DeLorean + McLaren
Casey:
Hi, I'm disheveled.
Casey:
So how's things?
Casey:
Good, good.
Casey:
I've looked at the show notes.
Casey:
I don't know what we're talking about.
Marco:
We're talking about your kid.
Casey:
Well, nobody wants to hear about that for more than a moment.
Casey:
I don't think that's true.
John:
Both together.
John:
Dad, dad, daddy-o.
John:
So this... Oh my God.
John:
That's a reference for Casey to get.
John:
I'm trying to lead him in gently.
Casey:
That is Back to the Future.
Casey:
Boom.
Casey:
See, I'm a changed man, guys.
John:
It's a gentle slope.
John:
You just get right up on that bicycle.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Marco:
I've seen Back to the Future a lot, and I don't remember that at all.
Marco:
Not as much as Casey.
Casey:
Yeah, I am.
Casey:
Let's see.
Casey:
I am 397 tweets behind and I've declared bankruptcy like four or five times over the last three days.
Marco:
Yeah, I think this might be the turning point in your life for a number of things.
Marco:
Not least of which will be that you may no longer be able to be a Twitter completionist.
Casey:
Well, I've already been slowly embracing not being a Twitter completionist, but yeah, I think that that is long gone now.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I managed to do it.
John:
Two kids.
John:
Just saying.
Casey:
I'm actually not that sleepy, but I don't know what day it is.
Casey:
I don't know what time it is.
Casey:
I barely remember who you two are.
Casey:
And I don't remember if we talk about Apple or Microsoft on this podcast.
John:
So if you're not that sleepy, then I don't even know what time it is.
Casey:
Because it's been a blur.
Casey:
And it's a wonderful, awesome, I'm so thankful for it blur, but a blur nevertheless.
John:
Yep.
John:
Only 18 more years.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I've already started the countdown.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Because, you know, parenthood totally ends when they go to college.
Marco:
You definitely have to like worry about them or do their laundry or best case scenario.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Right.
Casey:
So best case scenario is screw you, dad.
Casey:
I hate you.
Casey:
I'm leaving and you can never talk to me again.
John:
No, it goes off to college on a scholarship.
John:
I see him on holidays and then he goes off to get married and have kids and get a job and live the American dream with the white picket fence and blah, blah, blah.
John:
Right.
John:
That's how it works.
Casey:
So you say that, but consider that because we just had a baby, Aaron's mom is downstairs pinch hitting for me so I can talk to you two knuckleheads, which, by the way, in your two defense, neither of you were pressuring me to do this tonight.
Casey:
So I just want to make that plain.
Casey:
But anyways, and then I've seen my parents and her dad probably four times in three days or something like that.
Casey:
So, yeah, it's you say that it ends after 18 years, but it doesn't end after 18 years.
John:
Or the other alternative is your son becomes a very important general in the water wars that happen when he's an adult.
Marco:
Is that your conspiracy theory of choice, John?
John:
No, I'm just saying like it'll be ecological disaster and it'll be like Mad Max.
John:
But instead of fighting over gasoline, it'll be fighting over water because the earth will be destroyed.
Casey:
Cool.
Casey:
Well, that sounds fun.
Casey:
I'm glad we brought him into the world for that.
John:
So laundry is looking pretty good now, isn't it?
Marco:
Casey, did you miss us?
Marco:
Obviously, you must have because this wonderful conversation, this is of utmost importance.
Marco:
This is definitely worth you having taken literally only two days and 30 minutes of paternity leave.
Casey:
Well, the thing is, I don't want this show to turn into a total shit heap, and I know you two, and I know you'll turn it into one if you don't have me guiding you along.
Casey:
I mean, you'll get through one item of follow-up, and that's just no fun.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I mean, the question came up on some podcast I did forever ago.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Somebody asked, like, you know, this was before the show existed when John and I were both still on 5x5 with our own shows.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Someone once suggested somewhere publicly, you know, should we, you know, should me and John team up and then do a show together?
Marco:
And I believe my response at the time was it would never work.
Marco:
We would need some kind of third person to like help guide us along because the two of us would just talk forever and it would never end and it would be very, very boring.
Marco:
So here you are.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
Hi, everybody.
Casey:
Actually, I have that clip easily available because I heard it.
Casey:
Somebody called it to my attention forever ago.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
And I saved it because I thought it was extremely prescient of you.
Casey:
It was Build and Analyze number 25.
Marco:
I think if you had both me and John Syracuse on the same show, if you weren't there at all, it would be terrible because we would both just ramble on forever because we're definitely the commentator type.
Marco:
And there'd be nobody to drive us.
Marco:
You'd drive us really well and there wouldn't be somebody there to do that.
Marco:
And if you were there and there were both of us there, I think...
Marco:
We both have so much to say that I think it wouldn't work.
Marco:
There would just be no room for the host because the guests would be talking so much about so much stuff and not willing to yield the floor ever that the host wouldn't have any time to get a word in and therefore it'd be almost like the host was absent.
Marco:
Oh man, I can't even listen to those anymore.
Casey:
What, Build and Analyze?
Marco:
Yeah, like I'm very critical of my own past work.
Marco:
Build and Analyze was the first time I ever did any kind of podcasting.
Marco:
Like I didn't have a show before that anywhere.
Marco:
So I mean, as much as I...
Marco:
I'm aware of my own flaws today, especially since I edit the show.
Marco:
So I rehear my own flaws over and over again.
Marco:
The old ones are even worse in every possible way, because I was so new at it.
Marco:
A lot of my personal flaws were more audible or more frequent than they are now.
Marco:
And most listeners probably don't notice and don't care, but I notice, and it makes it very hard for me to listen to it.
Marco:
Plus, I was just an idiot.
Casey:
What do you mean, was?
Casey:
Right, exactly.
John:
So shouldn't one of us explain what's going on with Casey for the people who don't follow us on Twitter?
John:
John, you are in charge of explaining things.
John:
No, Casey's in charge of explaining things.
John:
That was Casey's cue.
John:
He didn't lose his job.
John:
His job is still the explaining things guy.
Casey:
So Aaron and I have finally, or really Aaron, has delivered our little baby boy.
Casey:
We had referred to him as Sprout during her pregnancy because we didn't have a name.
Casey:
Even after he was born, we didn't have a name.
Casey:
We had narrowed it down to a couple.
Casey:
And and we weren't really sure which one we were going to use.
Casey:
And so he was due on the 6th of November.
Casey:
We're recording this on Halloween because we're nerds and don't go out to parties, I guess.
Casey:
We had him or she had him Wednesday morning at 530 in the morning.
Casey:
He was eight pounds, six ounces, 20 inches long.
Casey:
Every nurse that came to visit us said, ooh, he's a big boy, which was like Aaron's thinking to herself, uh-oh, so what does that mean?
Casey:
But in any case, his name is Declan James Liss.
Casey:
We are extraordinarily overjoyed to have him, and I cannot even begin to put into words how—
Casey:
Unbelievable it is to see this little thing that we created, especially after it took us so darn long to get them here.
Casey:
And we'll put a link in the show notes about that to explain that.
Casey:
But suffice to say, it took us about three years to conceive.
Casey:
And so...
Casey:
to actually have declan in your hands it's just the most amazing thing in the world he he finally he finally came out and i pretty much went fetal not literally but pretty close and so the two of us were bawling it was i'm sure this is the same for everyone but um but yeah it was it was we were a wreck we were an absolute wreck but he is healthy uh she is healthy um we're all adjusting we
Casey:
Got home from the hospital earlier today.
Casey:
And so because I'm a masochist, I wanted to record and get this out of the way so I'm not stressing about how I'm holding up the works.
Casey:
And we actually slept okay the last couple days.
Casey:
We had the hospital nursery take him during the night and then bring him in whenever he wanted food.
Casey:
So we didn't have them give him a formula or anything because we're trying to breastfeed.
Casey:
And so we slept reasonably well.
Casey:
Ask me tomorrow morning how that works out now that we're at home.
Casey:
But life is excellent.
Casey:
Life is super good.
Casey:
I'm super, super thankful, super appreciative.
Casey:
I don't know what to do.
Casey:
I'm freaking out.
Casey:
And I mean that in the best possible way.
John:
Oh, so this is your first... You haven't even had your first night home yet.
Casey:
Correct.
John:
Oh, tonight's the first... Oh, boy.
Marco:
Mm-hmm.
Marco:
Well, congratulations, first of all.
Marco:
Before you encounter tonight, let's keep this happy.
Marco:
So, big congratulations, really.
Marco:
We couldn't be happy for you.
Marco:
I mean, even John, like, you know, the listeners might not know how much John loves kids.
Marco:
This is true.
Marco:
This is not a lie.
Marco:
And, like, you know, when John is presented with a child, he basically gets, like, giddy and is extremely awesome with the kid and loves the kid.
John:
Let's not oversell it here.
Casey:
No, that's true.
Casey:
That's absolutely true.
John:
I like cute kids and kids that are nice.
John:
I'm not one of those people who just loves kids all the time.
John:
But once you have your own kids, the fear of children goes away.
John:
So you don't feel like you're going to break them or whatever.
John:
And then when you see anybody else's kid, especially a kid of someone who you're familiar with, you feel like you ought to be able to play with them just like they're your kid.
John:
But you can't.
John:
So that's why every time I see little Adam, which is Marco's son, I want to pick him up.
John:
And I do.
John:
And he cries.
John:
And then I give him back, which is terrible.
John:
But...
John:
you just feel like in all fairness he cries whenever anybody picks him up including us yeah he's not a he's not a picking up kind of job i do that all the time like you just want to pick them up and play with them and especially when they're little like that especially now my kids are getting so big that it's hard to carry them around even though i still do uh you see those little the little pint-sized kids like there are two or three you just want to scoop them up
Casey:
Yeah, seriously, imagine like an 80-year-old grandma, her reaction to a little baby, and that's John's.
Casey:
And I mean that in a complimentary way.
Casey:
I don't mean that in a nasty way at all.
Marco:
John is an 80-year-old grandma, noted.
Casey:
So his eyes just get all super bright and shiny, and it's, oh, there's a little baby.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
Yeah, I can verify.
Marco:
That is not an exaggeration.
Marco:
John will deny this, but that actually is how excited he is.
Marco:
I have the same reaction to dogs, to be fair.
Casey:
Oh, man.
Casey:
So, yeah.
Casey:
So, I don't know what we're talking about tonight.
Casey:
I'm probably going to start snoring, even though I just told you I'm not tired, just in general.
Casey:
But...
Marco:
have fun tomorrow his adrenaline will carry him for a couple more days yeah no but i mean for us at least like the first night was um a transition certainly because it's you know it's the first time where there is no one else to take the baby to let you sleep that's casey's job he takes the baby let his wife sleep well but casey can't feed the baby yet i know that's why his job is to take the baby so she can sleep
Marco:
Well, yeah.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
But it depends on why the baby's waking up.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
So, yeah.
Marco:
I mean, at this point, you know, this is like, you know, Casey just needs to try to be as useful and supportive as possible.
Marco:
But he's at this point, you're relegated to a few not very useful tasks because like you just you can't like most of the time the baby wakes up.
Marco:
It's going to be to feed.
Marco:
There's not much you can do yet to help out, you know, except just be supportive.
John:
Well, you're ahead of the game if the baby is waking up, because that means the baby slept at some point.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
You know, it's funny.
Casey:
I feel like Declan's setting us up for the, well, relatively long troll.
Casey:
Actually, given that he's two days old, it's an extremely long troll because we're talking about 80% of his life.
Casey:
But anyway, he's actually been very sleepy for the most part.
Casey:
And so I'm getting used to a baby that actually sleeps quite a bit.
Casey:
And we almost have to wake him up to feed him a lot of the time.
Casey:
And I bet you anything that that's just like the...
Casey:
Oh, I'm new and you worked so hard for me and I'm going to make you think I'm nice.
Casey:
And then in the next day or two, perhaps tonight, I'm an asshole and I'm waking up all the time.
John:
Very newborn babies sometimes are sleepier than you would expect.
John:
And then they sort of come to life the next few days.
John:
Right.
John:
But if you had a baby who is a really bad sleeper, you'd probably know it by now.
Marco:
anyway you'll find out you can you can talk to us all tomorrow like but it's so far so far it sounds like uh you know everything everything is average everything is you know going the way it's supposed to i think you're doing fine yeah i mean next wednesday night will come really soon like you you will be surprised how how like you know when we have to record our next episode it's going to just spring you're like oh my god it's time for that already so are you going back to work speaking of
Casey:
No, I actually was going to share that just because I figured we'd get questions.
Casey:
So my work gives me a week of paternity leave, and then I've saved up two weeks of vacation on top of that.
Casey:
So what I think I'm going to do is, without a shadow of a doubt, I'm taking off all next week.
Casey:
I think I'm probably going to take off the week after maybe, maybe go back one day, but I doubt it.
Casey:
But the third week, I'm thinking I might actually stretch that and do, you know, maybe like a two or three day week that third week and then two or three day week of work.
Casey:
That is that third week.
Casey:
And then take another couple of days the following week and, you know, kind of ease myself back into it.
Casey:
We'll see.
John:
And so you've got like you've got grandparents helping you out and stuff.
Casey:
Yeah, so Aaron's parents are both in Richmond and are super helpful.
Casey:
I mean, Aaron's one of five kids, so they've been around the block a couple times.
Casey:
And my parents are retired, which is also super helpful because Aaron's parents are not.
Casey:
And they live outside Charlottesville, about 45 minutes away.
Casey:
So the good news is during the weekdays, I can easily guilt my parents into coming down to help.
Casey:
And then on the evenings and weekends, I can have Aaron's parents help.
Casey:
And this is the first grandchild on both sides, so he's going to be spoiled as hell no matter what I do.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
Now, did you... Was it difficult to pick a name to try to avoid list puns?
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
And so, actually, it's funny you say that, because the way we came upon the name was my two siblings are Adam and Brady, then Casey, then blank, and then Aaron, because it's A-B-C-something-E.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And so we were so daunted by how to pick a name that we needed some really ridiculous yet useful way of narrowing it down.
Casey:
And so I eliminated – I think it was me.
Casey:
Maybe it was both of us.
Casey:
But I eliminated 25 letters of the alphabet by saying, no, we're going to start with D because A, B, C, D, E, and that's just kind of cutesy, and I think it's cool.
Casey:
So then it was, well, what the crap?
Casey:
Because you can't use, I mean, Richard is an R name, but you couldn't use Dick because Dickless doesn't work.
Casey:
And you couldn't use a whole bunch of other names.
Casey:
And actually, one of the things I've been worried about is I hope I didn't set Declan up for a really awful, like, second through eighth grade stretch by Declan turning into Deck, turning into Dick.
Casey:
Now he's haha Dickless.
Casey:
We'll see.
John:
There's going to be seven other Declans in his class, so don't worry about it.
Casey:
I hope not.
Casey:
That's actually one of the other names we were really considering, which I'm not going to share because I don't want to have half the internet say to me, oh, you should use the other name.
Casey:
But one of the ones we considered, we eliminated because it's become super popular these days.
Casey:
And I am not 100% convinced that Declan isn't also applicable in that category.
John:
It's pretty popular.
Casey:
Well, whatever.
Casey:
We're committed now.
John:
It's all right.
John:
I mean, they're popular because other people name their kids that.
John:
It's just the way it goes.
John:
Not everyone can be named Marco.
Marco:
And to be fair, having a really unusual name in school is not necessarily a social advantage, believe me.
John:
Yeah, there's like three or four other Johns in my class.
John:
I mean, all the girls were named Jennifer.
John:
It works out fine.
John:
So my secret headcanon, as they call it, for Declan is DeLorean plus McLaren equals Declan.
John:
It's a car theme.
Casey:
Yeah, it's funny because my little brother-in-law, who...
Casey:
thinks he's like the king of movie trivia and really isn't.
Casey:
I'm actually much better at movie trivia than he is.
Casey:
So that should give you a rough estimate as to where he stands in this whole category.
Casey:
But anyway, he reminded me that Richard Gere's character in the movie The Jackal was named Declan, which I'd completely forgotten about.
Casey:
And it's actually my memory of the movie, although I haven't seen it in 10, 15 years, is that it was a pretty good movie, all told.
Casey:
And I think Jack Black was in it in like a semi-serious role, if memory serves.
Casey:
So, yep.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
So yeah, it's amazing.
Casey:
It's the most amazing thing in the world.
Casey:
And it's weird because I, you were kind of alluding to this, John, I never liked carrying babies.
Casey:
I mean, I think I picked Marco up.
Casey:
Yikes.
Casey:
I picked Adam up.
John:
He's very small.
Right.
John:
You just cradle him in your arms.
John:
You just want to put him in a little pocket.
John:
Yep.
John:
He's so weensy.
Casey:
But anyway, no, I picked Adam up a couple of times, I think.
Casey:
But every time I'm like, oh, my God, I'm going to drop him.
Casey:
Oh, my God, I'm going to drop him.
Casey:
Oh, my God, I'm going to drop him.
Casey:
And when it's your own kid, or at least in my experience, all of that, it just goes away.
Casey:
And it's just this is what I have to do.
Casey:
And it sounds so cliche and silly.
Casey:
But it really is the way it was.
Casey:
And and I'm so much more confident making decisions about him.
Casey:
Not to say it's all on me.
Casey:
Of course, Aaron's really doing all the work and I'm just taking credit for it.
Casey:
But, you know, figuring out, oh, does he got a poopy diaper?
Casey:
Is he sleepy?
Casey:
Whatever the case may be.
Casey:
It's it comes so much more naturally once you're there.
Casey:
And I still can't even really believe I'm a dad like that's the most wild thing in the world.
Marco:
Yeah, I'm so happy for you to see you going through this, to see you enjoying all of this.
Marco:
So I'm just so happy for you and Aaron.
Marco:
And I think the entire internet is happy for you and Aaron.
Casey:
Yeah, I really appreciate it.
Casey:
And actually, the outpouring has been absolutely ridiculous.
Casey:
And I cannot thank everyone enough.
Casey:
If you happen to listen to my other show, Analog, you'll know that I'm trying to come to terms with not replying or favoriting everything under the sun.
Casey:
And so I haven't done that and I will continue to not do that.
Casey:
But it's been absolutely incredible, all the support.
Casey:
And I know I speak for Aaron in saying I really appreciate it.
Marco:
Well, and I think anybody who has any sense whatsoever, especially anybody who was a parent, will totally understand if you don't necessarily have time to respond to every single outpouring message of tweet and email right now, literally two days after you've had a baby.
John:
You got two things going for you with this baby.
John:
The first one is...
John:
I've already forgot the list.
Casey:
I thought I was the sleep deprived one.
John:
I'm a little sleep deprived too.
John:
So since you tried so hard to have this baby, like, cause you had difficulty again, we'll put the link in the show notes.
John:
You'll appreciate, you will just appreciate it more than people who didn't have a problem.
John:
Right.
John:
And that appreciation will carry you through.
John:
Yeah.
John:
the hard times like that'll that'll give you a little rocket boost uh for when it's difficult because you'll always have that kind of in the back of your mind but like how hard you worked for this and how much you wanted it or whatever and i think that really will help yeah i think the same thing and the second thing is like now you are you're being indoctrinated into the secret club of people who know how difficult it is to be a parent and you will now face the struggle that all of us face which is do not lord it over other people because that's obnoxious
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
Actually, it's funny you say that because a lot of our friends have already had kids.
Casey:
And so we always tried, Aaron and I, to be very understanding when somebody would have to cancel at the last minute or if somebody was really particular about, oh, I can't do that because it's nap time or because it's within three hours of nap time or whatever.
Casey:
And so
Casey:
I never understood it, but we tried to be understanding of it.
Casey:
And what I'm really curious to see is how often we play those cards now that they're in our deck.
Casey:
Oh, well, we just can't do that because Declan's going to nap sometime between now and three days from now.
Casey:
So no, we can't.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
John:
sometimes it's a card and sometimes it's the truth and that's the beauty of it is that the other person doesn't know yep yeah usually i think it's the truth you know i mean at least for us it is or the truth maybe i haven't showered in three days right there's no way i can leave the house no but
Marco:
But soon, you will know firsthand.
Marco:
When somebody who doesn't really know about how life with kids works, they will be really surprised when you tell them that you really can't go and meet them for dinner a half hour away on a random weeknight out of the blue for fun.
Marco:
And it's like, really?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
You'll see.
Marco:
The assumptions that people make before their parents about the life of being a parent, if they even think about it, just by nature of it being such a huge change in life, the assumptions people make about how it is usually are pretty far off.
Marco:
you're not you're not choosing to like reject certain social events and not go out to certain things you're not rejecting that because you want to be uptight you're rejecting it because you actually would prefer doing things your normal way to going out because the consequences of going out are worse and it's not worth it if that makes any sense at all
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Casey:
And it's funny, the things that I made, like, I don't know if I should say I made declarations about.
Casey:
But for example, the nursery in the house is, I don't know, 10, 15 paces away from where our bedroom is.
Casey:
And Aaron and I kept saying to each other,
Casey:
The first thing we would say is, well, I think we're going to keep him in the nursery from the get-go so he doesn't get too attached, doesn't really get this idea that he's always going to be next to us, blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
And the next thing we would say leading up to tonight was, but we'll see what happens.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
when we started talking briefly about what the sleeping arrangements were tonight, the first thing I asked was, can we easily get the pack and play upstairs?
Casey:
The second thing I asked was, well, actually, why don't we just drop the Casper into, uh, Declan's room and we can just sleep there.
Casey:
So we're already, all these promises we made to ourselves, like, oh, we're going to go out to dinner in the first month.
Casey:
Like all, pretty much all bets are off already.
Casey:
And we've had them for two days.
John:
Yeah.
John:
No plans to advise contact with the baby.
Yeah.
Casey:
It's so true.
Casey:
But anyway, so yeah, thank you everyone, you guys especially, but everyone for being so supportive, for being so interested or at least feigning interest in a way that I don't realize you're full of it.
Casey:
So it's been a wild ride.
Casey:
It's going to continue to be a wild ride.
Casey:
I'm sure you guys will periodically ask for no other reason than to laugh about what we're going through.
Casey:
And then I will get hopefully some amount of pleasure into –
Casey:
into hearing you tell the stories of Armand Baby No.
Casey:
2, which, come to think of it, I don't think we talked about.
Casey:
So congratulations to you as well.
Marco:
Thank you.
Marco:
Thank you.
Marco:
Yeah, that's happening in the spring, but tonight's about you.
Marco:
We'll leave that for later.
Casey:
Well, tonight is about other things, too, so we should probably do the follow-up.
Marco:
all right it's also though about hover for this next two minutes or so uh hover is the best way sorry hover is the best way to buy manage domain names uh hover is a domain record store that doesn't suck basically uh that's my slogan not theirs but i think they should really take it um you're looking when you're looking for uh you know a name for your project or you want a name for yourself or for funny purposes
Marco:
generally speaking you know you go to a domain maker store you you you search for what you need you browse the list you find something anything that is available which is increasingly difficult unless you go to one of the crazy new tlds and then you go through some kind of horrible shopping cart where you know you got to say no to a bunch of add-on services and you got to uh you know uncheck the box that says please spam me and check the box that says please don't spam me and try to figure out exactly their wording there and everything and
Marco:
And then uncheck a bunch of recurring annual subscriptions to things that sound really vague that no one should say no to.
Marco:
Like, I would like the Freedom Package, please.
Marco:
Oh, that's $75 a year.
Marco:
But what does that do?
Marco:
All this crazy stuff that so many registrars do.
Marco:
Hover entered this market to basically be the opposite of that.
Marco:
So, Hover is run by people who like other people, who don't want to hurt them and annoy them.
Marco:
And it's just run by good people.
Marco:
It is a domain register that respects people.
Marco:
So, if you go to Hover, it's a nicely designed site.
Marco:
You search for what you want.
Marco:
The search is extremely good.
Marco:
It's fast.
Marco:
It searches all the crazy TLDs, and it shows you everything available.
Marco:
It does some language parsing a bit, so that if they don't have quite what you want, it can kind of show...
Marco:
alternate wordings or slight variations that might they might be might be available you go to buy something and you check out and you're done like there is no crazy add-on step there's no crazy upselling there's no crazy cross-promotional crap you just buy the name you pay for it easily and you have it
Marco:
And they do offer some add-on services that are paid, things like email hosting and stuff like that.
Marco:
But for the most part, they give you a lot for free.
Marco:
Every domain comes with free domain privacy, all sorts of DNS tools and everything, everything you need.
Marco:
They also have a really good valet transfer service where you can transfer names.
Marco:
If you want to transfer names from another registrar to Hover...
Marco:
If you want, you can have them do it for you.
Marco:
You give them the login to your old registrar and they will do the transfers for you for any number of domains.
Marco:
If you have 100 domains, they'll still do it for you.
Marco:
It's really great.
Marco:
That's no additional charge for that service.
Marco:
If you need support, they have, you know, of course, the usual online support, but they also have phone support during business hours.
Marco:
You can just call them and they have a no hold, no wait, no transfer phone policy.
Marco:
So you call them up and a human being answers the phone and that human being is able to help you.
Marco:
I really can't recommend them enough.
Marco:
Their prices are also really good.
Marco:
They just lowered prices on a bunch of stuff, but they were already good even before that.
Marco:
Anyway, go to Hover.com, H-O-V-E-R, for anybody who doesn't know how to pronounce this word like the British.
Marco:
Go to Hover.com and enter offer code Congratulations Casey to get 10% off your first order.
Marco:
Once again, go to Hover.com or Hover.com, depending on how you pronounce it.
Marco:
And enter promo code congratulations, Casey.
Marco:
All one word.
Marco:
I know it's very long.
Marco:
But anyway, that's it.
Marco:
Congratulations, Casey.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to Hover for sponsoring the show.
Casey:
So a quick story related to Hover.
Casey:
I know that that was a little bit of a read, but I think this is worth sharing.
Casey:
When I told Marco and John that Declan was born, all was well, we exchanged a few messages about that.
Casey:
And then I believe it was Marco said to me, all right, here's what you need to do.
Casey:
You need to buy Declan.
Casey:
DeclanList.com, and you need to get the DeclanList Twitter handle immediately before anyone else does.
Casey:
And so I'm sitting in the hospital on the hospital Wi-Fi doing exactly that.
Casey:
And Marco, would you like to guess where I registered?
Casey:
DeclanList.com?
Casey:
go daddy no it was at hover oh wait was it hover or was it hover actually it was hover i'm just being so you're infecting casey with your inability to pronounce that the british way yeah he's imitating you instead of trying to do it that's true it's true uh yeah yeah all right so uh marco speaking of things that you're either creating or buying uh what's the story with your imac retina 5k whatever whatever
Marco:
The business rep ordering system is apparently not that reliable.
Marco:
So I have between zero and three of them arriving.
Marco:
I've only gotten ship notices for two, which is the correct number that we ordered.
Marco:
So we will see how many arrive.
Marco:
I've been charged for three, but I think I'm going to get refunded automatically.
Marco:
It's a weird situation.
Marco:
Anyway, they're on a boat or a plane.
Marco:
Yeah, probably a plane.
Marco:
I think a boat might be too slow.
Marco:
So yeah, I'm pretty sure they're on a plane between Japan and Alaska right now.
Casey:
We got to drop in a clip of the Lonely Island song, which you don't even know what that is.
Casey:
In fact, I'd be surprised if John knows what that is.
Casey:
Nope.
John:
Adam Sandberg thing?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Good job, John.
Casey:
I'm proud of you.
John:
How could you go?
John:
Yeah, I was going to... Too bad you already jumped into the follow-up because I was all ready to segue from Baby Talk to the first item in the actual follow-up here.
Casey:
What was the first... Did I skip one?
John:
Yeah, so we're saying in the same way that Casey has bonded to his child, it turns out that the glass on the Mac 5K...
John:
is laminated and what is this this is fall from a different podcast i was on the talk show recently i'm pretty sure i said this on the talk show grubber and i were talking on the talk show about about the imac screen and talking about how it wasn't laminated uh but it totally is i was thinking of the thunderbolt display which is the same size but you know in typical apple fashion uh they updated the imax to have the nice laminated screen but did not update the thunderbolt displays at least not the one i have anyway
Marco:
No, you're right.
Marco:
And that also is not that recent.
Marco:
They updated the iMacs to have the laminated and lower glare screens like two years ago.
John:
Yeah, yeah.
John:
So anyway, iMac 5K, the screen is laminated.
John:
There you go.
John:
Is that shows don't have follow up?
John:
We have to do it here.
John:
We're going to die.
Casey:
You know, for what it's worth, that episode with you and John Gruber is really, really good.
Casey:
I really enjoy the talk show always.
Casey:
But but some of the guests are just always without question, just amazing.
Casey:
And having the two Johns together, always a good time, always worth a listen, even though you guys ramble on even longer than we do sometimes.
Marco:
Yeah, I'm also, I listen to every episode of the talk show, and I got to say, John, your episodes, I think, are consistently my best, my favorites.
John:
Your best.
John:
We just need to get some, we just need to get, like, smart speed for Gruber, though, because then the shows will be shorter.
Marco:
in fact the one you did with gruber a long time ago that was one of my one of my like top three test files like when i was making when i was making smart speed that was what played most of the time it was the one where you open up saying you know what i had to do to get here this is a good imitation of my voice yeah yeah thanks you know what i had to do to get this to happen what'd you have to do reboot into my super duper clone oh
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So we also got a lot of feedback, myself especially, but we all got it, about the AT&T Unlimited plan, because I believe it was on this show that I talked about how I still have the grandfathered AT&T Unlimited plan.
Casey:
And I don't remember if you guys had said, oh, that's crazy, or if the chat room had said, oh, that's crazy, but somebody did.
Casey:
And look who's smart now, because as it turns out,
Casey:
Uh, the FCC has said, you know what, AT&T, if you're going to make it unlimited and then severely throttle after three or five gigs of data, I don't remember what it is.
Casey:
Well, screw you.
Casey:
We're going to sue you.
Casey:
And gosh, only knows if anything will come of it.
Casey:
Probably not.
Casey:
But I do for this small stretch of time until this lawsuit is concluded, I get to feel smug about it.
Casey:
So that's really exciting.
Marco:
Yeah, and I think ultimately the most likely outcome of this is either nothing will change or they will just end those plans.
Casey:
Probably.
Marco:
They are not obligated to keep offering that plan every month.
Marco:
They chose to grandfather people in and let them continue indefinitely.
Marco:
presumably because they figured it would do less harm that way to their reputation and to their customer relationships uh but if it comes down to offering real unthrottled unlimited uh like back please which is our second sponsor but anyway when it comes down to real unthrottled unlimited speeds uh they're not going to offer that they're they'll just end these plans
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
But like I said, for a brief moment in time, I can feel smug.
Casey:
So, John, tell us about ECC RAM, please.
John:
I think I mentioned that when we were talking about whether I want an iMac and how I still feel better about having like server class components and in particular ECC RAM, because we have just so much RAM these days and the error rates of RAM.
John:
uh you know have not uh decreased at the same rate that capacity is increased and so the more ram you get the more likely you're going to have these one bit errors and that's what uh you know or whatever error cracking memory uh helps improve that reliability and i was like well maybe it's just all in my head like that i think i'm you know getting fewer and margot said the same thing getting fewer kernel panics because ecc memory is helping or whatever you know who knows
John:
But a couple people sent me this blog post.
John:
I think I got this link from Scott Ziegler originally.
John:
It's James Hamilton's blog, and he works, I think, in the data centers for Amazon.
John:
So, you know, kind of like those Google people, all those people who have fleets of hardware or like, you know, for example, Backblaze giving hard drive reliability numbers.
John:
You can get some good data if you just have a tremendous amount of hardware and then you just start tracking everything and showing the stats on it.
John:
And so I'll put the link in the show notes.
John:
People can read it and decide this, you know, the numbers are still small.
John:
Like how, how many, how many errors do you get in Ram?
John:
How much data do you have to shove in and out of Ram before you get any errors?
John:
Uh, but even one error bothers me.
John:
And so ECC Ram, uh,
John:
It's not that expensive.
John:
The main problem is that Intel, I think, still only puts, you know, controllers and everything for it in their sort of more expensive chipsets.
John:
But inherently, there's nothing about it that makes it so that it wouldn't be economically feasible to put in cheaper stuff if Intel just didn't, you know, sort of.
John:
segment their line according to this quote-unquote enterprise feature uh but anyway i thought it was interesting it makes me feel slightly more justified in my still probably irrational and unfounded belief that ecc ram is something that i need in my life
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, ECC RAM, like, you know, if, like, I've said this before, like, I have always kind of felt that Mac Pros were more reliable than the other Macs.
Marco:
I have never owned an iMac.
Marco:
Tiff did for a while, so we had one in our house, but I've never actually owned an iMac and used it full-time myself.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But I have had a lot of laptops, a lot of the Apple laptops, and they always just kind of feel like, you know, there's always like occasional kernel panics or occasional, you know, failures to wake from sleep and everything.
Marco:
And Mac Pros, I've never seen that kind of problem before.
Marco:
I'd not say I've never had a kernel panic, but they've been much more rare, you know, on the order of like maybe zero to one a year.
Marco:
Whereas in the laptops, it was more like, you know,
Marco:
One to three years.
Marco:
We're not talking big numbers here, but it's enough that it matters if you're doing something really important or if they cause you to lose data.
Marco:
But all that being said, I don't know because I haven't had a non-Mac Pro Apple desktop before.
Marco:
I don't know how much of that is just because they're laptops.
Marco:
Like, you know, like the power management stuff that, you know, transitioning it to and from sleep and everything like that's something that a laptop has to go through much more than a desktop.
Marco:
And there's, you know, there's different thermal boundaries and there are different thermal limits and stuff like that in a laptop and different component tolerances and a lot of things.
Marco:
And granted, you know, the...
Marco:
all of Apple's desktops, except the Mac Pro, use a lot of laptop components.
Marco:
Like the Mac Mini and the iMac, they're both full of laptop components.
Marco:
The low ends of each of those, the 1.4 gigahertz crappy models, are just MacBook Airs, really.
Marco:
And so it is a lot of the same components now, you know, between laptops and desktops.
Marco:
So I don't know...
Marco:
You know, I guess, you know, ask me in a year, you know, like how much of a problem this ends up being.
Marco:
I'm guessing it's going to be probably not enough to change which one you're using just for that reason.
John:
It's so hard to pinpoint the cause of those things, though, because it could be software, it could be, you know, like, that's why this article isolate, but it gives people an idea of like, well, what could be a Tribunal DCC RAM?
John:
Like, just to give like a little summary of it in this big measure of all these machines, it said about a third of their machines
John:
had at least one correctable ram error per year so that's not they're not big numbers right you're not really it's not the difference between constantly crashing and all like most i imagine most of the problems i actually have with laptops and other things have to do with software bugs can like i mean and components that are you know
John:
put under more stress because they have, uh, there's, there's more heat involved and there's just more stuff in there.
John:
And, you know, in the past, like when you'd get a desktop map, it wouldn't even have a wifi for example, but these all have wifi and Bluetooth and everything.
John:
And, you know, my Mac pro does not.
John:
So, oh, it has Bluetooth.
John:
Thanks.
John:
But anyway, uh, it's so hard to know what to attribute these errors to, but I know that my Mac pro has been reliable and that's why I'm sort of got this voodoo about, I would like something in a similar class going forward.
John:
It would just make me feel better.
Casey:
So, Marco, are you planning on getting rid of your trash can if the 5K or all three of your 5Ks ever show up?
Casey:
What's the intention there?
Marco:
Yeah, I'm going to sell it.
Marco:
I mean, it would be really stupid not to.
Marco:
I mean, it would, you know, because I have no use for a for like a big expensive desktop Mac that I'm not using.
Marco:
I've been thinking about maybe getting a Mac Mini for a backup server kind of needs.
Marco:
And by the way, every time I try to configure, I try to price out a Mac Mini at Apple Store, it always just makes me angry.
Marco:
Because it's like, here's this computer that's $500.
Marco:
But only if you get a terrible one.
Marco:
And if you get a Mac Mini worth owning, it's $1,000.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And it's like, oh, well, at this point, should I be looking at a MacBook Air?
Marco:
It's so nicely designed to push you up the line.
Marco:
And the new Mac minis have even less upgradable than the previous ones.
Marco:
You can no longer upgrade the RAM.
Marco:
It's now soldered onto the board.
Marco:
And the disks are very hard to get to.
Marco:
And you can't get an SSD with the low-end CPU.
Marco:
You have to go to the high-end CPU.
Marco:
It's just...
Marco:
There's so many little restrictions in place to make sure that if you get a Mac Mini for less than $900, it's going to be a total piece of crap.
Marco:
But that aside, I mean, this Mac Pro is probably still worth a few thousand dollars at least.
Marco:
And so it would be stupid of me to keep this around for file-serving tasks.
Marco:
I mean, I'd be better off selling it and taking a third of the money and buying a Mac Mini with it.
Casey:
Now you're going to keep it around for like a month or two to see how you feel about the 5k or are you going to immediately unload it?
Marco:
Well, it has 14 days to win me back.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Marco:
You know, if I, if I, if for some reason the 5k is horrible and I return it, then I will go back to it.
Marco:
But, uh, I, based on the reviews, I mean, everyone getting these 5k seems to be loving them.
Marco:
Like I have not found a lot of complaints about them.
Marco:
The, uh,
Marco:
i was a little worried about heat and fan noise and from what i can gather what everyone's saying is uh that you can hear the fan if you're like playing a 3d game uh with sean that might be relevant to you actually but if you if you're just doing other things even if you're just stressed even if you're stressing the cpus like if you're running handbrake as long as you're not stressing the cpu and the gpu everyone's basically saying it's it's effectively inaudible so i'll see when it gets here
John:
Did you hear the audio file that someone sent us of their iMac fan?
John:
No.
John:
Someone played Portal basically on their iMac and recorded the sound of the fan.
John:
And of course you can't tell from recording how loud it really is because it really depends on how close the mic was and so on and so forth.
John:
But you can kind of get a feel for the quality of the sound.
John:
And it sounds, not surprisingly, very similar to what...
John:
it sounds like when you really crank up the fans on a laptop you know what i mean because the sort of it's a thin package and there's small openings right it's got that kind of i couldn't tell if it was like the asymmetrical fan kind of like a fuzzy hiss instead of like the the wine that you'd get from a from a small symmetrical fan because there's pretty big fans in there so well there's just one fan it's it's in the back behind the stand it's really it's big right
Marco:
It's big, but it's not nearly as big as the Mac Pros.
Marco:
There's not enough room for a fan that big.
Marco:
I've been looking around to see if anybody has any information on this fan.
Marco:
I was looking around on it before I ordered.
Marco:
iFixit shows you what it looks like, but no one seems to say it has asymmetrical blades.
Marco:
I can't find that information on Apple's site, anywhere else.
Marco:
So I'm pretty sure it doesn't.
John:
The big difference between the Mac Pro fan and that fan is the same reason, you know, you get an extra 10 horsepower by changing your intake manifold.
John:
Nice.
John:
Much better airflow through the Mac Pro than you do trying to bring air in through the little slits or whatever at the bottom of that iMac and then shove it through a bunch of tubes or whatever.
John:
So the Mac Pro is all nice and opened up.
John:
Plenty of power.
John:
This analogy does not work anymore, but you know what I mean.
Marco:
yeah no i mean like i i mean literally i have never hurt my mac pro fan ever like no matter what i do with this thing and granted i don't play 3d games so i don't think i've ever stressed the gpus and the cpus at the same time uh but i've like doing just pure cpu maxing out i've never ever hurt the fan on this mac pro and i don't i don't expect the imac to match that that level of awesomeness but as long as it's close i'll be very happy with it
Marco:
And everyone's basically saying it's totally worth it because the screen is amazing.
Casey:
Yeah, I saw one.
Casey:
I went to the Apple store to check one out.
Casey:
And remember that I don't have any Retina Max in the house.
Casey:
And I got to tell you, that screen is beautiful.
Casey:
It is...
Casey:
It is absolutely the screen I would want in a mythical revised Thunderbolt display, which, as we've talked about many times in the past, isn't going to happen for a long time.
Casey:
But I'm personally not a desktop kind of guy.
Casey:
And so as much as I think that screen is beautiful, I'm not going to be buying an iMac anytime soon.
Casey:
But it is pretty.
Marco:
I was actually about 100 feet from an Apple store yesterday and didn't go in because I didn't want, like, I want mine to be the first one I see.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I know that's stupid, but I know it's already coming.
Marco:
It might as well wait until... I think it's supposed to get here on Monday or Tuesday.
Marco:
It might as well wait until then.
Marco:
And I realized, too, as I was talking to our friend underscore David Smith and reading a few other people's reviews...
Marco:
One of the great things about a retina screen for iOS developers is that you can run the retina simulators at regular sizes.
Marco:
When you have a non-retina screen, you know, for those of you who don't know, the retina simulators run, by default, at 1x of their actual pixels.
Marco:
And so, like, a retina iPad doesn't even fit on your monitor most of the time, especially if you're using a laptop.
Marco:
You know, even a retina iPhone 6+.
Marco:
It doesn't fit on anything either because it's so freaking big.
Marco:
It's 3x the pixels.
Marco:
And on a retina screen, it runs... These things all run at their retina sizes, at their native point sizes, so they're smaller.
Marco:
And you can hit command 2 and 3 to artificially shrink them if you need to on a regular screen, but the performance is terrible.
Marco:
It doesn't look good.
Marco:
So even just doing iOS development, there's a very, very good reason to have retina screens because it just makes it so much easier...
Marco:
to see what you need on screen the way it will actually look on a device.
Casey:
Yeah, that makes sense.
Casey:
I mean, I saw a screenshot that underscore David Smith, I assume he sent you the same one of him running the iPad simulator, I think in landscape, and having Xcode adjacent to it all on the same screen, not using like spaces or anything like that.
Casey:
And there was still plenty of room left over.
Casey:
And I've done enough iOS development to know that's a big damn deal.
Casey:
So I'm excited for you as much as it makes me grumble that you
Casey:
You sh** canned the trash can so quickly.
Casey:
But anyway.
Marco:
Believe me, that makes me grumble just as much.
Marco:
I mean, it does not please me that I spent a lot of money on this computer that I thought I was going to have for a while, expecting that I'd be able to get desktop retina the way I wanted with it.
Marco:
only to find out something way way better came out like nine months later like that i mean that's the or i guess 10 months later that is not a great feeling uh but it is a great feeling that the one i got the mac pro i got the resale value will probably cover the imax cost at least most of the way uh we'll see though god that's impressive
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We have a little bit more follow-up, but before we get to that, since I think it may take a minute, why don't you tell us about something else that's really cool?
Marco:
We are also sponsored this week by our unthrottled and unlimited friends, Backblaze.
Marco:
Backblaze.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Backblaze is unlimited unthrottled online backup.
Marco:
They also love to say it's uncomplicated and native, and they have all these unwords except native.
Marco:
It is very, very good online backup.
Marco:
I use them myself.
Marco:
It's always there.
Marco:
It's always backing these up for you.
Marco:
Your data is always secure.
Marco:
There's an entire class of problems this protects you from.
Marco:
Basically, anything that can happen physically to your house, if somebody could walk in and steal your computer and the drive next to it, that's your backup drive, that you could have a fire, you could have a flood, you can have electrical surges and all sorts of weird issues like that.
Marco:
If your data only exists in your house or in your office.
Marco:
uh that's not really good enough if it's really that important to you uh you got to have an off-site backup and and there's also because it's online they can offer you advantages like they have an app for iphone ipad and android where you can access your files that you've backed up on backblaze wherever you are uh you can also log into their website so like what i what i sometimes do if i want to get a file that's on my home desktop and i'm traveling with my laptop
Marco:
I can log into the site and pull that file right off the site.
Marco:
All of this is just five bucks a month.
Marco:
It is so good.
Marco:
I mean, I use it.
Marco:
My wife uses it.
Marco:
I set up my mom with it.
Marco:
When I was there last time, I just installed it on her computer.
Marco:
And so now I know my mom's all backed up and I don't have to worry about it.
Marco:
Of course, she doesn't have to worry about it.
Marco:
It's so great.
Marco:
I can't recommend Backblaze enough.
Marco:
Go to backblaze.com slash ATP.
Marco:
You get great unlimited, unthrottled online backup.
Marco:
Really unlimited disk space.
Marco:
That is really impressive.
Marco:
Unlimited online backup, five bucks a month.
Marco:
Anyway, thanks a lot to Backblaze for sponsoring once again.
Casey:
Oh, and we have a really good story about Backblaze.
Casey:
Two months ago, our contracted engineers managed to accidentally delete all of the data from our RAID set.
Casey:
Our local backups of our most active projects were good, and we had a backup of our email store from the previous evening, but our local copy of our support files and archives and financial data was found wanting.
Casey:
We are architects, and by law, we have to keep everything we do for seven years, and Backblaze saved our business.
Casey:
If it wasn't for the fact that Backblaze – or excuse me, if it wasn't for the fact that we could get everything back from Backblaze's service, downloads or drives in the mail or whatever, then I honestly believe that we would have had to shut the doors and 30 people would be looking for new jobs.
Casey:
Thank you to them, and thank you to you guys.
Casey:
So, yeah, that's –
Casey:
Honest to goodness, hand on heart, that is pretty much verbatim an email we got.
Casey:
So like Marco had said, get back, please.
Casey:
Get some sort of online backup.
Casey:
It can save your bacon.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And if nobody's told you yet, RAID and RAID-like systems like Drobos and NASA, that is not its own backup.
Marco:
Those things serve to reduce downtime.
Marco:
And in the case of Drobo and Synology's hybrid RAID and stuff like that, it's things like, I want to expand this drive volume without erasing everything.
Marco:
So you can get convenience from RAID.
Marco:
But RAID is not a backup.
John:
That's what RAID stands for.
John:
RAID stands for RAID is not a backup.
John:
That's why it's spelled R-A-I-D.
John:
Exactly.
John:
Just don't ask a geek what the I is for.
John:
Yeah, everyone's going to email us about the different definitions of what the I is for in RAID.
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
All right, so a couple other things that we should hit in follow-up.
Casey:
There's a couple of quick ones and one not so quick.
Casey:
First, I've tried Apple Pay.
Casey:
It is magical.
Casey:
I have used it twice.
Casey:
Both times were at McDonald's.
Casey:
I don't care if you think that's gross because I like McDonald's.
Casey:
The first time was for breakfast and it was just as socially awkward as I expected it to be because I had told the clerk, oh, how do I go about using the, you know,
Casey:
phone pay thing, because I didn't want to say, how do I use Apple Pay?
Casey:
Because I figured that they would be like, what?
Casey:
So I made it worse by using hand-wavy generalisms, but eventually I realized near-field communication isn't just near-field communication.
Casey:
It's like, stick your darn phone on top of the reader communication.
Casey:
And once I got the phone a lot closer...
Casey:
It prompted me to pay and it worked no problem.
Casey:
And then last night I used it again in order to get a chocolate milkshake for Aaron when I was returning from home to the hospital.
Casey:
But it is pretty awesome and I'm really stoked to use it in pretty much any store I could possibly use it in.
Casey:
And another quick one, someone shall and men on Twitter.
Casey:
Let me see if I can find their actual name.
Casey:
M night.
Casey:
Nicely done.
Casey:
It's Magnus, apparently.
Casey:
Well, anyways, he had told us that there is perhaps a way to do upgrade pricing or bundles to use bundles to do upgrade pricing in the app store.
Casey:
I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on that.
John:
we talked about that like that you know someone broached that idea and we talked about how terrible it would be because it's not it's like yeah you can kind of get upgrade pricing that way but trying to explain it to people it's like i know you just want to to get a cheaper way to get the next version of this program but what you really have to do is buy this bundle it looks like it has two programs but you'll will subtract the amount that you paid for the other one which is not the same as the amount that it's currently for sale for in the store and like it's it's all this convoluted system and you know uh
John:
marco in particular thought it was a bad idea i also agreed uh but the bottom line is we thought someone would try to do it if apple didn't stop them and this is i think the screenshot from a german uh app store but anyway apparently someone has tried to do it is doing it and apple hasn't stopped them yet and i'm sure people are very confused by it because all they want is one program and they have to buy a bundle with two and hope they're getting the right things and it's kind of a mess
Marco:
And as Kyle Cronin points out in the chat, you have to still be selling the old program in the store, like the old version has to still be there, which means that you'll have people buying the old version, thinking it's the new version.
Marco:
And then there are so many problems in practice with this arrangement and trying to hack upgrade pricing into this.
Marco:
This system was clearly not made to do that.
Marco:
and the more you try to wedge upgrade pricing into that system the more it's just going to hurt your support costs your reviews your relationship with your customers i think it's worth looking at um our friends uh super top bought unread from jared sinclair and they just this past week or the week before they just released uh their new update and and it's it's a separate app they had to do that for various reasons
Marco:
And they have a fantastic monetization plan where it's a free download and you get, I don't know, 50 articles to read in trial mode, something like that.
Marco:
So there's some trial limits to it.
Marco:
And then you got to pay.
Marco:
And so they do upgrade pricing with in-app purchase and it just sees if you have the old version installed.
Marco:
It's not like, you know, as secure, you know, I'm sure you could fake it pretty easily or hack your way around it, but who cares?
Marco:
I mean, that's not worth worrying too much about.
Marco:
It's so obvious that Apple really wants people to just make the apps free up front and figure out your monetization some other way.
Marco:
Like that's...
Marco:
You know, use an app purchase for that purpose.
Marco:
It's so much better for so many use cases.
Marco:
It's so much better for customers.
Marco:
It sucks when an app is paid up front and then you download it and it sucks.
Marco:
Like, that's one of the reasons why, you know, that generates a lot of customer hostility.
Marco:
It generates people, you know, it makes people lose faith in the app store.
Marco:
It makes a lot of one-star reviews.
Marco:
Not to say that, you know, free apps don't have that, but if you can avoid making your app paid up front, you should.
Marco:
And Apple's never going to make it easy for you to have upgrade pricing or automatic free trials or anything like that.
Marco:
They're never going to make that easy.
Marco:
The way forward is free app with some kind of trial mode or limitations in-app purchase to upgrade it.
Marco:
And any other system is just going to be a world of pain for you and your customers.
Casey:
Yeah, the unread thing was very cool.
Casey:
I mean, it was a little goofy in that you could tell it was probably, like you said, a URL scheme, and it bounced back and forth between the apps a couple – once or twice.
Casey:
But the fact that they pulled it off – well, that super top is the one that did it or one of the ones that did it isn't surprising.
Casey:
But the fact that they pulled it off was very impressive.
Yeah.
John:
the fact that apple approved it was impressive yeah that too but it was very cool and i'm i certainly appreciated it as an unread user so you know even ignoring the using bundles as upgrade pricing just bundles by themselves like doing the thing they're supposed to do like you know i would like uh these other applications but i already have one of them can i get a discount by buying them in a group but then have the you know the
John:
My purchase of that other one subtracted from and so on so forth and panic is has a bundle out now I don't know if they have more than one panic software makers of transmit and many other fine products And they had like a fact or something trying to explain and I saw them supporting people over Twitter and I think this is right I'm not going again no research and
John:
and I'm not going off any notes or whatever, just going by memory, but I'm pretty sure that, like, people were confused because they would have purchased one program, and they would go buy a bundle with two programs in it, and it would be more expensive.
John:
The bundle would be more expensive than if they had just bought the second program themselves, and they would be confused.
John:
Like, isn't the whole idea of the bundle that, hey, it has two programs.
John:
I already bought one of them, so I can get the second one for less, and it's, like, actually more expensive to buy the bundle.
John:
And the reason, I think, if I'm remembering this correctly, is that
John:
The bundle subtracts the price that you paid for the application, not the price of the other applications.
John:
So if you bought the other application when it was like on sale for 99 cents for a 24 hour sale or something, it will only subtract 99 cents from the bundle.
John:
So you could so you could end up essentially finding a really expensive way to buy that second app.
John:
If you just bought the second app by itself, maybe it's two bucks.
John:
but because you're only getting 99 cents subtracted from the bundle and the bundle price was like, you know, $6 or something, you could end up paying more than two bucks for the second app by buying the bundle, which is also not a good experience and weird.
John:
And I don't know if that's like, it's, it's certainly not obvious.
John:
And it's basically a support cost or like angry, again, angry customers who you can't get in contact with leaving bad comments on your bundle saying this bundle is a ripoff.
John:
It's cheaper for me to buy the other app separately.
John:
Don't do this.
John:
It's a scam.
John:
And you can't respond to that person.
John:
And it's just, it's just terrible.
Casey:
Well, we're running out of things to complain about that Apple has done in terms of App Store policy.
Casey:
So why not this?
Casey:
So I wanted to quickly mention as well that we talked last episode about a tweet that Michael Jurowicz had written that very, very conveniently and succinctly summarized the
Casey:
what is required for the different kinds of continuity in iOS 8 and Yosemite.
Casey:
And listener Jared sent a tweet that we will put in the show notes that has two links to Apple KBase articles that explain what is required for each of the different kinds of continuity.
Casey:
So we'll put those in the show notes.
Casey:
John, how would you like to eliminate support for certain kinds of devices in an iOS app?
John:
Yeah, I asked Marco on a previous show if there was a way to sell an app but exclude devices with the A5 system on a chip because they're slower.
John:
And so you want to sell something you know is not going to run on those.
John:
basically how the a5 devices are dragging down app development because you can't make something really awesome because you have to support the a5 because there's no way for you to exclude it i mean technically of course there are but like that apple doesn't let you exclude it by making up something bogus uh you know like checking for screen resolution and and uh retina versus non-retina something like that uh and a lot of people were going to tell us that one of the things you can specify is you can require metal support and apparently metal is not supported on on some of the a5 devices i don't know the details but uh
Marco:
that's correct the problem is it's also not supported on the a6 devices so metal can require iphone 5s and up but if you require metal you are ruling out the iphone 5 and 5c and the ipad 4 which is annoying because the a6 is a pretty good chip it's a pretty big jump over the a5 and it would be a shame to to lose those and and so it's probably not worth most apps except the highest end games doing this trick and
Marco:
And plus, I think, you know, and Apple would still probably not appreciate it, like, if some podcast app said, oh, I require Metal.
Marco:
And it's like, you know, really?
Marco:
Do you?
Marco:
Like, for what?
John:
Yeah, so that's why I put this in here.
John:
Like, again, there are many things you could possibly do that may be possible with public APIs, but the only thing that actually matters is whether Apple frowns upon the practice.
John:
So, Metal is one where you could say, okay, well, I have legitimate use.
John:
I'm using Metal.
John:
It's not supporting these things.
John:
Like, that's fine.
John:
But...
John:
what if you have a game that requires one of the sort of upper tier devices to work correctly and you just can't scale it down because it uses some lighting effect that's like essential to your gameplay or whatever, but you don't use metal.
John:
You're still, you're like, okay, well now I can check for some other GPU quality or whatever.
John:
Like,
John:
that essentially this seems to be a use case that not only is Apple not actively trying to support, but also it seems like if you were a clever developer and came up with a way to exclude those devices that they might, you know, smack you down with the hammer of the App Store and say, oh, sorry, you're out.
John:
And I think these are in the show notes somewhere.
John:
A couple people sent us...
John:
links to screenshots of things they bought on the app store that when they launched them on their sort of unsupported device like technically it's supported as far as the app store is concerned yeah you can totally buy this on this device it'll run it'll run fine when you launch it it just puts up a big graphic that says sorry you can't run this on this device and those are the type of apps that i feel like maybe app store review didn't test this on every possible piece of hardware and has no idea is this happening and if apple knew about it these apps would be pulled from the store because i can't imagine apple letting you do that basically sell an application because apple has a rule that like
John:
If your application doesn't meet some minimum threshold of usefulness, like the I Am Rich app would probably get rejected these days, then it doesn't go in the store.
John:
And this app, if you run it like an iPad mini, just puts up a graphic that says, sorry, you can't play this game.
John:
And that's like after you download it.
John:
And whether it's free or not, that is something that I imagine Apple would not approve of.
John:
So...
John:
This is another place where developers have a problem in how do I develop my product?
John:
How do I formulate a business plan?
John:
And how do I sell this product to people?
John:
How do I even conceptualize a product that can be sold?
John:
And Apple is not quite doing enough to create an environment that lets developers do what they want to do in a reasonable way, which is a shame.
Marco:
We'll see you next time.
Marco:
This is not like the homemade YouTube videos where it's pretty much inconsistent.
Marco:
This is high-quality, professionally produced courses by working professionals in their fields.
Marco:
You can even learn while you're on the go with the Lynda.com apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android.
Marco:
They also offer an annual premium plan.
Marco:
If you're a premium member, you can download courses to your iPhone, iPad, or Android app and watch them offline.
Marco:
And you can also download sample project files and practice along with the instructor.
Marco:
So that's great.
Marco:
If you're getting on a plane, you might get them all offline.
Marco:
They have all sorts of courses you might love.
Marco:
They have app and web development stuff in many languages.
Marco:
They also have things like productivity apps, creative pro apps like Adobe Creative Suite, Logic, Final Cut, and even professional skills like management and negotiation.
Marco:
What I like about Linda myself is...
Marco:
You can watch whatever you want.
Marco:
There's no pressure to pick, well, which one of these am I going to watch because it's going to cost me money.
Marco:
Because the great thing is it's flat rate priced.
Marco:
You pay $25 a month and that gives you unlimited access to their entire catalog.
Marco:
Over 100,000 video tutorials.
Marco:
$25 a month.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
In my case, I use lynda.com a lot for learning some podcast editing techniques.
Marco:
And lynda.com is so useful that 30% of colleges and universities and most of the Ivy League schools offer lynda.com subscriptions to their students and faculty members.
Marco:
So that's really great.
Marco:
Anyway...
Marco:
Go to lynda.com.
Marco:
They're offering a free seven-day trial.
Marco:
You can access all of their courses for free.
Marco:
Go to lynda.com slash ATP.
Marco:
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Marco:
L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to lynda.com for sponsoring our show once again.
Casey:
So we should probably talk at least a little bit about the after show from the last episode, which was talking about Gamergate.
Casey:
And there's a couple of links that we wanted to share with you guys.
Casey:
And I'm guessing, John, you were the one that added these?
John:
Yeah, I think I got most of the links I wanted to put out in last week's show notes.
John:
So if you haven't, we didn't talk about all the things that I linked, but if you go back to last week's show notes and look at the links, there's some good stuff there.
John:
And then shortly after the show,
John:
uh either this came out after the show or at least i read it after the show there was one more that i thought was good they got passed around a lot that's worth reading and this one is it's weird because it's from a movie reviewer and it's from a movie reviewer who has a sort of a who writes it underneath sort of a persona it's film crit hulk as in film critic hulk and he assumes that he who knows writes uh
John:
as if it's the Hulk writing movie reviews, sort of talking like cavemen, like this, or like Hulk talks or whatever.
John:
And it's all in caps.
John:
And that prevents a lot of people from reading anything that he writes because it's all in caps.
John:
So there are two, before I discuss what he actually wrote about game review, there are two things you'll need.
John:
There is the DHulkifier.
John:
There are many ways that you can, you know, you could just go in and if you're a web developer and just change everything to lowercase really easily.
John:
But the DHulkifier tries to actually make things sentence case for you.
John:
So if you're going to try to read this, don't try to read it in all caps.
John:
You'll probably go blind.
John:
Look into the DHulkifier first.
John:
That's one link.
John:
And the second link is an interview with the guy or is it an interview?
John:
No, I think it's just writing about him, but asking him questions about
John:
Why do you do this?
John:
Why do you write your movie reviews in all caps as if you're the Hulk?
John:
What's the point of that?
John:
It seems like it's annoying.
John:
You're reducing your readership.
John:
Is it a gimmick?
John:
Whatever.
John:
So on and so forth.
John:
So you can read that to explain why he does this.
John:
I read the explanation.
John:
I understand the purpose behind it.
John:
But bottom line, I find it very difficult to read very long things of text that are all in caps.
John:
And he writes really long things all the time.
John:
All right.
John:
So anyway, the actual article that he wrote here, his is from a perspective of
John:
sort of despair and sadness about this thing has happened and he feels helpless to do anything about it and it looks like it's horrible it's kind of like viewing a tragedy from afar like everyone is all just you know all these people are smashing together and not understanding each other and there are bad outcomes and
John:
you know and it doesn't bode well for the future and so on and so forth and so if you uh if you if you're looking to read something to try to understand the people who find the whole movement sort of the whole phenomenon upsetting right like they're not so much a cheerleader for one side or the other but they think gamer gate has been incredibly damaging and they try and they try to explain why uh
John:
I mean, he's against Gamergate, as everyone is at this point, I believe.
John:
Most of the mainstream media has come down pretty hard on the side of being against Gamergate.
John:
But this is not like it's not cheerleading for like, we need to get those Gamergate guys.
John:
I think it is very, very understanding and empathetic.
John:
And if you can get into the headspace of the people who are viewing this sort of
John:
Not entirely from the outside, but more like, I don't know.
John:
It's super long.
John:
You should just give it a try and read it.
John:
Film Crit Hulk, his movie reviews are similar.
John:
Very long, very rambling.
John:
uh very emotional uh i find them interesting sometimes even when i disagree with them so i if you if you still feel like you feel like there's something of substance to gamer gate and you don't understand why people are upset about it uh this is one more thing that you can read and it's a little game where you have to try to turn it into a sentence case before you get to read it without going crazy so that's it i didn't want to go into too far but did either one of you perchance even attempt to read this
John:
No.
Casey:
I don't know if I can answer that question because it was really long.
John:
You have an excuse now, Casey.
John:
Play the baby card.
John:
Pull it out.
John:
Come on.
Casey:
Yeah, so I have a new baby, so I have no time for that BS.
John:
I was totally busy.
John:
Couldn't read it.
John:
You totally meant to read it.
John:
But anyway.
Casey:
No, honest to goodness, I really do intend to.
Casey:
And now that I know that there's a way to take away the all caps, I probably will.
Casey:
But I looked at the length and I looked at the all caps and I was like, no, I can't do this.
John:
And honestly, it could be shorter, like with the many things that he writes as one of the major complaints is like it's long and doesn't seem like it needs to be that long.
John:
But there is there's a certain charm to maybe reading one of those things.
John:
But, you know, anyway, I wanted to talk.
John:
I ramble on in my writing as well before anyone calls me out on that.
Marco:
I wish he I wish he actually wrote this in the source code in regular case and then just use CSS text transform to make it uppercase on display because then you could just copy it out.
John:
Yep.
John:
And that's the easiest way to change it to lowercase is just, you know, do text transform for lowercase.
John:
But the extension will try to sentence case it for you.
John:
yeah nice i mean and of course getting rid of the all caps doesn't change the sort of you know hulk right like this you know like that it won't add it won't put the articles back in it won't you know so there's there's always going to be a little bit of that hulk flavor to it uh but he slips in and out of that he can't maintain that character i found over the long haul and in the middle of the thing he just starts writing regular sentences that happen to be in all caps
Marco:
Can we get Jonathan Colton to sing this to us?
Marco:
Maybe that would be easier.
Marco:
That would be a long song.
Marco:
It'd still be better.
Marco:
It's true.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Are we finally done with follow-up?
Casey:
I think we are.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
We are never done with follow-up.
Casey:
Fair point.
Casey:
So on a sort of tangentially related note with regard to people being, I don't know, made fun of, I'm losing the word I'm trying to think of, but anyway, persecuted.
Casey:
So people being persecuted that shouldn't be.
Casey:
Tim Cook came out today, is that right?
Casey:
Or officially came out as being gay and wrote a really good and reasonably short piece about it and about why
Casey:
why he's saying it and what it's all about.
Casey:
And I definitely recommend reading it.
Casey:
It is not in all caps.
Casey:
It is written like a regular human should write it.
Casey:
It is not written like a superhero.
Casey:
And it's a really, really wonderful article.
Casey:
And I can't recommend it enough.
Casey:
We'll put a link in the show notes.
Marco:
Yeah, I'm really happy he did this.
Marco:
I mean, a lot of people have assumed he was gay, but just never said anything.
Marco:
Because it's not other people's place to say, really.
Marco:
If he didn't want to be out, that's his choice.
Marco:
And it's sad, really, in our society, it's sad that this matters.
Marco:
But the fact is, it does.
Marco:
It's sad that this is major news.
Marco:
Ideally, your sexual orientation, the sexual orientation of the CEO of a big company...
Marco:
shouldn't matter any more than how they let their steak cooked.
Marco:
It's like, who cares?
Marco:
That's not relevant to his job at all.
Marco:
That is not relevant to his public persona, the role he needs to play in public and what the public needs to know about him.
Marco:
His sexual orientation is not at all relevant.
Marco:
But the fact is, and he writes this in the essay, the fact is, it does still matter because society as a whole is still nowhere near even mainstream, let alone full acceptance of homosexuality and various other LGBTQ states.
Marco:
And not to mention things like gender identity.
Marco:
I mean, there's so many things where we're still way behind on.
Marco:
So, the fact is, it is still very significant that he is coming out in public.
Marco:
Because that is still a risk to a lot of people.
Marco:
And that is still significant.
Marco:
And again, I wish he didn't have to, but I see why he wanted to do it.
John:
Yeah.
John:
That's the, but this type of issue, you know, people who make the sort of the comment that like, like you just said this other, well, that, that doesn't, that shouldn't matter.
John:
It's, it's irrelevant.
John:
And the fact that he's writing an article about it to declare this is just such BS.
John:
Cause why is he emphasizing this really not important?
John:
Like, uh,
John:
It should just be, you know, sort of unspoken.
John:
There's no need to throw this in my face, you know.
John:
Or just saying, like, by talking about it and by emphasizing it, you're actually making the issue worse.
John:
And really, we should just all be equal and stuff.
John:
And, like, this...
John:
is very similar to the sexism issue in that events like this don't happen in isolation.
John:
If you view it in isolation and you say, by saying this, you are drawing attention to the issue and you're just making it so you're never going to be accepted because you keep trying to show yourself as being different and so on and so forth.
John:
But like viewing anything like that, viewing, you know...
John:
any event or any action in isolation and then trying to apply logic to it and saying therefore this you know this this is illogical to be doing this or you shouldn't it doesn't make any sense because it's happening in the context of a world where we know that there is prejudice against gay people there are laws on the books that are you know that you can be fired for saying that you're gay like still like you know we
John:
That's the world this is taking place in, which is why he said in the article, this is why I have to do this, because it's the context of the world that I live in that I have to do this.
John:
Nobody is writing an article, a one-page article in Businessweek that's getting this kind of coverage and saying, I'd like to come out and tell you now that actually I am married.
John:
nobody's writing that because we do not the context is that we do not live in a society where being married is something that can get you fired something that can make people prejudiced against you you know there are not huge groups of people who are just against married people that that we could live in that society there's no it's just as arbitrary as you know what i mean
John:
Trying to get a job as a married woman who's 30.
John:
I didn't say women.
John:
That's the women issue.
John:
Like the women issue is the same thing when people say like anything that happens to, you know, that women will say about sexism and they'll say like, oh, that doesn't make any sense.
John:
Blah, blah, blah.
John:
It's like it's happening and racism exactly the same in isolation.
John:
your crazy you know sort of pseudo-rationalist logic works but this event this person this action this thing is happening in the context of a society where you know we're in a country that used to have slavery where there's massive institutional racism where this millennia of uh of oppression of women that is the context in which this action is taking place and you have to view the things in context
John:
And I think people have a reasonable time with this because people understand for the most part at this point, I think the context of, you know, being gay, like they know gay people have been, you know, oppressed and discriminated against.
John:
We know we're in the active process of trying to get our laws straight on this with marriage equality, right?
John:
You know, it's just in the same way in the civil rights movement.
John:
It's like, oh, I can see that this was bad and now it's getting better when this transition.
John:
The problem is when you get into situations where you either think that has already come and gone and it's not a problem anymore, like racism,
John:
Or you think it's never been a problem, like sexism, or you're like, that's just the way things are.
John:
Or you can't even remember, no one is alive who was around, you know, for women who were getting suffrage.
John:
Anyway, I am also sad, mostly sad that he felt like he had to keep this part of him hidden for so long.
John:
Not that I thought that it is irrelevant to his job in any way other than making him empathetic to other people who are also marginalized, but...
John:
Can you imagine being him, being like, even when Steve Jobs was alive, just a tremendously powerful person in a successful company, and yet feeling like you had to not so much keep it secret secret, but basically this is part of me that I know I can't talk about because there may be damaging consequences, damaging consequences for...
John:
The company that I work for, for my career, for, you know, for like, imagine if he had come out as soon as he was named CEO or just before, like how that would, you know, oh, that it could mess up our transition, you know, it's like, it's such a shame that that's the case.
John:
That's, that's the world that we live in that.
John:
this had to be a carefully controlled thing where you know and and by the way speaking of carefully controlled in typical apple fashion i think he did an amazing job in terms of not letting anyone else dictate the story not sort of getting outed or pressured into answering questions about his private life or anything like that even though this had been a persistent sort of you know rumor for a long time press was mostly good about squashing that and saying
John:
This is not something that you should be discussing in the tech press because it's not a tech issue.
John:
So he owned this issue.
John:
He came out on his own terms the way he wanted to in a way that shows why he's such a great Apple CEO, right?
John:
Because like he controlled the messaging and just the timing and everything to be like, you know, after the transition from Steve Jobs, after the Apple Watch announcement and no one's asking if Apple can ever make another great product.
John:
And it's just...
John:
Yeah, I don't know.
John:
I have a lot of feelings about it.
John:
I'm excited that he's out.
John:
I'm happy that he is providing an example, you know, to more marginalized people to say you can be whatever you want to be in life.
John:
There is no glass ceiling that should be preventing you from, you know, becoming.
John:
And becoming, you know, whatever you want to be.
John:
We're still not all the way there, but like the same way Barack Obama's, you know, kids growing up in a world where there's a president who looks like them.
John:
Long way to go on all fronts in these things.
John:
No gay presidents, no woman presidents, no atheist presidents, which probably never happened in any of our lifetimes.
John:
But, you know, every little bit helps, right?
John:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I mean, like, that's like, you know, before he came out, it was like he was in a position of power.
Marco:
You know, he wasn't not coming out publicly because he was afraid.
Marco:
I always assumed that he was not coming out publicly because he didn't think that should be relevant to his job.
Marco:
And so he was choosing himself.
John:
you know that from that position of power from the position of being in control but but but also because he knew this was a thing that could that some people don't like again he wasn't saying he's going to come out i'm going to come out as left-handed nobody cares like literally nobody cares that he's left-handed but he knows that there are people who do care that he's gay which is terrible but that that is the context in which that decision is being made and you can keep saying like oh it's about my privacy and it's like it's like
John:
not coming out to say you have bad vision.
John:
Like nobody knows you wear glasses because you always wear contacts.
John:
And that's technically a health matter.
John:
And it's like private information.
John:
And if anyone asks you a question, do you wear glasses?
John:
That's private information.
John:
I'm sorry, I won't reveal that.
John:
People will think you were crazy because there is no context in which you wearing glasses is meaningful to anybody.
John:
Like that's when people throw out those issues of like, well, it's private information.
John:
You shouldn't have to say it or whatever.
John:
Your health information, like your eyesight is is more private than your sexual orientation.
John:
The only reason we think sexual orientation is private is because there are so many people and institutions and laws that are prejudiced against it.
John:
That is that is the maddening thing.
John:
And that's why I think you can't never hear people making those comparisons in either direction.
John:
It's like context.
John:
It is all about context.
Marco:
You can look at this from the way of like, well, was he sending a more powerful message, never addressing this issue in public and just being who he was, but just never letting this even enter the public discussion or coming out publicly?
Marco:
And I think you could argue it either way, but I think he made the right move coming out publicly because I think...
John:
if if being gay was more societally accepted then it would make sense for him to just never address personal matters he didn't think were relevant to his job but because we're not there yet i i think this was this was a strong move but why would he like but if if if we were in a society where nobody cared uh he would never have felt the need to hide in the first place because because again like you don't hot you don't hide your left-handedness like nobody cares like literally nobody cares and we're never probably going to be to that point where nobody nobody cares because you know
John:
Human evolution takes longer than that, right?
John:
And who knows if we're selecting for the right things at this point.
John:
Anyway, if he's going to come out and do this in the context of the world that we live in,
John:
there is a good way it can happen and there's a bad way that it can happen and not having it at all is perhaps the worst outcome because then it would feel like he was the most powerful you know the ceo of the biggest company in the world and even he felt it wasn't safe for him to do this right because of the world we live in so uh i'm glad that he did it and i'm glad
John:
that he did it in a way that was positive.
John:
It was not negative.
John:
His hand was not forced.
John:
It did not disrupt anything else.
John:
Because if he had come out and had disrupted things, the lesson would be, oh, be careful.
John:
You better stay in the closet if you're a powerful CEO because look what it could do to your stock price.
John:
That would totally be unfair, but that would be the takeaway if there was a problem with it.
John:
And now I think he's entirely owning it and owning the message, and it's been...
John:
universally positive as far as I can tell.
Marco:
I mean, even the timing was masterful.
Marco:
There's not a lot going on in tech this week.
Marco:
It doesn't appear as though he's trying to bury some bad Apple PR or overshadow someone else's news or anything else.
Marco:
In the Apple product cycle, they've already announced their fall products.
Marco:
We're not going to hear from Apple again for the rest of the year in all likelihood.
Marco:
The next major Apple event is going to be in the spring whenever the watch comes out.
Marco:
And we're also right between their last announcements and
Marco:
black friday and holiday shopping so it's like it's like a perfect little window where like nothing else is really going on it's not going to appear as if this was some kind of political move or some kind of like you know move for apple's political gain because it's not like you could tell that this was this was not for that reason moves like this it just seems over and over again man tim cook is so freaking good
Marco:
like he is so good at his job he is i mean if anyone had any doubts watching watching what has you know what what apple has announced what they've released and how tim has handled things in the last year wow like he is it is just so clear that yeah he he was the right guy for this job no question i'm still sorry about the 16 64 28 storage split though that's fair
John:
Yeah, that's fair.
John:
And whether that lands on him just because the CEO or that lands on him because he had a closer influence.
John:
There's still room for improvement.
John:
Steve had some moves, too.
John:
Oh, no, he totally did.
John:
They all had their idiosyncrasies.
John:
I felt like I knew what Steve Jobs did.
John:
uh issues were and tim cook i can only speculate at this point like well apple did this thing i don't like was that despite tim cook's better wishes or was he the one pushing for it or neither and i have no idea because i don't i don't know i don't know his personality yet i think one thing we can say about tim cook uh is that he is exceptionally deliberate
Marco:
He does not do anything he doesn't want to do.
Marco:
He does not do anything without really thinking it through.
Marco:
His actions, his statements, they're all very deliberate.
Marco:
It doesn't seem like he's holding back.
Marco:
Even on things like analyst calls and interviews and stuff like that, you can tell he's not...
Marco:
He's not like holding back and trying to calculate every move because he's afraid.
Marco:
He's just, you know, he is extremely deliberate in, you know, this is what I'm going to say.
Marco:
This is how I'm going to say it.
Marco:
I'm not going to talk about those other things.
Marco:
Like, I'm not going to tell you about our TV unicorn super watch thing.
Marco:
Like, you know, just very deliberate.
Marco:
That's the best word I can use.
John:
I think to wrap this up, I think Jimmy Fallon had the best or his writing staff had the best one liner about this.
John:
Did you hear this joke?
John:
It went around a lot on Twitter.
John:
So Apple CEO Tim Cook officially came out as gay.
John:
But knowing Apple, a new Tim Cook will probably be out next week, which is a good like general purpose, you know, because any Apple fan would be like Apple doesn't come out with products every week, but you get what they're getting at.
John:
seems like that to people who don't follow the tech industry that every time you get an iphone the new one comes out and you feel sad so the joke works broadly but it's definitely a uh a tonight show style uh joke yeah it doesn't work to anybody who actually pays attention like yeah they release them every year at about the same time doesn't work on nerds uh you would say uh um so excuse me but uh apple releases iphones every year so yeah
John:
Was that you trying to do Merlin's comic book guy?
John:
That was like Lumberg mixed with Van Hoat.
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We should probably be done.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week.
Marco:
Hover, Backblaze, and Lynda.com, and we will see you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
It's accidental.
Casey:
They didn't mean to.
Casey:
I guess we'll save Microsoft Band for next week.
John:
Are you going to get one?
John:
I saw one.
John:
Saw one the other day.
John:
Is it out?
John:
People have them already.
John:
It's for sale.
John:
You can go to the store and buy it right now.
John:
They announced it at like 10 p.m.
John:
like two days ago.
John:
That's so weird.
John:
We'll talk about it next week.
John:
I have things to say about it.
John:
My other exciting arrival, not as exciting as Casey's, but I did actually buy myself an SSD.
John:
Whoa, that's huge.
John:
Congratulations.
John:
I'm calling him Declan.
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
You should call him Disclan.
John:
How about, how about Disclis?
John:
Oh, nice.
John:
I finally gave in cause I just couldn't take it anymore.
John:
And, but like, and I knew it was going to be painful and it was because like I had a 1.5 terabyte drive and the biggest SSD I think you can buy anywhere is one terabyte.
John:
And so I'm replacing a 1.5 terabyte drive with a one terabyte SSD and I,
John:
I was spending a lot of time in disk inventory X trying to find where am I going to dump the 200 or 300 gigs or whatever surplus that I had.
John:
And just spinning this is so damn slow.
John:
Like first, the first thing to go is my virtual machines.
John:
So I put them on another spinning disk and I'm like pulling everything off and, you know, doing some final clones of the drive before I pull it out.
John:
And then I have to take take that delta and put it somewhere.
John:
And I was putting the Delta down onto the Synology, and then I was cloning that thing out.
John:
And just it takes so long when there's lots of little files.
John:
Like my old iPhoto library that I like to have there was like 90 gigs, like a really old iPhoto library when it used to be on my computer.
John:
So many little files.
John:
And the spinning disk takes so long to back them up.
John:
It just took forever.
John:
But I think I'm out the other side now.
John:
I've taken my old 1.5 terabyte drive and just put it up on a shelf.
John:
I'm going to leave it there for a while just to make sure I didn't lose anything on it.
John:
I think I pulled everything else off onto the Synology and I'm up and running and it's nice.
John:
I got a Samsung 850 Pro.
John:
I went all out.
John:
It's just everything is so much faster.
John:
So I think I got another year on this.
John:
Basically, I've basically decided that I'm not going to get the 5K iMac.
John:
I'm going to cruise with this for another year.
Marco:
Wait for Broadway, see what happens.
John:
Yeah, that's what I'm going to do, more or less.
Marco:
Same deal with the iPhone.
John:
No, I'm going to get that.
John:
I haven't gotten it yet, but I will.
Marco:
I'm going to win this bet.
Casey:
You won't.
John:
roughly how much is the what's the ssd out of curiosity it's like 600 bucks it's expensive for a terabyte for a terabyte yeah you can get a terabyte cheaper if you buy like last year's model or like a lesser the 850 pro is like the new hotness is an attack has a good review
John:
of it it's not that much better than any of the older ones and i'm like look i'm just gonna buy it like i'm not i'm gonna be using this ssd for a long time i'm gonna carry it with me across my next machines right now i'll buy one of those little you know bus powered cases for it or something which is a great thing you can do with an ssd really easily and with the usb3 it's not you know it's not that slow and i'll end up using it as a backup drive and stuff but it's it's nice and fast now it feels like my work computer and nice and fast and quiet
John:
Yeah, all those spinning discs you don't have to hear anymore.
John:
Clackety-clackety-clackety-clack.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
That was terrible.
John:
So my reboot times are way faster now.
Casey:
Nice.
John:
Gotta have priorities.
Casey:
I'm about to pass out.
Casey:
Can we do titles?
Marco:
Why?
Marco:
Are you tired for some reason, Casey?
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
It hit me like a wall like 10 or 20 minutes ago.
Casey:
I'm dying all of a sudden.
Marco:
Oh, don't worry.
Marco:
You'll have a solid sleep tonight.
Marco:
Oh, yeah, totally.
John:
Well, at least you don't have to go to work next.
John:
I think after my second was born, I think I took two days off work.
John:
Like the first one, you take all the pictures, take all the time off.
John:
The second one's like, yeah, yeah, another baby, whatever.
John:
We'll see how Marco goes.
Casey:
Okay, so quick aside before we do titles.
Casey:
So we got a Micro Two Thirds camera, the one that Sean Blanc recommended.
Casey:
And I really, really like it.
Casey:
An Olympus OM-D-EM10, I think.
Casey:
That's probably slightly wrong.
Casey:
But anyway, look at the Tools and Toys website.
Casey:
They have the worst model names.
Casey:
They really do.
John:
You wrote a blog post about it, right?
Casey:
Yeah, that's right.
Casey:
I wrote a blog post about it.
Casey:
So anyway, I really like it, but I've been snapping photos incessantly.
Casey:
And it's funny because as I'm taking like 35 photos of him sleeping and doing nothing, I'm thinking to myself, there's no chance I'm ever going to look at this picture again.
Casey:
I'm already that parent that's taking photos of him doing nothing.
Casey:
And it's...
Casey:
There's no point in it whatsoever.
John:
So you can extrapolate that out.
John:
Again, with your organization where you're putting your photos into folders that you do by day.
John:
That's out the window.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Start graphing your number of photos taken per day.
Casey:
I haven't looked since yesterday at how many pictures I've taken of Declan.
Casey:
And to be fair, I'm shooting in RAW and JPEG, which is also probably silly.
Casey:
But nevertheless...
Casey:
And of course, there's like a gazillion duplicates of him sleeping where he moved three centimeters across 34 pictures.
Casey:
But in the two days that he has been alive, I've taken, by my estimation, somewhere between definitely more than six, I would guess closer to 10 gigs of pictures.
Casey:
Our freaking wedding, the photographer took about 10 gigs worth of pictures.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So I am so screwed.
Marco:
Well, to be fair, the photographer's pictures were smaller each.
Casey:
Yeah, that's true.
Casey:
But I'm so screwed.
John:
You guys are killing me.
John:
My wedding photographer took pictures on film.
Casey:
You're old.
Casey:
You are definitely old.
John:
So old.
John:
And we had to pay a bazillion dollars to get them professionally scanned, too, when we eventually got around to that.
John:
So now they are in my photo library.
John:
But we also have the negatives.
John:
All your digital pictures will be gone, but our wedding will be preserved in these negatives.
Yeah.
Casey:
My parents are actually going and taking boxes of VHS tapes to Costco to get them to put them on DVD.
Casey:
And I'm sure that's... Well, I don't know the details in terms of cost, but I do know that it's heinously expensive.
John:
Well, it's not... That's not... Like, my parents did that with their... Maybe you don't have... Like, 8mm...
John:
8 millimeter yeah but anyway that those anyway they transfer that and that looks terrible right but for wedding photos like these are high quality photos like even though it was film and so you want to get them like high quality scans and that that is expensive and nerve-wracking because like you send those off and that's all you've got
Marco:
yeah that's that i think is the worst like we have like some old vhs tapes that we'd like to get transferred but like i'm not crazy about the idea of like you know mailing them off to somewhere and maybe i should do like do like a raid kind of setup like i'll send like one to one place i went to another place so send them all individually nice all right so let's do some titles so casey i i have to give you a photographic tip uh well two tips number one uh the secret to good photography is lots of bad photography
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Well, still, I'm getting there.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
No, but you will need to take a lot of pictures to get one great one.
Marco:
And that's fine.
Marco:
That's what every photographer does.
Marco:
They just don't talk about it.
Marco:
Similarly, I suggest that you get as good as you can at capturing motion while Declan is not doing a lot of motion.
Casey:
Yeah.
Marco:
Because kids move very, very quickly.
Marco:
I've never used that camera before.
Marco:
I assume it has interchangeable lenses like most Micro Four Thirds.
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
Pay attention when you select lenses to their focusing speeds because that matters a lot.
Casey:
That's exactly why I ended up convincing myself.
Casey:
Well, there's actually two reasons I convinced myself to get a lens that was, I think, almost as much as the body, if not more than the body, which for someone who's never had a fancy camera, that's like, are you kidding me?
Casey:
I am spending more on a couple pieces of glass than I am the actual camera itself.
Casey:
Anyway, one of the reasons was because it focuses silly quickly.
Casey:
um although i haven't really gotten a grip as or grasp of how to how to do shutter priority on the camera i need to work on that to like crank the shutter speed way the hell up or at least i think i do i'm not a very good photographer obviously but the other reason i wanted to get the lens that we ended up getting and i could tell you what it is but i forget i just know it goes really really low and
Casey:
f-stop it's like 1.4 1.8 right you've discovered blur yep oh god bokeh or whatever it's called b-o-k-e-h oh it's my favorite thing in the world we're gonna have everybody telling us how it's pronounced please don't i please don't yeah i don't actually know the correct pronunciation either only i've only ever read it i've heard bokeh it's i mean it's it's based on a japanese word and so you know we're gonna argue about how to pronounce it doesn't matter anyway nobody cares how to pronounce it don't even bother emailing us but yeah that that thing my favorite thing in the world
John:
Also consider infant photography, like Marco was saying, practice because infants are terrible little pink worms.
John:
They don't do anything exciting.
John:
If they do anything that looks cute, it's accidental.
John:
It's gas.
John:
It's whatever, right?
John:
what you're gearing up for is honing your skills for when they turn two or three and start doing the super cute stuff like intentionally and by then you'll be an old pro at it so this is all like lots of it's like batting practice like figure out this figure out your camera figure out photography figure out the best places in your house to take pictures in terms of natural lighting and everything like that and you have plenty of practice and you'll get one or two good shots where the kid looks like he's smiling or making a funny face or
Marco:
looks like a movie star from the 30s or whatever yeah generally speaking if you ever use the flash you're probably doing it wrong um and yeah so if you the more light you can get the better as long as it doesn't come from a flash that's on the camera uh and i don't think you're gonna be getting into remote flash setup so yeah as long as it doesn't come from a flash the you you want a ton of light generally speaking now that you're now that you have a a wide aperture lens
Marco:
and you're going to be obsessed with blur for a while, keep in mind that while blurred background does look good in most cases, your subject should always be completely in focus for the most part.
Marco:
I mean, yes, this is a rule photographers can break once they know how to break the rules, but the most common thing that I see, and I went through this phase briefly.
Marco:
Their nose is in focus.
Marco:
Yeah, like you step it down to like f1.4 on your new prime lens, and yeah, you have like a centimeter of depth in focus.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And literally, yeah, it's like just the nose and the rest of their face or just their eyes and their nose is blurry.
Marco:
That looks really annoying.
Marco:
And the blurriness of the background will look cool temporarily until you realize, oh, I can't actually see any of the subjects except for this one centimeter slice of them.
John:
Not to mention if Aaron is behind holding the baby, Aaron is completely blurred out.
John:
Sorry, you're outside my one inch thick focus plane.
Casey:
And I think that I am doing that.
Casey:
I am guilty of that for sure.
Casey:
And some of that is because I really want that bokeh, bokeh, bokeh, whatever it's called.
Casey:
It's pronounced hover.
Casey:
But either way, I got to get better about that.
Casey:
But it is really nice to have an actual camera rather than the iPhone, as much as I do love the iPhone's pictures.
Casey:
And I got to tell you,
Casey:
I am not used to having any sort of physical shutter, and it is really damn satisfying having that shutter, that machinery move about in your hand as you're clicking the shutter button.
Casey:
It's deceivingly satisfying for someone who grew up with physical cameras, with film cameras.
Marco:
Yeah, so Micro Four Thirds, does it have a viewfinder and a mirror?
John:
There's no mirror.
John:
It's mirrorless.
John:
So he's not hearing the mirror clack.
John:
So you're just hearing the shutter?
Casey:
Correct.
John:
Okay.
John:
Mine is like Marco's car where it just plays a shutter sound from a little...
John:
You don't turn that off?
John:
That's like the first thing.
John:
No, I leave it on because I want to know when the shots go off.
John:
Like, maybe I'm, again, an old person.
John:
I need to hear that sound, right?
John:
Otherwise, I just feel like I don't.
John:
It's like the people, I guess it's the same as the people who leave key click on.
John:
I do not leave key click on.
John:
I don't understand people who do.
John:
but for cameras i mean i guess it's the same thing i have an established history of cameras that make a noise when you press a button like they have an established history of keyboards but i just feel like when the keyboard's on the screen it's not close enough whereas the cameras i held that made that noise back in the day felt like these cameras like they were physical things this is not a camera on a screen like i would never like the shutter sound on my you know the ios camera i could do without that but i don't know
Marco:
I can't believe... This is a shocking revelation that you leave on an artificial shutter sound effect on a camera.
John:
I would never have guessed that.
John:
I mean, it doesn't have to be a shutter sound.
John:
I think I just need to have something, especially since my cameras... I have cheap cameras, so they're slow.
John:
It's not ready to take a picture immediately.
John:
The flash takes a long time to recharge.
John:
Even without the flash, it takes a long time for the image processor to be ready.
John:
It's not a pro-level camera.
John:
I don't have real cameras.
John:
So...
John:
I need that little clickiness to know when the picture went off and, you know, when I can take the next one.
Casey:
So what do you, what do you have now?
Casey:
I thought you had like, what do we have?
John:
We had, I can, uh, we had a Canon 5D Mark II for my brother's wedding.
John:
Like he borrowed it.
John:
He borrowed it from MIT.
John:
Don't tell anyone.
John:
Um, and, uh, and I had that for like a couple of days surrounding his wedding to take pictures with.
John:
And I shouldn't have done that because it lets you know what a real camera is like, you know, like, uh, you know, but yeah,
John:
we got our first digital camera we got our kid and i i we did have point shoots and then i moved up to super zooms which is what i stick to which is kind of like you know a really big zoom lens that's not interchangeable on a camera with a sensor that's not really that big uh but you can get you know i use it for when we go to the beach i can get the ocean pictures where the kids are in the waves and i'm standing up to my waist in the water i can still get pictures of them when they're out farther uh
Casey:
Yeah, but you're 12 feet tall.
John:
Super zooms are very versatile.
John:
They're not going to take really good pictures, but they are very versatile for situations where you can't zoom with your feet, which is frequently with kids.
John:
I can snag my kid from across the auditorium when he's up on stage doing something or across a field or at family events where everyone's sitting around in the backyard.
John:
I can grab a close-up of someone who is on the other side of the yard from me that looks really good.
John:
Because it's bright sunlight because the camera, you know, camera doesn't have good low light quality So that's what I've been sticking with the super zooms and super zooms are getting almost kind of respectable Not still not going into like an interchangeable lens camera, but the recent super zooms, especially that new Sony one I forgot the the model number for it have somewhat decent sensors Sort of on the level with the micro four-thirds things or sometimes even better Attached to a non interchangeable lens that app that is actually okay is actually pretty good and
John:
you know so it has served me well well enough anyway especially with the zooms like i was gonna say if you want to see uh good uh childhood photography uh follow the the mergans i don't know how to pronounce her last name well enough uh on twitter so they have they have lots of cute kids and they take uh again they they post some really cute pictures they have they have a new baby as well and they they demonstrate how to take good pictures of a baby who is otherwise uh
John:
Not very interesting because, you know, they just sort of sit there.
John:
Although their baby, I think he's like three months old now, and now he's starting making real faces.
John:
He is a character.
John:
Don't look at Adam Lissagor's baby, though.
Casey:
Oh, I've seen his baby.
John:
Because he's the cutest baby on the entire planet, and it's unfair.
John:
That baby's ridiculous.
John:
So you look at your baby, and you're like, why don't you look like that?
John:
Baby sandwich kills us every time.
John:
It's unbelievable.
John:
It's a little pumpkin head.
John:
I can't stand it.
John:
see this is it this is john we told you everyone you both agree this is like the cutest baby in the world totally agreed oh it's so true it is absolutely true but that that you can tell from the sound of your voice that you're just dying in the best possible way he's adorable he hurts me when i look at him like stop being and then he's at the little videos where he does the dancing and everything yeah he's adorable yep all right can we do titles before i die
Casey:
Please.
Casey:
You have no idea what you're in for tonight.
Casey:
Casey, this is so cute.
Casey:
Nope, I don't.
Casey:
I'm going to go pass out.
Casey:
And by pass out, I mean get woken up by my screaming baby as soon as I shut my eyes.
Casey:
Yeah, but he's so cute.
Casey:
It's worth it.
Casey:
Oh, no, I'm not complaining.
John:
Babies aren't that cute.
John:
Babies aren't that cute until they start.
John:
You know what they're like.
John:
The first month, they're just... My first baby was terrible.
John:
Yours does not sound like he's terrible.
John:
But still.
John:
It's a Simpsons reference for Casey.
John:
I'll preload it for you.
John:
We called our first baby Scream-A-Pillar.
John:
Nope.
John:
Nope.
John:
Well, anyway, if you Google for Simpsons Screamer Pillar, it's hard to find Simpsons video clips.
John:
I wish there was like a clearinghouse for them.
John:
But anyway, yeah, Screamer Pillar.
John:
It was fitting.
Casey:
Did you like the Simpsons movie?
Casey:
It was all right.
Casey:
I don't remember, but I thought it was okay.
Casey:
And that was back when I actually watched The Simpsons.
John:
Yeah, the movie wasn't better than a good episode.
Casey:
Was the movie the one with Pinchy?
Casey:
No, that was an episode.
John:
No, that was a good one, though.
John:
I quote that one a lot.
Casey:
Pinchy is a good one.
Casey:
All right, I'm really going to bed.
Casey:
And by going to bed, I mean staying up all night.
Casey:
So you guys, as you wake up all refreshed and happy tomorrow morning, think of me.
Casey:
I can't even say that and actually play.
John:
You can't because we've been there and done that.
Casey:
Not only that, but I'm so excited to not sleep.
Casey:
I will take this problem over any of the problems we were running into for three years.
John:
I've got to say, another thing to carry you over, like you tried so hard to have this baby and that will help carry you over.
John:
The other thing is what you can look forward to is like
John:
There will come a point.
John:
I mean, you're already kind of at it now, but eventually you'll go back to work.
John:
You'll become more routine.
John:
And I just remember when my first child was like two or three or whatever, I would just be so excited to come home because I knew that's where my children were.
John:
It was like coming home.
John:
It was like Christmas every day.
John:
You get there and the kids would be there or the one kid would be there.
John:
Seriously, it was like I would realize that I was at work and I was excited to go home because my kids were there.
John:
yeah the same way you'd be excited like go downstairs during it for open christmas presents so that's think about that as as a screaming baby is in your arms and you're pacing back and forth