Brilliance Enhancer
Marco:
There's no way this is going on in the show.
Marco:
I know.
Marco:
This is not nearly exciting enough.
Casey:
Well, it was embarrassing for me, so I thought there was a pretty good shot you'd wanted in there.
Casey:
So we have a little bit of follow-up.
Casey:
The first thing is, and I'm a little disappointed that this has gotten a little bit of publicity because I was hoping to wow everyone with revealing this on the show.
Casey:
But there is a listener who wrote far and away my favorite thing I've ever read on the internet.
Casey:
His name is Joe Steele, if I'm not mistaken.
Casey:
And he wrote...
Casey:
And a screenplay review of the Accidental Tech Podcast.
Casey:
And as it turns out, I didn't realize this at the time, as it turns out, he's actually done several of these.
Casey:
And he even has a little Tumblr where he posts them.
Casey:
So he's done one.
Casey:
He did one for the prompt.
Casey:
which is falsely advertised as greatest podcast in the world.
Casey:
He did one for Bionic, which I actually thought was quite funny.
Casey:
And he's done it for several others.
Casey:
The Incomparable, he did one, and I forget what the other ones are.
Casey:
But they're really, really, really funny.
Casey:
And I absolutely adored ours.
Casey:
I thought it was hysterical.
Casey:
And so many thanks to Joe Steele for writing that inventive and hilarious review.
Casey:
And if you ever wanted to trick us into mentioning your name on the show, that's how you do it, is by writing an awesome review that's hysterical.
John:
That's not a trick.
John:
That's a legitimate way to do it.
Marco:
Speaking of Bionic, have you guys heard Bionic since the beginning?
Casey:
No, I only started listening a handful of episodes back, but don't tell Mike or Matt about that.
Marco:
So I always assumed it was about comics, so I didn't listen to it.
Marco:
And then when Merlin was on as a guest host, I listened to that one, and I kept listening after that.
Marco:
And I don't know what's going on in that show.
Marco:
Neither did I. However, I couldn't tell you what it's about.
Marco:
I heard them say that it used to be about ecosystems, so that's as good of an explanation as any.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But I like it.
Marco:
It's really weird, but it's funny.
Marco:
You can tell that you're walking in on what's clearly a long-running series of inside jokes, but they manage to make it funny.
Marco:
Even if you don't know the backstory, you can figure out enough that you can laugh with it.
Marco:
And then there's occasionally actual tech discussion.
Marco:
So it's pretty cool.
Marco:
I actually really like Bionic now.
Casey:
Yeah, I agree.
Casey:
I also didn't listen to it because I thought I was way too late in the inside joke category, which is to some degree one of the excuses I use for you look nice today.
Casey:
And you don't have to lecture me.
Casey:
I know I need to listen to it.
Casey:
It's on the list.
Casey:
But yes, I never jumped into Bionic until, I don't know, maybe...
Casey:
five-ish episodes ago, like I said, and it's actually quite entertaining.
Casey:
I'm not sure I understand what's going on ever, but I still enjoy it nevertheless.
Marco:
Yeah, I can pretty much say the same thing.
Marco:
Well, that's good.
Marco:
We also had some follow-up on the retina display.
Marco:
We talked at the end of last episode about possibilities for what Apple could release or what anybody could release, for that matter, in regards to a Retina desktop display.
Marco:
We looked at the new Dell ones that are coming out.
Marco:
And John brought up in his Mavericks review or somewhere that – right, John?
Marco:
When did you bring up the wallpaper size?
Marco:
Was it the Mavericks review?
John:
Yeah, it was in the Mavericks review.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So you brought up there about how the wallpaper that comes with the system is available in exactly 5120 by 2880, which is exactly double each dimension of the current 27-inch cinema display.
Marco:
And that would be awesome to have that as a retina screen.
Marco:
We haven't seen any monitors come out with that resolution, though.
Marco:
The highest we've seen is 4K 3840 by 2160.
Marco:
And we had talked at the end of last episode, what if Apple releases that resolution, 3840 wide, as the Retina display, rather than like the full Retina 27 inch, which would be 5120 wide.
Marco:
And we got a number of people pointing out that actually the current versions of even Thunderbolt 2 and DisplayPort 1.2, the two current, you know,
Marco:
Ways to connect a monitor to a video card.
Marco:
Those don't support enough bandwidth to run 5120 wide at 60 frames a second.
Marco:
They just can't do it.
Marco:
That takes roughly 28 gigabits per second, and they both top out at about 20.
Marco:
And so we're actually pretty far from that.
Marco:
DisplayPort 1.3 is the next upcoming version of DisplayPort.
Marco:
That will support up to 8K resolution at 60 Hz because it raises the bandwidth.
Marco:
But that's not available yet.
John:
Where are you getting the DisplayPort 1.2 bandwidth from?
John:
I looked up on Wikipedia and it said like 17 something and you have it here as 21 in the notes file.
Marco:
It was unclear to me exactly what it was, but it says in this little sidebar that you can have up to four channels at whatever that divided by four is.
Marco:
So I just multiplied that and said that's probably the theoretical max.
Marco:
But either way, it's neither Thunderbolt 2 nor DisplayPort 1.2, which is the current best version of both of those things.
Marco:
Neither of those can drive a display of the size that you want.
John:
And for the 5120 by 2880, how many bits per pixel is that assuming?
Marco:
That was at 32, however, it also doesn't work at 24.
John:
Why would it be 32 bits per pixel?
Marco:
I don't know, that's how everyone else was calculating it, so I did that, but even at 24 bits per pixel, it's still too much.
John:
At 24 bits per pixel, it's like 21 or something gigabits, which is still over the 17-ish that 1.2 puts out, but...
John:
Yeah, I have to wait a little bit longer.
John:
It's sad.
John:
Either way, you can't do it.
John:
There's possibilities that you can have resolutions in between there, but who the hell knows?
John:
It always bothers me that 4K isn't really 4,000 or anything, but I think 4K is kind of an umbrella term.
John:
It doesn't apply to any specific resolution.
John:
It's one of those BS things.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
There's like four or five different ones that all are kind of considered 4K.
John:
Yeah.
John:
The link I threw in there was the many stories about the sharp 4K display appearing in some European Apple store briefly before disappearing.
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, I don't really think that indicates anything useful.
Marco:
People obviously send that to all of us a lot when it came out when the news hit a few days ago.
Marco:
And, I mean, Apple has sold third-party monitors and stuff before in their store.
Marco:
So I don't think it indicates anything, whether Apple released their own or not.
Marco:
I really don't think it says anything.
John:
But it was another 3840-2160.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
So, I mean, I really think that's what we're going to be sticking with for the next few years.
Marco:
I think that's going to be the highest resolution you can get because nothing can drive anything better than that.
Marco:
And I'm guessing... You still think Apple will make one of these, though?
John:
I think they will.
John:
I'm not necessarily sure when they'll make it.
John:
We'll see it on the iMac first, and then at the end of next year, they'll be... Well, Dell's making one now.
John:
The fact that they put the Mac Pro up there and said, and it can drive three 4K displays, are they really expecting us to buy those 4K displays from someone other than them because just the margins are too low on these displays and they don't care because it's just...
John:
Maybe pros would never use the Apple displays anyway because they have their specialty.
John:
I don't quite understand that.
John:
It's kind of like when Apple discontinued the XServe RAID and said, oh, just buy these other ugly, purple, weird, plasticky RAID things instead.
John:
That was not a very Apple-like thing to do.
John:
It was very strange seeing them do that.
John:
Do you remember that time?
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I mean, I really think what we're in for here is Dell's going to release theirs.
Marco:
It's not already out, I don't think, but I think it's coming soon, like very soon.
Marco:
So Dell's going to release theirs.
Marco:
I think they said it was, what, $1,500, $1,400, something like that for the 24-inch one?
Marco:
I think that's going to be the new hotness for nerds like us.
Marco:
Assuming that it can be driven by the new Mac Pro and new Retina MacBook Pros at that resolution and be treated as 2X.
Marco:
I think people are going to buy that a lot if Apple doesn't make their own.
Marco:
And if Apple releases a 27-inch version of that,
Marco:
And the Dell one works fine at 24 inches.
Marco:
I really might go with the Dell one.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I've had Dell displays before.
Marco:
They've been fine.
Marco:
The plastic around them is crap.
Marco:
The stand is crap.
Marco:
The buttons always flake and fall off or spin around and stop working.
Marco:
They're built like crap, but the panels are always really good.
Marco:
It's always really good image quality for a really good price and usually with tons of inputs and card readers and USB hubs and all that other stuff.
Marco:
I've been...
Marco:
I've had perfectly fine experiences with Dell displays.
Marco:
I've actually never had an Apple display.
Marco:
I've always used third-party displays.
Marco:
So I would be fine with that.
Marco:
But if Apple makes one at the right size... If Apple makes a 24, which I don't honestly think they would... If they made a 24, I'd buy that, no question.
Marco:
But if the Dell one and the Apple one will end up working the same... If I can use the Dell one at retina... Being treated as a retina monitor by the computer... With no really horrible flaky hacks that fail constantly...
Marco:
I don't see a lot of reason not to do that.
John:
High DPI mode is not that much of a flaky hack.
John:
The fact that you have to use a dev tool to enable it is not that big a deal.
John:
As far as I can tell, it's the same code path everywhere as if you had a retina display hooked up.
John:
All the software running is outputting a double resolution, just like it would be if it was displayed at that resolution.
John:
I don't think there's any additional weirdness about it, except for maybe on the login screens.
John:
I do all my OS X testing, especially for Maverick, since all the screenshots are retina.
John:
and i don't have a retina mac had to be done in this mode and once you put it in this mode even the login screen will be in this mode too and it's kind of weird then when you go to the login screen you log into someone's account who doesn't have that setting set or log out of one and back it's a little bit weird there but if you just kept it in that mode the whole time i think it would be okay and and you would imagine that
John:
a point update of OS 10 would recognize a Dell or some other 4k ish display and treat it like a retina screen.
John:
You know, like you wouldn't have to do that hack.
John:
Like why would Apple make you do that?
John:
It's not a big deal for them to, to just show those supported resolutions.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I bet they would make you do that, honestly.
Marco:
I mentioned iFriendly last week, the utility to swap the resolutions on the MacBook Pro.
Marco:
I bet all those utilities and defaults, right tricks, and all those...
Marco:
system preference tricks that let you enable modes that Apple doesn't officially think that your monitor can support, I bet those same tricks will work to do this.
John:
But if Apple doesn't have their own displays, if their solution is like it was for the XServe RAID, oh, just buy this third-party monitor.
John:
They can't tell you to buy the third-party monitor and then also expect you to Google for...
John:
how to get the graphics tools out of the Xcode package and run the Quartz debug thing and flip the little option.
John:
Like if they're going to go third party, it's got to support the third parties.
John:
If they have their own first party one, yeah, then maybe you'll have to enable this mode manually.
Marco:
Until the Mac Pro actually comes out and Apple doesn't have this monitor available, I'm still going to keep believing there's hope for it.
Marco:
Oh, you're setting yourself up here.
Marco:
But again, now that this Dell one is out, and I'm pretty sure Apple... So now that we have this info about bandwidth limits, I'm positive that Apple will not release one that is the full 5120 wide.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I'm also not positive, but I'm fairly sure that if they did release a 4K monitor, it would be probably 27 inches.
Marco:
I don't see them releasing a smaller monitor than that because it's not that big of a market for them.
Marco:
So since we can't have the Super Retina resolution at 27 inches...
Marco:
you know what's better two 1920s like two you know two 3840 resolution ones that are treated as 1920s at 24 inches uh that might be better you know as we said last show but obviously i know john you are a monitor monogamist yeah i i still think no monitors this year macro will come out there might be some third-party options but no monitors because i don't i don't understand why they would
John:
keep the monitor so secret for so long and then to say oh and by the way the mac pro is out and here's these new apple monitors but i just see no monitors this year from apple do you think that we're going to get a mac pro before the end of the year i know they said december and i know december isn't over but we're running out of time if it's ready they'll ship it like who was someone said we said last show that it doesn't matter for the holidays because this is not a seasonal item uh but someone said that it would matter for like their q4 sales or something i don't even think it would matter there because i think the volumes are so low that it wouldn't make a difference
Marco:
Yeah, I think iPads and iPhones, and especially iPhones, that matters for their Q4 sales.
Marco:
I don't think what's probably the lowest selling Mac is going to make a drop in the bucket.
Casey:
One other piece of follow-up, or I believe this is follow-up, and I think, John, that you added to this to these show notes.
Casey:
Do you want to briefly talk about Squarespace?
John:
Yeah, this is not actually a sponsor break, but I mentioned on a couple of shows back a business plan based on implementing Squarespace sites for people who have terrible websites and don't realize that they could have a nice website if they'd spend five minutes on Squarespace and pay a couple bucks.
John:
And so if they don't want to go through that, why not start a business as a facilitator of that, where you charge somebody presumably a lot more than Squarespace charges.
John:
And for the money, you set up a Squarespace site for somebody.
John:
And they obviously do design work and content work and everything else.
John:
Apparently, there's a page at Squarespace that somebody sent me that I did not keep track of.
John:
It's at specialist.squarespace.com that lists a pretty small list of people who do or people or companies who do exactly this.
John:
You engage with them as a business, and they use Squarespace to set up your site.
John:
So basically, they're like design firms.
John:
They don't have to do any of the programming or any of the annoying other stuff, and they will set you up.
John:
I bet that these people will probably also set you up a commerce site or whatever, because Squarespace can do that as well, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yep, sure can.
John:
So anyway, Squarespace is out ahead of this apparently.
John:
They're already cultivating this group of – I wondered actually if Squarespace didn't want you like reselling their services or whatever.
John:
But apparently they think this is a good thing and they've already got a site set up for it.
John:
And if you're one of those people who does this for a living, a couple of people those contacted me and say, oh, I've set up three different clients already all using Squarespace.
John:
This is a thing that Squarespace does, so check it out.
Marco:
And now it is a sponsor break.
Marco:
This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, shockingly, the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio.
Marco:
For a free trial and 10% off your first purchase, go to squarespace.com and use offer code ATP12 to help support our show.
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:
Or apparently this guy's business or all these people's businesses.
Marco:
Every design automatically includes a unique, mobile, responsive design experience that matches the overall style of your site.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
squarespace starts at just eight dollars a month and includes a free domain name if you sign up for a year in advance and the best thing is you can start a free trial with no credit card required you don't you know it's not like one of those crap free trials that a lot of places do where it's like well free trial if you enter all your information for billing and we know you're probably going to forget and if you actually want to cancel you gotta like talk to one of those chat bot things and it'll probably fail and probably bill you anyway it's not one of those
Marco:
With Squarespace, it's a real free trial.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
When you do decide to sign up, make sure you use our offer code ATP12.
Marco:
As I said earlier, ATP12 to get 10% off your initial purchase and to support our show.
Marco:
Squarespace is everything you need to create an exceptional website.
Marco:
Thank you very much for your support, Squarespace.
Casey:
So in the spirit of random musings from Geek Friday or IRL Talk, I had a random musing of my own the other day.
Casey:
And I don't know if there's much to be said here, but I was on my Mac, and for whatever reason, I wanted to buy some iOS app.
Casey:
And I forget which one it was, and it doesn't really matter.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
My initial inclination was, okay, well, I'll go to the App Store to buy that app.
Casey:
Wait, no.
Casey:
No, I have to go to iTunes to do that.
Casey:
And it occurred to me, why is it that all of the iOS app purchases aren't in the App Store?
Casey:
Because to my subconscious, apparently, as well as to, I would imagine, most normal people...
Casey:
The App Store is the App Store is the App Store.
Casey:
It doesn't matter if you're buying Mac or iOS.
Casey:
You're just trying to buy an app, and you should do that in the App Store.
Casey:
And I thought it was just a little wonky that that was all happening on iTunes.
Casey:
And naturally, there's a million logical and obvious explanations.
Casey:
It's always been in iTunes.
Casey:
It started in iTunes.
Casey:
It would muddy up the Mac app store, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
But I just thought it was really, really weird.
Casey:
And I didn't really, maybe I missed it, but I haven't really seen anyone talking about this.
Casey:
I don't know if you guys had any input.
Casey:
And if not, we can just move along.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
What do you think?
Marco:
Well, certainly one problem would be that you see on the iPad app store.
Marco:
One of the problems is if you sell an app on the iPad, if you also have a separate iPhone version, a lot of people will mistakenly buy the iPhone one who want to run it on an iPad.
Marco:
And then that's a crappy support experience.
Marco:
It's a crappy customer experience because things are blended together.
Marco:
Obviously, if they did that on the Mac, if they integrated everything in, it would be a little easier in that they could at least...
Marco:
I don't know, talk to iTunes and figure out if you have an iPhone or iPad and not even show those results if you don't, something like that.
Marco:
But for the most part, it would still be a weird experience.
Marco:
You'd still have a lot of people who would buy the wrong thing.
Marco:
It kind of clutters up the store.
Marco:
I don't think Apple would ever do this, but I think it would actually be a way better experience on the iPad
Marco:
if it didn't show iPhone-only apps at all in a store.
Marco:
Like, you know, maybe you could download them from, like, your purchase tab or something else, but if it made it really, really hard to find them or if it just hid them completely, first of all, developers would be more forced to make iPad versions of their apps, even if they sucked.
Marco:
They would still have to, like, customize it somewhat rather than showing it, like, just in the little 2X window for the doubled-up iPhone mode.
Yeah.
Marco:
But I think it would be way better because when you blend the stores like that, it just creates problems.
John:
Doesn't it already do that?
John:
Doesn't the iOS app store not show you iPhone apps by default?
John:
I never find myself seeing phone apps in the store when I'm on my iPad, but maybe I'm just not searching for hybrid app.
John:
They show you the ones with the little pluses that work on both, but don't they hide the iPhone apps?
Casey:
I believe it will – I think there's a filter or toggle at the top that you can say either show me everything or show me iPad only.
Casey:
I'm pretty sure that's right.
John:
I was going to say before, the reason all these things are on the Mac is another one of those stupid iTunes legacy things where that used to be how you did everything is you'd do it on your Mac and you'd connect your thing with the USB cable and the whole nine yards.
John:
It's annoying to me mostly because of the reset that SSDs did to storage space because –
John:
If you have a bunch of 32 or 64 gigabyte iOS devices and they're all filled with crap and you actually sync them with iTunes, that means when you get Infinity Blade 2 or 3 or whatever the heck they're up to and it's like a gigabyte game, that's sitting on your Mac's hard drive taking up space for no good reason.
John:
Same thing with all the other stuff you have, and it adds up.
John:
The podcast that you download with the podcast syncing, that kind of syncing, where instead of the stuff being in the cloud, which is so dumb because Apple knows what you bought.
John:
Apple knows what you own.
John:
There's no reason that that data has to be on your Mac and on your thing so it can sync around and everything like that.
John:
So that's one of those legacy things.
John:
That's another reason a lot of people go to.
John:
I'm not going to hook up my iOS device to my Mac anymore.
John:
And there are so many benefits to that.
John:
And one of them is you get a bunch of hard drive space back.
John:
You have to pay for iCloud backup if you're over the limit for your whatever disposable data that you have to back up to iCloud.
John:
Yeah, I'll be glad when all that stuff finally leaves iTunes and we don't have to have our data duplicated in multiple places and have to deal with all that stuff.
John:
And the worst part is that if you just manage your device from iOS, you can kind of sort of feel like you have control over it.
John:
And then if for some reason you have to hook it up to your Mac because you want to do a file copy into the documents folder and a Kindle or something, you want to do something that only iTunes can do or that only iTunes can do easily,
John:
You would think that it wouldn't mess with anything else, but it does.
John:
Inevitably, new icons appear on your home screens because it syncs them.
John:
I don't understand how it decides how to blend the state of things that are on your Mac with the state of things in your iOS device, but it always pisses me off when it does.
Casey:
Well, you should also consider that if you back up your device to iTunes, even selectively, those backups, or at least in my experience, tend to be quite big, like gigabytes big.
Casey:
And so to your point, John, if you don't sync or specifically if you don't back up against your iTunes library, you're saving gigabytes that way as well.
Casey:
I mean, it all adds up really, really fast.
John:
Someone in the chat room asked, what about backing up the data of apps?
John:
Not every app backs up to iCloud.
John:
When you do iCloud backups, it backs up all your data.
John:
It's not up to the applications to back up to iCloud.
John:
When you do iCloud backups to your iOS device, it basically just wanders through all the document containers and pulls out all the documents.
John:
That's right, Marco, right?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Well, yeah, there's this weird thing with temp folder versus document folders where it won't back up things that are in temp folders, but it will also wipe them randomly.
Marco:
So then it's up to developers.
Marco:
Like for me, I'm writing this podcast app, and a podcast, you wouldn't want that...
Marco:
to be in the temp folder because you wouldn't want the system to randomly come by and delete it if it's low on space.
Marco:
Because then people would launch your app thinking they have all the stuff downloaded and see, oh, all my stuff's gone.
Marco:
That's bad.
Marco:
But you also don't want iCloud to back that up because it would take up everyone's iCloud space and it would have to retransmit everything up and down.
Marco:
So it's up to the developers to set a don't backup flag on anything outside of the temp folders.
Marco:
And some developers do it right.
Marco:
And as you can expect, many don't.
John:
Does that mean that the iTunes backup is still safer because it just copies everything or does the iTunes backup also honor that stuff?
Marco:
The iTunes backup will copy over those files, which is nice because then like if you have to do a restore on your phone, if you get it repaired or if it messes up, they will be copied back over on a restore, which is nice and you don't have to re-download everything.
Marco:
But then those are all sitting on your hard drive, so it's kind of a mixed bag.
John:
Yeah, that's another.
John:
Well, so this is another case where if we got rid of the iTunes aspect of this, it would kind of force developers to do to manage their data in the correct way.
John:
Otherwise, they'd have disgruntled customers, whereas now they get like some percentage of disgruntled customers because if they're doing it wrong and someone had an iCloud backup and then they restore from the iCloud backup and...
John:
the restore for that app didn't work right, they're pissed off at, you know, probably at Apple, but maybe at the app developer too.
John:
Whereas all the people who use iTunes for it are fine because they backed up everything.
John:
Does iCloud backup save your passwords?
John:
Because I know on iTunes you have to encrypt your backup to do that.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
No, it doesn't.
Marco:
Well, I can't say that authoritatively.
Marco:
It didn't when it launched.
Marco:
I can tell you that.
Marco:
I don't know if there's an option now to do it.
Marco:
I'm guessing not, though.
Marco:
Because Apple, the iTunes engineers, like I talked to some of them at WWDC about what would be appropriate to store in iCloud for.
Marco:
They say don't store, if you're a developer, they say don't store passwords in iCloud.
Marco:
Okay, how about a login token?
Marco:
Does that count?
Marco:
Login cookie?
Marco:
Auth token?
Marco:
OAuth tokens?
Marco:
And they were a little iffy on that.
Marco:
You could tell that
Marco:
they really don't want to be responsible for that.
Marco:
They really don't want you storing any kind of sensitive stuff in iCloud.
Marco:
And you can kind of see how they're approaching iCloud keychain, and they really want you to have the passcode and have all that encrypted and everything and have that be very secure and controlled and limited.
Marco:
So I'm guessing it doesn't simply because... Can anybody confirm that?
Marco:
I'm guessing it doesn't just because they seem very reluctant to take on password storage.
John:
And it probably is encrypted, but it's just that it's so easy to pull that data down that, you know, they didn't want it to.
John:
Like you said, I think iCloud Keychain is the one place that they're willing to put passwords and other type of information.
John:
With the advent of that, there should be a way for you to take all that information that you would have, you know, those OAuth tokens and stuff that you would have put someplace else and maybe shove them into iCloud Keychain where Apple says you're allowed to put that stuff.
John:
Who knows?
John:
I don't know.
John:
Speaking of that, are there authenticated iPod podcast feeds?
John:
There are.
John:
I'm not supporting them, but there are.
John:
Someone asked about that on Twitter.
John:
I'm like, I haven't run across one of those.
John:
I used to have an authenticated RSS feed back in the day when the Daring Fireball feed was like that, but...
Marco:
And for all of the reasons why John Gruber stopped doing that, it's pretty hard for podcasts also.
Marco:
It's very hard to support that in an app because I'm doing server-side crawling and everything revolves around this.
Marco:
And there's pretty much no good way.
Marco:
I'm not going to ask everyone for their passwords to an auth feed.
Marco:
That's crazy.
Marco:
There's so many reasons why that's a terrible idea.
Marco:
So I'm not going to support that.
Marco:
Although I think Downcast does support that.
Marco:
I'm pretty sure it does.
Marco:
So if you need that, use Downcast.
Casey:
John, I hear Christmas came early at your house.
John:
Not really Christmas.
John:
It happens to coincide with Christmas, but this has been in the works as soon as it became clear that Panasonic was probably going to stop making plasma TVs, and that was like a year ago.
John:
They were rumbling about that, and Panasonic would say something, and they would say, oh, no, we still have plans, and blah, blah.
John:
But it was clear the writing was on the wall, and then I think like a couple months ago, six months ago, they made the official announcement they're not going to make plasma TVs anymore.
John:
So then I had to make a decision, and I knew I was going to have to, which is
John:
do i just keep using the tv i have or do i buy one of the last panasonic plasmas before they go away for good and the reason i was thinking about this was has to do with uh the the still terrible state of television technology i should have written down the show number and here i didn't but i talked about tv tech on all hypercritical any of you remember the episode number
John:
Anyway, that was several years ago.
John:
I think it was like 2011.
John:
I actually bought my TV in 2009, and I was just talking about it in 2011, hypercritical.
John:
And the problem with TV tech is after the CRT era, the kids ask your parents, the big giant, very deep glass tubes with a little electron gun in the back of it that scans a little line across these little phosphors.
Marco:
The things that you see on everyone's curb sitting there for weeks getting rained on and nobody wants them and nobody will even take them for free.
John:
Exactly.
John:
You can't throw them in the garbage because they have lead in them.
John:
You have to get the special people to come and pick them up and those things.
John:
That technology was around for a long time.
John:
And I wouldn't say it was perfected because it always had problems.
John:
It was clear that if you bought a TV, you were going to get a cathode ray tube for a long time.
John:
This was clear.
John:
And they made them pretty darn good.
John:
Like the Sony Trinitron was sort of the premier consumer brand for good televisions.
John:
At first, because they only curved in one direction.
John:
So they were like cylindrical instead of being like bubble shaped.
John:
And then eventually they became entirely flat.
John:
and they had disadvantages and advantages but there weren't that many options you're like well this is the best tv i can get is the best crt i can get and then the waters started to get muddied when they came out with dlp and other stuff like that but you don't know if you guys remember the dlp stuff with the projection tvs they always had terrible disadvantages versus the crt and it was still clear that if you cared about the best looking tv just get a crt get the best crt you can get which is probably a sony turn and tron
John:
Projection might be bigger, but it's just so dim off angle and the colors are all messed up and all sorts of compromises that made you think unless I need one of the special features like giant size, for example.
John:
You know, if I want just a television television, I'm getting a CRT.
John:
The chat room looked it up and it was episode 16.
John:
We'll put that in the show.
John:
It's episode 16 of Hypercritical.
John:
So when high-definition television came out, that just made things very confusing because they did make a couple of high-definition CRTs, but CRT was on its way out and the new flat screens were in.
John:
First DLP and other...
John:
that you know rear projection things that were not as deep as a crt because if i had one of those giant crts and if you got a crt that was over 30 years or you know 35 or 34 inches or whatever that was super deep and really heavy whereas you could make a not quite as deep projection television that size so very quickly we got into the quote unquote flat screens which were either lcd or plasma i think plasmas came first because lcds are too expensive of that size and
John:
And that's where all the crap started because both LCD and plasma have compromises that CRTs didn't have.
John:
I guess the one compromise that CRTs had, of course, that the flat screens didn't was that they were gigantic and heavy.
John:
But that was it.
John:
Like people would find a room in their house for, you know, they used to make it, build them into pieces of furniture.
John:
CRTs were gigantic, but you'd find a place for it.
John:
Every other part of them was fine.
Marco:
Wait, I can't let that go.
John:
but convergence aperture grill weirdness uh all the various analog artifacts that could show up uh well they were only showing i'm talking about for standard depth they're only showing standard depth so you didn't care about all the you know you're not missing it was always going to be fuzzy it was low resolution right and so in the fuzz i think towards the end the trinitrons in terms of convergence and everything like that were amazingly good like as good as you could hope with a
John:
cruddy analog signal and in fact the fuzziness kind of helped it blend together because if you got something that was just a series of square pixels the size you know the number of lines on a crt that would look gross like crts sort of had a distinctive look and again they weren't perfected perfected but they were pretty solid but they didn't have all the crazy compromises that plasmas and lcd had plasmas in the beginning were super hot and powerful and like you know
John:
Build up tons of heat and didn't look that good.
John:
And, you know, had this weird, a lot of weird artifacts in them.
John:
And LCDs were even worse because they, the way LCD works is you've got a light shining through this light.
John:
liquid crystal, and the crystal turns on and off.
John:
It lets light through or not.
John:
And the problem was, when you turned them all off and said, don't let any light through, you still had that big backlight back there trying to get through, and a little bit of it would leak through.
John:
And so your black screen, if you just made an LCD entirely black, would not actually be black.
John:
In fact, you could light up a room with a black screen, especially in the beginning in LCDs.
John:
So they had to come up with ways to fix that.
John:
We're like, okay, well, we won't leave the backlight on all the time.
John:
If they make an entirely black screen, we'll just turn the backlight off.
John:
Isn't that awesome?
John:
Well, that's great until you have a bunch of white words in the middle.
John:
Say you're rolling the credits for a movie.
John:
Well, you need the words to be white on the black background.
John:
So we need to turn on the backlight behind the white words.
John:
But the backlight wasn't like one backlight per pixel.
John:
It was like one backlight per four square inches, or at least a square inch or whatever.
John:
So you'd have to turn on some chunky subset of the backlight to make the white words show up, and that white backlight would make all the black around the white words glow, like the previous glowing black display that wasn't really black.
John:
This is all black-level stuff.
John:
The LCDs had compromises as well.
John:
And so none of these technologies were as...
John:
a no-brainer a buy for if you didn't want a projection screen didn't need something gigantic or whatever you just wanted a really good nice looking tv you couldn't get plasma or lcd because they both had compromises and they jockeyed for position in the market eventually lcd won because everything else in the world uses lcd and they became cheaper even though the picture quality of lcd was never as good as plasma still isn't as good as plasma um again getting back to the black level stuff and the dynamic backlights turned out to be too expensive and complicated and they
John:
decided the consumers didn't care about black levels anyway, so they just went to edge-lit where the LCDs, where they don't have an array of backlights behind the monitor that can turn on and off in different sectors, instead of, ah, just light the whole thing up, and it'll be fine, and use mirrors to bounce it off the edge, because then we can make them super thin.
John:
I don't understand this obsession.
John:
Like, once they get to be like one inch or a half an inch thick, is it really important to go, oh, this is .75 inches thick?
John:
It's like an Apple-style obsession.
John:
And unlike handheld things, where I think the thinness does have a big payoff down the line when your thing is the size of a credit card...
John:
And maybe when you can paint your TV on your wall, it pays off.
John:
But going to Edge Lit this early seems weird to me that they're, you know, oh, look, it's a way to sell your thing in the store.
John:
Look how thin it is.
John:
You never look at it from the side.
John:
If it was an inch thick, would you say, turn up your nose at it because it looks gross?
John:
This is 0.75 inches thick.
John:
It's nicer.
John:
The compromises they did on LCD TVs in particular in terms of picture quality, just to get them another quarter inch thinner,
John:
i do not understand but that's the way the market went and that's why the plasma started to go out because uh everybody wanted lcd the other problem plasma had is burning and crt's had this some degree as well where if you leave the same image on the screen a long time eventually when you put on a different image you'll still be able to see that other image you see it a lot in uh
John:
Actually, you see it on LCDs as well occasionally, where there'll be a cash register, a point of sale system or something, and there'll be some banner that was on there, and it will change to another screen.
John:
You'll still see that banner there, or you'll still see the stock ticker on some TV that's been showing financial news 24 hours a day for six months.
John:
Plasmas have that burn-in problem, so you can't leave the same image on the screen for a long time.
John:
Otherwise, you will get what they call image retention instead of burn-in.
Casey:
Now, let me interrupt real quick.
Casey:
So you described the technology behind LCD.
Casey:
So what makes plasma plasma then?
John:
I don't know the details, and I'm pretty sure it's like excited particles going from the back of something and hitting up against a material that glows.
John:
It's not like a bunch of tiny little CRTs, but it's similar in concept to that in that it's not a backlight shining through a thing that lets light through or not.
John:
It's particles being excited and going from the back of something to the front of something and hitting it and that emits light.
John:
I don't know the details beyond that, but it's close enough that they both have that, you know, CRTs and plasms both have burn-in issues.
John:
And it requires more power than an LCD because with the LCDs, you can have the LED backlights and LEDs are very power efficient and they're very bright and stuff like that.
John:
That's another thing.
John:
LCD televisions with LED backlights can be much brighter than plasma televisions.
John:
And that's important if you've got a bright room where you want things to be bright.
John:
So all of these are compromises.
John:
All the current technologies for high-definite televisions are compromises that have problems.
John:
And I was killing myself trying to see what I didn't buy HGTV for so long because I'm like, I'll just wait until the good technology comes out.
John:
Whether it be like something called SED or OLED becomes inexpensive or some other technology that's supposed to not have all the compromises of both plasma and LCD.
John:
And eventually I couldn't wait any longer.
John:
In 2009, I bought myself a plasma television.
John:
And you can listen to episode 16 of Hypercritical to hear how that went, because I originally went in trying to look for an LCD television because everything's LCD, right?
John:
And I ended up coming out with a plasma because it was cheaper and had a better picture quality.
John:
If you were willing to accept all the other compromises of plasma, more power, thicker, heavier possibility of burn-in if you're not careful...
John:
you got better picture for less money for a plasma.
John:
And it seemed like a no brainer to me.
John:
Well, so now they're getting rid of the plasmas.
John:
If they got rid of the plasmas and I kept my current TV, uh, I would have to like, what would I do with my current TV broker?
John:
I wanted to get a new one.
John:
There would be nothing on the market for me to buy because the number of people making plasma television was just going down to zero.
John:
Samsung still makes them.
John:
Um, but Samsung's heart is really an LCD like everybody else.
John:
Uh, and everybody's eventually going to OLED, but I didn't want to be stuck with,
John:
with an older television that I can't replace because there's nothing on the market that I want to buy.
John:
And the second issue is that the television I bought, despite extensively researching and everything, turns out to have a problem where the black level got worse after the first year that you used it.
John:
This is a problem, I guess, with, you know, back then and still now, new TVs come out every year, and you can read a review.
John:
Oh, here's the new crop of TVs for 2014, and I'll read all the reviews, and I'll do all the research, and I'll look at them in the showrooms and decide which one I want.
John:
Well, if any one of them has a problem that doesn't show up until a year later, you're not going to know about that.
John:
Because by next year, the new TVs will be out.
John:
And if you bought one this year, you're going to end up stuck with one.
John:
So I had one of those televisions where the black level that started out as being amazingly good became mediocre later in the life of the television.
Marco:
And even if somebody did a long-term review to tell you that, it wouldn't be useful to anybody.
Marco:
Because if they're telling you, I bought this TV a year and a half ago and it's still great, you can't go buy that TV anymore.
John:
Yeah, they go off the market.
John:
It's very difficult to find.
John:
And the other problem I have with the television that I bought, and this is something I didn't even think to check, it wasn't even on my radar, was does this television have fans inside it?
John:
Which is not something... I mean, I never owned a CRT that had a fan.
John:
I guess DLPs had a fan because of that one light source.
John:
It could get really hot and they'd have fans in them occasionally, but...
John:
I didn't even think to check that.
John:
And so I got into my house and there are four gigantic fans in the back.
John:
And why are there fans in the back?
John:
Because plasmas take a lot of power and run really hot.
John:
And the fancier the plasma, the more likely you were to have fans in it.
John:
The cheap ones didn't have fans, but the fancy one that I got did have fans.
John:
Uh,
John:
So I kept that TV for four years, and I really liked it, did everything I asked of it.
John:
I never had any problems with burn-in because I was careful with it, I assume.
John:
You know, I didn't let my kids leave a television show paused on the plasma.
John:
The rule was, if we call you in for dinner, hit the pause button, enter, and then also hit the power button.
John:
It's not that hard to do.
John:
Managed to do it with two little kids, no burn-in on the screen at all.
John:
It's perfect.
John:
Black levels are not what they were when it was new, but I still think it looks really good.
John:
But I just kept thinking, look, I paid all this money for this fancy TV.
John:
It's four years old now.
John:
a much cheaper television that has better picture quality.
John:
And if I'm going to do so, I better do so now before Plasma exits the business.
John:
Before Panasonic exits the Plasma business.
John:
And then my only choices will be an LCD television or maybe a Samsung Plasma, none of which I particularly like.
John:
So that was the situation I found myself in.
John:
And this entire year, I've been thinking about whether they're going to do it.
John:
At many points during the year, I got up to the purchase stage in Amazon and didn't click on the button.
John:
Like months ago, I did that.
John:
And then three months before that, I did that.
John:
And I'd bail out the last minute.
John:
I was just driving myself crazy.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
I'm just like, just like agonizing, like your hands, like hovering above the mouse, like with your finger pointing down, ready, just click.
Marco:
And I can't do it.
Casey:
I'm picturing Federici, like the first Federici presentation when he was all nervous and shaky trying to do the mouse gestures.
Casey:
I'm picturing you with like that, that shaky, nervous hand wondering, should I do it?
Casey:
I can't, I can't.
John:
I'll tell you what was preventing me from doing it, but we should probably do a sponsor break first.
Casey:
I was just about to say, why don't we hear about something else that's awesome.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
This episode, this is the first time sponsor for us, although not for podcasting in general because they're awesome.
Marco:
This episode is also sponsored by Pixelmator.
Marco:
Or is it Pixelmator?
Casey:
It's Pixelmator.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
I'll go with Pixelmator.
Marco:
Pixelmator is a full-featured image editing app for the Mac.
Marco:
They don't tell you it's like Photoshop because I guess it's not cool to mention your competitors like that.
Marco:
It's basically like Photoshop, but $30 and better in a lot of ways.
Marco:
It's $30 in the Mac App Store.
Marco:
I'll say that right now.
Marco:
Pixelmator, go to the Mac App Store.
Marco:
It's frequently featured.
Marco:
It shouldn't be hard to find.
Marco:
Or you can go to Pixelmator.com.
Marco:
Now, Pixelmator, you look at what it can do.
Marco:
And first of all, if you go to their site, it's a fantastically designed site.
Marco:
And it shows off a lot of the cool features.
Marco:
You can see all sorts of stuff they have.
Marco:
They have everything from image editing down to drawing and even vector drawing tools all in one app.
Marco:
And it's kept very much in the modern Mac world.
Marco:
ways of doing everything right.
Marco:
It seems like they are like geniuses at optimizing for the Mac and keeping everything up to date.
Marco:
So not only are they already optimized for Mavericks, but they already use OpenCL.
Marco:
They use the Accelerate framework to use a lot of the vectorizing functions.
Marco:
And they have amazing performance on Mac.
Marco:
Everything is very Mac-like.
Marco:
It's everything that you wished pro editing apps were in regards to being super Mac-like and friendly.
Marco:
But unfortunately, the other ones usually aren't.
Marco:
So they recently released a big update, and it's pretty impressive.
Marco:
It's called Pixelmator 3.0 FX.
Marco:
It's a major upgrade featuring a lot of new tools to play with, including non-destructive layer styles, a very advanced feature, a liquify tool, and an all-new image editing engine that, using all these cool things, Grand Central Dispatch, parallelization, multiple thread support, everything else, OpenCL, all these GPU acceleration support,
Marco:
The new engine is almost twice as fast as the old engine.
Marco:
And the old engine was pretty fast already.
Marco:
That's saying a lot.
Marco:
They fully support Mavericks with tags, multiple displays.
Marco:
They're good power citizens.
Marco:
They use AppNap and everything else.
Marco:
And Pixelmator 3.0 FX is a free upgrade to all existing Pixelmator customers.
Marco:
Actually, in their script, they wrote the word costumers here.
Marco:
Or maybe Lex wrote that.
Marco:
I'm going to blame Lex.
Marco:
So whether you're an existing Pixelmator costumer or an existing Pixelmator customer, it's a free upgrade.
Marco:
And it's only $30 if you're not.
Marco:
And this is not the first free upgrade they've done.
Marco:
I think I got upgraded one to two for free anyway.
Marco:
They're really great to support, and you can't beat this price point.
Marco:
$30 for an app with this amount of power, it almost seems unreal.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So check it out.
Marco:
Pixelmator.com.
Marco:
It's a full-featured image editing app for the Mac.
Marco:
Very Mac-like.
Marco:
Very awesome.
Marco:
And this great new 3.0 FX upgrade is really impressive.
Marco:
So thanks a lot to Pixelmator for sponsoring the show.
John:
You guys probably don't remember this, but back in the 8-bit days, 8-bit graphic days, there was a whole suite of Mac applications that you do graphics in 256 colors.
John:
Uh, and they were pretty expensive.
John:
They were way more than 30 bucks each.
John:
Right.
John:
And then the 32 bit error where, you know, 24 by 32 bit error, there was of course, uh, Adobe Photoshop, which eventually became the big dog, but there were also other things like, well, it was called like live picture or something and a couple other ones.
John:
And to play in that game, to play in the eight bit space, a lot of people could play there.
John:
Cause it's, you know, it's 256 colors.
John:
You, you know, you can make a little pixel editor, but to play when the, uh, the Photoshop realm of like a true color images, uh,
John:
you had to write your own graphics engine and that was a difficult thing to do and a lot of the market was like well i can't just do what photoshop did i have to do something different so live picture was like not resolution independent or non-destructive but a similar type of thing where their their image engine was very different than photoshop's and it turns out that the photoshop style image engine won and then for a long time it was just photoshop and that's all there was with a couple other minor competitors and they really got a foothold
John:
uh but nowadays it's amazing that apple has improved the mac platform enough and just the mac platform as you don't see this as much on windows and stuff to the point where a small developer can make an amazing high performance application without having to make their own graphics engine but simply by taking advantage of all the graphics technologies that apple provides and combining them into a nice friendly application uh
John:
And offer it for $30 as compared to hundreds of dollars that Photoshop costs or that Photoshop competitors didn't use to cost.
John:
Every time I see Pixelmator, I think of them as like the poster child for look at what Apple helps you do if you write apps on their platform.
John:
Like all the APIs they give you at every WWDC is like, well, who's using all these things?
John:
Well, Pixelmator is.
Casey:
Well, and I was going to say that I love that they know the audience to know that we should mention in the read OpenCL, Grand Central Dispatch, and AppNap, because our audience is going to know what all those things mean.
Marco:
I mean, if you look at their site, it looks like an Apple page.
Marco:
It looks like this is the page for Apple's new image editor.
Marco:
Like, if you read the site, and it uses Apple styling, it's variable design like Apple sites, it uses a lot of modern HTML tricks and stuff like animations and transitions, and, you know, as you scroll, things move and stuff like that.
Marco:
Like, it's really very modern variable design page for it, even.
Marco:
And so it really does look like...
Marco:
This is Apple's pro image editing app that they never actually made.
John:
Yeah, remember those rumors?
John:
Maybe you don't.
John:
Like that Apple's making a Photoshop competitor.
John:
I think iPhoto, some of the game of telephone rumors about iPhoto before it was released was that Apple's making a Photoshop killer application.
John:
And Aperture.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Every time they do anything in graphics, it's like, well, Apple's finally going to make a Photoshop killer.
John:
Well, they should just buy Pixelmator.
Marco:
No, they shouldn't.
Marco:
Pixelmator should stay exactly as it is.
Marco:
Because, I mean, look at how Apple treats aperture.
Marco:
And I voted for that matter.
Marco:
At this point, I don't think Apple needs more major applications to take care of.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
Well, thanks again to Pixelmator slash Pixelmator for sponsoring.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So, John, we interrupted you or you sort of interrupted yourself during your talk about your TV.
Casey:
So your hand is hovering over the mouse on Amazon.
Casey:
You're ready to buy.
Casey:
And then you finally click the button.
Casey:
So what did you get?
John:
Well, no, before we get to that, I say why I wasn't buying all those other times.
John:
Why was I not buying?
John:
What was my hesitation?
John:
And the hesitation was for, you know, knowing everything I know now, people in the chat room are amazed that I didn't know to ask about fans.
John:
Like, I didn't even think it was a thing I should look for.
John:
And when I saw the televisions in person in the store, you can't hear a thing in like a retail store because it's just that background white noise, right?
John:
And so you don't hear anything in there.
John:
I just did not even think to look for them.
John:
But now I know all these things, right?
John:
The television I wanted to buy, like the sort of equivalent in the model line television from the one I bought before, had fans.
John:
And I knew it had fans.
John:
And all I would do is spend all day reading through old-style forum entries page after page after page of people saying, I bought this fancy new TV, and it's got fans, and they are super loud, and it's driving me insane.
John:
And, you know, just like...
John:
117 old-style forum pages, you know, one after the other in different forums, hundreds of pages of people having these fancy TVs and telling their stories about, I tried this, and I bolted this to the back of my TV, and I had Panasonic come in.
John:
They were supposed to do a fix, but they did the fix, and I think it's better, and no one says they did the fix, and it didn't help at all.
John:
And the people are like, it's a placebo effect.
John:
You think it helped, but it really didn't, and it really shouldn't make any noise at all.
John:
And just, you know what it's like?
John:
It's like looking for symptoms on WebMD, and everything leads to cancer, right?
John:
It just...
John:
If you read these forums enough, you think that these televisions just all sound like leaf blowers in your living room.
John:
And I would keep going through the threads going, okay, well, these people got the very first model, so maybe Panasonic fixed something about them.
John:
People are like, oh, what's the build date on yours?
John:
And people say, I got one that was built six months after yours and it still sounds terrible and I'm returning it.
John:
And Panasonic took three weeks to come out and the guy they sent was a gorilla and he scratched up my TV trying to open it up and it didn't help anyway.
John:
And...
John:
Like, how could I buy... I can't buy that, right?
John:
So I started looking down.
John:
Let me find the cheap Panasonic plasmas that don't have fans.
John:
But the problem is the current crop of cheap Panasonic plasmas that don't have fans have terrible input lag, which is another thing that I did know about on my past TV, but it was impossible to find.
John:
Input lag is...
John:
When you're playing a video game and you do something on the video game system, like press the fire button, how long does it take for you to see the gun fire on your television screen?
John:
And you would think that it would have to do with the game system, and it does, but the television itself can also introduce some amount of lag.
John:
Like the video game system can put out the image over its HDMI port of that gun firing, and it takes some number of milliseconds for the television to take the signal that just got off the HDMI from that frame and display it as little lights on the screen.
John:
And the reason the delay is there is because of, like, image processing and other stuff that televisions do to make a nice picture.
John:
And the higher end of the television, you could potentially have more image processing.
John:
But also the higher end of the television, you could have faster processors to, you know, process the image more quickly than the cheap television.
John:
So you never know.
John:
Do the more expensive televisions have better input lag or worse?
John:
And back in 2009, I knew all about input lag, but nobody who was reviewing televisions ever mentioned input lag.
John:
It was just a bunch of gamers sitting there with, like...
John:
complicated camera setups filming like little you know microsecond clocks and going frame by frame and trying to figure out what the input lag was well fast forward four years and now finally most television review sites will give you input lag measurements which vary wildly from site to site but presumably within a single site
John:
And within a single site that uses the same methodologies, you can compare within a site.
John:
So I would look up the input lag numbers, and the input lag of the cheap fanless Panasonic Plasma is terrible.
John:
And it used to be great, like two or three model years ago, the cheap one had awesome input lag, but now it's super terrible.
John:
And the stupid plasma with the fans had significantly better input lag.
John:
So my choice is, do I care about fans more or input lag?
John:
And also, by the way, the cheaper plasma has worse image quality.
John:
Like the fancier one has better image quality as well.
John:
And so every time I would almost buy, I would just take another stroll through the form entries with the fan noise and go, no, I can't do it.
John:
And every time I would almost buy the cheap one, I'd be like, no, I can't.
John:
I can't do it with an input lag.
John:
And I say, what do you care?
John:
You'll never notice that input lag anyway.
John:
You don't play fighting games.
John:
It's not like it's going to defect.
John:
And I'd be like, but why?
John:
Why would I buy worse television?
John:
This is supposed to be getting a better television.
John:
Because my old television had pretty good input lag because it was expensive and it had fast processors in it.
John:
And it had better input lag than the current cheap Panasonic.
John:
So I just did that for a year, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
John:
And eventually, one of the things that put me over the edge was Casey's friend who got this very same television that I was looking at.
John:
And Casey's friend says, fans are silent, can't hear them at all, right?
John:
You can tell me what he was saying.
John:
It's like that it was just totally a non-issue, right?
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah, that is pretty much accurate.
Casey:
This is my friend Brian who had gotten the same TV, and so I was talking to John after I was talking to Brian saying, oh, my friend just got this Panasonic.
Casey:
Is this what you wanted?
Casey:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Casey:
Ask him about the fans.
Casey:
Ask him about the fans.
Marco:
Now, see, I have a Panasonic plasma that does have fans, and I can't hear them.
Marco:
But I would never be brave enough to tell John, well, mine are silent, so go ahead and buy it.
Marco:
I would never in a million years say that because he'd hear them.
Casey:
It's funny you say that because immediately after Brian said, oh, you can't hear him.
Casey:
I mean, I'll listen again, but you can't hear him.
Casey:
The first thing I said, I think both John and Brian was, well, Brian says that he can't hear them, but we both know that John is not going to believe that.
John:
I mean, how could you?
John:
It's so difficult to... The best example was my old television, which had four gigantic fans in it that didn't make an annoying sound.
John:
They're very big fans, so it makes kind of a low-volume kind of rushing air sound.
John:
They're not asymmetrical.
John:
That would have been nice.
John:
my wife claims that either she couldn't hear them or they don't bother her.
John:
And it's like, well, if you can't hear that, cause it's like, it's like night and day, you know, as far as I'm concerned, it's just like, if you can't hear those four fans, that obviously an individual person sitting in front of a television has a very different experience of whether they can or can't hear fans or whether they bother them or not.
John:
And again, I had this television, but the four giant fans for four years, I just decided to live with it.
John:
Cause it wasn't that bad.
John:
I mean, you're listening with audio on, it's not like, you know, it's you get used to it.
John:
Uh, it,
John:
The picture quality made up for it all the other aspects of television.
John:
And what was I going to do at that point?
John:
I had the same problem.
John:
If I returned it, I would have to get one with worse image quality without fans or something.
John:
And the other thing about plasms, by the way, since they use so much more power than LCDs, and since apparently the analog electronics industry does not care about ambient noise, which drives me insane.
John:
See also my big rant about my Power Mac G5's power supply, which chirped.
John:
transformers and other analog components that actually move as in vibrate can make noise because moving things make noise and sometimes that noise is amplified through the printed circuit board that these little components are attached to acting like a big speaker type thing making a terrible noise well plasmas use a lot of power have transformers on printed circuit boards
John:
And they make a buzzing sound, an audible buzzing sound.
John:
They call it the plasma buzz.
John:
I think there's no reason for that stupid buzzing sound to exist.
John:
If Apple designed one of these things, they could design it.
John:
I say that after the serving G5 power supply.
John:
But anyway, it is possible to design these analog electronics in such a way that they do not make a noise that is audible to the person watching the television.
John:
And yet no television manufacturer does that because...
John:
nobody cares or they're inside entertainment centers or they're up against the wall or some other thing that muffles them or people can't hear them but you can totally hear transformed buzz on almost any plasma television if you go into a completely silent room make the entire screen white you will hear a buzz then change it to black the buzz goes down or off then change it back to white and it goes up
John:
That's in addition to the fan noise, right?
John:
So I knew that was there as well.
John:
Like, I'm aware of all the noises that televisions make at this point.
John:
And people had problems with Panasonic plasmas and other plasmas where the transformer would crack and make a super terrible buzzing noise and people would make YouTube videos of it.
John:
The problem with these ubiquitous cameras that everyone has on their phones now is that those cameras are designed to remove background noise so people can hear you talking on the phone.
John:
So that's absolutely the worst camera to ever use to try to record background noise.
John:
So a lot of people have videos where they would say, here's my new television.
John:
And do you hear that noise of the fan or the buzzing?
John:
And you didn't because the phones cancel the noise out.
John:
But they'd bring the phone around to the back of the television with the camera video recording and they put it right next to the fan.
John:
And then you could hear at least the sound quality of the fan.
John:
But then they go, look, I'm backing away here and you can't hear it at all.
John:
It's like, well, of course you can't hear it at all.
John:
The phone is removing that noise.
John:
And that's how I felt about individual people's reports of, oh, I can't hear the fan.
John:
Well, maybe your high frequency hearing is gone because you're 50 years old.
John:
Or maybe there's a giant fan blowing in the room because you're hot all the time, but you don't like air conditioning.
John:
Or maybe your air conditioning is on and you can't.
John:
Who knows why you can't hear the fan?
John:
But I knew if there was something spinning, moving air in the back of that thing, I'd be able to hear it.
John:
But enough people...
John:
You know, Casey's friend, other people who own them on forums and stuff like that said that it's an overblown problem.
John:
And yes, if you read these hundred page threads about people who have televisions make too much noise, maybe they have some sort of problematic unit there or maybe they're blowing it over.
John:
But.
John:
I figured I just, I have to make a decision.
John:
It's almost the end of the year.
John:
These models are going to go away.
John:
I'll buy it.
John:
I'll make sure I have a 30 day return window and it's too loud.
John:
I'll return it.
John:
So I actually clicked the button to get the thing delivered.
John:
I ordered it from Amazon, which I'd never done with the big TV before.
John:
I'd bought my last one from Best Buy, mostly because I wanted Best Buy to haul away my 350 pound CRT thing.
John:
And they did, and they took it away for free.
John:
And that was more than worth the price of buying it at Best Buy.
John:
And Amazon has sales tax now as well, so there's not even an advantage of buying it at Amazon to get rid of the sales tax.
John:
But I did it.
John:
I had a pretty good delivery experience to the people who brought the television in, although the styrofoam in the box was cracked.
John:
I wonder, like, how high did this television have to be dropped from?
John:
For the styrofoam surrounding it to crack.
John:
Because these are not small pieces of styrofoam.
John:
These are big, giant blocks of styrofoam cracked almost all the way through.
John:
But the television itself is entirely undamaged.
John:
They unpacked it before they left and before I signed anything to inspect the television.
John:
They plugged it in, turned it on, made sure it actually worked.
John:
Everything looked good.
John:
I hooked it up.
John:
It has fans in it.
John:
There's two fans instead of four.
John:
I can hear them.
John:
But the thing is, and I didn't think about this before I was thinking about the television, is it's not so much that I don't want to be able to hear the fans, just that they were quieter than my old televisions fans.
John:
And that, I said, well, it's still an upgrade.
John:
It's still quieter than it was.
John:
And these fans are significantly quieter than my old televisions fans.
John:
So much so that now I can hear the Transformer buzz way better than I could on my other television fans.
John:
Because the old fans were so overwhelming that they totally blanked out the Transformer buzz.
John:
But now the fans are so quiet that I can hear the Transformer buzz better.
Casey:
That's wonderful.
Casey:
That's just truly fantastic.
John:
But, you know, I haven't made a final decision yet, but I've pretty much decided that I'm going to keep it.
John:
Mostly because it is so much better than my old television in all ways.
John:
Like, it has fan noise, but the fan noise is quieter.
John:
It has transformer buzz, but it's probably about the same as my old TV.
John:
The picture quality is so much better because in four years, things have just gotten better.
John:
It's thinner than my old television.
John:
It's fancier looking.
John:
The only major disadvantage it has over my old television, and this is true of all televisions these days, and I...
John:
I guess I don't know why, but it's probably just cost cutting is it has fewer inputs.
John:
My old television had four HDMI inputs, a bunch of S video that I was never going to use and two component inputs.
John:
And I had stuff hooked up to all those inputs.
John:
And I was basically out of inputs.
John:
If I got a PS4, I would have had no place to put it.
John:
This one has three HDMI.
John:
So I lose an HDMI here, only one component.
John:
And of course, no S video or any of those other stuff.
John:
And I don't understand why high end televisions,
John:
have been losing inputs low in television sure give it one two hdmi ports but high in television just have like 10 hdmi ports back there but i guess the philosophy is that if you buy a high in television you really only need one hdmi point because you're going to have a av receiver that does all your switching for you and all that stuff and that's probably my next purchase
John:
decision thing that i have to deal with which is a whole other topic entirely i can't wait to hear about that yes but i've got the tv it looks really good i'm kind of trapped in calibration hell which is the place you go when you buy a fancy television and realize that it has a million adjustments and you're obsessive-compulsive like me and you try to keep adjusting them to get the picture you want without paying somebody 300 bucks to come to your house and do it with 10 000 worth of video equipment because then you just feel like marco
John:
Nice.
John:
Did you ever get your television professionally calibrated, Marco?
John:
No.
John:
I didn't even know that was a thing.
John:
Yeah, I also didn't.
John:
Oh, it's a thing.
John:
It is definitely a thing.
John:
And the thing is, the calibration, like, if you had the equipment to do the calibration, I feel like you could probably do it yourself because of the software they have that...
John:
works with it is i mean it's probably complicated but i get with a couple tries you can probably put all the equipment is expensive because you need like a computer hooked up to a light meter that attaches to your screen that puts out a known signal and measures it and does all this stuff and it's sufficiently complicated that it's difficult to do at home but mostly i'm just trying to pin down the basic stuff of like black levels light levels contrast and and the other basics oh and one more thing before we get off television thing
John:
I didn't even talk about this, but the other reason I didn't want to buy an LCD is because they don't do well with motion.
John:
They used to be terrible with motion.
John:
Now they're a little bit better.
John:
But remember the old days when your cursor on your crappy PC laptop would have trails behind it?
John:
That was a feature.
John:
Not the cursor trails, not the intentional ones that Windows put in, but the accidental ones where everything...
John:
that was way way way back in the beginning days of lcd that's gone now but lcds still don't show motion as well as plasmas do for a variety of reasons and what lcd televisions do to try to make things look more natural is that they will
John:
put frames that didn't exist in the source material in between.
John:
So if your video is 24 frames per second, but your LCD's refresh is 60 frames per second, instead of just showing the same frame a whole bunch of times and showing the next frame a whole bunch of times and showing the next frame a whole bunch of times, if you do that on a modern LCD, it looks weird.
John:
It doesn't look right.
John:
It looks stuttery and jerky and strange for reasons having to do with visual perception that I don't entirely understand, but that you can Google and find out.
John:
And that's not a problem on plasmas, because they're more like CRTs, because they, I guess I think it's because they pulse the output, and it's kind of like a bunch of bright lights punctuated by periods of no light if you slow down viewing of a screen.
John:
So it's more like a CRT, and it looks more natural to you.
John:
So plasmas don't have to do this, this motion interpolation, but LCDs all do it, and they do it like crazy, and there's a...
John:
If you look at an LCD television that's doing motion interpolation, there's this thing they call the soap opera effect because it makes all the shows you're watching look like they're shot like a soap opera.
John:
I don't know if you've ever watched television and then you flip through the channels and you come across a soap opera and you can tell, like just because of the lighting and the sets and stuff, you can just tell, oh, that's a soap opera versus like, oh, that's a movie, like they look different to you.
John:
I don't think the soap opera effects looks like soap operas, but it looks weird.
John:
And even regular people notice it.
John:
In fact, my parents recently asked me, you know, years after I tried to explain this to them, they probably half remembered, and they said, I'm looking at television, and the people look a little bit weird, like they're moving strangely.
John:
It's motion interpolation.
John:
Every LCD television does it, and it's on by default in LCD televisions, and plasmas don't have the problem at all, which is why they're quote-unquote better for sports if you care about motion, that you should just buy a plasma television because they don't have to do all this weird stuff to affect the video signal.
John:
Well,
John:
This plasma television that I got actually had a setting for motion interpolation, and it was on by default.
John:
I couldn't believe it.
John:
Like, why would you do this?
John:
Like, poor people are buying these plasmas, leaving that setting on and thinking that's the way the video is supposed to look.
John:
Because I was sitting there right in front of the television after I just set it up, and I pulled the menus down, and I saw the video moving behind the menus, and it looked all weird to me.
John:
I'm like, what the hell is going on there?
John:
Did the menus slow down the video on this television?
John:
And I found the motion interpolation setting.
John:
I couldn't believe it.
John:
Why would this setting even exist?
John:
So I immediately turned that off, and they were like...
John:
75 other settings that this television does, all of which everybody should turn off.
John:
Brilliance Enhancer, Black Extension, Automatic Gamma Correction, Digital Remaster.
John:
There's a million settings in this thing.
John:
They should all be off.
John:
This is why calibration should be.
John:
If you buy a fancy television, do not leave it the way it is, because they have...
John:
Like, tons of settings that basically screw with the picture to try to make it look better and shorter.
John:
Like, a brilliance enhancer?
John:
What the hell is that supposed to do?
John:
It makes things sparkly and bright, you know?
John:
It just screws up your picture.
John:
Turn all those off.
John:
And it'd probably also add input lag.
John:
Not that it matters because, like, game mode usually turns all of them off anyway.
John:
So part of my calibration exercise is going through these extensive menus and turning off every single one of these stupid features that has some crazy made-up marketing name.
John:
Same thing for sound, you know, with, like, fake surround sound and stuff.
John:
Turn all that crap off.
John:
maybe the only one that i would allow a little bit is like noise reduction and put that one on low but even that is iffy so if you have a fancy new television whether it's lcd or plasma turn off all those crazy settings try to you don't have to get calibrated by somebody but you can at least do like the self calibration things where you sit there and look at a test image and follow the instructions you can get pretty close to
John:
Not a correct image, but an image doesn't look like the crap that the things come out of the box looking like or that they look like in the showroom.
John:
So that's my advice for if you get a television.
John:
And people say, what television should I buy?
John:
I can't advise that you get a plasma.
John:
I just told you all the things about it.
John:
Burn-in, fans, power, transformer buzz, LCDs, terrible black levels, weird motion, soap opera effect.
John:
I think the colors are not quite as nice and natural looking as they are on plasmas, although they have gotten a lot better.
John:
There's no good television to buy, so you have to make your own choices with those compromises.
Casey:
But if one were to get the television that you just bought, what would one be buying?
John:
I bought a Panasonic VT60, they call it short on the internet, but it's like TCP, and then the screen size, and then the letters and numbers.
John:
And Panasonic's V series has been their fancy series.
John:
The old one was the TCP50 V10, and they added the T at some point, back I think around the VT50 they added it.
John:
anyway this year's models are tcp 55 vt60 or 65 vt60 i think 55 is the small size this television comes in yeah what the what the heck is that about what they don't come small they don't come smaller than 55 yeah no that's what i'm saying when i bought a television for upstairs i'm like i need a small television for my bedroom i don't want it to be this is you don't have room in a bedroom for a gigantic television i could not find a plasma that i was willing to buy that was below 50 inches
John:
And I'm not putting a 50-inch television.
John:
It's just too big.
John:
I don't have room for that.
John:
So I had to buy an LCD television for upstairs, and it was crushing to me.
John:
But, you know, like, what can you do?
John:
And, yeah, the fancier the TV, they don't come in the small sizes.
John:
Like, 50 was the smallest size I could get my old TV in.
John:
Actually, no, I think it came in a 42.
John:
But, yeah, 55 is the smallest for this one.
Casey:
So I'm sorry.
Casey:
So yours is 65, though, the one you actually ended up with?
John:
No, 55.
John:
The 50-inch television I had barely fit in the place that I had it.
John:
And the nice thing about the March of Progress is the 55-inch television, its external dimensions are almost identical to my 50-inch.
John:
They just made the bezel smaller, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
So that's nice.
John:
The new television I have has more screen area, but takes up about the same amount in my house.
John:
And the reason I got the VT60 instead of, there's actually a model up from that.
John:
They added a Z series, the ZT60.
John:
And the only difference with the ZT60 is that it has slightly better image quality in exchange for slightly reduced brightness, but it doesn't have the nice speakers that this has.
John:
And it's like, who cares about the speakers that are built into a television?
John:
Well, I do because I'm still sorting out the surround sound
John:
situation which again is another topic for another show and so i actually care about the built-in speakers and i like to be high quality and the vt had like this stupid built-in camera which is terrible and who cares about that uh
John:
And it was cheaper.
John:
So I was like, why am I going to buy the more expensive TV with fewer features?
John:
I went with the VT instead of the ZT.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So anything you'd like to add, John, about the TV?
John:
I can talk about the software on the television, but I'll do save that for another show because I think it's a whole other – that gets back to my hypercritical.co blog post of worst products through software, and that is totally the case with televisions.
Casey:
All right, Marco, is there anything else that's awesome that we should share?
Marco:
There is.
Marco:
There is one more, in fact.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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John:
Also, no fans in the Transporter.
Marco:
That is correct.
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Marco:
It's very small because they use 2.5-inch hard drives.
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John:
Just power an Ethernet.
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
Very simple.
Casey:
Apparently, there's something that nobody's talking about that we should be talking about.
John:
Well, I added that, and I didn't add it for the reasons you think I added it.
John:
This is a tweet from somebody who I'm not going to name because I'm not going to say things about this tweet, but I'm not trying to slam this person.
John:
This is not about The Verge.
John:
No.
John:
This is a phenomenon that I see all the time, and I thought it's worth talking.
John:
talking about i just saw it today all right so this tweet has a bunch of at names at the front of it including me daring fireball marco josh tapolsky not about the verge so that this this right away is a pattern i'm sure marco's seen this because he gets he's on a lot of these same things where it's at this person at that person at that person at that person and then and then like a question or a statement and you look at the list of like like the two lists effectively for the suite and like what
John:
What is it that made this person to try to address all these people at once?
John:
And it's the same effect that if you send an email, at least the email has to have a, you know, you can put a bunch of people into this.
John:
But it's like an email sent to five people.
John:
No one feels the responsibility to actually respond to it.
John:
And it's like shotgun blasting.
John:
And if you're shotgun blasting a bunch of people that are only vaguely related, like...
John:
i'm on a podcast with marco daring fireball is not john gruber's account but it's his website's account but i know him and i know the website josh topolsky runs the verge or is involved with the verge in some way which is also a tech site but there's just basically a bunch of vaguely tech related people so it's kind of like saying hey people whose name i know on twitter who are involved in technology hear me
John:
and then and then you say something right and the thing that they said that that the first bit is just in a side of like if you're trying to effectively communicate on twitter don't at mention a whole bunch of people who you don't know who are just vaguely related to the topic in general because you're not going to get a reply because every person that chain doesn't feel a responsibility they have to reply right uh
John:
And so either everybody ignores it, or even if you think it needs to have a reply, you're like, well, I don't feel like it's my responsibility to reply.
John:
One of the other guys will surely reply.
John:
And then what ends up is nobody replies.
John:
So this is not an effective strategy.
John:
But the second part is the question.
John:
And the question is, why isn't anybody talking about the iOS notification sync and OS X that never shipped?
John:
And I think this is a great example of...
John:
I don't know.
John:
When I see things like this, I don't know if – I actually want to engage in it.
John:
I did try to engage in this a little bit.
John:
It didn't have the effect that I thought it would because it never does.
John:
Like when you engage with people, I'm trying to – Casey knows about this and so does Marco probably too.
John:
You know the five whys thing that they tell you in corporate speak?
John:
I've only heard it from you.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Well, anyway –
John:
it's like another one of those and a future show we'll talk about work methodologies and stuff like that but it's another one of those like fun games games that they try to play to like teach you critical thinking um and so what i replied to this person was uh what i feel like replying to so many people when they say things when they say why isn't anybody talking about this new feature that apple said was gonna ship it didn't ship whatever i said you tell me
John:
And what I'm trying to get them to do is answer their own question.
John:
Because I feel like if you could think about it for, like, if you thought about it for a little while, surely you can come up with just as good an answer as anybody who put the thing up.
John:
what you're looking for the sensational version is there's a conspiracy theory here like you know they they pulled the guards away from the embassy just before the terrorists came and it's a big conspiracy and they don't want you to know i'm not getting political again anyway like the conspiracy theory is one angle why is nobody talking about this surely everybody's been paid off by apple or this conspiracy against this feature whatever that's the crazy version and you can't like this is not implied in there's nothing in this message that implies this person thinks it's a conspiracy theory
John:
Well, that's one reason someone would direct this type of question.
John:
Like, you guys should be talking about it and you're not.
John:
And the extreme version is it's because you've all been paid off by Apple.
John:
That's why you're not talking about this topic.
John:
Never mind that only a couple of people in this thing have websites where they get paid to talk about tech.
Marco:
Don't forget the F word.
John:
what's that we're all fanboys with an eye on the end because that makes it worse somehow well yeah but but i don't i mean i don't think that's in this question as well but like a lot of the questions that are like this is like why why isn't anybody talking about it's a leading question right but the like assume that's not the case assume this person is not a crazy conspiracy theorist and he's looking for some sort of like we're all colluding with each other not to talk about this and it's really a terrible shame and he's the only person who sees through
John:
facade of fanboys who were on the take from Apple.
John:
That's ridiculous.
John:
Assuming we put aside that ridiculous thing and say, what's left there?
John:
I'll pose it to YouTube.
John:
What do you think?
John:
None of us actually knows because none of us works at Apple and if we did, we couldn't say.
John:
None of us actually knows the answer.
John:
Surely the person asking this question knows that none of us work at Apple and if we did, we couldn't say.
John:
All he's looking for is
John:
for us to provide an answer that he thinks we're more able to provide than he is.
John:
And I don't think we're any more able to provide this answer.
John:
And I'm going to ask you two, what do you think is the answer to this question?
John:
Why isn't anybody talking about the iOS notification sync in OS X that never shipped?
John:
Either one of you want to take it?
John:
Well, I'm not allowed to talk about it.
John:
I can't.
Marco:
My take would get removed or something.
John:
I'm serious, but either one of you, but what is your best guess at the answer to that question?
John:
Why isn't anybody talking about it?
John:
I forgot.
Casey:
For whatever reason, it got deprioritized.
Casey:
Well, why hasn't it happened it got deprioritized or isn't done?
Casey:
Why isn't anyone talking about it?
Casey:
Just like Marco said, I completely forgot that was a thing or going to be a thing, I should say.
John:
That's more or less the answer I would give because sometimes features don't make it into software and it's not a feature that anyone really cared about that much anyway.
John:
So the answer to why isn't anybody talking about this feature that didn't ship is because features don't ship in software all the time and this wasn't a particularly highly anticipated feature anyway.
John:
Like, that's the answer.
John:
Like, I don't know 100% certainty, but that is the literal answer to why isn't anybody talking about obscure feature that didn't ship.
John:
Because, like, it's not a conspiracy theory.
John:
Features don't ship all the time, and not a lot of people care about it.
John:
That's pretty much the answer.
John:
And I feel like the person who asked that question could have arrived at that very same answer if they had looked inward instead of outward with this question.
John:
Like, merely ask themselves, why is it that no one is talking about that?
John:
And if the answer they arrive at is it's a conspiracy theory, well, then I can't help them unless they have some evidence that that's the case.
John:
But, like, it has the most – is this worth sending to five people this question that you could answer yourself?
John:
Like, it's a boring answer.
John:
No one wants to hear it.
John:
But I really think that's the answer.
John:
And this model of I get my tech information or information about the latest and greatest cars or drum sets or whatever from these set of people who know more about the topic –
John:
Like, that only goes so far.
John:
At a certain point, you have to sort of engage your own critical thinking and see if you can come up with something on your own, because all the other people you're asking are doing is the exact same thing you could do.
John:
Like, sometimes you have inside information or inside a historical context, but in very specific instances like this, it's like...
John:
no one cares about it that's why no one's talking about it and it didn't ship because sometimes things don't ship and maybe that's maybe that's not true maybe this person knows something that i don't that there was a big dramatic fight with apple executives and they demanded this thing not ship and you know who knows but i don't know that you don't know that and surely this group of five people is not expecting those details either
John:
And that's that's the only reason I include it's not to yell at the person for asking it because you're not supposed to ask questions because people ask, you know, whatever.
John:
Everyone does it.
John:
I mentioned random celebrities and say things all the time and then they respond like we all do it.
John:
Right.
John:
But I just thought it was a good example of ineffective at mentioning and asking a question that they themselves, I feel like, could have answered just as well as we could.
Casey:
I have nothing to add to that because you pretty much nailed it.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Marco, do you have anything?
Marco:
Yeah, I'm pretty much the same.
Marco:
I think it's probably a really boring story.
Marco:
It's probably like, oh, either we couldn't get it in time and it wasn't that important, so we'll work on it for the next release or appoint something.
Marco:
Or they could have figured out something between when it was announced and when it was shipped.
Marco:
They could have figured out, oh, actually it has this really weird, horrible problem that makes it a really bad idea to do it all.
Marco:
I find stuff like that all the time, which is one of the reasons I don't usually pronounce features.
Marco:
I'll have some feature I'll work on, and I'm like, oh, this is going to be great.
Marco:
And then I 90% through with it, and I realize, oh, wait a minute.
Marco:
This is actually impossible to be good or even shippable because of this particular condition or problem or edge case or anything else.
Marco:
And so maybe they hit something like that.
Marco:
At the scale they're working on, that probably happens all the time.
John:
and i think the questions i guess are actually a kind of a trap getting back to the stuff we talked about and i think 41 or whatever we're talking about like online criticism and stuff leading questions like this that seem like vaguely accusatory for no reason directed at multiple people seeking some kind of engagement on a topic where there's no real engagement we have it's very easy to get into a pointless flame war over nothing by responding to these type of questions because again you
John:
Maybe the person's intent is not, you know, the feeling that we get reading that is probably very different from the intent of the person asking it.
John:
But the way it's phrased is like, all you random people, I demand no Y, X, Y, and Z. And none of us actually know.
John:
And all we can give is the same exact answer that he can give himself.
John:
if you try to say anything back like if like try imagining to walk the line on twitter of trying to say what i said in big long rambling version back to this person on twitter and say well it uh you know features don't ship in software all the time because they don't make the shipping deadline and it uh wasn't uh as highly anticipated and demanded and important enough to be worth reporting on the fact that it didn't ship
John:
if you could fit that into a tweet and reply, that's like you've started an argument.
John:
Well, this is important.
John:
Don't you understand how many people want this feature?
John:
It's super important.
John:
And let me tell you why.
John:
You're going to argue with the person about why you think it's important.
John:
It's like, it doesn't matter if you think it's important.
John:
I'm telling you why I think it didn't ship.
John:
It's like, it only matters if people who run websites and blogs think it's important.
John:
And it doesn't matter if an individual person thinks it's important.
John:
It matters in aggregate.
John:
Did most people, did a majority of people, did enough people that it's noticeable?
John:
Did anybody write about this?
John:
Well, now I'm Googling it.
John:
I found one guy who did write about it.
John:
And he's like, like, you just get into this giant rat hole.
John:
It's like, what are we even arguing about?
John:
And which I was much rather, if he engages people at all, say, you tell me the answer.
John:
Like, so many people send me Twitter messages and emails where I feel like I don't want to answer this.
John:
I want you to arrive at the answer yourself, even if it's a different answer than I would give, because I have no extra knowledge about this than you do.
John:
It's kind of like the tech support thing, which is a whole other...
John:
topic that i don't want to get into now and again in order to make it seem like you know i feel put upon by these things because i have no problem just not responding to these tweets when they come especially when they have a million at names in them and i assume everybody else in these giant threads doesn't respond a little occasionally i check and i see like marco will answer these people and i don't understand why he's doing it oh you think he's bad i am such a sucker for these sorts of things i i always bite if there's a little little worm in front of me i'm always biting
John:
I have no problem just not responding to them.
John:
But so many times I just want to call them up on the phone and say, why do you think?
John:
I would love for that to happen.
John:
And I want them to think about it themselves.
John:
They don't want it.
John:
They're trying to anticipate... Now I'm doing a leading question.
John:
What do you think?
John:
They think I have an answer in mind and I'm trying to trigger them to say it.
John:
I just want them to...
John:
focus their thought process on it and come up with an answer.
John:
Like I would like to turn it around and say, this is an area where we both have equal and very little knowledge.
John:
I have a theory.
John:
Do you have a theory?
John:
Let's share our theories with each other and done.
John:
Like not, not, you know, not turning into an argument.
Marco:
So next time that you want to ask all of us, including John, one of those questions on Twitter, include a phone number.
John:
You never know.
John:
So many times.
John:
We talk about all the online stuff.
John:
That's part of podcasting.
John:
I feel like the bandwidth, the sort of expressive bandwidth, not data bandwidth, of instant message, email, and stuff like that is still so much less than voice communication.
John:
That so many times, whether it's in an argument or trying to help somebody, like trying to help my parents get something working on their computer or whatever, I just immediately want to run to the higher bandwidth connection.
John:
They're like, just let me talk to you on the phone.
John:
Like, I can talk to you through this, although it's kind of hard when you're like, do you see a box on the screen?
John:
Is it a gray box?
John:
Does it have a, you know, like, tech support is difficult.
John:
But, you know, for arguments or where you have a disagreement or whatever, especially when you're constrained by Twitter, it's like, I just want to call this person up.
John:
I feel like we could settle this in 10 minutes.
John:
Can't do it.
Casey:
Yeah, I hear you.
Casey:
And to go back just a quick step, you mentioned episode 41, which is where we were talking about online criticism and things like that.
Casey:
This week's Back to Work, which was episode 149, Merlin had a typically awesome, and I mean that with no sarcasm, Merlin, I don't know if I'd call it a rant, but a monologue about kind of sort of vaguely inspired by what we had said on episode 41.
Casey:
It's really, really good.
Casey:
So if you haven't heard that, even if you're not a normal listener, you should check that out because it's very, very, very good.
Marco:
Yeah, we'll link it up in the show notes.
Marco:
And with that, let's wrap it up for this week.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Pixelmator slash Pixelmator, File Transporter, and Squarespace.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause 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-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M
Casey:
I hope you guys don't want to go to bed for a while because we got a lot of neutral to get through.
Casey:
Because not only do I want to hear about your car, John, a little more about that, but the M3 and M4 were quasi-officially announced today, and oh my goodness, does the M3 look good.
John:
The M4 is still that banana color.
John:
That moldy, metallic, rotten banana color.
John:
I can't get over it.
John:
It's only available in that color.
John:
I can't get over it.
John:
I don't know what's going on over there in Germany that they think this is acceptable.
Casey:
But, oh, God, did you see the M3?
Casey:
Oh, it looks so good.
Casey:
It really does.
Casey:
It looks so good.
John:
I still think that, like, that the M... Not the M5.
John:
The regular 5 Series is still by far the most attractive car that BMW makes in this generation.
John:
And their kind of obsession with putting these... They look kind of like skin flaps.
John:
Like, their styling architecture of, like, oh, we're going to make the more aggressive-looking body cladding and front fascia and everything.
John:
And it does look more aggressive, and it mostly looks good.
John:
But the whole...
John:
The whole skin flappy design where it's kind of organic curves overlapping and stuff, I find less appealing than a more mechanical or on the other side of the spectrum, more sort of sculptural type of thing like a Ferrari inlet.
John:
I'm not entirely happy with basically the plastic bolt-on bits that they put on the M's.
John:
In a lot of cases, the M's still do look much better and more aggressive than the regulars, but then in the minute details of the front and rear, I'm a little bit iffy on it.
John:
Not that this will affect my life too much because I'm not getting any one of those cars.
Marco:
The M5 compared to the regular 5 Series that you like so much, if you put the M Sport option on the 5 Series, I think it's almost identical externally.
Marco:
There's very, very few differences.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah, it's like the Carrera 4S, where they, you know, get the turbo body work, but not the turbo.
John:
Yeah, like, the thing is, the 5 Series has good bones, kind of.
John:
Like, the structure, the proportions, where the headlights are, like, everything about it is nicely, it's all, you know, and it's just in the little details where you can screw it up a little bit.
John:
I think the M5, for the more aggressive front and rear plastic bolt-on thing, looks a little bit fussy for me, whereas the regular 5 looks sort of more stately and subdued and fitting with the car.
John:
But the M3 and M4, it's the same type of thing.
John:
The M4, I like the shape of it, the coupe shape.
John:
It looks nice and aggressive.
John:
But then the details around the bumpers and the haunches, it gets a little bit fussy and weird for me.
Casey:
The front air dam on the very, very, very extreme outsides, it has kind of Ferrari-ish, kind of like the upper part comes down and around, but the inner part doesn't meet up with it.
Casey:
It's like, I don't know, like lips almost.
Casey:
Not ellipse, but a set of lips.
Casey:
And then on the back, it has like a similar like quasi L shape on the very extreme edges.
Casey:
That I'm not in love with.
Casey:
I kind of wish it was a little simpler, like my era.
Casey:
Skin flaps.
Casey:
Yeah, there are kind of skin.
Casey:
Yeah, you know, you're right.
Casey:
Skin flap is a very good way to describe it.
Casey:
But generally, overall, I just think the M3 particularly looks incredible.
Casey:
I want one so hard, and I don't think I could ever afford my car brand new.
Casey:
I mean, we've talked about this ad nauseum.
Casey:
It was like $55,000 or something like that new.
Casey:
This, I forget what the starting price is going to be, but I'm sure it's going to be insane and just stupid expensive.
Marco:
What about $70,000, you think?
Casey:
I think they I thought they announced it, perhaps not in US dollars.
Casey:
But anyway, it doesn't matter.
Casey:
The point is, it'll probably be, I would say, 70 ish, certainly 70 to 75 option the way you would want.
Casey:
And so Panda 19 in the chat just asked, well, when am I getting one?
Casey:
I'll get one when it's actually affordable as a used car, which is like a decade from now.
Marco:
I'm guessing you'll have one in four years.
Marco:
Get it in black, though.
Casey:
I will not get it in black.
Casey:
Actually, to be honest, I was discussing with the same friend, Brian, that we were talking TVs with, and I forget what the name of the silver was.
Casey:
Maybe Silverstone?
Casey:
You would get it in silver?
Casey:
Well, no.
Casey:
So here's the thing.
Casey:
The blue that they have in the press shots, what is it, MOLA?
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
I forget.
John:
The blue, the light blue.
John:
It's iPad smart cover blue.
Casey:
Yeah, it really is.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I like it, but I don't love it.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
However, the silver that I'm speaking of, it's a silver, but with this weird bluish hue to it that I actually kind of like.
Casey:
I don't think I would get it white.
Casey:
If I could, if I could ever find one, I would definitely, or if I were to be able to afford one brand new, I'd get it individualed with Le Mans Blue if such a thing was affordable and possible.
Casey:
But if not that, I'd probably get it Silverstone or Silverstone or whatever it is.
Casey:
But, oh, man, it looks so good.
Casey:
It was, like, what, 450-ish horsepower?
Casey:
I'm trying to find the stats.
Casey:
425.
Casey:
425 and, like, 400 pound-feet of torque from about 2 RPM.
Casey:
And yet the fuel economy is actually up quite a bit.
Casey:
Again, I don't have numbers in front of me.
Casey:
But whatever it was, it was very, very, very good.
Casey:
Oh, I mean, for an M3, anyway.
John:
What do you think about the little Chrysler-esque things up behind the little vents behind the front wheels with the little chrome?
Casey:
Before Marco jumps in, what do you think of them, John?
John:
I'm kind of okay with doing those details just on the M series, but the actual execution of this particular detail, I think the chrome thing coming out of it is too much, and I don't think the scoop fits in with the rest of the bodywork.
John:
It looks a little bit tacked on, kind of.
John:
I do like the little M symbol on the brake pad.
John:
Like brake caliper, rather.
Marco:
I actually agree with you on the side vent.
Marco:
And the side vent is, in general, it is one of my favorite little features of the M cars.
Marco:
And it annoys me that you can go and see it on every Ford Taurus and crappy Kia ripoff.
Marco:
They totally rip that styling off of the M cars.
Marco:
I'm pretty sure the M cars did that a long time before anyone else.
Marco:
Not from the M cars.
Marco:
They've been doing that for more than 10 years.
John:
On racing cars and other high-performance cars, on many of them, it is a functional thing.
John:
Yes, on the American ones, it's usually not functional.
John:
It's just a service detail.
John:
But BMW is not a vent, whatever that vent is that's behind the front wheel.
Marco:
Well, but with the little chrome accent, when other people do it, it looks very BMW-ish.
Marco:
But anyway, I love that little vent.
Marco:
And that's one of the reasons I got the M5 is I love that little vent so much.
Marco:
I will say on this new M3 and M4, I don't love it as much.
Marco:
I agree that it doesn't really fit in that well.
Marco:
The way that little chrome piece is just kind of stuck on there, the way it's done on the 5, it's actually wrapped.
Marco:
The vent itself is trimmed in chrome.
Marco:
And, like, that's it.
Marco:
This is, like, the vent itself is just made of metal, and they, like, stuck a chrome thing right in the middle of it instead.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I'm not a big fan of that.
Marco:
I don't think it makes the car look worse, but I don't think it makes it look better.
John:
They should bring back the stealth.
John:
style that bmw used to have where their fast cars and mercedes had this you know back in the late 80s early 90s where the high performance versions of the cars looked very similar to the regular ones and you know you couldn't tell you'd blend in with traffic like basically take this m3 and pop off those plastic bits and put the boring plastic bits back on but still have a bm3 underneath right
Casey:
See, and what you're describing, in my personal opinion, is the E39 M5, which is the early 2000s, which – and I was discussing this with somebody on Twitter earlier today.
Casey:
It is the pinnacle of understated power, you know, the kind of sleeper approach, which was – there were a couple of places where you could tell it was an M5.
Casey:
The front air dam is a great example.
Casey:
It was quad exhaust, which you never saw and still don't really see on BMWs unless it's an M car.
Casey:
But by and large, it didn't have like 350 M badges on it.
Casey:
And even though I really do enjoy Marco's car and I think it's a fantastic automobile, it has M's everywhere.
Casey:
And it's kind of ridiculous.
Casey:
And the E39 M5 was not like that.
Casey:
And to this day, every great once in a while, I'll go poking through AutoTrader, telling myself I'm going to get one.
Casey:
And then I wuss out because they are so old now and so expensive to keep on the road.
Casey:
But, oh, man, it was the best.
Marco:
Speaking of too many M logos everywhere, I saw on one of these posts last night, has it been confirmed that apparently there's a feature where there's M logos on the back of the seats that light up?
Casey:
Yeah, I read that and I haven't seen a picture and it's terrible.
Marco:
Then they play engine noise out of them.
Marco:
I mean, if that's a real feature, that's pretty bad.
Casey:
Well, I can do worse.
Casey:
I can do worse.
Casey:
So there's launch control, which is that thing on your car that you've never tried.
Casey:
That's right.
Casey:
But there's also, they have, and I'm going to get the name wrong, but it's something as lame as smoky burnout mode.
John:
Yeah, what is that?
John:
It's like launch control, but they do not try to get traction.
Casey:
Precisely.
Casey:
No, I'm not kidding.
Casey:
Really?
Casey:
That is exactly it.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
So this way, if you want to be a total hooligan and show off a little bit and roast your $1,500 tires or whatever they are, you can put it in smoky burnout mode and it will let you do a burnout mode.
Casey:
Of some magnitude.
John:
Can't you just turn off the traction control and stomp on the gas?
John:
Isn't that effectively the same thing?
Casey:
One would think, especially in a stick, you can just dump the clutch when the engine's at 2,000 RPM, which is like 8 million torques.
Casey:
Oh, it works in a DCT, too.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
Well, in reverse, as we found out on the snow.
Casey:
But anyway, yeah, so there's a smoky burnout mode.
Casey:
And it was funny because I believe Ford just announced this for the Mustang.
Casey:
And so BMW has also come out with this.
John:
It's appropriate for the Mustang.
John:
The Mustang is supposed to do a smoky burnout.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
But anyway, I just wanted to bring it up because I think those are tacky features.
Casey:
They kind of are.
Casey:
Launch control I can understand because in the same Brian, in his R32, he had launch control, which he had done a launch control launch, if that's not redundant, once or twice with me in the car.
Casey:
And so the R32 was this Volkswagen with the V6 in it and Haldex all-wheel drive system.
Casey:
And I tell you what, when he did a launch control launch, it was something incredible.
Casey:
I mean, you were getting shot out of a cannon because it was all-wheel drive and
Casey:
It had a decent amount of torque.
Casey:
It wasn't stupidly heavy, and so it was quick.
Casey:
But I should go back a step and mention that the smoky burnout mode, in every spelling I've seen, it's S-M-O-K-E-Y, which just makes it even worse.
John:
Maybe they mean the bear.
Casey:
Yeah, who knows?
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
It's just terrible.
Casey:
But anyway, all in all, the M3, in principle, having never seen one in real life, having only read things on the internets, gets two very enthusiastic thumbs up from me.
Marco:
Do we know, has anybody reviewed the steering yet?
Marco:
Because it has electric power steering, and everyone hates electric power steering so far.
Marco:
And they say that in this one they fixed it, and now it has enough feedback and responsiveness.
Marco:
But I don't think a reviewer has actually driven one and evaluated that yet.
Casey:
I don't think so.
John:
the car driver drove the m4 i don't remember they said anything significant about the steering but i think they said that they overall they liked it but it was just an first impression thing but that's that's how you'll know because car drivers has been slamming the steering on the electric power steering and bmw's in particular like like a scorned lover because car driver has been the magazine that for decades has been like oh bmw wins every comparison and just in this current generation when they brought out the electrical power steering everywhere that they've been all pissy about it so
John:
I'll let you know when I get that car and driver if they finally brought them back around.
John:
But right now, they're very cranky about it.
Marco:
I've never driven an EPS system that was good.
Marco:
My current car does not have that.
Marco:
My current car has hydraulic steering.
Marco:
And all the other 5 Series have EPS.
Marco:
The M5 does not.
Marco:
It still has hydraulic.
John:
Car and driver hates your car for other reasons, though.
Marco:
That's true.
Marco:
That's fine.
Marco:
And some of them I agree with them.
Marco:
Most of them I don't.
Marco:
But I'm like, this is going to be my John Gruber keyboard.
Marco:
I'm going to hold on to this forever until somebody makes one that matches this somehow, which might never happen.
John:
You would think if not the second generation, by the third triad, all the car makers will have gotten it by their third triad.
John:
It's all the same.
John:
They all use ZF transmissions.
John:
Whoever is supplying these electrical power assist things plus whatever program they figure out, they'll figure out.
John:
Just take a couple generations.
Casey:
Now, does Tiff's new car, does that have electric steering?
Casey:
It does, doesn't it?
Marco:
Not only does it have it, but she noticed it on the very first drive on the drive home from the dealership.
Marco:
After taking that drive, she asked me, she's like, you know, the steering feels kind of weird.
Marco:
It's like it's not taking any effort and it doesn't really quite feel right.
Marco:
It feels like it's steering like almost too much around certain tight corners because you're like just instantly there and doesn't feel right.
John:
Just wait until they do drive-by-wire, because Nissan, I think, has a drive-by-wire system.
John:
A couple of makers have drive-by-wire things.
John:
That's going to be even weirder.
John:
So that's a problem.
John:
It's like they'll probably get the electrical-assisted power steering working okay, but then everyone will switch over again to drive-by-wire, and then we'll have to go through another three generations of that feeling weird.
Casey:
So anyway, I just wanted to bring it up.
Casey:
I think it's really awesome.
Casey:
Now, Marco, you had briefly said that you might consider an M3 as your next car.
Casey:
Obviously, it's a few years out, but just hypothetically, are you still thinking that's the case based on what little you know so far?
Marco:
I would really have to drive one first to really say.
Casey:
Sure, absolutely.
Marco:
Now that I've seen – so I've been in Tiff's car.
Marco:
Tiff just got her 3GT, and it's fantastic for everything that we needed her car to be, and she loves it, and it's really nice.
Marco:
And I will say I'm very jealous of two features that it has that were not available on my car, the automatic high-beam thing and radar cruise control.
Marco:
Both of those I thought might be gimmicky and useless.
Marco:
Turns out they're both awesome.
Marco:
And I wish I had them.
Marco:
And they just were not available on the M5, which is unfortunate.
Marco:
So that being said, having driven a 5 Series for all these months and going back to the 3 Series for a couple of drives that we've taken with her car together...
Marco:
I actually missed a lot of the 5 Series luxuries.
Marco:
And I didn't think I would.
Marco:
But the 5 Series is more substantial, more luxurious in a few ways.
Marco:
And I really did miss that difference when I was driving her car.
Marco:
And it's still a very nice car, and compared to almost anything else on the road, it's fantastic and very luxurious.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
There is a difference, and it would in some ways be a step down.
Marco:
It's like John stepping down his monitor size.
Marco:
So that would hurt a little bit.
Marco:
The big thing, though, is that I'm just so incredibly happy with the M5.
Marco:
I really am.
Marco:
I was telling this privately, but I'll sell it for the air because I didn't say it yet.
Marco:
The M cars, like most BMWs and like many cars, are on a seven-year generation life cycle, roughly.
Marco:
And so I have this on a three-year lease.
Marco:
At the end of the lease, it's not going to be the new generation yet.
Marco:
It's still going to be like two years before the generation switchover probably.
Marco:
So I don't know what to do at the end of this lease.
Marco:
It would be stupid to just get a new one just like the one I have.
Marco:
That would be incredibly wasteful and costly and it just wouldn't really make sense.
Marco:
I'm probably just going to buy this one out at the end of the lease and then wait until the new one comes out and then trade it into a new lease.
Marco:
Because I like it so much, it really is perfect for me and I have no major complaints at all.
Marco:
Unless the new one is ugly.
Marco:
That's the other thing you gotta...
Marco:
The new one could be ugly.
Marco:
That's true.
Marco:
It very well could be.
Marco:
And I'm betting the next M5 has all-wheel drive.
Marco:
I'd be almost certain it will have it.
Marco:
I don't think it will be standard, but I bet it will be available.
Marco:
Yeah, you say that, but watch.
Marco:
Just watch.
John:
It'll weigh 5,000 pounds.
Casey:
It already does.
John:
It's not 5,000, is it?
John:
It's like 44 or something.
Casey:
It's 43,000.
Casey:
I was going to say my car is over 3,500.
Marco:
And this is like – they don't use a lot.
Marco:
I don't even know if they use any carbon fiber in the M5 today.
Marco:
The new M3 makes extensive use of carbon fiber in lots of different places.
Marco:
So that's – like they were focused on weight savings for the new M3.
Marco:
Now they're developing the new 7 series, which is also using all this weight-saving stuff.
Marco:
After that, I bet they're redesigned the 5 series with the same weight-saving stuff, and then they do the M5.
Marco:
So I'm guessing that's going to be one of their focuses for the new one, is saving a bunch of weight.
Marco:
And maybe it won't be like, it's not going to be 1,000 pounds, but maybe it'll be 200 or 300 pounds.
Marco:
It's going to be enough to make a difference.
Marco:
And I think they have to add all-wheel drive because already it has more power than it can really put down on the road at low speed.
Marco:
They need more places to put this power.
Marco:
The engine is generating so much power.
Marco:
It just can't use it all properly.
Casey:
Well, with that said, you had the car out at least in the driveway in the snow.
Casey:
Did you take it past the end of the driveway?
Marco:
I did, yeah.
Marco:
I did, in fact.
Marco:
So I discussed on Neutral this situation where I got stuck in the 1M a year ago, where I tried taking it out in really slippery, packed slush ice conditions, and I got stuck in a grocery store parking lot.
Marco:
Well, this year I have the M5 and I have snow tires for the very first time.
Marco:
The 1M had its summer tires on that not only were they summer tires, were also pretty bald by that point.
Marco:
So they were really worn down summer tires.
Marco:
So they had no grip at all.
Marco:
So I got stuck in this parking lot and couldn't move and it was awful.
Marco:
Um, so I went out with my winter tires for the first time in this car and in our first snowfall, we've only gotten like two inches of snow, but I went out at like the worst of it to try to test this out to see how bad is it.
Marco:
So I, I went out, I took my car down to the exact same grocery store parking lot.
Marco:
It was similar conditions, but not as bad that it like there was tons of slush and like icy slush all over the parking lot.
Marco:
But I,
Marco:
you would still be hitting pavement most of the time.
Marco:
So I can't say for sure if it's a huge difference yet, but I tried lots of things.
Marco:
I tried stopping short.
Marco:
I tried turning tightly.
Marco:
I tried pushing the gas a little too aggressively to see if I'd spin around at all, or at least trigger the traction control light.
Marco:
And it was just like driving on dry pavement.
Marco:
It was shockingly good.
Marco:
It was a massive difference compared to the...
Marco:
bald summer tires, having brand new winter tires on a car with a more advanced differential and a little better balance and a lot more weight made a huge difference.
Marco:
So, so far I'm pretty confident this is actually going to work out pretty well.
Casey:
I'm going to choose not to be smug about this yet because I believe you and I went back and forth about this forever.
Casey:
And just like you always end up convincing me and I always end up being glad that you did.
Casey:
So far, it sounds like I might have convinced you the right way, but I don't want to count my chickens quite yet.
Marco:
Yeah, I think you're right.
Marco:
I think, you know, let's wait until the rest of the winter happens and like wait till I have to deal with way worse conditions than that to see if really for sure, like, you know, was this a huge mistake to not get all wheel drive.
Marco:
But so far, I'm very pleased with them.
Marco:
But again, it's there was only one snowstorm and it was fairly mild.
Marco:
So it's hard to say yet.
Casey:
right all right so after much delay because i had to be a total bmw fan boy with an eye uh john what's some more accord complaints we talked about what key fobs last time what else did we talk about i don't recall the stalks the headrests yeah here's a question that i hadn't thought about until i got the new car where in the in the car should the dead pedal be
Casey:
Is there an option?
Casey:
It should be all the way on the left, probably against the side of the car, and it should be flat, and it should be about the size of your foot.
John:
How far away should it be?
Casey:
From the clutch?
John:
I don't know.
John:
No, I don't mean horizontally.
John:
I mean distance from the seat.
Marco:
Oh, it should be... You should be able to rest on it as if you were resting on the pedal but not pressed at all.
Casey:
I would agree with that.
John:
See, my previous accord, and I think the...
John:
previous civics as well had the dead pedal at the distance from you where the clutch is like partially depressed so it was basically if the clutch is totally up the dead pedal is past where it is and i found that much more comfortable because i have long legs to rest my foot on something that's not that that's farther back than the totally untouched clutch pedal and the new accord the dead pedal is as you described it is basically the same distance from
John:
from the seat as the the untouched clutch or the brake pad or whatever kind of in that same plane of pedals and that feels way too close to me and part of that is that all the pedals feel too close they're not adjustable and the steering wheel doesn't telescope so my my choice is and plus i have the seat back lean back and everything i feel like i'm my knees are squished up a little bit because if i move the seat back so that my knees aren't squished up like that then i feel like the steering wheel is too far away because the seat back is pushed back so much i'm
John:
I mean, these cars are not made.
John:
I mean, they're made for big Americans.
John:
Maybe they're not made for 6'2 people or whatever.
John:
But the dead pedal in particular, and the pedal distance is probably not that bad, but the dead pedal in particular just feels way too close.
John:
And it's because of what I'm used to.
John:
I'm used to all my other Hondas where the dead pedal was farther back than the untouched clutch pedal.
John:
So it's not the end of the world, but it's there.
John:
I feel like it could have been fixed either with adjustable pedals, which a lot of American cars are offering, which I think are a great idea, because then you can make... It's ergonomically better to have adjustable pedals and adjustable steering columns so then small people and big people can find a good position.
John:
Or at the very least, a telescoping wheel, but I don't have... It is a tilting wheel, and I will give Honda props for finally making a car where...
John:
i can adjust the steering wheel so that i can see all the gauges through the little half moon shape that the steering wheel makes because if you're very tall inevitably the steering wheel cuts off like the top of the speedometer or whatever thing is at the top this one i can see all the gauges exactly through the thing when i tilt the wheel to the correct position so that's nice
Casey:
Now, Marco and I learned – well, Marco, you probably learned this at your first event.
Casey:
But Marco and Underscore and I learned at the BMW thing we went to that the correct distance from the wheel is that if you put your arms straight out and you rest your wrists on the top of the steering wheel, you should be able to flop your hands down.
Casey:
I don't know if that was the best way of describing it.
Casey:
But basically, you should be able to put your wrists on the top of the wheel without being terribly uncomfortable.
Casey:
And that's how far away you should be from the wheel.
John:
Yeah, and the seat back, see, the thing is, like, I'm already farther away than that, and a lot of it has to do with the seat back position because I have to tilt it back because of the headrest and also because, you know, if I start sitting more upright in my head, my head starts to get closer to the ceiling and all that other stuff.
John:
So I think my hands are already farther away than that.
John:
If I put my shoulder blades against the back of the seat and, you know, push my shoulders back and say, okay, now I'm fully in the seat, put my hands forward, I'll have to measure it in the car tomorrow.
John:
The driving position, it feels okay.
John:
It's just the pedals feel a little bit close.
John:
And the clutch also feels a little bit light, which I don't notice until I go into the old Accord and it feels heavier.
John:
But that's, again, just what you get used to.
John:
It doesn't feel unpleasing, the light.
John:
In fact, it feels pretty good because, of course, you know, the stick shifts slowly deteriorate as you use the car and they start feeling a little bit...
John:
notchier and more gross, and this still feels like a new car stick shift and a new car clutch, which is nice.
John:
We already talked about the iPod playback last time with no pause button.
John:
Oh, God.
John:
I guess the final one for today is...
John:
I'll talk more about the screens in another show and the on-screen displays and everything.
John:
I think this Honda does a reasonable job of striking a balance between physical controls and screen controls, partly because I didn't get the option that has the fancy screen with navigation and everything because I didn't want to pay for it.
John:
Honestly, I prefer the physical controls because when they put that screen in there, it's actually a second screen in this Honda.
John:
When they put that screen in, it takes the place of lots of physical controls.
John:
So my car has physical controls for fan speed,
John:
vent position auto climate control on off and you know the different temperatures for the passenger right it has physical controls but the physical controls they chose to use were a bunch of buttons that are all flush with each other but you know right up against each other with nothing in between them except a thin gap of of
John:
you know there's not even a little plastic flange with them it's just like button button button on all in one smooth continuous thing they are impossible to find and hit without touching and it's like dials people dials i can reach for a dial and you know you can feel this the five positions maybe if you even if you just memorize the end points crank all the way to the left crank all the way to the right heat all the way up heat all the way down i don't want a button to go up up up down down down i have to look at the digital display i don't want to have to search around this
John:
smooth featureless expanse of buttons, feeling the seams to try to guess which one of these, like the fan speed up and down buttons are next to each other and is left one down and the right one up or the right one down and left.
John:
Nevermind.
John:
They're in the middle of a series of identical buttons, all completely smooth.
John:
It's terrible.
John:
What I wouldn't give for a couple of dials.
John:
Like I don't, I don't like, it's good that they provide a physical control.
John:
So I don't have to such a screen to deal with this stuff, but dials people, it's so easy.
John:
One dial for fan speed, one dial for air position.
John:
They had it for, for generations, for decades.
John:
Um,
John:
I mean, like they got out of it in the gauge consoles where they used to have the numbers and they said, oh, people like dials better.
John:
You know, you can actually look at the angle of the thing without reading the numbers.
John:
Same thing on the dashboard.
John:
I wish they would put more dials, more physical dials and fewer identical buttons.
Casey:
One of the things I like about my BMW, and this is true of Marcos as well, is that there are a lot of physical buttons for things.
Casey:
And they're differentiable without having to look down or by glancing down at most.
Casey:
And the iDrive, as we talked about quite a long time in the actual neutral episodes...
Casey:
Having a tactile feedback or tactile control input is to me a whole lot better.
Casey:
And a friend of mine has an early 2000s Honda Pilot with a touchscreen navigation system, which I just don't care for at all.
Casey:
Because even as a passenger, if I try to operate that as I'm going down the road, it's just impossible to have any sort of accuracy.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I totally agree with you.
Casey:
And I also like, as much as I nostalgically enjoy the all-digital dashes of like the Corvettes of the 80s, for example, late 80s, it's so much easier to just get a vague notion of where you are in a gauge by looking down at a needle rather than having to read and compute what your speed is, for example.
Casey:
Although, I don't know, I guess, to be fair, that didn't bother me as much on Marco's fancy pants heads-up display.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah, if it's in your field of vision, it's not as bad.
John:
But dials, I would absentmindedly fiddle.
John:
And even though this car does have automatic climate control, I still find that I want to micromanage my fan speed, just because I do.
John:
And I can absentmindedly micromanage fan speed with a dial without even thinking about it.
John:
It's as automatic as driving for me in my other cars, and me constantly adjusting the fan speed or the temperature.
John:
with dials and now that they both have buttons and like digital readouts it's so much worse i can't even find the fan speed buttons absentmindedly let alone adjusted absentmindedly it's just not it's just not a gesture like find the up button hit it three times to go up three degrees or fan speed up to the one of the eight positions like dials dials
John:
I can't take it.
John:
I mean, I was going to say it's as if they gave you... No one has really had the gut so far, as far as I know, to not have a volume dial.
John:
Like, they'll have the up and down volume buttons in the steering wheel, and that's better because you're hitting them with your thumb.
John:
Like, you don't want to dial on the steering wheel.
John:
You want, like, the little pads.
John:
And the steering wheel controls are good.
John:
They're actually like little D-pads or five-way switches where there's a center button and then a four-way thing, and the volume is up and down.
John:
So I can absentmindedly adjust the volume with my left thumb, no problem.
John:
although I still find myself occasionally adjusting it with a dial anyway just because I like dials better.
John:
But forget about adjusting fan speed or even temperature with these things.
John:
I would challenge the Honda people who design this, put a blindfold on them and say, find the fan speed up button, and if you hit any button other than the fan speed up button, it will give you electrical shock.
Casey:
What is it, operation?
John:
It's impossible to do.
John:
Impossible.
Casey:
It's like the old game operation where you zap yourself, you hit the side of the opening.
John:
My daughter asks that for Christmas, actually, so they must still be running ads on it somewhere, and she must have somehow seen one of these ads.
John:
I occasionally find her watching commercials on the TiVo, and I say, no, we skipped commercials in this house.
John:
I have to remind her.
John:
Commercials are insidious, man, because she'll start seeing one of them play after a show because she hasn't gotten to the remote fast enough, and she'll become mesmerized.
John:
And it's like, no, no advertising.
John:
30-second skip.