The Ultimate Vanity Search
Casey:
We should probably start the show, shouldn't we?
Casey:
What show?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
That thing that we accidentally made when we were talking about cars.
Casey:
We had a lot of really, really, really, really awesome feedback about the last episode.
Casey:
And I don't say that to self-congratulate.
Casey:
What I mean is a lot of listeners wrote in various forms and tweets and emails and all sorts of things to say, not only that they like all of us and...
Casey:
that they also enjoy the show in particular, they enjoyed the end of the last show.
Casey:
And I don't know that us having group therapy sessions is really going to be entertaining on a regular basis, but, uh, I really appreciate, and I think I speak for the two of you guys as well.
Casey:
I really appreciate everyone that wrote in and said, uh, keep on keeping on.
Casey:
So that was very kind of every single one of you.
Casey:
And I tried to reply to pretty much everyone that I saw, but if I missed you, my apologies and thanks.
Casey:
Thanks so much for, uh, having written in that.
Casey:
That was really cool.
Marco:
Yeah, definitely.
Marco:
We got a lot of great feedback about that because I think a lot of people don't talk about this stuff in public on the internet because it doesn't fit into the topic of your site or your podcast.
Marco:
And this is true of lots of various human factors that just don't really get enough coverage.
Marco:
But the few times where you can get people to show you their more human side usually are pretty well received.
Marco:
And we didn't...
Marco:
We didn't do it to solicit or fish for compliments.
Marco:
We got a lot of compliments, and I'm very thankful for that.
Casey:
I was going to say it worked well that way, but that wasn't the point.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
That wasn't the intention, but we do appreciate everyone's feedback, and it was very nice, so thank you.
John:
Yeah, a lot of people also said that even though it said this really isn't on topic for the podcast or whatever, like, oh, well, you know, but you should talk about it anyway, because and the same point a lot of them made was that in particular, the technology market has difficulties with a lot of the issues we discussed, both, you know, personalities and technology.
John:
Taking and receiving criticism and the whole angle on workplace problems and gender relations and the whole nine yards.
John:
It's true that that is a problem in particular in the tech industry.
John:
I'm still not entirely sure it's on topic for a tech podcast.
John:
So I know people are like, oh, then you should start a different podcast and talk about these things or whatever.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I think it's good to do once in a while, and I think if there is an angle on it, like if something related to those topics happens in the industry, that's how we find ourselves talking about it.
John:
We started off talking about the Penny Arcade thing.
John:
It just kind of drifted from there, and I think that's fine, but I'm not sure it should be like a, you know, it really is going off the rails if you start making your podcast about that.
John:
That would be a perfectly good topic for another podcast, but we've all got enough podcasts here.
Marco:
Well, plus, if it isn't immediately clear to everybody, the three of us could talk about anything.
Marco:
We could go off the rails in any possible direction very easily.
Marco:
So it's important that we at least try to keep ourselves somewhat on at least one topic per or at least one genre of show while we're actually recording that show.
Casey:
Something like that.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So, yeah.
Casey:
So thanks again to everyone that wrote in.
Casey:
That was very kind of you.
Casey:
And even if you didn't write in, thanks for indulging us while we talked about.
Casey:
Now, John, you seem to have, I'm assuming this was you, John, a lot of feedback about PrimeSense.
John:
last week we talked about apple buying prime sense was the company that uh makes connect like sensors like the xbox connect and i still i still didn't even bother yeah i didn't do any research marco and casey wouldn't let him didn't bother looking up whether what their what their relationship to the original connect was whether they were the company that made the sensor or whether they sold it to my god i don't know but anyway they make a connect like sensor and apple bought them and last week i said that uh it
John:
The obvious idea would be that, oh, Apple bought them, and that means they're going to use something like the Microsoft Kinect on whatever their crazy TV thing is.
John:
And I said, what about if they use that same technology in an iOS device to do something less impressive?
John:
I said that not knowing that if you had just simply gone to the PrimeSense website, you would have seen on their listing of products that one of the products they offer is something that's sized meant to fit inside a tablet.
John:
So there you go.
John:
It's not a stretch.
John:
It's an existing product that is very small and could fit inside a tablet.
John:
And who knows what Apple bought them for?
John:
But it's clear that...
John:
this company could offer a lot of things to both Apple's current product lines and product lines that we all speculate that Apple may every hell even put put something like that in a watch or whatever.
John:
And then I had some more info on the issues of this kind of technology, in particular,
John:
if and this is a big if if you just look at what prime sense prime sense sensors are like and what connect sensors are like and say could apple use that type of thing in a television or in an ios device the problem with the ios device angle is that
John:
both of the approaches that PrimeSense and the existing Kinect sensors use don't work very well outdoors.
John:
And iOS devices have to be able to, I mean, I don't know what percentage of time they spend indoors and outdoors, but enough time that if you have something that only works indoors, it's probably not viable for any iOS devices that Apple sells.
John:
And the problem with doing it outdoors is they both use infrared, and infrared outdoors can get washed out if it's a sunny day because the sun is going to have way more IR.
John:
than anything that's put out by one of these devices or sensors.
John:
And one way to get around it is to really crank up the IR on the device, but that burns battery and could blind people if you, you know, shine it in their face.
John:
So it's not a great solution there.
John:
And there's also the problem of what is the stereo distance between the sensors?
John:
You have to kind of pick.
John:
Do you want it to be able to get depth information about things that are really close, like your finger on an iPad or something?
John:
Or do you want it to be able to get stuff that's farther away?
John:
And there's some difficult trade-offs there.
John:
So...
John:
anything that uses this kind of technology uh is probably going to be focused on indoor application but that's not to say that anything apple is going to make with this company is going to have anything to do with any technology that we've already seen this is just looking at what they have done who knows what they're going to do uh and it's perfectly feasible that apple might have bought them based on some technology that they had in the works that nobody's seen yet so uh
John:
I don't know.
John:
It's a company you watch.
John:
It's like PA Semi because it's interesting and exciting from a hardware angle.
John:
And software is a little bit more mutable.
John:
We'll talk about that a little bit later, I think.
John:
But when Apple has a hardware company, you have to think that they bought them because they want to do something similar to what this company has done in hardware.
John:
They're not just buying it to get, oh, well, you know, you might buy a company to get a bunch of software developers.
John:
So we could put these guys to work at iOS.
John:
But if you buy people who make this kind of a sensor, you've got to think they're doing something with some kind of weird sensor, right?
John:
So I'm excited by the possibilities of putting any kind of weird Kinect-like sensor in anything that Apple makes.
Casey:
It should be interesting, although certainly I can't conceive of what they're going to do with this.
Casey:
But just like you said, that's the beauty of it.
Casey:
Any other follow-up, you or Marco?
Casey:
Or Marco, do you just want to tell us about something that's awesome?
Marco:
This episode is brought to you in part by our friends at Squarespace.
Marco:
Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio.
Marco:
Did they used to say in minutes at the end of that slogan?
Marco:
Or am I thinking of something else?
Casey:
I don't recall.
Marco:
I think it used to be in minutes.
Marco:
Anyway, it's really fast and easy.
Marco:
Anything longer than a minute is technically in minutes, right?
Marco:
Well, I mean, even... I think anything that's not exactly one minute could be minutes.
John:
There you go.
Marco:
You know, if it's like 0.78 minutes, that's minutes.
Marco:
Just exactly 1.0, that's a minute.
Marco:
For a free trial and 10% off your first purchase, go to squarespace.com and use offer code ATP12.
Okay.
Marco:
Squarespace is constantly improving their platform with new features, new designs, and even better support.
Marco:
They have beautiful designs for you to start with and all the style options you need to create a unique website for you or your business.
Marco:
Every design also automatically includes a unique mobile experience that matches the overall style of your site.
Marco:
So your content will look great on every device every time with these responsive layouts.
Marco:
Squarespace is very easy to use, whether it takes minute or minutes.
Marco:
But if you need any help, Squarespace has an amazing support team that works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with over 70 full-time employees right here in New York City doing their support.
Marco:
Squarespace starts at just $8 a month, and it includes a free domain name if you sign up for a whole year up front.
Marco:
But you don't even need to.
Marco:
You can start a free trial with no credit card required.
Marco:
It's a real free trial, no obligation, no credit card required.
Marco:
And you can start building your website today.
Marco:
See if you like it.
Marco:
When you decide to sign up for Squarespace, make sure to use our offer code ATP12 to get 10% off your initial purchase and to show your support for our wonderful podcast.
Marco:
Squarespace is everything you need to create an exceptional website, and we thank them very much for their support.
Marco:
We use Squarespace, and we like it.
Marco:
We have our show there.
Marco:
We did our previous show, Neutral.
Marco:
We have that site there.
Marco:
It's really great, really easy.
Marco:
Not everybody needs to write everything from scratch, and coming from me, that's kind of ridiculous to hear, but
Marco:
Believe me, they do things that would take me writing from scratch years and years to do, and they do it in minutes.
Marco:
So it's really great.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to Squarespace for supporting our show.
Marco:
Don't forget, use coupon code ATP12.
John:
I thought of a new Squarespace-based business plan.
John:
Find a business that you go to that you like or maybe – or it doesn't have to be a business that you like.
John:
your barber or your landscape or whatever, and you see that they have a website, but it's terrible.
John:
A new business idea is to fix people's terrible websites.
John:
they pay you and then you take some of the money they paid you and pay it to Squarespace and just give them a Squarespace site, which takes you like 10 seconds of clicking.
John:
You're basically becoming like a Squarespace value added reseller for people.
John:
Because I always wonder why these people have such terrible websites when like for pocket change, like I know how much these landscapers make.
John:
They make, they make plenty of money or, you know, anybody, if you have enough money for any website, it's just these people's websites are terrible because they're not web designers.
John:
They don't know what they're doing.
John:
The websites look like they were made in 1992 and,
John:
They have little, you know, animated men under, you know, men working construction image at the bottom of it and a website hit counter.
John:
It's like, geez, just get a Squarespace site.
John:
It's so easy and it will look better and everyone will be happier.
John:
And if you can facilitate that, then that's maybe a viable business.
Marco:
This is like back in the late 90s and early 2000s, there was this whole business – I guess there still is – this whole business of web hosting resellers.
Marco:
Things like cPanel and stuff were developed not for one person running one server for themselves, but were developed for people who ran tons of sites on tons of different servers or tons of sites on one server for clients and charged them a big premium for that.
Marco:
It seems like Squarespace has really kind of made that entire industry half-obsolete.
John:
Yeah, because nobody wants to use a C-pound for an interface.
John:
That is not anything that a regular, that's what kept regular people away.
John:
And they would pay some teenager to make their website and that teenager would go away and they'd be stuck with this website and they can never change.
John:
That's terrible and never gets any better.
John:
And yeah.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So speaking of acquisitions, Apple is still up in buying things, and they bought Topsy, which I had never heard of before.
John:
I'd heard the name before, but I didn't know what they did until I read the articles.
John:
Like, first of all, how does a company, I mean, I guess I understand how a company uses this, but what did they get, over 200 million, something like that?
Casey:
I believe that's right.
John:
So this is a company that none of us have really heard of, or maybe we heard the name or whatever.
John:
This company apparently existed.
John:
as a way to mine data from the twitter stream so they would absorb all the tweets and they would sort of index them and allow i guess allow people to do searches to find out what's going on on twitter and stuff and i guess they resell this to people like advertisers who want to see what's trending or like it's a business it's it's like b2b it's not a consumer level business because these people as far as i know did not make a company worth 200 million dollars to apple by selling services to individual customers right
Casey:
I believe that's right.
Casey:
I mean, from what very, very little I know about it because I didn't do any research.
Casey:
But everything – I think that's right.
John:
But the fact that they're so Twitter-focused is mysterious because why would Apple buy a company –
John:
so focused on a service they don't own right it's not like they bought a mapping company to help them with their maps they don't have a twitter equivalent so what is a company that has expertise in mining the twitter stream going to do for them do they have some other stream that they would like to point topsy at and say we would like you to extract information from this are they going to be collecting metrics from people wandering through the app store it's i don't know i mean the price tag was a little high to be an aqua higher but
Marco:
I think Facebook and Google buy all sorts of crazy crap just to get talent in the door.
Marco:
Really, they're just buying the staff.
Marco:
That's the aqua hire phenomenon.
Marco:
Apple has a big problem that they have a real need for really good staff.
Marco:
And we can see a lot of the areas in which they are clearly short-staffed.
Marco:
We see a lot of the applications...
Marco:
You know, like I've said recently that I think their hardware is better than it's ever been right now.
Marco:
But their services have never been great and are still not great.
Marco:
And even their software is really starting to go into disrepair in a lot of different areas.
Marco:
I think the OS-level stuff is rock solid.
Marco:
I think whoever they have working on the OS-level teams, they clearly have great people and enough of them, I think.
Marco:
But it seems like the applications teams are really strained.
Marco:
And that's why you go like, you know, you have...
Marco:
all these years of iWork 09, followed by this new release of iWork that is really obviously unfinished, that was rushed out the door for other reasons, probably, you know, lining it up with the marketing of the new iPads and et cetera.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
Clearly, Apple needs more people.
Marco:
They need more engineers.
Marco:
They need more staff.
Marco:
And they also have a bit of a retention problem because, from what I understand, this is purely anecdotal, but from what I understand, they lose a lot of really good people because there's this whole world of apps and startups happening around them, around their own ecosystem that they've created, and
Marco:
And their own employees can't participate in that while they're working for Apple.
Marco:
And so it's very tempting for their employees to be like, you know, now that I've been working, you know, supporting UIKit or apps or whatever for all these years, maybe I want to actually go make my app.
Marco:
And Apple has a pretty good policy about if you want to leave and then come back within a certain amount of time, you can like retain all your seniority and stuff.
Marco:
So like they have a problem getting people and retaining people.
Casey:
Even more than going and making an app, imagine if you wanted to do independent consulting and you have Apple on your resume.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
You know, that pretty much is the only entry you need on your resume if you're going to do either iOS or OS X development and consulting.
Casey:
Well, you know, what makes you think that you're so special and you're good at this?
Casey:
I used to work for Apple.
Casey:
Where do I sign?
You know?
Casey:
So I mean it really opens a lot of doors having that on your resume.
Marco:
Like, oh, I wrote iPhoto.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
Or this API that everyone's coding against, I wrote the API.
Marco:
So for Apple to buy a company like this where it doesn't seem obvious to us what part of the company's product they might want –
Marco:
$200 million is a lot of money for an acquihire, but maybe they had some really good people.
Marco:
Most acquihires are in the $10 million to $50 million range.
Marco:
But if they had a bunch of really good people, maybe that's worth it to them.
Marco:
And this is a large web service that was consuming the live Twitter feed, or the live Twitter firehose, as they call it, which is kind of gross.
Marco:
But they were consuming that.
Marco:
That's a large-scale web service operation.
Marco:
Apple needs a lot of help in large-scale web service operations.
John:
Did you follow the second link I put underneath?
Marco:
Of course not.
Marco:
I didn't do any research.
John:
So the second link is a... Oh, the Dalton one.
Marco:
Yeah, I did read that.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I don't know if this is true or not, but Dalton of app.net fame...
John:
says that as far as he knows, Topsy is a Perl company, as he calls it, meaning that they implement their web service in Perl.
John:
And for the most part, Apple does not know their Perl from their elbow.
John:
And so the expertise that the programmers in those companies might have in writing server-side applications in Perl, I can't imagine Apple thinking those particular technical skills are...
John:
worth anything to them.
Marco:
Well, that doesn't matter.
Marco:
When you're dealing with the scale that Topsy was dealing with or the scale that Apple is dealing with or needs to be dealing with, the actual language that you're writing your application really does not matter one bit.
Marco:
It's really much more about how you write it, how you use the resources of things like the database, the network, the cache layer, stuff like that.
Marco:
It's such a bigger picture thing than just the language.
Marco:
It doesn't matter what text editor you use to write a shell script.
Marco:
It matters what it's doing.
Marco:
Similar, when you get to a scale like what they're doing, you can do it in any language, really.
John:
But when they do aqua hires, I have to imagine if they do aqua hires of people who they know they want to put on the iOS team, they want the people who they hire, they could be app developers or whatever, but they want them to be Objective-C programmers because they're going to put you deep in the guts of Objective-C.
John:
Or if they're hiring someone for the core OS group, they want them to know C and BSD API specifically because that's where they're going to be.
John:
Then I'm just like, well, you've worked on some operating system.
John:
I have to think that the technical skills are relevant when in particular doing aqua hires.
John:
It seems to me that Topsy has...
John:
But from the outside, it looks like Topsy has abilities that Apple wishes it had.
John:
Like they consume the Twitter fire hose and they get something out of it.
John:
And I think Apple has a very specific thing in mind, some big giant stream of data that they want to feed into something and get useful information out of it.
John:
And it's high volume and they need a company that can take a high volume stream of data and do something with it.
John:
So that seems...
John:
like the most likely thing i just can't think of exactly which stream it is i mean there's many possible streams they have all this activity of customers doing things buying things in stores rating applications all that stuff uh hell it could even be map data someone to handle all of the feedback that we've all been putting into apple maps to say this thing is in the wrong place and we're frustrated that it doesn't result in action you know quickly i don't know uh this also i think may be hard to tell
John:
Like, with with the with a sensor purpose, it'll pretty be it'll be pretty obvious when we see something with some crap or crazy sensor on it will be like, Oh, that was probably that crazy sensor company they bought.
John:
But with topsy, it may be hard for us to tell what, you know, there may be no obvious moment we said, Oh, there must have been well, that's why they hired topsy to do this, it might not be it might not be obvious at all.
John:
In fact, it might be entirely for internally facing tools they do for their own metrics, they never show anybody.
John:
So this is mysterious.
Marco:
Also, going back a half step to the web service thing, Apple's web services are still, in the grand scheme of things, young.
Marco:
And a lot of them are compartmentalized or outsourced.
Marco:
So if Apple wanted to build up a big service presence in-house, there's still a lot of room to start that, not quite from scratch, but close.
Marco:
to really get in on the ground floor and do that.
John:
They need to do that.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And so if they... Just because these people built a really big volume web service using Perl that consumes the Twitter stream to get certain things out...
Marco:
Apple really might be using this just to start another department or bring something that was outsourced in-house from some big thing they're already doing with a fresh new start, a fresh new team, or not having an outsource for the first time.
Marco:
There's a lot of potential even for that.
Marco:
We've been saying every third week,
Marco:
that Apple sucks at web services and needs to really take it to the next level and take it a lot more seriously and make it a bigger priority in the company.
Marco:
Maybe something like this is the start of that.
John:
Maybe they could acquihire Microsoft to get the Azure team.
John:
Is that possible?
John:
Do we have to wait a couple more years?
Marco:
I think just a couple.
Marco:
I don't know how many.
Marco:
We'll see.
Marco:
Just hire Elop as the CEO, and then he'll make it really cheap for them.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
So I wonder, though, if Topsy is about – what if it's about consuming Twitter data about Apple?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
and not allowing competitors to use the same technology to look at... It's the ultimate vanity search.
John:
Apple needs to know what they're saying about us on Twitter.
Casey:
Topsy, tell us.
Casey:
That's actually exactly what I'm talking about.
Casey:
To be honest, my first thought, which I'm a little mad at you, John, because you stole it from me before I had a chance to say it, was for internal use about maybe the App Store or something like that, which you said a moment ago.
Casey:
But what if it is about the ultimate vanity search to see what... Tim Cook loves his customer sat, which that
Casey:
That abbreviation infuriates me.
Marco:
To be fair, I think he stopped saying that recently.
Casey:
Well, whatever.
Casey:
The customer satisfaction numbers – I mean Tim Cook loves his customer satisfaction numbers.
John:
But they're already getting those numbers.
John:
I have to think that there is nothing that Apple cares about what its customers think is $200 million worth.
John:
Like seriously.
John:
That's always been the attitude of the company is –
John:
We accept feedback from customers to get a feel for its output, but in general, they think it's their job to show us what it is that we want rather than just asking what we want and trying to build that.
John:
That's always been the company's MO, and that's what we like about them.
John:
So I can't imagine...
John:
an entirely like, oh, we need to figure out what's out there about Apple or about Apple customers $200 million worth like this, the Twitter firehose is way more volume than you just need to sample users, right?
John:
Whereas if you want to get, I don't think they're sampling the firehose, I think they're consuming it all and indexing it and all that stuff, which is very different than surveying customers and seeing how your satisfaction is, I have to think all they have things in place for all of the
Marco:
sort of market research feedback about what's needing to get repair what are people unsatisfied about all that stuff like that has to already be in place it doesn't seem like it's a problem area for apple well also that's not incredibly unique to topsy like there there have been multiple companies that have over over the last you know five years multiple people who have come up who who uh who take the twitter the twitter fire hose and parse stuff out of it i mean it's that's
Marco:
It's not an easy thing to do, but it's certainly not unique to this one particular company that no one else will ever be able to do it again.
John:
Twitter bought one of them, didn't they?
John:
Didn't they buy Summly or something?
John:
Not the other.
Marco:
There was some other... Summys is what you're talking about.
Marco:
That was a long time ago, and that is what became Twitter search.
John:
Yeah, I know.
John:
But that was always funny, though, because Twitter was creating the data, and they had to buy an outside company to be able to search that.
John:
Remember when Twitter search sucked?
John:
Twitter is actually a good success story for a company that didn't know how to make wide-scale web services and figured it out.
John:
Because Twitter, in the beginning, had an idea.
John:
They had Ruby on Rails.
John:
They had, I'm assuming, hipsters in San Francisco or whatever it is they need.
John:
Yeah.
John:
But then they ran into the giant avalanche of users, and then they had problems and problems and problems.
John:
This is kind of the natural arc of any startup.
John:
You try to build something, you really hope somebody likes it, then all of a sudden the users come and you're excited, then more users come and you're a little bit scared, and then you basically have to figure it out.
John:
And they did, barely.
John:
I would say Twitter came the closest to a company that was crushed by its own success in terms of not being able to handle the traffic.
John:
If they had...
John:
anything close to a viable competitor that had the mind share they had, they could have just as easily gone down as a footnote of that company that we thought was going to be big but couldn't keep their stuff together and some other company stole their bacon, but it turns out they ended up getting
John:
enough mind share soon enough that we all just tolerated their terrible problems and now they've come out of it and they're so much bigger handling volumes that would have made the the the head spin back in the you know 2006 2007 days uh so if if twitter can do it coming from essentially nothing to a world-class web service that does incredible volumes again surely apple can right and when you say this every you know it seems like they have they got all the money in the world why can't they get their stuff together i don't know
Marco:
It's really about priorities, I think, and culture.
Marco:
They're such a big company that they need to make significant changes from the top to the bottom.
Marco:
They need somebody at the senior VP level whose only job it is to do stuff like this.
Marco:
Isn't that like half of somebody's job up there?
Marco:
Is it Eddie Q?
Casey:
I thought so.
John:
I think he was in charge of services or something like that.
John:
Some umbrella term like that.
John:
He's basically in charge of the iTunes store and I think all of their web service-y type things.
Marco:
Do you think he needs to be replaced?
John:
It's so hard.
Marco:
You can't play politics with that.
Marco:
Is it not his problem?
Marco:
Is it that he's – does he have an impossible job?
Casey:
Isn't Q in charge of scoring licensing deals and things of that nature?
Casey:
Didn't he kind of become the de facto guy to do that?
Marco:
I think so.
Casey:
That's certainly what we've heard.
John:
Yeah, he's always been – like the iTunes store, he was part of the content deals and everything like that.
John:
Right.
John:
Maybe the problem is he has too much to do.
Casey:
that's exactly what i was driving at is maybe he's so busy working on content deals perhaps for the apple tv or whatever but one way or another perhaps he's too busy worrying about all of that and he doesn't have enough time to worry about services or not not as much time as he'd like yeah and every company i've been in there's one group in the company that sort of wears the pants uh and a lot of times but not always it's the
John:
it's the group that originally made the thing that made the company successful and, you know, made the company what it is today.
John:
And Apple, it seems like the group that has that power is, I mean, I don't know what the balance is between hardware and software.
John:
It is basically the people who work directly on whatever the flagship product is.
John:
So you made the operating system for the Macintosh, you made the hardware for the Macintosh.
John:
That is the
John:
That's the tail that wags the dog.
John:
And there's tons of other people in the company, but they're more or less running the show.
John:
And that's fine when your company makes devices with hardware and software.
John:
Shouldn't the people who are running the show who make all the great hardware and software that makes your company successful?
John:
But now you throw the services thing into the mix, and I have to think that they are sort of the...
John:
you know, redheaded stepchild of the company where we're writing software too, but your software is not iOS.
John:
Your software is not OS 10.
John:
Your software is just something that runs on a server and we only care about you when you screw up.
John:
There's no glory in your job.
John:
Just get it done.
John:
You're about as important to our company as the people who keep our mail servers running.
John:
Right.
John:
And that, that culture that they're the B team and they're not as important to the company is really difficult to overcome.
John:
Even with leadership, the top saying we're rededicating to services.
John:
iCloud is a big deal.
John:
I don't know if they can get the best people, the most money, the priorities, the attention from everybody.
John:
Because everyone is so focused on what's the next iPhone?
John:
What's the next version of iOS?
John:
iOS 7 and the iPhone 5S, right?
John:
Whole company is focused on that.
John:
Launch, launch, launch.
John:
And by the way, the services better work, but we don't want to hear about it.
John:
Like, again, this is all for it's all from the outside.
John:
I don't know if this is true, but it's very difficult to change that internal culture that the iOS and the, you know, the hardware and software guys who make the flagship product are that those are the glory jobs.
John:
And at Google, the glory jobs are the guys who run the search engine, right, who run the web services who index the entire web every 10 seconds or whatever the heck they're up to now.
Marco:
Well, the guys who serve the ads at least.
John:
That's the glory job on Google, yeah.
John:
Or, yeah, or the ad, you know, the thing that serves the ads, right, that makes the money for the company.
John:
Like, but it's not – the glory teams at Google are not the teams that make – I think it's not even the teams that make Android or the Android devices this way.
John:
It's –
John:
The web services, and I think the real heart, if you dig down the real heart of Google, are the people who run the infrastructure that run all their services.
John:
Those are the real sort of the little Yodas inside Google, the people with the most respect and clout and power, the ability to say no to your project and yes to your project indirectly by... I mean, they make the services that make everything run.
John:
And that is a very different location than the heart of Apple's company, which is probably like...
John:
a couple people in johnny ives industrial design team and like the people who really run the core os and who decided i guess probably like the compiler team and maybe like the frameworks team for ui kit like that's the tiny little heart of apple and it is so distant from the heart of google and i don't know how if you can have two hearts or if you could spread the company out or sounds complicated yeah it's it's it's timey-wimey
Casey:
if you're one of the ios or os 10 engineers and you know enough about apple to know that you are currently in the chosen one position you're working on ui kit you know you have your future paved ahead of you in a good way well you're not going to be volunteering for going to work on icloud so anyone who's already there that's proven themselves probably is going to try to dodge the services bullet
Casey:
Maybe that's what this Topsy thing is all about, and I'm reaching quite a bit here, but maybe the answer is you get a group that's really good at services, and again, Topsy is a dodgy example, but get a group that's really good at services, say Dropbox three or four years ago when it was even reasonable that they would be bought, and have them come in, and they're not as bitter and jaded about not being on UIKit yet, and maybe that's what it takes to get services to be at a position that it's not a piece of crap.
John:
You missed the most important part about this Topsy acquisition, which is that if they hire this company and do not immediately throw away all of their technology, like that's not their plan, finally there is a job inside Apple that I might be qualified for.
Casey:
So let me know when you send your application in.
Casey:
I'll be a reference for you, John.
John:
Yeah, I can only imagine interviewing there.
Casey:
But you would have to move.
Casey:
You wouldn't move away from the greater Boston area, would you?
John:
No, that I think is part of their hiring problem, actually, because so many companies are flexible about remote workers now.
John:
And Apple historically has not been the most flexible company about remote work.
John:
And I guess Yahoo is going in the other direction as well.
John:
trying to lock things down there.
John:
But it's really difficult if like, we would like to hire you, but that would mean you would have to move to one of the most expensive places to live in the country.
John:
And maybe your family's not near here.
John:
And that sort of artificially limits is kind of a natural limit.
John:
But it's difficult when you're, you know, the biggest or second biggest company in the world, that your requirement is everyone who works for me has to live around here, you're going to miss out on tons and tons of good people.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And anecdotally, I've heard at least a couple of stories about people who have interviewed at Apple, perhaps even been offered a job at Apple, but have had to say, well, I really can't or won't move to California, at which point the conversation is over.
John:
There are other places.
John:
Google has offices.
John:
Google has offices in Boston.
John:
They have a big office in New York City.
John:
Amazon has offices, not just in Seattle.
John:
They have on the East Coast as well.
John:
Apple, I think, does have some offices in Austin, and that one guy who makes all the money in Ireland.
John:
They have remote locations, but the heart is really the giant flying saucer thing that they're building in one infinite loop.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So that is a possible way forward for Apple, and I would think that they were looking at that, to have a substantial presence, like to not say that everything has to happen in California for our important products, of course.
John:
And maybe that's a way for the server-side group to get some freedom from that, is make the server-side groups based in Texas or on the East Coast or somewhere, just so they can be independent.
John:
Then maybe you can build up a group there that sort of has its own pride and reputation and isn't constantly overshadowed by, you know, iOS and Johnny Ives hardware and all that stuff.
Marco:
This episode is also brought to you by our friends at Igloo Software.
Marco:
Igloo, this is great.
Marco:
So if you go to igloosoftware.com slash ATP, you'll see this new landing page they made.
Marco:
And a couple episodes ago, we were talking about enterprise software and how awful it is and John's enterprise software assumptions and how John had such an ordeal with the Cisco VPN stuff on Mavericks.
Marco:
Igloo, because they actually listen to our cool stuff and actually are fans and support us for a very long time now, Igloo has made a page in response to John's myths about enterprise software.
Marco:
It's pretty great to go to igloosoftware.com slash ATP to see.
Casey:
I have not seen this yet up until just this very moment, and this is utterly fantastic.
Marco:
Isn't it great?
Marco:
Usually on their landing pages, they'll sneak in an inside reference or two.
Marco:
You'll catch them subtly.
Marco:
This time they went all out.
Marco:
It's pretty great.
Marco:
So Igloo's latest cloud update, Tinsel, arrives this Friday, which is probably going to be the release date of this show.
Marco:
So let's say today.
Marco:
It's a free update for every customer.
Marco:
When you log into your Igloo, the new features are immediately available starting this Friday.
Marco:
With Tinsel, Igloo is making it easier than ever for you to get started.
Marco:
Some company... Oh, we should point out before I do this.
Marco:
They didn't tell me to say that, but I probably should tell you what Igloo actually is before I go on about their latest update.
Marco:
Igloo is a hosted, enterprise-ready intranet software platform that doesn't actually suck.
Marco:
That's not their official tagline.
Marco:
That's my tagline for them.
Marco:
But it's basically an intranet that doesn't suck.
Marco:
So they have great design, and they have things like Twitter-like things, microblogs, wikis, all sorts of components that they can use for your company to use internally, and they're all private and encrypted and secure and everything.
Marco:
So they aren't out there on the public internet, so that's very nice for companies.
Marco:
But it also is not horrible, ugly, clunky, feature-limited enterprise software from the 90s.
Marco:
With Tinsel, Igloos is making it easier than ever for you to get started.
Marco:
Some companies don't need a full intranet.
Marco:
Now you can start your Igloo with just one of their web apps.
Marco:
Like for example, if you just need file sharing or you just need microblogs by themselves.
Marco:
The best part is you can still add additional apps into your Igloo, expanding it later as your needs grow.
Marco:
So if you start with file sharing to replace Dropbox, for instance, you can add an internal blog and shared calendars later, all in one place.
Marco:
Tinsel also adds a health check dashboard for your intranet.
Marco:
It gives you detailed analytics and easy-to-read these charts about the people, content, and social activity happening in your intranet.
Marco:
When your intranet falls below Igloo's benchmark data, suggestions appear in the health check dashboard to improve your performance.
Marco:
There's also great new features like content templates, color-coded channels, new widgets, and more.
Marco:
So start building your Igloo today.
Marco:
It's free to use up to 10 people and very affordable after that.
Marco:
So go to igloosoftware.com slash ATP to see those great pigs they made for us and to sign up.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to Igloo for sponsoring our show.
John:
This is a great landing page.
John:
And I immediately scrolled to the bottom to see if they were going to do item number four because it was my, I forget what they called it, enterprise software.
Marco:
Assumptions, I think.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah, basically.
John:
And the first three were easy.
John:
It's like, you know, when a new version of OS X comes out, assume your enterprise software won't work.
John:
So they're going to contradict that and say, well, Igloo will work, right?
John:
And so on and so forth.
John:
But the fourth one was actually, despite all the terribleness of enterprise software, sometimes it's your fault.
John:
And I'm like, well, how are they going to spin that one?
John:
So they say, despite all the terrible things that are terrible about enterprise software...
John:
It's at least partially your fault, and then they add it in parentheses, but we'll help you fix it.
John:
So they turned it into a customer service angle.
John:
If you screw up, Igloo is there to help you out.
John:
So that's very clever.
John:
And the little paragraphs of text they wrote underneath each one of these things, it's very nice.
John:
And I totally agree with it because Igloo is the internet that I wish I could use, but don't.
Casey:
And I have to point out just a couple of quick items here.
Casey:
At the bottom of number one, and just for John, Flash is optional and there are zero apps required.
Marco:
Zero Java apps required.
Casey:
Sorry.
Casey:
Yeah, sorry.
Casey:
And the quote, and just for John part, quote, I pulled directly off the page, which is pretty awesome.
Casey:
And then I also enjoy way towards the bottom, collaboration doesn't have to be craziness.
Casey:
Watch our sandwich videos and save yourself from SharePoint.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Which is pretty awesome.
Casey:
And that's dear to my heart.
Marco:
These guys really get it.
Marco:
So thanks a lot to Igloo.
Marco:
Speaking of, it's sometimes your problem.
Marco:
About a week ago, for the second time, you would think this would only happen to a geek like me once.
Marco:
But no.
Marco:
For the second time, I called Verizon Fios to report an outage.
Marco:
And the problem was that I had to reboot my own Apple Airport Extreme.
John:
Did they tell you to do the thing where I just plug it and unplug it in case any dust settled on it?
Marco:
No, they didn't make up any kind, merciful reasons to make me do that.
Marco:
They're like, oh, have you tried rebooting it?
Marco:
And, of course, immediately I'm like, oh, yeah, I think I tried that.
Marco:
I must have tried that.
Marco:
And then I'm like, you know what?
Marco:
Let me go try it just in case.
Marco:
This actually happened six months ago also.
Marco:
I was so embarrassed.
Marco:
Our Fios has not been that reliable.
Marco:
Actually, about two days ago, it had a real outage all night, and it was pretty rough.
Marco:
Over the course of having it for the last three years, I've called them maybe five times about outages, and two of them have been, I just needed to reboot my own router that I use arrogantly, not using theirs.
Yeah.
John:
I'm really terrified to replace my Apple airport.
John:
I have like an airport extreme, like when they were the flat pancake thing and actually a much older model.
John:
And it's, it's not good.
John:
It doesn't have good wifi range, but it is rock solid.
John:
Like I, I have had to plug it and unplug it.
John:
Uh,
John:
sometimes like i'll go away for vacation or something but like maybe two times a year after that and it just it doesn't crash it doesn't reboot it just runs and runs and runs and every other router that i read about it's like oh i have to you know reboot it once a week or it's flaky or sometimes it just stops sending data or whatever and that's why i'm so and also i'm using it instead of using any files hardware i go right from the ont into my thing and i'm afraid i'm not going to be able to get it to release the ip address so when i plug in the new one it won't be able to get like
Marco:
oh yeah you'll you have to call them to do that they're like it will it there's all these tricks on the internet about like oh well if you hold down the buttons on the ont and make it do a real full reset and it never works like it's it's held for i think at least a few hours um on the server i'm willing to wait a few hours although when when i did the switch over the guy who did my install was good and i told him what i was planning on doing and he of course has to hook up the verizon whatever and he just basically said uh
John:
You should go to the admin interface to this router, and you can issue a command to have it release the IP.
John:
So issue the command to have it to release the IP and then disconnect that router, and then the next router you connect, it will give the IP.
John:
And so I didn't have to wait an hour for it.
John:
But yeah, I'm so scared to get rid of this router, even though it has such terrible range.
John:
A, because I hate the stupid giant TARDIS-looking thing from Apple that it has the fan inside it, which I don't want.
John:
And B, and the other choice that I have, I'm terrified that it's going to be flaky and reboot all the time.
Casey:
I'm just surprised that you got asked to do all those sorts of things because I don't remember if I talked about this on the show and cut me off if I did.
Casey:
But a week or two ago, we had an outage.
Casey:
And long story short, it was because of a power spike.
Casey:
And the box that's in the garage, which isn't the ONT, it's like the power station that powers the ONT, ended up getting fried.
Casey:
But I called them at like 9 o'clock at night.
Casey:
And I called Verizon.
Casey:
I said, hey, you know, I have an outage.
Casey:
And here's what I've discovered.
Casey:
Not only is the internet out, but the phone and the TV are out.
Casey:
And the only slightly weird thing they had me do was unplug this little power station, as I call it.
Casey:
I know that's not the right term.
Casey:
And plug in anything else into that outlet just to make sure the outlet was alive, which I thought was completely reasonable.
Casey:
And that was the only thing.
Casey:
Never asked about a router.
Casey:
Never asked about anything else.
Casey:
That was the only thing they did.
Casey:
And then, sure enough, at 8.30 the next morning, somebody arrived to fix it.
Casey:
And by no later than 9 o'clock, it was already fixed.
Casey:
And that was the only – that was the second time –
Casey:
I've had somebody to the house about my file service since 2008.
Marco:
I will say also, I've had amazing luck with the people that you get when you call them for tech support.
Marco:
They're really consistently really good people.
Marco:
And they do.
Marco:
I think you got the effect of this.
Marco:
They do pick up pretty quickly whether you're a geek or not.
Marco:
You don't have to try to convince them.
Marco:
Yes, I know what I'm talking about generally, although I haven't tried rebooting my router.
Marco:
But you don't...
Marco:
You don't usually have to go jump through hoops.
Marco:
Yes, okay, I'm plugging it in now.
Marco:
You don't have to do that.
Marco:
You can just tell them, hey, my ONT is failing.
Marco:
The fact that you know what it's called will probably get them to immediately say, okay, here, do this, this, and this, and then that's it.
Marco:
They're really good.
Marco:
They're very geek-friendly.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
As soon as I said ONT, I think that flipped the switch into this person must at least know slightly what they're talking about.
Casey:
This person at least read a forum once.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
So this episode is sponsored by Verizon.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Going back a minute, back to Apple and their potential woes with services and the respect within the company.
Marco:
How much of this do you think is a problem with the release and marketing schedule?
Marco:
So when most people do web services, Google included, everyone, you know, Facebook, Twitter, everything, they don't usually have big press events to announce feature updates.
Marco:
You know, new products, maybe.
Marco:
But generally, like a feature update or like, you know,
Marco:
a medium-scale improvement won't really get a big event, and they won't hold it for a big event.
Marco:
Whereas Apple almost always does that.
Marco:
Their web services seem to almost be versioned and fixed in time as if they were OSs or the OS updates that we get, where they will hold back certain features or fixes or tweaks until the next marketing event to lump it all in.
Marco:
And part of that...
Marco:
is, I think, necessary because Apple has been battling this image that they're not innovating anymore.
Marco:
So they probably feel pressure to pump up their events with as much crap as they can cram in there with all this cool stuff they've been doing.
Marco:
But I think that...
Marco:
that ultimately is really dysfunctional for web services and web apps because that's not how the rest of the world works.
Marco:
That's not how the web works.
Marco:
How much of their problem stuff in this area do you think is related to that kind of forced product marketing schedule that both the public and Apple kind of forces on itself?
Yeah.
John:
The good and the bad part of it is that the web services are not held in high enough esteem to be deemed worthy of holding back for the thing.
John:
Remember they're doing the iCloud beta website?
John:
No, iWork for iCloud or whatever the hell those terrible web services were.
John:
They put that out, and they revised it, and they improved it, and it was up for beta, and then they rolled it out to everybody.
John:
Because it's not a big deal, and they don't think it's going to be that flashy.
John:
Though they did demo it at the recent event,
John:
uh they had been making changes and improvements to it i mean just think of the whole history of that that interface that they've had that's supposed to look like apple mail they changed that and improved that off cycle like not during events because it's like well they don't they don't think it's high enough priority for an event because it's not going to be impressive or it's not their bread and butter and i know they do want to have a big bang and tied in with the new versions of the the iLife applications but it's like they get to be in the presentation only because they're tied to one of the real products that apple makes
John:
And the rest of the time they'll willingly update it and tweak it and do stuff to it.
John:
I mean, it seems like they're better for not being tied to that schedule, but inevitably for all of their products, they're going to have to, they do a pretty good job dealing with it.
John:
But the exception of hardware, they're going to have to get used to putting out products on a less monolithic kind of schedule and more kind of drips and drabs.
John:
And I think they are getting better about that.
John:
Like,
John:
When they have to, for example, the mail update to work with the Gmail stuff, you got to do what you got to do.
John:
That didn't come in 10.9.1.
John:
The old Apple would have held that for 10.9.1.
John:
But in the new era of people trying to use web services and Gmail to get their work done, you can't hold that for 10.9.1.
John:
10.9.1 is not ready to come out.
John:
It's coming, but they can't hold the mail fix, so it has to come out.
John:
And same thing if there was a Safari error or whatever.
John:
You just got to keep pushing these updates.
John:
And I think the change in Mavericks to having...
John:
optionally automatic updates of all applications on the os is all part of that hardware is different because you have to make millions of these hardware devices in the months leading up to your launch and it's kind of hard to uh kind of hard to avoid a big run up to a big bang and then sell a couple million on a weekend uh you can't let that out by drips and drabs so i think the hardware stuff will still be on that schedule and as long as any hardware stuff is on that kind of schedule which i think makes sense if you want to have a big sort of opening weekend in movie parlance
John:
There's some software that's tied to that hardware, too, and there's no avoiding tying something to it.
John:
But the web services, for good or for ill, seem less tied to the hardware and more likely to be updated off-cycle.
Casey:
This kind of reminds me in a weird way of companies that say they use agile processes but don't.
Casey:
And Marco, you will know nothing about this because you don't have a real job, but you are correct.
Casey:
But John, you might actually know something about this.
Casey:
So I've worked at a couple of different places and for most of my career, I've done consulting and the place in which I work now actually does do legitimate, honest to goodness, agile development.
Casey:
And there's not an overabundance of planning upfront.
Casey:
There's just enough to get by.
Casey:
And generally speaking, we manage all of our,
Casey:
All of our projects in terms of sprints, we use Pivotal Tracker.
Casey:
Everything gets assigned points.
Casey:
Points are used as currency.
Casey:
We cooperate with product owners about what to schedule, when to schedule it, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
And it actually works pretty well.
Casey:
And when everyone is on the same page, when the product owner is invested, when the product owner understands what a point is and what it represents, it works really, really, really, really well.
Casey:
But if anyone, if there's any weak link in that system, if, for example, the product owner, which is typically at the client, if the product owner doesn't have the time to invest or doesn't really care or doesn't want to learn to understand, then suddenly everything stops working well.
Casey:
And
Casey:
I kind of wonder, to bring this back to Apple, if even if the web services teams were behaving in such a way that they could do incremental releases regularly, I wonder if the superiors just...
Casey:
kind of find that prohibitive.
Casey:
And I guess, Marco, this is kind of what you were saying as well.
Casey:
But even if they themselves were prepped for really frequent releases, I don't know that even if the higher ups in Apple wanted them to do those more frequent releases, because so much of the company is based on annual or semi-annual releases, I don't know that it will ever really work because it's kind of like trying to force Agile on a situation where Agile just doesn't really fit.
John:
It made me depressed about Agile methodologies and other methodologies that are used in jobs.
John:
We should put that on a topic list for a future podcast because that stuff makes me sad.
Casey:
The fact that you don't use Agile?
John:
No, all those kind of, like, here's a set of rules, and if you apply these rules, it will make you be able to develop software.
Marco:
Can I make a slight confession?
Marco:
Sure.
Marco:
I have never used a methodology.
Marco:
You're using one.
John:
It just doesn't have a name.
John:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
It isn't that effective.
John:
I wouldn't recommend my methodology.
John:
Most importantly, you're not using one imposed on you by somebody else.
John:
That is no matter what methodology you're using, if you got to pick it, well, then, you know, it's very different than if a bunch of other people have decided this is the way we're going to develop software.
John:
And then you come into that environment and have the rules applied to you.
John:
That is a very different whatever the rules are.
John:
That is very different.
Casey:
Now, John, do you does your company self-describe as adhering to any particular methodology?
John:
We use a lot of the words from agile methodology.
Casey:
Hold on.
Casey:
So you self-describe as agile.
Casey:
I'm not asking what you are.
John:
No, no.
John:
I don't think so.
John:
I don't think the company would say we use – because every time in interviews and stuff, we use aspects of an agile system.
John:
And I would modify that to say we use vocabulary from an agile system.
John:
Which is what it devolves to.
John:
Sure.
John:
Again, I think that's – I'm going to put that on the topic list for another day because I think it's a big, long thing.
Marco:
We would never start a big, long topic an hour into a show.
Marco:
No, definitely not.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So I will let you slide on this one, but we will add it to the show notes that don't exist.
John:
Type it in the notes file, yeah.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Do you want to talk about this boring USB plug instead of interesting things like Agile?
Marco:
Honestly, this thing is pretty funny.
Marco:
So the USB 3.0 mini plug is a disaster, as we've talked about before.
Marco:
So I have that card reader, my one USB 3.0 device.
Marco:
I still insert the plug wrong every time.
Marco:
It's so weird to get that stupid mini 3 connector.
Marco:
Anyway, so the news is that the USB standards group or whatever has agreed to make a new connector that they haven't actually shown yet.
Marco:
But it's going to be a new connector that, like the Apple Lightning connector, will finally be reversible.
Marco:
And this will come out if all goes to plan, which, of course, rarely happens with committees.
Marco:
If all goes to plan, devices that use this will come out in about 2016.
Marco:
Did I get that right?
John:
If you were looking at the notes file, you would know.
John:
it's in the different tab give me a break i thought it was 2015 the final specification is expected to be published by the middle of 2014 that's when the spec will be done and then it presumably but the thing is a lot of with these specs kind of like the uh 802.11 specs there's a possibility that uh manufacturers will start building things to the not technically ratified or whatever approved spec like they always do draft n
John:
Yeah, I mean, they can always upload the firmware, but a lot of times they don't even have to do that.
John:
With connectors, it might be a little bit more dangerous, but I don't know.
John:
But anyway, I would expect that the MO for the group that handles USB seems to be to make sure that whatever crap they come up with, you can make it as cheaply as possible.
John:
And that seems to be their one and only criteria for success because they sure as hell don't care about making a good connector.
John:
And so this would be a change.
John:
This would be a change in methodology.
John:
But their audience is still the same group of people saying, how many pennies can we save by making a piece of crap connector?
John:
Can I bend a piece of metal into a shoebox shape?
John:
Good.
John:
Ship it.
John:
Done.
John:
Piece of plastic in the middle of a bent piece of metal.
Marco:
Well, and to some extent, they should be concerned about that because that's one of the things that has made USB so – to reuse part of its acronym – so universal that when USB first came out, you had like USB versus the old stuff, serial parallel.
Marco:
But then Firewire came out I think soon afterwards or right before.
Marco:
And USB was always way cheaper to implement than FireWire.
Marco:
And part of this is the controller chips and how that's arranged.
Marco:
But USB was always the cheap way to go.
Marco:
And so it caught on like crazy because it was just the cheapest.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
Same thing now.
Marco:
Thunderbolt comes... Firewire 800 comes out, USB 2.0 comes out.
Marco:
Thunderbolt comes out, USB 3.0 comes out.
Marco:
In every one of these generations, USB has dominated and won and been way more universal and supported than the other thing because it's just cheap and it's simpler.
Marco:
It's cheaper for everyone, cheaper to implement, cheaper to host, etc.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
That actually does matter here.
Marco:
And I don't know how much of the total cost of implementation is like the bits on the connector versus the controller chips and the logic inside.
Marco:
But I would imagine a reversible connector with enough pins to support these kind of rates and everything else they have to support in the physical cable, a reversible connector is definitely going to be more expensive and more complicated to implement.
John:
I'm not saying that the cheapness is not something they should go for.
John:
They just got the balance way off because like it's it's getting back to last show Pennywise pound foolish.
John:
Oh, we can we can save we can save tiny pennies by making our connector really crappy and cheap and easy to construct.
John:
The big one was over fire and stuff like that was that the smarts had to be in the computer.
John:
You didn't have to have like a complicated controller.
John:
chip whereas firewire interfaces were smart enough to sort of talk amongst themselves without a controlling computer that's where all the money went and if they but they were like oh but like the the mindset is just squeeze every penny you can out of these stupid connectors and ignore everything else and just shift that a little bit to say make them cheap that's good right but it's like it's like optimizing something you have to profile it find out where most of the time is being spent optimize that part so
John:
profiling usb is like where's all the money being spent well it's a stupid silicon chips in the controller we can't afford a big expensive controller like the firewire things we want to make a cheap control that's easy to make that can come from tons of manufacturers that's good once you've done that don't worry so much about the connector because what portion of the price is the connector uh you know maybe it's an increasing portion as the silicon price goes to zero as we keep shrinking things i don't know but
John:
it's it's just such an incredible mistake i always talk about that you know the usb connector guy saying how does he know whether he did a good job if any of us were making a connector we would spend 10 minutes thinking about what makes a good connector and surely we would come upon things like hard to put it can't put in the wrong way not externally symmetrical and internally asymmetrical like those would come up if you just thought about it for a minute and it's
John:
On the one hand, you can say, well, if I save one penny, I end up saving $5 billion over the life of a thing because of so many USB connectors, right?
John:
But on the other hand, if you annoy people for one second, you annoy people for 5 billion seconds over the life.
John:
It's just a different way of looking at it.
John:
So this gives me hope.
John:
And what I would like to see out of this, which I think would be hilarious, is if this new USB connector, of which there are no pictures or design drawings as far as I've been able to find, if this connector looks exactly like a lightning connector, but like slightly different, like a little bit wider or like has a bulge in it or something.
John:
Because think about it.
John:
What other kind of form factors can you get for a small connector that's not that giant, wide, floppy USB connector?
John:
micro thing that's not even very micro it has to be small it's the whole point of the thing because devices are getting smaller and you want something small and reversible it's very difficult to do something sturdy at that size you know just look at the existing like the ones that go into your your uh cameras whatever the hell those connectors are they're terrible yeah the micro usb yeah
John:
Yeah, there's lots of different ones.
John:
There's one that looks kind of like it's got a wide angled sort of triangular trapezoid thing on the bottom and then a rectangle.
John:
And there's the one that's just skinny and it looks almost like it's just exactly rectangular, but it's got like little the corners chopped off of it.
John:
I believe you're talking about mini and micro USB respectively.
John:
I don't know what the names are, they're both very small.
John:
But those are, they're metal, they're metal, bent metal things, and inside the metal, it's like hollow, and there's pins in there, whereas the lightning is reversed.
John:
It's like a solid piece of, well, not really solid, but it's solid, and then the connectors are on, the contacts are on the outside of the solid thing.
John:
And I think that's the only way, really, to make a sturdy, very small, reversible connector.
John:
because you can't have anything go inside the tiny little thing like that's what makes the micro and mini so annoying that there is that hollow spot that stuff has to go into and you could make that reversible i suppose but i really really hope that they basically just copy lightning and say reverse it conducts on outside solid middle solid metalish thing because then you can make that solid melting pretty thin and still be sturdy uh and still be reversible so we'll see
Marco:
But the problem with Lightning, you know, the reason why Apple – and by the way, there was a great post John Gruber wrote on Daring Fireball about this thing today.
Marco:
We'll link to it in the show notes about how this is like – like Lightning is like what makes Apple Apple, and it's everything that people love and hate about Apple.
Marco:
It's fantastic.
Marco:
But, you know –
Marco:
In order to do this, you have to give up substantial concessions to complexity and cost.
Marco:
To make something reversible, it is going to be more expensive.
Marco:
It is going to be much more complex.
Marco:
The dollar cables from Monoprice might actually suck or might not work.
Marco:
There's going to be problems.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
well but i think well physically i i'm pretty sure that the lightning cable has like just barely enough contacts to run usb3 over it uh and and and pull that off yeah but it's like this flexible arrangement where it can change what the pins do and they sense each other like it's way more expensive it's way more expensive than yeah it's way more expensive than uh than usb is going to be but i think like just physically speaking like
John:
You know, ignore what's going over the wires and what's talking amongst them.
John:
Just look at the little metal thing that you plug into some other thing.
John:
I think the USB group can come up with a connector that's more expensive than any of their existing connectors, but it's not outrageously so.
John:
And then down the line continue, you know, as the wires connect, they connect to a USB 3 hub and they have all the same, you know, cost constraints that they always have there.
John:
I hope they can pull it off.
Marco:
I love, too, how this is one of those things, like, about half the articles about it and a lot of the comments that some of the reporters are getting from the various USB spec people and from Intel and everything like that, it's so funny how they try to avoid talking about Apple or giving Apple any credit whatsoever in starting this thing.
Marco:
It's like, they'll try, they'll be like, well, we're designing this for emerging product categories.
Marco:
It's like, well, I think they've already emerged.
Yeah.
John:
A couple of years ago, actually.
John:
And the worst thing about it is that USB was way out ahead in making connectors for very tiny devices.
John:
Like all those two terrible camera connectors that we were just talking about, those existed way before lightning.
John:
Like the USB group saw people want to connect their cameras or they're very small.
John:
I don't know if they had tablets or smartphones or whatever charger.
John:
Like they said, they saw the need for small connectors way before Apple did.
John:
Apple took so long with that stupid giant, you know, 30 pin connector.
John:
Yeah.
John:
The USB group just made a series of terrible small connectors.
John:
They had all the advantages of the old world PC.
John:
We can move fast.
John:
We can fill needs as soon as we see them.
John:
And they just did a bad job in every single one of them.
John:
And so now they've sort of been embarrassed into this press release by Apple...
John:
taking forever to come up with anything.
John:
But when they came up with it, it's fantastic, at least for Apple's purposes, obviously, it wouldn't be fantastic for the for their group, you know, the expensive lightning interface that connects to it.
John:
And so that's why it's so hard to envision this new USB thing, being anything other than looking a lot like the lightning connector, unless it's
John:
unless it's terrible because if they just make something that's like micro usb but a slightly different shape and reversible i don't think that's a win like would you rather plug in say you took micro usb and now it's reversible would you still would you enjoy plugging that in i sure as heck wouldn't i hate plugging that thing into my camera it's not you know it's not a good experience and so this is this is a test of whatever this is the usb if i don't know what the if stands for but we'll see if they got their act together by what this connector looks like when it comes out
Marco:
Yeah, I'm very curious, honestly.
Marco:
I would love for them to do this on both ends of the cable.
Marco:
And I don't know if they would ever do that.
Marco:
USB has never had a symmetrical cable like that.
Marco:
But I would love to see that because certainly the computer end of the cables...
John:
is just as frustrating to insert and you know to insert upside down and everything it's it's just as bad that's one that's one of the things they say in the thing usability enhancements users will no longer need to be concerned with plug orientation slash cable direction oh good easier to plug in that would be fantastic and this will affect all of our lives because even though we have apple devices we have cameras and stuff too and they will have whatever this connector is in a couple years you have to assume right
Marco:
And the Apple laptops and Apple computers that have USB, which is all of them, you know, those ports can get smaller too.
John:
That may wait several more years.
John:
Remember how long it took Apple to get USB 3.
Marco:
That's true.
Marco:
Maybe in 17 years, the Mac Pro will finally support these connectors.
John:
That's where we're going to connect our Retina displays to our Mac Pros with this new USB connector because DisplayPort will never carry appropriate resolutions.
Casey:
Do you want to talk about anything else that's awesome?
Marco:
And then let's go with our friends at hover.
Marco:
Go to hover.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Hover is high quality, no hassle domain name registration.
Marco:
Use promo code ATP for 10% off anything you buy.
Marco:
Hover takes all the hassle and friction of owning and managing domain names.
Marco:
They offer smart, easy to use and powerful domain name management tools.
Marco:
They believe that everyone should be able to take control of their online identity, have your own domain name, and they will make it easy for you to do so.
Marco:
They're part of 2COWS.
Marco:
2COWS have been around since 1994.
Marco:
They also are the parent company of our previous sponsor, Ting, which is awesome.
Marco:
And they are one of the largest domain registrars in the world.
Marco:
Hover offers .NET, Co, Com, TV, lots of different country codes, and many more top-level domains.
Marco:
They recently added a bunch of new ones, including .io, and they're always adding more, so you can get .just about anything at Hover.
Marco:
They don't believe in heavy-handed upselling or aggressive cross-selling, which is unusual in this business.
Marco:
They don't believe in hiding functionality or requiring extra payment for things that should be included with domain name management, such as who is privacy, subdomains, and URL forwarding.
Marco:
Hover Email also makes it easy and affordable to create a memorable email address and eschew the impersonal free webmail email addresses that you get from the webmail services.
Marco:
They also support Google Apps for Business.
Marco:
You can now add any Hover domain, new or old, to Google Apps for Business, and they will fully support that.
Marco:
Now, they offer, speaking of support, they offer excellent online help.
Marco:
But they also have an amazing phone support policy.
Marco:
You can call them up, this 800 number, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.
Marco:
to 8 p.m.
Marco:
Eastern, and a live human being will pick up the phone and talk to you.
Marco:
And the person who picks up the phone actually has the power to help you.
Marco:
This is shockingly unusual in customer service these days.
Marco:
Hover actually supports this.
Marco:
You call up a phone number and talk to a human.
Marco:
They are really quite good, and I've done this a couple times to do a couple things, and it really is true.
Marco:
It's really fantastic.
Marco:
They also have this awesome, I believe they call it a domain name transfer valet service.
Marco:
Did I have that right?
Marco:
The valet service?
Marco:
Anyway, they have this great service where if you're moving a bunch of names to Hover,
Marco:
And you don't want to have to go in and log into your registrar and get every single transfer code and all that stuff you have to do.
Marco:
If you give them the username and password to your registrar, they will do the move for you.
Marco:
It's pretty great.
Marco:
So check out Hover.
Marco:
It's high quality, no hassle domain name registration.
Marco:
Again, use promo code ATP for 10% off at hover.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thank you very much to Hover for sponsoring the show.
Casey:
You know, another use for Hover, Archagon in the chat said, I subscribe to Hover because I'm lonely.
Casey:
And he can talk to – well, he or she could talk to someone.
Marco:
8 a.m.
Marco:
to 8 p.m., you can not be lonely.
Casey:
And yeah, he or she finished with, it's like subscribing to a friend.
Marco:
That's fantastic.
Casey:
That is pretty awesome.
Casey:
All right, so I'm going to make a big mistake and ask you two to tell me where your Mac Pros are.
John:
It's under my desk right now.
Casey:
No, you know what I mean.
Casey:
You know what I mean.
Casey:
Where are your trash can Mac Pros?
Casey:
Because isn't it supposed to be before the end of the year, or did I make that up?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Well, they say December.
Marco:
Now, we have to consider, yes, when Apple says just a month for a product, it often comes like the last day of the month.
Marco:
But also Apple tends to be closed usually for a large part of the company tends to be closed for the last two weeks of December.
Marco:
So I think if it's going to come in December, it's probably going to be within the next week.
Marco:
And my theory is that I think Retina displays might not be totally ruled out for this launch.
Marco:
Keep up alive.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
You're like me with The Last Guardian.
Marco:
They could have them.
Marco:
It could happen.
Marco:
Hey, 10.10 might have a new file system.
John:
I am not hoping about that.
John:
I'm realistic.
John:
you're secretly hoping you know with with your idea of like that you were gonna wait and only buy one retina that is having a new appeal to me now as i sit here and i think about like if they came out with them today would i be rushing to buy one i'd probably rush to configure them to see the pricing oh me too i don't know if i would rush to buy them maybe maybe you and i will hold strong together and just say nope we're not buying trash cans until we can get a retina display with it because i am not buying a dell i don't even know how you sit in front of those dell displays or whatever you got at your setup there i'm not buying a dell display
Marco:
Oh, I have moved on from my mediocre Dell displays.
Marco:
Now I have a mediocre HP display.
Marco:
Some ugly black thing, I know.
Marco:
It's really bad, actually.
Marco:
It has transformer wine, and it's... I think it's inverter wine, actually.
Marco:
Whatever it is, it has a high-pitched wine that occasionally... It's not even regular, it's occasional, and...
Marco:
It's really obnoxious.
Marco:
And the signaling interface to it is – either its signaling interface or my Mac Pro, the video card, is buggy in some way so that mini DisplayPort no longer works reliably.
Marco:
The picture will just cut out after a while.
Marco:
I've tried different cables.
Marco:
They're out.
Marco:
So now I'm using DVI, which is a giant thick cable running behind my computer.
Marco:
And if I move my feet slightly the wrong way, the screen flickers or turns off because something is like slightly on the edge of being connected somewhere within the cable or the two connectors.
Marco:
So I'm just like – I actually – I've decided that I really kind of can't and shouldn't buy the new Mac Pro as long as I'm using this monitor because –
Marco:
I'll have to involve another adapter in that chain because it'll have only mini display ports or Thunderbolts.
Marco:
So I'll have to have the adapter to this flaky cable, to this flaky monitor, and God knows if that'll even work or if that'll have problems.
Marco:
So that's yet another reason why I should wait until a Retina display before buying this thing.
John:
I was not excited by the – whatever those rumors were of like a Dell 24-inch Retina-ish display because the – what would you call it?
John:
Logical resolution?
John:
Like once you go in high DPI mode, the resolution was too low despite the fact it's also an ugly monitor and – Well, hold on.
Marco:
The resolution was too low on the big one.
Marco:
But on the 23-inch or 24-inch one, it's exactly right.
John:
What was the logical resolution?
Marco:
1920 by 1200.
Marco:
Or by 1080, sorry.
John:
No, I got to go bigger than that.
John:
I can't stand being stuck in that.
John:
I've been stuck in 1920 by 1200 since, I guess, the 22-inch Apple Cinema display.
John:
My wife has a 27-inch, and it's not that much bigger in terms of resolution, but it's bigger enough.
John:
I cannot be in 1920 by 1200 anymore.
Marco:
Well, two things.
Marco:
One – so I've – for all of Tumblr, I used two 24-inch monitors.
Marco:
So I had two side-by-side monitors of that resolution.
Marco:
Now I have one big 30-inch.
Marco:
I like the 30 inch better, but not by a massive margin.
Marco:
It's not that different.
Marco:
The 24s give you, I believe, actually more real estate.
Marco:
But the 30, of course, is a little more useful for you because you can have one giant window if you really want to.
Marco:
So I'd say it's kind of a toss up between the two.
Marco:
Having two 24s or having one 30 or 27 is roughly the same amount of usefulness.
Marco:
I'm monitor monogamous.
Marco:
Well, I do like having the one big one because it makes the desk arrangement a lot easier.
Marco:
Like I can fit my speakers on my desk and I, yes, anyway.
John:
Not on the onscreen.
John:
No, I use tons of windows and the bigger area I have to spread those windows, it's like having a big gigantic desk where you spread all your papers out.
John:
That's how I treat my screen.
John:
And I have had multiple displays at various points.
John:
It's not that I dislike it so much, but I would much rather have one big screen than two, even though the total area of the two might be much greater.
Casey:
Oh, you're so wrong.
Casey:
You're so wrong.
Casey:
I totally prefer having two screens.
Casey:
Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt.
Marco:
Yeah, but you're a more recent Windows user.
Marco:
Maybe that's it.
John:
Who had multiple displays first?
John:
I was running two displays back when your PC had CGA graphics and everything was teal and purple, so I don't want to hear about multi-monitors.
John:
I've been there and done that.
John:
It's just the way I work is better with one monitor.
Marco:
So the other thing to consider is on the Retina screen, they have those different scaling modes.
Marco:
Now, on the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, I've used this thing a lot.
Marco:
I've gotten a lot of work on it.
Marco:
So now I'm pretty comfortable knowing that the native 2X resolution is, as measured in points, it's 1440 by 900, which is like a step below what you'd expect for a 15-inch laptop.
Marco:
But you can tell the display to run in 1680x1050x2.
Marco:
And it just scales it to fit the actual physical pixels.
Marco:
And so that's how I use it most of the time.
Marco:
And it works just fine.
Marco:
It doesn't look bad.
Marco:
I would say it's perfectly fine.
Marco:
So if they release a 27-inch monitor that only has the logical 1920x1080x2,
Marco:
which is what these rumors all point to um if they do that resolution at 27 inches i assume it would offer the same kind of scaling mode where you could simulate the 2560 by 1440 of of the real 27 inch now uh and i would just do that and i'm it would look i'm sure at that at that size and that distance i'm sure you wouldn't even be able to tell the difference i don't know not non-native res is impressive that it works looks as good as it does on the 15 inch but i i don't want that on my desktop i'll know it's there even if i can't see it
Marco:
Well, unfortunately, if they're going to go Retina, I think it's almost certain that's how they would do it.
Marco:
I think they would release a 27-inch at 3840 by whatever, like at double 1920 by 1080.
John:
Well, I mean, I keep coming back to the resolution of those desktop images that are included in Mavericks.
John:
They're on the nose exactly four times the number of pixels is on the existing 27-inch display.
John:
I can't think that's a coincidence.
Marco:
Like, why would you do it?
Marco:
I think you're right.
Marco:
However, the way that the Retina MacBook Pro scales it is it renders its own virtual resolution at 2x.
Marco:
and then down samples that image to fit the physical pixel.
Marco:
So if the highest virtual resolution it offered was double 2560 by 1440, it would need a wallpaper that size to be native, and then it would scale it down to 3840 by whatever.
John:
No, the whole rest of the screen isn't like that.
John:
They would just scale it up to fit the tumble res, and then they would scale it back down.
John:
It's the same thing they do with any other drawing.
John:
It doesn't fill the screen entirely.
John:
I have to think that they're going for, I mean, maybe the first one will be that kind of scale thing, but I don't like that.
John:
Who wants to run non-native res?
John:
It's gross.
Marco:
I'm telling you, on my 15-inch retina, I run it all the time, and you can't even tell.
John:
I've seen it.
John:
It does look impressively good.
John:
It looks nice enough that I wouldn't mind running it like that on a laptop, which is like a compromised machine.
John:
But on a desktop where I've got this gigantic thing with this amazing GPU power, what's the point of it if I can't have...
John:
you know, that's, that's the whole reason you're buying this thing with all this power is I want to have actual real native retina desktop display.
John:
Maybe, maybe I can't afford that this year.
John:
Maybe they come out with $4,000.
John:
Fine.
John:
I'll wait, you know, and maybe I'll have to buy one of those non-native res ones in between to get through, but out there and in my future, it's 4x, the 27 inch display native.
Marco:
So here's a question that will probably come up then.
Marco:
Suppose they launch the monitor I think they're going to launch, which is 3840 at 27 inches.
Marco:
So it's going to be – you'd have to scale it up to get that kind of real estate.
Marco:
Do you buy it and just be upset about it and angry for a few years?
Marco:
Or do you hold back and still use 1X monitors with the new Mac Pro?
Marco:
Or do you not buy either?
Marco:
Do you not buy the new Mac Pro and you don't buy the new monitor until it has the resolution you want, which might never happen?
John:
Oh, it will happen.
John:
Of course it will happen eventually.
John:
It's just a question of how long.
John:
I would seriously consider trying to get Firestyle prices on the existing 27-inch and just running 1X for a few more years.
Marco:
Oh, man.
Marco:
See, I would so much rather run scaled 2X than run real 1X.
John:
And it wouldn't be because the non-native thing would just be because the logical resolution of the one X 27 inch would be higher.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like the real estate, I'm trading the ability to have more space on my desk to spread my crap out for that crap looking, you know, super sharp.
John:
Uh, so I, but I would have to, I would have to say like what 1920 by, uh,
John:
Logical resolution of, like, if it's 1080 in the short dimension, I would want it to be at least 1200, because I'm not going to go down.
John:
I'm not going to go from 1920 by 1200, which is what I'm looking at now, logical resolution, to a lower logical resolution.
John:
Like an animal?
Casey:
Well, that's part of the problem that I've...
Casey:
What is this running at?
Casey:
1680 by 1050.
Casey:
Yep, 1680 by 1050.
Casey:
And what is your 15 run at if you're in like retinified 1440 by 900?
Casey:
Right, that's terrible.
Casey:
That's atrocious.
Marco:
Well, right, but you can just toggle it.
John:
Yes, yes, yes.
John:
He runs the non-native to get more stuff on the screen.
Marco:
I do.
Marco:
Let me run.
Marco:
I can tell you that there's this great utility, by the way.
Marco:
I want to plug this.
Marco:
It's called iFriendly.
Marco:
That's I spelled E-Y-E.
Marco:
iFriendly.
Marco:
It's this awesome like five buck thing in the Mac app store that it lets you assign those resolution scaling things to hotkeys on Retina MacBook Pros, which is really, really nice.
Marco:
So I have like if you smash all three modifiers and hit up or down arrow, I have that toggle through the modes.
Marco:
It's really, really cool.
Marco:
Yeah, I don't know.
Marco:
I'd be fine with the scale.
Marco:
Like if that's what I have to do to get Retina in the next five years, that's what I'll do.
Casey:
But I don't understand.
Casey:
And I'm really being serious.
Casey:
I'm not trying to poke the bear here.
Casey:
If the whole point in a retina screen is getting everything to look as pretty as it does on iOS, where you've got double the density for the same effective space, doesn't scaling defeat the whole point of that?
Casey:
Yeah, you get a lot more real estate, but isn't that kind of defeating the whole point of the retina screen in the first place?
Casey:
Or am I just totally missing something here?
Yeah.
John:
It's like one and a half scale where things get fuzzy around the edges because it's a non-native resolution.
John:
But the pixels are so small that non-native resolution, it doesn't look as blurry as maybe we all make fun of people who run non-native on their, you know, 800 by 600 iBook.
John:
And they would change to non-native res to make everything bigger and it would look terrible.
John:
At that size, everything is so small that it just looks a little bit softer.
John:
And I find that I think retina is more important to me on an iPad or an iPhone because I think I just hold it closer to my face that I could see the pixels if they were there.
John:
On a desktop, because I'm using it for work and stuff, I really want more space to move stuff around.
John:
And I also want it to be red.
John:
I want everything.
John:
If I have to trade one for the other, I really have to see what the logical res is and just stare at it for a while in a store and see, could I tolerate using this at a non-native res in the 1.5x mode?
John:
I don't know.
Marco:
So this is kind of like one of those computer philosophy things.
Marco:
It's like you're still running hard drives on your desktop, right?
Marco:
At home, yeah.
Marco:
So there were a lot of people that refused to use SSDs and might still because they were waiting until they could just buy a 2TB one for $300.
Marco:
Something like that.
Marco:
Which actually we're not that far off from.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
For years, it's like you had these people who were crazy, like me, who would buy a small SSD and then a big hard drive and jump through the hoops you need to make that be reasonably good.
Marco:
Just because it was so good to even have an SSD at all that it was worth the kind of hack to get it earlier than when you can go all SSD.
Marco:
So now I wonder if that's going to be like you with Retina.
Marco:
You seem like the kind of person like you will on principle, you will wait and not get this until you can have the exact resolution you want.
Marco:
Whereas I will jump in sooner and I'm willing to tolerate a little bit of hackiness to get this massive, what I perceive as a massive upgrade that I really want very badly earlier.
John:
but i really want the extra real estate almost as badly as the right like that's the that's the problem like the the thing that will change my life the most will be having more room on my screen to put stuff and i'm i was hoping not to have to go backwards and hoping you know that to get retin i wouldn't have to sacrifice space i would also get a small bump in space or whatever so that that's the other change that i'm looking for and for the ssd hard drive thing fusion drive nicely takes care of that i don't think there's an equivalent though
John:
of fusion drive unless it's that 1.5 x mode but fusion drive has almost none of the disadvantages of spinning discs and almost all the advantages of retina and i'm not sure that's true of the non-native res retina screen i guess it also depends on how dense it is because i think the 15 inch macbook air is going to end up being more dots per inch native dots per inch than the retina desktop display so it might look different than your laptop does in non-native
Marco:
That's actually a good point.
Marco:
Yeah, I bet you're right about that.
Marco:
I hadn't considered that, but I'm also sitting much further away.
Marco:
But you are right that I think it will be significantly lower density because the Retina MacBook Pro is already 2880 by whatever.
Marco:
So it's already like at 15 inches.
Marco:
It's most of that resolution to 4K.
Marco:
It's like three quarters of the horizontal resolution.
Marco:
So yeah, maybe.
John:
If we learned anything from the past couple of years, it's that waiting for Apple to rev its displays is like technology version of the crying game.
John:
Not in the way you think.
John:
So many of my past Mac purchases have been like...
John:
either based on well surely we'll update the displays or i shouldn't buy a display now because this display is really old and surely they'll revise it soon and you just wait and you wait and it's just it's just sadness all around waiting for them i don't know why they take so long to revise their displays but they do and we should just expect it and now who knows how long it will be before they pair a display worthy of their black trash cans
Marco:
But there was that one exception where when they released the first 27-inch iMac, that was like a revolution in displays for that time where like at the time you could get 30-inch displays for over $2,000.
Marco:
Or you could get a 27-inch iMac with a better quality, more dense panel of the same resolution with a free computer stuck to the back of it for like $1,500.
Marco:
And they were the first ones to have those panels in any kind of quantity.
Marco:
And for a long time, the only way to get that panel was to buy an iMac.
Marco:
That's what I'm saying.
John:
They didn't put them like, oh, where's the monitor that's just like that but without the iMac attached?
John:
What do you mean it doesn't exist?
Yeah.
Marco:
right but it's like i'm hoping they pull something like that with retina you know obviously i'll attach it to the to the new mac pro just glue to glue the garbage can to the back of the monitor well it would it would almost certainly require thunderbolt 2 and so you can pretty much only use the new retina macbook pro and the new mac pro which makes a lot of sense i mean obviously you know we've talked about this before at least i've talked about this endlessly every episode
Marco:
We've talked a lot about how all the pieces are in place.
Marco:
It's very obvious that they're planning for a Thunderbolt 2 display that will be Retina that will work only with the new MacBook Pro and Mac Pro.
Marco:
The only question is when that's going to be available and whether it will be at long shot.
Marco:
For whatever reason, they're...
Marco:
the original Mac, the Mac pros were seemingly slated to come out earlier in the fall originally.
Marco:
And this feels like a delay to me to come out in, in quote, December.
Marco:
Um, and I could be wrong, but it feels like they were supposed to come out at the November event and they didn't.
Marco:
And, um,
Marco:
all the things they use the cpus from intel are already shipping in volume to everybody else the gpus are not new they're a little customized for apple but it's not a new part so they're probably not having yield issues so i have to wonder what what's the hold up here what are they holding this back for the u.s manufacturing plant getting up online it could be but i i would imagine that that's that happened a long time ago
John:
At this point, it's like, why even bother releasing it this year?
John:
I'm sure they'll just release it when it's ready because they don't care, but it's not as if the holiday season has anything to do with Mac Pro purchases, right?
John:
So it's like, what kind of company puts a new product up for sale in December?
John:
It has nothing to do with the holidays.
John:
They'll probably just put it out.
John:
If it's ready, they'll ship it, and so what?
John:
But it's like, you know, people going on vacation and stuff, if they wait until January, is the world going to end?
John:
No.
John:
If it's ready December 16th or whatever that rumor URL just flew through, then fine, they'll ship it then.
John:
But...
John:
You know, I'm not holding my breath for it.
John:
And like I said, even when it comes out, you're not going to buy right away.
John:
I'm going to go and fiddle with the configuration right away and then just see what I think.
Marco:
Well, if it comes out with a retin display, I will buy it right away.
Marco:
That's the only thing that would make me buy it right away.
Marco:
No question.
Marco:
I'd order it that day.
Marco:
I'd get the 8-core with probably 32 gigs of RAM, 1 terabyte SSD, and probably the mid-range video card.
Marco:
I did some research on the video cards.
Marco:
It looks like the mid-range one is substantially better than the low-end one.
Marco:
And the high end one is not that much better than the mid range one.
Marco:
So yeah, that's, I tell you right now, that's the, that's the configuration I would get sight unseen, eight core middle video card, one terabyte SSD and 32 gigs of RAM.
Marco:
That's it.
John:
That'll be, that'll be $6,000 please.
Marco:
Yeah, probably.
Casey:
You know, D. Sheehy in the chat asked a very important question.
Casey:
Marco, are you going to choose pickup from Amazon's or excuse me, Apple's German factory option when you buy your Mac pro?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Do we know where the factory is?
Marco:
Is it somewhere weird?
Casey:
I thought it was outside Austin.
Casey:
No?
Marco:
Yeah, I could go to Austin.
Marco:
They have good barbecue there.
Casey:
They have very good barbecue there.
Marco:
Breakfast tacos.
Marco:
I mean, breakfast tacos are an awesome invention of the world.
Marco:
Ever since South by Southwest started sucking, I haven't gone there.
Marco:
I could visit Dan Benjamin.
Marco:
I could eat barbecue.
Marco:
Let's do it.
Casey:
You want to road trip it?
Casey:
No.
Marco:
Definitely not doing that.
Casey:
You don't want to do this?
Casey:
I know John definitely would like to road trip from Boston to Austin.
John:
I think they stopped BMWs at the border of Texas.
John:
Well, at least Democrats.
John:
To affix the giant steer horns to the front, and then you're allowed to continue.
Casey:
Clearly, you haven't spent a lot of time in Texas, John.
Casey:
There's more to Texas.
John:
Well, it's Austin.
John:
It's not really Texas.
Casey:
That's exactly right.
Marco:
Well, and keep in mind, the border of Texas is going to be substantially more rural than Austin.
Casey:
Oh, man.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So I think – are we good?
Casey:
Is that a sign?
Marco:
We should probably cut it off there.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our sponsors this week, Hover, Igloo, and Squarespace, and we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
They didn't.
Casey:
Uh, John, what's up with your car?
Casey:
Do you, do you want to talk about that or do you want to save that for another time?
John:
It's always another time.
John:
Let's do it now.
John:
I've got lots of little items.
John:
You know, I'm still on the first tank of gas in that car.
Casey:
Seriously?
John:
It came from the dealer.
John:
Wow.
John:
It shows both how little driving I do and also, I guess, how fuel efficient it is.
John:
Although I'm not getting great mileage because I'm, you know, stop and go traffic all the time to work.
John:
It's much better to go highway miles.
Casey:
Now, is that a five-speed or six-speed?
John:
Six.
Casey:
But the Civic was five?
John:
Yeah, this is my first six-speed car.
Casey:
I was about to ask.
Casey:
See, the BMW is my first six-speed car.
John:
I have not entered six gear yet, though.
Casey:
I was about to ask.
Casey:
I was just about to ask.
John:
I've been in fifth, but not sixth.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
So how do you like it?
John:
I'm still babying the car.
John:
I haven't finished going through the owner's manual.
John:
What do they tell you these days for engine braking?
Casey:
Between 1,000 and 1,500, usually.
John:
Yeah, so it's going to be a long time before I can wind this thing out to see what it can do.
Yeah.
Casey:
Can that wind out?
John:
Oh, it winds out.
Casey:
Oh, that's terrible.
Casey:
And, you know, if you buy an M5 or lease an M5 and get it in Germany, apparently break-in just doesn't matter.
Marco:
Well, there is break-in, just that the limits are so ridiculous.
John:
It's a leased car.
John:
He's not keeping that engine long term.
Casey:
Anyway, I digress.
Casey:
So tell me, what do you like and what do you not like about the Accord?
John:
I have a big list of things I don't like.
Casey:
You?
Casey:
Somehow I am not at all surprised by that.
John:
This is my third Honda Accord, and it's my fifth Honda, and I've only ever owned Hondas, although I've driven Mazdas and Volvos and other things that my parents have owned and stuff.
John:
and so part of the problem is like i guess when you have you know multiple kids you're always comparing it to the past ones like well in my old honda this was like that and now it's different and so a lot of the the past models have the advantage of familiarity in my mind and i imagine a lot of my complaints about the new one will fade as i become more familiar with it in fact after only driving it for a few weeks or whatever i had now
John:
I've seen that start to happen where the things that seem weird at first, you just kind of start getting used to.
John:
And you realize it wasn't that it was worse.
John:
It was just different than the car you're used to.
John:
Because a lot of the things about driving cars are like sense memory of where things are and how things feel inside the car and how the car moves and everything.
John:
And it feels weird and alien at first, but then eventually you start settling in.
John:
You start knowing where everything is.
John:
But some things are clearly regressions from past Hondas, and that's just such a shame.
John:
such as well so let's start with the key fob oh is it is it massive like all the modern ones they they are they have been getting bigger right but in exchange like you know the the first accord i got was the first car that had something on the key fob where you could press a button to unlock the doors and that's good i like that feature right
John:
But it's big.
John:
Obviously, you'd prefer it to be like the BMW magical little thing where there's no key part.
John:
It's just the fob, and you have little buttons, but that's not the kind of car this is.
Marco:
That being said, the BMW one is, in my opinion, way too big.
Casey:
Oh, yours is enormous compared to mine, and yes, I'm talking about key fobs.
Marco:
Well, the F30, the new 3 Series is the same size as the one I have for reference.
Marco:
Oh, really?
Marco:
They get bigger.
Marco:
They keep getting bigger.
John:
Yeah, I don't understand why they're so big.
John:
It's like battery life or something?
Marco:
I have no idea.
Casey:
So, genuine question, though, John.
Casey:
Your key situation in the Accord, it is not a proximity key, and you actually do have to insert a metal object into the steering column in order to start the car?
John:
Yeah, and that was one of the... Speaking of things that, like, seem weird at first, but you start to get used to, this... And I don't know why they change things like this, but...
John:
when you have a metal key that goes into a slot to start your car, the angle that that slot is is something you may not think about until it changes.
John:
So all the other Hondas that we had, the angle was, I don't know what angle it is, but I just kind of know like when you grab the key in your hand and you reach around the side of the steering wheel to stick it in the slot, you kind of know what angle you have to put it at.
John:
And it's a more vertical angle.
John:
And in this new Accord, it's much closer to horizontal, which is very weird to do, you know, like the twisting the key.
John:
But that's not my complaint about the fob.
John:
My complaint about the fob is the old one had,
John:
had three buttons on it in a triangle type arrangement.
John:
And the buttons were two different sizes, two different textures.
John:
One was concave, one was convex, one had a ring with little studs around it.
John:
If you felt that thing in your pocket, you could tell of those three buttons, they were differentiated in every way you could differentiate them except for they were all circles.
John:
it was way easier to fish around there if this is unlocked this is locked this is open the trunk right you could feel it the new fob is like a rectangle cut into thirds and the thing that divides it into thirds is at the same level as everything else so it just feels like one big smooth continuous rectangle
John:
And you have to kind of feel your way along and go, okay, the middle one is unlock, and the top one is lock, and the bottom one, which is a little bit concave, is like open the trunk or whatever.
John:
And so it's so hard to feel around in your pocket to find the unlock button for that thing.
John:
You always have to end up taking it out or really concentrating on feeling where that little ridge is.
John:
And that's a regression.
John:
I don't know why you would take a design where you had three distinct, widely separated buttons in a triangle pattern that have different textures and make one button that's sliced into three parts.
John:
Bad.
John:
There's another one in the minor complaint department.
John:
These are all minor, I guess.
John:
This is not really entirely Honda's fault, but kind of their fault.
John:
So you know about NHTSA, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration?
Casey:
I've heard of it.
John:
Is that how you say it?
John:
Yeah, well, that's how, yeah.
John:
My first job was at Car Talk, and we did the stuff with NHTSA data.
John:
I don't know if that's how you say it.
John:
That's how I say it.
John:
That's how everyone at Car Talk said it.
John:
That's fair.
John:
That's authoritative.
John:
Well, not the show, the website.
John:
So we could have all just been saying it wrong.
John:
But it's like GIFGIF.
John:
Anyway, NHTSA has new requirements for headrests.
John:
Not new, but like new since last time I bought a car 11 years ago or whatever.
John:
That limits the distance between the back of your head and the headrest.
John:
Because they found that there was less injury if that distance was smaller.
John:
And so the new rules are that...
John:
To accommodate people sitting in the weird positions they sit in, the headrests have to be closer to your head.
John:
And sure enough, in this new accord, if you were looking at the seat back and the seat back was up perpendicular to the ground, which it never is because no one sits bolt upright in their seat, but if you were to put it like that, the headrest is tilted forward, way forward, to try to minimize distance between your head and the headrests.
John:
So much so that if you actually had the seat in a right angle, which, again, nobody ever does, this headrest would be shoving your head down.
John:
Now, what people actually do is they tilt the seat way back, and at that point, then the headrest starts to become closer to vertical.
John:
But it is a way different experience.
John:
It looks like the headrest is reaching back and hitting your head, and you're like, stop, leave me alone.
John:
You want the headrest to go back.
John:
If you Google for 2014 Honda Accord headrest complaints, you'll find people complaining about this, and it's...
John:
partially honda's fault for making a headrest that's so far forward like that and it's not adjustable or whatever i guess but it's i think they're doing it to comply with regulations that the new regulations are that you have to have a smaller distance between your head and the headrest this is one of the things i'm kind of getting used to once you realize that it's kind of there it's it actually fits my head a little bit better than the old headrest when it's adjusted correctly but it is closer than i think it needs to be because i would like to have my seat a little bit more upright than i actually do but i have to
John:
tilt it back just to get a reasonable, so the headrest isn't poking me in the back of the head constantly.
John:
um i guess one more before we get off this topic because i have a very long list and we should come back to it each week and revisit things uh the stocks you know the the stocks for like the the blinkers and the wipers and everything i can't tell for sure without actually seeing an accord with flappy paddles because they do have they do have like i'm pretty sure they have accords with flappy paddles i think they put the flappy paddles on like the cvt version it's some ungodly transmission that i don't even want to think about
Casey:
How does that even make sense?
Casey:
There's not even gears.
John:
It doesn't.
John:
It doesn't make any sense.
John:
But they do it.
John:
Tons of car companies do this.
John:
They put CVTs in them because they're cheap and everything, and they also put flappy paddles on them just to make people have fun flapping and make them feel like they have expensive stuff.
John:
My theory is that the stalks are way higher than they used to be.
John:
Instead of being exactly horizontal, they're up on an angle like 45 degrees.
John:
And I think they're way higher and actually mounted higher on the steering column to make room for the flappy paddles that I don't have in my car.
John:
So when I go for the stocks with my fingers, you know, reach around from behind the rim of the steering wheel to reach where the stocks are, they're way higher than I expect them to be because on all my other Hondas, they were lower down.
John:
It could be that they just Honda decided the stock should be higher up and they're just higher up in all their cars.
John:
But my theory is that the empty space below them where I have nothing is where the flappy paddles would go and they didn't want to make two versions of the steering column with stocks in different positions.
John:
So that's a little bit annoying.
Casey:
But overall, you still do like the car.
John:
I have like a list of 80 more complaints, but I think that's enough for today.
John:
But yeah, so far, the car's been treating me well.
John:
I've been trying to keep it in the garage to see how long I can go acorn dent free.
John:
Nice.
John:
So far, so good there.
John:
No scratches, no dings.
John:
It's getting a little bit dirty, but you know.
John:
so i when i when i walk up to in the parking lot i'm still excited to see it with its big shiny wheels and its undented body work little things get into it and it's and it's leather wrapped steering wheel which is nice even though it's not heated and play with all my various av connections and i'm getting into a good rhythm with the ipods that i connect i connect my shuffle to it a lot to listen to podcasts on and then i take the shuffle out of the car with me you know
John:
So I can listen on my way up the stairs out of the parking garage and everything.
John:
So that's working out pretty well.
John:
And one of my iPods has a permanent home in the car connected to the actual iPod connector with the integration with the steering wheel controls and everything.
John:
That's what I use to listen to music.
John:
So it's going pretty well.
Marco:
You're like the worst friend to have when thinking about beta testing a podcast app.
John:
i i gotta have the physical buttons i can't i cannot look at a screen to pause the podcast and why do i have to pause the podcast because the kids are asking me a question because my wife is calling me because something you know i want to be able to just reach a button without looking and pause and i can i could do that with steering wheel controls and i can do that with an ipod shuffle can't do it with an ios ipod app well you can with a clicker if you have the headphone clicker
John:
Yeah, but I'm wearing headphones.
John:
It's going over the speakers in the car.
John:
It's the point of the integration.
John:
I want to have sound in the car.
Marco:
So you use the wheel controls.
Marco:
What's wrong with that?
John:
Wheel controls can't pause.
John:
Can't you just tap the off button to pause?
Casey:
No, we went through this on Twitter, didn't we?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Even just like queuing up the podcast.
John:
I like the shuffle.
John:
Again, because I want to listen to it.
John:
I want to listen to it when I'm getting ready in the morning, when I'm getting out of my car, going out of the parking garage, going up the stairs to the building and on the way back down.
John:
You wouldn't think that would make a difference, but that's, you know, five, ten minutes a day when I want to have the podcast with me.
John:
That's fair.
John:
And during that time, I also don't want to be fumbling with something in my pocket or accidentally hitting it.
John:
It's going to be difficult to get me to use an iOS iPod podcast application.
John:
If Apple would just stop making the shuffle, then that'll do it.
Casey:
And what do the kids think?
Casey:
Do they even have an opinion?
John:
I don't think they care.
John:
Are they allowed in the car?
John:
They know about new car smell.
John:
They say, what's that smell?
John:
This is their first new car smell.
John:
So they're excited about that.
Marco:
They're both a lot younger than your previous car.
Marco:
Oh, wow, that's true.
John:
They were too young.
John:
When we got the 2006 Accord, they were alive, but they were too young to care about that.
John:
I'm excited because now they're both old enough and big enough to only be in boosters.
John:
They don't have to be in the big seats that destroy your car.
John:
Nice.
John:
And so hopefully the seats in this car will not be destroyed by the gigantic car seat strapping mechanisms that destroy cars.
Marco:
For whatever it's worth, so far, I've gotten away okay with that.
Marco:
I have this one little pad, this little skinny pad that sits between the two.
Marco:
But for the most part, I have those things tight as hell, and I've been fine.
John:
Well, leather is probably more durable than cloth in terms of resisting the compression and everything.
John:
And also, you're not supposed to have anything under the car seat.
John:
If you go to the local fire department, they'll yell at you about that.
Marco:
the cop who installed the first one didn't complain about the thing i had because you could still get it so ridiculously tight that like if you like shake the top it doesn't even budge it's like it's that tight you know it's like it's so it's so locked down that uh i don't i don't think anybody could really complain about it is he still rephrasing
Marco:
yeah it's we're to the point now where he he doesn't need to be rear-facing but like the the current wisdom is that which makes sense is that you should rear face pretty much until they can't fit rear-facing anymore like until like their knees are at their chin rear-facing then you have to turn it around you're not supposed to get too long because their little legs can get caught between the seat and the thing so there is a leg length limit for but yeah the real seat destruction doesn't happen until you go front-facing
John:
You'll see when you get a gigantic... When they can kick the back of the... That's part of it.
John:
Yes, they get their stupid feet all over the back of your seats.
John:
But no, the ones that... The big seats that strap in end up just pressing down into the foam of your seat and like four points of wherever the seat hits...
John:
the car seat hits your seats that really destroys it because you have to crank it down with the seatbelt and it's not like the rear facing has the advantage of kind of being pulled into the little wedge of your seat like you're you're taking the car seat and pulling that that thing into the wedge of the seat whereas the front facing one has got to kind of be pulled down into the seat you'll see when you get one there and plus they weigh more and they have more scratchy things and there's a much heavier kid sitting in them well the one i have now is both that you can reverse it but i mean there's no seatbelt involved anymore now it's all latch
John:
Well, what model do you have?
John:
I hate latch.
John:
What model do you have?
Marco:
Give me a second.
Marco:
I couldn't even tell you.
Marco:
Tiff would know.
Marco:
Give me a second.
Marco:
Talk about something else with Casey for two minutes while I'm looking up on Amazon.
Okay.
Marco:
going through your order history.
John:
Yeah.
John:
All right, I'll pull out another complaint.
John:
The pedals are too close in the name of the Accord.
Marco:
It's the Britax Marathon 70 G3.
John:
Yeah, Marathon.
John:
All right, I know that one.
Marco:
Yeah, it's pretty... The one we had before for the infant car seat we had was the Graco, whatever, Snug Ride, whatever, whatever.
Marco:
It was a piece of crap.
Marco:
Like, it was... Every time I had to remove or mount that car seat, I wanted to burn down the world.
Marco:
It was... It was just a total piece of crap.
Marco:
Like, the latch... Like, the...
Marco:
Horrible.
Marco:
The Bridex Marathon has been fantastic so far.
Marco:
It's night and day difference in installation, qualities, views, massive difference.
John:
I don't know if we had a marathon.
John:
I think we might have had a similar marathon, but this is still like a little kid's seat.
John:
Once you get the...
John:
the big kid seats are just, just brutal.
John:
Like if you can look at the little, the part that contacts the bottom, that little sort of the foot of the thing, that is a much, that is a much gentler foot than the big ones to start.
John:
Just.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And the other thing is the food.
John:
Oh God, the food that they grinds into the, the, the thing that's underneath it as they throw their food out and then it goes underneath there and then the sticky candy gets in there and then the seat is grinding it into the, it's just, it's disgusting.
John:
Kids are disgusting.
John:
They,
John:
so no i'm really excited about that i don't have to have those uh those giant seats in there anymore no more latch no more belting the seat belt in doing the little clicky ratcheting thing no more of that just boosters just boosters yeah so you said you still have the first tank of gas and presumably the range on one of those is somewhere around 400 miles on a tank
John:
I think it's less than that.
John:
I think it's like 300 and something.
John:
It's small tanks.
John:
They put small tanks in them.
Casey:
So at that rate, if you've had the car, what, three or four weeks now?
John:
Something like that, yeah.
Casey:
So if you call it a month, that says it's going to take you another three months to just get out of breaking.
John:
It's in the honeymoon period.
John:
Well, when we go on our summer trip to Long Island, this will be the car we take.
John:
So that may be its first long trip.
Marco:
Because Long Island never has any traffic or anything.
Marco:
You'll be fine.
Marco:
We don't go the traffic-y way.
Casey:
You sound like somebody from D.C.
Casey:
It's the same thing in D.C.
Casey:
Oh, D.C.
Casey:
traffic is terrible.
Casey:
Oh, no, it's not.
Casey:
It's not terrible at all.
Casey:
And so like the Hausmans, who I know Marco is friendly with, Stephanie had said, oh, you know, the traffic is fine in D.C.
Casey:
as long as you know where you're going.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
Just today she tweets a picture of her on 95 or 495 or God knows what stopped because D.C.
Casey:
traffic is terrible.
Casey:
And I think Marco was going to say that Long Island is the same way.
Marco:
Everyone always thinks they have their own little secret way that they can go that won't have traffic.
Marco:
The problem is there's millions of people who all have the same idea.
Marco:
It's like the AT&T store on iPhone launch.
John:
My way is not secret, but it actually avoids traffic.
John:
Sure.
John:
You just don't go on roads.
John:
You go on a boat.
John:
If you go from New London to Orient Point, there's no traffic.
John:
Hey, I solved the problem.
John:
That's what we do when we go down there.
John:
We take a new London ferry to Orient Point.
John:
On that boat trip, there is no traffic.
John:
I guess there's boat traffic, but they don't get in your way.
John:
And then once you go from Orient down to where we stay, you're going in the North Fork...
John:
You know, it's not against or with traffic.
John:
There's just nobody there.
John:
Like, we don't get close to the city.
John:
So, yeah, that's how you avoid traffic.
John:
Take boats.
John:
Going down to New London is usually not that bad.
John:
It could be a couple.
John:
I mean, it depends on what day we leave.
John:
But that'll be enough highway miles to get out.
John:
I used to drive around, and then, I mean, it's not terrible.
John:
There's always a little bit of traffic around the city, but...
John:
uh you you would actually end up getting depending on where you're driving it's very possible that you could get there faster by driving around than you would by taking a ferry because the ferry you got to wait for the ferry to show up and the ferry is actually kind of slow but you're not driving during that time so it's better turns out boats full of cars are slower than cars
John:
They are, but it feels faster because you get a break, unless you're like me and can't stand boats.
John:
But it's a testament to how unwilling I am to drive around, or how unwilling my whole family is to drive around these days that I'm actually willing to get on a boat, although I dread it every time.
Marco:
Are there any transport methods that you enjoy?
John:
When I'm driving my car, I'm more or less fine with that, but no one likes to be stuck in traffic, I guess.
John:
I'm okay with teleportation.
John:
Anyone wants to work on that.
Casey:
I would love to hear John go hypercritical on teleportation.
Casey:
I can only imagine what that would feel like.
John:
I've read too many bad sci-fi stories about the dangers of teleportation that I imagine it wouldn't go well.
Marco:
It doesn't seem worth the risk.
Marco:
Seriously.
John:
I wouldn't go first.
John:
Let someone else go first, you know.