
So it seems weird.
John:
If it seems weird to you to have antipasta before your Thanksgiving dinner, it's because you're not in my family.
John:
But that's the only oddity.
John:
Our Thanksgiving dinners are straight up the middle.
John:
Thanksgiving stuffing.
John:
Oh, stuffing.
Casey:
Oh, how could I forget stuffing?
John:
It's just plain old Thanksgiving.
Casey:
Marco, are you a stuffing fan?
Marco:
I love stuffing.
Casey:
See, here again.
Casey:
You get me.
Marco:
The great thing about stuffing – Oh, no.
John:
We're in dangerous territory here, Marco.
Marco:
Let me translate.
Marco:
I'm talking to – for the Midwesterners, I'm talking about dressing.
Marco:
Oh, God.
John:
No, that's not the dangerous territory I'm talking about.
Marco:
I have the fear now.
Marco:
Keep going.
Marco:
The great thing about stuffing is that you can basically use it as a vehicle for a ton of really awesome and usually otherwise maybe unhealthy flavors to come together in a wonderful medley.
Marco:
The stuffing that I like...
Marco:
are very, you know, butter heavy.
Marco:
They usually involve, they always involve some kind of meat flavoring, usually a fatty meat, like a sausage, like maybe being ground up in there.
Marco:
Sometimes it involves, you know, like savory vegetables, slow cooked things, you know.
Marco:
So there's a lot you can do with stuffing.
Marco:
And I've had lots of different stuffings.
Marco:
I've had the ones that have like fancy bread as the bread chunks or the ones that just use the bag mix.
John:
I'll tell you what, it's the same.
John:
No, you've entered the territory.
John:
This is what my fear was.
John:
When we started talking about stuffing, that Casey would say, man, I love stovetop and I would die.
Marco:
No, I'm not saying stovetop.
John:
And now you did it.
John:
No, no.
Marco:
The bag, the what?
Marco:
The bag mix of like the bread.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
No, like the bread cubes that form your base.
John:
N-O.
Marco:
You don't need, if the freshness of the bread matters in your stuffing, you aren't putting enough other stuff in your stuffing.
Oh, no.
No.
John:
thanksgiving is the one time that you just make yourself stuffing on thanksgiving do not do any mix it's not that hard i'm not talking i'm not saying a whole mix i'm saying like the bread cubes that you can buy in the bag you know you get bread cubes you take bread you cut into cubes with the same long bread knife you got from your bagels you've already got the long bread knife it's there already it's really easy to cut it into oh my god
Casey:
I just recently had the thought technology introduced to me of sausage and stuffing in the last couple of years.
Casey:
And, oh, man, that changed my world.
Casey:
So good.
Marco:
My favorite is breakfast sausage in general in life.
Marco:
But most good brands of breakfast sausage, you can buy the loose sausage either without a casing or in one giant casing.
John:
Do you have a good brand for that, by the way?
John:
I'm also a big breakfast sausage person.
John:
I heard you mention that you had frozen breakfast sausage patties.
John:
You should send me whatever brand you're getting for that because I've been looking for that.
John:
Frozen.
John:
They're frozen, right?
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
and it's jones jones sausage i gotta look for that and uh yeah i use the um here i'll send the link here so it's it's jones sausage they come in the freezer i don't i assume they're available everywhere or close to everywhere i get the one in the red box which is the mild all pork sausage ones uh they come in either either links or discs i prefer the links but if you're making sausage i would probably just get the discs and chop them up yeah yeah yeah but yeah this is my preferred sausage uh you know my preferred breakfast sausage of choice it's really wonderful
Marco:
and uh but yeah breakfast sausage actually works really well as the sausage to put into thanksgiving stuffing just because of like that you know the seasoning mix is a little bit different than like a like a dinner sausage would be um and it just works really well with it for some reason i don't i just don't understand people who don't like stuffing it's so good do you have uh i mean this is another southern not entirely southern thing but part of southern cornbread stuffing are you into that casey
Casey:
I've only had it a couple of times and I do like it.
Casey:
I love cornbread and especially as paired with barbecue, which actually let's go on a quick tangent here.
Casey:
Little chunks of corn with like like little corn kernels in the cornbread.
Casey:
Yes or no, Marco?
Marco:
No, that would be weird texturally.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
I agree.
Casey:
John, John, what do you think?
John:
I find it acceptable that I do not prefer it.
Casey:
Okay, because there's – actually, coincidentally, I think it was Wegmans that we got.
Casey:
Wow, Wegmans is really powering my life.
Casey:
We got some cornbread made for – like several batches of cornbread made for Declan's birthday party because we went to a local barbecue restaurant that I really love.
Casey:
And the particular catering setup wouldn't give us corn or they couldn't do cornbread for it.
Casey:
And so we got some Wegmans cornbread made and the taste of the cornbread was great.
Casey:
But Marco hit the nail on the head.
Casey:
Having those little particles, little kernels of corn in there, very texturally peculiar.
Casey:
And I do not care for it.
Casey:
I'm glad we also agree on that in that regard.
Marco:
I also – I agree that cornbread is delicious and I have never had cornbread stuffing and now I really want to try that because I love cornbread and I love stuffing.
Casey:
I love stuffing.
John:
It's a little bit different because it's not – I mean I love cornbread too but like it's not the kind of stuffing that I prefer but it definitely –
John:
It definitely takes something getting used to.
John:
It's kind of like if you haven't had sausage and stuffing before.
John:
It's like, ooh, I didn't expect this.
John:
If I had to pick my Thanksgiving dinner, I wouldn't pick cornbread stuffing.
John:
I like it fine.
John:
It's good.
John:
It's tasty, but I wouldn't pick it.
John:
Same thing with the sausage stuffing, which I like, but I would never pick it.
John:
My Thanksgiving dinner, aside from the Italian bracketing, is straight up the middle, like just the most sort of... Like 70s cookbook.
John:
exactly traditional thanksgiving that's what i want it's a little bit i mean we put pine nuts in the stuffing that's i guess that's a little bit of an italian oh that's weird oh yeah that's that's something but you know other than that it's very straightforward like you know cranberry uh from the can but the one with the chunks like it's not you know we've done the fresh cranberry and i i like the one in the can with the chunks better
Marco:
Yeah, I'm with you on that, actually.
Marco:
I've had fresh-made cranberry sauce, and it's fine, but the canned stuff, I think, is just better.
Marco:
I mean, it's more junk food-y, and it's filled with more sugar, which is why it's better.
Marco:
Well, but I even like the non-chunky one.
Marco:
I like the one that comes out, the shape of the can.
Marco:
The gelatinous.
Marco:
And you have to slice a can-shaped disc for yourself.
Marco:
I like that because if you're using it either as a flavor accent layer in a leftover sandwich, which you should be doing, or even if you're using it in the dinner itself and you are using it to dip your probably too dry turkey into for flavor, you want a nice, consistent...
Marco:
consistency throughout it so it can be used easily as a dip or as a spread or whatever else like so i actually don't want a lot of big chunks in there if i can help it but chunky or not i do prefer the canned stuff
Casey:
I don't like the cranberry.
John:
Not a fan.
John:
You're missing out.
John:
It's a big important tangy flavor component to the overall thing.
Marco:
One of the reasons why the IKEA meatballs thing is so good is because it has very similar flavor components.
Marco:
You have a meat, you have a gravy, and you have a tart berry jelly.
Casey:
Oh, no, I do know what you're talking about.
Casey:
And I actually do like that.
Casey:
That's interesting.
Marco:
It's Swedish meatballs with like, you know, a light brownish gravy of God knows what and lingonberry jelly.
Marco:
That's that's the IKEA version.
Marco:
Well, you can really approximate a very similar flavor profile with Thanksgiving turkey with gravy because you should have gravy from something and with a little bit of cranberry sauce.
Marco:
You get that same combination of like types of flavors and it's really good.
Casey:
Yeah, it is pretty good.
Casey:
Maybe I should try the cranberry again.
Casey:
God, I wish I had an Ikea close to us.
Casey:
The nearest one is like an hour, hour and a half, and man, that bums me out.
John:
I don't even know where the nearest one is.
John:
There's got to be one around here, but, you know, it's a good time to bring up that I have never purchased a couch in my life.
John:
Wait, what?
John:
Nope.
John:
I am 40-something years old, and I still have not ever purchased a couch.
Casey:
Still rolling the hand-me-downs.
Casey:
Mm-hmm.
John:
Good for you.
John:
They're too heavy to leave the house.
John:
I'm too old to carry them anymore.
John:
How old is your current couch?
John:
Both of my current couches came from my grandparents, who are both deceased.
John:
And when did they buy them?
John:
I don't know, sometime substantially before they passed away.
John:
How long has it been?
John:
A couple of decades since we got them.
John:
Oh, wow.
John:
These are both convertible sofas that change into beds and they weigh as much as a car each.
John:
And I'm sure knowing my grandparents that they were purchased from some expensive department store, right?
John:
So obviously they're high quality and that my kids haven't completely destroyed them yet.
John:
And I've already established their incredible weight.
John:
uh we went uh couch shopping last year sometime and you know we went to the local giant uh furniture super basically the ikea of new england furniture which is a similar quality you know but much more expensive anyway and we looked at i think literally every single couch there and it was dozens and dozens of couches and couldn't find one that we like when you were when you were a uh
John:
touting your couch uh online you said here it's linked to it we found it and it was still for sale and blah blah i looked at that one again but like it's no good for us because it's not flat or whatever like we have particular demands of how our couches need to fit into our room and how they have to work and we couldn't find one that we like better so it's not like we're not against the couch we would like to buy at least one new couch and potentially replace the other couch with the smaller couch or love seats or something or who knows but so far we haven't done it