You Are a Computer Athlete
Casey:
I think I've mentioned this once on the show, but the key to getting an Ask ATP answered is, generally speaking, to have tweeted it Wednesday mornings.
Casey:
Now, obviously, today's not Wednesday.
John:
That's not true.
John:
I pick from all over the place.
Casey:
Actually, well, so that, okay, let me back up a half step.
Casey:
It used to be that I was the one who chose and volunteered to do all the AskATPs.
Casey:
The last couple of months.
John:
That was never the case.
John:
That was never the case.
Casey:
Maybe not all of the AskATPs, but I feel like there was a long stretch of time.
John:
You participated in the selection process.
Casey:
That is true.
Casey:
Oh, my God, John.
Casey:
Is this really how we're going to start the show?
Casey:
Anyway, I feel like I did the lion's share of the AskATP, and I'm not complaining about that.
Casey:
I think that's perfectly reasonable.
John:
You did not.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
Can you just let me get through this, please?
Casey:
Please, John.
John:
Give it a false premise, Casey.
John:
Anything follows.
John:
So I'm just trying to keep you on track.
Casey:
Whether or not it's invented, whether or not it's true, my feelings that you cannot f***ing argue with are that I did the overwhelming majority.
John:
You can have feelings about factual things.
John:
That's fine.
John:
Great.
John:
Go ahead.
Casey:
All right, so normally we would start with follow-up, but I should make it plain that we are recording on Sunday, the 18th of August, and we are doing that because your two favorite hosts in the show, that's not true, but whatever, two of the hosts of the show are going to be in San Francisco this week, so we needed to record early.
Casey:
We're going to be in San Francisco because Real AFM turned five this very day on the 18th of August.
Casey:
So congratulations to our friends, Stephen and Mike, and everyone else at Relay, including the three of us.
Casey:
Congratulations for turning five.
Casey:
That's a very, very cool achievement, and I am glad that the three of us have had a very small part in it.
Casey:
That aside, we should start with follow-up, and Nate Lyman had something to say, but I don't care, so let's move on.
Casey:
Stephen Howell writes, regarding Apple Laptop, are you really letting me get away with this?
John:
I'm very surprised.
John:
No, you've got to do it.
John:
Now your punishment is you've got to do this item.
Casey:
You know, I should have just soldiered on, but I felt guilty.
Casey:
Nate Lyman writes, store brand Velveeta is, quote, smooth melting cheese loaf.
Casey:
I couldn't even say it with a straight face.
Casey:
It's smooth melting cheese loaf at Safeway, which is a grocery store here in the United States.
Casey:
Good to know.
Casey:
Thanks, Nate Lyman.
Marco:
yeah we had we had speculated last week during the discussion of case's awful taste does that discussion ever end whether his beloved velvita actually whether there was a like cheap imitation or store brand version of velvita and there actually apparently is at safeway named smooth melting cheese loaf which is so bad i mean velvita itself is already pretty inexpensive pretty crappy how do you make velvita cheaper
John:
And what is it made of?
John:
My main question is, how are they allowed to call it cheese loaf?
John:
Because don't they have to call Velveeta like cheese food?
Casey:
I believe it's pasteurized cheese product, if I'm not mistaken.
John:
Because if this is called cheese loaf and there's no modifier, is there like an asterisk next to cheese?
Casey:
Velveeta, which remember the tagline is liquid gold, which again, you can't even say with a straight face.
Casey:
Pasteurized recipe cheese product.
Marco:
Wait, did they actually use the phrase liquid gold?
Casey:
Yes.
Marco:
That's not a joke?
Marco:
That's not something we say about it?
Marco:
That's something they say about it?
Casey:
No, no, no, no.
Casey:
I'm putting a link in the show notes.
Marco:
That's really something.
Marco:
Also, who has decided that the word loaf is a good thing most of the time?
Marco:
I feel like if you're describing bread...
Marco:
That is a good term to use.
Marco:
If you're describing almost anything else, there's not positive associations.
Marco:
No one thinks loaf, like a type of food that is a loaf that is not bread, no one associates that with quality or even anything appetizing.
John:
So what's the alternate?
John:
Let's get some alternatives for loaf.
John:
Brick.
John:
Block.
John:
Brick is good.
John:
Rectangular solid.
John:
Pasteurized processed cheese block.
John:
Block.
John:
Hmm.
John:
Plug.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Wow.
John:
Cheese product plug.
John:
Cheese monolith.
Casey:
There we go.
Casey:
I'm excited by that.
Casey:
Cheese monolith.
John:
Anyway, there are, Velveeta has competitors.
John:
Somehow.
John:
Mm-hmm.
Casey:
So on rare occasions, especially if we're having like a party of some sort that is themed around football.
Casey:
I don't know why football is required, but whatever.
Casey:
When we're watching American football or maybe like the Super Bowl, for example, that's a great example.
Casey:
Occasionally we will make a sausage and cheese dip.
Casey:
And by we, I mean Aaron.
Casey:
And so that's Velveeta, like, you know, the block of Velveeta.
Casey:
with sausage and Rotel.
Casey:
And I think we talked about this on Analog a couple of times.
Casey:
And it's really honestly just, well, I can't say this because the two of you are going to jump all over me.
Casey:
I find it to be very tasty.
Casey:
But the thing is, if you let it sit, so you heat up this block of cheese, it melts, you put sausage in it, you put this Rotel diced tomatoes and green chilies thing in it, and then you mix it all up.
Marco:
I believe you mean loaf of cheese.
Casey:
Oh, right.
Casey:
Sorry.
Casey:
Loaf of cheese.
Casey:
Yes, that's correct.
Marco:
You've got to be precise here with your... Yes, exactly.
Casey:
And anyways, so you get this melty cheese with the sausage in it.
Casey:
You know, cheese and sausage, okay, granted, Velveeta is a little weird.
Casey:
I'm not going to deny that.
Casey:
But on the surface, cheese, sausage, tomatoes, and chilies, I think all three of us can agree on, in principle, maybe with different cheese, in principle, this is okay.
Casey:
Well, the thing of it is, is that if you let this Velveeta cheese sit after it has been heated up,
Casey:
It eventually becomes kind of a loaf again.
Casey:
what did my life lead to to make me think that this was a good idea to consume this?
Casey:
And it's tasty.
John:
It gets hard again?
John:
It gets harder than it started out as?
Casey:
No, I'm exaggerating some, but it definitely congeals and becomes not melty at all.
Marco:
Better question is, what does it do inside of you if you do eat it?
Casey:
Exactly right.
Casey:
Exactly right.
Casey:
And that's the question I have that I ask myself every single time.
Casey:
And
Marco:
it's it's kind of grossing me out to be fair making some kind of like cheese dip with velvita that you like dip chips into is indeed really good that's what it's really like that that is i feel like the ideal thing to do with it there's not that much else you can do with velvita that i can defend at all but that is one thing that it is really good at
Casey:
I mean, if you recall, people who have listened to Analog, I sent Mike or I purchased on Amazon.co.uk a Velveeta shells and cheese box and had Mike make it.
Casey:
And he was utterly disgusted by it.
Casey:
But then of his own volition, like a year or two later.
Marco:
When visiting us.
Casey:
Oh, is that what it was?
Casey:
I didn't realize it was you.
Casey:
See, I do that to John.
Casey:
Now I'm doing it to you, Marco.
Casey:
So when visiting the Armands.
Casey:
They made a Velveeta and Rotel and sausage or a rough equivalent dip.
Casey:
And Mike reported back on the show saying, oh, my gosh, it's actually quite delicious, as you were just saying, Marco.
Casey:
So, yeah, it can win over even the most stalwart, you know, I can't think of the word other than evangelist, which is the wrong direction.
Casey:
The antonym of evangelist.
Marco:
I can also report that after doing that, we visited London a few months later and I brought Mike a block of Velveeta.
Casey:
You mean a loaf?
Marco:
Yes, a loaf of Velveeta and a can of Rotel.
Marco:
I will say it was very, very covered in TSA inspection tape when we arrived.
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
I did not know that.
Marco:
well if we put it in our checked luggage because it's pretty big and heavy imagine how a block of plastic like cheese must look in an x-ray like they had to think it was like a plastic explosive right like there's i'm sure it's it it is something that like you see that on the x-ray and you pull that bag and you inspect it like for sure and i i must i can't even imagine
Marco:
The expression on whatever TSA agents face when they opened it up and found a block of Velveeta in this suitcase.
Marco:
But it definitely made the gift extra cool that it was covered in TSA tape.
John:
He doesn't travel without it.
John:
Real-time follow-up just so we don't have to get all of the responses and tweets.
John:
Lucerne is apparently the Safeway store brand, so it's a fancy name.
John:
Now we know.
Casey:
uh walmart store brand great value has original melt apostrophe n dip easy melt cheese melton melton dip is that don's did don do this no don would never do that yeah it yeah the melton dip invented safari and swears a lot
Casey:
And drinks a lot of wine.
Casey:
Very well done.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Stephen Howell writes, regarding Apple laptops that turn on with any key press or trackpad click, one solution I've found to clean my keyboard is by using an app called Keyboard Clean Tool for exactly this purpose.
Casey:
It does one thing and does it well when you open the app and click the start cleaning button.
Casey:
The entire keyboard stops responding to input.
Casey:
Keyboard input is restored after clicking the stop button.
Casey:
And according to the author's website, it can also be useful for toddlers and cats.
Casey:
P.S.
Casey:
If you accidentally lock your screen while the app is enabled, no worries.
Casey:
The lock screen overrides whatever API the app is using, so you can still type your password.
Casey:
Cool.
Casey:
That is a useful tip.
John:
That's mostly a solution, but part of the reason I've always wanted my computer to be off before I clean the keyboard is just in case there's, you know, some kind of moisture going on there.
John:
I mean, really, you shouldn't let the moisture in the computer at all anyway, and it's probably just mostly superstition, but it is that extra bit of safety, you know, that some tiny molecule of water can't...
Casey:
work its way in there and hit a contact it honestly especially with today's keyboards and the way the laptop designer doesn't really make any sense but it always makes me feel better it was actually off well i completely agree with you but you know it's the next best thing i suppose all right quick follow-up i'm very impressed with us uh let's move on to our main topics i'm going to go take a power nap because we need to talk about playstation 5 hardware
John:
Cool.
John:
Yay.
John:
It's not really about PlayStation 5 hardware.
John:
It's about, I mean, there's a bunch of stuff in notes about PlayStation 5, which is old news.
John:
I forget how old.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I guess I could look at the date on this article and find out.
John:
But it's really just about consoles.
John:
And, wow, it's from April.
John:
Okay.
John:
Slow news summer, huh?
John:
Yeah.
John:
They mostly talked about this in the context of, like,
John:
Nintendo and whether they should still make hardware in light of iOS games.
John:
Remember we had that discussion before the Switch came out, and one of my more strident positions was that as long as there remains a market for hardware devices that mostly just play games, Nintendo...
John:
Can continue to make hardware and should continue to make hardware.
John:
And the question was like, all right, well, but is there still a market for devices that aren't personal computers that mostly just play games or will tablets and smartphones and everything take over for them or whatever?
John:
So, I mean, I feel like that was long enough ago that.
John:
The verdict is in, certainly for this generation and probably for the next, that, yeah, people still want to buy game consoles, basically.
John:
The PS4 has sold very well.
John:
The Xbox is in a strong second place, and the Switch has done surprisingly well for Nintendo.
John:
So not only is there a market for more or less dedicated game hardware, but it's actually big enough to support three large players, and none of them is, you know, going down the tubes.
John:
Like, all through those three players I mentioned seem like they're doing okay.
John:
Obviously,
John:
Xbox is massively subsidized by the rest of Microsoft's business, but I think they're doing fine there too, even though they were firmly in second place in this generation.
John:
And I think that's going to continue because I don't see any market forces with the possible exception of the streaming gaming stuff that we talked about when Stadia was announced that are really going to change the landscape in the near term.
John:
Like I think the next generation of consoles is going to come out and I think they're going to sell in similar numbers to the current generation.
John:
Which means that, you know, that iOS and smartphone games and tablet games and whatever you want to put in there has not dethroned the game console quite yet, nor has the PC replaced it or whatever, whatever scenario you might imagine.
John:
So it got me thinking, like, why do I care about game consoles at all?
John:
Because I do.
John:
And I realized this when the PS5 announcement came out, like Sony came out and said, here's what we're planning to do for our next console.
John:
And here's a bunch of specs and blah, blah, blah.
John:
They didn't show any hardware or announce a name or anything like that.
John:
I just wanted to talk about the next hardware.
John:
And I got excited about it.
John:
And I'm like, why am I excited to buy this thing that is like... It's always been true of game consoles, especially in the past few generations.
John:
They're basically like PCs, but...
John:
not as good x86 cpus they have hard drives they have memory uh and they have a gpu and all of those things are less powerful than the equivalents in pcs of course pcs cost way more so it's like well great so i can buy it for it's like a 500 gaming pc or something
Marco:
To be fair, it isn't just that PCs cost a little bit more.
Marco:
It's like most game consoles, the entire console has to be sold for less than what a decent PC graphics card costs.
John:
Yeah, it's a different price class.
John:
And you could say, well, it's pretty amazing what they do for price performance.
John:
But honestly, you could probably build a gaming PC for similar to console prices and get close to the same power maybe if you bought a bunch of stuff used.
John:
And it would be, you know, a terrible shambling mess or whatever.
John:
And obviously that's the experience of a game console is way different than cobbling together your own gaming PC, especially if you're trying to do one for like $500 or $600.
John:
But still, it seems like it should be hardware that is not exciting.
John:
Well, first, before I talk about why I'm still excited by console hardware and why I think a lot of people are, let's just briefly go through what Sony announced back in April about what will presumably be called the PS5.
John:
So the CPU is... It's going to be AMD Ryzen.
John:
You know, it's 7 nanometer.
John:
So the game console... Our Macs won't have 7 nanometer CPUs in them, but all these game consoles, well, that's great.
John:
So it's x86, whatever.
John:
The big deal is it's going to have an SSD, which I think most people would have predicted.
John:
Like, it's not surprising.
John:
I actually have an SSD connected to my PS4 now, just because it reduces load time.
John:
But this was really pushed by Sony.
John:
The idea that...
John:
Yeah, it's got an SSD, but it's not like connecting an SSD to your PS4.
John:
So this is from, what's his name?
John:
Mark Cerny?
John:
I get his first name right.
John:
Anyway, he says, I've got a PlayStation 4 Pro, and then I put an SSD that costs as much as the PlayStation 4 Pro, and it might be one-third faster.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Because if you have a terabyte hard drive and you connect a terabyte SSD, and back when he wrote this $400 or $500 terabyte SSD, that's doubling the price of your game console just for the storage.
John:
And I can tell you from experience that, yeah, it goes maybe one-third faster.
John:
So it's a huge investment, and it's worth it for me because one-third faster is a significant decrease in load times or whatever.
John:
But it's not great bang for your buck.
John:
So what they're trying to do with the next generation console is say, OK, we're going to have an SSD, but kind of like Apple did, like it's going to be built in and we're going to build the system around it and it's going to be way faster than if you connected an SSD to like USB 3.0 bus, external bus or whatever.
John:
So the figure they put out is like 19 times faster than a spinning disk, which again shouldn't be hard with the SSD, but they're going to use PCIe 4.0 and the SSD is going to be built in and it's not optional.
John:
There is no hard drive version.
John:
Every next generation PlayStation will have solid state storage and it will be like an integral part of the system.
John:
Let's even talk about possibly using it for, you know, it'll be so much faster for swap that it'll make it seem like you have more RAM and many more things or many more options are open.
John:
One of the examples they showed was, like, the Spider-Man game where there used to be 15 seconds to do, like, fast travel from one place to the other, and they reduced that down to less than a second.
John:
So the 10 to 20 times faster, depending on what you're doing, is apparently a real figure, at least for PS4 games.
John:
Maybe PS5 games are a little bit different.
John:
The next interesting fact about it is they will still accept physical media, which I'm assuming will just be another optical disc, Blu-ray, whatever.
John:
Which is kind of surprising because I have never inserted a plastic disc into my PlayStation 4.
John:
And sometimes I forget that it even takes discs.
John:
That's just not how I use it.
John:
I download everything.
John:
There's plenty of storage for the amount of games that I play.
John:
And if I run out of storage, which my son has on his PlayStation 4, you can just delete a game and then redownload it later.
John:
And with cloud saves, it's not a big deal.
John:
But apparently they still want to have disks.
John:
I'm sure there are a bunch of reasons having to do with bandwidth and, you know, how far broadband goes out into the potential customer base and just how much easier it is to ship people plastic disks or whatever.
John:
But we're not away from physical media quite yet, which is interesting because the Xbox One has a model called the Xbox One S.
Marco:
o-n-e space capital letter s they are the worst at naming yeah i can't wait to see what the next generation xbox can be called uh xbox two well yeah let's see well it's it's the fourth yeah so first so you have the xbox one which is not the xbox one you've had the xbox one back in 2001 which made sense right then you had the xbox 360 which is the second one because of course it's named the number beginning with three
Marco:
And then you have the Xbox One, which is not the Xbox One, but it's the Xbox One that's the third one.
Marco:
And then you have the Xbox One S, but it's not number one S. It's spelled out one, but not spelled out S. So the Xbox One S, and now they're making more.
John:
Well, they also have the Xbox One X.
John:
Which is not S. That's right.
John:
But it sounds like it.
John:
X was like the... And it's not pronounced 10.
John:
Yeah.
John:
X was the one... Actually, I don't... Yeah, it's not pronounced 10.
John:
It was the more powerful one.
John:
And so the new one that is relevant to the discussion about media is the Xbox One S All Digital.
John:
So it's the Xbox one is like the this is this generation of thing.
John:
And I just put suffixes on it.
John:
Right.
John:
So you've got the Xbox one with no suffix and you've got S X and now you have S all digital.
John:
So it's the Xbox one sad Xbox one SAD.
John:
It's the S all digital.
John:
Oh, they are so good at this.
John:
But anyway, it's $250, and all digital means it doesn't have an optical drive.
John:
And hey, you save money, and it's less complicated, and you have more room in the case for cooling.
John:
Getting rid of the optical drive is an advantage, but apparently it's still...
John:
Not a thing that Sony's going to commit to for their introductory flagship console, but Microsoft is already offering one model that's like that.
John:
It's the cheap model.
John:
$250 late in the generation of Xbox One.
John:
So now they have all these different variants and stuff like that.
John:
Anyway, I can't wait for...
John:
the optical does to go away entirely because as far as i'm concerned i'm just paying for it with both my money and space that could be used for cooling or storage or just making the box smaller and i'm not even going to use that feature but whatever it's fine um so that's the new playstation not you know not they did a bunch of figures in gb or whatever but yeah it's going to be less powerful than a pc surprise it's probably going to be like five or six hundred dollars it's going to have a really really fast ssd and an optical drive
John:
And so why is this, why do I care about console hardware at all?
John:
Because I did, when I was reading about this, I was excited.
John:
I was excited about the kind of stuff I'm going to see in PlayStation 5.
John:
And it's because consoles still have this...
John:
I mean, I guess it's an advantage.
John:
There are disadvantages to it, but advantage even in today's world where they release pro versions of consoles and S versions and X versions and X version all digital of being a fixed hardware target.
John:
uh even if there's a couple variants in general it is a fairly fixed hardware target for game developers which means and and these generations lost around a long long times the game developers have a long time to get used to the hardware when they test their game they know that how it runs for them is how it's going to run for you and they can safely optimize the game using optimizations that will only work on the target hardware and
John:
wring every last bit of power out of the hardware because they know this is our target and we can spend time optimizing for this specific GPU because this is the one and only GPU that will be in this model of console and millions of people will buy this model of console.
John:
And that's how you get games like an Uncharted 4 or something for the PlayStation 4 that look really, really good
John:
even though they're running on, by PC standards, incredibly underpowered hardware.
John:
Part of it is art direction, part of it is artistic skill.
John:
I always think back to Metroid Prime running on the GameCube.
John:
The GameCube is an incredibly underpowered console compared to PCs of the time, but Metroid Prime looked amazing, even though it was like low polygon, short draw distance, low res textures.
John:
Art direction can go a long way.
John:
So part of it is talent, but part of it is also...
John:
That if you're, you know, especially the games towards the end of a generation, if you have a game engine that's very well optimized for the console, you really just use every part of the buffalo.
John:
You're getting every execution unit firing at the same time.
John:
You're not wasting any memory.
John:
You're using all the GPU.
John:
You're multi-threading the whole game thing.
John:
You're just like...
John:
it's very difficult to do that on a PC game or even like a phone game because phones, there's so much variability in what generation of phone you have.
John:
Whereas on consoles, you make a game and it's for the PlayStation four.
John:
And even though there's two variants of the PlayStation four, you know, they're not that different from each other and it is a very fixed target.
John:
And what that means is that the kinds of games that you see on consoles are,
John:
differ materially from the kinds of games you see on PC, the kinds of games you see on iPads, on phones.
John:
It's a different genre of game.
John:
Even if it's the same quote-unquote genre, it's a different sort of class of game.
John:
And the expectations are different, especially when a new console generation comes out
John:
You have this expectation there's going to be a generation of games that are going to show off the new hardware.
John:
And maybe they'll be a little bit clumsy and maybe they won't be that great.
John:
But like every part of a console generation has something to recommend it.
John:
In the beginning, you say, here's the game that you couldn't imagine seeing before because it would never run on the PlayStation 4.
John:
Here's on the PlayStation 5.
John:
and it's you know so why would i be excited about that i could have seen that game on the pc it's like but you you didn't see that game on the pc because these people either don't make games for the pc or they don't make this game for the pc if they made it for the pc it wouldn't look like this except for on some super duper rig that you don't own anyway because you're not into
John:
PC gaming so I find that prospect exciting when I see hardware like this I'm not excited like wow they put an SSD in I'm so excited by SSDs what I'm excited by is the games I'm going to see on this console that all those people who make games that I love what will they be able to do with more hardware to work with because I don't have a big gaming PC and you know Naughty Dog is not making PC games and so if I think about here's what Uncharted 4 looked like on the PlayStation 4 imagine what
John:
the big flagship Naughty Dog game in the Uncharted vein will look like on a PlayStation 5, because it looks so amazing on the PlayStation 4, and the PlayStation 4 is a tiny baby compared to the PlayStation 5 hardware-wise, even though PlayStation 5 hardware-wise is a tiny baby compared to a gaming PC.
John:
So I find myself getting much more excited about a new console generation of hardware than I am about a new top-end video card for PCs or anything like that, because...
John:
The advancements in the PC world don't come along with a giant new crop of games that you know are going to take advantage of.
John:
It takes a while for games to take advantage of it.
John:
And very often it's just playing the same games that you have at ever greater resolutions or, you know, 200 frames per second instead of 120.
John:
And that just doesn't get me excited.
John:
I'm excited about, you know, The Last of Us 2, which is going to be a PS4 game, I think.
John:
Or, you know, even a next generation Nintendo console.
John:
Like, what could Breath of the Wild be like with twice as much power?
John:
I'm excited about that prospect, even though twice as much power as the switch is probably still not as fast as our phones.
John:
So that's, that's a great example.
John:
Like how can a game like breath of the wild exists on a switch when the switch is so underpowered compared to like any, it's probably has less power than like the AirPods.
John:
Like that's exaggerating, but it's the switch is incredibly underpowered, but they made this amazing game for it.
John:
So I always think of what could those same people do with much more freedom, much more power.
John:
So yeah,
John:
Anyway, that's why I'm excited and why I think a lot of people are excited about consoles all out of proportion with the supposed specs or whatever.
John:
It's the way people always talk about it in an idealized manner.
John:
It's like you shouldn't care what kind of camera they use to make a movie.
John:
You shouldn't be excited about the movie itself.
John:
Well, in the console world, I think more than any other technology platform, people are excited about the games.
John:
And with good reason, because history has shown many really great games have come hand in hand with new advances in consoles.
John:
That's, of course, why you two should also be excited by consoles, but you're not really excited by games at all.
John:
Yay.
John:
Games.
John:
Woo!
Marco:
Actually, I haven't played a game very heavily these last few days, but on the Switch.
Marco:
Wait, what?
Marco:
Which one?
Marco:
What have you been playing?
Marco:
Forager.
Forager.
John:
I don't even know what that is.
John:
Same.
Marco:
Yeah, I think Mike told us to play it.
Marco:
It seems like it's kind of Stardew Valley-like, which is probably why I like it so much.
Marco:
Yeah, it's one of those building stuff and crafting stuff games.
John:
Where everything bounces up and down while it breathes.
Marco:
yeah it's it's extreme when you see the anime if you're watching the game if you're watching someone else play the game or if you're watching a video of it it seems like the entire thing is manic like how much it's everything is moving every like every action you do shakes the screen it seems crazy when you are playing it it doesn't seem crazy
Marco:
So far, it's pretty fun.
Marco:
It's pretty delightful.
Marco:
It's kind of like Stardew Valley, but without any of the socialization aspects.
Marco:
With a lot more combat.
Marco:
Yeah, it's more focused on combat and resource collection and building and stuff.
Marco:
It's simplified in some ways, but then expands greatly in other directions.
Marco:
What I like about it over Stardew is that it a lot more becomes automatable and so it's less manual over and over again work and a lot more automation over time as you level up.
Marco:
But it doesn't give me feelings the way Stardew Valley did.
Marco:
Stardew Valley is an incredible work of art and
Marco:
It has way better story, way better interpersonal stuff, way better music.
Marco:
God, I love the Starter Valley music.
Marco:
But this is a different... It's a more different game than what it initially appears to be.
Marco:
Forager is.
Marco:
But Forager is very much its own thing.
Marco:
And what it is is similar enough that if you like Starter Valley, you'll probably like Forager.
Marco:
But it is really fun.
Marco:
It's really great.
John:
Another example of hardware power, you think, well, this whole hardware power discussion is irrelevant to games like Stardew Valley and Forager, but that's not actually true.
John:
So these games with sort of a retro feel, they're, you know, a top-down 2D game made with sprites, you're like, well, that could have been made in the SNES era.
John:
But as you noted, like... Trust me, I was there, it couldn't.
John:
Yeah.
John:
If you look at these games, they are actually using not obviously all of the power of the hardware, but there's no way these would be possible because yes, they use sprites, right?
John:
But very often they have like lighting effects and weapons effects that would absolutely be impossible on those consoles.
John:
And then they add things like screen shake and warp and other filter things that you just absolutely could not do.
John:
Like those machines were like sprites and color palettes and very, very limited.
John:
So this is like taking the aesthetic, the sort of art direction and game design from that era and
John:
but applying all the modern technologies, all the cool GPU effects, all sorts of things that actually affect the gameplay and change how the game looks.
John:
And so you're looking at it and you're thinking, this looks like a retro 2D game, but it doesn't.
John:
It looks better.
John:
I use this example a lot, and it's...
John:
perhaps increasingly problematic but it's like uh quentin tarantino when he takes all of his influences from movies that he liked uh and remixes them into a modern invention that uh is so much higher budget and and nicer and better done than those things but you can clearly see the influence that's what these games are like forager is like you love those 2d games now uh imagine somebody making that who has played all those 2d games but also has access to modern hardware and game development practices you can make it
Marco:
way better and way cooler in many ways it's it's it's kind of like forgive me for this incredible tangent um but i was a huge nerd about these things back then it this is kind of like the direction that sega went with the saturn and unfortunately that was a terrible time to do it uh basically the market at that time with the you know the ps1 the n64 the market was pushing into 3d and
Marco:
And Sega had a lot of problems back then, but they were coming off the Genesis, which was an incredibly successful system.
Marco:
And the direction they went with the Saturn, instead of making a system that was good at 3D, they made a system that was really good for doing really rich stuff with 2D stuff.
Marco:
And unfortunately, the market didn't follow.
Marco:
The market wanted 3D, and so the Saturn became a crappy 3D system in practice.
Marco:
But it was really designed to be an incredible 2D system and do a bunch of stuff like this.
Marco:
So at the time, unfortunately, that's not what the market wanted.
Marco:
But anyway, yeah, this style of game I find very delightful because...
Marco:
It really is, as you said.
Marco:
It really is taking the style of game that I grew up with and that I really loved and now basically having no constraints whatsoever.
Marco:
For doing this style of graphics and this style of gameplay, modern hardware is effectively infinite.
Marco:
Even the Switch, which, as John said, is not a very powerful console by modern standards.
Marco:
But it's powerful enough for stuff like this, and it's a lot of fun.
Marco:
And it's really cool to see...
Marco:
Instead of trying to do photorealism 3D stuff, which would probably not look very good on the Switch, instead, you do a really awesome job of something that is a totally different ballgame.
Casey:
Did either of you have a Dreamcast?
Marco:
No, I was sane.
Casey:
Oh, come on.
John:
That controller was so ergonomically awful.
John:
Probably the worst controller ergonomically speaking ever released for a console, for a popular console.
Marco:
So at the time most of these came out, I grew up with Genesis.
Marco:
I couldn't afford the Saturn when it came out.
Marco:
And a couple of times I actually rented a Saturn from Blockbuster.
Marco:
You could rent entire systems.
Casey:
Oh.
Marco:
it was some crazy price like 30 to do it but it was i did i just like splurged a couple of weekends and got got myself a saturn for the weekend and in retrospect i'm very glad i never got one because eventually what happened was uh later like after college i bought one on ebay when it was when it was ancient and cheap for something like a hundred dollars for like the saturn and a bunch of games and i realized like wow this really isn't a very good system actually yeah
Marco:
like i i lusted after it for so long and i couldn't buy it and then yeah in retrospect it was a good thing i couldn't buy it because had i spent four hundred dollars on it which is what it originally cost i would have regretted that i think so
Casey:
I was working at a Babbage's when I was in high school and early on in college.
Casey:
And this would have been in high school for me.
Casey:
And I remember trying to hawk Dreamcasts like it was my job.
Casey:
And I was successful in getting a bunch of people to buy Dreamcasts.
Casey:
And I might have been the only person that can say that because it did not sell well.
Casey:
And it was amazing, though.
Casey:
It was amazing.
Marco:
To be fair, to clarify and to keep myself from getting too many horrible emails from Dreamcast lovers –
Marco:
The Dreamcast was actually a really great system, but just such a massive flop and had such a short life because of a combination of both incredibly poor market timing and also incredibly poor marketing.
Marco:
And also, at that point, Sega fans being so burned from the series of Sega CD, 32X, Saturn.
Marco:
The series of those three systems just destroyed Sega's fan base and the loyalty.
Marco:
And at that point...
Marco:
There was very strong competition, especially from... It was depending on what you were looking for.
Marco:
If you were looking for quality and playability and fun, the N64 and then later the GameCube just killed it.
Marco:
And if you were looking for more mainstream stuff, that was the heyday of the PS1 and 2.
Marco:
And Dreamcast just...
Marco:
If the Dreamcast would have come out from a different company at a different time, it would have been much more successful.
Marco:
But unfortunately, it was too little too late.
Casey:
That's too bad.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Anything else about the PlayStation 5?
John:
You going to get one?
Casey:
Me?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
Of course not.
Casey:
Don't be ridiculous.
John:
Destiny 3 on PS5.
John:
I'm all excited.
Casey:
I can wait another six years until it comes out on a platform I actually care about.
John:
Destiny's never going to come out on a platform you care about.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Casey:
When you said Destiny, you absolutely said Destiny.
Casey:
I heard Journey in my head, though.
Marco:
The implication was a game I'll care about on a platform I care about.
Casey:
Sorry.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
Yes.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Squarespace.
Marco:
Start building your website today at squarespace.com slash ATP and use code ATP at checkout to get 10% off.
Marco:
Make your next move with a beautiful website from Squarespace.
Marco:
Squarespace is just so incredibly easy to use no matter what kind of site you have to make.
Marco:
Whether it's something relatively simple like a simple blog or a simple two or three page content site for a business.
Marco:
or whether it's something more complex that normally would be very difficult and or expensive to host, something like a podcast or a big, rich gallery with rich functionality and calendars and everything else.
Marco:
It is super easy to host all these things on Squarespace.
Marco:
Even storefronts for digital or physical goods, that is usually a very complicated thing to host.
Marco:
Squarespace makes it super easy, and it's included with every plan, too.
Marco:
And all this is backed by amazing support, amazing performance.
Marco:
You don't have to worry about upgrades or software patches or anything like that.
Marco:
Squarespace keeps the site running for you.
Marco:
They keep it up.
Marco:
They can take any amount of traffic.
Marco:
It doesn't matter.
Marco:
They'll stay up.
Marco:
You don't have to think about any of the technical details.
Marco:
You don't need any coding experience.
Marco:
There is never really any coding if you don't want there to be.
Marco:
It's super easy to design the site, to customize the site, to make the functionality exactly how you want, and then you're done.
Marco:
You can move on to actually doing your business or your hobby or your project or whatever you're making the site for.
Marco:
It's also really great if you're making a site for somebody else because you can kind of just point them in the right direction, send them on their way, and then you're out of the picture.
Marco:
They can do it themselves, and Squarespace will support them if they need help.
Marco:
It's wonderful.
Marco:
Check it out today at squarespace.com slash ATP, and you can start a free trial with no credit card required.
Marco:
When you decide to sign up, make sure to head back there, squarespace.com slash ATP, and use offer code ATP to get 10% off your first purchase.
Marco:
Squarespace.com slash ATP, code ATP.
Marco:
Thank you so much for Squarespace.
Marco:
Make your next move with a beautiful website from Squarespace.
Casey:
A couple of months back, actually, no, it was just last month.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Casey:
It just feels like forever ago.
Casey:
There was an article on Mac rumors saying Apple's rainbow logo may return to some new products as early as this year.
Casey:
As someone who lived with the Macintosh from day one, gentlemen, I cannot be more.
Casey:
No, actually, I am excited about this, but this has no significance to me like it does to you, John.
Casey:
John, how do you feel about this?
John:
Well, it has aesthetics against all of us, and if this comes to pass, we may be faced with these devices with the Rainbow logo.
John:
But it made me think about when it went away.
John:
Was that before your time?
John:
Before both of your time?
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
Really?
John:
Well, my recollection... My time was a G4 PowerBook.
John:
All aluminum.
John:
My recollection is that it went away when...
John:
jobs returned roundabout uh and my recollection is that even though we don't know how these decisions get made the prevailing theory was that it was uh like like everything that happened at apple back then that it was because jobs uh either decided that he didn't want the rainbow one or was okay with it going away so it's kind of in my mind i have it as a jobs uh johnny ive uh
John:
kind of joint agreement decision that we're going to break with the past uh i mean they think different campaigns still had the rainbow but i feel like when the imac came along and they did the glossy one i think that was around the time when i really should have looked this up ahead of time but my recollection is that uh that it was after jobs had been back around that maybe you know 98 99 was when the rainbow logo disappeared uh after the think different campaign basically
John:
And it kind of makes sense in the sort of what Apple was doing aesthetically at that time because there was the teal, glossy stuff.
John:
Remember when they used to do, this should have been in your time maybe, the ads and the slides and presentations would have like a shiny, glossy, silver or teal Apple logo.
John:
Do you remember seeing that?
Marco:
No.
No.
John:
you're talking about like the like the g4 like aqua kind of era no i mean i mean like uh yeah but it would be on a slide like it would be like at a mac world presentation there would be a slide up there that would show an apple logo and instead of it being just a solid color of an outline it would be like a 3d rendered like you know medallion made of like glossy translucent plastic
John:
They treated the Apple logo a little bit like that.
John:
You see it in Mac OS X versions and startup screens and intro movies and stuff like that.
John:
Before, they went to totally like it's monochrome, it's a single color, it's flat, there is no sort of shading to it whatsoever.
John:
But that was sort of like the rainbow went away, but they hadn't totally settled down into absolutely flat silhouette colors, whether it be gray or black.
John:
But all of that sort of fits with the
John:
Break from the past, yes, but also an aesthetic transition.
John:
Because if you think about aesthetically what Apple hardware looked like and evoked, you know, there was the Snow White design language, which was sort of the Mac 2, the SE, and that sort of era.
John:
But even before that, we had the yellowish-beige boxes of the Apple II and the original Mac.
John:
And the boxes themselves were, you know, grayish, tan, brown, beige.
John:
The only thing on the computer hardware box that was colorful was the Apple logo.
John:
And it was sort of part of the design was it would be a very monochromatic look, very understated and elegant, and with a little sparkle of color would be the Apple logo, which would always feature...
John:
Not super prominently, but it would be on the front of the machine somewhere, right?
John:
And they would spend a lot of money to, A, make that logo, because it's apparently very expensive to manufacture, and B, eventually they started fitting the case around the logo better.
John:
Like on the Apple II, it was like the little rounded rectangle, and in that rectangle would be a rounded square, rather.
John:
And in that square would be the Apple logo.
John:
So it would be like a square, then another piece of plastic, and then a raised Apple logo on that.
John:
But eventually, once they started making the fancier Macs, they fit the case right around the Apple logo, which was also tricky to do.
John:
And in the iMac jobs era, they weren't hurting for color.
John:
Their computers started to be teal and grape-colored and green, and if there was a rainbow Apple logo there, it just would have clashed with all of that.
John:
And then eventually in the later Johnny Ive era when everything had to go super simple and minimalist and he was in his white room and all the hardware lost all the ports and all external features and all buttons, having a rainbow logo sort of flew in the face of that.
John:
They didn't even make their phones in colors for the longest time, if you recall.
John:
It was always just, you know, there was the one iPhone, and there weren't alternate models, and there weren't a lot of color choices, but eventually there were color choices, and it was not many of them.
John:
Gold was the most colorful I got, and then we got rose gold.
John:
But in the modern day where you can get phones in all sorts of colors and certainly cases in all sorts of colors, the Macs are still pretty monochromatic and the iPads in between.
John:
But I feel like the door is open, aesthetically speaking, for the rainbow logo to come back and not be completely out of step with what Apple is doing.
John:
Uh...
John:
both because, like I said, they're more open to colors on the hardware these days, and also on the models where they're not open to color, it would fit right in in the same way it used to, where if you have a completely silver MacBook Pro that's very monochromatic and doesn't really have any different shades or variations of color,
John:
having just one spark of color on the thing, I think would look good as evidenced by a lot of the mock-ups that you see, or if you see somebody who has like a MacBook and they take a rainbow Apple logo and they stick it over the Apple logo that's on the back of their lid.
John:
I mean, it doesn't look great that it's a sticker, but if you look at it,
John:
I mean, maybe it's just me.
John:
Maybe it's because I have nostalgia for it.
John:
But I look at it and I say that that design works because it is just featureless gray with the rainbow.
John:
And on the flip side, if you have a rainbow candy colored phone and say the phone is like the product red phone or whatever, and that red matches the red in the Apple logo, putting a rainbow Apple logo on a candy color red phone, I think also works and looks nice.
John:
So I'm I'm not desperate for this vaguely unsourced rumor to be true.
John:
But I can imagine really cool, fun, exciting-looking hardware coming from a return to the Rainbow logo.
John:
Because it's not like Apple ever sort of disowned it.
John:
They just stopped using it in their hardware and all communications.
John:
But it's still their logo.
John:
No one else has taken it.
John:
So it's right there waiting for them to pick it back up and reincorporate it into their designs.
John:
And I'm not...
John:
trying to pin it on the departure of Johnny Ive.
John:
But I have a feeling that, well, I can't even say if he was still here, they wouldn't do it.
John:
I think if he stayed on with the company, it was going to stay on for another 20 years.
John:
He would eventually brought it back too, just because these things go in cycles.
John:
And so, you know, we went away from it.
John:
We went as far away as we possibly can.
John:
We stayed really far away from it a long time.
John:
And now I think it's an appropriate time for it to return.
John:
I just wish this rumor had more foundations and maybe think it was more than just wishful thinking.
John:
Do you both have, I think we mentioned in the sticker show, does at least one or both of you have the rainbow colored Apple logo sticker somewhere on your hardware?
John:
No.
Marco:
No, I've never done that, but I've seen it and it does look really nice in person.
Marco:
If it was, I know they wouldn't do this, but if it was an option, I would definitely take it.
Marco:
But honestly, just overall on this, I'm with you in that I don't think we have good information about this actually happening or not.
Marco:
But I really hope it does.
Marco:
I really hope they do bring this back because...
Marco:
You know, not only do I want more color in Apple's products and more humanity to return to their industrial design, because so much of it has been stripped out in the Johnny Ive era, but also just imagine the statement it makes in today's political climate to have these immensely popular computers, to have all of them all of a sudden have a rainbow logo.
Marco:
That would be amazing.
Marco:
I really hope they do it.
Marco:
I wouldn't assume this is an incredibly likely thing to happen, but man, would it be cool if it did.
Marco:
And so I really hope they do.
John:
I mean, the support for it, and they put in the article and everything, is that Apple has been using these rainbow colors more often than they have in the past.
John:
So that stage they built on their campus for Lady Gaga to sing it or whatever is the Apple...
John:
logo colors.
John:
It's not a rainbow Apple logo, but for many years, not only was the logo no longer rainbow stripe, but you would never see those colors anywhere and anything having to do with Apple.
John:
And now they're building gigantic structures made literally out of that rainbow.
John:
I have some more pictures in the article.
John:
So it shows that Apple is not averse
John:
to evoking the old apple logo in things that it does itself in an official capacity so i feel like that opens the door and yeah like the rainbow has always been like the whole the whole shtick with the rainbow uh logo was that it was the colors of the rainbow which at the time apple was founded and or the time apple came up with this logo which was after they were founded um
John:
didn't have the LGBT, whatever, connotations it has today, at least not in a widespread fashion that people would know.
John:
But the whole idea was that it was the colors of the rainbow and rainbows are good and everybody loves them.
John:
And there was a diversity angle, but also that the colors of the rainbow were all mixed up because it's not the same order that the colors are in the rainbow.
John:
So there was a bit of sort of 60s era anarchy in the mixed up rainbow.
John:
That was sort of the...
John:
original pitch for for apple's rainbow logo it's like we are hippie children from the 60s uh and that's why we are into rainbows but also they're all mixed up because we're because we're wild man we don't wear shoes to work that was you know 70s uh silicon valley and today yes there's a much more much clearer connotations uh political connotations which apple absolutely embraces uh and i think most of the customers you're either ignorant of or also embrace so it's
John:
It makes a statement, but I feel like it's a fairly safe statement as far as corporate America goes, which is why they built a giant Rainbow College stage on their campus and invited Lady Gaga to play there.
John:
I feel like that's
John:
right up the middle for the company.
John:
If they're not going to do it, and they never do bring back the rainbow Apple logo, it won't be for political reasons.
John:
It'll just be purely aesthetic.
John:
But honestly, I don't know what direction... What's next for Apple's aesthetic direction?
John:
Because we still kind of have the carryover of the Ive era, and even new stuff like the Mac Pro fits perfectly in with the Johnny Ive design era.
John:
There's nothing about that that screams a massive change in direction.
John:
I don't think we've seen really any hardware that...
John:
that doesn't fit with the Johnny Ive era.
John:
Obviously, the Ive era has evolved significantly since the iMac to where it is today, but every piece of hardware that has been announced by Apple today, we look at it and say, yeah, that totally makes sense.
John:
I would be excited to see a product from Apple that would surprise us aesthetically in the same way that the iMac did.
John:
Something with a rainbow Apple logo could do that, but it's probably hard to...
John:
recapture that sort of lightning in a bottle because you know everyone's tried anything now apple sort of opened the floodgates now everybody is willing to try any kind of design so anything that apple does i'm sure will have some precedence again aesthetically speaking not design wise um but yeah i would be excited to see that you you have apple logo stickers on your stuff but i guess they're not rainbow and i don't know why i thought you would even have access to rainbow colored stickers
Marco:
You can get people on Etsy making exactly die-cut ones that can fit the lid logo.
Marco:
It was better when they were light-up logos.
Marco:
I think one other reason this has some potential to be good or realistic is that
Marco:
timing wise you know fashion changes obviously and this is of course everyone's top fashion podcast so obviously we are the experts in this area um 70s stuff is really in right now 70s style design but like a modern take on 70s style design is very in and this logo i think would very much fit that or could be made to fit that
Marco:
So that obviously is one big area where I think there is some credence to this.
Marco:
Also, if you think about the time that this logo came from, you mentioned the whole 60s hippie era thing, 70s coming up.
Marco:
If you look at the world politically today, not only are we fighting literally some of the exact same fights that we are still, or again, fighting, but I feel like we're in kind of a dark place.
Marco:
And they were in kind of a dark place back then, too.
Marco:
There was a lot of really messed up stuff going on.
Marco:
And that kind of ebbs and flows.
Marco:
And right now we're in a low part of that.
Marco:
And I feel like that color, the use of color and the kind of resistance against the corporate world or the government world back then, this was kind of like a resistance movement against that and trying to break free and bring some light to a dark world.
Marco:
I think we need that right now in today's world.
Marco:
We really need a lot of that, actually.
Marco:
And so maybe this is one small way in which this massive corporation... It's very hard for a massive corporation to...
Marco:
have that kind of statement or attitude it's very very hard because it's just it's so big and so commercial you know it's one thing when apple was like the small upstart of rebels it's it's a very different thing when they're like the biggest corporation in the world you know but but to whatever degree they could maybe do this the timing would be right and i think the world could use some things like this
John:
They've had campaigns like this in the past with Think Different that I already mentioned, but even stuff like the iPod campaigns where like the message was like, hey, isn't music great?
John:
Those kind of sort of right up the middle, you know, heartfelt, everybody love each other kinds of messages.
John:
Can be corny when done poorly, but when done well, I think are kind of universal and sort of feel good.
John:
And like definitely the rainbow Apple logo could be incorporated into a campaign like that.
John:
Is Apple still capable of campaigns like that?
John:
Like obviously Think Different is not a campaign that today's Apple can probably...
John:
uh get away with the reason you mentioned marco like they're they're not the they're not the underdog uh there's no there's no melancholy about their potential uh financial fortunes there was then but but the the ipad campaign is great it's like they're not we're not saying we're under we're just saying we love music uh and you love music so let's love music together that can still work i don't know we need to do it for tv we love tv you love tv i'm not sure how it would work but i
John:
I can see that working.
John:
We love subscriptions.
John:
You love subscriptions.
Marco:
Let's love subscriptions together.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
You know, the thing is, is I agree wholeheartedly with what you guys were saying, that it would be a very bold statement, a statement I would encourage and I would be overjoyed to see.
Casey:
If Apple added a rainbow, which has connotations to the LGBTQ, et cetera, community, like I would be all in on that a hundred thousand percent.
Casey:
However, taking off the What Casey Wants hat and putting on the Casey the Business dweeb hat, I don't see them ever doing it because there is too much of the world that takes issue with that community.
Casey:
Unfairly, I'm not saying I agree with it.
Casey:
It's awful.
Casey:
to take issue with someone just living the life that they want to live.
Casey:
I could not speak ill about it strongly enough.
Casey:
But you look at the iPhones, which the iPhone sales have just sagged in the most recent quarter, have they not?
Casey:
And then you're going to make this kind of political statement on a product line that is both deeply important and
Casey:
And also sagging a little bit.
Casey:
I just don't see it happening.
Casey:
I am all in on it happening.
Casey:
Casey, the person, all in, 100,000% in.
Casey:
But Apple as a corporation, I don't see it happening.
Casey:
I mean, can you imagine the backlash that they would get?
Casey:
Which is, again, totally bogus, totally ridiculous.
Casey:
But I just don't see it happening.
John:
I don't think they'll get it.
John:
I think there's enough cognitive dissonance that people will be like, oh, it's the old Apple logo they're bringing back.
John:
And even if you point out to them, say, isn't it kind of neat that, you know, it's kind of like the pride rainbow colors, they'd be like, oh no, it's just the old Apple logo.
Marco:
I don't think most iPhone owners know that it would be the old Apple logo, but I also, and I also agree with Casey that, yeah, it's stupid to rage against this and horrible.
Marco:
And, you know, this is, I am way outside of my comfort zone.
Marco:
I'm trying to talk about these things without offending people.
Marco:
Because there would also be angles such as, you know, co-optation that you might want to think about.
Marco:
But,
Marco:
ultimately i don't think they would do this on the iphone i think they would do it on the mac and the the stakes would be very different there the risk would be a lot lower if people are going to have a problem with it although honestly screw those people but you know if people are gonna have a problem with it like i feel like they could take that risk on the mac and maybe the ipad right but on the phone
Marco:
They've just been so incredibly conservative with even offering any color at all on the phone that I would be shocked if they did it on the phone.
Marco:
But yeah, I think it's most likely to happen on the Mac.
John:
I'm not sure where it's likely to happen.
John:
I think it has more to do with people who are designing those products and less to do politically.
John:
But honestly, I think that politically, Apple would absolutely put this logo wherever the hell they wanted to put it for whatever reasons they wanted to.
John:
I think there is possibility of some backlash, but this is a company led by a gay man who's the CEO.
John:
They're just going to do it because it's the right thing to do and because they...
John:
Like, I don't even think they're cynically going to do the math to see if they can get away with it, because the guy at the top is not going to shy away from this.
John:
Like, he's like, as much as I go, he's going to he's like, I can't, you know, not to say that they're going to put it in all their stuff or even this rumor is true, but absolutely feel like they would do this and just take whatever lumps they were going to get, which if they got any lumps, it would be awful.
John:
But we live in an awful world.
John:
It's hard to say.
John:
I don't know.
John:
It's really hard to take that risk with the iPhone, though.
John:
Casey's right.
John:
But I can't make myself that cynical.
John:
I can't see them coming with that idea and then nixing it internally for this reason.
John:
I just can't imagine that happening.
Marco:
The iPhone, I mean, one thing actually, I'm kind of coming around to the idea now because I'm thinking like one of the biggest problems Apple has with the iPhone design cycle is when you get into the second or third year of a design, you have to visually distinguish it somehow such that people want to upgrade to it and be seen with the new phone, especially in certain markets where that matters more, like where it matters more to be seen with the newest thing.
Marco:
And
Marco:
Maybe this is a way to do that going into what is going to almost certainly be the third year of the same industrial design in the iPhone X line.
Marco:
So maybe that would be a good reason to do it this year especially because it would be a clear, obvious way to see like, oh, I have the new one.
John:
Yeah, like I said, I'm not predicting they're going to do it for the phone or for any of their products.
John:
I just, like, just, honestly, I can't bring myself to believe that if they chose not to do it, that would be the reason.
John:
I think the reason they would choose not to do it is because the iPhone design language is still more or less what it has been, and they're sort of evolving in that direction.
John:
It just doesn't fit with what they're planning to do, right?
John:
And I can imagine it being on the Mac first just because maybe the design direction of the Mac is changing while the iPhone is going off in a different direction, but...
John:
Man, like I just can't like can you imagine?
John:
I mean, we see lots of interviews with Apple executives as much as they give.
John:
I think if they give them, we tend to see them.
John:
Can you imagine them like
John:
ever, like, they retire from the company and someone asks them about, like, they bring back the Rambo logo, but they don't bring it back to the iPhone.
John:
And in an interview, they say, yeah, we thought about bringing it back to the iPhone, but we were afraid of backlash, so we didn't.
John:
Like, I can't imagine them ever giving that interview and saying that.
John:
Mostly because I can't imagine it being true.
John:
Like, you just can't.
John:
Like, I don't know.
John:
It's hard to say.
John:
Like, I'm sure there are people within Apple who would take that sort of cautious attitude for, you know, cowed middle managers who have been, you know...
John:
incentivized to do the safe thing at all times but Tim Cook for all of his sort of you know sort of steady what's it charitably call it steady leadership and just sort of you know doing the Tim Cook thing and keeping products on the shelves for a long time because people are still buying them
John:
I know.
John:
I really hope that we do actually get interviews with all these great people once they leave Apple, because I would like to hear, you know, tales from the inside.
John:
By the time we hear them, the only people who will be interested will be like old timers like us.
John:
But I'd still like to hear them.
Marco:
I would love, setting aside the iPhone question, because I don't know what the answer is, just thinking about this logo coming to the Mac, can you imagine the symbolism of this new rainbow logo showing us the light, rescuing us from the era of the butterfly keyboard, and finally returning the MacBook Pro to greatness?
John:
But they don't light up anymore.
John:
Maybe it would.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I don't think they would ever do a backlit rainbow logo because it's really hard to make that look good.
John:
I think it would have to just be solid.
John:
That's probably true, yeah.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by ExpressVPN.
Marco:
Protect your online activity today and find out how you can get three months free at ExpressVPN.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Now, VPNs serve a really important role in today's web usage.
Marco:
Basically, a VPN can help you encrypt all of your traffic to get out of the network that you're on.
Marco:
And this can have a number of real world advantages that are actually really useful.
Marco:
So number one is if you're using somebody else's Wi-Fi, especially when you're traveling.
Marco:
I personally, I don't feel comfortable having my computer connect to just some arbitrary Wi-Fi somewhere like in a hotel or an airport or something like that.
Marco:
Because I don't trust what that network administrator is doing.
Marco:
There's lots of weird ways that people have been hacked over time doing stuff like this.
Marco:
I don't like it.
Marco:
I know we have things like HTTPS and encrypted transmissions and everything, but it still isn't 100% on everything.
Marco:
And there's still weird things that network owners can do sometimes that can occasionally exploit problems with that.
Marco:
So I don't like using other people's Wi-Fi.
Marco:
I like to use tethering or to use a VPN if I have to use someone else's Wi-Fi.
Marco:
and expressvpn secures and anonymizes your internet browsing and encrypts your data it hides your public ip address it has easy to use apps that run seamlessly in the background of your computer phone and tablet you can turn it on with just one click and then you can safely do whatever you need to do on someone else's wi-fi without worrying about that whole kind of class of potential risks all this is available for less than seven dollars a month to start using expressvpn and expressvpn is rated the number one vpn by tech radar and comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee
Marco:
So protect your online activity today and find out how you can get three months free with a one year package at expressvpn.com slash ATP.
Marco:
That's expressvpn.com slash ATP for three months free with a one year package.
Marco:
Thank you so much to ExpressVPN for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
Let's move on to some Ask ATP.
Casey:
And we start with friend of the show, Mark Bramhill, who did the, and I guess is technically still doing the unbelievably great show, Welcome to Macintosh.
Casey:
Mark Bramhill writes, what techniques or tools have you found most helpful in combating or preventing RSI pain?
Casey:
RSI being...
Casey:
repetitive stress injury or something like that.
Casey:
Strain.
Casey:
Strain, thank you.
Casey:
Stretches, ergonomic keyboards, mice, apps to remind you to stretch or take a break, going to physical therapy.
Casey:
Where do I start?
Casey:
So can we help Mark out?
Casey:
Mark's a really good guy.
Casey:
What can we do here?
Marco:
I'll go first because John's going to have the right answer.
Marco:
I had some relatively minor RSI issues early on when I first started doing full 40 hours a week work on computers in my 20s.
Marco:
I've mostly fixed them.
Marco:
I don't feel any RSI problems really ever anymore.
Marco:
What I have found to help most was a combination of
Marco:
Some basic ergonomic desk changes, so things like making sure you have a desk that is the correct height and a chair that brings you to the correct height such that you don't have to reach your arms up to reach it.
Marco:
They always say your elbow should be pretty much at a right angle or at a more oblique angle than that even.
Marco:
not a more acute angle so not less than 90 degrees um and so you shouldn't be like reaching up and then having your wrists then tilt down or whatever to get to your keyboard or tilt up it's really yeah you don't want any of that um so i fixed all that you know i've read all that stuff like you know 15 years ago and fixed all that
Marco:
And then I also switched to split ergonomic style keyboards.
Marco:
And I've used a bunch of them.
Marco:
By far, my favorites have been the Microsoft ones.
Marco:
First, the old Natural 4000.
Marco:
And more recently, the Natural Sculpt ergonomic.
Marco:
Not the Surface ergonomic.
Marco:
If it is gray...
Marco:
wrong that one not only does that really have a lot of problems working with max but it's actually ergonomically worse in significant ways than the old uh black sculpt version the sculpt ergonomic keyboard is fantastic and we'll put a link in the show notes
Marco:
But more generally than that, I have found there's all sorts of things that maybe temporarily solve the problem for some people sometimes.
Marco:
And I would put into this category almost any kind of physical product that is made specifically for RSI.
Marco:
I would include a huge one here, any kind of wrist brace.
Marco:
i've used them before i've known lots of people who have used them as far as i can tell they do nothing if you are to that point the best thing you can do is to try to take a break first of all from the from the activity that's causing the problem and then fix your ergonomics in other ways so you don't create more flares in the future and john will have a lot more to say about that i'm sure but ultimately i have found most of those things to be ineffective but
Marco:
what has ultimately fixed it for me besides fixing my ergonomics to not have a problem in the first place is strengthening my wrist muscles in various, you know, exercises.
Marco:
And, um, the one product that did seem to help was the Dynaflex, which is like this, like gyroscope ball thing that you like, you spin in a certain way that exercises your wrist, any kind of, uh, like just basically getting your arms in shape, uh,
Marco:
I have found ever since I started doing regular workouts and strength building and stuff like that, all the RSI problems I had in my wrists disappeared.
Marco:
I have not had a single problem since that.
Marco:
I can look back at the times that I had RSI issues, and those were times when I was the least in shape in my life.
Marco:
And so I would be surprised if there was not a strong correlation for people in that way.
Marco:
So I would strongly suggest first fixing your ergonomics of your setup and everything.
Marco:
And then really consider basically getting in shape in a useful way that will affect your arms and wrists in particular.
John:
John.
John:
So I did an entire episode of a podcast about this.
John:
I was on the pragmatic podcast a long time ago.
John:
We'll put a link in the show notes, episode number 50 called accidental clicking.
John:
Uh, you can listen to that and it is, uh, almost two hours of me talking about this.
John:
I can't get into that kind of detail here cause I, I probably have even more than two hours to talk about, but I see the most important points that I think I would bring up from that thing are, um,
John:
It depends on what state you are.
John:
This is combating slash preventing.
John:
Preventing, you know, learn about the ergonomics and get your thing set up right.
John:
But combating is like if you're already suffering from it.
John:
I feel like the two most important hurdles to overcome it, because there are many hurdles.
John:
The first is...
John:
Finding a doctor who actually can help in literally any way with RSI is surprisingly difficult.
John:
This is one of the major hurdles that you will face, at least in the United States.
John:
Um,
John:
Because if you go to your doctor and discuss it, like you're just going to get some sort of, oh, here you go.
John:
Take adiprofen, rest more, use ice, put on braces at night or splints at night.
John:
Like there's all sorts of just sort of immobilize, you know, anti-inflammatory, blah, blah, blah like that.
John:
Now, I'm not saying that won't help, but that is a very shallow understanding of what the potential issues could be.
John:
You really need to find a doctor who understands exactly what the deal is.
John:
Repetitive strain injury is an umbrella term that encompasses a huge host of problems that you could be having.
John:
Basically, the cause is you're doing something repetitively, typing, using the mouse or whatever, for a long time.
John:
But what that can cause is all sorts of dysfunctions and injuries over your entire body.
John:
uh and they're connected in very strange ways for example you may feel the pain in your wrist but the problem may be in your neck or shoulder because it's all connected right you need to find a doctor who understands this what kind of doctor is that going to be i don't know it's probably not going to be a general practitioner might be a physical therapist might be an occupational therapist i don't know what kind of doctor will be like find an actual person with a medical degree though
John:
who treats people with these problems successfully.
Marco:
Oh, you're killing me, John.
Marco:
You're killing me.
John:
Why am I killing you?
Marco:
This is the kind of thing... Look, I trust modern medicine with a lot of things.
Marco:
It is almost always the right move for lots of different things.
Marco:
But when it comes to back problems and this kind of RSI thing...
Marco:
It's the kind of thing that the way most doctors are trained to operate and the way that the system kind of makes them work, it really results in oftentimes pretty poor outcomes.
Marco:
It's like addressing the symptoms instead of like... Yeah, I know.
John:
That's what I'm saying.
John:
It's going to be difficult to find a doctor who actually understands it.
John:
But here's the thing.
John:
If you are combating it, if you are already injured...
John:
Finding your way out of it on your own is going to be very difficult.
John:
If you can find a medical professional, medical professional, I am stressing this again, they can help you come out of it with actual things that treat your body.
John:
It depends on what your injury is, how many injuries you have, what they may be.
John:
It may just be...
John:
you know, a bunch of stretching exercises and weight training.
John:
It could be physical therapy.
John:
It could be like, there's all sorts of things.
John:
Like if they're just put it this way, if they're just giving you medicine, it's probably not going to help.
John:
I can probably having, having experience to do is that's, there's going to be something that you have to do with your body.
John:
And very often there are things that other people can do to your body to help you out of this.
John:
But the thing is you need to find someone who understands exactly what you're going through.
John:
If you find someone who says, Oh, you should just type less.
John:
they're not going to help you.
John:
And it's very difficult.
John:
So I say this because I've seen people who are very injured, try to like muddle through and like, I'll get an ergonomic mouse.
John:
It's like, it's not going to save you.
John:
If you have like nerve damage and you've already injured yourself, you need someone who understands who can figure out exactly what is wrong with you and understand how you can safely work your way back from it.
John:
This is, this is probably the first hurdle you're going to find, especially if you're already injured, because like I said, in the U S it's very difficult to find this.
John:
So yeah,
John:
Look for that.
John:
I'm not even sure you'll be successful.
John:
I went to many different doctors.
John:
I found like two people who have ever helped me in any way and a lot of people who didn't help me at all, right?
John:
But you should try it.
John:
Just have it as a background task.
John:
Continuing to try to find a medical professional who actually understands this.
John:
It's difficult, right?
John:
Second thing, sounds like mumbo jumbo, but it isn't.
John:
And that is...
John:
like especially for younger people and especially for people under computers very often you will do things like using the computer for hours and hours at a time getting really into the zone in your programming or playing video games or whatever it is i'm not gonna say not without thinking about it but you don't have the right relationship between your brain and what your body is doing uh
John:
That if you were to step out of your body and observe and like take notes and measurements, you'd be like, this subject is sitting in the same position for four hours with stress hormones coursing through their body and repeatedly doing the same action.
John:
they are and the entire time it hurts a little bit why aren't they stopping like the the thing the thing you want you you need to become this sounds so bad but it's 100 more aware of your body like when you're in there when you're doing the thing like
John:
Your risks are or whatever part of you is hurting is actually hurting and sending signals to you.
John:
But people, again, especially young people, are amazingly good at like literally ignoring that feeling.
John:
Like if you're able to ignore it, like if it's below the sort of background threshold of like, yeah, I feel something, but whatever.
John:
you need to turn that around and get to the point where you become aware of what your body is telling you it's it's not telling you complicated things it's telling you this kind of hurts kind of doesn't feel great kind of sore i don't want to keep doing this and you're just like yeah yeah yeah like you're not even yeah yeah yeah like it just gets it completely disappears and the reason you have to become more aware of your body is as you're working your way out of these problems you're
John:
All these things about, oh, take more breaks, have an app to remind you or whatever.
John:
Those are all good things, but they are all substitutes for you being aware of what your body is telling you.
John:
And you respecting what it's telling you and not saying, trust me, body, I've got this.
John:
You're fine.
John:
It doesn't even hurt.
John:
I can feel my wrists feel different than, you know, I feel them more.
John:
But everyone's wrists feel like that, right?
John:
Like that's probably just what everyone's wrists feel like when they're typing.
John:
It doesn't actually hurt.
John:
I can keep going.
John:
That's how people injure themselves because you go until one day you wake up and you literally can't type anymore.
John:
And you're like, how did I get to this point?
John:
And the months leading up to it, your body was yelling, it's kind of hurting over here.
John:
Seems like you're doing bad things to me.
John:
I don't feel good.
John:
And it's like a boiling the frog thing because it comes on slowly and you just like...
John:
Don't even consciously but unconsciously convince yourself that this is just whatever.
John:
It's fine.
John:
Like, yeah, I did an intense coding session for seven hours last night, but whatever.
John:
That's just what it's like to be a programmer.
John:
Like, this is terrifically normal.
John:
Everybody feels this until all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, this isn't normal.
John:
I can't do anything with my hands anymore.
John:
What happened?
John:
What happened is you just ignored everything that your body was telling you.
John:
So you need to change the relationship with your body and be aware of your body in a way that you are not.
John:
Like,
John:
i don't know how else to say it it's it sounds like new wave mumbo jumbo but it really like yeah your ability to completely ignore signals from your own body is amazing and that's how people get massively injured because it creeps up on you slowly and you're doing it to yourself over a long period of time everything else i feel like beyond those two things you will find your way to uh like
John:
get your ergonomics sorted like you figure out which devices like like how would you tell how would you tell if you get like should i get an ergonomic keyboard should i get an ergonomic how can you tell when you get one of those things whether it's helping you well if you're aware of what your body is telling you and if you get one of those things you'll be able to tell immediately does this help or does it hurt or does it is it neutral does it change anything about you know uh how i feel or how how long i can go before i start feeling something if you never stop until you are in crippling pain all devices are the same because it'd be like
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
That's what it is.
John:
Because even if you do all the working out and have perfect ergonomics or whatever, you can give yourself repetitive strain injury if you really try hard enough, no matter what.
John:
Just do the same very difficult action at a very awkward angle over and over and over again.
John:
No amount of ergonomics and exercise and stretching will prevent that.
John:
You can always injure yourself.
John:
It's just a question of being aware of when you're approaching that and finding ways to...
John:
A, get yourself back to a healthy state.
John:
B, maintain that healthy state, getting stronger, using better, using the bigger muscles instead of the smaller muscles.
John:
There's tons of stuff you can do, but it all comes back to, so how do I know when I'm screwing myself again?
John:
You have to know that.
John:
It's the feedback loop.
John:
The feedback loop is like trying to write a program and never being able to see the execution or any of the errors.
John:
You need to be aware of what your body is actually doing before you can...
John:
fix it um so anyway i i said that in probably a more concise way but hopefully a more clear way in this podcast and i talked about all different devices and ergonomics and all things you can do so listen to that i have one book to recommend it is a super old book because i'm an old person a lot of it is silly and out of date
John:
The thing I like about this book is the attitude that it tries to impart on the reader.
John:
It sounds kind of corny.
John:
Like there's stuff in it that like describes like, listen, this is what you're doing when you're at the computer all day, even though it seems like you're not doing anything particularly strenuous.
John:
You are actually doing many small physical actions a huge number of times.
John:
And that actually is a thing that you need to, to Marco's point, strengthen your body for and train for.
John:
And no, just doing it is not training for it.
John:
Like the same reason that athletes don't say, I just need to play the sport forever and ever.
John:
I don't need to do any training anywhere else.
John:
No, they go do things that are not the sport.
John:
They lift weights.
John:
They run even if their sport is not weightlifting or running.
John:
You need to do that to be able to use the computer eight hours a day.
John:
As they say in the book, and you will roll your eyes until they go back in your head.
John:
But hopefully by the end, you will be convinced you are a computer athlete.
John:
It sounds so dumb.
Casey:
It sounds so dumb.
John:
No, but it makes sense.
John:
You need to get your head in that space.
John:
And computer athletes do not become better just by using computers.
John:
You have to actually do exercise with your body to train to be a computer athlete.
John:
And you have to be able to do it in a way that is safe for your body.
John:
So anyway, the book is called Repetitive Strain Injury, a Computer User's Guide by Emil Pasquarelli and Deborah Quilter.
Marco:
I would also add, before we leave the mumbo-jumbo area, not only should you listen to your body and everything else, but also this is one of the many things that nobody wants this to be the solution.
Marco:
Everybody wants the solution to be, you need to go and buy some cool gear and that will solve your problem.
John:
It's like fad diets.
Marco:
Or they want to know that you can go to your doctor and they'll give you a magic pill and it'll fix the problem.
Marco:
Those are the two things that everybody wants to be the solution, but the actual solution are things that you don't want to be the answer, but they are.
Marco:
As John said...
Marco:
Do less of the thing.
John:
That is one of the major solutions to it.
John:
That's like the eat less version of dieting.
John:
But it's like, you know, if you eat less and exercise more, you'll probably lose weight.
John:
And if you type less, your wrist will feel slightly better.
John:
That's not all you have to do.
John:
There's other stuff you should do.
John:
But that's one pretty good starting point.
Marco:
And unfortunately, one of the answers to this, I mentioned earlier that honest exercise is one of the biggest answers to this.
Marco:
Any kind of exercise that can strengthen the upper part of your body, especially in the lower arms and shoulder areas, those will probably benefit people for RSI reasons.
Marco:
But also, hate to tell you, diet can also help.
Marco:
Because, I'm not going to get too far into this because it's hard to find good science on it, but diet affects inflammation.
Marco:
Not as much as other factors might, maybe.
Marco:
But there is a connection there.
Marco:
There are dietary choices you can make that can be more or less inflammatory.
Marco:
And RSI is mostly an inflammatory problem.
Marco:
So if you can make dietary changes that can reduce inflammation and help your body better deal with it,
Marco:
that will almost certainly help rsi so again i hate to tell you the answer is diet exercise and gradual long-term habit change but that really is the answer like my you know my natural keyboard i think bought me a few more years until it was a bigger problem um and unfortunately i never got to that point because i was also making those changes in the meantime and
Marco:
but all the different gear can do is buy you a bit more time before you have to really address the root problems.
John:
And we're giving people bad news.
John:
One of the other pieces of bad news is that if you have one of the various strains of repetitive strain injury that causes permanent injury, you could be out of luck.
John:
Like, for example, if you have nerve damage, it's much more difficult to come back from that.
John:
You can really screw yourself over if you go too far before you're like, oh, I should do something about this.
John:
It may be
John:
That you can never get back to the level of activity that you were able to.
John:
Just like an athlete who breaks their femur, they're probably not going to be a world-class sprinter again or whatever.
John:
Whatever the sporting equivalent might be.
John:
A really bad ACL injury for someone.
John:
Depending on how badly you're injured and depending on the exact nature of your injury, it may be that you can't get all the way back.
John:
So that's part of being injured is to understand, how can I come back from this?
John:
How can I prevent it from happening?
John:
And can I come all the way back?
John:
And of course, as you get older, this just gets worse.
Casey:
Like everything else.
John:
Yeah, age will come and get you.
John:
So that's why I say it's important to seek out a medical professional because...
John:
Are you going to diagnose in yourself whether you have nerve injury?
John:
They can do nerve conduction tests on you, which are not fun, by the way, but they can do them to find out, hey, do you have nerve damage?
John:
Which nerves are damaged?
John:
How much are they damaged?
John:
Do not self-diagnose that.
John:
Do not Google it.
John:
Find an actual medical professional who can help you figure out.
John:
exactly how badly you are injured and what's screwed up with you and and even for the strength training stuff like they can tell you which muscle groups to work on and also a lot of it has to do with like flexibility you can make your injury worse if you strengthen up muscles that are already in a section of your body that is too constricted and like if your strength if you're if you're hunched over like all of us hunched over computer people and you strengthen all the muscles in the front of your chest but none of them on your back and
John:
and you have, like, thoracic outlet syndrome, you're going to be crushing everything in there even worse as you make these big, strong muscles on the front of your body and these wimpy muscles on the back.
John:
So you have to know which parts to work out and how, and a medical professional can help you with that.
Marco:
Yeah, and one very common thing that at least is a big part of American medical culture—
Marco:
many americans basically treat their doctors as prescription drug vending machines like you basically decide before you even go like i want to get this prescription drug i'm and you go to the doctor and they can tell immediately what you're there for what what you really want and most of them will just say fine here's you know they'll go through their diligence and they'll just give it a prescription that you want if you're going to do that for to solve problems like this
Marco:
Get yourself a prescription for physical therapy.
Marco:
Physical therapy is, when dealing with issues like this, or by the way, this all applies to back problems as well, physical therapy is generally a much more useful remedy than most medication can be for this kind of problem.
Marco:
And physical therapists, at least when you find good, properly trained ones,
Marco:
physical therapists are very good at what john just said at being able to tell you like you know do this specific exercise and then they will do it with you they will show you they will watch you do it to make sure you do it right this specific stretch stuff like that like they physical therapy is one of the most effective options in the medical complex that we have today for this kind of problem or back problems
John:
One more mumbo jumbo bit, which is in line with Marco's inflammation-related food stuff.
John:
I mentioned stress hormones before, and that is absolutely a real thing.
John:
If you're under stress, even like momentary stress of like stress of debugging a particular problem and you're stressed about that problem or it's the end of the day and you have to get something done before you leave –
John:
you can injure yourself more in like the last stress-filled 15 minutes of the day than the whole rest of the day combined.
John:
Because being under stress makes you type harder, makes you tense up more, and it can make you injure yourself more.
John:
It sounds like mumbo-jumbo, but your body is one big, giant, connected thing.
John:
You may not realize you're typing harder.
John:
You may not realize your muscles are tensing up.
John:
But in a repetitive strain injury situation...
John:
When you're on like the, you know, the edge of messing yourself up and all of a sudden everything gets more tense and tighter and you start typing harder and it's the last 15 minutes and you should have stopped 20 minutes ago.
John:
You can really screw yourself up in the last 15 minutes.
John:
That's part of being aware of your body, part of being aware.
John:
When am I tensing up?
John:
You know, when am I typing harder than I should?
John:
You'll know you've reached a level of awareness of your body when you realize exactly how much pressure you're applying when you're typing.
John:
And am I typing this email slightly harder than I should because I'm angry about it or something?
John:
And that does make a material difference.
Casey:
A couple of quick thoughts.
Casey:
Hi, I'm Casey.
Casey:
I'm still here.
Casey:
So I haven't, I've been lucky enough not to really suffer from RSI in any meaningful way that I'm aware of as yet.
John:
You totally do.
John:
I didn't even realize this.
John:
I was going to say that like literally every person I know suffers from RSI.
John:
But Casey, now I know someone who ostensibly doesn't, which probably just means that you're not aware of it.
Marco:
Yeah, this is probably because iMac rebooting itself all the time.
Marco:
I don't suffer from RSI.
Marco:
I just can't move my wrists every Friday after I finish work for six hours.
Marco:
I don't know why.
Casey:
I literally just said that I'm aware of.
Casey:
I literally just said it.
Marco:
I try to squeeze my bottle of Hunt's ketchup, and I just can't get the pressure.
Casey:
I just can't get it out.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
I hate you so much.
John:
I mean, I was exaggerating saying that it's like everybody, but it's a lot of people that we know, right?
John:
Like us collectively.
John:
Oh, yeah, a lot of people.
John:
When I think of all the computer nerd people I know, it's hard to think of one who hasn't had some kind of RSI issue at some point.
Casey:
So in that vein, I wanted to call attention to the show Fun Fact, which we've name dropped a couple of times recently with our friends Arik and Alan.
Casey:
And Alan has been going through some RSI issues, and he's been talking about some of the ways he's been trying to treat it.
Casey:
And it's a pretty funny journey because he's apparently tried everything under the sun.
Casey:
I don't know that you'd necessarily get any...
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
He had a catastrophic back injury that was entirely Marco and Tiff's fault, or at least that's the story he told me.
John:
Unrelated to typing.
Casey:
Unrelated to typing.
Casey:
No, he did not blame Marco and Tiff at all.
Casey:
But anyway, he did have a catastrophic back injury in the presence of Marco and Tiff.
Casey:
And apparently his doctor, who is a British doctor, which means they're probably really good at what they do because they actually have good medicine over there.
Casey:
His British doctor told him, and I'm going to butcher the retelling here, but apparently the doctor told him, avoid pain, which at first you're like, oh, okay, great plan.
Casey:
Thanks for that.
Casey:
How long did you go to medical school?
Casey:
I'm glad that's what you learned.
Casey:
But what it boils down to is if your body says, wow, this hurts, then maybe don't do it, which is exactly what John and Marco both were saying, particularly John was saying earlier.
Casey:
Listen to your body and don't do things that hurt.
Casey:
Who'd have thunk it?
Casey:
That's actually helpful.
Casey:
All right, very quickly, let's do our last Ask ATP for the main show.
Casey:
Nicholas Scafney writes, what year will USB-C ports be mainstreamed in cars?
Casey:
Well, they're already in Jeep Wranglers, so boom, 2019.
Casey:
All kidding aside, I would guess a couple of years after the iPhone goes USB-C, and if it never goes USB-C, then, I don't know, four or five years from now.
Casey:
Marco, what do you think?
Marco:
I mean, it kind of doesn't matter whether the iPhone goes USB-C or not because A, lots of Android phones have already gone USB-C and that's a pretty big part of the market, especially people who would buy Jeep Wranglers.
Marco:
And B, you want to take a bet on what the most popular phone platform is for people who buy Jeep Wranglers?
Marco:
I bet it's Android.
Casey:
Well, let me tell you, Marco, since you brought it up, I know two Jeep Wrangler owners, and both of them use Android.
Casey:
Anyway, carry on.
Marco:
The best kind of data.
Marco:
Anyway, yeah, I don't know.
Marco:
I mean, I don't know what mainstreamed in this context means.
Marco:
Like, is it all new cars?
Marco:
Is it all cars on the road?
Casey:
I think the majority of cars, so over 50% of cars that are shipped in whatever year have a USB-C port within them.
Marco:
I'm going to say within the next four years.
Casey:
I think that's fair.
Casey:
John?
John:
I think cars are not independent.
John:
I think they will go USB-C along with the rest of the USB-A world.
John:
So all the power adapters, all the plugs on airplanes, I feel like they'll all go together or not at all.
John:
So not at all would be like there's some new standard after that that they go to and they just skip USB-C.
John:
But assuming they're ever going to go USB-C,
John:
I feel like it will happen in pace with the rest of the USB-A world.
John:
That's what it feels like to me, although it's hard for me to get it.
John:
Other than the Jeep Wrangler, I can't think of an instance where I saw a USB-C
John:
like this end of the USB-C, like I see them on cameras and obviously computers and phones or whatever, but the other side, like the charging side, essentially, I can't think of a time I've actually seen that, so it's hard for me to gauge how long it's going to take it to come, but I feel like the cars will not be ahead of the rest of the world, nor will they lag behind it.
John:
It'll just come at the same time, so...
John:
Four years sounds a little soon to me.
John:
I would say five or later.
John:
But again, hard to judge because I just honestly don't see USB-C anywhere in the world.
Casey:
So if the regular car gets in four years, the Tesla will get it in eight to ten.
Casey:
Oh, no, Tesla won't be around then anyway.
Casey:
So no big deal.
Casey:
Wow.
Casey:
Tesla could be ahead because they'd be like an early adopter.
Casey:
I'm just kidding.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
Please do not tweet at me or email me.
Casey:
I'm just kidding.
Casey:
Marco, save me quick.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace and ExpressVPN.
Marco:
And we will talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, cause it was accidental, it was accidental, 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-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
They did it.
Casey:
So long.
Marco:
All right, so we got one more Ask ATP question that I wanted to make the after show because it has nothing to do with anything that we ever talk about for the most part.
Casey:
So James, last name withheld, writes, speaking of non-Apple tech, it's been about three and a half years since Marco's blog post about mechanical watches.
Casey:
Marco said then that Nomos, is that pronounced correctly?
Casey:
Nomos?
Casey:
Nomos is what got him into mechanical watches.
Casey:
But I wondered how his collection has developed since then.
Casey:
What does Marco look for in a watch these days and what are his favorites or wishlist items?
Casey:
What would it take for you, Marco, to regularly wear an Apple Watch?
Casey:
That actually is the most interesting question to me.
Casey:
But feel free to take these in whatever order you would like.
Casey:
So what do you got and what are you looking for?
Marco:
Sure.
Marco:
So I'm not going to go into too much because this is it's a very hard thing to talk about.
Marco:
And this is why I mostly don't share my watch world online, because it's awkward if I like, you know, if I buy something expensive, I don't want to really talk about that.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So like it's kind of it's it's an awkward thing to talk about in public.
Marco:
So I'm going to more speak generally here and give some recommendations in different price brackets of what I think are like things that people may want to check out because they represent best bang for the buck or, you know, really nice design in that category or whatever else.
Marco:
So what I tend to look for these days in a watch, first of all, I tend to go simple.
Marco:
I like time only or time and date.
Marco:
I don't like most big chronographs or GMTs, which adds an extra hand so you can track 24-hour time or a different time zone or whatever else.
Marco:
Normally, I go with simpler time-only watches for lots of reasons.
Marco:
They tend to have cleaner designs.
Marco:
They are mechanically simpler.
Marco:
They tend to have smaller sizes and much thinner cases.
Marco:
And that's one thing I look for.
Marco:
One of the things that mattered a lot to me recently is...
Marco:
I want a watch that's relatively slender, relatively, you know, not too big.
Marco:
I tend to go 38 to 40 millimeter is my sweet spot.
Marco:
Not thicker than about 11 millimeters.
Marco:
Not a bulky, wide case design.
Marco:
I'm also extremely prioritizing recently comfort of the strap.
Marco:
If it's a bracelet that does not have any kind of micro adjustment, I don't like that at all because I can never get the size exactly right.
Marco:
I'm always between link sizes.
Marco:
I prefer leather and rubber straps.
Marco:
I'm not a big fan of NATO straps, the nylon ones, because it's hard to find really nice ones.
Marco:
They tend to be way too long on me.
Marco:
I don't like having a bunch of extra slack sticking out the back and everything.
Marco:
most of what i look for in a design is about having a very nice aesthetically pleasing dial and hands i am all about like dial design especially nice dial service finishes like a sunburst finish or a texture anything like that i'm a sucker for like nice applied indexes for the hours like applied markers which basically means like
Marco:
Things that are stuck on the face as opposed to just like numbers that are painted on.
Marco:
You know, usually like polished edges of each marker, stuff like that.
Marco:
That's the kind of thing I love.
Marco:
Fancy dials, fancy hands.
Marco:
And the comfort of the strap and in a reasonable size that isn't too big or too thick.
Marco:
To answer the question of what it would take for me to regularly wear an Apple Watch...
Marco:
I don't think there's anything that could, honestly.
Marco:
I think the answer there is nothing because the reason I like watches is ways in which I find them delightful and satisfying and useful that the Apple Watch can't do.
Marco:
The Apple Watch can never have nice materials on the dial and fancy finishes and the way it plays with the light.
Marco:
One of my favorite things to do with a nice watch is just kind of move my hand a little bit in the light and see how the light reflects off of all the different surfaces.
Marco:
you just can't have that with a screen you can try to simulate it maybe like it's not it's not the same thing like it's watches are jewelry and the apple watch is very much not jewelry it's it's 100 function and some of the functions it does it does very well i still want it to be better i still use one regularly for exercise tracking here and there and and uh and i i i'm still frustrated by a lot of things it isn't very good at still or a lot of things that it's like
Marco:
80 good at or it works most of the time um but yeah for the most part like what i love about watches the apple watch can't do by by its own nature um i also love i never have to charge my watch i never have like i just i set it and i i i reset it for accuracy purposes maybe every few weeks and it's fine like it's totally fine so going on to more specific recommendations i i i
Marco:
tend not to talk about this stuff much and i'm going to keep this relatively quick in the various price categories if you are say under one or two hundred dollars you're looking at only quartz watches that price range quartz is fine quartz is the kind of watch that has batteries and it has a seconds hand that ticks once per second usually and that's what most people wear it's fine you have to change a battery every couple years if it isn't solar and usually under one or two hundred dollars it isn't solar
Marco:
And that's about it.
Marco:
It's a simple, durable, fairly accurate watch design that is fine for most people.
Marco:
And I honestly think in this price range, give a really hard look at Timex.
Marco:
Timex is surprisingly good.
Marco:
It makes surprisingly good designs.
Marco:
They have surprisingly good quality.
Marco:
If it ever needs batteries or service, anybody anywhere can service those watches because they're very common.
Marco:
They're very inexpensive, usually under $100.
Marco:
And you can get some really surprisingly good designs recently out of Timex, especially for the price point.
Marco:
Moving up, I kind of classified under $700.
Marco:
This is like the next step.
Marco:
You can start to get mechanical movements in this price range, but mechanical movements that are in this price range tend to have pretty poor accuracy.
Marco:
You're on the order of plus or minus 30 seconds a day, which you think about... A really good mechanical watch might have plus or minus 1 to 3 seconds a day.
Marco:
That's a really good one.
Marco:
When you're at plus or minus 30...
Marco:
you're off by a minute every two days.
Marco:
It basically makes it so that you have to reset your watch more frequently if you want it to be remotely accurate.
Marco:
Also, at this price range, usually you're not getting some of the more useful amenities.
Marco:
Things like hacking seconds, which means when you pull the crown, the seconds hand stops.
Marco:
so that you can stop it at zero and precisely set it.
Marco:
Usually you don't have things like that in this range.
Marco:
You also might not have anti-magnetism.
Marco:
You almost certainly won't.
Marco:
And if mechanical watches get magnetized in a certain way, which is very easy to do around iPad smart covers, then they get even less accurate.
Marco:
They usually will start gaining like 45 seconds a day or a minute a day.
Marco:
So that's like, you know, like mechanical watches under about six, $700.
Marco:
They have these inexpensive movements that aren't very nice, but it's still a mechanical watch.
Marco:
It's still useful.
Marco:
I think the king of everything mechanical in this price range is Seiko.
Marco:
seiko is going to come up again throughout this discussion for a good reason uh they have really amazing bang for the buck at almost every price range if you uh you can also go for hamilton hamilton's they have a new line called the khaki field watch that i think is very nice very modern and i think it's only about 700 something like something like that and uh also in the under 700 category
Marco:
citizen is really nice citizen competes very well with seiko in lots of ways they tend to specialize in the solar quartz area which is the eco drive line that they have where it's quartz but you almost never have to do anything to it because it has an internal unchangeable battery of some sort that is charged via solar panels under the face of the watch that you can't even really tell are there it's really hard to beat citizen at that type of movement under this price range
Marco:
So moving up, if you're willing to spend between $700 and $1,500, this tends to buy you nicer mechanical movements, nicer finishing, maybe a little bit nicer dial work and a little bit nicer cases and finishing work.
Marco:
You start to get into some cooler style potential here.
Marco:
A lot of micro brands live in this $700 to $1,500 price range.
Marco:
In the macro brand category, Longines is probably the biggest one.
Marco:
They're one of the biggest brands in the world, and they're surprisingly a good bang for the buck.
Marco:
Once again, Seiko Returns.
Marco:
They have a line of dressy watches.
Marco:
I don't know how to pronounce it.
Marco:
I think it's Presage or Presage.
Marco:
These are dressier Seiko options that have really amazing finishes and amazing dial designs and textures and materials.
Marco:
They have Urushi.
Marco:
They have enamel.
Marco:
They have this one.
Marco:
It's the SARX055.
Marco:
Their names make no sense.
Marco:
It has this awesome paper texture dial.
Marco:
And these are for $900, $1,000.
Marco:
In the watch world,
Marco:
The Seiko Presage line is amazing value.
Marco:
It's stunning what you get for that value.
Marco:
I would also say this is kind of where Nomos' entry-level models live, like in the $1,500 range.
Marco:
I'm less into Nomos in recent years because they've pushed very much upmarket in price.
Marco:
And they've kind of lost me on some of their design directions recently.
Marco:
And they, they, they also pushed a lot larger in size and I'm now both too small for their, for many of their watches that I would actually want.
Marco:
And also they've pushed way up in price to the point where, uh, you're basically paying Omega prices now and, uh,
Marco:
I'll have more to say about that in a minute.
Marco:
Also, before we leave the $1,500-ish price range, I also want to mention German brand Junghans, spelled Junghans.
Marco:
They make this wonderful, iconic line called the Max Bill line about the famous Max Bill designer.
Marco:
Very like, how do you pronounce it?
Marco:
Bauhaus?
Marco:
Bauhaus?
Marco:
I don't know how you pronounce that.
Marco:
But that school of design, very represented in their Max Bill line.
Marco:
Those are really cool if you like that kind of style.
Marco:
And also in this price range, you get some nice utilitarian models from Syn and Damasco.
Marco:
And I'm a Damasco fan of the two.
Marco:
They're both good.
Marco:
But Damasco watches are incredibly useful tools.
Marco:
These are like tool watches.
Marco:
They can take a beating.
Marco:
They have a lot of good functions.
Marco:
You get a lot of technology, a lot of advancement for $1,500-ish.
Marco:
uh this is also where in this price range you mentioned earlier micro brands um micro brands are hard to find in person they're hard to see in person um with the one exception there is an event put on by a watch blog called worn and wound called the worn and wound watch fair they put it on every year in new york and san francisco and that is by far the best place i know of to be able to see these brands in person
Marco:
Some micro brands I would take a good hard look at are Halios, which Halios watches are incredibly nice for the price.
Marco:
They're like $600, $700 at retail, but they sell out immediately and are very hard to get except secondhand for a premium.
Marco:
So they're very nice if you can get one.
Marco:
Farer is a brand that Mike recently got into very much.
Marco:
I've seen them at the Warner Wound Watch Fair.
Marco:
They are very, very nice for the price, and they do a lot of cool color work that a lot of other brands don't do.
Marco:
And also a brand that I like a lot is Oak and Oscar, which they also do some cool designs that you don't really see anywhere else and that are in this price range.
Marco:
Moving up from this price range, I know this is a big jump, but we're going to go now to the $4,000 to $5,000 range.
Marco:
This is where you start to get the big brands that you've heard of that are nice brands.
Marco:
You tend to get higher accuracy movements.
Marco:
You start to have all the common convenience features like the stopping seconds, quick setting dates, anti-magnetism.
Marco:
You start to have those pretty much as standard in this price range.
Marco:
And in this price range, to me, there are two amazing standard options.
Marco:
Number one is Grand Seiko.
Marco:
Grand Seiko is, again, continuing the Seiko line, amazing quality and super fine finishing work, super nice polishes, dial textures and colors and designs.
Marco:
It's hard to find a watch that is nicer and has better finishes than a Grand Seiko.
Marco:
at any price from any brand.
Marco:
They are that good.
Marco:
They specialize in very intricate dial patterns and extremely sharp and well-polished hands and hour markers on the dials.
Marco:
Grand Seikos are really something to see.
Marco:
And the best thing for me about Grand Seiko is they have this movement that they've made that no one else has called spring drive.
Marco:
This works like no other movement.
Marco:
It's basically... It is a mechanical power source.
Marco:
It has the same kind of automatically wound mainspring as an automatic watch.
Marco:
But instead of having an escapement that ticks back and forth with the balance wheel... It's the wheel you see in the back of a mechanical watch that ticks.
Marco:
Instead of having that...
Marco:
it kind of uses like a magnetic break controlled by a quartz crystal.
Marco:
And so you get incredibly precise timing and it kind of, it moves in a continuous motion instead of having little ticks.
Marco:
And so what you get with spring drive is a perfectly smooth moving seconds hand and,
Marco:
Nothing else in the watch world works like this, and it's incredible to see in person.
Marco:
The most famous model is the Snowflake.
Marco:
It's a fantastic one.
Marco:
The Snowflake encapsulates everything that's great about Grand Seiko.
Marco:
You have amazing, sharp, highly polished, reflective hands and dial markers.
Marco:
You have this amazing snow dial texture, and you have spring drive.
Marco:
So you have this continuous, smooth sweep, and it is more accurate than almost any mechanical watch.
Marco:
Because it's using a quartz crystal for regulation, it is basically quartz-like accuracy.
Marco:
You're in the area of less than one second per day deviation.
Marco:
So Grand Seiko, especially Spring Drive, in the $4,000 to $5,000 range, you're not going to find anything that is fancier, nicer.
Marco:
It's really, really nice.
Marco:
However, I would also strongly suggest, if you're in this price range, consider Omega.
Marco:
I know it's hard to say this about something that costs $5,000.
Marco:
Omega is probably the best overall value in the watch business.
Marco:
Because what you get, you get incredibly nice watches.
Marco:
I would especially steer you towards the more recent Master Chronometer models.
Marco:
Those have a new generation of movements that's incredibly nice and accurate and practical.
Marco:
I'm a big fan of the Seamaster line.
Marco:
I'm currently wearing a Seamaster Aqua Terra 150M on a rubber strap.
Marco:
They make really good rubber straps and deployant clasps for them.
Marco:
It's the most comfortable thing.
Marco:
I've been wearing it all summer.
Marco:
I just absolutely love it.
Marco:
Omega, it gives you all the modern things.
Marco:
The movements have all the modern amenities.
Marco:
They're anti-magnetic.
Marco:
They have all the good features.
Marco:
They're incredibly accurate.
Marco:
They're easy to service.
Marco:
That's one thing.
Marco:
Grand Seiko is kind of, it's not great to get Seikos serviced.
Marco:
Omegas are super easy to get serviced.
Marco:
There's boutiques everywhere.
Marco:
You can see them in person in lots of different places.
Marco:
On resale, they tend to be all right.
Marco:
You can also buy them.
Marco:
You can buy either of these used, but it's a lot easier to find used Omegas because there's so many more of them.
Marco:
And then once you get above $5,000, you tend not to get meaningful improvements in things like mechanics.
Marco:
Like the mechanics are all basically the same above that price range.
Marco:
You know, you get into like, if you're willing to go, you know, up...
Marco:
Between 5 and 10, that's when you start getting into the brands everyone has heard of that aren't Omega.
Marco:
So that's when you start getting things like Rolex, Panerai, IWC.
Marco:
Those all start up in that price tier.
Marco:
There are many great watches among all these brands.
Marco:
But for me, the bang for the buck is the Omega and Grand Seiko category.
Marco:
Those are...
Marco:
in very different ways from each other, those are just amazing companies.
Marco:
And if you're looking at watches, give those a serious look.
Marco:
If I could only wear watches from one brand for the rest of my life, today I would choose Omega to be that brand because they're just so practical and so good and spans actually a wide range.
Marco:
I would also, before we leave this topic, I would say two things.
Marco:
You really, I know this is hard in most of the world because of location issues, but
Marco:
you really should see watches in person if at all possible before buying them.
Marco:
This is not the kind of thing that you can just research online and order online and be fine with most of the time.
Marco:
It's jewelry and it's very dependent on how things look in person and how sizing works on you.
Finally,
Marco:
many watches don't photograph well in in both directions sometimes there will be one that is amazing in person that doesn't photograph well online or more often you'll find amazing photos of one online and then in person it doesn't look that nice uh you really try to see these at all in person if at all possible i know it's hard there aren't that many places you can see watches in person besides you know a few top brands uh but
Marco:
It's something you should really do if at all possible when buying.
Marco:
Even if you try to do research about sizing, the numbers don't tell the whole story.
Marco:
It's very hard to figure out by numbers alone whether a watch will fit and look good on you or look too big or look too small or whatever.
Marco:
And finally, I will close this by saying, while I could never follow this advice because of the kind of person I am and how much I love this kind of thing, the ideal number of watches to own is one.
LAUGHTER
Marco:
Yeah, I know.
Casey:
Okay.
Marco:
Because if you only have one, you never have to think about which one do I put on?
Marco:
Is it wound?
Marco:
Do I need like a storage box or an automatic winder or things like that?
Marco:
Like, no, the ideal number of watches to own is one.
John:
Sounds like it might be zero.
John:
I don't have to worry about which watch to put on and which winder and what box to put in.
John:
I don't have any of those concerns and I have money that you wouldn't have if you bought a watch.
Casey:
That's also true.
Casey:
You know, I feel like I could play back all of the talk you gave, probably on Neutral, maybe on ATP, about having two cars because this is the same thing all over again.
Marco:
Yep, there's a lot of overlap there.
Casey:
Although this might even be more expensive for all I know.
Casey:
My word.
Casey:
Let me ask you a question.
Casey:
Are you familiar?
Casey:
Well, I know you're familiar with them, but are you like very familiar with movement?
Casey:
Because movement strikes me as someone who does not.
Marco:
You're talking about MVMT?
Casey:
Yes, yes, yes.
Casey:
As someone who does not really know anything about watches, Movement strikes me as a very affordable, I'm talking between $1 and $300, reasonably aesthetically pretty series of watches.
Casey:
But for all I know, the watch people, the hodinkies of the world, hodinkers, I don't even know what to call you people.
Casey:
For all I know, you guys hate Movement or MVMT or whatever they're called.
Casey:
Are they really shunned or is this not a bad option?
Marco:
There's this whole category.
Marco:
I've seen them before.
Marco:
They advertise heavily on Instagram, and one of the big companies bought them.
Marco:
I forget which one.
Marco:
I think maybe Fossil.
Marco:
But anyway, there's this massive category of what the watch people call fashion watches, which is a lot like saying a lifestyle business.
Marco:
from the VC crowd like it's it's used not not kindly it's it's you know it's a way to look down upon these you know and this includes things like fossil and MVMT Danny Wellington Shinola which has a whole bunch of things going on with it and controversy but I'm anyway there's a whole bunch of that and by the way
Marco:
I'm fairly cool on Hodinkee these days because they are basically a hype machine and anything they shine their light on gets immediately ruined by their audience.
Marco:
So it's like anything that Hodinkee says is awesome becomes impossible to get.
Marco:
basically and people obsess over it like crazy and it kind of drives the whole industry and it's it's kind of it's it's you know the crowd ruins everything i guess regardless um fashion watches are fine but don't overpay for what they really are like shinola is a fashion watch brand like the the quality you get out of something like that um
Marco:
is not meaningfully higher than what you can get for a lot less money from other brands.
Marco:
And you can say that about a lot of these fashion watch brands.
Marco:
If you're paying like, you know, under $200, you're probably okay with,
Marco:
once you start crossing that point when you're in this kind of quality level you're you're not getting a good value there and you might not care this is jewelry nothing about watches is a good value like except timex nothing else timex and like and seiko those are the good values nothing else is a good value so like realistically speaking you should buy what makes you feel happy because this is jewelry and it's all irrational and it's all based on spending money for things that aren't worth that money because they make you feel good
Marco:
If you're looking for a good value, typically the fashion brands are not good values.
Casey:
I don't think I have ever seen you prepare more for anything in your life than I think you prepared for this topic just now.
Marco:
I have a lot of thoughts about this, but I don't share them in my online life.
Marco:
And so I have multiple years of bottled up opinions and expertise and preferences and rules.
Marco:
You should see the kind of things I would rule out a watch for.
Marco:
For instance, I'm looking at this MVMT homepage right now, and I wouldn't get any of the three watches they have here for various reasons.
Marco:
Number one, I would rule out because it has a diagonal date window.
Marco:
I am extremely picky about date windows.
Marco:
I have recently become a person who appreciates having the date on the watch.
Marco:
It is a very useful thing.
Marco:
And in fact, one of the reasons why I love my Seamaster 150M is that it has a really nice font on the date window.
Marco:
And the date window is centered at the bottom at the six o'clock position.
Marco:
That is the ideal date window.
Marco:
It should be at six o'clock if it's there at all.
Marco:
And most watches put it at three o'clock or if they are chronograph style, which means they have like three sub dials or two sub dials somewhere in the middle.
Marco:
Oftentimes they will shove it diagonally at kind of the four 30 position and
Marco:
And that, to me, I can't abide.
Marco:
I recognize that's a practical thing.
Marco:
It's really hard to fit a date on a chronograph any other way besides that, and that's why they all do it.
Marco:
But I can't abide that.
Marco:
That's why if I'm going to buy a chronograph, I want one with no date at all, because there's no good place to put one and have it fit in a reasonably sized dial, except diagonally, which I don't like.
Marco:
I have all sorts of opinions on design issues like that.
Marco:
I'm also big on legibility.
Marco:
I want to be able to quickly tell the time and certain color combinations or metal combinations or finishes make it so that in certain light you don't have a lot of contrast with the hands against the dial or something like that.
Marco:
Or the markers aren't distinguished enough.
Marco:
There's all sorts of potential problems that can arise from poor design.
Marco:
So I care a lot about watch design, but I don't really want to make it a part of my online life because
Marco:
I don't like the online watch press world enough to join it, and I don't want it to bleed into what I do here because I think it would mostly be me talking about very expensive things.
Marco:
Nobody wants to hear that.
Casey:
Yes, let's talk about your Mac Pro.
Casey:
I'm not buying the Mac Pro, probably, maybe.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
It's funny because, and I feel like we've talked about this several times on the show, exactly half of me thinks this is the most self-indulgent, preposterous, wasteful hobby in the world.
Casey:
It is.
Casey:
And exactly half of me thinks, oh, if I only had more money, I would be so bad about this, I would be worse than you.
Casey:
Yeah.
Marco:
well you can say all the exact same things about cars yeah yeah yeah right like cars like what you know it's one thing like people want to tell the time they can buy a timex or a casio and be fine right and they're inexpensive and they'll last forever and you can say the same thing about cars like you can buy like you know a basic economic car that isn't any fun to drive and doesn't have any and isn't very nice and doesn't have any cool features and it's not that fast yeah like an accord yeah
Marco:
Honestly, I think an Accord is better than what I just said.
Marco:
Accord is fun to drive.
Marco:
It has nice features.
Marco:
The people who really care blow massive piles of money in order to get something that makes them happy.
Marco:
And that's what this is.
Marco:
Buying a fancy watch is not a good use of money.
Marco:
It's not a great value.
Marco:
Just like buying a nice car is a terrible use of money.
Marco:
It's not a great value either.
Marco:
But if you have the money, it's a way that you can make yourself really happy if you care about that kind of thing.
Marco:
It's jewelry.
Marco:
It's like any other jewelry.
Marco:
It doesn't serve that much of a purpose except that it makes you happy.
John:
These watches are kind of more like if every car was a Pagani.
John:
And even Pagani, that's not fair to Pagani because the terrible value of fancy cars...
John:
It is a terrible value, but the value, like the fraction that gets that terrible value usually includes performance.
John:
And in watches, it doesn't.
John:
Because the best performance is like the quartz watch.
John:
And all the very expensive ones tell terrible time.
John:
So it's as if the more expensive the car got, like the slower it got and the worse the handling was.
John:
It's kind of weird.
John:
But jewelry is a better analogy.
John:
Because it really is an...
John:
almost a 100% aesthetic thing.
John:
And I understand the beauty of the movements and all the other blah, blah, blah.
John:
But if you cared about performance, the one job that the watch has to do is to tell accurate time.
John:
And the more expensive the watch, the worse it does at that.
John:
Well, there's a bunch of asterisks on that.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
There's a transition from really, really good at telling time and then crap at telling time.
John:
And in the crap realm, you can pay more money to get higher in the crap realm.
Marco:
There's a lot of exceptions to that, but we'll leave that on the table for now.
John:
Well, I mean, quartz.
John:
You mentioned the expensive watches that actually have quartz stuff in it.
John:
This is a solved problem.
John:
It's like, you know what?
John:
I don't like quartz.
John:
I like little gears.
John:
It's like, all right, well, then get one with little gears.
Casey:
I mean, if you want a watch that tells time accurately, just buy an Apple Watch that's constantly on Atomic Time.
Marco:
Honestly, if accuracy is your number one goal, the Apple Watch is the best option as long as you can charge it every night and do software updates and as long as you only tell you the time most of the time.
Casey:
So let's say you have just fallen upon $100 million just for the sake of discussion.
Casey:
So money is no object.
Casey:
You have decided you are going to buy yourself the watch.
Casey:
I don't care if it's new, if it's used, but you have $100 million to blow on a watch.
John:
I feel like you need to up that to a billion to say that money is no object because I don't know how expensive watches get.
John:
That's probably true.
John:
I'm prepared for the worst.
Casey:
That's probably true.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Whatever the number may be for you ridiculous people, you have infinite money to buy one and only one watch.
Casey:
What do you have your eye on as the unattainable, I wish I could justify it or I wish I could afford it and I just can't.
Casey:
What is your be-all, end-all watch today?
Marco:
Nautilus.
Marco:
5711.
Casey:
What does 5711 mean?
John:
That's the model number, basically.
John:
That's a whole bunch of different model numbers of basically the same looking watch.
John:
I find that Nautilus a very ugly watch.
Casey:
Yeah, I don't understand it either.
Marco:
A year ago, I would have said the same thing.
Marco:
My tastes have changed over time.
Marco:
I might say evolved.
Marco:
It might just be changed.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I used to not get...
Marco:
the appeal of a lot of very popular watches and as i've gotten more into the watch world and i've i've seen many more of them especially seen that in person and worn them sometimes and like as i've gotten more into it my tastes have have changed and expanded and now i appreciate a lot more like for instance
Marco:
a few years ago, I thought Panerai's were ridiculous.
Marco:
More recently, there have been a few that I've been like, hmm, I wouldn't mind trying that on sometime.
Marco:
There it is.
Marco:
It's one of those brands that like, they do look ridiculous.
Marco:
They're made to look ridiculous.
Marco:
And
Marco:
And yet, when you see them, they're kind of nice.
Marco:
And maybe one time you see them and you don't think they're kind of nice.
Marco:
But maybe two years later, you do.
Marco:
It's jewelry.
Marco:
It's fashion.
Marco:
Things change, fashion changes, and you change.
Marco:
And so there's lots of things that I loved when I first started getting into watches a few years ago that now I don't like anymore.
Marco:
And there's lots of things back then that I thought, who would ever buy that?
Marco:
And then like two years later, I bought one.
LAUGHTER
John:
I was clicking around on some watch search results, and I clicked through to this one for this $850,000 watch.
John:
And I find it hilarious that in the lower right corner, I got one of those little bubbles, you know, like the little, would you like to have a live chat with your representative now?
John:
It's like, for an $850,000 watch?
John:
Like, that's pretty low rent, I feel like, the chat bubble.
John:
Like, come talk about your watch.
John:
Like, are you kidding me?
John:
If I'm going to spend this much money for a watch, you're going to
John:
Fly me out there on a private jet.
John:
You're not going to talk to me in a chat bubble.
Casey:
So how much is this 5711?
Casey:
Do you know offhand?
Marco:
It retails for like $30, but you can't get it.
John:
I see it here for like $60,000, $78,000, $95,000.
Marco:
Even if I were to somehow get one of those, I don't think I could ever actually wear it.
Marco:
What if you bump into a door frame and you scratch that incredibly brushed bezel it has?
Marco:
You just get AppleCare and AppleCare is only like 10 grand.
Marco:
This is a problem that I think has come out of Hodinkee culture.
Marco:
Some of these super hard to get watches, if I had one, I think I'd be afraid of people noticing it on me.
John:
because then they would they would eat you and they probably should eat you or like they like if i i would feel i would be mortified if i was wearing that somewhere and somebody recognized it or knew what it was worth i would be mortified they'd have the twitter parrot you know the uh has jeff bezos decided to end hunger today twitter account do you know that one uh no it's like he has enough money to end world hunger or something and every day that there's a twitter account that checks whether he's decided to end world hunger that's
Marco:
like once you start wearing a million dollar watch on your wrist you get one of those parody accounts it comes with the watch right yeah no silly that's why like i don't i i don't like the kind of attention like i wouldn't want to wear something that people would be able to recognize as something that expensive right like which most most of what i wear are things that most people wouldn't recognize and that's it that is intentional
Casey:
So then what appeals to you about the Nautilus 5711 then?
Casey:
I'm genuinely asking because as an outsider who really doesn't understand this stuff, it seems to me like half of the point is to be recognized for this from the people in the know.
Marco:
And that's the half I don't want.
Marco:
And that's why I wouldn't want to get something like this.
Marco:
I actually just like it for the design.
Yeah.
Marco:
I just really like the way it looks.
Marco:
Like, it's just a nice design.
Marco:
It's very... I told you, I got to try one on a store once.
Marco:
Like, it fits me really well.
Marco:
It's very thin and light.
Marco:
It has a really nice bracelet.
Marco:
I love the way the light plays with the dial and the markers and the hands.
Marco:
Like,
Marco:
I just like the design, which is basically the worst possible reason to ever buy this watch, because at this point you're into speculation and investment territory, and I have no interest in that at all.
Marco:
I want to buy something to wear it.
John:
You can get matching cufflinks that look like the face of the Nautilus.
John:
I noticed that.
John:
For $5,560.
John:
It's a bargain compared to the watch.