A Button in the Thumb Shelf
John:
were you bitten by a radioactive spider speaking of spiders because you could be gaining superhuman hearing abilities can you like run much faster and leap higher than you could before as well can you see through walls oh my goodness imagine what a curse it would be to get superhuman hearing but only for fan noise only for i think i already have that i was gonna say that is john superhuman vision but only for dead pixels
Marco:
I am having a slight problem with my iMac Pro.
Casey:
Of course you are.
Casey:
Of course you are.
Casey:
Coincidentally, I actually have had a slight problem with my iMac Pro, which we'll talk about later.
Casey:
But Marco, tell me, what terrible tragedy has befallen your iMac Pro that's going to necessitate a replacement with a Mac Pro?
Casey:
I wouldn't say necessitate, but it did kind of make me think, hmm.
Casey:
Of course it did.
Casey:
Things that make you go, hmm.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I've started hearing the fan a lot more often.
Marco:
It started to spin up a lot more to audible levels.
Marco:
Oh, no.
Marco:
So I've had the computer for, what, about two years now?
Marco:
For the first 23 months of ownership, I never heard the fan spin up.
Marco:
Not a single time.
Marco:
recently every time i do like a big build in xcode it spins up very noticeably for a while really so i'm assuming it's probably just full of dust and i don't really know how to clean it out i figure like you know obviously besides taking it to an apple service provider which i don't want to do is uh maybe if i like take it down from my desk and blow compressed air through its exhaust vent my theory is maybe if i blow canned air into the exhaust vent it'll force all the dust and crap out the intake vents
John:
Maybe.
John:
You should take a look at the geometry of the inside of that thing before you... Yeah, I should.
Marco:
Radarski in the chat says, it's full of sand.
John:
Or spiders.
John:
Well done.
Marco:
so I'm hoping this is easily solved with dust but honestly if this is just how this computer is now I'm going to be very upset because one of the things I love most about this computer is I never hear it and now I hear it frequently and that's very very annoying but it's a very recent thing so I'm assuming it's something I can hopefully fix
John:
Remember I told you that my Mac Pro is louder just at idle than an iMac at idle because the fans are not like behind a solid thing, right?
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
So you wouldn't – and now the fact that that audio never changes –
John:
As far as I could tell, my fans literally never spin any faster than idle ever.
John:
It doesn't change the fact that there is sort of a higher, low-level idle hum.
John:
So I'm not sure if a Mac Pro solves this problem for you.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, honestly, if they had updated the iMac Pro...
Marco:
I might have ordered it to fix this problem.
Marco:
Unfortunately, they haven't.
Marco:
If for some reason this problem can't be fixed, if my iMac Pro is just getting flaky because it's two years old, which it sure shouldn't, but it wouldn't be the first time that happened to an iMac, then I would honestly, looking at the current lineup, I think I would still honestly just buy another iMac Pro.
Marco:
I would just feel bad buying two of the same generation.
Marco:
This is probably something that's easily fixed, but God, I sure hope so.
Casey:
The tough thing about it is you're still on Mojave on that, right?
Marco:
Whoop in the chat says, this is the computing equivalent to my ashtray is full.
Marco:
New car time.
John:
I think you could follow us under the category of, oh, compressed air.
John:
Is there anything you can't fix?
John:
Yeah, right.
Marco:
Well, I hope.
Marco:
I mean, we'll see.
Marco:
When it comes to Apple hardware, compressed air is the cure-all.
Marco:
I'll follow it up next to you.
Marco:
Do I have to hold my iMac Pro at a 75-degree angle?
John:
That is a whole different tech note for what angle you have to hold the iMac Pro at.
John:
Oh, goodness.
John:
I don't even want to think about it.
Casey:
No, the funny thing about this is for a fleeting moment, I thought, well, could this be software?
Casey:
But you're still on Mojave, aren't you?
Marco:
Yeah, I have not changed my software setup at all.
Casey:
Well, you never know with Apple these days, which is really unfortunate.
Casey:
In fact, somebody pointed out to me, or maybe I saw, I think it was an Insta story that MKBHD put up a day or two back, where he was exhibiting the janky and laggy mouse movement that I was seeing on my old iMac.
Casey:
And he was seeing this, if I recall correctly, on either the Mac Pro or a 16-inch MacBook Pro.
Casey:
That was a laptop.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
it wasn't a laptop uh john defend your honor there uh so anyways i saw that and was like oh yeah i really need to hold off on the catalina upgrade yeah but it was in a slack because when i saw that video i was like oh i've never had this happen to me because i thought you know i have had like cursor jumping around like when i try to use the bluetooth mouse with uh my wife's imac but it did not look like that like that was like very smooth motion but delayed by like half a second from the input motion
John:
And I've not experienced that.
John:
I've experienced it where you try to move it and it jumps from one place on the screen to another instead of moving a smooth line.
John:
But that is very weird.
Casey:
Yeah, and that is one of the things I saw when I also saw the machine gun trackpad.
Casey:
So, very weird.
Casey:
Well, Marco, I'm sorry to hear that your iMac Pro needs to be replaced with the Mac Pro.
Casey:
But I'm glad that this difficult time where you didn't have a justification for it is now over.
Marco:
Yeah, if there was either a new iMac Pro or an Apple 5K display, it would make this a lot more tempting.
Casey:
Oh, I feel so bad for you in your time of woe.
Casey:
Well, I had some interesting iMac problems, which we'll talk about later.
Casey:
But we should start with some follow-up as per the rules.
Casey:
Marco, tell me about AirPods and in-flight entertainment systems, if you don't mind.
Marco:
Yeah, so last episode, I basically said how much I love the AirPods Pro and how I really don't plan on bringing any other headphones on planes for the foreseeable future because they're so good and so much smaller than full-size noise-canceling headphones that...
Marco:
the travel benefit of the small size and the performance of the noise canceling is fantastic.
Marco:
And I still stand by that.
Marco:
They're great.
Marco:
But a few people wrote in to say, what if you want to listen to the in-flight entertainment system?
Marco:
That basically, like, one of the reasons why they still carry headphones that can be wired is that they like to plug in and, you know, watch movies on the little screens that are on the in-flight thing.
Marco:
And that's a perfectly valid opposing idea.
Marco:
I just never thought about it because I never do that.
Marco:
I always bring my own entertainment.
Marco:
I bring either an iPad or a laptop or both, and I will watch videos on that if I want to watch something.
Marco:
It just never really came up for me, but that is a totally valid thing.
Marco:
Now, there are little Bluetooth transmitting dongles that you can get for like 20 or 30 bucks.
Marco:
plug into the headphone jack of the airplane, and they will broadcast a Bluetooth signal to a pair of Bluetooth headphones that you have.
Marco:
I have never used one, and I'm not sure whether the AirPods could pair to it or not, because I don't know how the pairing really works there.
Marco:
So that might be a solution, but I can't really speak for it.
Marco:
But certainly for non-AirPods Bluetooth headphones, those things are always fine.
Marco:
But most of those headphones also can be wired optionally, so you're better off just doing that.
Casey:
If it were me, I think I would probably bring my AirPods or AirPods Pro and then bring one of my 84 old earpod, corded earpods, my first several iPhones.
Casey:
That's not the most enjoyable way to watch anything on a plane.
Casey:
But if I am slumming it to the point that I'm watching the in-flight entertainment, then at that point, all bets are off.
Casey:
Because I'm like you, Marco...
Casey:
Not only do I likely have a computer, but I certainly have an iPad that has certainly used Plex to sync a whole bunch of media that I thought I would enjoy on the flight.
Casey:
So yeah, this is not a problem that I find myself having, but it is an interesting point nonetheless.
Marco:
Also, it's funny, we're at this point technologically where not only does whatever you want to bring with you on your laptop or iPad or whatever, not only do you probably have better stuff that you enjoy better and you probably have a bigger selection available if you've prepared at all, but also the screen is likely to be not only...
Marco:
Not only larger, but also better quality.
Marco:
Those screens and airplane seats are so bad.
Marco:
They must be like TN panels.
Marco:
They have terrible viewing angles and terrible contrast.
Marco:
They just look terrible, and they're so unresponsive.
Marco:
And yes, I know I'm supposed to listen to the in-flight announcements, but...
Marco:
rarely are those correctly volume leveled to the content that plays back on the in-flight entertainment system so usually what happens is if you turn the volume up enough to hear speech in the movie you're watching then if there's a pilot announcement it is it like blows your ears out it's so loud right
Marco:
And so, you know, it's it's very hard to use that and have a good experience.
Marco:
So it's it's much better to bring your own stuff as long as you prepared and you have any device, any modern device that has a screen.
Marco:
I'd rather even watch a movie on my phone than watch on the entertainment system.
Marco:
Like that's how much the quality difference matters to me.
Casey:
I completely agree with you there.
Marco:
The only thing that the in-flight entertainment screens are for is, in my opinion, is either to be off if it's a dark flight or if it's a light flight to show the map.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
You and I are of the same mind, my friend.
Casey:
Completely agree.
Marco:
And by the way, this is a small thing.
Marco:
Two little notes that I have.
Marco:
My recent flight, we flew on JetBlue.
Marco:
First time I've flown on JetBlue in a while because they don't usually go where I want to go.
Marco:
Anyway, all of JetBlue seems like a series of ads now.
Yeah.
Marco:
It's one of those many, I think, American airlines that now during the flight, the in-flight crew comes on and makes long announcements that our credit card offers.
Marco:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep.
Marco:
This seems like it's crossing a line.
Marco:
you know so not not only are the are the people speaking credit card offers to you using the same announcement system that they speak important flight information and critical instructions um but then also then they walk down the aisle holding up this like brochure and offering it's like and you can tell the flight attendants don't want to do this like you know you can you can see in their eyes like they're doing this because they have to they don't want to do it that's not their job it shouldn't be their job but their job is making them do it right
Marco:
And so that's, that's ads.
Marco:
And then on the in-flight screen, I just want to watch the map screen.
Marco:
If it's going to be on, just show me the map screen.
Marco:
But nope, it cycles through.
Marco:
It's showing the map screen maybe 10 seconds at every minute.
Marco:
And the rest of the time it's cycling through like billboard ads on the screen.
Marco:
It's so bad.
Marco:
No wonder we bring our own screens now.
Marco:
The in-flight screens have gotten so bad.
Casey:
Well, the screens, to your point a few minutes ago, the screen quality was never good, even when they were brand new.
Casey:
But yeah, the content is also terrible these days.
Casey:
A friend of the show, Jelly, just sent me, you know, it's basically in-flight push notifications, which I think is completely accurate.
Casey:
So well done, Jelly.
Marco:
Remember when, I think it was Virgin America, that they actually had...
Marco:
like seat to seat messaging and, and yes, the remotes had a little keyboard on the back.
Marco:
And so like this, cause this was like right before everybody had their own smartphones and everything in their pockets anyway, all the time.
Marco:
And, and right before everybody had wifi everywhere and everything.
Marco:
And it was just like, it was like the coolest thing in the world for like a year when Virgin America first came out and you could message someone else in like, you know, like if you, if you were sitting separately from some other member of your family or party, you could like message, Oh, send this message to six, this, you know, seat 16 C.
Marco:
The weirdest idea.
Casey:
It is a weird idea, but it was very interesting.
Casey:
You know, I have to point out, I don't remember what airline it was, and honestly, it doesn't matter, but on a couple of the flights I've flown in the last year, there's been some deal, I think via T-Mobile, but it doesn't really matter.
Casey:
Some way, somehow...
Casey:
You could send iMessages for free, even if you didn't pay for in-flight Wi-Fi, which I thought was extremely cool.
Casey:
That was very, very nice.
Casey:
And it just reminded me again that half, well, like Aaron's entire side of the family is on Android, which kind of stinks.
Casey:
But for those of us who are on iMessage, that was really, really convenient and really nice.
Casey:
And I thought that that was a very nice middle of the road between screw you, give us $15 to $25 to $35 for in-flight Wi-Fi.
Casey:
And, you know, oh, yeah, everything's free.
Casey:
We, you know, I thought it was a very good middle of the road.
Marco:
Also, to complete travel tips corner here, this is one thing that as SSL has become more and more universal on websites, it has actually become somewhat harder to find a site that is never SSL so that if you're in a captive portal Wi-Fi thing, like on many planes, I had to actually do this because normally the Apple Wi-Fi thing should detect when you're in a captive portal and it should detect
Marco:
put a little slide-up thing up that lets you log in or click the accept button or whatever you have to do.
Marco:
Sometimes that just doesn't work for whatever reason.
Marco:
Like Apple's test page, it doesn't detect that it's a captive portal or whatever.
Marco:
And so you have to go type in Google.com or whatever, and then you know it'll capture that and redirect you to their login page so you can log into the Wi-Fi.
Marco:
Well, you can't do that anymore with SSL everywhere, and most browsers won't even attempt to go to Google.com because it'll use HSTS or something.
Marco:
There's actually a site, NeverSSL.com,
Marco:
That is never served over SSL.
Marco:
So if you're on a captive portal and you need a site that you know will redirect you to the login page, go to neverssl.com.
John:
Isn't that cool?
John:
That's very good.
John:
Or you can go to alwayshttp.com if you prefer the reverse logic.
Marco:
Yeah, glass half full, half empty, yeah.
Casey:
Oh, that's very good.
Casey:
All right, Henrik Helmers had a very good point.
Casey:
This was with regard to our conversation last episode about how Marco and I don't really feel like there's any point to our big cameras anymore.
Casey:
That's a summary.
Casey:
You get the idea.
Marco:
Oh, God, please don't email us based on that summary.
Casey:
Yeah, please don't email us.
Casey:
That's a very simplified summary.
Marco:
Yes.
Casey:
But anyway, the point being, Henrik pointed out in their spot on
Casey:
The ergonomics of the iPhone as a camera is very poor.
Casey:
I would argue the iPhone has worse ergonomics than any physical camera currently for sale.
Casey:
I don't know if I want to take that better or not, but certainly the point, the broad point is absolutely true, that the ergonomics of trying to physically operate the iPhone as a camera is not great.
Casey:
But I stand by what Marco and I were saying, that for 80 to 95 percent of my use cases anyway, it's the best camera I have these days.
John:
I think that's an area for possible improvement.
John:
I mean, we know that the battery case has the camera activation button to launch the camera app, which is a step in the right direction.
John:
Because when you need to quickly take out your phone and use it as a camera, it's a tricky skill.
John:
It's a tricky thing to become good at.
John:
It's a small object that's pretty uniform and smooth around all the edges.
John:
You may have to...
John:
tap something on the screen if you don't want to use like the volume button shutter or whatever.
John:
But depending on how you have it oriented, you might not know where all that stuff is going to be.
John:
By adding affordances for quickly being able to launch the camera app and use it to take a photo, that makes the phone a more valuable, more useful camera.
John:
And I think you can do some of that without making like the phone, making it phone, the phone camera shaped.
Um,
John:
like the if you just i mean we've talked about a dedicated camera button for years but you know not just the one that launches the thing but a dedicated shutter button other than using volume and maybe multiple buttons i don't know i'm just trying to think of uh a newly shaped phone or a newly shaped phone case maybe that reflects the reality of our phones it's kind of like uh you know mike uh pearly and many other people in their pop sockets like
John:
the reason that's so popular is it's better ergonomics for using the phone in a particular way not for pictures in that case but just you know for very large phones being held in one hand safely and securely right it's not something you couldn't do before but people are willing to buy basically a little outfit for their phone and dress it up for its new role as you know hey iphone pro max you're a giant but i can hold you with one hand now because i've got a pop socket um
John:
I can imagine something like a smart connector or other kind of smooth contacts on the naked robotic core that is the iPhone that allow you to put on basically a camera case that has more grips and shutter buttons in various places so that you could...
John:
Take out your phone blindfolded, point it in a direction and take a photo.
John:
You can do that today, but it takes a little bit more fumbling.
John:
I feel like I could take out my big camera and point it in a direction, take a photo easier with blindfolded than I could with a phone.
John:
And certainly more securely, like if I was timed and said, get it out quick and point in the right direction and do it all blindfolded.
John:
my camera is camera shaped it's very easy to see where all the buttons are i don't need to look at them it is not symmetrical in any way it's very clear where the gigantic lens is pointed and where the shutter button is and whether it's on or off and all that other stuff not true at all the phone you'd have to take it out and feel around with it to find where it find where the camera is make sure it's facing the right direction make sure you know is the camera in the upper left upper right lower left or lower right corner because sometimes that matters when you're taking a picture
John:
so i look forward to i haven't been keeping track of the rumors but i look forward to a future iphone maybe not this new redesign but maybe the one after that has the ability to be more camera shaped one can dream all right let's talk about uh scott simpson and jumpy mice john can you tell me about this
John:
Yeah, we're going to talk more about mice later.
John:
But remember when I first got my Mac Pro, I was saying how I'd hooked up the little Logitech dongle RF receiver thingy.
John:
And when I put it in the back of my computer, it was getting terrible signal.
John:
My cursor was jumping all over.
John:
So instead, I used that little Apple USB-C to USB-A adapter, which is like three or four inches long.
John:
and put the little rf dongle in that and it worked and i was doing it i was putting it on the top ports like instead of being around the back i was putting it on the top in retrospect i should have realized that like the one and a half foot distance between the back of the computer and the top of the computer surely is not accounting you know that doesn't explain the incredible difference in signal quality that i was getting so here's the actual explanation and i find this
John:
Depressing and somewhat infuriating.
Casey:
This is an Intel paper.
John:
Intel, the company largely responsible for USB.
John:
It's on their website.
John:
I don't know if those people did it.
John:
But anyway, it's a study showing that the noise generated by USB 3.0 data can have an impact on radio receivers whose antennas are placed close to a USB 3.0 device and or USB 3.0 connector.
John:
We'll put the link in the show notes.
John:
It's a PDF.
John:
We apologize for the PDF.
John:
But it is...
John:
straightforward like they do a bunch of tests and say here if you put something near a usb3 port that has data going through it the the act of the data going through that port will cause interference with things on on a similar spectrum so that explains why my little logitech turd thingy uh wasn't working on the back of my computer because guess what it's right next to a usb3 port that was connected to like my external ssd you know and similarly i have other usb3 devices and an external hub or whatever
John:
That's bad.
John:
Like if you're coming up with a standard, make sure that it doesn't cause radio interference for the things.
John:
And it's not just the devices, the ports, the ports themselves.
John:
If they're not well shielded or not ridiculously well shielded, even the devices, the experiment where they were like wrapping the external SSD in tinfoil or some kind of foil to try to keep the noise, the USB 3.0 generated noise from coming out of that.
John:
I feel like this is the type of thing you should figure out before you release the standard to the world.
John:
And it's 3.0 only.
John:
It's apparently not 2.0.
John:
So here I am with a bunch of USB 3.0 devices coming out of the back of my computer.
John:
And that's why it was different when it was on the top.
John:
Because the interference decreases rapidly as you move away from the port or the device.
John:
So being on top of the computer, it wasn't like it was closer to the mouse.
John:
It was farther from the USB 3.0 port that had a lot of data going through it.
John:
So if you're wondering why you get bad signal for your little RF receiver for your Logitech mouse, or you're getting other weird behavior and you have a bunch of USB 3.0 peripherals and or cables, read this paper and see if any of the solutions they recommend help you.
John:
I just like knowing what's going on, but boy, I hope USB 4.0 doesn't have similar problems.
Casey:
I'm sure it'll have even better and newer problems for us to contend with.
John:
It'll have problems without a space.
Casey:
USB 4.
Casey:
No space.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Let's talk about photo sharing.
Casey:
A little bit more follow-up there.
Casey:
Mario Panaghetti says, you can send iCloud photo links to people with non-Apple devices.
Casey:
Instead of adding the photos to the library, they'll just get a zip download of all the photos.
Casey:
My testing Android phones don't always know what to do with this.
Casey:
Surprise, surprise.
Casey:
Andrew Elliott writes, also, it creates a public web page viewable by any browser, which expires within 30 days.
Casey:
And finally, Jared Counts writes, I recently sent some photos to my wife via iCloud slash iMessage.
Casey:
If she opened the link on her phone, she could import directly into photos.
Casey:
But opening the link on her Mac showed a page with a download button for a zip file, as Mario had mentioned.
Casey:
So all a little bit more feedback on photo sharing, which was an Ask ATP a couple of weeks ago.
Casey:
John, this is something about Destiny.
Casey:
Don't care.
Casey:
Let's talk about rack-mount Mac Pros.
John:
It's not about Destiny.
John:
It's about a PS4 controller.
Casey:
Still don't care.
John:
You do care.
John:
Someday you're going to care.
John:
Someday one of your children is going to complain that they want to use their PS4 controller to play Minecraft on one of your Macs, and you're going to be like, oh, you'll be glad you heard about this.
John:
uh be saying that like i had my uh ps4 controller which was working fine in windows 10 uh with steam and everything it was paired it was working it could navigate the interface but as soon as i launched the game the game couldn't see it because the game itself had uh its own notions about connecting to the ps4 controller and i had to plug it in well apparently there is a wireless adapter that very kind of like the uh the rf adapter for logitech mice that uh
John:
makes your computer think that it has a wired ps4 controller plugged into it and really it's got a little transmitter receiver pair that make that happen and apparently if you buy the one from japan it's cheaper so we'll put a link in the show notes if you'd like to use your ps4 controller wirelessly with your quote-unquote pc or mac and boot camp
John:
in a game that insists that it must be a wired connection, this will fake it out.
Casey:
You know, I will say, as much as I'm giving you junk about this, I was trying to use... Oh, I don't remember the name of the emulator, but I was trying to use a Mac-based emulator to emulate software that I had acquired...
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I thought about buying one of the blessed controllers that Apple supports.
Casey:
I think there's at least a couple, but maybe this would be another solution to my problem.
John:
The PS4 controllers will just pair directly to your Mac, I think, with no anything.
John:
I know what you're talking about, like the made-for-iPhone, whatever they are, the ones that work with iOS devices.
John:
But with the Mac, I think both PS4 and Xbox controllers will just pair.
John:
You put them into pairing mode, you go into Bluetooth, you connect, and that's it.
Casey:
I think you're right.
Casey:
I think the problem was I was doing it with the Switch Pro controller, and that's where I fell in my face.
John:
I think that's not one of the ones that's on the list of things that just get supported out of the box on Macs.
Marco:
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Casey:
Tell me about Rackmount Mac Pros, if you don't mind.
John:
They're available.
John:
The slow rollout of the Mac Pro continues.
John:
It's not complete, but this is the next step.
John:
The Rackmount Mac Pro that has been on the page for a long time, but you could never actually click the configure button.
John:
Now you can click configure.
John:
Really, the options look basically the same, except that it starts at $6,500 instead of starting at $6,000.
John:
You can look at a gallery, which has a grand total of three pictures.
John:
It shows the front, which has a bunch of holes and two smaller handles for pulling out the rack.
John:
It shows the side, or the cutaway, which looks like it's basically the same motherboard with the same components in the same places.
John:
uh with a couple of extra things thrown on the front i'm not quite sure what they are i hope i fix it gets one of these and tears it down but i can't maybe it's just dead space in front of it i don't know uh and then finally it shows the back which is a little bit weird i mean first you can see how much wider it is than the regular one but second uh the back does not have the same scalloped cheese grater whole pattern instead it just looks like it has a much more sort of
John:
You know, previous generation cheese grater pattern is just a flat piece of metal with a bunch of holes punched in it, a bunch of very tiny holes punched in it.
John:
So if you want to pay $500 for a bigger Mac Pro that can fit in a rack, now you finally can.
Marco:
I have a very important question.
John:
does this count as the 2020 mac pro i mean maybe uh i wonder i guess if you buy it it probably does they probably do consider it the 2019 mac pro like what is the name of this product even let me see what it says on the page uh
John:
It just says Mac Pro.
John:
Like surely there is some way to differentiate it in Apple's official literature.
John:
What kind of Mac do you have?
Marco:
You don't just say you have a Mac Pro because if you come with this thing, it's probably just like, you know, they don't give the wheel configuration its own product name like this.
Marco:
It's probably considered still the Mac Pro.
Marco:
Just it happens to be in a radically different case.
Casey:
Tell me about Pro Display XDR True Tone, if you don't mind.
John:
One thing I forgot to talk about when talking about my Pro Display XDR is that it comes with True Tone.
John:
I'm so out of the loop on other options.
John:
Does the iMac Pro or any of the iMacs have a True Tone option?
John:
No?
Marco:
I have Night Shift.
Marco:
That doesn't count.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
So I think for True Tone, obviously you need the sensors.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
And maybe there's just those don't exist.
John:
I mean, I guess you could use the camera.
John:
I don't even know.
John:
Anyway, the XDR has True Tone.
John:
And so playing with the monitor when I first got it is one of the things I considered.
John:
And, you know, what's both of your positions on True Tone on all your devices that supported mostly iOS devices?
Marco:
I use it.
Marco:
I use it wherever it's supported.
Marco:
I find it quite subtle and I've never really noticed it.
Marco:
I used to use the other one, Night Shift.
Marco:
I used to use Night Shift a little bit more.
Marco:
I think it's now disabled on my stuff.
Marco:
But yeah, Night Shift used to be a much bigger effect.
Marco:
But yeah, True Tone, I don't really notice it.
Marco:
So I just leave it on.
John:
Yeah, so on my iOS devices, I use True Tone all the time.
John:
It's kind of one of those things, like when it first came out, I was like, do I really want something trying to mess with the colors based on what it thinks about the environmental colors?
John:
It's not going to look weird sometimes.
John:
Wouldn't I rather just have the screen just do accurate colors all the time, regardless of my ambient light?
Yeah.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I guess I just went with it, figuring that if I enable it and I don't notice any difference, that it means that the light hitting my eyes in contrast to the surrounding light... I'm not optimizing for the accuracy of what is emitted.
John:
I'm optimizing for the accuracy of...
John:
what gets to my eyeballs, which includes some reflected light.
John:
And I don't know.
John:
So anyway, I leave it on and I'm fine with it.
John:
But on this thing, I'm like, well, I'm going to be editing photos on here.
John:
Do you want this thing messing with the photos?
John:
So I've tried it on and off.
John:
And it's the type of thing where if you turn it on, you very quickly stop noticing that it's on.
John:
But as soon as you turn it off, you're like, wow, that's a big color difference.
John:
And usually it's shifting it more blue, right?
John:
So you turn it off and it looks bluer than normal.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I think I'm going to end up leaving it on.
John:
But it's definitely like a different vibe.
John:
The thing is, it has a nice fade effect too.
John:
It doesn't just switch immediately.
John:
I just turned it off and I was like, everything is blue.
John:
And when I turn it on...
John:
like for a second things start to look a little yellow but then everything acclimates and i don't know it's it's it's a little bit of a conflict in my life here i think i'm probably just going to leave it on edit all my photos with it on i think if like on a sunny day with all the windows open or the blinds open that it'll basically be the same but at night with this weird artificial lighting on the second thing is there's two different presets that come with this uh like in the color profiles below
John:
One says Pro Display XDR and then in parentheses P3-1600 nits.
John:
And the second one says Apple Display P3-500 nits.
John:
And I've tried each one of those things.
John:
And other than, I assume, the top preset...
John:
Being able to go to the maximum 1600 nits when you play the HDR content and the bottom one not, I can't tell what the heck they're doing.
John:
So I'm just leaving it on the default.
John:
It came out of the box, set to P3 1600 nits, and I'm just leaving it on that.
Casey:
I have no thoughts about this whatsoever.
John:
This is the thing about HDR.
John:
I mean, this is my first HDR experience.
John:
I know technically the iPhones have HDR or yada yada, but this is my first display that has HDR that you can really notice, especially in Windows, which handles this terribly.
John:
When I try to play Destiny in HDR and then get the game to switch back to the quote-unquote desktop in Windows...
John:
when it goes into hdr mode like the entire like non-hdr content like just your icons and windows or whatever looks like washed out and gross like it changes the colors of that to support hdr and so you can sort of catch a glimpse of what the rest of the world would look like in hdr mode but when you leave the game it switches out of hdr mode in windows and goes back to like regular display so that
John:
You know white stuff looks white again instead of everything looking I had a gray haze over it the Mac handles it much more gracefully So when I play vid HDR video I can tell that the brightest whites in that HDR video are so much brighter than any other white that's been on the screen before that
John:
You can narrow the gap by cranking the brightness up to max, but you do not want to do that.
John:
I mean, I think we all know on these modern displays, on modern desktop displays, putting the brightness at max will burn your eyeballs out.
John:
Don't do that, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
But the HDR, I don't think there's a way to get it to display an all-white text edit window at 1600 nits, unless you put that in a movie.
John:
right because i think the display will never that you know it's not high the mac desktop experience is not high dynamic range as far as i'm able to tell only video is that and that means only video is going to reach those peaks of 1600 nits at least that's my understanding if somebody who actually knows stuff about reference monitors and hdr displays and and mac os specifically has any guidance or something i can read or answers please write into the show and let us know
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So things seem to be mostly good with your new Mac Pro, but I see the following in the show notes, quote, Mac Pro Ethernet wonkiness, quote.
Casey:
And coincidentally, I have iMac Pro Ethernet wonkiness that I'd like to discuss after you're done.
Casey:
But tell me, is there trouble in paradise, John?
John:
So my Ethernet wonkiness is, it's a quick one, but it's a thing that people, the other five people listening to this show who have Mac Pros may run across.
John:
So my Mac Pro, like most of my desktop Macs, I just turn off Wi-Fi because I want wired connections for everything.
John:
I don't want them bothering sending their signal, transmit and receive signal out into the air.
John:
Just get off Wi-Fi.
John:
Don't need it.
John:
Don't want it.
John:
You don't use AirDrop then?
Casey:
Or Apple Watch Unlocked.
John:
No.
John:
You know I'm not using Apple Watch Unlock.
John:
I don't wear a watch, right?
John:
And AirDrop, no.
John:
No, I don't use AirDrop.
John:
I don't hand off.
John:
I don't want the little icon sliding up next to my dock.
John:
I don't want any of that.
Marco:
I'm assuming that your previous Mac Pro was not AirDrop compatible.
John:
My previous Mac Pro did not have Wi-Fi.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
i i would suggest turning it on for airdrop because if you if you do the little network uh preferences priority list and just put the ethernet first all your networking stuff will still go over ethernet but leave the wi-fi on for airdrop yep what do you think i'm airdropping
Marco:
anything photos anything yeah like sometimes like yeah sometimes i'll send a photo from my phone to my mac if i want it like immediately there like without any waiting for sync sometimes um tiff or i will airdrop things to each other's computers uh you know it occasionally like you know if the network isn't working right or if we if it's just faster if it's from ios to the computer yeah there's lots of times where i use it
John:
no i don't think i have occasion to transfer anything chrono i always do this to my mac that's not like already there through some sync process but i'll keep it in mind if it ever comes up i certainly have the capability now unlike my previous computer um but anyway i'm i connect the ethernet the mac pro has two 10 gigabit ethernet ports um
John:
i personally in my house have an eight port switch that's the same eight port switch that i've been using with my 2008 mac pro it's not as old as my 2008 mac pro because i think it replaced at some point in its lifetime but it's not a new switch um it's old enough that i can't get a replacement that looks like it because i needed a bunch of switches i think when i got the synology that wasn't that long ago right but
John:
wasn't that long ago that was almost seven years well my my mac pro was three years old then um when i got that i said oh i want to get some switches i'll probably i'll get the same one that i have that i've been using with my mac here and i couldn't find it because they changed the models around or whatever so anyway it's a pretty old switch is what i'm getting at
John:
But it's a gigabit Ethernet switch, and it's a dumb switch.
John:
What could have changed since then?
John:
Well, something about this switch and the existence of 10 gig Ethernet do not get along with each other.
John:
I mean, it makes sense because when I bought the switch, 10 gig Ethernet did not exist as a standard over copper, as far as I'm aware.
John:
So it kind of makes sense that this switch wouldn't expect that.
John:
Anyway...
John:
When I connected everything up on my Mac and one of the things I did was a speed test to make sure that I had everything working the way I wanted.
John:
And my Internet speeds were terrible at, you know, so incredibly slow and so incredibly close to 100 megabits that it immediately became clear to me that my interface was probably set to 100 megabits.
John:
And sure enough, I went into the Ethernet hardware settings and it was like hardware speed and it had selected 100 megabits.
John:
which is the wrong choice.
John:
And so basically what it comes down to is in the negotiation between my Ethernet switch and my Mac, they could not see eye to eye.
John:
And I think my Ethernet switch said, fine, I'm just defaulting to my slow speed.
John:
So I went to 100 megabits.
John:
So I just manually set it to gigabit and problem solved.
John:
But if you also have a semi-old Ethernet switch connected to your 10 gig Ethernet, be aware that they may not be friendly with each other and you may have to do what I did, which is just manually set it to gigabit and then lo and behold, hundreds of megabits a second up and down to the Internet.
John:
Problem solved.
Casey:
So let me tell you my tale of woe, because I've had a stressful 24 hours.
Casey:
And let me give you the extremely short version that Marco can drop in if he ends up cutting all this.
Casey:
I thought that my iMac Pro's Ethernet port was broken.
Casey:
Then I thought the Eero was broken.
Casey:
And it turns out that possibly, seemingly because of my Mocha bridge...
Casey:
Everything was falling down on its face, but as soon as I disconnected the Mocha bridge from my Switch, everything came back up and everything was fine.
Casey:
So the longer version of the story, and this is where Marco will do the fast-forward sound effect, but the longer version of the story is that I noticed that my iMac Pro wasn't connected via Ethernet, and I thought that was very odd.
Casey:
And I started trying to troubleshoot.
Casey:
And I thought that, okay, this is weird because the iMac just is refusing to pull an IP.
Casey:
It's seeing that everything is connected physically, but it won't pull an IP.
Casey:
And I restart my Eero.
Casey:
I restart the switch, which like you, John, is a gigabit switch I've had for probably five years or something like that.
Casey:
Nothing seems to be making a difference.
Casey:
Well, then I eventually think, all right, well, screw it.
Casey:
Thankfully, my Eero base station, the parent, if you will, Eero base station is right there.
Casey:
And so I plug my iMac directly into the Eero.
Casey:
And that works, no problem.
Casey:
It immediately pulls an IP address.
Casey:
Everybody's happy.
Casey:
So I decide that the switch is broken.
Casey:
So because it's old, you know, even though there's no real intelligence there, you never know.
Casey:
So I decide to Amazon Prime now myself a new switch, which, by the way, the fact that you can do that and within a couple hours it shows up still blows my mind, even though this is like a five-year-old thing.
Casey:
But be that as it may.
Casey:
So I eventually get this new switch in.
Casey:
I plug everything up and I'm ready to go.
Casey:
I'm excited.
Casey:
That must have been.
Casey:
Oh, no, it's not the problem.
Casey:
Oh, OK.
Casey:
And I don't recall the exact timeline.
Casey:
At some point in this struggle, I decide to do a diagnostics on the iMac and the iMac says, no, no, no, everything's great.
Casey:
But I don't really trust that because my last iMac said, no, no, no, everything's great when it wasn't.
Casey:
So I'm starting to get really upset at this point.
Casey:
And then.
Casey:
I guess it was around now that I realized, okay, the Switch can't be the problem because it's brand new.
Casey:
And that's when I plugged into the Eero and I feel like, okay, it's something about the combination of the Switch and the Eero.
Casey:
So I start blowing up Eero support via email saying, without actually saying, I would like a new one yesterday, please, because obviously this thing is jacked up.
Casey:
And
Casey:
They didn't put me through the entirety, I don't think, of their is it turned on kind of tech support rigmarole.
Casey:
But what they eventually said was, which I didn't think of myself, and I'm a little disappointed that I didn't think of it.
Casey:
But they eventually said, unplug everything from the Switch except your iMac and try that.
Casey:
And sure enough, that's when everything worked.
Casey:
And if this by some miracle actually makes it in the show, I would love to know from someone who knows more about this than me, why would the MoCA bridge cause everything to fall down?
Casey:
So if you're not familiar with what that is, it's an acronym, something over coaxial, I think, media over coaxial or something like that.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
But anyways.
Casey:
I still have TV service through Verizon Files, and the way that our set-top box gets the TV guide, or whatever you want to call it, is through the internet.
Casey:
But the only way the set-top box is connected to the internet is via coax, the same cable that the video comes through.
Casey:
And in the past, this was fine because my Verizon-issued router also got its internet via coax, or once I got gigabit, it had a coax port on it.
Casey:
So even though the internet was coming in via Ethernet in the newer router, it still would connect to coax, so it could give the set-top box or boxes access to the internet.
Casey:
Well, what I did was, because I didn't want to use the Fios router anymore, and I really like Eero, which is a past sponsor and probably future sponsor, but I really like them,
Casey:
I decided I wanted to use my Euro.
Casey:
And so I got this thing called a Mocha bridge, which is basically you plug coax into it, you plug Ethernet into it, and it, guess what?
Casey:
Bridges the two networks.
Casey:
And I don't know what it is about this Mocha bridge that caused everything to fall on its face.
Casey:
But since I have unplugged it, everything's been working great, except, of course, it's a top box.
Casey:
But if you know more about this stuff than I do, I would love to know how that could be a thing on
Casey:
other than maybe the bridge just needed to be like restarted or something, but I don't understand how that Mocha bridge could have taken down my whole darn network.
Casey:
So I, if you know, and if this actually made it in the show, I would love to know.
Casey:
So please do let me know.
John:
I never trusted those Mocha bridge things.
John:
I don't like the idea of,
John:
Yeah, which is what I have now.
Casey:
And I do – when everything works, I actually do like the Mocha Bridge.
Casey:
I have a –
Casey:
fairly old one uh and i don't recall what generation it is but my understanding having briefly looked into it is that you can actually get gigabit or near gigabit speeds over more modern mocha bridges and that's really important for someone like me who is too lazy to run cat six throughout the house but really would like to have an ethernet drop across the house now in my actual circumstance i i haven't i only use the mocha bridge for the purpose of the set-top box but
Casey:
If I wanted to go, like my office is in the upper right corner of the house, if you will, and the family room is like below it and halfway back, and the kitchen is below it and on the opposite side of the house.
Casey:
So if I wanted for some reason an Ethernet drop in, say, the kitchen, I could use Mocha Bridges to get that Ethernet drop.
Casey:
I already have one that usually is plugged in up here in the office, and I could put a second one down in the kitchen, and then I have an Ethernet drop right there.
Casey:
And so in that sense, it's super convenient because I just ride on the stuff that's already in the walls.
Casey:
But yeah, something has gone very, very wrong with this, and I don't understand what, and it's kind of driving me crazy.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
So thank you for indulging me, and we'll see if this actually makes it in the show.
Casey:
John, tell me about your sleep-wake battles, if you don't mind, please.
John:
There's another thing about, I don't know, all new computers, most new computers in my life.
John:
That's one thing I appreciated about my 2008 Mac Pro and the thing that I hate about most laptops, sleeping and waking.
John:
My Mac Pro, my previous Mac Pro,
John:
It had energy saver settings where you could say, do you want it to wake for network access?
John:
And you could do scheduled wakes and sleeps.
John:
I think those were basically the only options.
John:
And you could also say when the screen goes to sleep and how long at idle before the computer goes to sleep.
John:
And all those settings worked all the time.
John:
I know that doesn't sound like much, but anyone who has a laptop or another Mac that they have these issues with knows that's not... You don't take that for granted.
John:
The settings I had on my old Mac Pro were...
John:
never sleep uh by yourself except for during the schedule the schedule was wake up at like 3 a.m and then i had back play scheduled to run then and then go to sleep like an hour and a half or two hours later right so if you just left my mac awake all the time it would eventually cross 3 a.m and do its thing and then it would hit its scheduled sleep and it would go to sleep right but otherwise it would never automatically go to sleep so that's so i could have like long running downloads or other sorts of things and you
John:
In theory, all those sort of long-running operations should already keep the computer awake, but sometimes they didn't, especially in the old days.
John:
So it was just nice to be able to have a computer that I knew would act in a predictable way.
John:
And when I put it to sleep, which I did frequently, I never shut it down, but I wouldn't just leave it running all day because it's a big thing that uses a lot of power.
John:
I'd put it to sleep when I'm not using it, and it would just immediately go to sleep, and it wouldn't wake up until either that 3 a.m.
John:
wake-up time came or until I came back and woke it up.
John:
again not necessarily true of laptops so this new computer has more settings than the old one did it has all sorts of other things that will wake it up some of them are sort of revealed in the in the ui like it's got power nap which i think my other thing didn't have that lets it like wake up silently and check for email and do time machine backups or whatever i don't know how silently it does those wake ups um
John:
And, you know, it's got startup after power failure.
John:
I think my old man had that.
John:
And then it's got wake for network access and, you know, the hard disk sleep option and all that, all the good stuff.
John:
But with this computer, I was having a bunch of issues.
John:
Where I'd put the computer to sleep when I walked away from it, just, you know, my old habits from my old Mac.
John:
And I'd come back in the room a little bit later and I'd eventually realized that the computer is awake.
John:
The screen is still black, but the computer is awake.
John:
And this led me to a couple of realizations.
John:
One, despite what I said before about the fan noise, every time I would come in here, I'd be like, is my computer awake?
John:
I put it asleep.
John:
Is it awake?
John:
And I couldn't tell unless I walked up to it and put my ear like right in front of the grating on the front of the computer.
Marco:
It's like somebody who sleeps with their eyes open.
Marco:
Like, are they asleep?
Marco:
Yeah, like, are they alive?
Marco:
Are they breathing?
Marco:
Put your finger under their nose to see if they're breathing.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And this is like what I was saying before.
John:
It's like, well, when the computer's on at a Tidal and I'm sitting in the chair here, you know, three feet away from it, like I can still hear it.
John:
But when I'm doing the sleep-awake testing, sometimes I'd be sitting in the chair, like I'd be on like my work laptop in the same exact chair, but I'd put the big, you know, the Mac Pro to sleep, but I'd just be on a laptop.
John:
And I'm like, did the Mac Pro just wake up?
John:
And I wouldn't be able to tell for sure unless I got up out of my chair, went over to the computer and put my ear to it.
John:
The same chair that I'm sitting in right now.
John:
So despite me saying that at idle you can hear the fans, apparently you can't hear them well enough for me to determine with certainty whether the thing just woke up or not.
John:
Right?
John:
So they're fairly quiet.
John:
Now, like I said, I think if you made me bet, like, all right, I'm not letting you get up from the chair, but place your bed.
John:
Do you think it's awake or asleep?
John:
I think I can mostly tell.
John:
I think I'd have maybe 90% success rate, but it's borderline.
John:
So that's one point of that.
John:
The second point is, why the hell is my computer working out?
John:
Right?
John:
Anyone who has dealt with this before, with a laptop or otherwise, hopefully knows all the many things that can wake your computer up.
John:
I'll link to a good article by Howard Oakley in the Eclectic Light Company, which is a great website for Macnerdery.
John:
this is one of those topics where if you google for why is my mac waking up and especially if you know something about how to debug it and you start googling for the words that involve debugging it you will find so many results across like decades right this is a common problem uh the solutions vary the tools for looking into the solutions vary a little bit uh a
John:
The PM set command line tool is your friend.
John:
I think, you know, PM set minus G log, giving you a log of the sleeping and waking and PM set minus G assertions to see, you know, if your problem is that your Mac won't go to sleep, even though you tell it to go to sleep after five minutes of an activity, you can see who's keeping it awake and why.
John:
Every time your computer wakes up, those logs will say a wake reason.
John:
Why did I wake up?
John:
And the wake reasons will say very obscure text that you will then type into Google and find a million people whose computer are waking up with the exact same thing.
John:
If you have a more recent Mac or more recent OS, you'll see that the wake reasons have information redacted for privacy reasons, which is a new innovation to try to keep like private information out of the logs.
John:
But it is not particularly helpful when you're trying to figure out why your computer is waking up.
John:
Why might your computer be waking up?
John:
Well, there's wake on network access, but you can just uncheck that checkbox and you've got that solved.
John:
And by the way, I never have that check just because if you have any, especially for any computer that there is any route to that computer from the internet, like say you're running like a Plex server on something,
John:
and you want it to be accessible from the internet, there is a way from the internet to get to that computer.
John:
If that is the case, and you have wake on network access available, you put it asleep, it will wake from network access in three seconds, because things are port scanning the internet like 24-7.
John:
It is a hostile environment.
John:
If you wake on network access, somehow, some way, that wake-up packet will go flying through.
John:
I don't understand how it can do that, because I wrote a little program to send the wake-up packet,
John:
And I think it has to be sort of like handcrafted.
John:
And I didn't think you could get to it from the internet.
John:
But anyway, maybe it's my hostile environment in my house.
John:
My experience has shown if you do wake for network access, your computer will never sleep for long.
John:
It'll be like a parent of a baby, right?
John:
It's an infant.
John:
You'll put it to sleep and it will be woken up.
John:
So...
John:
I suggest if you want your computer to stay asleep, not enabling that.
John:
Bluetooth devices.
John:
Bluetooth devices love to wake up a computer.
John:
Why?
John:
Beats the hell out of me.
John:
That's one of the reasons I have Bluetooth turned off on my computer most of the time.
John:
Are they just lonely?
John:
Are they glitching?
John:
Did someone nudge a mouse?
John:
Is there some kind of vibration?
John:
But...
John:
You know, if you're trying to debug this thing of like, is a Bluetooth device waking up my computer?
John:
Turn off Bluetooth.
John:
Then at least you eliminate that problem, hopefully, by turning off Bluetooth.
John:
USB devices of all kinds love to wake up your computer.
John:
Again, why?
John:
Why are they waking up your computer?
John:
I don't know.
John:
Static electricity?
John:
Again, somebody nudges them?
John:
Solar flares?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Bugs in the firmware?
John:
Like...
John:
External hard drives, USB hard drives that the thing tries to spin down when they're idle but then wake themselves back up.
John:
And you'll see wake reason, HID, USB, blah, blah, blah.
John:
And you're like, what does that mean?
John:
What is waking up my computer?
John:
Why won't you stay asleep?
John:
Again, much like infants, why won't you sleep?
John:
Why won't you sleep for more than 30 minutes?
John:
You're killing me.
John:
So anyway, I went through that procedure with this computer over the course of the first week I had it.
John:
It did eventually get to the point where I am now, where when I put it to sleep, it stays asleep until the scheduled wake-up time.
John:
But it did take going through all this stuff, removing... I had a USB hard drive that was always connected, and I said, you're not going to be always connected.
John:
I'm only going to connect you when I need to boot camp, and otherwise you're going to sit on a shelf.
John:
Turned off Bluetooth, disabled wake-up for network access, found a bunch of other programs that were putting in assertions that were keeping it from idle sleeping, and so...
John:
I think I'm mostly okay.
John:
There's this other thing, by the way, called dark wake, which is where I think it's where it wakes up but doesn't turn the screen on.
John:
I think that's affiliated with PowerNap.
John:
Sometimes you'll see a dark wake.
John:
Anyway, PMset-glog will show you the sleep wakes, and I was graphing them.
John:
There is another stuff like the real-time clock, what is it, MDNS resolver, whatever that thing is, the thing that was DiscoveryD, we got changed back.
John:
That wakes your computer every two hours to do some real-time clock maintenance something, yada, yada.
John:
But anyway, since you have a log of these events, you can graph them and see when is my computer waking up and when is it going to sleep.
John:
And it has been improving to the point where I feel like it's an understandable, predictable cadence.
John:
It will sort of wake up without turning the screen on and do some kind of maintenance thing that I'm pretty sure I can't stop it from doing.
John:
I don't understand what real-time clock maintenance means other than perhaps...
John:
I don't know, synchronizing the real-time clock with an NTP server?
John:
I don't know what the hell it's doing, but occasionally it wakes itself up every two hours briefly and does a thing and goes back to sleep.
John:
But as long as it mostly stays asleep, I'm happy with it.
John:
So I don't know if this is going to help anybody except to let you know that if you are having problems with your computer waking up when you don't want it or problems with it going to sleep when you command it to or letting it go to sleep from idle...
John:
There's a world of pain out there, but it is possible to defeat it with a little bit of effort and process of elimination.
John:
Kind of like Casey with unplugging everything and turning everything off with his various routers and that story that you may or may not have just heard in this podcast.
John:
Yeah, and this is one of the things about desktop computers that I feel like sleep-wake battles can be won because the environment that they exist in is controlled in some way.
John:
It's not constantly on the go connecting to weird networks and having all sorts of weird peripherals and docking things.
John:
It's sitting in one place with one set of stuff connected to it.
John:
It is a winnable war, but the variety of things that think they need to wake or half-wake up your Mac has grown over time, and now I feel like it's just barely manageable.
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Oh,
Casey:
Tell me about your Finder toolbar battles.
John:
That's that toolbar that kept popping up in the Finder that I would dismiss and it would reveal itself again.
John:
As I look at the Finder windows in the background now, both of them have the toolbar visible, despite me hiding the toolbar in both of those windows at least five times today.
John:
They're back.
John:
The theory on this, and this was my theory as well, but I didn't know how to test it and didn't know how to fix it, was that various third-party apps that can add toolbar buttons to the Finder toolbar...
John:
could be causing this to happen.
John:
One of those apps is Dropbox, which I believe, let me go to Customize Toolbar and see if I can see it here.
John:
Yeah, there's a Dropbox item in Customize Toolbar.
John:
I don't have that item in my actual toolbar, but it's in the Customize sheet, and I think something about the interaction between whatever that plugin is lurking inside Dropbox and the Finder is causing Dropbox to do something that triggers the Finder to show the toolbar in all the open windows.
John:
I can't really uninstall Dropbox because I want to use Dropbox.
Casey:
Oh, you can.
Casey:
I've done it.
Casey:
I'm Dropbox free.
Casey:
Really?
Casey:
In terms of client app, anyway.
Marco:
Yeah, then you got to use the web interface.
Marco:
Yeah, are you using the transmitter or the web interface?
Casey:
Web interface.
Casey:
And the only time I ever really use it is to send you or Mike files.
John:
Yeah, you've got that thing going on in your Synology.
John:
But I'm not ready to do that.
John:
I use Dropbox not just for podcast stuff but for personal stuff as well.
Casey:
That's what the Synology thing is for.
John:
Not attractive.
John:
But I would like to...
John:
find a way to disable the finder integration that used to be an option and many versions of dropbox ago there was a checkbox that says do you want finder integration i think that also applied to the little badges but now there's an official apple supported api for the badging so there's no more checkbox because just you know it's it's not a hack anymore i think the custom the toolbar thing is also not a hack it's also an official api so this may be some kind of catalina bug uh but anyway once again asking for help if anybody knows
John:
A, if it actually is Dropbox, I suppose I could uninstall it and find out, so I should just do the experiment myself.
John:
But if it is Dropbox causing my toolbars to appear, and B, how I can stop Dropbox from insisting on putting that toolbar button there that I'm never going to put in my toolbars because I don't like toolbars.
Casey:
Oh, John.
Casey:
All right, Marco, you had an interesting post just a couple days ago about pro mode and low power mode.
Casey:
Would you care to talk to us about that?
Marco:
I love that John and I now both blog so infrequently.
Marco:
And Casey, I think you're getting there.
Marco:
We blog so infrequently that every time we post a blog post is worth your discussion on the show.
John:
This topic was in the notes before you blogged about it because I thought it was hilarious that there was a rumor that the thing that you've always wanted, low power mode, that the rumor was that Apple was doing the opposite.
Yeah.
John:
Oh, you want low power mode?
John:
How about high power mode?
John:
What do you think of that?
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
Yeah, so there was this rumor from 9 to 5 a few days ago about that in a Catalina beta, there were some string references found that suggest that Apple is working on something called possibly pro mode.
Marco:
which would be a way to temporarily enable higher performance.
Marco:
And it kind of suggested that maybe it might have to do with raising the fan speeds to basically increase the thermal output.
Marco:
And so presumably, because modern laptops and computers, modern processors are limited with a certain thermal limit.
Marco:
And if you apply more cooling to them,
Marco:
they can usually get more performance or at least longer sustained peak performance before having to throttle the speeds closer down to the base clock speed.
Marco:
Like modern Intel Turbo Boost basically lets the CPUs burst way above the advertised clock speed much of the time that they're in use.
Marco:
And in fact,
Marco:
the advertised clock speed under normal operation, all that is is the minimum that they're guaranteed to be able to sustain under indefinite load.
Marco:
But a lot of times, even under a constant load, modern processors can sustain way above their base clock.
Marco:
but they can sustain way way above it for a really short time and so if you apply more cooling then they can sustain higher performance levels for longer times during busy workloads and so that's what i assume pro mode would be doing and that's a frequent demand especially from the video editing crowd for macbook pros that's a very very common request of like
Marco:
YouTubers or other video producers who were using MacBook Pros out in the field they want to render stuff as quickly as possible and there are times when they don't care about fan noise they just need something to be done quickly and so you know that would ideally benefit that crowd but what I want is indeed the opposite
Marco:
I want what I've been running on my laptop for a while now.
Marco:
I want a first-party solution.
Marco:
On my laptop, I've been running Turbo Boost Switcher Pro for, I don't know, like four years now?
Marco:
It's been a while now that I've been running this.
Marco:
And what I love about it is that it lets you disable Turbo Boost completely.
Marco:
And you can also automatically disable it based on whether you're on battery or not.
Marco:
So you could like automatically disable it when you're running on battery.
Marco:
And then when you're plugged in, it automatically gets enabled.
Marco:
I've actually usually just kept it disabled all the time.
Marco:
And then if I really need high performance, I go to the menu bar and toggle it and then toggle it back when I'm done.
Marco:
But that's becoming less and less common that I actually need that higher performance.
Marco:
And the rest of the time,
Marco:
It may seem weird that I am buying a processor that's capable of significantly higher performance than what I ended up limiting it to.
Marco:
But it's actually really, really nice when performance is not your highest priority.
Marco:
to have a laptop that is much more pleasant to use in other ways.
Marco:
So when you disable Turbo Boost, you lose a lot of your single-thread performance.
Marco:
It could be up to half of your single-thread performance.
Marco:
Multi-core performance gets reduced a lot less because when you're using all the cores, Turbo Boost can't boost as high anyway.
Marco:
So using all the cores with Turbo Boost disabled, you're looking at maybe losing about a third of your performance, depending on the processor you have and how many cores, etc.
Marco:
But anyway...
Marco:
Multi-core is not affected as much as single-core.
Marco:
But what's great about this is that the laptop, when not using Turbo Boost, runs significantly cooler because the maximum wattage is significantly capped, way lower.
Marco:
You can look at my blog post for all the actual numbers here, but it runs way cooler, and that also means that the fans almost never spin up.
Marco:
It's almost impossible to have the fans spin up when Turbo Boost is disabled.
Marco:
In fact, I heard from a lot of people who like playing games this way because it keeps the fans from just going crazy when they're gaming.
Marco:
Windows has a control that I think does this.
Marco:
There is like a slider in Windows that is like performance or battery life.
Marco:
And I don't know what that's adjusting, but people pointed it out as a thing in response to this.
Marco:
But anyway, so when you run disabled, so it runs way cooler, it runs way quieter, and you get way more battery life.
Marco:
So you are giving up a good amount of performance, but a lot of times that's not noticeable.
Marco:
Most of the time I run my laptop this way and it's fine.
Marco:
Most of the work I'm doing on a laptop is casual work like email, web, social stuff with occasional bursts of Xcode productivity.
Marco:
And when I'm doing that, I can get through a whole cross-country flight using Xcode
Marco:
And not worry about the battery because it actually will last the entire flight pushing it with Xcode without a problem when Turbo Boost is disabled.
Marco:
So it's a wonderful way to have a laptop.
Marco:
And the reason I ask for it now is, you know, not only is there a chance that Apple's listening and therefore, you know, like I figure like, hey, while you're in there, while you're making an option for pro mode, this would be a perfect like other end of that slider.
Marco:
Give us low power mode.
Marco:
ios has low power mode people use it all the time it's a great idea because you know the point i'm in making the post is like all these trade-offs of like power and heat versus performance and battery life apple chooses one balance of those trade-offs for each product generally and it's fixed in stone forever and
Marco:
And sometimes I want peak performance.
Marco:
Sometimes I don't care about battery life.
Marco:
But sometimes I want the laptop to run cool and not burn my legs and not make my hands sweaty.
Marco:
And I don't want to hear the fan spinning up constantly.
Marco:
And I already need the battery to last for a whole cross-country flight because the power outlet in my seat is broken.
Marco:
Like, there are times when I want a different balance.
Marco:
And normally Apple does not let us control that balance of performance versus everything else.
Marco:
iOS's low power mode is one of the only times they've ever given us a control over that, that we can say on iOS, you know what, right now I care more about longest battery life possible than everything being exactly fast, exactly up to date with background updates and stuff like that.
Marco:
They give us that control.
Marco:
And there's lots of software stuff you can do as well, which they do in iOS low power mode.
Marco:
Stuff like on the Mac, you can disable photos indexing, you can disable spotlight, you can disable software updates, iTunes downloads, a whole bunch of stuff that Macs do automatically in the background, even when they're on battery.
Marco:
A proper low power mode could actually turn all those things off.
Marco:
in addition to modifying turbo booster or cpu thermal limits anyway so on ios we have this one switch that we have low power mode and that's great we need that sometimes people seem to like it it seems to be a great success and i think there's no real major downside to it there but
Marco:
that obviously one fixed balance of performance versus other factors doesn't fit everybody all the time.
Marco:
So it's nice to have a control.
Marco:
So on the Mac, if they're going to add a control in the other direction, like making it pro mode, this is the perfect time to also add this one, add low power mode.
Marco:
It seems like they were making it work in a similar way where like...
Marco:
you can't really leave it that way all the time easily you'd have to like turn it on and then automatically turns itself off tomorrow or something like that like that's fine i could deal with that and the reason that i'm that i'm caring about this now is because turbo boost switcher pro is probably going to stop working later this year with whatever the next version of mac os is because it shows this warning on catalina of like
Marco:
this developer needs to update this because it won't work with a future version of Mac OS, which of course means probably this year's version.
Marco:
So I'm concerned that this utility that I've been using to approximate low power mode, that I like the effect a lot,
Marco:
is probably going to stop working in about a year.
Marco:
That's why I'm hoping Apple will add this, because a proper low power mode on Mac OS has all the same benefits that it does on the iPhone.
Marco:
Also, apparently, I haven't verified this, but people have told me that it's not even on the iPad yet, and that I think also would be a good addition.
Marco:
We have batteries on all these devices.
Marco:
Pretty much everything that does not plug into the wall should probably have a low power mode.
Casey:
I have nothing to add other than to say I completely agree with you.
Casey:
And, you know, I think this is this is needed.
Casey:
I think low power mode is needed.
Casey:
And I also think, you know, the low data mode, which is also available on iOS, you know, something that you can approximate with trip mode.
Casey:
I think both of those are long overdue.
Casey:
And I really wish both of them existed.
Casey:
And I'm sad that neither of them do.
John:
yeah oh and and by the way there are other options uh if you're willing to disable system integrity protection i'm not that's i think not really an option so so rule those right out we had all those stories where in the mac pro came out where everyone was trying to configure the most expensive mac pro uh if this pro mode feature ever does actually ship i can't wait to see people seeing how fast they can burn the battery down from full charge by enabling pro mode and doing some sort of cpu intensive thing uh
John:
giving it more thermal headroom to run sustained at higher frequencies for longer.
John:
Yeah, it's kind of weird.
John:
I mean, I understand, you know, the, you know, whatever, the Pro Apps team, what's the name of that team?
John:
The Pro Workflow Group.
John:
There you go.
John:
I mean, I'm sure they're saying exactly like you were saying, like, sometimes, you know, I'm in a situation where even if I'm on battery, I want maximum power right now to get something done ASAP.
John:
I don't care if my battery is depleted by the end of it.
John:
So it'd be great if I had a mode that would remove the limits on the fans.
John:
Because historically, even on their laptops, Apple has...
John:
favored throttling down uh the the cpu and everything rather than running the fans at screaming speed all the time and a lot of times if people do temperature sensing and say like it would be great if apple ran their fans a little bit faster and sped them up a little bit sooner because it seems like stuff's getting pretty toasty in there and maybe it's like too toasty but apple's sort of in balancing that equation thinking well let's balance a little bit more in favor of noise um
John:
So I see how the pro workflow group would say that balance is not really the right balance for us.
John:
So can you give us a mode where we crank it up?
John:
But it is really amazing that, you know, again, if this rumor is true, to even think that they would do this and not do low power mode.
John:
Because, like, is there...
John:
the non-pro workflow group saying everybody wants more battery life on their laptops like everybody wants that it's why it's on phones like it is not an uncommon desire to say boy i wish this laptop had more battery life um maybe the optimistic take is like well don't you worry about that because when the arm laptops come you're going to have more battery life than you know what to do with but that doesn't really make much sense because the phones are arm and they have low power mode so i really i really really hope low power mode
John:
comes out is a higher priority than this the opposite of low power mode like it's it seems like the priority should be low power mode first and then kind of like the mac pro for those weird pro people yeah okay the you know i love how they call it pro mode in the strings by the way like they can't call it like
Marco:
battery sucking mode or drain your battery mode by the way too like like there's also a problem of like all the modern um high-end like large laptops like the 15 inch and the 16 inch when you run them at full blast they actually draw more power than their wall adapters can supply and so they actually will slowly deplete their own batteries even when plugged in so i'm not sure you would want a pro mode that would make that even faster yeah
Marco:
Because all that would do would be suck more power.
Marco:
And again, it wouldn't be able to keep up from its own wall wart.
Marco:
And so you would have the situation where you would be draining your internal battery faster and faster.
Marco:
I mean, maybe, again, like maybe you want that.
Marco:
But I think my concern with this, as you were just kind of alluding to, is it has seemed on a number of occasions recently that...
Marco:
The pro workflow group that Apple seems to be designing their pro products for these days might not be as diverse as it needs to be.
Marco:
We talked about this a few weeks ago.
Marco:
It certainly seems like Apple is basically designing computers for video editors.
Marco:
And that's great.
Marco:
There are a lot of video editors out there.
Marco:
But that's not their only customer segment.
Marco:
And video editors have very different needs than almost anybody else.
Marco:
And so I hope that their product direction reflects the needs of lots of types of customers and that they aren't
Marco:
only prioritizing basically what YouTubers want.
Marco:
That would be unfortunate.
Marco:
And I don't think they are that narrow-sided.
Marco:
But certainly sometimes it seems that way.
Marco:
And some of the directions, some of the products do seem that way.
Marco:
But this would be an area where...
Marco:
I hope that John's right.
Marco:
I hope they have heard not just from video editors who say, please let me crank this laptop even faster sometimes and burn my battery even faster, but also from literally everybody else who would be like, hey, you know what?
Marco:
Most of the time I would like more battery life, please.
Marco:
And maybe not have it be so hot and loud.
John:
yeah i feel like this constituency of pro users was neglected for so long that they did the right thing and made this pro workflow team to get get their own sort of in-house uh you know microcosm of that constituency to find out how they can make things better for them and i don't think it's just video editors like you just look at the mac pro thing they had audio editors with a big soundtrack and they have photographers and
John:
they have 3d artists right but it's it's basically all all of the types of applications that really can use all the power available if you just give them more of it um despite that you know as we've quoted many times and they say in their keynotes that developers are number one pro customer but developers are not represented well if at all by the pro workflow team it seems um but the other side of that is like yeah so i i want i think of the pro workflow team as like lobbyists i want them lobbying for the wild stuff that they need right
John:
But there needs to be like the reason you needed to make that is because that's a constituency that you weren't paying attention to.
John:
So form this group.
John:
Presumably you were paying attention to everybody else before that.
John:
But now it seems like you have this.
John:
vocal powerful group within the company lobbying for exactly what they're supposed to be lobbying for their needs and whatever everybody else's needs are either like maybe the company thinks oh we don't need any sort of in-house constituency for that because that's just everybody else and that's just us that's just our product managers we know what we need to do but it seems like you know the voice of the voice of the customer like the non-pro customer
John:
There's a disconnect between, I think, what sort of the mainstream non-pro Mac customer in particular wants out of Apple's products and what they're providing.
John:
Everything from low power mode to number of ports and convenience to battery life and all that stuff.
John:
Price.
John:
Yeah.
John:
price another good one um whereas on the phone i think the non-pro constituency is very well represented they made the phones bigger and thicker and have more battery life and actually made them cheaper like if you look at the recent trend in iphones it's so clear that the sort of non-pro regular person constituency has been getting things that they like and the things that you know we wanted many years ago and they're delivering on now
John:
So I don't think that's a problem in the phones.
John:
But when it comes to the Mac, you know, I'm happy that they're catering to the pro things and making this crazy computer that I'm sitting in front of.
John:
But it's clear that the rest of the Mac line could use a little bit more.
John:
Like, I don't think you need to make a non-pro workflow team.
John:
I think that should be just a function of the whole rest of the product org.
John:
But I think there's still a disconnect there.
John:
I think they need to have a meeting of the minds with the mass of their regular non-pro customers to get on the same page about what they want.
John:
considering looking at the 16 inch but really that's that's a pro product as well and yes it does have a bigger battery but mostly for the needs of pros and speaking of that of draining the battery even when on power did they does the 16 inch come with higher wattage power brick than the uh the 15 inch yes it went from 87 to 95 i believe 96 and can it still outrun that you're saying that if you take the 16 inch and you crank it without any special tweaks you can outrun the that power adapter
Marco:
um i haven't heard specifically on the 16 inch whether it still does that i know that i know the 15 inches before it uh all the recent ones could do that indeed um you have to i believe stress the cpu and the gpu which is pretty easy to do if you're doing something like a video encode yeah so anyway i think we still need um we don't need a round table and we don't need a non-pro workflow group uh but i think we do need
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Casey:
John, you've been taking a tour of mice and keyboards and things, and you have put four different mice mouses in the show notes, and I'm having a problem.
Casey:
And if you wouldn't mind, can you explain to me how it is you can steadfastly and adamantly and petulantly refuse to have an LG monitor with a little LG logo on it
Casey:
But you can have these four f***ing abominations on your desk and be okay with that.
John:
Apple doesn't make a mouse that I like.
John:
Apple makes one mouse.
John:
I mean, in different colors, right?
John:
But that's the only mouse they make is the little sushi thing.
John:
And it's really low.
John:
And I don't like a low mouse.
Casey:
Yes, I understand that.
Casey:
But these are hideous.
Casey:
How can you be so upset about the LG display and look at these and be like, yeah, okay, that's fine.
Marco:
I mean, in all fairness, you aren't supposed to look at your input peripherals as you're using them, whereas you are looking at your monitor.
Casey:
Yeah, but still, I mean, Marco, if you haven't yet, you need to look at these links in the show notes because, oh boy, the Microsoft one isn't bad, but it has a Windows logo on it.
Casey:
And every other one is pretty bad.
Casey:
If we're saying that the bar for bad is the LG logo on the front of the display, then these are all hideous.
Marco:
No, the LG logo is the least of the Ultrafine's problems.
Marco:
So what we're looking at here is three Logitechs and a Microsoft mouse.
Marco:
And these aren't even the super lit-up RGB LED kind of super gaming mice.
Marco:
Those, I think, are a little bit tacky by design, and that's what that market wants, and so that's fine.
Marco:
But these are...
Marco:
fairly pedestrian looking mice like you know it would be the uh mx master is the like bulkiest you know most complicated looking one and even it has a fairly tame like design aesthetic compared to its market of mostly like gamers enthusiasts like this is actually a pretty tame looking option
Marco:
I don't think this is that bad.
Marco:
I've seen way worse mice.
Marco:
In fact, Tiff owns a way worse mouse that we bought to match her ridiculous gaming PC that has RGB lights and everything.
Casey:
Of course.
Casey:
No, the Microsoft mouse I actually think is pretty decent looking, but it has a Windows logo on it, which I thought would just absolutely infuriate the John Syracuse of 20 years ago or whatever.
Marco:
Actually, you could sand that off pretty easily.
Marco:
A lot of times, I did that.
Marco:
My car has little USB ports in the center console that you can plug in for either music or actually you can record the footage from the cameras as dash cam footage onto USB.
Marco:
I got one of those little tiny, almost like flush USB drives for it.
Marco:
It was a Samsung one and it had Samsung written across it.
Marco:
It was such a small thing.
Marco:
I was like, I don't want my
Marco:
car to be screaming samsung out of this little usb thing and so when it came i got some sandpaper out of my garage and just gently sanded off the logo and it was fine and so i have now i have a blank usb stick in my car and it's wonderful and this is like we never think of that as an option like you can just slightly modify some hardware that you don't maybe maybe like or you know something about it like you can you can just
Marco:
grind that thing off or sand that thing off and usually it's fairly unintrusive and it's everything's fine um so yeah so i feel like john could theoretically just sand off this windows logo of this mouse and it would probably be fine all right with all that said john tell me about all of these mice and what what you do and do not like from them
John:
Well, so here's where I'm coming from.
John:
I'm coming off of, you know, I was using a 10-year-old computer, and I think the mouse I was using was even older than that.
John:
Maybe, maybe not.
John:
It was an MX, not even an MX300.
John:
I was using originally Logitech Wheel Mouse.
John:
It didn't have a product name.
John:
There was no names or anything like that.
John:
And I think it was replaced with an M300 model that was basically the same size and shape that I got off of like eBay or whatever.
John:
I wore out some part of it and eventually had to buy another replacement.
John:
The shape of the mouse was what I wanted.
John:
It had straight sides and it was somewhere – it was higher than the apple mouse but lower than some of the really big sort of palm-filling giant snail mice, right?
Yeah.
John:
and it had two buttons and it had a scroll wheel uh and when i was looking for a replacement i was like well all right this mouse is kind of old new computer reconsider everything let me look at some new mice i was mostly shopping based on shape but when i started shopping around for mice modern mice that are not like 10 years old um you know i use the apple one right and i didn't like it and when i was shopping for new ones i
John:
i very quickly came to the conclusion that if you're shopping in sort of the high end of consumer mice not getting into gaming mice quite yet but just the high end of consumer mice they are all better than apple's mouse like full stop now i know you don't like the logos and i know you think they look weird but here's the thing stuff that goes in your hand very often looks weird look at the tivo remote look at most oxo things that you can buy like my weird cheese grater look at hand tools
John:
It's not a beauty contest.
John:
Symmetry doesn't win you anything.
John:
It's got to fit in your hand, which is not symmetrical and is lumpy and weird and has five appendages and one's coming out the side.
John:
You're not going to make a perfect conical section or this beautiful solid.
John:
It's not going to be ergonomically good.
John:
so that's one thing so yeah they look weird and they are weird shapes but they are shaped to fit your hand better than apples is shaped to fit your hand if you don't use it in exactly the way apple wants you to use it as sort of like a thing that is barely there beneath your hand which is not how i use a mouse i kind of grip it from the side with my thumb on one side and my pinky and ring finger on the other side and the two things on the top right
John:
second thing is that the the controls themselves like there's lots more physical controls on on these non-apple mice obviously apple is the elegant solution of just the entire continuous surface and it clicks down and it's really nice and it's a touch surface it's a beautiful elephant elegant apple solution but it has limits as discussed last time you can't hold down the right mouse button and click the left mouse button because it's one big mouse button surprise that's limiting in games and in weird complicated apps and
John:
It doesn't have a scroll wheel.
John:
It has a scroll gesture.
John:
And I don't like that, as I described it, the same way with the Apple TV remote, where when I go to grab the mouse, I don't want any accidental scrolling happening because my fingers brush the touch-sensitive surface.
John:
I don't like thinking that it's a live beast that if I pet the wrong way, something's going to happen on my screen.
John:
I like physical buttons.
John:
And that's what you'll get on most of these third-party mice.
John:
And in particular, the physical controls on the expensive third-party mice are nice.
John:
We talk about this in cars or on toasters.
John:
Knob feel, button feel.
John:
How do the controls feel?
John:
Do they feel cheap or expensive?
John:
Do they make lots of noise?
John:
You both remember the scroll wheel on my old mouse.
John:
You could hear it in lots of recordings.
John:
You know, I don't have it in front of me, so I can't spin it for you.
John:
But it was very noisy and didn't feel good and was kind of gross.
John:
We've come a long way there.
John:
So that's what I was shopping based on.
John:
And my thought process was...
John:
try to find something more or less same size and shape as my other one, but that has a much nicer scroll wheel and some good buttons.
John:
And I was open to the idea of Bluetooth, and a lot of them are offered in Bluetooth, but I wasn't, you know, wedded to it.
John:
I did want, like, the idea of not having a cord, because my previous mouse was corded only, and it was kind of hard snaking that cord onto my keyboard tray, and I was like, you know what, I can just get rid of that cord and not have to worry about it at all.
John:
It would be nice if I could be wireless, but it wasn't a deal breaker.
John:
So I got the Microsoft, what is it called?
John:
Microsoft Precision Mouse.
John:
It's also called the Surface Precision Mouse, which is Microsoft's fancy mouse.
John:
I tried it in the Microsoft store.
John:
I talked about that before.
John:
I got it in black, of course, with the pro thing.
John:
I got the Logitech Marathon Mouse M705, which was a sort of middle of the road, not super high end Logitech mouse.
John:
um and so that was my other and i also had tried that in like i think i tried it in like a staples or something when i was buying school supplies for the kids and i remembered the model so you know again i highly recommend going to a store and trying these things before you you know buy based on a picture or whatever
John:
I did look at the gaming mice and I see a couple of contenders there in particular Logitech G305 Lightspeed looks like a mostly RGB less or RGB light mouse that I'm looking at because it it seems like it's about the right size and shape but I'm not going to buy it until I've gone to a store to hold it.
John:
i think best buy might have it but i haven't had a chance to go to the store so i don't have that mouse so we'll put the link in the show anyways you can look at it but uh in particular the gaming mice concentrate on the sensitivity of the sensor and all sorts of stuff having to do with the dpi and for gaming or whatever and they you know working on lots of surfaces and not having lag and those are all good things too like i even though i'm not buying i'm not buying it for gaming i like the idea of that
John:
And I can tell with sort of like my old janky mouse as an example, good sensors, good optical sensors versus bad ones.
John:
You can tell the difference when you're using them, like in terms of what kind of resolution does it have and what kind of surfaces does it work on or whatever.
John:
And then finally, somebody from Logitech apparently listens to this program because a package came in the mail today that had a little handwritten note that said, I don't have it in front of me, it was like, uh, hello, greetings from Logitech, we like the show, enjoy.
John:
So someone from Logitech sent me a bunch of Logitech peripherals for free, and that's why I also have a Logitech MX Master 3 sitting right here.
John:
They also sent a bonus item, uh,
John:
the magnetic camera thing that attaches to the top of your pro display xdr and i'll talk about that a little bit later oh that's cool and they also sent a logitech keyboard uh but mice first the thing i didn't think about when i bought these mice it didn't occur to me until i got them all my house and started using them but i'm telling people listening now so they think about it as well or obviously maybe no one cares the underside of the mice
John:
whoever looks at the bottom who cares what's in the bottom of the mouse right it's like the sensors down there but other than that like there's no you know I'm in the store I'm looking at them I'm feeling the buttons I'm feeling the wheels I'm feeling the shape and I'm not looking at the bottom of the mouse I should have been looking at the bottom of the mouse I see the bottom of mine sometimes
John:
you do sure do and then you stab it in its belly but um but you know without looking i mean maybe you know this because you do charge it like a harpoon turtle but uh without cheating and looking what's on the bottom of your mouse what's going on down there um there's a switch to turn it on and off there's a charging hole and then there's the two long like rails of anti-skid material that i have to scrape all the gunk off of sometimes
John:
yeah so i mean you know because you're cleaning it also because you harpoon it but yeah that the apple mouse has two long vertical strips that go down the sides of the mouse two parallel lines of slippery material or whatever yeah it cleans the stuff off of those i guess yeah um i should have looked at my old janky ancient lot of tech mouse
John:
because one of the things i liked about that mouse that i quickly found is how it feels sliding across my mousing surface mousing surface is just a it's an amazon basics mouse pad at this point like a mouse pads is a whole other issue i really need to get a bigger one but my keyboard tray is oddly shaped so it's a pain i might have to buy one and cut it but anyway
John:
It's just like, I don't know, mouse pad material, regular mouse pad material.
John:
It's very thin.
John:
It's not like one of those thick, ancient mouse pads from the 90s, right?
John:
It's very thin, but in the end, it's a rubbery thing with kind of like a fabric surface on it.
John:
That's what I like to mouse on.
John:
I'm open to other mousing surfaces, but history has shown, as I've tried many different ones, this is what I like.
John:
The way the little feet or whatever things on the bottom of your mouse slide across that surface makes a big difference in how a mouse feels.
John:
And if you've never looked down there or never made that connection, if you have a mouse that you really like or really hate, it could have something to do with how it actually interfaces with the surface you're sliding it across.
John:
My old Logitech had four feet.
John:
I think they're Teflon because it's like a fairly slippery looking plastic.
John:
Four little tiny ovals of Teflon at the four corners of the mouse.
John:
It was a fairly normal shaped sort of rectangular mouse with a rounded back, just four little things.
John:
And the mouse was very light.
John:
All that meant that it slid very easily and silently.
John:
I know Casey is rolling his eyes when I'm talking about the noise mice make.
John:
Stay with me here.
John:
The Apple one...
John:
has way more contact than the four little points and i think is also heavier so i don't you know i don't we need to get dr drang here with coefficients of friction and all sorts of other stuff but like spreading the weight across a larger area is good but having slipperier materials is also good but being lighter weight is even better anyway all this is to say i did not look at the bottom of any of the mice i got and i should have
John:
So, for example, the Microsoft mouse, you look at the bottom of this sucker, instead of having some pads or rails, it has the entire perimeter of the mouse, like all around the entire edge, sort of the outer edge, just one big, long, continuous trail that goes around the entire outer edge of the bottom of the mouse.
John:
And that is the slippery stuff.
John:
logitech mouse has five pads four big triangle two big triangular ones at the back two squarish ones at the front and a fifth one that's kind of off to the side where the little thumb thingy is
John:
The MX Master 3 has two vertical rails, not as long as the Apple one, but one on the left and one on the right.
John:
And then it has two semicircles on the front and the back.
John:
All of this makes a difference.
John:
And it factors in with the weight of the mouse as well in how it feels and how it sounds going across the surface.
John:
The Microsoft mouse in the beginning, I put it down on a mouse button and I slid it and I'm like, oh, no, this is not going to work.
John:
It was hard to slide.
John:
And it made it like a noise, like a sort of like fingers scraping across fabric.
John:
And I was like, am I imagining things?
John:
I took my old mouse, I put it down and I moved it.
John:
Total silence.
John:
And it moves really easily.
John:
Put the Microsoft mouse on it.
John:
Much harder to move and makes noise.
John:
Should have checked that, but I didn't.
John:
Logitech mouse, the marathon, not as quiet as my old one, but quieter than the Microsoft one.
John:
But I didn't, you know, live and learn.
John:
I didn't look at that, but I still wanted to give them all a fair shot.
John:
So one thing I learned by giving them all a fair shot is there is a break-in period for a new mouse where the slippery junk on the bottom of the mouse gets slipperier.
John:
Today, in the Microsoft mouse, if I feel with my finger that little slippery rim, I think it's more slippery.
John:
I think it's been slowly been polishing it.
John:
It doesn't change the weight of the mouse, and it doesn't change how the weight is distributed on the pad, but it does change the sound and the feel.
John:
It gets slipperier.
John:
I have a feeling that my 10-year-old Logitech mouse, or even older than that, the really old janky one, probably is way slipperier now.
John:
than it was when i bought it kind of like if you buy a car and two years later you get better at zero to 60 times like you break the thing in right so i wasn't going to reject these mice for the tracking but i did want to note that the most important thing i learned from this experience so far is that is a factor consider it and test it and look into it and also consider that it may change over time
John:
uh the other thing is you know getting back to the physical controls the reason probably the main reason i got this microsoft precision mouse is because this scroll wheel is fantastic now i know scroll wheels are passe and everyone wants to touch service yada yada i'm not into touch service on a wheel this is a metal wheel that feels
John:
like an expensive knob in a car it's got two modes it's got the ratcheting mode and the free spinning mode the free spinning mode it feels like it's on a ball bearing smooth as glass right solid smooth sort of a textured metal wheel the button that switches modes has this satisfying electromechanical kathunk i don't know if i can get on the microphone here let's see
John:
you're probably not gonna be able to hear that it's probably anyway we heard it a satisfying funk where you can feel like something electrically activating and moving into place and moving back um and that and when it goes into ratchet mode the ratcheting mode feels like an expensive car knob with like the little where you can feel like the little i forget what they're called the little notches detents i believe
John:
Yeah, there you go.
John:
And but it's not noisy.
John:
So here, let me I'm going to scroll the scroll wheel like this is this is like literally, you know, my fingers practically touching my microphone.
John:
I mean, you should hear nothing.
John:
Nope.
John:
Yeah, nothing.
John:
Total, which is amazing.
John:
You know, my old mouse, you could hear it when it, from the, I'd scroll it and you could hear it in the next room.
John:
But you can still feel the little, the little notches, right?
John:
It's not the freewheeling scroll wheel thingy, like the logic thing that I'll get to in a second, where it's like,
John:
it spins and you can just give it a spin and like a roulette wheel just spin and spin and spin and then you stop it with your finger the microsoft mouse does not do that it has smooth and ratcheted but in smooth mode it's totally smooth there's nothing impeding the movement but it does not freewheel spin like it's damped right so if you flick it it'll as soon as your finger leaves the wheel it will stop moving right
John:
So that's the Microsoft mouse.
John:
Shape-wise, it has the little thumb rest flange, but it has a very small thumb rest flange.
John:
You know what I'm talking about?
John:
Like on the bottom of the mouse, there's a thing that sticks out of the side for your thumb to go on.
John:
I'm not really a fan of that thing.
John:
I'd just as soon do without it, but I bought the Microsoft one because I'm like, look, if I'm going to have a thumb thing, let's get a really tiny thumb thing.
John:
I've mostly gotten used to it.
John:
It still bothers me a little bit, but not too much.
John:
This mouse has flat sides.
John:
The buttons are really solid.
John:
The side buttons, which I mostly hate and will never use, are very thin and out of the way, and they don't touch any part of my hand when I'm using the mouse, which is nice.
John:
I do kind of appreciate having them there.
John:
I can imagine using them.
John:
It has three side buttons instead of just two, which is nice.
John:
And the mouse wheel clicks in for the third button.
John:
Um...
John:
The other thing that I learned from buying all these mice, and I learned with the Microsoft mouse first, is that Bluetooth is garbage.
Casey:
I don't like Bluetooth.
John:
Why?
John:
How is it actually noticeable?
John:
Maybe it's my environment.
John:
Maybe it's because my tower computer has bad antennas and it's far away.
John:
But the Bluetooth signal from this Microsoft mouse to my computer is...
John:
not good enough to get smooth mouse moving all the time and it's not some catalina thing where it's freaking out like it's it's fine most people wouldn't notice but i can totally notice that the tracking is not great occasionally you get a little hitch i don't know what the problem is uh but i think it's bluetooth uh or maybe it's this mouse because i tried the mouse on my wife's computer too which presumably the bluetooth is closer there it's like a 5k iMac and then we're right in front of it with the mouse and
John:
And it was mostly fine, but it had a couple of hiccups.
John:
She rejected it the first time it had any kind of tracking hiccup.
John:
She's like, get this thing off my computer.
John:
And I don't blame her.
John:
Like, when you move the mouse, it should move the cursor in a direct one-to-one connection, and there should be no hitches, especially if your computer is idle.
John:
And she's not on Catalina, right?
John:
uh and so and she has had other bluetooth peripherals you know that aren't pointing devices like bluetooth keyboards and stuff like yeah the only reason i'm rejecting it out of hand is because i'm coming from a world with wired mice which never have this problem at all right and also because of logitech so the microsoft mouse i'll get to the logic stuff in a second but the microsoft mouse in bluetooth mode
John:
unacceptable luckily the microsoft mouse comes with a very very long thin usb cable that you can connect to the front of it and it becomes a wired mouse and in wired mode no problems no hitches no nothing on the other hand now you have a wire attached
John:
it's an interesting you know the fact that you can just plug and unplug it at the mouse at the point of the mouse and it's such a thin long cable is kind of nice because when i have my work laptop here and i'm working but i have my computer sort of behind it i can use the mouse with both i use it wired mode with my mac and then when i unplug it it's paired with the laptop you know what i mean on the same keyboard tray again more logitech stuff on that in a moment but i like that uh arrangement so
John:
For a while, the Microsoft mouse was my winner using it in wired mode because the ergonomics were right.
John:
I love the scroll wheel.
John:
The buttons were great.
John:
The shape was pretty good.
John:
The thumb flange wasn't too low.
John:
I was breaking in the little pads in the bottom and I didn't have to deal with Bluetooth because it was plugged in.
John:
Logitech.
John:
Everyone knows Logitech has their own thing going on.
John:
with uh you know before you before bluetooth they had their own little wireless rf dongle you'd stick it into a usb port and the mouse would communicate with it and as far as the computer was concerned it's like there was a usb mouse connected to it but really there was no wire there you know it's it's like usb but there's no cat um youtube won't get that that's like that's like a literary reference a literary historical it's a highbrow reference much higher brown like 80s movies
John:
Oh, my goodness.
John:
Our listeners will get it.
John:
You can look it up after.
John:
Anyway, my wife has been using a wireless logic mouse with her computers since the 2011 MacBook Air.
John:
I haven't.
John:
I've been using wired peripherals, but I've seen people use them at work.
John:
uh and let me tell you logitech again disclaimer they sent me a bunch of free stuff uh so take this with a grain of salt if you want but this is my opinion before they sent me a bunch of free stuff as well that stupid little rf dongle
Marco:
is rock solid.
Marco:
Yeah, it always has been.
Marco:
That's like one of the great reasons to use Logitech stuff is that those little RF dongles are way better than Bluetooth and usually they also usually lead to much longer battery life in the mice and it's just like everything about them is better.
John:
Yeah, it is fantastic.
John:
You would think, isn't this janky?
John:
Isn't this like a non-Apple, non-elegant solution?
John:
Shouldn't everything just be Bluetooth?
John:
It's built into your computer.
John:
The answer is no.
John:
That Logitech RF thing is amazing.
John:
Now, setting aside the USB 3.0 interference crap, which is not Logitech's fault.
John:
It's probably Intel's fault, right?
John:
Setting that aside, that stupid little dongle, which now is microscopic...
John:
It is, you know, if you AB tested me with a wired connection versus that RF thing, I'm not sure I could tell the difference.
John:
It does not stutter.
John:
It does not switch.
John:
The battery lasts for like seven years in your mouse.
John:
It is unbelievable.
John:
So, and in general, I tend to like Logitech mice.
John:
I mean, again, I've been using that older Logitech mouse for 10 years, right?
John:
So I'm predisposed to like Logitech.
John:
the tracking was just it was just unbelievable right this the marathon doesn't have a usb connection so i have to use the wireless one but like you know i was like well logitech has this down they've cornered this market until bluetooth can match it i should just not even consider bluetooth mice the marathon mouse specifically the mouse wheel
John:
Not as nice as the Microsoft one.
John:
It's one that does scrolling sideways by tilting the mouse.
John:
Do you remember that mechanism?
John:
Mm-hmm.
John:
It's not ideal.
John:
It has a ratcheting mode, and it has a smooth mode.
John:
The smooth mode is very smooth.
John:
The ratcheting mode is ratcheting, but it's also a rattle here.
John:
It's more fully.
John:
Listen to this.
John:
When you shake your mouse, you shouldn't hear anything.
John:
You shake this mouse, you hear something.
John:
It's because there's a lot of play in the mouse wheel.
John:
The buttons are okay.
John:
The shape is pretty good, but it's got a little bit of an overhang where your thumb goes instead of having straight sides like the Microsoft one.
John:
It's got two side buttons instead of three.
John:
The feet and the scrolling action...
John:
or the, I don't know what you call it.
John:
The mousing action is better than having the perimeter, but it is also breaking in.
John:
I think these pads are not even Teflon.
John:
They're like weirdly textured.
John:
So I think they're intentionally slowing it down a little bit and I can do with it being a little more slick.
John:
But in the competition between these two mice, which are the first two that I bought, the Microsoft one was winning, but I was using it wired.
John:
Finally, the Logitech sent the MX Master 3, which I know as the mouse that destroyed Mike Hurley's hands through RSI.
John:
That is the reputation that I, what do you know about this mouse?
John:
Mike Hurley had one and it hurt his hand.
John:
That's what I know about this mouse.
John:
And, you know, I know that it's been around for a while.
John:
Lots of people have it, you know, and so on and so forth.
John:
It's there.
John:
is their fancy mouse this has the thumb shelf to end all thumb shelves i don't know what they are expecting you to put on there i don't know how big people's thumbs are i i knew there's a button in the thumb shelf a couple of the logic mice have like this button down there i don't need a button in the thumb shelf this thumb shelf is so big i could fit like three fingers on it i don't like i was intentionally avoiding this mouse and not getting it because i'm like all right i can handle a thumb shelf but not that thumb shelf right
John:
as it turns out the gigantic thumb self is a problem but it's not it was not the the first problem i noticed the first one i noticed is that the thumb shelf and the whole wraparound thing of this mouse is sort of textured with like a scalloped kind of corduroy type texture that i do not find particularly pleasing can you only pet it in one direction
John:
you can't i mean it is kind of unidirectional i don't know uh like they're cut contour lines like on the bottom of a blue whale only on a mouse i would prefer it if it was smooth i love the idea that you think people will have seen a blue whale everyone knows what the underside of a blue whale looks like when you see it in the encyclopedia with the big like vertical like corduroy stripes right
Marco:
I would guess that listeners of this show might actually be more likely to know what an MX Master looks like than the underside of a certain type of whale.
John:
Some people know what animals look like, Marco.
John:
Anyway, the MX Master is a very high mouse.
John:
It is the highest one.
John:
It is also the one that rotates your hand most towards the hand shape grip.
John:
It's not a vertical mouse.
John:
A lot of people make vertical mice that...
John:
you put your hand on it the same in the same position as you would perform a handshake like vertically that is better ergonomically than turning your wrists inward that's why keyboards are tilted and that's why you know split keyboards yada yada right so ergonomically i'm thinking this is probably better for hand position than these other mice i do understand why mike might have had rsi issues because the mx master has like
John:
It's got a scroll wheel, but it also has a horizontal scroll wheel by your thumb, and it has two buttons by your thumb, and then it's got the main two buttons, and then it's got the gesture button down underneath your thumb.
John:
It's got a lot of controls, and if you try to work all the controls, it's a little bit... You have to be a little bit of a contortionist.
John:
You can mostly ignore the other controls if you don't want them because it's so high, like the wheels up above your hand.
John:
Anyway, the scrolling action on this...
John:
better than the cheaper logitech mice in terms of the smoothness of the pads moving across them not as smooth as my old mouse but definitely smoother than the microsoft mouse again i'm talking about physically scraping across the thing the scroll wheel on this one this is logitech's fancy scroll wheel it is metal it is solid it has the same sort of silent ratcheting uh feel as the microsoft one maybe a little bit less stiff i still think microsoft has the best scroll wheel on the market right now that i've tried
John:
but this one has the thing where if you spin it real fast it will auto switch from ratcheting mode to free spinning and this has the momentum where it will freely spin and keep spinning until you stop it in my experimentation because the other logic mouse also has that mode i found that i don't really like the free spinning mode where you just give it a spin and then stop it when you hit where you want that's not the way i like to work i tried to get used to it over the course of a couple weeks and i couldn't but i am still playing with the
John:
logitech one where it's mostly ratcheting but you don't have to switch modes itself it'll auto switch the modes for you um i'm using it wireless i'm using it with the uh the little wireless dongle uh in recent decades i don't know how long ago this happened probably five years ago whatever logitech had changed their little rf dongle to be what they call a unifying receiver where you just need one of those little dirty dongles and you use it with any number i don't know there's probably a limit but any number of logitech peripherals
John:
and this is good because if you have like you know multiple mice and keyboards or whatever you could pair them all with that dongle you don't need five usb ports right um and they come with some software that to manage that which i actually install but you're like oh my god you bought hardware and you install you install drivers for it don't do that like if it works without the drivers by all means do not install any third-party stuff
John:
uh and i i know i hear where you're coming from there that's usually my ethos but well first of all i i disobeyed that by buying steer mouse for the first two mice to mess with the tracking uh adjustments i don't know if you remember the software it's a it's like a usb mouse setting swiss army knife where you have
John:
You can assign all the buttons on basically any mouse.
John:
You can control the cursor by adjusting the acceleration to, like, four decimal points and sensitivity.
John:
And there's, like, window snapping.
John:
And, you know, you can switch through different settings for different mice and save them.
John:
And you can let the system control the mouse.
John:
You know, it's a very flexible piece of software.
John:
I highly recommend it to your mouse, despite the fact that a little mouse icon is horrendously ugly.
John:
And they should have someone draw a new one for them because it's uglier than all the mice that are on my desk.
John:
I don't know.
John:
It looks like...
John:
it looks like a tampon let's just say it looks like a plastic applicator tampon please steer mouse change your change your icon to something else um so i already installed that and i found it extremely valuable for trying to adjust the tracking to make them all feel good like to make them all feel like the apple mouse basically in terms of acceleration curves and everything and surprisingly they don't out of the box if you just use them without any drivers
John:
But for the MX Master, I installed the crazy Logitech thing.
John:
That is a very wide tampon.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Well, you know, some people... Yeah.
John:
The Logitech software is called Logitech Options.
John:
It has a terribly ugly icon.
John:
But the interface is actually pretty nice.
John:
I put a screenshot of it into our Slack thing.
John:
It shows you nice photos of the devices that are hooked up to your computer.
John:
And you click through to them and it lets you customize the buttons and it lets you...
John:
you know, change the scrolling stuff.
John:
You can change the sensitivity at which the wheel switches from ratcheting to freewheeling.
John:
There's a whole bunch of other options.
John:
You have different things for scrolling and pointer speed and different settings for the, you know, like everything you would imagine.
John:
As far as I can tell, it has not destroyed my computer.
John:
The app seems to be well behaved.
John:
And the tracking on this mouse, again, I can definitely say with this MX Master, I could not tell the difference between this and a USB connected mouse.
John:
there's no way i could tell it is buttery smooth perfect precision and control no matter how fast i move the thing it is it is amazing um shape wise i thought i was going to hate this thing because of the giant thumb shelf and because of how high it is uh but in practice i'm kind of getting used to it here is the one big downside and this is has a little bit to do with my setup here the gigantic thumb shelf there is a little pad again the bottom of the mouse one of the slippery pads is under the thumb shelf at the edge
John:
Because my mouse pad is not quite big enough, occasionally I will mouse to the left edge of my mouse pad when I'm traversing my gigantic monitor.
John:
And the mouse, as far as I'm concerned, has not left the edge of the mouse pad, right?
John:
Because my thumb is still well within the perimeter of the mouse pad.
John:
But the stupid shelf sticks out so far that the shelf has left the edge of the mouse pad and now has fallen down like a millimeter.
John:
And when I try to move it back, the little pad thing on the thumb shelf catches on the edge of the mouse pad, which is terrible, which is another reason that, A, this thumb shelf shouldn't be as big.
John:
But, B, I need a bigger mouse pad so that I can make the mouse pad extend all the way so it hits the edge of my keyboard.
John:
And that way...
John:
I will never be able to get the thumb shelf off the edge because before that happens the thumb shelf will hit my keyboard.
John:
So, yeah, in this competition right now, I'm using the MX Master just because it is the newest one, and I want to give it a fair shake of using it for, you know, a week or so to see.
John:
My previous champion was the Microsoft mouse.
John:
Again, if you don't know what a good knob on a toaster feels like or a good knob on a car feels like or a good scroll wheel feels like, go to a Microsoft store and feel the scroll wheel on the Microsoft Precision mouse.
John:
Whoever made this scroll wheel deserves a raise.
John:
As for the Windows logo, it's the new Windows logo, which everybody knows.
John:
But if you don't think about it, the new Windows logo is literally a square with a vertical line and a horizontal line going through the center of it.
John:
That's the logo.
John:
It is so generic.
John:
It is so generic that it is very easy for me to look at this and absolutely not recognize that as a Windows logo.
John:
It's also gray on a black mouse, right?
Casey:
Oh, but you know, you know what it really is.
John:
Well, here's what I want to say.
John:
This is a good peripheral.
John:
This is a good mouse.
John:
We talked about this before.
John:
Microsoft has made and continues to make good peripherals.
John:
This mouse is better than Apple's mouse.
John:
Full stop, unless you like very low mice.
John:
If you like very low mice, this mouse sucks because it's higher than the Apple mouse, right?
John:
But it's just playing better.
John:
It is ergonomically better.
John:
It is easier to hold.
John:
It has more affordances.
John:
The controls on it, like the click, feels higher quality than Apple's click on its giant mouse.
John:
uh it's a good product like i don't you know i microsoft makes a good product they deserve to have their logo on this mouse the mx master is a bit of an abomination it has a bunch of crap sticking out of it that i'm never going to use uh but the scrolling on it is great and the final thing is logitech has as part of this weird software that i installed that i hope i'm not going to regret they have a thing where
John:
You can use multiple computers with the same set of peripherals and transparently switch between them.
John:
So you can bring the mouse to one edge of your screen, the mouse cursor, and it will leap onto another computer screen.
John:
No KVM switching, no anything like literally the same mouse on two computers.
John:
Which you would think that's great because sometimes you've got your work laptop and your home thing and you're trying to do both at once and you don't have two mice and I don't want to use the trackpad.
John:
But it does that magic using networking.
John:
And I think when my laptop's on the VPN, that whole system won't work.
John:
So I'm probably not going to bother trying with it.
John:
The keyboard they sent.
John:
This is going to probably drive Marco up a wall, but this is definitely a thing.
John:
There's too much key travel.
John:
Oh, my word.
John:
There's too much key travel.
John:
I mean, you know, I've been using the Apple aluminum keyboard.
John:
I used the Apple Extended 2 for years, and then I had RSI issues, and I found that the Apple USB keyboards with the, you know, the very...
John:
short light travel like the original apple aluminum extended keyboard i found that better for my rsi and since then i've been a big proponent of these apple monitors that don't take a lot of pressure or distance to press the keys because that's better for my rsi with the apple extended i was you know hitting the keys too hard and it really exacerbated things right
John:
i'm now on the keyboard that came with my mac pro which is the magic key switches which i love i i like these key switches these are my favorite desktop key switches i've ever used in my post rsi era i tried the logitech keyboard and those keys have so much travel i felt like i was going on a journey every time i pressed the key they don't have as much travel as the apple extended too like i'm not saying it's like that but compared to the magic key like
John:
i just felt like i was putting in so much work i don't i don't have the kind of time to wait for these keys to go down and the keycaps are oddly shaped other than that the keyboard is and also the keyboard has like a kickstand on the back where it's like cranked up and that's exactly the wrong thing for a keyboard to do it should be level or tilted away from you even
John:
but it weighs a ton it is made of metal but most importantly for the multi-computer scenario that keyboard has three dedicated buttons where you can hit those buttons and it will cycle through three different computers again using this logitech like you know software and these unified receivers or whatever so if you go all logitech and if you do not have one of your computers on a vpn you can use a single keyboard and a single mouse to interact with three of them at the same time
John:
by pressing buttons on the keyboard to switch what the input is, and by just moving the mouse between the screens, which is not a thing that I'm particularly interested in, but I'm glad that feature exists.
John:
And I have to say, so far, using their software that they installed that hopefully is not destroying my computer,
John:
It's fairly straightforward to use, and other than the ugly icon, it seems kind of nice.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Maybe next week I'll come and say the Logitech software is destroyed by a computer, but so far I think it's actually pretty nice.
John:
And then finally, finally, the camera, because my six-umpteen-bajillion-dollar Pro Display XDR does not come with a camera of any kind, but Logitech will sell you one for...
John:
what is it like 200 bucks or something it's expensive anyway it's a quote-unquote webcam i think it's 4k uh i had a few curiosities about this one how do you have to connect it to your computer so that it works
John:
And two, how is the interface between like, how does it physically connect?
John:
You know, I know they said it's like magnetic or whatever, but how does that work?
John:
Like, is it just, you know, because the monitor case I'm assuming is aluminum, which is not particularly magnetic.
John:
How does it actually connect?
John:
Well, so the physical connection, as far as I can tell, and I really don't want anyone to tell me otherwise, because then I'll have to take out a tape measure.
John:
it's like on the smart cover thing on ipads where like a kind of like there's magnets in the device and also magnets in the cover and they line up with each other so it's kind of hard to get a smart cover on the wrong way like it just snaps in and you don't have to worry like oh is it is it off is it shifted it's oh it just it goes into position right so you bring this camera near the top of this monitor and it just chunk magnetizes right to
John:
a spot that i assume is dead center in the monitor which i find extremely pleasing and please don't tell me if it's not true i because i think that's the only place it goes on i don't think you can put it on the left or on the right i think it only magnetizes in the middle uh second thing is connecting with the cable it's usbc the the there's a little usbc port in the back of the camera and
John:
And you could connect that all sorts of places.
John:
I could run a cable from the camera to the back of my computer, to the top of my computer, but also to the USB-C ports that are on the back of my monitor.
John:
Ah, but with the base video card, the Radeon 580X, those USB ports are only USB 2.0 because all the high-speed lanes in the connection between the computer and the monitor are being taken up by the non-display stream compressed video.
John:
So all I've got left is USB 2.0.
John:
Is that sufficient for 4K video?
John:
the camera comes with a tiny little cable that connects directly from the camera and is just long enough to reach any one of the three usbc ports which i super appreciate because cable management is an issue and this is a tiny beautiful purpose-built cable one is a right angle uh you know the connector is a right angle for going into the back of the monitor and the other one goes in or maybe i'm reversed anyway it's it's like a perfectly sized cable plugged into the back of the monitor
John:
I think it's working.
John:
I opened FaceTime.
John:
I saw myself.
John:
I think I was in 4K.
John:
It's really hard for me to tell.
John:
The camera tilts, which is nice.
John:
The monitor is so big that I have to tilt the camera down, even though I ergonomically adjusted it so that the top of monitor is directly aligned with my eyeline.
John:
That's where I have it lined up.
John:
Even doing that, maybe I'm just slouching all the time.
John:
I don't know.
John:
But I had to aim the camera down to get a view of myself and the view of the room behind me.
John:
So it's aimed down a little bit.
John:
The only way the whole physical setup could be better, one, if the camera was smaller, because obviously it's a little comically large for what it's doing.
John:
I don't know what the hell is inside that thing, but it's like, come on.
John:
You can build...
John:
granted a crappier camera but a so much smaller one in the 5k iMac so much so that you don't even see that it's there now i have this thing sitting on top of my monitor uh that's a little bit uh overwhelming and two uh everyone should see this one coming i would like it better if the tiny little purpose-built cable that came to connect this camera to the back of my monitor was uh braided in black yep
John:
you got it braided in black make everything braided but anyway i i will accept this merely black but not braided cable because it is the perfect length oh my word so uh and then so the the gaming mouse i'm interested in because of the high dpi and because the shape of it is the closest to my old mouse but i haven't tried that yet
John:
So I've been sitting here with this computer with multiple mice.
John:
I think I've had at least three mice sitting on this desk all connected to the computer at the same time for multiple weeks now.
John:
I'm not sure when I'm ever going to pick a winner and retire one, but right now it feels like the Microsoft mouse is probably still in the lead, but the MX Master had a few days in it, and it's really nice.
John:
So I think the lesson here is that if you haven't looked at the world of
John:
third-party mice look at it because there's some good stuff out there uh and you may be surprised to find something that you know to your react both of your reactions looking at the beginning of these things they are homely looking they're not they're not like sleek or beautiful but some of them really are good uh knob feel is a thing mouse feel is a thing and in particular uh
Marco:
non-bluetooth connections of your mice is also a thing uh do not turn your nose up at it because it's old tech it's old tech that works i will also add very briefly here you mentioned during your keyboard segment that it would probably drive me crazy that you were saying you wanted a keyboard with less travel i actually just by coincidence happened to between last week and this week uh change my keyboard temporarily so
Marco:
I usually use the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic keyboard, not the Surface Ergonomic, the Sculpt Ergonomic.
Marco:
It is a split black keyboard with a gap in the middle and elevated on the front.
Marco:
So it's by far my favorite ergonomic keyboard, and I've been using it for a number of years now.
Marco:
However, there is one fatal flaw with the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic keyboard.
Marco:
After a while, it just kind of flakes out, and then you've got to replace it.
Marco:
There's no coming back from it.
Marco:
After a while, keystrokes will start queuing up or getting missed or something, and you can change the batteries, and you can move the receiver around, and it just never fixes itself.
Marco:
You just have to replace it.
Marco:
Fortunately, they're only about $60.
Marco:
Mine last about two years, so I wore out the current one I was using, went to the closet, had to get the next one, but I thought, well, now that I'm replacing it...
Marco:
I've gone through this kind of self-improvement kick for the last couple of years, and one of the things I mentioned on the show is I tried to eliminate myself from having to say, oh, I don't like an entire class of food.
Marco:
So now I can eat seafood, for instance.
Marco:
I used to go say, I don't like seafood, and that would make it hard to go to certain types of restaurants, and I hated that limitation.
Marco:
So I've slowly worked to eliminate my limitations as much as possible.
Marco:
And
Marco:
One of the things I thought was, now that I'm in better shape than I've ever been in, you know, I have like regular exercise, my arms and wrists are in better condition than they've been in, maybe I don't need a split ergonomic keyboard anymore.
Marco:
I would love to be able to just comfortably use any keyboard again and be able to join this like, you know,
Marco:
mechanical keyboard revolution everyone's going through and everything and i happen to have in my closet for years a uh filco magistux 2 10 keyless mechanical keyboard with the cherry mx brown switches i bought it years ago thinking maybe i would try it then tried it for about a week started getting sore and put it in the closet um so i thought now that i'm between keyboards while i replace my sculpt uh let me try that again and
Marco:
And sure enough, you know, the Sculpt has scissor style keys, you know, laptop kind of travel scissor style keys.
Marco:
The Filco, of course, has like the big mechanical Cherry MX key.
Marco:
So like, you know, big full travel.
Marco:
It felt weird to me to go back because like I've been using scissor keys, you know, on my desktop and my laptop full time.
Marco:
for over a decade and so it's been a very long time since i've used like full big you know chunk style keys and it really did feel weird to me and i ended up putting it back not because of the travel although it i didn't give it enough time to get used to it i gave it less than a day but because i kept hitting uh the wrong modifiers and everything because i realized that
Marco:
the sculpt has kind of ruined me for placement of what it is labeled as the alt key, but what functionally behaves as the command key, the key next to the space bar that modifies your, your commands.
Marco:
Um, it lines up its alt key almost below the E and most keyboards align that key below the W or bridging between the W and the E or
Marco:
And so I realized I've actually kind of, like, my muscle memory of my left hand hitting command slash alt and all of the keys on that side, like WE, you know, for window closing, stuff like that, it was all off.
Marco:
I kept, like, accidentally quitting my apps because I was hitting Q instead of W and everything.
Marco:
It was crazy.
Marco:
And so I had to switch back just because, like, that was too much of an adjustment for me.
Marco:
Like, that and the key travel, it just felt really weird to me.
Marco:
So I'm kind of ruined now.
Marco:
And, like, now I kind of feel like
Marco:
scissor keys are my full travel keyboard and i mean again really they have been for over a decade if i'm honest with myself but i wonder if that will ever transition further like i wonder if i will slowly get used to the lower and lower travel scissor key switches that apple's moving towards over the years and maybe eventually i won't care and i'll be like yeah bring back the butterfly god i hope not you'll be ready you'll be ready to type on glass
Marco:
yeah right exactly like like is this like is there a a lower limit to like how what we will get used to i honestly i think the butterfly keyboard might have shown like oh yeah okay there is such a thing as too far i think apple had a patent on a negative travel keyboard where the buttons actually bulge out at you yeah they hit you did you see that one they did have a thing where it's like the screen bulges so you could feel where the keys are which is
John:
basically negative travel if they don't go in like that it reaches out to touch you anyway yeah mechanical keyboards do feel like i used you know the apple extended 2 i used from you know the the release of the se 30 all the way up until i
John:
i think my blue and white g3 just that same keyboard i've extended to um and then i switched to usb full travel keyboards and then i switched to the the lower travel ones but yeah it does feel weird to go back it feels like like i said it feels like you're going on quite a journey to get each key press it's like why am i it feels like you're using your whole arm it's like really and you know again technology marches on i i still vastly prefer this
John:
whatever key switches are in this magic keyboard that came with my mac pro i vastly prefer that to the butterfly switches and by the way i just got my uh 2017 macbook pro back from repair at work and you know i'm assuming they did a total keyboard replacement because i think that's the only way you can repair these things but my space bar is back um it they didn't replace it with the membrane one as far as i can tell i think you're not even able to replace it with the membrane one because it feels the same as it did but uh but yeah this
John:
You know, I never really seriously considered a different keyboard.
John:
I really like this one that came with the Mac Pro.
John:
And the key travel has got to be like a third or a quarter of what it was on the Apple Extended 2.
John:
Maybe less, maybe I'm underestimating it.
John:
Oh, I forgot one thing I forgot to mention about the Logitech ridiculous software that it comes with.
John:
Because this mouse has a million different settings on it, well, some cool things that this thing does.
John:
It has settings for each of your devices, and you can also use per-application settings, and it syncs them all to the cloud.
John:
So no matter what, you know, they have some kind of cloud service.
John:
So no matter what Mac you hook up to or any computer, Mac or PC, that you use this mouse with,
John:
it will remember your preferences for how the buttons work and how the scroll wheel works and how the tracking works, which is great.
John:
Like not having to sync that up.
John:
It's a great use of the cloud.
John:
And the second thing is it comes with a bunch of saved sets of like, here, we've customized the things for this app, right?
John:
So I'm in Chrome now.
John:
And if I do the horizontal scroll wheel, it switches between tabs.
John:
i don't know what all the settings are i didn't look at them like it prompts you and says hey do you want to try all these settings and i was like you know what why the hell not like it has ones for photoshop it has ones for a whole bunch of different common apps where it tries to make all the various buttons and stuff do things that are interesting and useful in those apps obviously you can customize this yourself again maybe why mike got rsi maybe he had a logic setup where he was doing all sorts of commands with it or whatever but
John:
i like the idea that they do most of that work for you and sync it all through the cloud and have sort of third-party sharing of things steer mouse has that too by the way there's like hey here are settings that other people found useful for this particular mouse in terms of acceleration and sensitivity that works with you know and i would try other people's settings that are like rated with star ratings or something and see how how do other people have it set up and do i like it um
John:
That is technology that's like above and beyond like what you would think of in the old days of like you connect a mouse with a computer and it is what it is.
John:
It's so much beyond that now.
John:
And I'm, I'm, I'm really, I'm proud of Logitech for like, I expected their software to be garbage and I expected their mice to be kind of clunky.
John:
And these things feel really solid and their software seems pretty good and has useful features.
John:
I know, again, I know it sounds terrible because they just sent me a bunch of free stuff, but this was my opinion before they sent me the free stuff as well.
John:
Take it, take it as you will.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Linode, and Mack Weldon.
John:
And we will see you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
John:
They didn't even mean to begin.
John:
Because it was accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
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, they didn't mean.
Casey:
You know, I didn't get a chance to say this in the show, but I don't understand why you don't just do what I did, which a year or two ago would have seemed like heresy.
Casey:
I hope I pronounced that right.
Casey:
But anyways.
Marco:
It's pronounced hearsay.
Marco:
Yeah, hear a say.
Casey:
It would have been hear a say.
Casey:
But anyways, switching to the Magic Trackpad, which I'm actually surprised.
Casey:
I hate trackpads.
John:
Oh, my God.
John:
You should have had them in the shot.
John:
No, trackpads never.
Casey:
No, no, John.
Casey:
A year ago, I completely agree with you.
Casey:
A year ago, I am probably more devout in my hatred a year ago of trackpads than you are.
Casey:
But now I'm happy with it.
John:
I'm never switching to a trackpad.
John:
It's one of the reasons I hate laptops.
John:
I grew up with mice the way other people grew up with walking.
John:
You can just give up walking and try dragging your body across the ground by your teeth.
John:
No!
John:
I'm always going to walk.
John:
I am always going to use a mouse for things that are mouse-like.
John:
Oh, my God, I hate trackpads.
John:
I understand why you have to have one on a laptop because it's a laptop, but it's the only reason I will ever use one.
Casey:
Wow.
God, I hate trackpads.
Casey:
John, I'm telling you, a year ago, I would have been even more devout.
John:
As an accessory like how Marker uses it?
John:
Yeah, then you're like a two-handed thing.
John:
This is my swipey pad and this is my mouse.
John:
But no, I got it.
John:
Yeah, I'm a big fan.
John:
Left-hand trackpad, right-hand mouse.
John:
Big fan.
John:
But I got it.
John:
The cursor is controlled by the mouse.