No Indication of Progress
Marco:
I'm back on my LG 5K because I'm in that other location right now.
Marco:
Every single time I come back to this, I feel like it gets smaller.
Casey:
There's some jokes here, Marco.
Marco:
So not only does it seem like it's smaller, which, you know, that's its own problem.
Marco:
but the second i touch the keyboard on this desk it jiggles the whole monitor jiggles with every keystroke and i'm i'm oh and of course because of the stand i can never quite tell if it's level like if like the rotation angle of the monitor it always seems like it's a little bit tilted and i try to tilt it back i'm i'm not i haven't gotten to the point of getting out of level yet i probably should but like it's just it's
Marco:
It's so mediocre.
Marco:
And then there's some kind of weird buggy behavior where it seems to forget its brightness setting every so often.
Marco:
I'm not sure with what conditions exactly.
Marco:
I don't use it enough.
Marco:
Thank God to have nailed that down yet, but it's, it's like,
Marco:
Every time I come up to it, it's like crooked and shaking and dim, and I have to hit the brightness up button on the keyboard to make it – and then it blasts with full brightness because I only adjusted it one square, but it actually moved up nine squares.
Casey:
So the thing with the brightness – I don't recall having an issue with mine with brightness, but I will say that the volume –
Casey:
The speakers on that thing are hilariously bad, but nevertheless, the volume, like the jump from third to fourth block, cube, whatever you want to call it, was like the difference between a whisper and shouting.
Casey:
And I believe when I busted out the iMac Pro, which I guess I have an update about that as well, but...
Casey:
When I busted out the iMac Pro briefly to do the firmware update, I believe that was one of, if the only thing that got fixed was the volume was actually more linear subsequent to that firmware update.
Casey:
So you might want to see if a firmware update is possible, and if so, if that does anything for your brightness.
Casey:
I believe as of... Did we talk about this on the show?
Casey:
But as of a week or two ago, the LG monitor whatever app, which is a steaming pile of garbage, actually works on M1 Max now, so that's kind of cool.
Casey:
Well, for a loose definition of works, but nevertheless.
Casey:
But no, you know, I will say I still am, even despite all that I've been through, I still am a bit of an LG ultra-fine 5K apologist.
Casey:
However...
Casey:
It absolutely is what you said with regard to the stand.
Casey:
It is truly and utterly atrocious, like hilariously bad.
Casey:
And one of these days, I'm going to figure out a different mechanism.
Casey:
Well, assuming I ever get it back.
Casey:
a different mechanism to mount it because it is truly terrible what i really want is like a visa stand rather than a visa mount because i have this glass desk that i also is it really visa or is it you know like mastercard or like is it i go with visa i don't like saying visa
Casey:
Oh, yeah, I very well could have that wrong.
Casey:
I personally, like John, go with VESA rather than VESA, but I am not standing by this as accurate.
Casey:
This could very well be a Bazel moment.
John:
And they do make stands.
John:
I mean, I've looked at a bunch of them for TVs, and they make them for monitors, too.
John:
But the problem with—I don't know if it's a problem for you because you're using an LG, but my problem with most of them is they don't look great.
John:
I mean, I bet they're sturdy, and you can buy ones that are metal and, you know, are well-made, and it's a straightforward thing they have to do, but—
John:
They're not particularly attractive.
John:
They look a lot like just what they are, which is like bent pieces of metal in an L shape.
John:
They don't have good surface finishes.
John:
They're not really shaped in any interesting way.
John:
The one thing the LG stands have going for them is that from a distance, if you don't know how terrible they are,
John:
they usually look pretty minimal and they're not in your face and they're usually some kind of reasonable curve.
John:
They don't look like, uh, robot spider legs like they do on the gaming monitors.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Those giant claws or, you know, fake articulated, like multi-jointed feet.
John:
They're just, you know,
John:
Plain, but of course they don't fulfill their function of actually holding the monitor up and still.
John:
So, um, so then you look at the visa mounts and they all just, they all just look like they belong in an office.
John:
In fact, many of them are things that I've seen in my office and they're fine if you're going to buy 700 of them to put on all the desks of the people in your company or whatever, but they're not particularly nice looking.
John:
And I know that sounds dumb, but it's no more dumb than the criteria people use to buy $30,000 cars, which is if you don't like how it looks, you're not into it.
John:
all right so uh may i give a brief update on my desk situation absolutely okay i've i've added a coaster yeah i do have a coaster actually new setup i've not fixed where my drink is but now that's correct there will be not as many rings on my glass desktop well it's a new level it's it's you know three millimeters taller you're going the wrong direction you're not supposed to go higher higher does not help because the gravity will pull the water down
Casey:
As we learned at Marco's Closet.
Marco:
I have placed everything else in the table on coasters.
Marco:
The water remains at desk level.
Casey:
As it should be.
Casey:
So my desk situation is actually the same.
Casey:
I joke.
Casey:
There's no significant differences here.
Casey:
In fact, I don't think there's any differences from last week, which is itself a difference because every week there was something new.
Casey:
But I will say that my LG 5K arrived in California, I believe, last week in City of Industry.
Casey:
Is it sending you postcards?
Casey:
No, but... Wish you were here.
Casey:
Good God, tell me about it.
Casey:
But surprisingly, something is happening on it because the track repair feature on LG's website moved from appointment confirmation, which it sat in for like three or four days after the monitor arrived, to repair.
Casey:
So one would assume that my LG 5K is hopefully in the to-do list, if not actively getting repaired.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
Moving right along.
Casey:
Let's start with some follow-up.
Casey:
And speaking of displays, a friend of the show, I think we can say that at this point, friend of the show, Jonathan Dietz, came through with all sorts of numbers and mathematics about cabling and monitors and resolutions and bit rates and all that.
Casey:
I'm going to leave it as mostly an exercise for the listener to dig into this and try to make heads or tails of it.
Casey:
But a couple of things that are worth noting.
Casey:
Is this quote that you put in here, John, is this from Jonathan Dietz?
John:
yeah it is that's the sort of the main i mean we feel like we've gone over the same ground multiple times so every time we go over it the the released apple products are slightly different so we've always talked in the abstract about like oh here's what the standards support and here's which kind of standards can be tunneled over which type of other connections in which type of mode blah blah blah but the you know and the reason we keep like forgetting is like well that's all well and good but then the question is of the existing apple products they released what do they support over their ports what protocols are they using and then so things are
John:
Anyway, this is an update, a modern update based on current hardware and the current standards.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So Jonathan wrote to us privately, a single Thunderbolt cable at 40 gigabits a second can handle 8192 by 4320, which is DCI full format 8K.
Casey:
RGB with 10 bits per component, which is HDR10, no chroma subsampling, at 120 Hz when using display stream compression.
Casey:
Any existing Thunderbolt 3 or 4 controller that supports two DisplayPort 1.4 HBR3 streams and DSC 1.1 at 8 bits per pixel should be capable of this, including Titan Ridge, Ice Lake, Tiger Lake, Goshen Ridge, Maple Ridge, M1 Pro, and M1 Max.
Casey:
So, hypothetically, it should be possible to do, according to Jonathan, who I trust, 120 Hz at 8K.
Casey:
Although, I swear I keep reading somewhere, and I forget where, that the M1 Macs, or perhaps Mac OS, something in the Mac toolchain does not support 8K.
Casey:
Do you guys know what I'm talking about there?
John:
Well, I'm not sure if this list is exhaustive, but notice that the plain old M1 is not on the list.
Mm-hmm.
John:
All right, so maybe this is a new thing in the M1 Pro and MMX.
John:
Like, obviously we know Thunderbolt 3 and 4 who exist on MMX for a long time, but the question is, do they also support sending to DisplayPort 1.4 or high bitrate 3 streams and display stream compression version 1.1?
John:
Like, there's a bunch of extra qualifiers.
John:
And so anyway, the M1 Pro and M1 Max hardware is apparently capable of that.
John:
Is the entire hardware software stack capable of that?
John:
I don't actually know the answer to that.
John:
But the point is that it could be in the future.
John:
There could be a new version of macOS or maybe even the existing version for all we know.
John:
And an 8K monitor that you could run 120 hertz with display stream compression.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So Jonathan had put together an Excel spreadsheet, which I have then uploaded pretty much untouched to Google Sheets.
Casey:
And I will put a link in the show notes.
Casey:
If it doesn't work properly, don't blame Jonathan on that because it's probably something about the Excel to Sheets conversion.
Casey:
But you can go and poke about and kind of play with that if you so desire.
Casey:
Then Jonathan pointed us to a person on the internet called Glenn Wing, who seems to have been doing some really deep dives into this.
Casey:
So Glenn Wing has a page, which we'll put this in the show notes, about different display infos and things that you can learn about it, including a calculator where you can say, you know, it's such and such resolution, it's such and such frequency and such and such color depth and whatnot.
Casey:
what is or is not possible given that configuration.
Casey:
And then separately, within the Linus Tech Tips forum, there's like this very interesting and interactive, it's a forum post, but it's an interactive calculator where you can say, all right, my computer's outputting Thunderbolt 3 and my monitor is inputting Thunderbolt 3, or you can mix and match, what's possible?
Casey:
So for example, if you go Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 3, according to this USB-C Thunderbolt 3 alternate mode, 8K is only supported at 30 hertz.
Casey:
So it's such a mess.
Casey:
It's such a mess.
Casey:
But we'll put this link in the show notes as well.
John:
This doesn't mention display stream compression, obviously.
Casey:
Yes, indeed.
Casey:
Maybe that's where I'm missing out here.
Casey:
Jonathan also had another piece of follow-up, which I thought was very interesting.
Casey:
And he pointed out a page on artings.com, which is, I think, John's beloved TV review website, where they talk about chroma subsampling, which is something I vaguely understand.
Casey:
But this is relevant because it talks about how chroma subsampling, which is basically like providing less information about color than you would normally want in order to...
Casey:
to decrease the amount of data you need to throw across the wire.
Casey:
So you can get, you know, more stuff in less space, kind of, sort of.
Casey:
And so Jonathan writes, I also came across this page the other day that does a pretty good job of explaining chroma subsampling in relation to TVs and displays.
Casey:
It even mentions LG's cryptically named HDMI Ultra HD deep color setting.
Casey:
To quickly remind you, on these LG 4Ks that I have, I was saying I couldn't get 60 hertz on HDMI until I turned that HDMI Ultra HD deep color setting on.
Casey:
So Jonathan continues, when you had your LG connected via HDMI, it would have been using YCBCR.
Casey:
Is there a different verbalization for that, John?
John:
No, I always hear people just say it out, say it just like you did.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
422 to hit 60 hertz at 10 BPC, which would have made the text slightly blurry, which makes me feel a lot better because I swore that on the same monitor, when I flip-flopped between HDMI and DisplayPort, the text just looked a little wonky on HDMI, and I couldn't put my finger on why.
Casey:
So Jonathan continues, turning off HDR for that display by unchecking high dynamic range and system preferences might have enabled RGB8BPC at 60 hertz and allowed for sharper text.
Casey:
When you have multiple displays that are the same model, connecting them using the same type of interface is definitely the way to go, which is what I'm doing now, wherever possible.
Casey:
It sounds like you have rearranged things and now have both displays connected via USB type C to DisplayPort, so I'm guessing they don't look noticeably different anymore.
Casey:
That is correct.
Casey:
However, it is worth looking at this Arting's page, because not only is it a really good explainer about what all of this stuff is about, but it shows you, it provides images of what it looks like when the chromosomes subsampling goes a little wonky, particularly around text.
Casey:
So this is surely what I was running into, and I'm just glad that for all the many reasons that I am bananas, this is not on that very long list.
John:
That was my guess when you said the anti-aliasing looked weird.
John:
I'm like, what do you mean the anti-aliasing looked weird?
John:
Didn't I mention chromosome sampling?
Casey:
You might have.
John:
I don't recall.
John:
Because I was surely thinking it if I didn't say it.
John:
But yeah, it's not that it goes wonky.
John:
That's what chromosome sampling does.
John:
Like you said, it throws away data.
John:
It just plain throws it away.
John:
It either throws away data about color or throws away data about brightness or both in a way that it hopes you won't notice if you were like watching a TV show.
John:
But if you're looking at a monitor where you expect sort of pixel perfect text with, you know, so that every pixel has meaning, especially around the edges of text if it's anti-aliasing or whatever...
John:
you every one of those pixels is important and if you just say ah this square of four pixels will just average the color between them and you're just going to get one color for all of them or one brightness for all of them or both um the graphics are great here to explain it the text does not explain it very well at one point i read something that i made me thought i think i understood the encoding of four four four four two two four two zero like what the number stood for
John:
graphically you can see it here and it's like okay i get it you can see how four two zero is worse than four two two and four four four is just what you would expect of just everything going straight through right but the text that tries to explain this on this page does badly it says the first number in this case four returns refers to the size of the sample
John:
okay but the size of the sample has eight pixels in this example so what the hell is the four about again the size of the sample i don't i mean i'm sure that makes sense if you already know what it means but i don't already know so it doesn't make sense to me so anyway the graphics is good the text is not great and you know if you have to remember anything just remember that 444 is show me all the pixels right show me all the blueprints casey um nope nothing okay i assume that's the aviator yeah
John:
Yay, Marco.
John:
I haven't actually seen it.
John:
Yeah, you heard it on Back to Work a lot.
John:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
And then 4.2.2 and 4.2.0.
John:
If you're watching it on a television, sitting in from a couch distance and watching a movie, you can get away with a lot of those things.
John:
A lot of video games, for example, use those formats to save data when sending things to displays and stuff, and you can probably get away with it.
John:
But if you're looking at a monitor real up close to it and you want to see every single pixel, 4.4.4 is the only way to go.
Casey:
Yep, sure seems like that was probably the case.
Casey:
And then Dimitri Bonial writes, technically USB 4 slash Thunderbolt 4 can also support using all lanes in one direction for displays, making 80 gigabits per second available for it.
Casey:
Won't it be possible to have, or excuse me, it won't be possible to have a hub in the display, but 8K at 120 hertz should definitely be possible on a supported system.
Casey:
And that's again, USB 4, Thunderbolt 4, so many different, so many different disc codecs.
John:
I don't think anyone would do that, though.
John:
Like, I looked it up in the spec, and it does seem like that's true, that you can say, okay, I'm just going to use all the lanes in one direction.
John:
But I don't think any computer system would really want, like, no way for any communication back from the monitor, especially if it's, like, an 8K monitor and it's really big.
John:
That means no ports on your monitor.
John:
No, maybe not even any kind of ambient light sensor, anything like that.
John:
So, unidirectional doesn't seem... Maybe, like, for a Super Pro setup where...
John:
you know you're just using for display purposes you don't care about any of the other stuff it would make sense but uh it's interesting to know that it's there but i'm not aware of anybody that has used that and this is again without display stream compression because like didn't you just get done saying that we could do 8k and 120 hertz with 40 gigabits per second why are we talking about 80 gigabytes because it's all about display stream compression or not uncompressed you can just do the straightforward math of how many bits or pixels how many pixels and you know do it out both straight display stream compression and
John:
I don't know what the expected compression ratio is, which is why it's always tricky to figure it out.
John:
But presumably all these calculators that we will link in the show notes have some value put in for that.
John:
And you can just punch the numbers in yourself and see what you get.
Marco:
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They probably integrate with the CMS you already use.
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Casey:
I feel like this has been a running problem for the last few weeks, where one of you two jerks will drop something in the show notes that gives me the shakes.
Casey:
This week, I see the following in our show notes.
Casey:
Marco's Christmas movie adventure.
Casey:
What problem are you going to bring upon me that I would have immediately solved with either FFM Peg or Plex?
John:
Well, before Marco talks about this, I just want to tell the listeners that he assured us that this is tech-related.
John:
So now keep that in mind, and Marco will now begin.
John:
Because I keep thinking he's going to tell us about this giant Christmas tree, and it's going to be about how his life is like Christmas Vacation, the movie.
John:
I believe I have mentioned in previous years that every year...
Marco:
Tiff makes a photo slideshow video of the Christmas photos to give to the family.
Marco:
And this is very important to certain members of the family.
Marco:
And so it's a big deal.
Marco:
We make the Christmas video every year and then we show it to the family the following Christmas.
Marco:
Here's last year's Christmas video.
John:
This is like a desktop laptop.
John:
This is a photo, slideshow, video.
Marco:
Correct.
Marco:
It is a video of a slideshow of photos.
Marco:
Of still photos.
John:
Yes.
John:
So it's one still photo after another.
Marco:
Mostly still photos.
Marco:
There are occasional video clips mixed in.
Marco:
but usually and you know this has been generated over time from what used to be called iPhoto later on you know the Photos app one or two years using Keynote and back to the Photos app now because that's that's where the photos start and they have a slideshow feature that you can export to video so it seems like the obvious place to do it and
Casey:
Okay, so now hold on.
Casey:
So you're saying this year, at the end of 2021, TIFF has created sometime recently, or attempted to, a video of mostly stills, occasionally other videos, that is Christmas 2020 that will be displayed as a family event during Christmas 2021.
Marco:
That's correct.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
And we also used to do time lapses, but those are actually much easier.
Marco:
We would set up a camera.
Marco:
This is before phones had good cameras.
Marco:
We would set up an older SLR that didn't matter so much on a tripod and have a little timer trigger thing, like using the bulb port on it where you can have a remote trigger for the shutter.
Marco:
Well, they have one that basically is an interval timer, and it's this weird, very specialized Canon accessory.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And you could have it just automatically click the shutter every X seconds.
Marco:
And that, I would use FFmpeg to create the video from that.
Marco:
That was no problem at all.
Marco:
But the slideshow is the much more effort and time-intensive thing.
Marco:
And that falls on Tiff.
Marco:
And she has had many trials and tribulations with these videos over the years because...
Marco:
This is the kind of thing, like, I feel like, you know, I don't like to invoke when Steve Jobs is still alive, unnecessarily.
Marco:
But Steve Jobs really seemed to care a lot about this kind of use case, you know, about the things that what used to be called iLife would cover.
Marco:
Now, not everything in iLife would still have a role today.
Marco:
For example, iDVD, which we used to use to make these into DVDs back when that was the easiest way to display a video that we had made on our computers to the family at Christmastime.
Marco:
We actually made DVDs and would bring it and had a whole menu and everything.
Marco:
But it makes sense why that doesn't exist anymore.
Marco:
But just the act of creating a slideshow.
Marco:
That is somehow, you know, that that Apple does a lot of the heavy lifting of like giving us a cool template to work within.
Marco:
And then you pick the photos and, you know, it maybe suggests an order and a pattern, but also hopefully allows you to like modify the thing it automatically generated and then save it in some way that is persistent and maybe can be exported as a video.
Marco:
This function has moved around so much over the years as these apps have died and been reborn and been rewritten and been neglected in many cases.
Marco:
And so the simple function of creating a slideshow from your photos in a nice way has been...
Marco:
increasingly difficult over time to do reliably or even even to be able to like do it whatever way you did it last year just do it again this year like that is so often not possible because the way you did it last year doesn't exist anymore or it officially exists but it doesn't work which is a common common thing unfortunately in today's uh technology world especially in in you know some of apple's um apps and and various things like this so
Marco:
Again, this is an area where I think in post-jobs Apple, I think Apple has totally lost the ability to make really good consumer-facing content creation or content management apps in most ways.
Marco:
are a couple of counter examples like i i think the notes app is pretty good although honestly notes sync has been really buggy for me recently but um that's separate but you know for the most part the the apps that used to be called i life and i work frankly um either don't exist anymore or have reached a stage of kind of passive mostly neglect um many of them in especially in the case of photos um
Marco:
The old app was rewritten and thrown away.
Marco:
And so now the new Photos app has really no part of iPhoto left in it.
Marco:
So the experience that she has every year is poor, to say the least.
Marco:
This year, she ran into frequent crashes.
Marco:
This is using the Mac app, to be clear, not like on an iPad.
Marco:
Using the Mac Photos app,
Marco:
on photos that were created and stored in Photo Library, making a slideshow and doing a couple of modifications, and the app would just crash.
Marco:
And every time that she would either leave a slideshow as the selection of what she's currently working on and go back in, or every time the app would crash and she'd go back in...
Marco:
any customizations she had made were lost and it would just reset to its automatic state every single time.
Marco:
So that's, that's one problem, right?
Marco:
A secondary problem is that at some, like we were looking for, like we were missing in our, in our like main folder, we were missing like 2017s or 2017, 2018, like one of those, like, you know, a few years back, we were missing the video for that year and we couldn't find where the heck we had stored it.
Marco:
And she, you know, she had them all in, you know, iPhoto previously on, you know, probably like three computers ago.
Marco:
whenever it last ran and iPhoto's files are just gone like there's like those files were just nowhere in our computer which we had like migrated every time those files are just not there anymore so like that there was a whole other thing there was an issue with like oh I had these in my iTunes home movies folder where is that
Marco:
What app does that even show up in anymore?
Marco:
Good luck finding that.
Marco:
So there's a lot of things that have moved in recent years that a lot of stuff gets dropped on the floor every time Apple migrates something or rewrites something, and this seems to impact this task in some way almost every single year.
John:
anyway my vague recollection of the iPhoto to Photos transition is that one of the very few things that didn't make the transition and they told you that during the transition was like your projects but they used to call them an iPhoto some or all of your projects won't come over what it meant for me is that some of my book projects from iPhoto didn't come over well here's the thing they wouldn't come over they wouldn't it's not that they wouldn't come over they wouldn't sync
John:
through iCloud, right?
John:
So this was back when the photo library was being used on my wife's computer in addition to being on her Apple ID.
John:
And so on her computer, the projects were all there.
John:
But when I got my Mac Pro and said, now I'm gonna do all the photo library stuff on my computer,
John:
I didn't, you know, I had to like, if I synced it from iCloud, I wouldn't see the projects.
John:
She still had them because we like converted in place her actual thing.
John:
So the projects were on her computer, but when we synced with iCloud, they were on mine.
John:
And now I think the reverse is true.
John:
Now I think when I make projects, maybe they don't sync back to her computer.
John:
This may not still be true.
John:
It may have just been a transient thing, but I distinctly remember projects being one of the few things that was left behind, which makes some kind of sense because if Apple's not...
John:
like selling you the books anymore having a project for it is useless like you can order a new book from or whatever but that may also be true of slideshows and then what you said about like home movies or you know you're saying home movies people don't know what that is it's just like any video file that you stick into itunes that it doesn't understand is a television show or movie it would call quote unquote home movies but it could be literally anything and that's how they were categorized and when itunes was itunes
John:
You could, you know, right-click reveal and finder and see where those files are.
John:
They were filed away somewhere, but then when music came along, who knows where they went.
Marco:
Yeah, and there's been, you know, increasing turbulence in that area over time.
Marco:
And, you know, then iTunes got killed and, well, sort of killed and broken apart.
Marco:
And then the TV app replaced that section of it, but the TV app has no concept of these videos.
Marco:
And it's just, it's a whole idea.
Marco:
So anyway, so that whole mess, that's mess number one that I feel like,
Marco:
I do wish that Apple would regain the talent and prioritization to make those kinds of apps really good again, because they used to be so great.
Marco:
That's exactly the kind of app Apple used to just nail in the Jobs era.
Marco:
And I recognize that not only is he gone, of course, and there's different people in charge, but also we're in a different time.
Marco:
And I recognize that.
Marco:
And I recognize that a lot of this stuff is...
Marco:
it has fragmented onto well some people want to do it in you know on in iphone apps and some people want to do it on in web apps and by the way we tried some of those and they're horrendous um i was gonna say for the with the iphone apps like that i bet a lot of people are thinking like oh it's because you're being an old grandpa and you're trying to use a mac to do this stuff and yes apple did stop caring about these types of apples
John:
But what about all these new apps that do similar things?
John:
They're all focusing on the phone like that Clips app that Apple made and a couple other examples of iPhone focused apps that can do all the things you're describing.
John:
And that's where Apple's paying its attention.
John:
What I would say to that is, yeah, Apple occasionally comes out with an app that they're super proud of, that it actually is pretty cool on the iPhone for doing this type of thing.
John:
But two things about that.
John:
One, we call us old and fuddy-duddy, but doing a big project with lots of media on a phone screen is not fun, right?
John:
Having a big screen and a keyboard and a mouse and lots of different windows, it's way easier to do a bunch of stuff like that.
John:
And two, the much more important one, depending, you know, setting aside how much easier it is to do the stuff on a Mac because of the UI and the screen space,
John:
Apple makes these apps and then seems to lose interest in them.
John:
It's not saying that they don't still exist or that they aren't still updated, but it's not like the thing people might not remember about iPhoto, if you're not an old funny daddy like us, is that every year someone would come on stage and say, here's the new version of iPhoto and here's how it improved from last year.
John:
They would just keep making these apps better and better and better year after year after year.
John:
Like more capable of handling more photos, better performance, new features every single year.
John:
Whereas now we hear like, here's the Clips app.
John:
Isn't it fun?
John:
And you will never hear about it again.
John:
So if that's their solution, that like we made a Clips app once and it's really cool, like does that team even still exist?
John:
It is disbanded.
John:
Those people go on to something else.
John:
You can't, if you want to have a, you know, there's a customer problem.
John:
Hey, I want to make a cool Christmas slideshow.
John:
We're not saying the solution has to be you have to make an app just like Steve Jobs did on the Mac, right?
John:
Because that's what he did.
John:
But whatever it is that you do, you can't make it once and then be done and reassign those people.
John:
You have to just keep updating and supporting that app every single year.
John:
And I know that's boring or it feels like a waste of time.
John:
Do we really need to have a development team dedicated to photos on the Mac and we keep them employed year after year?
John:
We keep paying the money?
John:
Yes, you do.
John:
Because otherwise the app just dies in the vine.
John:
So whatever Apple's strategy or solution is, A, I would recommend their solution involve the Mac because big screens and keyboards and input devices like mice and trackpads, maybe not so much trackpads, are way better than trying to do it on a phone screen when you're trying to wrangle hundreds of photos, right?
John:
and B, wherever you put it, you have to keep developing and improving it.
John:
It's a thing you can brag about.
John:
It used to be a selling point of the Apple experience.
John:
If you want to make a slideshow, buy our stuff because we have an easy way for you to make it and you'll look cool.
Marco:
It does feel like they release these apps and then the teams get disbanded instantly.
Marco:
Whatever either doesn't work or isn't very good in version 1.0, that will just never get fixed.
Marco:
And then five years down the road, some manager somewhere will have a project, oh, let's make a new, you know, today's modern version of Clips or iMovie or whatever.
Marco:
And then something new comes along and then it has its own 1.0 bugs and limitations and they never get fixed because the team gets disbanded.
Marco:
You know, it's just... And I wish... I wish that Apple held themselves to a higher standard in some of these areas.
Marco:
And the second half of the story is going to touch on that as well.
Marco:
But, you know, they have...
Marco:
A slideshow feature in Photos app.
Marco:
It is in many ways worse than what it replaced in iPhoto.
Marco:
How many years ago was that now?
Marco:
Why is it still worse at all?
Marco:
And why, if you buy a flagship Apple product, suppose you buy a new MacBook Pro,
Marco:
You know, it's a Mac.
Marco:
That is like the highest end, high end of Apple's product lines.
Marco:
The Mac.
Marco:
It's higher end than the phone.
Marco:
It's higher end than the iPad.
Marco:
It's certainly a higher price, so people see it.
Marco:
This is the flagship Apple product line.
Marco:
I know sales-wise it doesn't work out that way, but, you know, that's logically in the product line, if you want like, you know, the best Apple computing device, you look at what they have.
Marco:
Oh, it's clearly the Mac.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
So you buy the Mac.
Marco:
You open up Photos.
Marco:
which is a really simple name, and you would think photos would have this feature.
Marco:
And look, oh, it does.
Marco:
It has a slideshow feature.
Marco:
Awesome.
Marco:
You start using slideshows, and it just crashes.
Marco:
Or you do something really obvious and simple, and it doesn't work.
Marco:
And I feel like, does Apple not care that a common task on their flagship product just doesn't work?
Marco:
Is that okay?
Marco:
Is somebody in Apple saying, you know what, that's fine, because our priority isn't to make our Mac apps very good.
Marco:
Because that's what's happening.
John:
Or because not a lot of people use that feature.
John:
They would say, oh, yeah, but we have limited resources and 0.02% of our customers ever touch the slideshow feature.
John:
There are lots of bean counter reasons you can come up with that, but they're terrible reasons, but I bet that's what they'd say.
Marco:
And I feel like you can use the term bean counter to describe a lot of the really tremendous leadership failures of the Tim Cook era.
Marco:
And I think that definitely applies to things like
Marco:
basically ignoring the entire mac hardware and software ecosystem for a few years you know back during the bad old days um and fortunately pulled out a lot of that but i feel like the software team still seems to be run with like a the mindset of like a 22 year old smart guy right like you know we we were those guys once we understand that you know what i was when i was a 22 year old smart guy i thought that i knew everything about everything um
Marco:
I would look at something that I didn't understand and say, well, that's stupid.
Marco:
Why is it done that way?
Marco:
And I was really good at starting projects and really bad at finishing them.
Marco:
And I really think that's how Apple seems to be run a lot of times.
Marco:
We talk about the kind of institutional attitude that Apple seems to have in certain areas.
Marco:
And I feel like they are so good at starting new little projects.
Marco:
Oh, look, Clips app.
Marco:
Hey, go have fun with this.
Marco:
And then it just falls on the floor.
All right.
Marco:
Hey, we're going to rewrite our entire iPhoto app.
Marco:
We're going to rewrite it for the phone and then replace the Mac version, all this old code.
Marco:
You know who rewrites old working code?
Marco:
22-year-old smart guys.
Marco:
And then you replace the old working code with this, no, we're going to rewrite this whole new thing, new language, new platforms, everything else, new methodologies.
Marco:
We're going to use the Gang of Four book or whatever.
Marco:
And then the thing comes out and it's full of bugs and it doesn't have all the features of the old one that people actually used.
Marco:
You really got it in for patterns.
Marco:
I guarantee you that is not the problem.
Marco:
It's more of a culture thing.
Marco:
But so the thing is, they're so good at doing the things that young people love to do.
Marco:
We're going to rewrite it.
Marco:
We're going to start clean.
Marco:
I mean, design team's a whole other thing.
Marco:
Starting clean, right?
Marco:
But...
Marco:
So much gets thrown away when you do that.
Marco:
And, you know, the healthy and functional and high-quality thing to do is to, you know, obviously when you start out with something fresh like the photos rewrite, there's going to be some losses along the way.
Marco:
And certain features won't need to make it into the new version.
Marco:
Like, it's okay that iDVD went away.
Marco:
We don't need to burn DVDs anymore.
Marco:
But you have to then iterate on it and restore the things that don't work anymore or are missing that people still do actually need and use.
Marco:
Instead, Apple just walks away.
John:
that's why i think this is not a problem of like smart engineers wanting to rewrite stuff because that's that's not how things work inside big companies for the most part like it's someone else is setting the priorities what do we staff how many people do we put on this project how many people are on the photos team versus how many were on before and you know the photos like rewriting apps with new tech stacks and new ui frameworks like you have to do that every once in a while i remember they changed i movie to like i movie eight or whatever and it was uh it was had fewer features but it was all new ui and all new uh
John:
you know foundation for how video is done that needed to be done because the old one was old and creaky and the new one didn't have as much feature so they kept the old one around for a while like so that's where engineering gets to lead there and if you give enough resources to people who want to do that it comes out okay like i think that that new foundation for imovie eventually became the new foundation for final cut pro 10 which also had its own problems in terms of not having as many features but they kept people on both of those teams long enough to make it over that hump but when you see something like
John:
you know the photos app come out and remove a lot of features my photo would never get better that's not because you know the engineers wanted to rewrite it or because they did come up with like what was it called ux kit or whatever it was like a first attempt to put uh uh ios apis on the mac without straight porting them so instead of it being ui kit it was ux kit which i'm assuming the api looked like ui kit but it was all on the mac and it was
John:
This is before Catalyst, before Swift.
John:
This is all older stuff.
John:
And in retrospect, it's like, well, if you had waited longer, you could have used Catalyst to do this.
John:
Or if you had waited longer, you could have used Swift.
John:
But they didn't.
John:
They did it way back when.
John:
That wasn't so much the problem.
John:
It's just unfortunate timing.
John:
The problem is people who make staffing decisions.
John:
How many people are on this project?
John:
How much money will you put in this?
John:
When we're budgeting for next year, how much of our budget is put towards the Photos app?
John:
that's where prioritization mistakes are being made and engineers aren't making those decisions no matter how much someone wants to rewrite something or whatever if they say well guess what the budget for this team is cut in half for next year and you're being reassigned to do something else no matter how super smart you are and how awesome you would have made photos if you're reassigned or if they you know if they cut the team size down that's not going to happen like this is a management prioritization failure first and foremost and
John:
You can, you know, quibble with like, oh, this person rewrote this application and they did a bad job.
John:
But for the most part, if you, you know, I think I think else problem is not like picking the wrong people to do an important rewrite.
John:
Their problem is keeping their eye on the ball and not.
John:
not following through on the rewrite.
John:
If you're going to do the rewrite, do it, but then keep supporting it.
John:
Or just, you know, like with the Mac, it's not like they stopped making the Mac, but they heavily deprioritized, let's say, the Mac.
John:
They made a bunch of design mistakes, and then they deprioritized it, and...
John:
i'm sure lots of people wanted to fix it inside apple but it's like no we're not doing that now we're doing something else so you know it i i don't i never will never fault somebody for trying to make the bold move and rewrite the thing you know even things like uh discovery d versus uh what was the other thing
John:
mdns responder right like i applaud those efforts you just have to have enough follow-through on and sometimes the follow-through is uh you know we made a mistake let's revert and we'll regroup and consider this later core os seems to do a good job of this in that when they address subsystems they either do it and then follow through and fix it until it works or realize they're mistaken back it out um but either way what they don't do is uh drop discovery d and then disband the team like we'd still be suffering from that now if that's what they did right and
John:
So I blame this entirely on management and almost not at all on engineering.
Casey:
Yeah, that rings true to me as well, that this is absolutely prioritization more than it is some hotshot 20-year-old trying to shoot from the hip and pew-pew-pewing all over the place.
Casey:
I really suspect this is management.
Casey:
This isn't engineering.
Marco:
I hope you're right, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating, unfortunately.
Marco:
When you're on the outside, you don't care what the reasons are.
Marco:
The reasons aren't our problem.
Marco:
Whatever the reasons are, I'm sure there's a handful of people in our audience who are going to hear this who work in the company and who are going to be upset because you don't understand.
Marco:
I don't need to understand the details of why it is this way.
Marco:
All I need to understand is that it is this way, and it's Apple's problem to fix it.
Marco:
And
Marco:
I don't care how far up you have to go.
Marco:
The buck lands somewhere.
Marco:
And it's on some manager's desk.
Marco:
And ultimately, it goes all the way to the top.
Marco:
Ultimately, this is up to Federighi and Cook.
Marco:
That's where this goes.
Marco:
It's software problems.
Marco:
Someone has to take a responsibility for this.
Marco:
And it should be on somebody to fix this problem.
Marco:
And whether it's a problem of resource allocation or incentives or some bad manager somewhere along the line...
Marco:
Frankly, I don't care.
Marco:
It's the company's problem and they need to deal with it.
John:
Yeah, I've had crashes in photo slideshows as well.
John:
Also, like they have a plug-in system for photos where you do like the third-party things that replace the books and stuff.
John:
Sometimes those are a little creaky, but that's probably like third-party.
John:
It could just as well be a third-party problem.
John:
But if you don't, you know, I tend not to expect year-to-year big things from the Photos app.
John:
And that's why, like, you know, once I learned that the slideshow crashes a lot, I just don't touch that part of the app anymore and look for alternatives.
John:
And I know you haven't finished with your story, but the thing I would have suggested if you had described to me your frustration with this in the process, I would have said, you know, you tried Keynote already and maybe you went back to that.
John:
But iMovie I found to be much more stable and an easier way to put a series of still images with transitions between them with an occasional movie chucked in.
John:
All right, that's interesting.
Marco:
Yeah, because the other thing, there were so many other limitations.
Marco:
The speech volume in the movie clips was considerably lower.
Marco:
And this was shot on iPhones, but it was considerably lower than the music volume.
Marco:
And there was no way to tweak that.
Marco:
There was no way to tweak how long the movies were shown.
Marco:
So it would show a split second of a movie and then go back to a photo, a split second of a 15-second long movie.
Marco:
There were so many lacking customizations and stability problems.
Marco:
It's like, this is barely even a feature.
Marco:
So anyway, to end this on a happy note, before I go into part two of the story, which is more interesting, if anybody out there has recommendations for other apps to use, because frankly, again, I don't think...
Marco:
modern apple has shown an ability to maintain this kind of consumer app very well um so if there's any alternatives out there please not a stupid web app like but you know something that on a mac or ipad or iphone any just something that could make this easier um just please let you know write it and let us know all right so part two
Marco:
We eventually dug up the missing 2017 video on an old backup folder.
Marco:
So we got that covered.
Marco:
And then eventually Tiff suffered through and found the exact pattern of how not to cause a crash once or twice and got this year's videos made.
Marco:
So then we thought...
Marco:
Wouldn't it be nice, you know, this means the most to her father, and we thought, wouldn't it be nice if we could wrap up, like, a USB something that he could plug into his iPad, he could unwrap it and plug it right in and view the movies?
Yeah.
Marco:
yeah right okay so so first we were like all right maybe we should get some kind of like cheap digital picture frame that can play videos and just have because we wanted we wanted to be able to unwrap it and see the see the movie right there like that would be you know it's a this is a meaningful experience in this family and we're like let's let's make it cool right all right so he thought all right
Marco:
First, I looked at digital picture frames and, you know, they're like 150 bucks and everyone says they're kind of terrible and very few of them are battery powered.
Marco:
So you'd have to plug it in first.
Marco:
And I knew the screen would suck.
Marco:
And I knew also like, I don't think they would have a use for a digital picture frame afterwards.
Marco:
Then I thought, well, for less money, I can just get like an Amazon Android tablet.
Marco:
So I wonder if I could just get like a cheap Amazon tablet to serve this purpose.
Marco:
It has a battery and it could play videos, I'm sure.
Marco:
but i'm like they have then after that like after that that moment is done nobody in the family wants an amazon tablet so we would have no use for this afterwards my god that feels too wasteful so you know we'll stick with the ipad plan so i knew that um you know apple sold apple sells that uh and this is a um 10.5 inch ipad pro he has so it has lightning port not usbc
Marco:
So I thought, all right, well, I know Apple sells the camera connection kit thing or what used to be called the camera connection kit, which is a lightning to USB adapter.
Marco:
So you can plug in a USB storage device and it'll offer to import it into photos.
Marco:
So I thought, okay, that's the way to go.
Marco:
So we had a USB stick.
Marco:
So fine.
Marco:
Great.
Marco:
I even I got a new USB stick this year, a SanDisk like sliding thing where it has a USB C port and a USB A port on the same USB thumb drive.
Marco:
And you just like slide the cover over to pick which one it is.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
I got one of those for my PlayStation 5.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
For the record, the SanDisk one that has the slidey thing, don't get this USB stick.
Marco:
And I'll tell you why in a minute.
Marco:
But anyway, so we thought, okay, let's wrap up this thing and we'll try to get it on her father's iPad.
Marco:
Like in that moment, we'll wrap up a USB stick plugged into a camera connection kit.
Marco:
Done.
Marco:
Great.
Marco:
So I put the videos on that.
Marco:
These are videos that were created with the Photos app on the Mac.
Marco:
it's a standard like m4v file you know whatever it exported as its video export h264 some of them are 1080p some of them are 4k like the newer ones are 4k um you know maybe 300 megs each you know not not we're not talking big or or obscure videos they're not they're not encoded like in pro res or anything huge they're not like 8k they're not even hdvc they're h264 4k and 1080p videos okay so
Marco:
unwrap it everyone's happy okay trying to get the videos onto her father's ipad so first we plugged in the thing that we got and with the modern sandisk usb thumb drive because we had an old thumb drive that we also had like we had made a while ago with like a a wood look with like a nice engraving saying like our family christmas stuff so
Marco:
Those are all USB 1.0 drives.
Marco:
Sorry, USB 2.0 drives.
Marco:
So they're pretty slow.
Marco:
So I thought, all right, let me get a modern USB 3.1 and then the USB-C port on it so that when he eventually upgrades his iPad, he'll have a USB-C model.
Marco:
He can plug it in.
Marco:
It'll be even better.
Marco:
Great.
Marco:
Okay, so...
Marco:
First, we use the new SanDisk USB thumb drive, that's USB 3, with the USB 3 lightning adapter.
Marco:
Plug it in, and it says it needs power.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
Well, fortunately, the modern Apple lightning adapter does have a second lightning hole for power input.
Marco:
So we plug in, fine, I get the cable, I'll get a charger.
Marco:
This is already disrupting the flow of this experience that we were trying to have here, but fine.
Marco:
Get a charger, plug it in.
Marco:
And we plug it in, and nothing happens.
Marco:
Nothing at all.
Marco:
nothing on the system seems to recognize that there is a drive plugged in, not even the files app.
Marco:
So I thought, okay, let me try the other thumb drive.
Marco:
I plug in the old ancient USB 2 thumb drive.
Marco:
It's recognized every single time.
Marco:
Now, both of them are recognized on my Mac every time.
Marco:
Both of them are formatted as MBR partitioning with FAT32 file system, exactly as thumb drives come from most factories.
Marco:
So it's not a difference in any of that.
Marco:
For some reason, the iPad can see the USB 2.0 ancient one, but not the modern USB 3.0 one.
Marco:
Okay, well, whatever.
Marco:
So eventually, well, we at least get it to see the thing, but only in the Files app, not in Photos.
Marco:
So we go to the files app and we navigate to the drive.
Marco:
It's all right.
Marco:
Well, it's listing the files.
Marco:
Now, how do we get these into his photos library?
Casey:
Well, time out.
Casey:
These were just video files on the root of the USB key.
Marco:
I see you've listened to this before.
Marco:
I'll get there.
Marco:
So originally, yes.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So you would think that there would be, you know, photos would see it.
Marco:
It doesn't.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
So, but files app does.
Marco:
So here we are first.
Marco:
So the files app can list the contents of the drive and it offers the share menu.
Marco:
So I think, okay, so you, I selected like the five or six videos you didn't have yet.
Marco:
And I hit share and there's an option that says save videos.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
Now, I assume that this is very much like the save photo option all over iOS, where like you share a photo from anything and you hit that and add it to your photo library.
Marco:
Save videos.
Marco:
That seems like it makes sense, right?
Marco:
So I tapped save videos.
Marco:
And what happened?
Marco:
Nothing.
Marco:
No feedback.
Marco:
For a while, no error message.
Marco:
No sign of any progress happening.
Marco:
You tap it and the share sheet disappears and just nothing happens.
Marco:
for i think it was like 45 seconds like it was a long time to the point you definitely don't think something is going to happen and then it would eventually put up an error box like can't open you know fail to save item okay so okay and we start checking okay well we're on the latest software of everything there's 200 gigs of free space on the ipad so it's not like a free space issue so and we're trying to add like one gig of movies and
John:
to a 200 gig, I feel like it's fine.
John:
At what point in this process did you reconsider the idea of just having it be on the network somewhere and then just loading it in like a web page?
Marco:
Well, but this isn't our house.
Marco:
They don't have anything.
Marco:
They don't have like a NAS or anything.
John:
No, you could have just put it on marco.org slash Christmas slash rmovies.m4v and then just sent him a URL and a message and tapped it.
John:
Not with this internet connection.
Marco:
Anyway, so that would have taken longer.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
Eventually, I'm like, all right, what can I do here?
Marco:
So then I tried... Let me try... I plugged it into my phone, because modern iPhones have the Files app.
Marco:
So I plugged it into my iPhone, and I opened up my Files app, and I selected the videos, and I thought, let me airdrop them to him.
Marco:
So this... And this is like...
Marco:
i was already laughing like this how ridiculous is it's like the ipad's supposed to be easy to use and here we are trying to get videos in the right format from a usb drive using all apple's hardware into apple's device another network thing could have been a shared album that you could have just shared with him yeah but then it wouldn't be the original quality like these are this is like you know archival stuff for the family like we want him to have the actual files in his library yeah
John:
You're right.
John:
It wouldn't be the original quality.
John:
But if you wanted the open up a present and I can meet a look at a video sharing it through photo sharing.
Marco:
You know, I know that now.
Marco:
Thanks.
Marco:
But anyway, so I try plugging into my phone and air dropping it to his iPad.
Marco:
the transfer progresses.
Marco:
It goes, you know, this is, as I mentioned, it's about a gig.
Marco:
So, you know, it takes like, you know, a minute or two.
Marco:
Um, eventually airdrop completes the transfer and the iPad throws up an error that just says failed to save item, save to iCloud drive instead.
Marco:
what okay well i guess that doesn't work so then i i started looking up and here we are the googling part of the story right and i learned what case you just alluded to that apparently the photos app will not offer to import things unless it it seems to have the file structure of a camera card so you have cim yeah like the dsim slash and then an eight character name you know dot mov in all capitals
Marco:
all right so i'm like okay so i rename all the files to that i put it on i made copies and it's whole thing so eventually that's got completes i plug it plug it back into the ipad again and the photos app finally shows the card you know the usb drive as a card and you tap it and it says no photos to import
Marco:
what okay another suggestion that i found with my googling was to plug the ipad into a mac to be able to use the old file transfer thing like from from itunes where like you open up in in now finder what used to be itunes and you go over to the file section and try to just like drag it in or the photo section so i tried that but oh when i cloud photo libraries and you you can't do that
Marco:
so what i then i'm like okay this i don't i don't even know at this point like what are normal what normal people do in this case like you just give up right so anyway so then i'm like all right let me just get this let me see what i can do here so i knew airdrop came the closest to working
Marco:
So I just airdropped the files one by one from my Mac, where they originated, to the iPad.
Marco:
First one worked great.
Marco:
And most of them worked great, except for two of them, that said, on the iPad after transfer.
Marco:
Failed to save item.
Marco:
Saved to iCloud Drive instead.
Marco:
Now, so I had, now I figured out, okay, there are two files that for some reason just don't work.
Marco:
And that's causing the problem.
Marco:
So I look at these two files.
Marco:
Both of them were 4K, H.264, M4V files exported from the Photos app for Mac, just like all of the other files.
Marco:
There was nothing, seemingly nothing different about them.
Marco:
All the rest worked, although only when transferred one by one with AirDrop.
Marco:
So I just, those two problem files, I just transcoded them to 1080p with the compressor app.
Marco:
And then, of course, they worked.
Marco:
So that's finally the story of how we got videos from a thumb drive onto an iPad that were all made by Apple.
Marco:
Like, I just, the iPad is supposed to be the easy computer.
Marco:
This worked instantly on Macs.
Marco:
Everything about it worked great on Macs.
Marco:
What the hell is going on with the iPad?
John:
As you've learned, like the iPad is not a computer that has good ways to get hardware input, like connecting drives or connecting hardware devices.
John:
Like the camera connection kit is very tailored to what the name says.
John:
That's why I wanted everything in that format or whatever.
John:
the i think the the way that ipad people or the ipad experience wants you to do it is all over the network and there are lots of solutions to that there's photo sharing there's icloud drive there's dropbox the files app understands all of them so if for example you could you know your grandfather was on dropbox and you were on dropbox and you shared the folder you could just go into the dropbox app and from there you could save and or you could view it directly in the dropbox app or you could have put an icloud drive and shared it or you could put like i said you could put it on a web page because you have a website where you could just chuck it up there and then they would just tap a link and watch it
John:
And all of these are ways to get the original files and original quality over to the iPad that are probably more in keeping with the iPad experience.
John:
iPad experience is not connecting a camera connection kit, then connecting that to a charger, then connecting it to a USB thumb drive to put a file that you exported on your Mac into it.
John:
right that should have still worked i'm not saying it shouldn't this is a mess but the the you know the ipad way to do it is everything's just over the network and everybody has huge amounts of bandwidth and easy ways to share large files or and i would imagine the more consumer ways to do it loss of quality who cares like that's what everyone says when i talk about shared iCloud libraries why don't you just use shared albums it's the same thing i'm like no but it reduces the quality no one cares about that like they just don't care um
John:
So yeah, this should definitely be easier and all these stupid limitations on how things work are just, I feel like the historical baggage from the iPad basically being a sealed box and saying, we don't need to ever get data from anywhere except for the network.
John:
That lightning port is just for charging.
John:
Don't worry about it.
Marco:
But I feel like, but you'd be right if these features weren't not only offered, but advertised.
Marco:
Like,
Marco:
Apple sells equipment to do this.
Marco:
In previous, whatever, I forget which version of iOS had this, but in one of the recent versions of iOS, or now iPadOS, they even bragged about, hey, look, Files app now supports external storage devices.
Marco:
And so they officially support everything I just said.
Marco:
They officially support plugging in something to the Files app to be able to browse the files on it and do something with them.
Marco:
And you would expect that the files app, since it offers a button that says save videos in the share menu when you select a video file, would be able to save videos.
Marco:
But it doesn't.
Marco:
It just can't.
Marco:
Like, there's so much about this experience where, oh, that thing that we say you can do, that you even spent money to buy hardware to do, oh, that doesn't work.
Marco:
Okay, well, what do you mean it doesn't work?
Marco:
You literally said this worked, and the software says it works.
Marco:
These options are offered, and then it just doesn't work.
Marco:
And that's okay?
John:
I think the other part of the iPad experience is like the sort of the goalie effect of like, we don't want to allow anything onto this iPad that either is in a place where it isn't expected or is in a format that isn't expected.
John:
So the expectations on a personal computer or a Mac is if you're in the finder or any kind of file manager and you have external storage, you can copy a file from point A to point B. And then the computer and operating system do not care what's in that file.
John:
They're like, oh, file.
John:
I guess I'll just copy it.
John:
It is not the finder's problem what is in that file.
John:
Whereas I always get the impression when dealing with anything having to do with files on the iPad or the iPhone, it's like, whoa, wait a second.
John:
You want to copy a file?
John:
Who owns that file?
John:
Where will it be stored?
John:
Whose container will it be?
John:
And who can read that?
John:
Who should own that file?
John:
Is this a format I can understand?
John:
Can I play this back?
John:
And it's like...
John:
I don't care files app.
John:
Just copy the file.
John:
Put it like, trust me to later find a thing.
John:
And that's not the iPad experience.
John:
That's a personal computer experience where there is a file manager and the file system and the files.
John:
And then it's a separate problem to deal with like, oh, what app can read this?
John:
Can you play it back or anything like that?
John:
And, you know...
John:
your whole experience makes me think that somewhere there's a misguided, uh, set of rules that are saying, we don't want to allow anything onto this iPad that can't be played back because that would be a bad experience.
John:
Whereas it's much worse experience to get just an obscure error that says, Oh, I couldn't copy your file.
John:
I'm not going to tell you why.
John:
Just sorry.
Marco:
I just like, it's, it's like, it's all the worst of Apple.
Marco:
Like it's, it's a, it's kind of, you know, an edge case feature.
Marco:
on what they have always treated as an edge case operating system, iPadOS, which has never gotten a ton of attention and still isn't.
Marco:
And it's doing something that I think is a fairly common thing that people think they'll be able to do, which is take something on a USB thumb drive that came from some other computing device and get it onto their iPad.
Marco:
That's a fairly common thing.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I don't know about that.
Casey:
I don't think anyone really uses thumb drives anymore except us olds.
Casey:
And beyond that, certainly nobody would think to themselves, you know what I need for my iPad?
Casey:
I need a camera connection kit so I can plug in a thumb drive.
Casey:
I sympathize with what you went through.
Casey:
I truly do because it stinks and it shouldn't have been that hard.
Casey:
And if it did fail, it should have told you why it failed.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
And that's the thing that I think has driven all three of us nuts about Apple for the entire run of this damn show.
Casey:
But be that as it may, I think this was a bit of an esoteric use case, an esoteric use case that I still think should have worked.
John:
Well, no, because the use case is sharing video with family.
John:
That's not esoteric at all.
John:
It's the way that Marco went about doing it with his PC mindset that should have worked.
John:
But like the other mechanisms that Apple gives you to do it.
John:
I imagine a lot of people, if they try this at all, one of their go-tos, depending on their age, might be, why don't we email it to them?
John:
Which to us sounds like, no, you're going down the wrong path.
John:
Stop.
John:
But that's the way a lot of people share files with each other because it's a thing they've learned how to do in the past.
John:
I know how to email stuff to people.
John:
And when that inevitably doesn't work for things like large videos and they don't understand why, then they're kind of stuck.
John:
But that's their instinct.
John:
Our instinct is to copy files.
John:
Apple would probably tell you, oh, just within the Photos app, you can add it to a shared album and then add your grandpa to the shared album.
John:
Then they just launch photos on their iPad and they'll see it there.
John:
And I can tell you, having done that, that theory works most of the time.
John:
But if you have a large slideshow and...
John:
you know you just invited them to the shared album there are ways you know if depending on how they have things set up you know accepting an invitation to share a shared album and photos there are ways to screw that up uh like if you for example use the gmail app and not the apple mail app and you try to click the link for years that didn't work and you have to like oh you got to use the apple mail app to accept the invitation then once you accept it where does that show up oh it's in the photos app where in the shared albums all right i'm in shared albums i don't see it well wait how long should i wait i don't know
John:
it will appear because because you know what it's like with icloud syncing like it's pretty good and syncs most of the time but it's not like there's a progress indicator it's not like there's a refresh button it's not like a thing you can do to say hey someone i i just accepted an invitation to photo library when is the stuff going to show up this
John:
is one of the reasons why i haven't looked in this on years but for a long time with apple tv apple tv had you know you can sign into your apple id with apple tv and you can use it to connect to your photo library and so if you make a slideshow for example on your mac and the apple tv is connected to the same apple id and you tell it pointed to your photo library in theory apple tv can say oh i can see show you all your photos and your albums and your slideshows on the tv wouldn't that be great in practice it just shows me a bunch of empty thumbnails forever because apparently my photo library is too big for it to handle
John:
And I tried that for several years.
John:
Every time I knew Apple TV came out, I'm saying, hey, can you do something useful with my photo library besides show me a bunch of, you know, blank gray thumbnails?
John:
And the answer was no.
John:
So I just gave up.
John:
That's like even even the ways that like the sort of the paved paths for doing this fall down when you, let's say, have a big photo library or, oh, I want to show a slideshow in 4K.
John:
4K.
John:
Why would anyone want that?
John:
Just take the defaults.
John:
Use the lower quality setting.
John:
Don't do anything with big files because then our complete lack of progress indicators and your slow network connection will make it so that you just see an empty nothing for an undefined period of time after which maybe it will show up or maybe it won't.
John:
And if it doesn't show up, what's your recourse?
John:
I don't know.
John:
Do it again.
John:
Unsubscribe from the library and resubscribe to it.
John:
Yeah, this is back in the same realm of...
John:
Making things magically work so there's nothing you need to do is great when they magically work, but when they don't magically work, it's magically bad.
Marco:
I feel like these are all hallmarks of the problem we were talking about earlier with 22-year-old hotshots.
Marco:
This is just immature software.
Marco:
Software that does not handle edge cases very well, or that fails silently, or that can't...
Marco:
can't really accommodate the things that it says it can do because they just don't test them very often or they don't think people do it very often those are all hard marks of just immature software like it's or software that is being managed in an insufficient way uh but the result is immature immature software which is just like it just it can only do the common the common path because that's all they had time to implement or test or both
Marco:
or care about.
John:
And it trains you badly, though.
John:
Like, I think of an example.
John:
My son was having a problem.
John:
He called me into his room, which is never a good sign of, like, I have a problem with my computer.
John:
He was having a problem in Xcode, an app you may be familiar with.
John:
He was just trying to, like, you know, build and run his app.
John:
He was just trying to do development.
John:
And what he was faced with was, like, a dialogue that said...
John:
uh please wait while alex's apple watch is being prepared for development have either of you ever seen oh god reboot all three devices right now and i trained him well enough i've gone through stuff by the time he called me to the room he said i already rebooted everything right all right good you did the first step debugging because that would have been my first suggestion but here's the problem like so this is one of the situations where you know you can do googling for it and see all sorts of stuff but like
John:
I mean, one of my instincts was, all right, so something is stuck or bad.
John:
Because for people who don't know, if you just want to build and run your app, and for the record, he doesn't have a watch app.
John:
But I could tell that it was like, you know what, if you use Xcode, it wants to set up your device for development.
John:
It does stuff to your devices, whether it be your phone, your watch, even your Mac, to say, I'm setting this up so it can be used as a target to deploy in-progress builds of stuff, right?
John:
And even though he doesn't have a watch app and we've never had a watch app.
Marco:
Wait, and can I pause you right there?
Marco:
If you want him to continue loving software development, never build it.
Marco:
Never make a watch app.
John:
Can't confirm.
John:
Can't confirm.
John:
But that's what he was saying.
John:
He was like, but I don't even have a watch app.
John:
I'm like, yeah, but I bet you probably Xcode probably updated and it needs to like because your watch is paired to your phone and because your phone is a dev target, it needs to prepare your watch so that you could deploy a watch app to it.
John:
And that, for whatever reason, is blocking your ability to run your app on your phone.
John:
Right.
John:
But the thing is, that message would come up and it would say preparing Alex's watch for development.
John:
And we were Googling for answers and looking at it.
John:
And it's like, because it was there for so long and because there was no progress indicator other than like a spinning indeterminate progress indicator, distinguishing this is hanging and it's never going to complete from you just have to wait is very difficult.
John:
And my first instinct was this is clearly hanging because it's kind of like iCloud stuff.
John:
It's like, well, you just wait, and after a certain period of time, you're like, well, it's not updating.
John:
I don't see the stuff.
John:
I added this album on this computer, and I don't see it on this computer, and it's just not updating.
John:
So you want to do something.
John:
You want to say, okay, let's delete it and reshare it.
John:
And if you do that, you'll just chase your tail forever because it could be that it wants you to wait 37 minutes, and you waited 32 minutes before you gave up and deleted it.
John:
Now you're just going in a cycle forever.
John:
So, luckily, my old age instincts prevailed and said, let's let this sit for a little while and see if it eventually does something.
John:
And, you know, and his instinct to say, let's just keep trying to build and run, right?
John:
Because it'll keep getting stuck, but then you can try to do it again.
John:
We did do another set of reboots.
John:
But the bottom line is, we just had to wait.
John:
And the instinct...
John:
Like if you use the software for a long time, you start distrusting it because you say, in the past, I have waited.
John:
We've all had this experience.
John:
I'm trying to update to a new version of macOS.
John:
I'm trying to do an iOS update.
John:
I launched photos and it's beach balling, right?
John:
Sometimes you can say, well, I should just wait.
John:
But then you forget about it and come back five hours later or come back the next day and it's still beach balling.
John:
And this trains you to believe that if I have no indication of progress and something is taking way longer than I think,
John:
don't assume it's ever going to complete just give up and try something different or whatever and the problem is that's right like 50 of the time the other 50 if you had just walked away for an hour and come back it would have eventually completed and you know i was half of me was not surprised and half of me was surprised when after waiting for you know 15 20 minutes eventually it finished doing whatever the hell it was doing right i think at that point we'd like
John:
we'd rebooted everything multiple times and i was almost to the point where i was going to unpair and repair the watch right i was trying to i was in the device manager saying can i delete the watch from the thing or whatever but if you have software that behaves this way no indication of progress sometimes it completes if you just wait a long time but other times it doesn't it trains users to be distrustful and to do things that are counterproductive like give up after too short a period of time and just keep kind of repeating the same action which is just angering the software right and i just
John:
For all we know, a lot of the stuff... Like you said when you had the share thing to save videos and the share sheet went away and then nothing's on the screen.
John:
How long are you supposed to wait before deciding that that didn't work?
John:
Right?
John:
45 seconds with no feedback is too long.
John:
30 seconds, 5 seconds... It's just...
John:
You know, when people are writing software, it's like, I assume this operation will happen real quickly because it happens real quick in my dev device.
John:
So I don't need any kind of progress indicator here.
John:
And meanwhile, you do it.
John:
The share sheet goes away and you're left staring at the screen wondering what the hell just happened.
John:
Maybe it would be successful if I wait here for two minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes.
John:
Like, how long do I have to wait with no progress?
John:
Who knows?
John:
And if you're not a computer person, it makes you look like, you know, they look at you kind of with pity and go, so are we are we waiting for something?
John:
You're like, just just give it time.
John:
It might do something.
John:
It might not.
John:
I can't promise.
John:
And so you're sitting there.
John:
They all just want to see the pictures and they're all just looking at each other all in their eyes and you're like, something might appear here.
John:
If it doesn't appear, what can you do?
John:
We can try it again, I guess.
John:
It's not a good situation.
Casey:
This reminds me, I saw my parents today and we had just seen them over the holiday.
Casey:
And over the holiday, you know, I'm the kind of de facto family photographer.
Casey:
And I'd taken a bunch of pictures of the events of the holiday and had shared it with, you know, all the people that were there.
Casey:
Thankfully, all of us are on iOS devices.
Casey:
And my dad wanted a copy of all the files, which was fine.
Casey:
And I was too lazy to collect the files and zip them up and send them to him by any number of different ways of doing that.
Casey:
And I said, well, just download them from photos, particularly photos on your Mac.
Casey:
And he said, well, they're not there.
Casey:
It's a shared album.
Casey:
Can you see it on your phone?
Casey:
Yeah, I can see it on my phone.
Casey:
Can you see it in photos?
Casey:
No, on your Mac?
Casey:
No, I can't see it.
Casey:
They're not there.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Here's what I'll do.
Casey:
I will record a screencast, a 45 second screencast of me showing you, here's where you go.
Casey:
Here's what you do.
Casey:
Cause exporting, you know, photos wants to be, you know, it wants to eat all the things.
Casey:
It doesn't particularly want to give them back up.
Casey:
So I'll show you exactly how to export them.
Casey:
Then you can do with them as you please, whatever.
Casey:
He says, I swear to you, they're not there.
Casey:
And of course, like I love my dad to death.
Casey:
He's a very smart guy, very good with computers and technology, but he, he very rarely gives me actionable feedback.
Casey:
It's just, they're not there.
Yeah.
Casey:
okay well i'm not sure what you want me to do with that so he was here his computer was here because he has a macbook pro an older macbook pro an intel macbook pro which by the way seeing a touch bar again for the first time in a long time was kind of weird but nevertheless um he shows me photos he says they're not there and i look and darned if the damn album wasn't there what what was what was the problem gentlemen
John:
you didn't wait long enough no good guess no but that but that's the whole thing if you do something like hey i shared a thing with you or i added we're in a shared album that we've been in for literally seven years and i added two photos to it and everyone in the family sees the two new photos except for you what's the problem the problem is very often i don't know reboot your device wait a day you know and very often it will happen like oh they showed up eventually but why did why did they show up eventually why did it take a day why did you have to reboot i don't know there's no refresh button
Casey:
So as it turns out, the problem was, and I don't know what made me think of this, but I went digging in the photos preferences, of which there are very few, because Apple.
Casey:
But sure enough, in the iCloud tab, there are two checkboxes.
Casey:
iCloud Photos and Shared Albums.
Casey:
And I'll give you one guess.
Casey:
What was unchecked?
Casey:
It was Shared Albums.
Casey:
So as soon as I checked that, everything came flying in right away, and it worked perfectly.
Casey:
And I mean, I don't necessarily... Apple didn't necessarily do anything wrong here, but it was just very frustrating because...
Casey:
I don't really know why that's not the default.
Casey:
I don't think he had deliberately changed that.
Casey:
But even still, it seems like some sort of information to assist him or me.
Casey:
Like, if you're looking for shared albums, you know, or shared albums is currently disabled in the sidebar of photos or something...
Casey:
to give you a hint that, oh, this is something you have chosen, either implicitly or explicitly, and you might want to look in preferences to take action on it.
Casey:
You know, and obviously messaging that is very difficult, especially in a sidebar, but something to show him slash me this is where you need to look.
Casey:
And to their credit, to Apple's credit, everything worked lickety-split once I checked that checkbox.
Casey:
I did not understand for the life of me what his deal was.
Casey:
Like, what do you mean it's not showing up?
Casey:
You're clearly in the shared album if you're seeing it on your phone.
Casey:
What's your problem, old man?
Casey:
And it turns out his problem was one checkbox.
Marco:
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Casey:
I tell you what, so Aaron got me, this is a complete subject change, Aaron got me AirPods Pro for Christmas because it was too cheap to buy them for myself.
Casey:
What do you think?
Casey:
And they are really good.
Casey:
I really, really like them a lot.
Casey:
The noise cancellation is phenomenal.
Casey:
Now, admittedly, I have not had a modern, like, what is the beloved Sony's, the WRX TUV 6794321s?
Marco:
Yeah, the Sony WRX STI.
Yeah.
Casey:
Well done.
Casey:
So anyway, I have not tried those.
Casey:
So for all I know, they might be just as good, if not better.
Casey:
But the noise canceling that I am familiar with from several years ago now was not great.
Casey:
And holy cow, it's different depending on what fan I'm standing next to.
Casey:
Sometimes noise canceling is sufficient.
Casey:
But sometimes it's like, that fan is gone.
Casey:
That fan just disappeared from my life.
Casey:
I very briefly tried spatial audio, very, very briefly.
Casey:
It
Casey:
was fine like it didn't do much for me i did this in the context of audio not like watching a movie or anything i have not taken the time or nor do i really even know what i should watch to try spatial audio in in the context of like a movie i don't know john what's the what's the best way of doing like is there some apple tv show best way is turn it off and not use it because i don't i don't find it like useful at all um but there's lots of uh you know you
John:
I think you can watch pretty much any movie and just turn it on and it will try to spatialize it.
John:
But I'm sure you can find like demo things on Apple.
John:
The thing is, I don't think the effect that we've described it before, like it's like the sound is coming out of the iPad.
John:
Is that what you want?
John:
Do you want the sound to sound like it's coming out of the iPad?
John:
Because it can do that for you.
John:
And it's really impressive and it's very convincing.
John:
But that's not what I want.
John:
That's why I'm wearing headphones.
John:
The sound was coming out of the iPad.
Marco:
Well, I'll tell you one thing.
Marco:
One time when you really don't want that is suppose you have your AirPods Pro paired to your MacBook and you have your MacBook propped up on your rowing machine and you are rowing back and forth, moving your body physically frequently as it decides after a software update to spatialize all the audio from YouTube.
Marco:
oh interesting oh my god first of all the illusion breaks real fast because yeah it's really impressive if you're like sitting still on an airplane seat it's a lot less impressive when you are moving and yeah let me tell you that's the very first thing you do if you listeners if you have this problem go to control center and turn off the spatialized audio setting for that device on the mac because you trust me you do not want this
John:
the other problem with that setting especially if you have your airpods set to connect automatically is because the audio sounds like it's coming out of the ipad you're constantly thinking did my airpods not connect right because a lot of the reasons you're using airpods is you don't want to disturb the person next to you if like you're in bed and someone's sleeping next to you you're on an airplane you don't want them to hear it to be annoyed by the movie that you're watching but it sounds so much like the sound is coming out of the ipad you're worried that the sound is coming out of the ipad but it's not it's coming through your headphones but sometimes it actually is coming out of your ipad and you'll be fooled into thinking it's actually coming out of your headphones but it's it's confusing
John:
As people are talking about in the chat, this is going to be great for AR, but AR is not what I want when I watch a movie on my iPad.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Actually, so, you know, to bring it back around a little bit, I would love to briefly spend this time talking about really positive experience we've had with technology over this Christmas week, because I have had a lot of those as well.
Marco:
And, you know, Casey, you mentioned how much you're loving the AirPods Pro.
Marco:
And I got to say, you know, as a, you know, longtime AirPods Pro user, I
Marco:
I am still incredibly happy with them.
Marco:
And if my AirPod Pros, you know, for some reason got lost or broke or something, I would just go instantly buy another pair.
Marco:
And, you know, listeners are aware how much I love headphones and I'm constantly using them and wearing them.
Marco:
And I used to be constantly trying out different portable slash wireless headphones.
Marco:
My desk headphones have been
Marco:
set for a while.
Marco:
I love the Hi-Fi Man HD6 for open.
Marco:
I love the DT770 for closed.
Marco:
I'm so happy with those and so little has come around that's really been better for my preferences and needs and priorities in those areas that my desk headphone game has been solved for some time.
Marco:
But my portable headphone game was really up in the air for a long time, because portable headphones typically sucked in some ways, and usually more than one.
Marco:
And so, you know, typically you had to choose between, you know, quality and size, first of all.
Marco:
That, you know, small headphones, like, you know, all of Apple's white earbuds, like, small headphones usually sounded like garbage for things like music, but maybe they'd be acceptable for podcasts and phone calls, you know.
Marco:
So,
Marco:
you could like kind of you tolerate their crappiness and music because well they're small they can't be good and historically you'd also have to shoot between things like noise isolation or active noise cancellation and size slash price slash portability you know you'd have the big you know bose or sony noise canceling over-ear headphones for airplanes maybe but those were a little large to be wearing you know walking around you know and they were also honestly quite expensive i
Marco:
And so I went through so many like both wired and then later Bluetooth portable headphones, you know, headphones that were not as big as the giant ones I use at my desk, like my studio headphones.
Marco:
And I just never found a pair that was really great.
Marco:
I found some that were pretty decent in most ways.
Marco:
The wired sets tended to be better in most ways, except for, of course, there being a wire.
Marco:
And then when we all went Bluetooth, everything went to hell.
Marco:
There were so many crappy headphones on the market, many of which were very expensive.
Marco:
And really, everything Bluetooth that I ever tried was pretty compromised in some way until the AirPods Pro.
Marco:
And the AirPods Pro are so damn good.
Marco:
And still, now that they're, what, about two years old, three years old now?
Casey:
Yep, 2019.
Marco:
Yeah, so now that, you know, they're no longer at all like, you know, cutting edge in terms of newness or, you know, even the new AirPods have a couple of little feature improvements that the AirPods Pro don't have, but they are still the best all-around headphones that exist in the market today.
Marco:
Like, if I had to just have one pair of headphones in my entire life, it would probably be the AirPods Pros.
Marco:
Because they are just... So, not only... So, you know, you mentioned, Casey, the noise canceling.
Marco:
I can tell you, because I've done back-to-back comparisons.
Marco:
The noise cancellation on AirPods Pro...
Marco:
is not as good as the big over-ear Sony's or Bose's, but it's not that far off.
Marco:
And it's close enough that after one plane flight where I had both with me and I compared, I never carried the big ones on a plane again.
Marco:
And I think I sold them.
Marco:
I haven't seen them in a while, although I haven't flown in a while either.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
It's close enough in quality and in noise cancellation abilities that I decided to just take the massive backpack space savings on my airplane backpack and just never carry the big headphones again.
Marco:
And that's when I believe we joked about it on the show.
Marco:
The only downside of the AirPods Pros in that context is that their battery life is not super strong to get through like a six-hour flight.
Marco:
So I just bought a second pair of them.
Casey:
The most Marco answer I've ever heard.
Marco:
Well, because two pairs of AirPod Pros are better than most other ways you could spend $400 to $500 in the portable headphone space, honestly.
Marco:
They are just better.
Marco:
It's simple as that.
Marco:
I would rather have two of those than one of anything else.
Marco:
I'd rather have one AirPods Pro than the Bose or the Sony's.
Marco:
If I have to take out an earbud at hour five to have it recharging the case for a while and then swap it out for the other one, I'll do that.
Marco:
Fine.
Marco:
They're that good.
Marco:
And when you compare their music quality to anything else in the portable headphone space, you have to get to a pretty large headphone before you match their quality.
Marco:
You have to really get to full-size over-ears before you can find anything that's better than them.
Marco:
And even among full-size over-ears, not all of them sound better than the AirPod Pros.
Marco:
The AirPod Pros, given their convenience and their size,
Marco:
And all their features with the integrations and everything, even though I strongly suggest turning off auto device switching.
Marco:
Please.
Marco:
Everything works better when you do that.
Marco:
But there's basically no trade-off.
Marco:
They're just great in all of those ways.
Marco:
The only possible downside is if you're one of the people who they are not comfortable for.
Marco:
And I understand that.
Marco:
I'm the kind of person who other AirPods were never comfortable on, and I hated how awesome they were for everyone else and not for me.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
So I know how you feel, but man, if the AirPod Pros are comfortable for you, I so strongly recommend them because they are just so good in pretty much every way.
Marco:
And I've never found a pair of headphones that was so good at so much.
John:
I had my son audition all of the existing AirPod products.
John:
He had basically AirPod 1s, I think, still, and he just uses them 24 hours a day now.
John:
So it's just constantly, like, he's totally attached to them.
John:
And of course, now the battery is crappy or whatever, and there's newer ones, so hey, let's get him some new ones, right?
John:
And so I not so subtly had him try, you know, a newer version of the old AirPods, the AirPods 2, whatever.
John:
I had him try the new AirPods 3, and I had him try the AirPods Pro.
John:
And showed him the noise canceling feature and the transparency feature and did the tip fit test to make sure he was, you know, did all the things or whatever.
John:
And of all those three ones, I had him pick, you know, which one of these do you like better?
John:
And he picked the threes.
John:
And I don't know if it's just that the idea of having something in his ear canal was wigging him out because he's never used to that or whatever.
John:
He said he doesn't care about the noise canceling.
John:
Maybe young people don't care about noise.
John:
Noise just bothers old people.
John:
But he did like the 3s better than the 1s, probably because it doesn't take much to tell that the sound is better on the 3s, or the 2s.
John:
It's better on the 3s than the 2s.
John:
The 2 and the 1s, I think the audio is about the same, but the 3s have significantly better audio.
John:
So that's what he got for Christmas.
John:
He got AirPods 3.
John:
And my daughter did not like the 3 because they were too big in her ears, and she got a new pair of the 2s.
Casey:
nice yeah these airpods pro are really good and and i immediately felt like they sound way better than my i guess they're replacing a second generation airpods so the the first look but the second version of the airpods too right okay yes night and day they're so much better but they are a very different shape so it is worth like actually trying them to see whether the new ship because it's it
John:
If the original shape fits your ear great, that means nothing about the second shape or the AirPods 3 shape because there's no panels in common.
John:
Yeah, but I've been using the 3s now as well.
John:
I should have been logging how many times I tapped them.
John:
Just the other day, I was thinking, oh, I haven't tapped these in forever.
John:
Maybe I've finally gotten over the pinch, and then the next day, I double-tap them real quick when someone's trying to talk to me.
John:
I'll get over it eventually, but I'm getting better at pinching.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, to that end, yeah, the pinching doesn't bother me.
Casey:
I think I like it more.
Casey:
I feel like it's a slower operation, but...
Casey:
Ultimately, I think I like it more than the tapping.
Casey:
And I never was that bothered by the tapping, to be honest with you.
Casey:
But so far, so far, so good on pinching.
Casey:
Yeah, these things are really great.
Casey:
And I'm going to be so sad when the brand new ones come out in like three months.
Casey:
But for those three months before that happens, I'm super happy.
Casey:
Um, and if you'll permit me a very quick, uh, technology that makes me happy.
Casey:
So I think I've mentioned many times in the past that the greater Richmond area goes absolutely bananas when it comes to Christmas lights.
Casey:
And it's a thing to go on a quote unquote tacky light tour around here.
Casey:
And some people go really all out and they'll rent like a party bus or a limousine and, and, you know, typically drink grownup drinks while they're riding, not driving, uh, and looking at lights.
Casey:
And it's a very fun thing to do.
Casey:
Granted, I haven't done that in like 10 years.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
But Erin and I still like to take the kids and go around and look at lights.
Casey:
In the last couple of years, we've done it with her youngest brother and his now wife.
Casey:
But we're still not entirely keen on everyone climbing into the same car.
Casey:
So we used cheap, crummy, digital walkie-talkies to talk between cars.
Casey:
It worked great.
Casey:
It worked great.
Casey:
I love those cheap, simple solutions to problems.
Casey:
It's a much greater feeling when you can throw $20 at a problem.
Casey:
I don't know how much these were, but it was not expensive to get these things.
Casey:
And we threw $20 at this problem like four years ago for something unrelated, and we're getting so much use out of these little digital walkie-talkies for all sorts of random and uninteresting things.
Casey:
But I love when basic, simple technology actually works and works reliably, and it makes me so happy.
Marco:
I'll also say, so one of my Christmas gifts this year, Tiff got me my own Nintendo Switch.
Marco:
Our Nintendo Switch journey started out as I got one through friend of the show, Colin Donnell, who had like an extra pre-order and let me buy it off of him at cost back when that was really quite a generous thing to do because nobody was giving them a cost.
Marco:
So I had the first Nintendo Switch of the family.
Marco:
It was very rapidly stolen by the rest of my family.
Marco:
And then
Marco:
uh later on tiff got her own um and then you know quote mine really became adam's and so i just really basically haven't had a switch for a while and ab and i have really gotten into playing co-op games of stardew valley i love stardew valley it's such an amazing game and i hadn't played it in a while uh probably a couple years really and we really were enjoying co-op
Marco:
Well, Tiff got me my own Switch now, so now we have a family co-op game where all three of us are playing, and it's delightful.
Marco:
It's so much fun.
Marco:
We love doing it.
Marco:
I'm so happy I finally have a Switch.
Marco:
And she got me, I don't know how, but she got me the Switch OLED, the new one.
John:
I was going to say, how is the distribution of OLED throughout the Switch family doing here?
John:
I'm not sure that you should really be the one with the OLED based on hours played.
Marco:
Well, I won't have Vernon.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
So, yes, I have the only OLED model.
Marco:
TIFFs and Atoms were both bought before that model existed.
Marco:
And Atoms, which is now the oldest one, the original purchase, Atoms now has a very loud fan.
Marco:
And I've been faced with the dilemma of, like, do I try to replace it?
Marco:
Like, I looked up the iFixit guide, and it's involved.
John:
Do you have a Joy-Con drift on TIFFs or Atoms?
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
No, surprisingly not.
Marco:
Wow, it's amazing that you dodged that bullet.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, we do have a few extra Joy-Cons, so it wouldn't be the end of the world if that happened.
Marco:
But anyway, so this is our first OLED model, and it is, I've got to say, really nice.
Marco:
I haven't been following really very closely what the differences were, and all I knew was everybody was upset that there weren't many differences.
Marco:
But let me tell you, the differences that are there matter.
Marco:
It's so nice.
Marco:
So first of all, yeah, the screen is just way nicer.
Marco:
OLED looks way better than any LCD, let alone the fairly mediocre and outdated LCDs that were in the regular Switch console.
Marco:
So number one, it's way better with contrast, color, brightness, everything.
Marco:
It looks incredible.
Marco:
It looks like an OLED TV.
Marco:
OLED looks awesome.
Marco:
And
Marco:
the screen size has also grown slightly.
Marco:
It's a little bit bigger screen.
Marco:
And they did that mainly by shrinking the bezels.
Marco:
And again, that matters.
Marco:
It might not matter so much to kids who have amazing eyes and don't care about screen quality so much.
Marco:
It matters a lot to me.
Marco:
Like the regular Switch screen...
Marco:
I could play games on it, but I was always a little squinty, especially when so many games assume they're running on a TV, and so they have really small text in a lot of areas, and it's a little hard to see on the original Switch screen.
Marco:
The Switch OLED is, I think, a half-inch or one-inch bigger screen.
Marco:
It's not a massive difference, but it is a helpful difference and a noticeable one.
Marco:
So way nicer screen overall.
Marco:
Um, also they have updated the feel of some of the buttons around the case.
Marco:
The kickstand now is actually useful.
Marco:
Like it goes all the way across the back instead of just a little like thumb thing.
Marco:
Um, so yeah, overall a couple of little nice improvements and the screen being a really big improvement.
Marco:
Uh, I'm very happy with it.
Marco:
And I would say if you're buying a new switch today, assuming you can find one in stock, uh, if you care about such things, the OLED model is really nice.
Marco:
And, uh, I think it was only 50 bucks more than the other one was.
Marco:
So it seems like a no brainer to me.
John:
I forget if this was a software update or a feature of the Switch OLED, but for the longest time, Switch did not support plain old Bluetooth headphones.
John:
That's a software update.
John:
I guess that's for all of them.
Marco:
I haven't actually tried it on any of them, but that was a software update across all of them recently.
Marco:
Oh, hold on.
Marco:
One complaint before we leave Nintendo Switch land.
Marco:
We, being modern people, purchased most of our games as downloads.
Marco:
Most of these games were purchased under my Nintendo account back forever ago.
Marco:
Now that I have my own Switch that I've activated as my own, there seems to be no way for Adam to play the games I bought on his Switch.
Marco:
It says you're supposed to be able to do this if it has internet connectivity.
Marco:
In practice, that seems to fail a lot and just refuse to play.
Marco:
And certain games you can't play at all that way.
Marco:
And I've tried different combinations of which one you set as your active console and everything.
Marco:
And it just kind of sucks that, first of all, you have to go through all these hoops.
Marco:
And second of all, that when you have a digital purchase,
Marco:
Even though we are a family share group in Nintendo's eyes, I, as the person who originally bought these games, not only can my family not play them, even if I'm not playing it, but I also can't seem to transfer my ownership to my son for this game.
Marco:
So I seem to have no recourse whatsoever except to rebuy all of these $60 games that my son wants to play if he's still going to be able to play them.
Marco:
And that that sucks.
Marco:
That really sucks.
John:
I went to this with Destiny and the PlayStation.
John:
It gets even worse.
John:
So Sony's terrible with that also.
John:
But then it gets even worse when you have DLC like Destiny.
John:
You know, the base game is nothing and everything is about the expansions.
John:
And it's like, OK, well, you can both play the game.
John:
But do they have that expansion?
John:
Do you have to buy the expansion separately?
John:
But you can share the base game.
John:
Can you share neither?
John:
Who can we playing at the same time?
John:
It is very, very, very bad.
Marco:
Yeah, I got to say, Apple is way better at family sharing than Nintendo is by a mile.
John:
And even Apple just recently folded in in-app purchases into the system.
John:
Originally, you could share apps within the family, but in-app purchases were hit or miss.
John:
And now I think it's up to the developers to decide, right?
Marco:
Yeah, and for a while, subscriptions couldn't be shared, but they have recently modified that as well.
Marco:
And yeah, it's like we complain a lot about Apple, but sometimes when you see some other part of the tech environment, you realize like, oh God, we don't have it so bad.
Marco:
And that's why we're all here, right?
Marco:
And that's why we all care, you know, because the rest of the tech landscape is not all roses at all.
Casey:
John, any good technology stories from your holiday?
John:
I don't think so.
John:
Not a lot of tech issues.
John:
I mean, the AirPods just worked out of the box.
John:
Oh, I guess the only one tech thing is I got my wife a new car thingy for a car mount for the phone.
John:
She had been using one that she had for years, which is one of the recommended kind of like...
John:
bear trap ones where you stick the phone in there and it triggers the trap and the thing adjust any size phone and she's used it across many different phones with and without battery cases and it was fine but it always annoyed me when I had to drive her car because when I use like the turn signal with my right hand it would occasionally hit the
John:
like the thing that's sticking out of the like they have these little things that stick out the side that you press in to make the to set the bear trap and it would hit my hand i didn't like it it was annoying so i figured i can solve that problem now by giving her a mag safe uh mount i heard marco raving about his and she has a mag safe phone and all of her cases are mag safe right and she has the stupid apple mag safe battery thing but you that's removable easily right so you don't have to worry about that either
John:
And I'm happy with it.
John:
So far, she hasn't complained about it.
John:
I think she likes it.
John:
But, like, the whole point is I was able to put that mount there.
John:
The mount is way smaller because it's just a circular, you know, magnetic puck thing.
John:
And it's always plugged in through a cable that I carefully routed to the USB thing.
John:
So now she was taking the cable, like, from the USB that's in, like, the center console.
John:
And she would just...
John:
stretch that thing i always bother me because she's remember she's stretching this past a stick shift right so you've got this lightning cable stretching from the center console that she would occasionally plug into her mounted phone if it needed battery because pokemon go drained it for the millionth time right but then she didn't always have it plugged in sometimes it was just dangling and sometimes we were just like hanging out by the shifter and all that is gone now now it's just the cable that goes from the
John:
like the console like where the radio would be from there up to the puck and it never moves and i actually like you know gaff tape it to the side of the dashboard so it's all like there's no hanging cables anywhere and you just get in the car and you shove on your phone and it's mounted and it's easily adjustable and it's also charging so i'm very happy with that gift i hope she is too
John:
and did she like her bowling ball as well john yeah i mean it's in her car and i don't even have a mag safe case so it's not like previously when i went in her car i could use that mount i can't even use that mount anymore because i don't have a mag safe case like it's fine it's not my car it's her thing but i hope she likes it
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Casey:
all right jeff fowler writes the current imac 27 inch starts at 1799 if the new replacement for this machine starts at 1999 but includes the option to use it as a monitor for the macbook pro with 120 hertz p3 color hdr etc and can be connected with a single cable as we all want would you buy it just to use it as a monitor is a base 27 inch imac just going to sit dormant behind a display on your desk or is this really stupid
Casey:
uh in knowing what i know today yes i would buy it and yes it would be dormant or maybe i would turn that into my server and if there was such a way to like have it not use the screen which i doubt but you know in this fantasy world but i would do that without even blinking an eye i absolutely would you two wouldn't however because you have your stupid xdrs that i'm jealous right but i think anyone would buy this because there is no current two thousand dollar monitor that has the specs of this thing that they're describing in this question right but the the real answer is that's not going to happen like the
John:
Target display mode hasn't been on iMacs in what, like seven years?
John:
Like how long ago did they get rid of that?
John:
It was a while, right?
Marco:
Yeah, it never made the jump to retina.
Marco:
So the last Mac that had it was the 27-inch non-retina iMac.
John:
Right, and all the other solutions for using a Mac as a monitor...
John:
uh like over the network or with air display or whatever all those have lag or quality loss or both and so i think if that was the only way you could use it i think all of our answers would be no we wouldn't use a new 27 inch iMac if it couldn't be connected like a monitor like with an actual wire instead of like some weird thing where we encode your video as h264 and send it over the network and like it would have to be display port you know like actual monitor connection not some kind of network blurry compressed whatever thing
John:
Because we already have enough compression with display screen compression.
John:
We don't need, you know, showing a weird movie on the thing.
John:
So for $2,000, no, I don't think any of us, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, would accept the idea that it's a way for you to airplay to a $2,000 monitor.
Casey:
Yeah, definitely not.
Marco:
Yeah, I wouldn't either.
Marco:
But ultimately, though, like, I do think this is interesting.
Marco:
time to revisit pricing estimates for what we think the alleged monitors that might be coming out in the future might cost.
Marco:
If you look at the 24-inch M1 iMac, and if you assume that the rumored LG low-end one, made by LG Apple monitor, which would be a 24-inch monitor, if you assume it's basically the 24-inch iMac's monitor in an external case with just ports in the back and no computer,
Marco:
Well, that computer starts at $1,300.
Marco:
I bet that monitor would be, and no one's going to like this, $1,000 for the 24-inch size without the micro-LED XDR stuff.
Marco:
Just the regular 24-inch Apple monitor, I bet, is $1,000.
Marco:
And I bet now for the 27-inch that everybody actually wants...
Marco:
Well, that iMac, right now the current iMac, without the XDR stuff.
Marco:
Again, $1,800 starting price.
Marco:
I'm guessing the nice one probably goes to, you know, the nice new one with the M1s, what's probably going to be called iMac Pro, even like the, quote, base models, it's probably going to be the same guts as the MacBook Pros.
Marco:
It's probably going to be called iMac Pro and be 27 inches.
Marco:
I bet that starts at $2,000.
Marco:
$2,000.
Marco:
And so I bet that the 27-inch monitor would be very unlikely to cost less than $1,800 by itself.
Marco:
So that's what I'm – just prepare yourself, people.
Marco:
If you think that when you say we want Apple to make cheaper monitors than the XDR –
Marco:
Well, that's easy to make things cheaper than $6,000 because I bet they'll include stands.
Marco:
So I'm going to compare like to like and say $6,000 instead of $5,000 because I'm including the stand price.
Marco:
So I bet the lineup we're going to be left with is 24 inches at $1,000, 27 inches for almost $2,000, and the Pro Display XDR at $6,000.
John:
One complication is some recent rumor back and forth about whether or not the 27-inch thing will be mini-LED and will have HDR.
John:
There was some rumor going around that said, oh, actually, it's going to be like the 24-inch and that it's not going to have HDR, not going to have high refresh, not even going to be mini-LED.
John:
And that, I think, would potentially adjust down the price of the 27-inch monitor, assuming it exists.
John:
Maybe not, though, but that rumor was, like, the people who had the mini-LED rumor strongly refuted it and said, no, no, no, no, the big one isn't going to be mini-LED.
John:
So I don't know if this is true or not, but, like, the idea that there is contention about whether the big one will be
John:
People seem to have consensus that the 24-inch won't be, because it's just the iMac monitor, and we know the iMac monitor doesn't have that, and it's supposed to be low-end, so that all makes sense.
John:
The 27-inch, I still really hope, is mini-LED, but if it's not, it could be lower.
John:
But, like, $2,000 for a 27-inch, especially if it's mini-LED HDR high refresh, that's...
John:
Not a bad deal at all.
John:
Again, CEO of the past shows where I looked at like, if you wanted to buy that today in like the quote unquote PC monitor market, it's expensive.
John:
$2,000 for a monitor of Apple quality of that size with those specs, that's a pretty good price.
John:
And it's not just, it's less than half of the $6,000, but it's like, you know, a third of the price.
John:
So, you know, that's a good price spread, right?
John:
$1,000, I know that seems like a lot for 20-inch, but it'd be really nice and have a nice stand and blah, blah, blah.
John:
And then $2,000 and then $6,000?
Marco:
that's that's a reasonable monitor range like ship it it's good yeah like that that's why like i think people who are hoping for like you know an 800 monitor i think you're gonna be disappointed like i think it's gonna be you know typical apple as i said before like they will probably eventually deliver on this but when it comes out it's going to be substantially more money than you wish it was and some of you out there will buy it anyway and that's why they can do it
Casey:
Yeah, I was going to say that I would think that $1,000 and $2,000 would be the target prices, irrespective of the cost of the computer associated with it.
Casey:
Like, even if the 27-inch iMac starts at $1,800, which I'm not saying it well, but let's just suppose the 27-inch iMac starts at $1,800, but the 27-inch monitor is $2,000, I really don't think they'd care.
Casey:
I really don't.
John:
Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me at all.
John:
But again, I think $2,000 may be low if it has all those specs because you cannot find a PC monitor with those specs for anything close to $2,000 right now.
John:
And, you know, those are, you know, time marches on.
John:
We get new displays, right?
John:
But I think it would be quite a leap for an Apple monitor with P3 color, high refresh, HDR, mini LED with thousands of zones to be $2,000 at 5K, 27 inch.
John:
We'll see, though.
Marco:
Well, I mean, maybe maybe we have the pricing on this wrong.
Marco:
I mean, let me see, like the 16 inch MacBook Pro starts at twenty five hundred.
Marco:
So maybe maybe this is not, you know, just one iMac Pro starting at eighteen hundred.
Marco:
Maybe the rumors that you just said, John, about the 27-inch not having the high refresh and possibly mini LED stuff, maybe we're actually talking about different computers here.
John:
The iMac and an iMac Pro.
Marco:
Yeah, maybe there's going to be a 27-inch low-end model and a 27-inch high-end model that might be $3,000 starting price.
John:
And that would be an even better way to to diversify this range even more, because a lot of people don't care about a high refresh or HDR or P3 color.
John:
But the current 5K iMac screen is a really nice retina screen for regular people who don't care about those things.
John:
So why not sell it?
John:
And then that lets them, you know, instead of having 1000 2006, they can have 1000 2000 3500 six.
Marco:
Well, honestly, I would be surprised.
Marco:
If they do have two 27-inch iMac classes, if they still do have a non-mini LED, non-high refresh one, and the high-end mini LED and high refresh one, I don't think they would turn both of those into standalone monitors.
Marco:
I think they would pick one, probably the higher-end one.
Marco:
Yeah, maybe.
Marco:
And so then we might have something like...
Marco:
1,000, 3,000, and 6,000.
John:
Yeah, that's more even spread, but yeah.
John:
A man can dream.
Marco:
But can you imagine how much developers are going to freak out?
Marco:
Like, you know, people like us, how much all the fans are going to freak out if they finally make the 27-inch monitor we've been waiting for for years and it's 3,000.
Marco:
I mean, it's still way less than 6,000.
John:
It is, right.
John:
I think I think people would be buy it and buy it and be happy to buy it.
John:
It's like pent up demand.
John:
People are just so like kind of like how most people aren't complaining about the prices of the new MacBooks because they're so good.
John:
And we waited so long for a good computer is that no one cares about the price.
John:
Like they could have been a thousand dollars more each and people still would have bought them if they could afford it.
Casey:
Seriously, I spent five thousand friggin dollars on this MacBook Pro and I zero regrets.
Casey:
Absolutely zero regrets.
Marco:
And I know you don't want to hear this, Casey.
Marco:
I spent $6,000 on the XDR, and I have zero regrets.
Marco:
Really.
Casey:
Sorry, you broke up again.
Casey:
Are you back on Wi-Fi?
Casey:
Anyway, Eric New writes, Apple is famously secretive.
Casey:
To what extent do you think Apple welcomes the drama and publicity that comes with cat and mouse of the rumor and leak game?
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I felt like this was a fairly interesting question, and I don't really know what I think about it.
Casey:
I think...
Casey:
Apple, by and large, enjoys the game, but they hate when the press gets something right.
Casey:
Like the iPhone 4 leaking and when they leaked a whole bunch of press images, when they themselves leaked a whole bunch of press images right before a keynote like a year or two back a couple years ago.
Casey:
uh i think when stuff is legitimately spoiled i think apple hates that hates that more than anything but everyone just sitting and flapping their gums about it hello i think i think they quite like that and like that everyone is always paying attention to them and anytime they they move even the tiniest bit all of us go what was that what what i i think they quite like it what do you think marco
Marco:
I think, you know, what their execs have said in interviews recently, like, I know, I think it was Schiller who said this on the talk show a few years back about how, like, you know, it was very much a, like, you know, support the troops kind of argument of, like, well, you know, we really don't like, you know, our teams work so hard on this, and it's just, we hate that their day comes to shine and it's ruined, you know.
Marco:
And that argument I understand to a degree, but
Marco:
I see Apple as not having much of a sense of humor culturally as a company.
Marco:
And I do think that, like, oh, the team's let-down attitude, I think, really pervades the company pretty deeply.
Marco:
And so I think when we heard that, I think that was correct, that it really deeply bothers them when something gets spoiled.
Marco:
And I can't say I'm...
Marco:
I can't say that's unreasonable.
Marco:
That makes total sense why they would be really upset about that from that point of view.
Marco:
That, to me, though, that is definitely filed under, in my opinion, that's Apple's problem, not our problem.
Marco:
If there's some leaked schematics of the MacBook Pro and it shows the ports, and we talk about it on this show, hey, look, if this is real, this is pretty cool.
Marco:
I don't feel like we are spoiling anything for anybody in the company for their work not being valuable.
Marco:
Because when it comes out, we celebrate it again.
Marco:
And we love it.
Marco:
And we are so happy about it.
Marco:
And the whole reason people are really into finding out new information about Apple products...
Marco:
is because we all love them and we're excited.
Marco:
And this stuff affects our lives in massive ways as customers, not only as podcasters who talk about this, but as customers of Apple's.
Marco:
We care so much because we love them and we love their products and their products are super important to us.
Marco:
And so to have an audience that cares so deeply about your stuff that they would...
Marco:
seek out and then discuss for hours rumors about stuff that you might be making, rumors that might be true, and how excited we would be if they do come true, there's also a lot of value in that to the company.
Marco:
And so I don't think the answer is as clear-cut as Apple likes or doesn't like the rumor and leak game.
Marco:
I think it's complicated.
Marco:
I think they don't like the part of it that spoils their surprises.
Marco:
But they also, I think...
Marco:
strong so strongly benefit from the culture of people who are so obsessed with their stuff that we love it so much and we care about this you can't ignore that benefit and granted that's a benefit they didn't necessarily ask for but that is a benefit that they greatly enjoy and reap profits from so I think it's complicated you know I think if you ask them like would you prefer if this thing in the future be leaked they would almost certainly say no almost every time but
Marco:
To some degree, it's unavoidable because the scale they're at is so big and there are so many manufacturers and stuff involved.
Marco:
And that's, again, that's a problem of their success.
Marco:
And the other side of it is that they have enjoyed so much success based on people's obsession and care about their products.
Marco:
So, again, I think it's a mixed bag.
John:
I think in an ideal world, Apple wants everyone to be talking about what they're doing and want to know what they're doing and having that conversation.
John:
And they want them to never figure anything out and never get any actual leaks.
John:
Right.
John:
Because the whole the whole I mean, show us perspective.
John:
I was like, oh, the team just so disappointed because they didn't want to have their coming out story.
John:
What the, you know, the team that most cares about that is marketing, right?
John:
They want to control the message of their product.
John:
Like, and their message is like, here's how we want our product to be presented to the world.
John:
Here's what we're going to say it's good for.
John:
And they lose control of that message immediately.
John:
if rumors of that actual product get out ahead of time because then people start talking about it however they want oh like if apple doesn't get to tell you like here's this thing and we did it this way because of x if they don't get to control the message and say here's how you should think about this product we'll just make up whatever we want oh it's too expensive it's not expensive enough it has doesn't have the features we want it's bad because it doesn't have as many megapixels as this like apple needs to control the message and what part of apple needs to control that message not the product team that makes it marketing right and phil schiller is the head of marketing for years so of course he's going to say oh it's so disappointing the team you know what team is disappointing to the marketing team
John:
because now you're like how the hell we were we had this whole message ready to tell here's this product and here's what we want to say about it and now instead we are on our back on our heels saying we have to counter the narrative that's been out there for two months because of the stupid rumors uh so yeah apple wants people talking about them but they do not want them to know anything
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
And finally, Adam M. Head writes, when teaching your kids best practices for their macOS and Windows device, do you recommend they close all open apps before restarting the device?
Casey:
macOS reopens the apps if you tell it to.
Casey:
Windows doesn't handle this as well.
Casey:
I am not in a position to need to worry about this quite yet, although for my own use, I almost never close basically anything before I shut down.
Casey:
I picked on Marco first last time.
Casey:
John, what's your approach here with you and your kids?
John:
I think Adam has a very optimistic notion of being able to tell your kids anything.
John:
As if they're going to, A, seek out, or B, listen to any advice you give them about how you think they should use technology products.
John:
Very optimistic.
John:
To answer this question for my kids, I have never taught my kids anything having to do with this.
John:
The closest I've come is reprimanding them for reflexively force-coding apps on their phone, but that's mostly a losing battle.
John:
because whatever um but no like i they will learn to use the device the way they feel like using it again if they're doing something that has no technical foundation or that is doing the opposite of what they think it is like force quitting all the apps on their phone reflexively i will explain what's actually happening and then they can make a decision from there but i don't recommend anything about
John:
window hygiene i mean the closest i'll get is every time i sit down to try to fix something on my son's computer i have to take everything out of full screen but that's more of a me issue right because he puts everything in full screen and he three finger swipes between them that's not how i want to use the computer so when i'm even if i'm just there for debugging for two seconds like that or whatever like that xcode problem i'm like i just pull everything out of full screen so i can see more than one window at a time and so i just feel more comfortable doing that way i hate having to swipe around he doesn't like me swiping around because i'm swiping to some web page where he's looking at something that he's wanting his dad to see or whatever like it's just
John:
it's a bad three finger swiping is bad not my but but i don't i just i don't tell him you shouldn't run things in full he's got a macbook air like full screen i can understand why you do one thing is full screen you want to maximize you know he's got the old 13 inch macbook air and
John:
I know why he does things in full screen.
John:
And if he likes three finger swiping between them, you know, go for it.
John:
But I do, the closest I get is I show him, hey, you know, when your dad sustains your computer, see how I can do lots of stuff because I can see more than one window on the screen at a time, even on a 13 inch screen that has its disadvantages, consider it.
John:
That's as close as I get.
John:
Most of the time, I'm just hands off.
Marco:
Yeah, so I don't see Adam using a Mac much yet, because the only place he uses a Mac really is in school.
Marco:
I don't usually see that.
Marco:
But on Windows, like on his gaming PC, he doesn't seem to really multitask.
Marco:
So it's not... I mean, why would a kid with a gaming PC really need to multitask that much?
Marco:
You open one game, and then you close it and open another game.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
it's not really a problem that we're facing and he's a little young to have like much productivity stuff open at all um but uh my my battle again with john it's like my battle is like just can you please like quit tear down before you close the lid to the laptop that way it's not sitting there blaring the fan for the next 12 hours until i walk by and notice that it's on blaring the fan because it's not it's not actually sleeping and it's running a game engine in the background and
Marco:
oh, God, just please quit the game before you close the lid.
Marco:
That's the level.
John:
Less fan noise.
Marco:
Yeah, fewer games.
John:
That's another solution.
Marco:
Yeah, right.
Marco:
We can solve the problem of your games overheating your computer by just having a computer that can't run any of the games you like.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Linode, Memberful, and Trade Coffee.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
We will talk to you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
John:
They didn't even mean to begin.
John:
Cause it was accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
John:
Cause it was accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M
Casey:
So long.
Casey:
Hey, so we went long, so I will give an extremely short update for the after show.
Casey:
The iMac Pro is almost in Florida.
Casey:
It did not sell on Twitter.
Casey:
It did not sell on Swappa.
John:
You're disappointing me with the Florida, Casey.
John:
You're so excited when I hear you say the dog and coffee, and you're saying Florida?
John:
Come on.
John:
What happened?
John:
Instead of Florida?
John:
Instead of Florida, yeah.
John:
God, whatever.
John:
Say the fruit the Tropicana makes juice from.
Casey:
Orange juice.
John:
Oh, what happened?
John:
Did you never have that or did you lose it?
Casey:
No, I never did.
Casey:
No, it's not orange juice.
Casey:
I pronounce things properly, not like a Long Islander.
John:
You used to be on my page when you say things like dog and coffee and stuff.
John:
And you say it like closer to New Yorker, like your New York inflected Connecticut accent.
John:
But those two, I didn't know those two didn't make it up to Connecticut.
John:
I guess not.
Casey:
Who even knows?
Casey:
But also remember I'm a mutt of an accent, because my very, very early life was New York State, and then I bounced around the Midwest for a while, and then to Connecticut during my high school years, then southwest, really rural Virginia for college, and then in central Virginia, which is also a melting pot in and of itself ever since.
Casey:
So I'm a mess.
Casey:
Although I feel like I just talked about this with you guys.
Casey:
Maybe it was on analog.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
But anyway, I feel like syllables are getting longer.
Casey:
Over the years, instead of mile, it's mile.
John:
Yeah, the South may be affecting you, but we'll always have dog and coffee.
Casey:
That's right.
Casey:
So anyway, so yes, so my iMac Pro is on its way to Florida, where MacMean offer has given me, what did they give?
Casey:
Supposedly, it's a pretty good offer, right?
Casey:
It was like $2,500, which was not as much as I wanted, but is probably a fair offer for what it was.
John:
They should give everyone an extra $10 due to the name of their company.
Marco:
So here's how I see this.
Marco:
You know, you got rid of this computer.
Marco:
You got rid of the Intel generation.
Marco:
It's now out of your hands.
Marco:
It is done.
Marco:
Bank it and put it towards whatever your monitor conclusion ends up being, you know.
Marco:
Don't consider this part of the LG fund, for the love of God.
Marco:
Just consider the LG fund like a sunk cost from a previous age, and now consider yourself having an effective $2,500 discount towards whatever you choose to do next.
Marco:
And
Marco:
While I would push you for the XDR thing and just be done with it now, I know you're not going to really do that, even though you still should do that, but I know you won't.
Marco:
So instead, maybe bank that towards the upcoming $3,000 27-inch monitor that they release instead.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Well, that's the thing, though.
Casey:
It's the same thing that one of you, I suppose it was John, just said about the MacBooks being so expensive.
Casey:
Like, in any normal scenario, if you told me that I would willingly, happily spend $5,000 friggin' dollars on a laptop, I'd laugh in your face.
Casey:
There's zero chance of that.
Marco:
Well, but speaking of, I mean, again, like, speaking of happy tech stories,
Marco:
This laptop was so good.
Marco:
Like all Christmas break.
Marco:
Now, you know, we went to visit family.
Marco:
I've been, I did some coding work on it.
Marco:
Oh my God.
Marco:
It's so good.
Marco:
Sorry.
Marco:
Go on.
Casey:
Couldn't know.
Casey:
I couldn't agree more.
Casey:
That's exactly it.
Casey:
And so, yes, like even though $5,000 for really any computer is a preposterous sum of money.
Casey:
Hi, John.
Casey:
And it's still, it's still, I would pay it again, like not literally again, but I would do it all over again in a heartbeat to get this computer.
Casey:
Cause I love this computer so darn much.
Casey:
It is so unbelievably great.
Casey:
And I feel like, you know, this phantom Apple monitor that may or may not come next year, even if it's $3,000, like when you're standing in monitor hell, the $3,000 glass of water is well worth the money.
Casey:
Like I will absolutely pay that.
Casey:
I won't even blink an eye because you know what?
Casey:
It's half off that $6,000 monstrosity that you idiots paid for.
Casey:
So yeah, I will do that in an absolute heartbeat.
Casey:
I won't even blink an
Marco:
I'll tell you what, sitting in front of this glorious 27-inch Ultrafine right now, I miss my 6K so much.
Marco:
I do not mind that my 6K costs 6K.
Marco:
I do not mind at all because I cannot wait to go back to it.
Marco:
And I see its value every second that I'm using this slightly diagonal, mediocre monitor with edge backlight bleeding and it's shaking every time I hit the keyboard.
Marco:
I'm like, oh my God, I can't wait to get back.
Casey:
I totally hear you.
Marco:
And honestly, there is a lot of value for an Apple nerd like yourself to just be done with Intel.
Marco:
I assume Aaron's computer is still a MacBook Air.
Casey:
She still has the cute, the adorable.
Marco:
Oh, the 12-inch.
Marco:
Right, I forgot.
Marco:
Okay.
Casey:
Which I asked her, actually.
Casey:
I almost, for Christmas, I almost impulse bought her a MacBook Air.
Casey:
And I thought about it, and I was like, you know what?
Casey:
She uses her computer basically exclusively to do online grocery shopping orders and almost nothing else.
Marco:
In that case, I have a slightly different suggestion for you.
Marco:
our spouses put up with a lot from us.
Marco:
Let's be honest.
Casey:
You have no idea.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So, I mean, the three of us, I have to imagine, you know, our spouses are very tolerant of our various quirks.
Marco:
And foibles.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Take a portion of this $2,500 you've just earned from your old Intel trade-in, and when the new MacBook Air comes out this spring, buy one for Aaron and sell the MacBook One.
Casey:
I don't know if I would sell it, honestly.
Casey:
I did love that MacBook One so much.
Marco:
Do a trade-in for Apple, that's what I mean.
Casey:
Well, fair.
Casey:
For a fleeting moment, I thought I would pull a John and hold on to it, but ultimately it would just take up space and there would be no point.
Casey:
But I did love that computer so much.
Casey:
It was a piece of garbage the moment I bought it, and I loved it.
Casey:
I loved it so much.
Casey:
But that's all right.
Marco:
Honestly, I have a feeling, speaking of rumors, if there...
Marco:
If any of the rumors about the upcoming M2 potentially based MacBook Air, if the rumors are at all accurate, it's going to be awesome in many ways.
Marco:
Obviously, the M1 MacBook Air is awesome already.
Marco:
If you happen to go that route, that's also a fantastic route to go.
Marco:
It would obviously be a bit of a size and weight upgrade from what she has now, which would possibly be viewed as a downgrade.
Marco:
But
Marco:
first of all i suspect the new air is going to close that gap a little bit um but also the new air is going to have like the you know the even nicer new keyboard it's going to have allegedly like a physical design and color scheme similar to the uh new 24 inch imax like that's going to be an awesome computer it's people are going to love that thing and they're going to sell a ton of them um if that's at all accurate so
Marco:
Consider this as an option because I'll tell you one thing.
Marco:
As an Intel free house, and by the way, I just traded in TIFF's laptop, the 16-inch MacBook Pro, the Intel one, to Apple and got almost $1,500 for it.
Marco:
It was like $1,480 or something like that.
Marco:
I was blown away that it was still worth that much, but it does feel really good to be Intel free right now.
Marco:
As a nerd, the way we are, we are Apple nerds, and all three of us keep, with the exception of John a few years ago, all three of us keep pretty high-end Apple hardware.
Marco:
Pretty recent Apple hardware.
Marco:
And so to be all in on Apple Silicon, if you don't need to run any Windows stuff, oh my God, it's so nice.
Marco:
It's so, so nice.
Marco:
And I'm happy that the only Intel machines in my house are now gaming PCs.
Marco:
It's like, all right, let Intel be Intel.
Marco:
Let it do what it does best, which is...
Marco:
gaming hardware with pc stuff and have intel microsoft have their own like you know hot little room off to the side of the house where it's just full of like fan noise and then over here we have glorious m1 apple land and it's just so nice over here this is like the you know the the professional side of the house and it's just it's so so much nicer so yeah maybe consider that option
Casey:
Oh, speaking of, tangentially, I heard the fan on my MacBook Pro a couple of weeks ago.
Casey:
I actually heard it.
Casey:
I will give you one guess what I was doing.
Marco:
FFMPEG.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
But I wasn't even doing, like, I have done so much FFMPEG work on this thing, it hasn't even batted an eye.
Casey:
And for what, I don't know, I don't remember specifically what it was, but something about this particular transcode was really ticking it off.
Casey:
And I was like, what?
Casey:
What?
Casey:
What?
Casey:
huh?
Casey:
Oh, that's the fan.
Casey:
That's the fan.
Casey:
Oh, it does have a fan.
Casey:
There is a fan there.
Marco:
Do you not use the hardware encoding?
Casey:
No, I believe I do, generally speaking, because I don't really futz with those particular switches very often.
Casey:
And more often than not, I'm just using Don Melton's scripts that I'm almost sure do use hardware encoding.
Casey:
So yeah, again, I don't remember there being anything remarkable about this particular transcode, but for whatever reason, it kicked the fans on, and it was very...
Casey:
Very surprising.
Casey:
And this was before my AirPod Pro, so I couldn't surround it out or I couldn't silence it.
Casey:
But no, all kidding aside, for me to have been startled by hearing a fan on this laptop, it's just another sign of how great these machines are.
Casey:
John, you should get one.
Casey:
They're really nice.
John:
I was just thinking about how I rebooted into Windows the other day and played a bunch of Windows games in Steam.
John:
I'm not going to be able to do that.
John:
I think I'm going to miss this.
John:
I'm not going to miss running Windows Update, but having the choice of anything in Steam that I was there was a bunch of like little games and like free demos of things I wanted to try.
John:
And I'd seen them like, you know, I can do that.
John:
And I just rebooted into Windows and did that.
John:
And yeah, I'm still going to kind of miss that when, you know, two years from now when the Mac Pro updates.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
So do you think you're going to buy a gaming PC then when that time comes?
John:
No.
John:
My problem with the gaming PC, I mean, there's the philosophical problem.
John:
I don't want windows in my house.
John:
I don't want a PC in my house more precisely.
John:
But I just don't have a place for a gaming PC.
Marco:
end of an era honestly like i know you would never do this and i understand your reasons why no it's two two things i hate a lap a laptop and but yeah i was gonna say like having having a gaming pc be a laptop for people for whom the gaming pc is not their primary computer device it's really nice because it's self-contained and it doesn't have to like take over your entire desk or an entire desk like it's to have like i
Marco:
If you're a really serious gamer, I understand why you want to build a desktop and everything, but if you're a little closer to the casual side, like I am, and even people in my family, the gaming PC laptops are fine for us.
Marco:
They have ample capabilities for us, and the flexibility offered by it being a laptop is so nice.
Marco:
I would suggest just checking it out, because they are not as underpowered as you might think.
John:
but they are as hot and loud as you think honestly even that i've been pleasantly surprised i mean you know most of the time i'm playing minecraft so it's not like that demanding not a demanding game well but i'm playing at like high resolutions and you know having like far render distances and stuff i was playing these games on steam i could play them in native 6k because i have a pretty okay graphics card and sometimes games aren't that demanding when they're not demanding native 6k baby
John:
that's pretty nice and there's no way i would get a 6k monitor for gaming pc gaming pc people are still buying 1440p displays because they're like oh i get better frame rates that way because like for actual serious like top end triple a you know brand new games
John:
And the total inability to buy a 3090 because of crypto and COVID means that 1440 monitors are still a big thing.
John:
Forget about HDR.
John:
Forget about color reproduction.
John:
They can't even get up to 4K with most of these games.
John:
But here I am playing some old-ass game, and it plays perfectly in 6K.