A Series of Rectangles
Marco:
I'm not feeling great right now.
Casey:
Save it for the show.
Casey:
Save it for the show.
Casey:
Save it for the show.
Casey:
Yeah, so we have a lot of things to – this is not really the show, but I'm trying to ease into it since I've cut Marco off.
Casey:
We have lots of stuff to cover.
Casey:
It's going to be John Syracuse's favorite kind of episode, an episode where it's probably nothing but follow-up.
Casey:
So brace yourselves, everybody.
Yeah.
Casey:
It is everyone's favorite time of year.
Casey:
It is approaching WWDC time.
Casey:
So what does that mean?
Casey:
It means the ATP store is back.
Casey:
And no snark.
Casey:
I really mean this.
Casey:
I've been really excited for this one.
Casey:
I feel like we have a really good lineup this year.
Casey:
Not that they've been bad in other years, but I feel like this year, really good lineup.
Casey:
And so here's what we've got.
Casey:
If you are listening to this now, recorded or live, you can go to atp.fm slash store.
Casey:
And we have several different offerings.
Casey:
Let me briefly try to go through them all without John or Marco, probably John, interrupting me.
Casey:
And then we will spend a little more time on each of them.
Marco:
We've got... Hey, I'm good at interrupting you too.
Casey:
Well, yes, but I thought John would have more thoughts on this one.
Casey:
So anyway, actually, you succeeded in making your point.
Casey:
Well done.
Casey:
All right, so we've got several different shirts.
Casey:
We've got the M1 shirt.
Casey:
The front is our favorite six colors, you know, slash, slash, slash, with M1 on the front.
Casey:
The back, a certain John Syracuse spent an inordinate amount of time recreating the chip diagram of the M1.
Casey:
It looks excellent.
Casey:
We have that in color on the front.
Casey:
And then it's monochrome on the back.
Casey:
We also have that in monochrome on the front.
Casey:
So it's just white ink on the front, but several different colors of shirts.
Casey:
We've got an ATP performance shirt.
Casey:
So this is kind of in the spirit of Under Armour, although it is not exactly Under Armour.
Casey:
So if you were wearing this while you are sweating, it doesn't stick to you and you don't have to like scissor it off.
Casey:
It actually slides right off.
Casey:
Then we also have the classic logo shirt, the one that we've known and loved for several years now.
Casey:
We've got the pins that have been around forever and we'll eventually run out of them, but that day is not today.
Casey:
And then my personal favorite, because this was my contribution, we have an ATP pint glass, an etched ATP pint glass, which I'm very excited about.
Casey:
So that's the quick overview.
Casey:
This will all be available.
Casey:
The sale will end Friday, May 14th.
Casey:
This is where I do the same thing I do every year.
Casey:
For those of you who are good about this, I'm sorry for wasting a moment of your time.
Casey:
I'm sorry, but I got to do it.
Casey:
Every year, every time, without fail, within hours of the sale ending, I get tweets.
Casey:
Is it over?
Casey:
Oh, I forgot.
Casey:
Is it over?
Casey:
Is it over?
Casey:
Oh, no, I forgot.
Casey:
Is it over?
Casey:
Yes, it's over.
Casey:
So please, if you're listening to this and you are at all interested in any of these fantastic shirts or glasses or pins, now's the time.
Casey:
Pull your car over if you're in the car.
Casey:
Pull over to the side of the walkway that you're on if you're walking.
Casey:
Or in all likelihood, you're at home, which is where you probably should be.
Casey:
So stop what you're doing at home.
Casey:
ATP.fm slash store.
Casey:
Now's the time.
Casey:
All right, let's go through this with a little more detail.
Casey:
John, the M1 shirt was, I think, 100% your work.
Casey:
So would you like to dive in a little more and tell us a little more about it?
John:
For the people who don't listen to the car segments or don't care about them or don't understand what it is with our logo, the joke of our ATP logo is that since this Accidental Tech podcast came out of us doing a car podcast, it's
John:
It looks a lot like the M logo, the BMW M logo, which has some colored stripes leaning to the right and then an M. And so our show was a bunch of, you know, colored stripes, but it was the Apple colors and then a leaning A for ATP, right?
John:
This year, of course, we know the M1 is in all the Macs and the M1 is awesome.
John:
So it gave us a chance to make a shirt that actually has a bunch of colored stripes and a slanty M. Looks just like the BMW M logo.
John:
Please, BMW, don't sue us.
John:
It's parody.
Yeah.
John:
And so now finally we have an actual M shirt.
John:
Uh, now BMW, the M one was a super car and it was not, that didn't have a logo or anything like this.
John:
Um, actually BMW makes their ones a little bit different, but we took some artistic license.
John:
So that's the idea behind the M one shirt.
John:
Um,
John:
So we've got the colored one, which I think is the most expensive to manufacture shirt we've ever made.
John:
Because every single one of those colors on the front, I think, is a separate printing pass.
John:
Plus, we print it on the back.
John:
So I think for the first time, we had to do calculations to make sure we literally wouldn't lose money in each shirt that we sold.
John:
So we apologize for the price.
John:
And speaking of the price of these shirts, and forget about shipping and VAT.
John:
I know they're insanely expensive.
John:
Just want to remind everybody.
John:
If you don't care about shirts, you don't care about pint glasses, you don't want any of this junk in your life, but you just want to give us money, we have a way for you to do that.
John:
You can become an ATP member at atp.fm slash join.
John:
And believe me, like if you want a shirt, get a shirt.
John:
But if you just want to give us money, we get way, way, way more money if you join as a member than if you buy a shirt.
John:
I know it seems ridiculous.
John:
Like, how can you not be making a ton of money off these shirts?
John:
The shirts are here for people who want shirts.
John:
I want shirts.
John:
My kids want shirts.
John:
People want shirts.
John:
People want pint glasses.
John:
Get them if you want them.
John:
They're awesome.
John:
They're really cool.
John:
But if you don't care about any of this merch and you just want to give us money, atp.fm slash join.
John:
And the synergy here is if you do want a shirt but you don't want to pay full price for that shirt...
John:
If you're an ATP member, you get 15% off every single thing in the store.
John:
So you can become a member today.
John:
Become a member.
John:
Pay for one month of membership.
John:
Get the 15% discount.
John:
Save more money than you spent on the membership.
John:
Buy a bunch of stuff.
John:
Cancel next month.
John:
It's really easy to do.
John:
Oh, and I guess the colored M1 shirt.
John:
So the monochrome one is our attempt to let people have this shirt for less money because the monochrome is just one color of ink so you don't have to do umpteen printing passes on it.
John:
But the cool thing about the M1 monochrome shirt is it comes in a ton of colors.
John:
Let me look at how many different colors we have with this thing.
John:
We have...
John:
like blue, red, purple, teal, green, pink, like a lighter purple, like tri-blend versions of all those.
John:
So just because we show a blue shirt and you're like, ah, I don't want a blue shirt, look at all the colors.
John:
A lot of them are really cool looking.
John:
Lots of different styles, different materials.
John:
When possible, we give every color and every possible material.
John:
It's not always possible.
John:
Some colors are only available in cotton, some only available in tri-blend, but just check out all the colors.
John:
Same thing with the performance shirt.
John:
It comes in a bunch of different colors and styles.
John:
So check it out.
John:
And as for the pint glass, it is not printed.
John:
It is etched.
John:
We already had someone ask whether that's dishwasher safe.
John:
I assume so.
John:
We will have follow up next week to confirm one or the other.
John:
But that's part of the reason we didn't choose printing.
John:
Etching is actually scratching of the glass.
John:
So I think that'll hold up well.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
I'm super excited about this.
Casey:
All of this.
Casey:
And I can't stress enough, John, can you tell the story of recreating the M1 for the back of the M1 shirt?
Casey:
Because you went through just a preposterous amount of work to get this to look right.
John:
Eh, it's not that much work.
John:
I mean, like, so it looks, if you look at it, you'll say, hey, I recognize that kind of from like Apple's presentations where they show this stylized, not really realistic version of the M1 that shows the four high-performance cores and the four efficiency cores and the GPU cores.
John:
And it's not a reflection of the physical chip, but it is kind of an abstract diagram that Apple uses.
John:
But of course, we can't use Apple's graphics because they belong to Apple's.
John:
But I can, in fact, sit there for hours and hours in a vector design program
John:
And make a series of rectangles that more or less approximates exactly what Apple had.
John:
So thank you, Apple, for the inspiration for this chip design, even though it doesn't reflect reality.
John:
And yes, I did draw every single line of that chip myself.
Marco:
And I think a series of rectangles might be underestimating.
John:
how many lines there are in this drawing i mean they really are all rectangles like it's just it's a lot of rectangles and the other thing that i discovered when drawing it is that apple's drawings are not symmetrical like when you see a bunch of lines that you think are evenly spaced they're not actually evenly spaced because i was trying to do it on a grid with like grid snap and i realized when i did the the same number of lines as apple it would be like they wouldn't line up correctly anyway it's it's artisanally hand created it's very interesting
Casey:
Yeah, I'm really, really excited for this.
Casey:
Way back when, it was one of our earlier shirt sales when we had done the, how would you describe this?
Casey:
I think this was Marco's idea, but it was a rounded rect outline that was approximately the proportions of the then new Apple Watch.
Casey:
And it said Accidental Tech Podcast on it.
Casey:
And we did this years and years and years ago.
Casey:
And I think this was the same shirt that we did the edition, the very first edition, if I'm not mistaken.
Marco:
Yes.
Casey:
And if you weren't around for that, we basically printed one or had one printed in with like gold foil or something like that, which I don't think it was actual literal gold.
Marco:
But nevertheless, no, we actually tried to make it literal gold.
Marco:
But they and there are people who print in gold leaf, but like it wasn't going to work out like there was some practical reason why like you you kind of can't really do it.
Marco:
It's technically possible, but it's a bad idea.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So we attempted to do that, and it didn't work out.
Casey:
But one of the shirts we did was the sport shirt.
Casey:
And we did that in this, again, it's not literally Under Armour, but Under Armour style.
Casey:
I don't know how to describe it in a flattering way, because I would say almost like a plasticky, but that sounds terrible.
Casey:
It's not plasticky.
Casey:
But nevertheless, we did that.
Casey:
And that is my designated workout shirt.
Casey:
And I only bought one of them, so I use it a lot.
Casey:
And it needs brothers and sisters.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Hence the ATP performance shirt, which I'm really excited about.
Casey:
And again, that comes, like John said, in several different colors.
Casey:
And I cannot tell you enough how excited I am for the ATP pint glass.
Casey:
Years ago, Plex sent me a bunch of swag just to be nice because Plex is awesome.
Casey:
And one of them was a pint glass with a printed Plex logo on it.
Casey:
And it is my favorite pint glass.
Casey:
And even though I'm not a beer drinker, a pint is a perfect size for all sorts of beverages, for water, for beer.
Casey:
soda for any number of things for mixed drinks if you're aggressive so uh i am really excited to get this pint glass uh in the house and and have some friends for my plex pint glass as well i am super stoked this is all again until friday may 14th i won't belabor the point but please if you're even thinking about it now's the time pull over stop what you're doing atp.fm slash store atp.fm slash join and again
Casey:
please go to your membership page or your member page and see what your discount code is and find your discount code and use that when you check out.
Casey:
Save yourself 15%.
Casey:
So thank you for entertaining us.
Casey:
I appreciate it.
Casey:
And we'll move right along and continue celebrating.
John:
Before we continue, I wanted to thank Casey and reiterate that because I totally forgot.
John:
If you're an ATP member, you get 15% off.
John:
If you go to your member page and get your discount code, you actually have to go.
John:
We have a link to the member page on atp.fm.store.
John:
So you log in as your member.
John:
You go to your member page.
John:
There you see like your private feeds and all the other stuff.
John:
And you will also see your discount code.
John:
Copy and paste that discount code into the promo code field when you check out from the Cotton Bureau page.
John:
And that's how you get your discount.
Casey:
moving right along we have other things that we need to celebrate two-thirds of atp have completed asterisk asterisk their journey on the vaccination train which we'll talk about that in a second but marco how you feeling buddy not great bob what is that from i know the line but what is that from mad men okay so you got yours yes or your second shot yesterday
Marco:
Yeah, yeah.
Marco:
I've had friends who have had worse days after, but I'm not having the nothing reaction that I think many people have, for sure.
Casey:
I had a mostly nothing reaction.
Casey:
Erin also got her second yesterday, and she, I think, is on the same path that you are.
Casey:
She's not bad, but she's not feeling good.
Marco:
On my desk in front of me are two Benadryl pills that I will be taking near the end of the show, which will start a timeline.
Marco:
But but yeah, I look, let me start by saying I might have committed a crime.
Casey:
Oh, wonderful.
Marco:
I gave false statements.
Marco:
They asked if I had had any of the symptoms recently, and I said no.
Marco:
But that wasn't entirely true.
Marco:
You see, my kid had a cold about a week ago.
Marco:
Basically, it was going around the whole school, the whole town.
Marco:
Everybody has this cold, and it's not COVID.
Marco:
If people have been tested, it's fine.
Marco:
We know it's not that.
Marco:
So this cold has hit me.
Marco:
One of the weird symptoms of this cold is that every night for or most nights for the last three or four nights, I've gotten like hives on my arms and legs just itch for a while.
Marco:
I've never gotten hives in my life.
Marco:
I have mild allergies here and there.
Marco:
Never had hives for anything.
Marco:
So that's interesting.
Marco:
and it seems to completely unrelated believe me i've done the debugging of like all right what are the factors that have changed what could this possibly be could it be food could it be laundry detergent like all that everything it's not it's none of those things like nothing correlates in in a direct way to this except i did some research and apparently i
Marco:
Hives are often apparently the result of like certain viruses.
Marco:
Like sometimes you just get a cold and one of the things it does to you is give you hives for the duration of the cold.
Marco:
I had never heard of this, but when you research hives, that's what turns up from like the more reputable sources.
Marco:
Which, by the way, are hard to find.
Marco:
But anyway, so I decided, you know, we had this appointment that was set from when we got the first shot.
Marco:
They automatically set you the second appointment three weeks later.
Marco:
And I thought, you know, I can I can not get my second shot.
Marco:
But there's a risk in that, that all the testing that's been done on the vaccines and the massive amount of data that we have that this thing is ridiculously overwhelmingly safe.
Marco:
I'm pretty sure you're more likely to die on the way to the vaccine site in a car accident than you are to die from the vaccine.
Marco:
I know that we've tested this very widely, but...
Marco:
we've tested it with people getting a shot you know once and then getting a second one three weeks later if i get my second one six weeks later then that's going to be a lot less tested of a situation you'd be fine like the three weeks is the soonest you can possibly give it because they're rushing to get the vaccine most vaccines they wait six months to a year so just fyi i know it's too late now but you could you could have waited a year and it would be fine
Marco:
Well, and I know logically.
Marco:
I know like – and I mean again like the way mRNA vaccines work is so remarkably amazing and remarkably safe compared to most of the things.
Marco:
Like I wasn't too concerned.
Marco:
I'm like, okay, that would be like an unknown.
Marco:
Or I could just go get it now, even though I kind of have a weird cold, and roll the dice on that risk.
Marco:
And I decided to do that instead because I wanted to get this done.
John:
Your reasoning about health decisions is suspect on many levels.
John:
I mean, you're talking about the thing that's tested.
John:
They're asking those questions for a reason, presumably because they don't want you to take it when you have a cold, but you're okay doing that.
Marco:
anyway i'm sure everything is fine i'm sure it's fine i'm just saying i feel like your reasoning your your reasoning is not sound for any of this well regardless maybe maybe people don't always make the right decisions but regardless that's what i did uh so i i still have the the weird nighttime hives on my arms and legs uh but otherwise like from the vaccine i seem to only have worsened my cold by making myself extremely tired all day today yeah
Marco:
Just like really just like knocked out tired.
Marco:
But I don't have like the fever that everyone says they get and everything.
Marco:
So I think I'm doing okay.
Marco:
And ultimately, I mean, geez, I did two episodes of the show with COVID.
John:
I was going to say, like you're really on the COVID tour this year.
John:
You get the actual COVID.
John:
You get the vaccine.
John:
You're getting the second shot while you have some other cold.
John:
Like you're just, you're rounding all the bases here.
John:
So I think you're, you know, maybe you'll get a fourth or a third COVID shot in six months.
John:
Who knows?
Marco:
Thanks.
Casey:
yeah maybe i see this i got the pfizer maybe i get the modern one also just just for yeah why not just double up all right so we should start with some follow-up and this relates actually to what we were just talking about so i this this is one of those moments where i swear at some point i said something but either it got cut or you totally said it it got cut in the edit
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
So I was going to say either it got cut in the edit or there was enough like distance between the thing that I said wrong in my in-show correction, which does happen sometimes.
Casey:
You know, I'll say something five minutes into the show and then I'll correct it 10 minutes into the show.
Casey:
And we've already gotten inundated with emails after the five minute mark about how wrong I am, which, you know, at that moment I was wrong.
John:
So that's fine.
John:
And that's why it got edited out because your correction was distant from it and Marco was trimming the fat.
John:
So anyway, go on.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So last week I was making reference to being fully, quote unquote, fully vaccinated, which I don't know if that necessarily is the wrong nomenclature, but it certainly presented the wrong implication.
Casey:
And I would just like to state clearly that, yes, even last week I knew that it's not until two weeks after your second shot, if you're on the two shot system, that you are considered completely and utterly vaccinated.
Casey:
All I was trying to say at the time, which, again, I probably should have chosen better words, is I have received the mandatory two shots that I need.
Casey:
And this was, at some point or another, this related to the Gruber term maxinated, which I think is quite funny and I have embraced.
Casey:
And Gruber defined vaccinated as two weeks after your final shot.
Casey:
And so I am not yet vaccinated.
Casey:
I am halfway to vaccinated in the sense that I got my second shot about a week ago.
Casey:
So yes, you are not fully vaccinated until two weeks after your second shot.
Casey:
I am well aware of that.
Casey:
I am sorry that that got cut in the last episode.
Casey:
as am i because it was probably my fault well you know like i said i think i clarified we went off on like a tangent if i recall correctly and then by the time i got the clarification us yeah if you listen to the tangent you see why it was cut but that's where you put your correction yeah exactly got it yeah awesome attention no yeah right that never happens
Casey:
So moving right along sometime.
Casey:
What was it?
Casey:
Just a day or two ago.
Casey:
Who is this?
Casey:
Joanna Stern had an interview with a hair force one, otherwise known as Craig Federighi.
Casey:
And it was a pretty good interview.
Casey:
It was only eight minutes long.
Casey:
You can find it on YouTube.
Casey:
And interestingly at seven and a quarter minutes, Joanna asks him, Hey,
Casey:
You know, Tim has said that he's going to be out in 10 years.
Casey:
Are you going to be the next CEO?
Casey:
And John, what did he say?
John:
Also, here's the thing.
John:
Yeah, I would encourage everyone to watch his interview because it's really short.
John:
And also because his hair seems to be at half mast.
John:
This is like the first bad C-fed hair day I've ever seen.
Marco:
Maybe it was like really humid there.
John:
yeah it looked kind of like that um or you just got out of bed i don't know but that was the question it's like oh your name has been floated as the next ceo which is a topic that we discussed in the show a couple episodes ago who are the possible who are the possible people who could be in line for next ceo and when we discussed it my attitude towards uh federighi being an exeo was like ah it doesn't seem like something he's interested in um you know because he just seems like he's more interested in tech stuff and i'm sure he knows how hard tim's job is i'm not sure he has any you know
John:
It was all about whoever was going to be CEO was going to really have to want that job, and it's a difficult job, and it's in many ways not as much fun as being at the more technical level.
John:
So he got asked the question, and his answer was, get out of here.
John:
No, I think he said, irresponsible.
John:
Yeah, that would be irresponsible.
John:
That's insanity.
John:
Forget it.
John:
Right.
John:
But watch the video.
John:
That's why we have a timestamp link in the show notes that brings you directly to that question.
John:
You can see his answer.
John:
What he says, the words, the transcript is, oh, that's that's silly, you know, whatever.
John:
But the way he says it said, oh, CFED wants to be CEO.
That's true.
John:
That was my read on it anyway.
John:
My read on it was, yes, it was a silly, oh, forget it.
John:
That's so ridiculous, right?
John:
But the way he said it makes me think he's open to the idea.
John:
So I'm starting to come around on that.
Marco:
I still don't think that A, he would want it or B, he should be the CEO because we know him to some degree.
Marco:
The three of us have all met him at some point, right?
Marco:
I've had a couple of conversations with him, like WBCs and stuff.
Marco:
You can tell through and through he's a nerd like us.
Marco:
And a nerd like us should not be in the CEO of Apple in 2021 position.
Marco:
Because as I was saying, at this point, it's more of like a – it's almost like a political and diplomatic kind of job on a lot of levels.
Marco:
And that's not a job for a nerd.
Marco:
That's a job for basically a tech-savvy politician.
John:
Well, I was saying that because he's a nerd, he wouldn't want it because that's not what he's into.
John:
But in terms of could a nerd do that job?
John:
Well, here's the thing.
John:
Yes, he's the nerd, but he's so high up on the org chart that surely his last two or three jobs have been like 98 percent political managerial, you know, BS.
John:
It just so happens that he's also still super technical and super into that.
John:
But I think as Steve Jobs at least has shown, whatever it is that you're super into, you can still dig down on even when you're CEO.
John:
Like you can just kind of choose which things you delegate.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
So that – I mean, I'm basing it off like the way he said like a three-word answer.
John:
So this is obviously silly, right?
John:
But –
John:
I no longer think it's ridiculous that he might be interested in it.
John:
And I don't think it's ridiculous that he might do an OK job at it.
John:
Just because his strengths are completely different than Tim Cook's and Tim Cook's were completely different than Steve's.
John:
I think they're all they're all inhabiting such a high level in the org chart that they all could do a reasonable job as CEO.
John:
They would just be very different kinds of CEOs.
Casey:
I think that's true.
Casey:
And the rumblings I've heard from friends at Apple is that, you know, I think some of them like CFED and some of them don't.
Casey:
But I've never heard anyone even think about breathing that he's not an incredibly smart man.
Casey:
Everyone universally, the friends of mine who like him, the friends of mine that don't, all say that he's extremely bright.
Casey:
And if you look at this interview, now granted, I'm sure it was heavily edited, but it seems like not only is he smart, but he's a very cool customer in a very Tim Cook sort of way.
Casey:
Uh, and, and I, I don't know that he would get the nod and I, I'm not a hundred percent convinced he would want it, but I do think if, if I were a betting man, I'd say he would definitely take a stab at it.
Casey:
And the other interesting thing is, you know, he is extremely technical.
Casey:
I think it was Marco a second ago that said he's, you know, a nerd's nerd.
Marco:
He really, really is right.
Casey:
He's still at least looking at code from time to time.
Casey:
And I think there've been times that, that rank and file engineers have had to be like, uh,
Casey:
Craig, stop.
Casey:
Please don't make commits.
Casey:
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Casey:
Please stop.
Casey:
You have much more important things.
Casey:
That may be BS.
Casey:
I might be making that up, but I'm pretty sure that I have heard stories about that not too many years ago, that this is still a thing that happens from time to time.
Casey:
And he seems to really get it.
Casey:
So I only met him once.
Casey:
It was when Marco, if I recall correctly, you had spotted him across the field at the bash when it was still in San Francisco.
Casey:
And all of a sudden, you basically grabbed my arm and said, follow me, let's go.
Casey:
What is going on?
Casey:
And next thing I know, I'm posing with Federighi and shaking his hand.
Casey:
And he was an extremely kind fellow.
Casey:
And so anyways, yeah, I would be surprised if he was the one to get the nod, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was interested in it.
Marco:
I did pick up there was a little bit of oddity to his tone of reaction, but I attributed that to discomfort with the question as opposed to actually wanting the job.
Marco:
Again, I've heard similar things, Casey, of how he really is very involved with the tech.
Marco:
I can't imagine that he has any interest in doing all the other crap that the CEO has to do.
Marco:
He's really into the software and the tech.
Marco:
And he doesn't even seem to be that into a lot of the product design and product decisions, let alone the massive amount of operational and political stuff that CEOs have to deal with, financial stuff.
Marco:
I mean, there's so much stuff that CEOs have to do these days, especially the CEO of Apple in 2021 or 2031 or whatever it is.
Marco:
It's not a job that somebody who is very, very technical would probably really want to do because –
Marco:
And honestly, he's probably really happy where he is because where he is is about as high up as you can go without having a lot more of that other stuff come into your job description that he probably doesn't want.
Casey:
Yeah, I think, you know, people always have aspirations.
Casey:
People are always enthusiastic and trying to get to the next, you know, next big thing.
Casey:
But I totally hear what you're saying.
Casey:
I could go on with this conversation for another hour.
Casey:
We got a lot to go through.
Casey:
So let's just move right along.
Casey:
Apple TV.
Casey:
So calibration, I think...
Casey:
thought we had said this or implied this last episode, but I guess not.
Casey:
The whole thing where you calibrate the TV, which is I guess how we phrased it, you're not actually calibrating the TV itself.
Casey:
You're calibrating the Apple TV's output for your specific TV.
Casey:
The idea being that when your TV is tuned to the Apple TV, when you're using the Apple TV as your input, then it will look incredible because you've used your iPhone and the Apple TV in concert in order to tune the output for your specific TV.
Casey:
Is that a better way of describing it?
John:
I mean, we did say that it is just the TV's outputs, but I didn't delve into what that and what the implications of that are.
John:
I mean, the obvious first implication is that means that if you calibrate the Apple TV's output to look better on your TV, that only affects the Apple TV, because when you're not looking at the Apple TV.
John:
that was the only thing whose output you calibrated like you're not calibrating the the display device you're calibrating the signal that comes over the hdmi cable into your display device and adjusting that signal to account for whatever weirdness there is in your display device but when you use another display device like your game console or your cable box or whatever it is that you have
John:
Anything you did with the Apple TV is totally irrelevant because you were only basically telling the Apple TV to output different signals.
John:
Second thing is, perhaps less obvious, television sets, especially modern ones, have tons of adjustments that the Apple TV has no access to it.
John:
There are tons of image processing things that happen on the TV itself, and there's nothing you can do to the output from the Apple TV to enable, disable, or adjust those features at all.
John:
And if your TV is super-duper off, there's nothing the output of your HDMI signal can do to account for that.
John:
Or if it could account for it, it could just make it much worse, because if your red and your green are super low, the only way it can get it in balance is bringing your blue super low, and now your whole image level is down.
John:
It's very, very complicated.
John:
All this is to say that you should actually calibrate your television
John:
and not calibrate the output of one of your hdmi devices to account for the idiosyncrasies of your television set so please calibrate your tv if you want to do this now all that said this apple thing is probably better than nothing and if you watch most of your tv through the apple tv it might help some but yeah um you know uh quinn nelson uh snazzy labs snazzy uh
John:
youtube channel has an upcoming video about the apple calibration versus a real calibration i'm really curious to see what he finds but uh my uh my assessment of this apple calibration thing right now is pretty low so unless it's this is some very surprising results i would say please calibrate your television and not just your apple tv
Casey:
sounds good all right the remote has a slightly rounded back which i think i had seen before we recorded but we don't i don't believe we brought up last time so that should be nice to at least be able to pick up the correct side facing upwards which is which is definitely an improvement uh how do you feel about that john
John:
yeah and even last time he said it had no acknowledgement of human hands here's a minor acknowledgement now this siri remote also had slightly curved sides so you could pick it up with your fingernails off the table this one is a more of a uniform sort of uh u shape along the entire bottom it's not sloped enough and it's not like it's still not going to be you're going to pick it up or you're going to feel like you're a giant and this is something for a toddler because that's how small the remote is but credit or credit as it do they slightly curve the bottom
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
And then Eric Weber writes that the original Siri remote was $80, but it was dropped to $60 with the refreshed white ring when the original Apple TV 4K was introduced in 2017.
John:
So this remote is not cheaper than the Siri remote.
John:
It's only cheaper than the original Siri remote.
John:
So that's a shame.
Casey:
There was a big brouhaha over the last several days that the new Siri remote does not have an accelerometer or gyroscope for gaming on the Apple TV, which is a bummer.
John:
Yeah, especially since it costs the same amount and it doesn't have a U1 in it as we discussed last week.
John:
So I'm not sure where the extra money went.
John:
It's got a smaller touchpad, a similar number of buttons.
John:
It's made of aluminum instead of being aluminum, glass and metal or whatever the other one was.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Anyway, I don't quite understand why this lacks those features, other than the touchpad's not big enough to play games with anyway, so why should they bother?
John:
But really, if you're going to play games on the Apple TV, you should buy a controller.
John:
You shouldn't use the Siri remote, and apparently you can't use this remote if the games require an accelerometer or gyroscope.
John:
Is anybody playing games on Apple TV?
John:
I hope they're not playing them with the remote, if they are.
John:
I mean, I guess you can play Crossy Road with the remote.
Marco:
Any game that has one button?
Marco:
We did.
Marco:
Like, when it first came out, we played a lot of Crossy Road.
Marco:
We played Badland.
Marco:
But ultimately, like, we just kind of fell out of favor with the Apple TV as a gaming platform because we tried a bunch of games.
Marco:
I even bought two of the controllers.
Marco:
Like, two different branded Apple TV, you know, MFI controllers.
Marco:
And the gaming scene is just so...
Marco:
It feels like back in the 90s when you bought the wrong system.
Marco:
It feels like you have the 3DO and you're waiting for good games to come out and you're like, well, there's not a lot here.
Casey:
Well, you're used to that being a Genesis person.
Marco:
Oh, no way.
Marco:
Come on.
Casey:
It was too easy.
Marco:
I couldn't resist.
Marco:
No, it's more like a 32X.
Marco:
It's like you bought 32X thinking, oh, there's going to be a lot of games for this and then just nothing happens.
John:
Well, if you subscribe to Apple one, you should at least check out Apple arcade because they just added a whole infusion of games, including like a bunch of known good games from the pre Apple arcade days only without ads in an app purchase.
John:
So, you know, if you're getting it for free anyway, you might as well check it out.
Casey:
Yeah, so anyway, to come back to this lack of gyroscope and accelerometer, apparently if you try to play a game that requires it and you don't have a proper game controller hooked up, the app will say, to play this game on your Apple TV, you need to connect the Apple TV remote, parenthesis, first generation, parenthesis, or a compatible PlayStation, Xbox, or MFI controller.
Casey:
If I were to read that as a regular person, I wouldn't have a clue what MFI meant.
John:
i don't have a clue what apple tv remote parentheses first generation means yeah absolutely and there's a note about this that uh that apple tv remote is what it's called in countries where siri is not available on the apple tv but otherwise it's called the siri remote fair enough but no one knows what like apple no one knows what siri remote first generation is and no one knows what apple remote first generation is but people do know what playstation xbox controllers are so at least they have a fighting chance
Casey:
Somebody, Odin, wrote in with an interesting point about Apple TV pricing.
Casey:
So as everyone else has been, we've been lamenting the fact that it is a very expensive box to do the sorts of things that it does.
Casey:
And Odin writes, with regard to the pricing, neither the Apple TV doesn't come with an HDMI cable, so you can't even connect it to your TV right out of the box.
Casey:
Meanwhile, Google and Amazon's $30 streaming devices plug directly into an HDMI port.
John:
neither meaning like the 4k or the hd like it makes sense if you think about it for a second and you know how big the box is of course there's not an hdmi cable in there it's this tiny little box it just got enough room for the little puck and the remote uh but it's another you'll get it you'll like yay here's this new apple to you let me hook it up and you realize unless you already have a spare hdmi cable unless you disconnect another input and put this one in its place there's something else you have to buy because you know it's just not expensive enough uh to support the price of that cable it's it's pretty crummy
Marco:
did the apple tv ever come with an hdmi cable i don't remember no i don't think so i think it's always maybe maybe the one that was uh basically a mac mini do you remember that one i don't think that had hdmi output i think that was component maybe i never had one i don't remember but no they never came with hdmi i had one of those they never came with hdmi cables
John:
And yes, the chat room asked the PS5 does come with an HDMI cable.
John:
And it's good that it does because PS5 supports HDMI 2.1 and most people don't have an HDMI 2.1 compatible cable just laying around if they haven't bought AVU equipment in a while.
Marco:
Correction, it did have HDMI out.
Marco:
we regret it also had component in my defense it was the one that ran like Mac OS 10.4 or something yeah it was it was basically it was like a little Celeron in there it was a whole little like low-powered like 400 megahertz Celeron computer or something like that
Marco:
and a hard drive right uh yeah i believe so it was a little it was a little mac it ran mac os i do not remember this at all it was the one that it basically acted like an ipod you had to like sync things to it from your mac and it was it was a whole thing i think it was introduced at the iphone event in 2007 was it yes yes it was it was like itv right
Marco:
Yeah, originally it was, well, I think it was announced as ITV earlier that year, but I think they introduced it then as Apple TV.
Marco:
It was introduced at one event, or it was like previewed at one event, and then it was, I think it was shown off at the iPhone event.
John:
As bad as the current crop of Apple TVs are, this one was worse.
John:
So just be glad things have improved.
Marco:
For the time, it was really interesting.
John:
For the time, TiVo embarrassed it, so I'm not sure.
Casey:
Oh, here we go.
Casey:
We need a different sound effect other than a ding for the TiVo.
John:
I don't talk about TiVo much.
John:
I'm just saying.
John:
Back when the first Apple TV came out, TiVo was just a thousand times better.
Casey:
Moving right along.
Casey:
John, tell me, what is the deal with high frame rate HDR anyway?
Casey:
What is the story there?
John:
We talked about that as a possible reason that Marco should get the fancy new Apple TV.
John:
Oh, don't you want to see a high frame rate HDR video, meaning higher than like, you know, 30 frames per second or whatever.
John:
And Chris Jennings tells us that apparently, according to his conversations with Apple support, which isn't always exactly correct, but according to these conversations from a theoretically knowledgeable Apple source in Apple support,
John:
you can get the high frame rate HDR features on the older Apple TV 4K too, that it's basically a software feature, not a hardware feature.
John:
Now, initially I thought, well, that can't be the case because only the new Apple TV 4K supports HDMI 2.1.
John:
And I know you need HDMI 2.1 to support 120 frames per second and stuff like that.
John:
But it turns out that even though the new Apple TV has HDMI 2.1, it only supports HDMI.
John:
up to 4K at 60 frames per second.
John:
Even though HDMI 2.1, the standard, can do 4K at 120 frames per second, the fancy new Apple TV doesn't go higher than 60.
John:
And the old Apple TV 4K supported HDMI 2.0a, which stops at 4K 60,
John:
But I don't know if the old Apple TV 4K before the software do 4K60.
John:
So anyway, it's still an open question, but it seems clear that if you're looking for 4K at 120 frames per second from your new Apple TV, it can't currently do that, even though technically the wire coming out of it can support that.
John:
um i guess we'll just wait to have to get these things in our houses and see if we can play back 4k 60 frame per second hdr video on an old apple tv 4k with the new tv os update but according to apple support that is a thing that can happen
John:
The other theory I have is that maybe high frame rate HDR via AirPlay requires the new Apple TV and it only works wired or, you know, downloaded to the thing with the old one.
John:
I don't know.
John:
It's very confusing.
Marco:
Better get that 64 gig model in case it's only downloaded.
Marco:
Yeah, right?
Yeah.
Casey:
Aye, aye, aye.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And AppleCare Plus is available for the first time for Apple TV, providing three years of technical support and additional hardware coverage, including up to two incidents of accidental damage protection every 12 months.
Casey:
It's $30 for all of that.
Casey:
And I first thought, why would one want this?
Casey:
But then it occurred to me when I was still with a true jobby job, there were Apple TVs in like every conference room.
Casey:
And I would assume that this is a corporate thing.
John:
No, no, you forget, or maybe you've been lucky enough not to know this.
John:
It's a stupid remote.
John:
The Siri remote was covered in glass, and people were shattering them all the time.
John:
It's not like your Apple TV puck is going to get damaged, I hope, like it's usually just sitting with the TV or whatever.
John:
It's this stupid remote.
John:
Now, I think the new remote looks much, much sturdier because it's just aluminum and plastic buttons, and there's no big glass thing, but I've seen so many pictures of completely shattered, like the glass diving board on the Siri remotes.
John:
So I just wanted to bring this up just because if you're afraid of that happening or for some reason you're buying the one that still has the glass remote, you can actually get AppleCare for it.
John:
And I think the only reason this exists is because of all of the people breaking their Siri remote and then being super angry that it costs 60 bucks or in the past 80 bucks to replace the stupid remote that they just broke.
Casey:
That's a good point.
Casey:
I hadn't considered that.
John:
The chat room says that the Apple TV remote is not covered by AppleCare or was not covered by AppleCare.
John:
I'm assuming this new AppleCare for the Apple TV covers everything.
John:
And when they say accidental damage, I'm assuming they include accidental damage to the remote.
John:
But if you have any questions, ask Apple to make sure before you buy it.
John:
But it is only $30.
Marco:
Is it very likely that you would accidentally damage the box?
Yeah.
John:
I mean, I guess if it's on a, in a conference room or being wheeled around on a card and you drop it and it cracks, I don't know, maybe yank out the cable and it breaks the connector.
Casey:
I don't know, man.
Casey:
But all I know is it's this coming Friday, which as we record is like a day and a half away that I can finally order a new one.
Casey:
And I am super excited.
Yeah.
Marco:
It is pretty funny, though.
Marco:
I think somebody wrote in to point this out, but the new one isn't that much better than the outgoing one.
Marco:
Most of the newness of it is the new remote, which you can now get for all of them, or you will be able to get for all of them once the orders go up.
Marco:
and it's an A12 versus an A10X, but the A10X and A12 are actually not as far apart as you would think.
John:
I did read that the A10X has a better GPU than the A12, which I'm not sure that I'd buy, but the A12 certainly will be lower power in...
John:
for doing the same amount of work, I suppose.
Marco:
Yeah, it seems like this was an update mostly to the remote.
Marco:
And Apple basically speed-bumped barely the box.
Marco:
And I'm okay with that because the remote was the biggest problem.
Marco:
I'm still amused at how bad the pricing is and that they still offer two capacities.
Marco:
But, you know, I'm hoping that the remote will be good and we will find out.
Marco:
Honestly, though,
Marco:
I don't think I'm even going to buy the new box.
Marco:
I think I'm only going to buy the remotes.
Marco:
Because I look at the box and I'm like, well, what am I spending the extra $120 for the box for?
Marco:
I'm not really getting a lot for that, I don't think.
Casey:
I can understand that.
John:
Real-time follow-up, they were looking at the apple.com slash support slash product slash Apple TV, and it says the AppleCare Plus does cover your Apple TV, included Siri remote and power cord.
John:
It's not quite Siri remote anymore, Apple.
John:
Update your page.
John:
And up to two incidents of accidental damage.
John:
It looks like the remote is covered under the new AppleCare.
John:
And one more AppleCare thing here that I snuck in.
John:
This is not Apple TV related, but apparently now AppleCare Plus coverage for the Mac can be extended beyond three years.
John:
You just keep paying for it.
John:
So they always have the thing where you can pay like per month, but then you could also pay one lump sum and get the three years.
John:
Now at the end of the three years, you can just keep paying, I presume on a yearly or monthly or whatever plan.
John:
We'll put a link in the show notes for more details on this.
John:
So if you have a Mac and you're always annoyed that even with the fancy AppleCare Plus, you know, three year bulk purchase thing, it just ends after three years.
John:
Now you can keep paying and keep getting that AppleCare if you want to.
Marco:
That's actually really nice.
Marco:
You know, like I would have definitely used that on my iMac Pro.
Marco:
I think, you know, people who buy like, you know, really expensive Macs and use them for more than three years.
Marco:
that's a really nice feature i wonder like how long ago though like there has to be some limit right because they otherwise they would be like apple would therefore be on the hook to replace your like seven year old back or something like there's probably some limit they have that time horizon where like the products become like obsolete or something in apple parlance and they're like i'm sure there is a limit on it but just going past three years is useful and
John:
You know, the longer you go, the more likely it is you're going to need that coverage.
John:
So if the price doesn't increase, which I don't think it does, I don't think increases with time other than just like the normal sort of inflationary increases of AppleCare on all their products.
John:
Yeah, it might be a good deal for people if they keep you the max for a long time.
Casey:
Hey, going back to the Apple TV for a second, I am going to be placing an order Friday morning.
Casey:
Do I, why would I spend the extra $20 for the 64 gig one?
Casey:
I'm never going to play games on it.
Casey:
I almost never, I can't remember a time I've ever downloaded anything to this.
John:
You got to hold all those screensaver video.
Casey:
You know, you joke, but that actually is a reasonable answer because those screensavers are so good.
Casey:
But like, I don't think it's worth 20 bucks to do that.
Casey:
Is it like, why would I get the big one?
John:
I think $20 is so little for doubling the storage I might get it anyway just for the hell of it.
John:
I have the Arial screensaver on my Mac and I looked at how big the folder of downloads is and it's 54 gigs.
Casey:
Yeah, it's big.
Casey:
It is not small, especially for a computer with the monitor you have.
John:
So, you know, if you get the 32 gig Apple TV, you certainly won't have all of the screensaver video cached locally.
John:
And I know that's going to really pain you.
Casey:
That's interesting, actually.
Casey:
With your gigabit internet connection.
Casey:
Exactly, exactly.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Well, we'll see how I feel.
Casey:
But sitting here now, I think I'm just going to get the 32.
Casey:
Moving on to the iMac, the power brick slash cable.
Casey:
This was brought up, I think I first saw this with Jason Snell.
Casey:
He apparently cut a, I think it was a two meter string and hung it off the back of a standing desk while it was in standing mode.
Casey:
And he said that the power brick would probably be dangling in the air because the two meters isn't quite enough for his particular standing desk, which is kind of a bummer.
John:
what is this meters business analog is affecting you we're talking about feet here okay sorry john two meters is not the same thing as six feet um yeah so jason did bring this up when he was trying to see you know in my standing desk if i had a six foot cord coming out of the back of my iMac would the brick reach the ground or would the brick be dangling in midair and his measurements indicated that the the power brick would kind of be dangling in midair which is not ideal but
John:
um he did an interview uh on upgrade with the apple folks and brought this exact issue up and said hey uh six foot cord i just measured that won't be quite long enough for my setup how did you come up with six feet and the apple people said well we looked at all different setups and we came out that we thought this was the blah blah blah but like jason had just got done telling them it's like well this may fit like like uh the airpods fit the average ear but not fitting marco's ear uh this may be sort of the sweet spot for satisfying the most people but
John:
But it doesn't work in Jason's setup, and I don't think Jason's, you know, because Apple acknowledged standing desks.
John:
It's not like they didn't think about standing desks.
John:
They did, but Jason's not that tall, and his desk is not that high.
John:
So I feel like they, you know, put an extra six inches to a foot on this cord would probably be beneficial for people who use standing desks.
Marco:
You know what would be a lot more beneficial for people who use standing desks?
Marco:
Why are you running more than one cable off the desk?
Marco:
Oh, you'll have to Velcro things to the bottom of your desk.
Marco:
Here we go.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Somehow zip tie or otherwise attach a surg strip under your desk to the underside of your desk.
Marco:
Plug everything on your desk into that.
Marco:
Tie up all the loose cable excess so it's nice and tidy somewhere.
Marco:
And then run one cable or maybe two if you include Ethernet.
Marco:
from that area of your desk down one of the lifting legs or whatever you can have it run down cleanly to the outlet and then you can have a huge amount of slack in that second you know cable grouping of you know just the ethernet and power coming out of the desk and all the stupid little short cables you can plug into the underside of your desk and have everything nice and tidy
John:
so this is a setup for people who have more than just the imac on their desk but part of the beauty of having the single cable coming out of your imac like you don't even need ethernet back there and everything like that's i think if you just have an imac in a lone scenario like that you don't need the whole power strip underneath the desk maybe you just have the one cord and maybe those people don't use standing desks i don't know i'm just saying like it's the fact that it's so close to working with a standing desk but just needs a few more inches seems like they could fix that in a subsequent revision
John:
The second thing to know about the power brick is we were speculating about, hey, they could have used USB-C because USB-C power delivery can do 100 watts.
John:
Apparently, the power brick is rated for 143 watts.
John:
Now, that doesn't mean the iMac or any of the iMacs they introduced...
John:
uh you know in the in the apple event will actually ever consume 143 watts but that's what the brick is rated for so maybe apple knows something we don't maybe they're just trying to have one brick and reuse it uh you know maybe they're thinking ahead because the next version might use more power than this one did i don't know but either way uh the bricks makes me think that apple thinks that 100 watts is not sufficient for the system either in the present or the future
John:
it's interesting uh tell me about visa bounce because apparently you can flip-flop sort of kind of yeah we didn't i don't know if we mentioned visa mounts at all but just fyi like the like the old style imax these new colored ones you can also get them with a visa mount if you don't like the non-adjustable little foot you can get a visa mount on the back and then put it on whatever arm or stand or anything else you have that supports visa um
John:
And apparently, according to Jason Snell, you can call AppleCare and if you buy a Visa mount iMac and say, I don't want the Visa mount anymore, can you swap it for the foot version?
John:
Now, no idea how much that would cost.
John:
Obviously, it would cost you some money.
John:
I assume they just replaced the entire back of the computer.
John:
But the good thing is the computer is basically a giant iPad anyway.
John:
And so the back is just like the entire big back shell.
John:
And maybe it's a maybe it's an easy repair.
John:
I don't know.
John:
But it's nice to know that you're not stuck with the Visa mount permanently.
John:
if you buy one and then change your mind later.
Casey:
And then someone wrote in to ask, hey, does anyone else wish that they would add the Ethernet port to all Mac power adapters?
Casey:
For example, the notebooks would be nicer than a dongle.
Casey:
Don't we all want that?
Casey:
Or is it just me?
Casey:
I guess not literally just me, but...
John:
I mean, it depends on your setup.
John:
I can see the appeal because we don't like dongles, right?
John:
And you have to have the power brick with you anyway.
John:
And there's plenty of room on the power brick for the Ethernet connector.
John:
But on the other hand, people tend not to like to crawl around under their desk and plug things in.
John:
And with an iMac, it's not a big deal.
John:
You do it once.
John:
It's a desktop.
John:
You set it up and you're done.
John:
But with a notebook, you're bringing it from place to place.
John:
Maybe if you had multiple power adapters in the house and you could set up the Ethernet at once and just have the power cord kind of stick it up on your desk, it would be cool.
John:
I can see the appeal.
John:
And maybe that is Apple's plan.
John:
Again, they made a 143-watt adapter.
John:
Maybe this adapter will also come with some other future computer.
John:
But the tricky bit is you need to route Ethernet to the power brick.
John:
And all of Apple's current power bricks...
John:
Don't do that in terms, I don't think they even have the right number of conductors.
John:
I think they're just power from the power brick.
John:
I'm not entirely sure, but my impression is that from the power brick.
Marco:
That's not entirely true.
Marco:
They support only USB 2.0 transfer speeds, though.
Marco:
So whatever Apple labels as a charge cable for USB-C, it can be used as data, but not for USB 3.0 speeds.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And of course, you know, they could put they could put out an adapter that would support this.
John:
The other wrinkle in this and we're not going to talk about this week, but there's a bunch of leaks from some ransomware attack on a manufacturer that shows supposedly show the rumored MacBook Pros with all the things that we talked about in past shows, SD card slot and MagSafe and HDMI and HDMI.
John:
Right.
John:
If those things end up having MagSafe, of course Apple can do whatever it wants with whatever this new MagSafe is, but that would mean that they would need to route Ethernet through the MagSafe adapter along with power down the power cable to the power brick where the supposed Ethernet port is.
John:
So I think there's some merit to this idea, but it seems complicated enough that unless Apple is really married to it, especially if they're going to MagSafe, it just seems simpler for them to just bring back MagSafe as just a power thing and then...
Marco:
continue to rely on dongles for everything else yeah and if you actually want a single cable solution i would assume and hope that if this new you know magsafe based macbook pro thing is real or even if it isn't you know assuming future macbook pros might have magsafe
Marco:
I would hope that they would also still be able to charge via USB-C PD.
Marco:
And if that's the case, then people who want a single cable solution but some kind of port expansion can continue to use Thunderbolt docks and stuff and still have just one cable running to the computer that also charges it.
Casey:
Yeah, I will be.
Casey:
Even though I think MagSafe would be great to bring back for notebooks, it will bum me out ever so slightly if USB-C power delivery goes away.
Casey:
If it's one or the other, not both.
Casey:
And especially since we're all approaching this USB-C lifestyle where everything is USB-C.
Casey:
I mean, there's so much of my life other than my iPhone that is USB-C.
Casey:
And just having a USB-C dongle sitting around
Casey:
can power you know my ipad my computer my drone etc my my switch and and man it would really stink if magsafe got introduced reintroduced which would be excellent and then they said well that's the only way you can charge now tough noogies that would really bum me out yeah agreed and i i hope and i bet they would probably keep both
Casey:
One would hope and one would think.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And then finally, Eric Berlin writes, what's the benefit of having four high efficiency cores in a system without a battery like the iMac or Mac mini?
Casey:
Aside from economies of scale, do you expect there to be a split between desktop and laptop versions of future Apple M series systems on a chip?
Casey:
I mean, one silly answer is it's just more efficient.
Casey:
Like as silly as that sounds, but why run a, you know, higher wattage core and why expend all that energy if you don't have to?
Casey:
I mean, I know that's kind of silly, but it does add up over time, doesn't it?
John:
I mean, it makes sense from more than just an electric bill perspective.
John:
It's a, you know, you know me, it's all about fan noise, right?
John:
If you can use, most of the time your Mac is not doing much if you're not running some big, you know,
John:
hard task in the background that's using lots of cores so from moment to moment those efficiency cores are getting a ton of use because especially when you're just sitting there reading text on a web page there's probably hopefully unless you're running chrome with a bunch of terrible tabs in the background no need for the high efficiency cores to be enabled at all and if you can just use the efficiency cores or one or two of the efficiency cores it uses less power yes and that means less heat and that means less fan noise
John:
um now eric is right that like the reason they're using it is because like this is the architecture they have and you know they're not gonna you know that it's not apparently we now know the answer is it worth it for them to make for the low-end imac an entirely different chip even though the current m1 fits fine no not worth it to them they could have made a chip without efficiency cores and with like six you know high performance cores or something right and that would be extra expense and maybe they get a little bit of benefit but for the low-end imac it was not worth it so yes
John:
economies of scale there are many different computers you can wrap around the m1 and the iMac is one of them and it's perfectly fine for that and as a bonus less fan noise less heat less electricity probably less electricity is non-measurable but i imagine the less heat and less fan noise is something that they could actually measure so i'm glad that efficiency cores exist and i think there's a place for efficiency cores on every single one of their desktop computers even the big giant mac pro that they eventually make with umpteen cores or whatever
John:
It's okay to have some efficiency cores in there because sometimes the Mac Pro is not doing anything that big either.
Casey:
And that brings us to another computer that has an M1 as its core, and that is the iPad.
Casey:
And so there's some follow-up we need to talk about with regard to the iPad, starting with the front-facing camera.
Casey:
Tell me about that.
John:
I think we missed this entirely on the event show.
John:
There was so much stuff.
John:
But Apple talked about center stage, which is their way to use the new 12-megapixel front-facing wide camera on the new iPads.
John:
to take a very wide view of what's in front of them but then crop it to show the area of interest when doing like video conference type things and they showed it with like with one person in the picture it will center on them and then when more people come it will expand the image now the camera doesn't move it's not like it's actually zooming optically it's not pivoting from side to side it is merely taking different crops and doing image processing you
John:
know using the using the software to do some smarts and obviously the crops are going to be lower resolution than the full 12 megapixels but apparently there's enough pixels to go around to make this work especially for like a facetime thing so it looks like a very cool feature and the other thing to know about it is that this feature is actually available to other people through an api so if you have any kind of third-party app and you want to start taking video from the front facing camera apparently there's an api that you can just tell it please do that center stage thing where you look for people's faces and try to include them which is
John:
very nice of them to include although honestly i'm not sure what other apps people use for doing video conferencing on the ipad besides facetime and i guess zoom maybe but do people use zoom on the ipad i guess so yeah well declan spends several hours a day in teams on the ipad in teams seriously oh my god i didn't even think about that this shouldn't children shouldn't be subjected to teams
John:
no it is bad it is real bad well i hope those apps do use those features though because that is a problem especially with an ipad where you're trying to like prop it up at the right angle and make sure you get everyone in the picture like doing you know well mostly for me it's doing family facetime calls but i suppose for you know other things that are not family and maybe you're using teams or what do you call it webex or uh you know zoom or whatever so that's cool and worth mentioning
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
Hey, John, how much RAM do you have in your iPad?
John:
We noted this on the event show, but we didn't really emphasize.
John:
Right.
John:
So, yes, the iPad comes with two different amounts of RAM.
John:
But the most important thing is Apple lists those two different amounts of RAM on their Web pages and in their promotional material.
John:
For the first time, the amount of RAM in an iPad is not a secret that Apple won't tell you, even though everybody knows what it is.
John:
They actually use it in their advertising material.
John:
It's on their slides.
John:
Up to 16 gigabytes of memory.
John:
If we were there live, we all should have gasped and said, the iPad has memory?
John:
I thought it just had storage.
John:
All these years, we've just been buying iPads based on storage.
John:
Now you're going to tell me there's memory?
John:
It's like when they change from iOS firmware from iPhone firmware to, you know, iOS.
John:
It's like the iPhone has an operating system.
John:
I thought it just had firmware, you know, a secret.
John:
So I like this.
John:
Obviously, this is just in the pro models.
John:
I think they still don't talk about RAM on the lesser iPad models.
John:
But see, Apple, nothing bad happens if you talk about RAM.
John:
We all know it's in there and we have to figure out what it is anyway.
John:
Eventually, it's just annoying that it's not on your product pages.
John:
And now it finally is, at least for the pros.
Casey:
So speaking of iPad Pros, apparently the new 12.9 inch iPad Pro, specifically the 12.9, won't work with the original $350 Magic Keyboard.
Casey:
So it's just a bit thicker than the last one was.
Casey:
And because of that, officially speaking, it is not compatible with the...
Casey:
magic keyboard that came out before this new one existed however if you were to buy a magic keyboard today it is compatible with every ipad that has ever been compatible with the magic keyboard yeah that's a shame uh but i still think they made the right move some people were saying oh didn't you know how thick the new 12.9 inch i've had would be when you made the original magic keyboard
John:
I think it's conceivable that no, they didn't.
John:
Maybe they were shooting for, oh, it'll be the same width.
John:
But you know, we talked about the screen tech and this new 12.9-inch iPad with the 2,500 different zones and 10,000 LEDs.
John:
That screen is amazing, and it's worth putting on the highest of the high-end iPad.
John:
And if they had to make it 0.5 millimeters thicker to pull that off...
John:
at the cost of breaking compatibility with their very expensive Magic Keyboard, I still think that's the right move because this is the most expensive iPad with the highest end, you know, you can get it 16 gigs of RAM and two terabytes of storage and all that stuff.
John:
Obviously not ideal.
John:
I don't think Apple planned this.
John:
I think they probably tried to make it exactly the same size and they just couldn't quite get it.
John:
And if the choice was between this screen and being compatible with the Magic Keyboard, they'd take the screen any day.
John:
So it's a bummer, but I think the right move.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I'm surprised and happy that they haven't changed the keyboard size for the 11 inch.
Marco:
I mean, this is like, this is the longest they've ever gone.
Marco:
If you're an 11 inch customer, this is the longest you ever be able to carry any peripherals forward.
Marco:
you know like normally if you were buying a new ipad pro or you know you would have to buy a new keyboard you know possibly even a new pencil depending on when you bought it if you use the pencil or not like and those and those things are so expensive they you know they add up pretty pretty quickly so this is actually a nice you know constant period here where you like if i bought a new ipad which honestly i'm not going to but if i bought a new ipad i would still be able to use my same keyboard from two years ago
John:
And people who are second guessing this, it's helpful to think about the other scenarios that could have happened, which is let's say they're targeting to make it exactly the same with.
John:
And they build one and they say, here it is with the new screen and the new guts and it's exactly the same dimensions as the old one.
John:
And they have some kind of problem.
John:
Oh, it's like...
John:
overheating in this area or this thing is very close to shorting out or there's some other problem and they say well you know the only way we can solve this is to make the thing half a millimeter thicker to give a little bit more breathing room and everyone's like oh that's going to break compatibility with with the thing you would much rather have them make the thing thicker than to say well let's
John:
Let's just shove it in there and just hope for the best because whatever the problem may be with overheating or shorting or compressing or bulging or causing discoloration on the screen because of stress, you don't want any of those problems.
John:
And if that was the reality and they said, well, they did that because if they didn't do that, the keyboard wouldn't work, you'd be saying, what a ridiculous notion.
John:
Who cares that the keyboard works?
John:
I just want my iPad to work.
John:
I don't even have that keyboard.
John:
This is absolutely the right move.
John:
It's a bummer, but sometimes that happens when you're pushing the envelope, which I feel like Apple is with this, don't call it a tablet iPad, that is just tremendously fast and has an amazing screen on it.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
Last week, we were talking about potential uses for AirTags, which actually, speaking of, before we get to this follow-up, Marco, did you order any AirTags?
Marco:
You can order them?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Oh, yes, that's right.
Marco:
I did.
Marco:
Wow.
Marco:
Sorry.
Marco:
Are you feeling well, bud?
Marco:
Beaver's setting in.
Marco:
A little warm.
Marco:
No, I forgot.
Marco:
Yes, I did.
Marco:
I did order a four pack.
Marco:
It's coming on whatever day one is, which I think is, is it this Friday?
Casey:
uh it's either this or next i think i don't recall to be honest with you so the reason i'll have it next monday all right the reason i don't recall is because i ordered a one pack which at the time was delivering in like mid-may and i thought about getting a four pack but i don't even know what i'm using one for so it seems silly to buy four just on a lark uh but uh i i did order one and it'll be here several weeks after your four pack is john what about you what did you order if any
John:
Didn't order any because I still can't think of what I'm going to use it for, you know.
John:
So I'll listen to your reports on what it's like to have a little plastic puck.
Marco:
It is kind of, you know, I would have been very surprised if you would have told me before the Apple event that the only things I would buy as a result of this Apple event were AirTags and a new Apple TV remote.
Marco:
But that's honestly, I'm in this for those things.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, that's a fair point.
Casey:
So anyway, so we were asking, you know, what would we use these for?
Casey:
And something that I had thought of, but I didn't say on the show.
Casey:
This was not Marco's fault this time.
Casey:
I definitely did not say it out loud.
Casey:
And this was also provided to us by Jameson on Twitter.
Casey:
A use case for air tags, watching your luggage work its way back to you at the carousel at the airport.
Casey:
Now, I vaguely remember where airports are, and I vaguely remember what luggage is, but nevertheless, that is a very good use case for it.
Casey:
Another thing that a few people have suggested, including just now in the chat, is placing it in or around a favorite stuffed animal from a child.
Casey:
Because if you're a parent, you know, especially when they're young, they have that special stuffed animal that if they lose that stuffed animal...
Casey:
Oh, your next week to month is going to be terrible.
Casey:
So a lot of people are saying they're thinking about sewing one in the animal or putting it around the animal or whatever the case may be.
Casey:
And again, I'm talking about a stuffed animal.
John:
If you put it inside the animal, though, your kids will just tear it open and pull out the stuffing and get that thing out and then just destroy it.
Casey:
Probably.
John:
Probably.
John:
But nevertheless, that's another idea.
John:
If your kids are dogs.
Marco:
I would say also like on the following your luggage through the airport thing,
Marco:
We don't know yet how frequently the location is updated and what kind of range they have in practice yet.
Marco:
If that's the kind of use case you have in mind, I would maybe wait and see how these things actually perform in reality.
John:
I'm assuming people are expecting that to be in U1 range by that point.
John:
You're not...
John:
that like you're not looking to say like which baggage carousel is in it you just wanted to know like is it coming off the thing now or whatever i again yeah you're right someone would have to test it but i'm i'm guessing that this use case is only useful when you're within u1 range and i don't know what u1 range is but certainly it's less than the uh passerby had bluetooth on range
Marco:
Yeah, I would expect it to be something like 30 feet, you know, because it's Bluetooth based.
John:
And yeah, so I'm guessing it's something like that, but I wouldn't expect it to be like... And you don't need this for Boston's Logan Airport.
John:
You don't need this air tech thing at all because I can just tell you, just get a chair.
John:
Your luggage is not coming out for an hour.
Yeah.
Casey:
Well, that's what you get for living in Boston.
Casey:
Hey-oh.
Casey:
All right, moving right along.
Casey:
Something that I think all of us knew but, again, did not say actually on the show is one of the problems with Apple's premium podcast offering is what if you don't have an iPhone?
Casey:
Tough no-gees?
John:
Yeah, we were talking about who are you excluding by, you know, using this Apple Premium Podcast.
John:
And we talked mostly about, hey, if any of your listeners don't use the Apple Podcast app, they have to start using it because that's the only way to listen to your show if it's an Apple Premium Podcast.
John:
But many people are going to say, and yeah, what about all the people who don't even have iPhones?
John:
Of course, they can't use Apple Podcasts and they can't listen to your show at all.
John:
And there's tons of those people.
John:
One of the reasons I didn't mention this was something that I should have mentioned when we talked about the premium podcast is I'm basing this on nothing.
John:
But my my impression and hunch is that Apple is at least considering the notion of making Apple premium podcasts available on Android.
John:
I know this seems weird to you, but I just assumed that they would eventually make it available on Android, and then I saw everyone else thinking that they never would.
John:
It just seems like Apple Music, like an audio service type thing.
John:
I know Apple doesn't do a lot of things on other platforms.
John:
They made Safari for Windows and then gave up on it or whatever, but like...
John:
Apple premium podcast for Android does not seem like a ridiculous thing to me.
John:
Now, obviously, they don't have that now.
John:
So don't, you know, don't assume it is going to exist.
John:
But I don't know if you do feel the same way.
John:
It just seems to me that it's not such a ridiculous notion.
Marco:
No, I don't think it's a ridiculous notion.
Marco:
It would take a lot of motivation, though.
Marco:
You know, the reason why Apple brought Apple Music to Android, they did, right?
Marco:
That's the thing they actually did.
Marco:
Yep, I believe so.
Marco:
We've never talked about it after they did it, so I kind of forgot.
John:
I mean, it's like Safari on Windows.
John:
When it went away, it probably took a while for me to realize it went away because who uses Safari on Windows?
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So I don't know how well Apple Music on Android would be doing, but the reason they did that is because Apple Music is a massive service that brings in significant revenue into their services division and everything.
Marco:
premium podcasts i don't think i mean i could be wrong but the way they've launched at least their version of premium podcasts i don't see that becoming anywhere near the size of apple music as a business and therefore i think there would be a lot less financial motivation for them to invest into the engineering of that um you know the apple music or the apple podcasts app um
Marco:
is not just a big web view it's a whole bunch of native code in there and so it would be substantial work for them to bring over that that app has its own thing uh so i just i don't see it happening honestly i mean it really it kind of depends a little bit on the competitive landscape not that we're probably not gonna have time to talk about it this episode but spotify's new premium podcast move uh is an interesting counter to what apple has done and is different in all sorts of ways and
John:
You're right.
John:
It's mostly small potatoes and the safe bet is that they're not going to do it, but they might eventually see it as a strategic thing that they have to do just to keep Spotify at bay.
John:
It also depends on how all the antitrust stuff related to Spotify and other stuff turns out.
John:
So all I'm saying is that, you know, this is right that you are excluding people who have Android, but that I, you know, I don't think it's completely ridiculous that Apple might someday put their premium podcast on Android.
Marco:
I think it depends a lot on how well is Apple Music doing on Android?
Marco:
I've never heard of anybody using it.
Marco:
I'm sure there are some people who do, but I would bet it's not a substantial market for them.
John:
I think one of the big reasons that Apple Music exists on Android is
John:
interestingly as a counter to spotify not in the podcast space obviously just in the plain old music space and i think you're probably right that it's maybe not doing that well android but like why does it exist at all you said it's because apple music is a big business i think a big part of it is also because spotify is there and if we're going to compete with spotify kind of like the apple tv thing if we're gonna yeah if we're gonna compete at all we can't be stingy and say oh it's only on apple platforms it's like if you're gonna if you're gonna be some kind of service type thing you've got to be everywhere
Marco:
yeah maybe i mean and part of it also it might just be as simple as like apple music was born out of beats music and beats music was available on android so maybe they had an easier path to get there maybe like maybe they didn't have to build as much as we think they had to build from scratch for that they should give android the old podcast app with the real drill tape yeah that'd be great yeah from ios 5 yeah oh man that would be funny all right john do you want to tell me about your eero and smart outlet situation please
John:
This is so long ago.
John:
I don't know if people still remember.
John:
I did a whole big rec tips episode about it, so I'm not going to go into too much detail.
John:
But to catch a run up, I had filled around with my network and made my ear on my router and got rid of an Airport Extreme.
John:
And everything worked except for my smart outlet, which was completely invisible.
John:
And I was trying to debug it and configure what the deal was.
John:
Here's what eventually worked.
John:
Why did it work?
John:
Unknown.
John:
But here's what eventually worked.
John:
It was a suggestion I got from two different places.
John:
Merlin suggested that I do this and I didn't follow his suggestion.
John:
And then I got the same suggestion from a person at the smart outlet company.
John:
And the reason I did it when the person in the smart outlet company said it was not because like, oh, I trust that person more than Merlin, but it was simply because I needed to respond to their email.
John:
And when I respond to any kind of email where people give debugging suggestions, I have to tell them, I tried your suggestions and here were the results, like truthfully.
John:
and one of their suggestions was hardware reset the outlet which i had done many many times before but i had not you know this is two different ways to reset it's like a soft reset and a factory reset depending on how long you hold down the little buttons or whatever i had not factory reset the new outlet the one the new one that i bought that just came out of the box now you may be thinking why would you need to factory reset an outlet that you just brand new took out of a box
John:
That's never been on your network.
John:
Like it's never even been seen by anything on your network that is invisible.
John:
Like, you know, I haven't even been able to attempt to connect it because every time I do, it says looking for devices, can't find anything.
John:
Right.
John:
But that's what I did.
John:
I factory reset the new outlet and it just joined right up and worked perfectly.
John:
Oh, my goodness.
John:
Now, here are the theories we've got behind this.
John:
One theory is that there is, apparently for this brand of smart outlet, there is a server-side component associated with your account.
John:
Because I think you have to sign into your account to use their iOS app.
John:
And the person at the smart outlet company says, we deleted all your data on our server-side.
John:
Maybe that was a factor, right?
John:
The second thing is, and this is something I didn't know, and I just don't know the details of it, that apparently...
John:
uh home kit devices can only be in provisioning mode like where they're ready to be like added to your network or whatever for a limited amount of time i think it's like a security thing like you don't want to allow them to be in provisioning mode indefinitely because you could like put some put some thing in provisioning mode and like your neighbors accidentally pick it up a week after you tried to connect it and they connect it to their thing right
John:
So there's some kind of time limit as part of the HomeKit spec.
John:
If you want to be a HomeKit compliant device, you can only be in provisioning node for a limited amount of time, after which you need to do some kind of reset to get them out of that.
John:
And maybe this particular smart outlet needs a factory reset after it has reached its provisioning mode time limit.
John:
And I can tell you that if there is a time limit, I'm surely past it because I've been trying to add these things to my network for, you know, days and days, just constantly having them and like ready to be added to your network.
John:
Make sure this light is blinking, right?
John:
So those are the theories.
John:
Server side, or I was stuck in provisioning mode too long and timed out.
John:
But whatever it is, a factory reset of the brand new thing made it work.
John:
And now I have the old one, which I have no use for.
John:
It's just sitting here.
John:
I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it.
John:
I haven't even tried to connect it, but now I'm just not touching anything because my network, everything's on my network, just like I want it to be.
John:
I haven't had any of that Teams problem in all my Teams meeting at work.
John:
I have yet to have the problem recur, although it hasn't been a month yet, but...
John:
So far, so good.
John:
My networking house is in order.
Casey:
That's good.
Casey:
I'm very glad for you.
Marco:
Don't touch it.
Casey:
Yeah, definitely don't touch it.
Casey:
I'd actually like to make a brief request for help.
Casey:
I, in the process of doing this screened-in porch, selected – I don't remember talking about this on the show, but I selected two not-cheap ceiling fans in order to put in the screened-in porch –
Casey:
and there was a little bit of a disagreement as to whether or not these not-cheap ceiling fans were worth the money that we spent.
Casey:
And one of the things I wanted to do with these ceiling fans was use them with Lutron Caseta switches.
Casey:
And I thought I was buying the appropriate kind of fan in order to use them with Lutron Caseta switches, and it turns out I did not.
Casey:
And many, many
Casey:
hours of investigation and fiddling about later, what I've realized is these particular fans use some sort of proprietary radio frequency controller.
Casey:
So there is something in the wall, and it is connected to the fan, but the actual commands to go on or off for different speeds or whatever are radio frequency.
Casey:
And what I'd like to do is figure out a way to get that on HomeKit.
Casey:
These fans are Kichler fans, K-I-C-H-L-E-R.
Casey:
Kichler doesn't seem to believe that HomeKit exists or even Alexa or anything like it.
Casey:
So if you have a way that you are aware of that you can make a RF device talk HomeKit, please let me know.
Casey:
Casey Liss on Twitter, or you can find my contact information on my website.
Casey:
I'd love to know, because I've been looking at this broad link, RM4,
Casey:
IR and RF universal remote, which I guess is basically it's supposed to just emit IR or RF in order to control things that really you're not supposed to be able to control.
Casey:
And I'm looking at this, but I don't know if it's going to work with the appropriate frequencies, blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
So I will stop here.
Casey:
But just if you've experienced anything like this, please let me know.
Casey:
I would love to know about it.
Casey:
Our, I think, final bit of follow-up?
Casey:
No, yeah, our final section of follow-up is with regard to Marco's refusal to believe that there's anything other than Tesla superchargers in the world.
Casey:
And friend of the show, Sam Walsamid of the Wheelbearings podcast, wrote in to say that Tesla accounted for about two-thirds of EV sales in the U.S.
Casey:
in the last year.
Casey:
But according to Sam, whose job is to know these sorts of things, that share is likely to shrink significantly in 2021 and beyond.
Casey:
There's lots of new competitors arriving this year and next from all the legacy brands.
Casey:
And then moving on, Sam writes, for distribution, there are currently 3,440 CCS, which I believe is the connector type, DC fast charger locations with 6,534 actual outlets.
Casey:
So about 3,500 locations with about 6,500 outlets across the United States.
Casey:
There are 1,000 supercharger locations, so about a third as many locations.
Casey:
However, they have about 10,000 outlets, so about twice as many outlets.
Casey:
So Tesla has fewer locations with more chargers per station.
Casey:
Something I don't think we've mentioned on the show is that Electrify America was done in part because Volkswagen was compelled to fund it as a result of Dieselgate.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
So Electrify America was the first network to implement the plug-and-charge standard, which allows drivers to set up one account for their compatible vehicles.
Casey:
So Ford, Volkswagen Machedies, Lewis, and Rivian have all announced support and more coming.
Casey:
And then they let you just plug it in, and then it authenticates and starts charging just like a supercharger.
Casey:
And we'll put a link in the show notes to a list of all the chargers and networks and whatnot at the Department of Energy website for the United States.
Casey:
Do you want to jump in here, Marco?
Casey:
Because I know you have some feedback, or do you want to plow forward?
Marco:
Yeah, just a quick little thing on this point.
Marco:
So my car is still in the body shop, still, and they haven't even been able to start to work on it because insurance companies are apparently terrible.
Casey:
Neat.
Marco:
So it's been almost a month, and they haven't actually started working on it yet because of my insurance company.
Marco:
So that's okay.
Marco:
I mean, I guess it was my fault for going with the totally fly-by-night insurance company Allstate.
Casey:
Ah, I also use Allstate, and they are.
John:
You don't get to be a big insurance company by just giving out money for free.
John:
Insurance company does not want to pay a lot for the smuffler.
John:
Yeah, nice.
Marco:
Anyway, so we're still driving around the i3, and we had an opportunity to stop and supercharge, and I specifically sought out an Electrify America location because there was one kind of near where we were going.
Marco:
30 something percent on the i3 we stopped off it was it looked almost like a supercharger you know they had these big you know glowing white bays across the back of this mall parking lot there were there were eight plugs in this location um so it looked pretty nice and it was it was a pretty good experience it was significantly nicer than the um the charge point one that i'd used before and
Marco:
And it was super easy.
Marco:
I walked up to the thing and I plugged it into the car and they had a little credit card contactless slash chip reader on the front.
Marco:
So I just did Apple Pay on the front of it.
Marco:
I didn't have to make an account.
Marco:
I didn't have to do anything.
Marco:
All I had to do was Apple Pay with my credit card, with my phone rather, wave it in front of their little reader.
Marco:
Beep, it started up.
Marco:
And then I was able to watch both in my car and also on their screen.
Marco:
They had a giant glowing screen to show my car's charge level.
Marco:
I guess the car communicates its charge level back through the CCS connector to the charger.
Marco:
So it was able to give me a time estimate.
Marco:
It was able to give me a percentage readout and everything.
Marco:
It allowed you to type in a phone number and it would text you updates.
Marco:
That way, in case you wanted to leave and go inside the mall or whatever, you could do that and see when it's done.
Marco:
And overall, it cost me about $10 to charge from something like 30% to about 90%.
Marco:
I mean, this is not a large range car.
Marco:
That's something like 100 miles of range.
Marco:
But it was about a half hour.
Marco:
Like, really not bad at all.
Marco:
It was a surprisingly nice...
Marco:
supercharger competitive experience and if every DC fast charger was as nice as the Electrify America ones then I think that would be a really nice world to get to I don't think we're there yet and I think it's going to be a while before we get there but
Marco:
When and if that kind of world arrives for the non-Tesla charging needs, that will be very nice and very compelling.
Marco:
So I really enjoyed it.
Marco:
It was very nice to use, and I would gladly use it again.
Marco:
However, again, when I look for things like this in the areas I travel...
Marco:
The Tesla superchargers are still better coverage of the areas I go, and they're in more convenient locations.
Marco:
Kind of an underappreciated part of charger location selection is, well, what can you do during the half hour that you're waiting there?
Marco:
If it's in a travel plaza or something off the highway, that's great because then you can park your car and the thing is you're only going to be charging there for maybe a half hour to 40 minutes.
Marco:
You can't do something that's going to take you two hours.
Marco:
You can't watch a movie or anything in a movie theater, but you also don't want it to just be like...
Marco:
in in the back of an empty parking lot where there's nowhere even within walking distance that you could eat really meaningfully go so you want something to do and i like the travel plaza kind of situation because then like you can go in use the bathroom order food you know maybe have some have a quick snack you know get get a crappy coffee at starbucks go out to your car and it's pretty much time
Marco:
Tesla seems to be significantly better, at least with the more recent round of superchargers, significantly better at choosing good locations that actually give you some reasonable way to use your 40 minutes that you're going to have while sitting there.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
that's one thing that so far the the non-tesla fast chargers around here are not super great at but i mean that could just be a regional difference but anyway it's something to look at like when you're looking when you're comparing if you're if you're looking at electric cars if you're comparing the charging networks you definitely have to i think look at like which ones you're likely to use like where they actually are what kind of environment they're actually in because that that matters a lot
John:
Like Sam said, though, this is changing rapidly because all the EVs from all the car companies are coming out pretty fast and furious now.
John:
And most of them, granted, are not actual cars.
John:
They're stupid SUV things.
John:
But there's a ton of them.
John:
And Electrify America and all the other sort of car brand charging networks are just going to be expanding extremely rapidly.
John:
And it's not just one company doing it.
John:
It's multiple companies doing it.
John:
So I expect this to be.
John:
A very dynamic situation.
John:
In fact, I was surprised to see there was three times as many CCS DC fast chargers because this is trying to compare like to like and not just say like any old thing, but the DC fast chargers.
John:
I'm also surprised to see that a bunch of car brands like we talked about this one, the
John:
let me get the pronunciation right because I saw a video, uh, Tycon.
Casey:
Nice.
John:
They have two syllables in their word and neither one of them is pronounced the way that an English speaker would expect him to say, but that Porsche has a YouTube video that says tie like a, uh, yeah, a necktie and then con like the opposite of pro.
John:
Um,
John:
tycon which has this 800 volt system that allows it to charge faster and stuff i recently saw a review of the new hyundai uh ionic 5 which is another you know suv type thing or whatever i think it has an 800 volt system too and it's not a fancy car like it's you know it's it's competing with like it's competing with the you know mainstream suvs right it's you know it's it's
John:
They're more expensive than a gas SUV, but still it's not a $100,000 car.
John:
And those 800 volt systems can charge a lot faster.
John:
So the amount of time that you spend to the chargers may actually be decreasing, assuming we can get these 800 volt, like whatever it is, 250 kilowatt or whatever.
John:
I get confused with battery specs for laptops.
John:
um if those start to proliferate um and the other thing i'll say about your charging experience is your car doesn't even have the plug and charge thing that we were talking about here which is just like you don't have to do any of that stuff you just plug the thing in i mean that's what that's what this feedback says is that you just plug it in and somehow it knows who you are based on the fact that you plug the car into it because you had set up an account with electrify america beforehand
John:
And that's the best experience because when you fill up your car with gas, I mean, I guess you have to pay with your phone or whatever, but like just be able to pull up to one of those things, take the plug out, shove it into your car and walk away and get all those features that you described without even having to activate Apple Pay or tap it.
John:
That's pretty cool.
John:
Although I do wonder, like, I've been watching a lot of videos about electric cars because there's so many of them coming out.
John:
Most of them don't appeal to me at all.
John:
But a lot of them have, I mean, I guess we'll get to this in the next feedback, interesting integrations with their various power supply things.
John:
Like, you know, their sort of charging network integrations in the car, integrations outside the car, like you said, the thing where it texts you to see how filled up your thing is or whatever.
John:
So I wonder if those features will end up being differentiators or if we will kind of
John:
settle on one feature set kind of like gas pumps there's a million gas companies around here but the feature set of gas pumps in the u.s has always kind of like coalesced around a standard feature set uh if there was any moment where like you know mobile speed pass came out and for a little while they don't want to have had it eventually that stuff like that spreads everywhere so it'll be interesting to see that play out with electric charging stations as well
Casey:
And speaking of very expensive cars, a friend of the show, Dave Nanian writes, with regard to charging station integrations, each car vendor either owns a charging network or partners with one.
Casey:
And at least with Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche, the charger location, routing availability, et cetera, is fully integrated into the nav system.
Casey:
I'm assuming much like Tesla.
Casey:
Hold on, let me see if I can do this.
Casey:
In the Taycan...
Casey:
And I'm sure this is true of others, writes Dave Nanian.
Casey:
If I plan a trip, it automatically routes me through chargers, not just in network ones.
Casey:
And it tells me how long to charge for and adjust during the trip if conditions change.
Casey:
It's just like the Tesla, basically, except the DC fast chargers, while fewer in number, can go up to 350 kilowatts.
Casey:
And I can charge from 5% to 80% in 22 minutes.
Casey:
Dave admits that that's sometimes in a Walmart parking lot, which is kind of crummy.
Casey:
But nevertheless, it's fast, which is great.
John:
Another cool thing about the 800 watt system and the new Hyundai, one of the features they're advertising is you can use it to charge another electric car.
John:
So you can drive over to them and just plug your thing.
John:
Like if they run out of charge somewhere, you can go there and charge them up on it.
Marco:
that's interesting that's that would actually be really nice for um like like a like a towing company to have some of those in their fleet so if you have like an ev that gets totally dead and stranded on the side of the road you could just drive this to them because he can't because he can't bring a gas can right yeah exactly that actually that actually is a really good feature yeah and what you can do then is if you take a cord back from that car and put it into your car you can drive forever right exactly yeah that's how it works you just have a loop right
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Backblaze, unlimited computer backup for Macs and PCs for just $6 a month.
Marco:
I strongly recommend that everybody out there have a cloud backup service.
Marco:
Now, local backups that you have, you know, Time Machine or Clones or, you know, other backup solutions that you have on your desk, those are great, and you should have those too.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
backblaze is a cloud backup service so that they can protect you against hazards that might take out your computer and whatever backup drives are connected to it things like you know fire flood power surge theft all sorts of things backblaze can protect you from those hazards cloud backup services again i strongly recommend everybody use one and i have used all of them before backblaze is the one that i've stuck with it is by far my favorite one because quite frankly it's the best one
Marco:
you know all these other points they can tell me what to say but they can't pay me to say that i actually use this one and i do and it really is the best one so backblaze lets you back up unlimited files everything on your computer and any drive plugged into your computer they will back it up for just six bucks a month
Marco:
They will also have this new service now.
Marco:
If you're worried about accidental deletion for an extra $2 a month, you can increase your retention history up to one year of changes.
Marco:
And it's super convenient too.
Marco:
You can, of course, restore right from their website.
Marco:
You can download right from their website.
Marco:
Or if you have too many files to download, it'll take too long.
Marco:
They'll overnight you a hard drive with all your files on it.
Marco:
And then you can return the hard drive back to them when you're done copying your files back.
Marco:
And they'll refund you the cost of the drive.
Marco:
They also have mobile apps, so if you're on the go, maybe you don't have a file with you that is on your computer back home, you can restore from their mobile apps for iOS and Android any file that's on your computer, so you can always have access to them.
Marco:
It's an amazing service.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Everybody should have a cloud backup service, and Backblaze is the best one, I can tell you.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Backblaze for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
Brian Ash writes, this one is for John.
Casey:
If Apple were to announce a new mini Mac Pro in April or May, can you imagine a configuration that would make you switch away from your Intel Mac Pro this soon?
Casey:
How much performance would you need?
Casey:
And at what price would that need to be to make the jump?
John:
I've actually talked about this before, but it's worth revisiting now that we know more about the ARM Macs.
John:
I am totally open to a smaller version of the Mac Pro.
John:
All I want is some internal storage and a big GPU, and that's what I've got in my current Mac Pro, but if you open it up, there's a lot of empty space in there.
John:
So if they make a miniature version,
John:
that can fit the stuff that I want and doesn't have room for all the stuff that I don't use, that's fine.
John:
Like, this thing has so many slots in it.
John:
Like, I have a second GPU in there that I'm not even using just because there are so many open slots.
John:
That's the best place in the house to store it, right?
John:
And I think maybe something will use it for compute someday.
John:
But, like, I do not need the massive amount of space that's in this thing.
John:
But I do actually enjoy the fact that I have, you know, a bunch of internal storage in there and my big double-height video card and all that stuff.
John:
So we'll see.
John:
I'm totally open to a miniature one.
John:
And as for when I would upgrade, you know, I'm still assuming that the Mac Pro will be like, if not the very last...
John:
than at least one of the last machines to port over to arm so i've got a while yet to see what they're going to come out with and if if the if the new arm based mac pro equivalent comes out like by the end of this year i don't think i'm going to upgrade that soon it's mostly a monetary issue because i'm not going to sell this one like you know i don't sell my macs i keep them i keep the macs that are meaningful to me this is this mac is always going to be meaningful to me but i don't need to use this thing for 10 years like you know
John:
We always knew the ARM transition was coming, and I said when I bought this, if it turns out that the ARM Macs come out right after I buy this, oh, well, I've got to be okay with that.
John:
And look what happened.
John:
Here it is, and I'm more or less okay with it.
John:
I'll use this Mac until I've saved up enough discretionary income to replace it or until it becomes so obsolete that I have to replace it.
John:
So maybe not the end of this year, but, you know, in two, three years, yeah, I'll be ready to replace it.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
All right, Lingxiu Zhang writes, do you use FileVault on your personal Macs, and if so, why?
Casey:
I just got a new M1 MacBook Air and came across the setting during setup, which was on by default.
Casey:
I'm hesitant to turn it on because of the possible computational overload, but is that even still relevant?
Casey:
You know, I honestly don't even know if I'm using FileVault.
Casey:
I think I am on my laptop.
Casey:
Where is that?
Casey:
Is that in security and privacy?
John:
I think you've hit on the main thing that I was going to say, which is,
John:
Most people don't even know whether they're using FileVault, which really speaks to how transparent it is, both from a user's perspective and I think also from a computational perspective.
John:
There is computational overhead to it, and I think it can still actually be measured, although that might be harder with the ARM Macs because all the...
John:
the decompression stuff is probably has some dedicated hardware units somewhere inside there but the t2 did accelerate that right in the last generation of intel max that used the t2 like the t2 did that um which made the computational overhead part basically free free like at the cost of some additional power that your battery you know whatever but like but yeah like it's it's the type of thing where like don't worry about the performance it is what we're saying
Casey:
Yeah, so it turns out I was looking, so in system preferences, security and privacy, and then there's a tab for FileVault.
Casey:
Both of my computers are using it, and I would have expected that my MacBook Pro definitely was, and I wasn't sure about my iMac Pro, but yes, both of them are.
Casey:
And yeah, I don't think even having... I've used FileVault, especially on laptops for years.
Casey:
I don't remember ever having noticed a computational difference.
Casey:
I don't remember ever having noticed a slowdown, even...
Casey:
There have been once or twice I've either turned it on after I've had the operating system installed and so on, or perhaps even turned it off.
Casey:
But yeah, I don't see any reason not to at this point, to be completely honest with you.
John:
Marco, do you have it enabled on your Macs?
John:
Do you even know?
Marco:
I didn't know.
Marco:
I thought I had it enabled.
Marco:
I just checked on my Mac Mini that I'm using now, and it's not on on the Mac Mini.
Marco:
I figured I probably shouldn't turn it on during the recording.
Marco:
Yeah.
Casey:
I would recommend not Casey.
Marco:
I'm pretty sure it's on my laptop.
Marco:
I recommend leaving it on because at this point, this day and age, the computational overhead of that I don't think is relevant.
John:
So my policy is I tend to put it on for laptops just because they might be lost somewhere and whatever modicum of security it is to have this stuff encrypted at rest, I will take that, right?
John:
On my desktops, I personally choose not to enable it, but it has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with me being afraid of hosing myself somehow, but either forgetting the encryption password or it's somehow getting corrupted in some way.
John:
I'm just...
John:
paranoid in that way that i have enough problems i was always i'm always doing weird stuff with my computer like trying to somehow get boot camp installed and bootable on an external disk which was a saga that i've just reflected on this the other day that i've long since forgotten what i did to make that happen so if i ever had to do it again i'd be starting from zero
John:
but it was really hard and it was scary and involved a lot of my machine being a in a almost unbootable state and that's before we even get to the arm max which are way harder to deal with booting and external booting right so the reason i don't enable it in my desktops is like well they're they're in my house they're much less likely to be you know stolen or lost uh and i'm kind of afraid that i'll accidentally lock myself out um
John:
Those are probably not good reasons.
John:
You should probably just enable encryption everywhere.
John:
But it seems like, based on Marco's experience, that Apple still doesn't default it to on for its desktop Macs.
John:
Otherwise, if Marco doesn't remember explicitly choosing not to do it, it was probably just the default.
John:
I'm assuming it defaults to on all their laptops, but maybe not on their desktop.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I mean, this is also an installation that I brought forward from old desktops.
Marco:
So I just checked.
Marco:
My laptop does indeed have it on.
Marco:
And I'm kind of with you.
Marco:
Like, I tend to make my laptops more secure.
Marco:
Like, for instance, I always leave Find My Mac on on my laptops.
Marco:
But I don't leave it on on my desktops because remember back when Matt Honan was hacked and they used Find My Mac to remote wipe all of his Macs?
Marco:
that scared me enough that like i i like the ability to remote wipe my laptop if it ever gets stolen but i don't want anybody to have the ability to remote wipe my desktop so it's that's one of those things like i i always turn that off on the desktop uh but yeah file vault is on the laptop and i leave all the high security stuff there and i think i'll turn it on my desktop too because why not
Casey:
Yeah, I mean, like I said, I see no reason not to, to be completely honest.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And then finally, from Johan Neubert, what do you think about the longevity of the M1?
Casey:
How long do you think they'll last?
Casey:
Usually buying a quote unquote, first generation Mac computer can be bad in the long run.
Casey:
Do you think that they'll last as long as iPhones or even as long as John's old Mac Pro?
Casey:
I mean, I don't know.
Casey:
Look at, I guess, look at iPhones, right?
Casey:
Because this is, or iPads, perhaps, especially early on, like in the iPhone 4 era, you were seeing dramatic speed increases with each new year's phone.
Casey:
But I feel like the last couple of phones I've gotten, they're snappier, sure, but I wouldn't say it's a dramatic increase like it was in years past.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
I would expect it's there.
Casey:
It's probably a three to four to five year chip without feeling too terrible about it.
Casey:
I mean, I'd also look at the iMac Pro or excuse me, my iPad Pro from 2018.
Casey:
I don't feel like I'm, you know, CPU bound or CPU limited very often on that thing.
Casey:
And that's three years old now.
Casey:
So I think I think you'll get some time out of it.
Casey:
What do you think, Marco?
Marco:
Yeah, I think if anything, you might get more time than you expect because it's the first of the new architecture.
Marco:
So far, the reason why you're not really supposed to buy the first version of things if you can help it is that usually the first version has problems, just weird bugs or shortcomings or weird things that they fix in later versions.
Marco:
We've had the M1 stuff now since November, or October or whenever it was delivered in November.
Marco:
So we've had them now for a good half a year, and there don't seem to be many issues, and possibly even any major ones.
Marco:
There's some software issues.
John:
Agreed.
John:
I poll my kids about the reliability of macOS on the M1s, but those have nothing to do with the hardware.
John:
It's just like, okay, well, macOS has some shortcomings in terms of drivers or whatever.
John:
There's more weird pink screens are not unlocking or stuff like that, but the software will continue to get updated and the software will eventually come to accommodate these.
John:
But there's nothing weird about this hardware
John:
from a hardware perspective simply because it is so much like and now is identical to uh the ipad hardware from which it's derived right so it's not like this is the very first system on a chip that apple has made right so i think the hardware is very solid and casey was talking about like projecting forward like how much faster a chip is going to be like well is the next year's chip going to be so fast that you'll feel bad about having this one
John:
The more important direction is to look is backwards, because backwards behind this thing are the Intel chips, and they're way down there in the mud in terms of performance, right?
John:
So as these machines get older, the Intel machines will rapidly become, oh, so slow I can't even imagine using those.
John:
But these things will hang on, because this is the big leap.
John:
This is the big discontinuity.
John:
It was like slow and steady 1% or 2% or 5% increase in Intel chips.
John:
And then this huge leap to the M1...
John:
And it's going to take a long time before the performance that's available in the M1 becomes so slow that you can't even imagine using it.
John:
So I think these M1s, assuming there's no catastrophic hardware problem, are going to be usable, useful computers for a really long time.
John:
Think about that fanless $999 MacBook Air.
John:
What an amazing performance bargain.
John:
I think that computer will last longer than any $1,000 Apple computer has perhaps ever.
John:
So I am very optimistic about how long these will be used, especially since that M1 MacBook Air doesn't have any moving parts even.
John:
It's like an electric car, so much simpler, so much fewer parts inside it.
John:
Fewer things to go wrong, and the performance is great.
John:
So, thumbs up on the M1.
Marco:
I made a shirt about it.
Marco:
The only thing I will note about the performance characteristics of the M1, now having used them full-time for however many months, the reason it feels so ridiculously fast, and the reason why certain tasks are so incredibly much faster than they were on Intel, or smoother, or better responding...
Marco:
The ceiling of performance, when you have very efficient, parallelized, vectorized code, is not that much higher than what we had before.
Marco:
In some cases, it isn't higher at all.
Marco:
What they did was they raised the floor a lot.
Marco:
So a lot of common things on the M1, common CPU tasks and everything, those are faster, sometimes by a lot.
Marco:
And so it seems like performance all across the board, everything is just snappier, more responsive.
Marco:
But where the M1 is limited is when you want to push it really hard, when you're maxing out all the cores and doing something really CPU intensive, it's
Marco:
It's not slow, but it's not as much faster than the Intel stuff as you would expect based on how much faster it is with kind of more pedestrian tasks.
John:
Well, it depends on what you're comparing it to.
John:
If you compare it to the Intel $999 MacBook Air, it crushes it even in the parallel stuff.
John:
But as you get to the higher end, yeah, because they're using this chip everywhere.
John:
Again, we've just seen the low-end computers here.
John:
But let's say the MacBook Pro, 13-inch MacBook Pro, that's an area where I can imagine...
John:
the previous best 13-inch MacBook Pro Intel model would match it in multi-core maybe.
John:
But as you get to the lower end machines, you're thinking of multi-core as compared to what about my 10-core iMac Pro, but that's not what these machines are competing with.
Marco:
Right, exactly.
Marco:
And so if you are someone who tends to buy the high-core machines, the 15 or 16-inch MacBook Pro, the iMac Pro, the Mac Pro, if you're buying the highest core counts and you're maxing those things out, first of all, you're going to want probably more GPU power than this can offer if you're using that for video stuff.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I can see a good case for waiting until whatever it's called, the M1X or maybe the M2, whatever the beefier version of this for the bigger computers ends up being called, waiting for that.
Marco:
But otherwise, like, I'm... And that's, by the way, that's why, like...
Marco:
My computer never feels slow to me anymore unless I am doing something like an Xcode archive build.
Marco:
Or a lot of Xcode builds, honestly.
Marco:
Where, you know, my project is big enough now that when I do a lot of build in Xcode, and I'm using a Swift now, thanks a lot, Swift.
Marco:
Whenever I do a build in Xcode, it maxes out all of the cores for, you know, maybe...
Marco:
10 to 60 seconds depending on what exactly it's doing and you definitely feel that and there are areas where I would love to have more high performance cores just so I can shorten those builds and when that you know whatever the next you know little Mac Pro ends up being whenever that comes out I will probably buy it for that reason because I don't need any GPU power more than I already have but I really would love way more high performance cores as many as they will give me I'll take them
Marco:
and you know because right now i have four that's great give me 12 give me 16 great that would be even better and so i don't know what they're going to do but if you are that if you have that kind of performance need where you're doing a lot of high end parallel stuff you may want to wait and see what else comes out after this if you're looking to use it for a very long time that being said right now i am incredibly satisfied with this it just the only time i notice it being a little bit slow is that but
Marco:
I also look and say, well, this is a MacBook Air or a Mac Mini, depending on which computer you're using.
Marco:
And these are, for what they are and for what I paid for them, it's fantastic.
Marco:
All right, thank you to our sponsor this week, Backblaze, and thank you to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can become a member and get a discount on our new merch by going to atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
If you just want to buy a shirt and not become a member, no problem, that's cool.
Marco:
Go to atp.fm slash store.
Marco:
Thank you, everybody, and we will talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C, USA Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
They did it.
Casey:
So long.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
My arms are on fire.
Casey:
Your arms?
Casey:
Oh, because of the hives.
Casey:
The hives.
Marco:
I've never had hives before this week.
Marco:
It's terrible.
Casey:
It does not sound particularly fun.
Marco:
And these aren't even severe hives.
Marco:
I don't have to be scratching them all the time.
Marco:
I'm trying not to scratch them at all.
Marco:
And they go away sometime in the middle of the night.
Marco:
So I go to bed.
Marco:
They start around 7 or 8 p.m.
Marco:
I go to bed, and then I wake up in the morning, and they're gone.
Marco:
So I don't know what's going on.
Marco:
People give me stick talking about my toes on rectus.
Marco:
I think this is worse.
Marco:
I don't want to hear about hives.
Marco:
I don't want to have them.
Marco:
Believe me, this is not a fun thing.
Casey:
Well, how do you think all that 5G is getting out of you, man?
Marco:
I'm glad that they started before the shot.
Marco:
So I know that that's not it.
Casey:
That's true, actually.
Marco:
That's a good point.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
Your body's a Petri dish.
Marco:
Some people's body are a wonderland.
Marco:
Marco's body is a Petri dish.
Marco:
I always get the weird medical issues in the family.
Marco:
Like, I don't have anything normal that's wrong with me.
Marco:
I only have occasional really weird stuff like this happen, and then it goes away.
Marco:
Like, okay, well...
Marco:
So anyway, hopefully by next week I won't be having hives every night for unknown reasons.
Casey:
Actually, next week's show I will be vaccinated.
John:
And next week's show I will be where Marco is because that's the day my second shot is scheduled for.
Casey:
Oh, nice.
Casey:
I don't recall.
Casey:
Are you Pfizer or Moderna?
John:
Pfizer.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
So I'm the lone Moderna man.
John:
My wife got her second shot today too.
John:
She went to bed early complaining of a headache.
Marco:
Lots of hydration is what I've heard.
Casey:
I'm not sure.
Marco:
I think it's placebo, but I mean, it's always a good idea anyway.
Casey:
It is probably a placebo, but I was drinking water, Powerade, Pedialyte, literally Pedialyte, like whatever, nonstop the day before and the day of.
Casey:
And I really did not have a bad go of it at all.
Casey:
Like I said, I think earlier in the show, there was a couple hours where I was like really chilly during the day and felt a little run down.
Casey:
I had a lot of like...
Casey:
I don't know if you guys get this, but when I take NyQuil, which I don't do often, the following day I'll wake up and I'll feel like my head is like two or three floors above my body.
Casey:
That's the only way I can describe it.
Casey:
Like it's the most odd, like very light, well, not lightheaded, but like fuzzy feeling.
Casey:
And I had, and I would like would waffle between, oh, my head is not several stories above my body like it is after NyQuil, but it's like the next story above my body.
Casey:
And then it would go into like a light headache and then back to this like floating head, like brain fog, as Roll Call says in the chat.
Casey:
That's a good way of looking at it.
Casey:
And I kept going back and forth with that.
Casey:
And I was freezing at night for two nights.
Casey:
But that was it.
Casey:
Like I tweeted about all this and some people were like, wow, that sounds really bad.
Casey:
And I was like, no, actually, it really was nothing.
Casey:
Like it really wasn't bad at all.
Casey:
So, yeah, it seems to be just the luck of the draw.
Casey:
I don't know what to make of it.
Marco:
I can tell you from experience, though, this is all better than actual COVID.
Casey:
Yeah, I was going to say, like, from my experience, not having had it, it's like certainly even what Aaron's going through, you know, super, super tired and feeling not the greatest.
Casey:
Like, I'll take that over COVID any day of the week.
Casey:
And you actually are in the you're uniquely positioned to say with authority that it is indeed better.
Marco:
Yeah, imagine having that brain fog for a month.
Casey:
Yeah, no.
Marco:
In addition to like the horrible fever and aches and everything that you had for two weeks.
Marco:
Like that's – it's just – it's no contest.
Marco:
This is better.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
And I've probably said this live and the thing of it is is that like –
Casey:
If I knew that COVID was just a bad flu, like, hear me out, hear me out.
Casey:
If I knew it was, like, just a bad flu where you feel like crap for a week, like, fine, whatever.
Casey:
I probably would have just gone on living my life.
Casey:
But because there's such a variance between, like, oh, you get it and nothing really happens, and oh, you get it and literally die.
Casey:
Like, that's why I've been locked in my house for a year, because...
Casey:
you don't know what's going to happen.
Casey:
And yeah, like Aaron and I both were, not that we were dreading getting our second shot, but we're both like, oh God, what's going to come of this?
Casey:
Are we going to feel like death for a day?
Casey:
But you know what?
Casey:
I'll take it.
Casey:
That is absolutely worth it.
Casey:
I will absolutely do it.
Casey:
And I wasn't planning on getting preachy in the after show, but here we are.
Casey:
If you have the opportunity to get a vaccination, please, please do so.
Casey:
Please do so.
Marco:
this is really like this is this is all of our duty to society if you if you can get vaccinated get vaccinated yep couldn't agree more i think that's fine for an after show to be honest with you i don't know how long i have in this benadryl so we're gonna keep it moving i gotta i gotta get you on the phone in like an hour and start asking for something that you really don't want to give me like hey man you want to buy me a tycon stores down marker you gotta fix it what what
Marco:
You won't be able to.
Marco:
I'll be in DND mode.
Marco:
Auto DND.
Marco:
10 p.m.
Marco:
is when it starts.
Casey:
Hey, man, I can call you twice in a row.
Casey:
That'll bust right through.
Marco:
Will it?
Marco:
I think it's only if I tell you to, right?
Marco:
Don't I have to whitelist you for that, or is it everybody?
John:
I think it might be people in your address book can double call through.
John:
I don't remember.
John:
Oh, crap.
John:
You're in my address book.
John:
He's not going to actually do it.
John:
Don't worry.
John:
I'm not going to.
John:
Yeah, he's going to be asleep by then.
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
I'm absolutely going to sleep.
John:
He's got his sleepy shirt.
Casey:
I am in my sleepy shirt.
Casey:
You are correct.
Casey:
That is a fact.
Marco:
I'm in my sleepy hives, so I'm ready to go.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
Yeah, you're in your own sleepy shirt.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Red and blotchy on my arms.
Marco:
Gross.
Marco:
Kind of itchy, kind of hot.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
I did think the toe thing was much worse, but we're starting to even out the longer you go on.
John:
I mean, the toe wasn't like infectious or, you know what I mean?
John:
Like, it's not spreading across my body.
Marco:
Hives aren't infectious.
Marco:
You're just going to be one big hive soon.
Marco:
Yeah, but it's not infectious.
Marco:
It doesn't spread to other people.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I don't know how the hive's working.
Marco:
It's spreading to yourself.
Marco:
Now, granted, I only learned this like 48 hours ago when I looked it all up.
Marco:
Oh, God.
Marco:
This is terrible.
Marco:
I don't know how people do this.
Marco:
A lot of allergy people have hives on a more regular basis.
Marco:
God, I hope this is not my new life.
Marco:
I hope this better not be my new normal.
Marco:
Time for some more allergy shots.
Marco:
I actually haven't gotten them in a few months because it's difficult where I live to get that done.
Casey:
Before you die, let's say goodbye to the live listeners.
Casey:
Thank you if you're listening live, if you've joined, because at least a couple of you did, if you've bought merch, which I haven't looked, but I'm assuming at least a couple of you did.
Casey:
Thank you for just listening to us.
Casey:
Shill for all these things.
Casey:
That's very kind of you, and thank you for being live listeners, hopefully not covered in hives.
Casey:
Live listeners, not hive listeners.
Marco:
And you all can rest assured, when Casey said a few of you joined, Casey watches the membership number.
Casey:
Oh, like a hawk.
Marco:
Like... Like a hawk.
Marco:
There was... You don't even know.
Marco:
There was one time when, like, there was, like, a wave of payment failures, and just because it was, like, the interval that they renew on, and Casey posted in our chat, like, we've had, like, a... What was it?
Marco:
Disastrous?
Marco:
What was the word you used?
Casey:
I know what you're thinking of, but I don't remember.
Marco:
A disastrous drop in members, and it was, like, you know, like, 0.01% or something, but it was, like... Whatever.
Marco:
It was, like, you know, some number of people, like five people or something.
Casey:
It was more than five, you big jerk, but yes.
Marco:
It was some small number of people, and you were like, it's a disaster.
Casey:
Excuse me.
Casey:
It was like 20 or 30 people, sir, and I will concede that I was definitely having a chicken little moment.
Casey:
It was more than you were making it out to be, but it was still not as much as my reaction justified.
Marco:
Yeah, and regardless, so if you're out there thinking, should I become a member?
Marco:
Would they even notice?
Marco:
Rest assured, Casey will notice.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
i will notice i look at the numbers too and i can actually keep track of them i mean i don't keep track of them over time but i do have a little like solver sheet that i updated in like let's put it this way uh prospective uh members we do not have enough members that you are one of an anonymous few you you are you are a precious gem a unique uh ingot of whatever uh there's not so many members so come and join us there'll be more
Marco:
And rest assured, at least Casey and probably John will notice.
Marco:
I won't notice, but I will appreciate it.
Casey:
Marco doesn't give a shit.
Casey:
I care about like... I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Marco:
He cares in the aggregate.
Marco:
Yeah, that's it.
Marco:
I care like, what's the ballpark of how we're doing?
Marco:
And is the average either going up or staying the same?
Marco:
That's what I care about.
Marco:
If the average starts going down, then I'll start caring in a bad way.
Marco:
But as long as things are flat or going up trend-wise, I'm fine with that.
Casey:
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Casey:
I pay closer attention than I know I should, and it's probably healthy, but it's important to me.
Casey:
That implies it's not important to you, too.
Casey:
You know what I mean?
Casey:
There are things that I choose to worry about.
John:
Casey also needs his garage door status and his menu bar on his Mac, so there you go.
Casey:
Hey, both of these things, they're literally next to each other.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
Did you see?
Marco:
I think this was the best email of the week from Russ Newcomer.
Marco:
Subject line, Casey, air tags use.
Marco:
I am surely not the first person to suggest that you put one on the top half of your garage door to determine if it's open or not.
John:
See, I read that.
John:
I'm like, how is that supposed to work?
John:
The U1 can point an arrow to say if it's open or closed?
John:
I don't feel like the resolution would be enough to make that useful.
John:
Well, it depends on how close the bedroom is to the garage.
Casey:
It's pretty close, right?
Casey:
That's true, actually.
Casey:
Isn't it right on top of it?
Casey:
That's right.
Casey:
Our master bedroom is directly above the garage.
John:
Then we had to launch the Find My app, which always takes a long time, and wait for it to find and register and show the letter arrow and then show the number of feet.
Yeah.
Casey:
I was slightly miffed by it, but also it was a very, very good email.
Casey:
And so I did laugh.
Marco:
That was my favorite email of the week.
Marco:
Russ gets an award, a gold star for the best email of the week.
Casey:
I've put in our super secret text.
Casey:
This is my menu bar as it stands right this very moment.
Casey:
So you'll see that there's a padlock that is locked.
Casey:
So the garage is indeed closed.
Casey:
And then there's a one to seven digit number that indicates subscriber count.
Marco:
You have that in your menu bar?
Casey:
You're damn right I do.
Casey:
You're damn right I do.
John:
He's got too much stuff in that menu bar.
John:
Like, do you need Backblaze there?
John:
Like, the whole point of Backblaze is it just runs without you worrying about it.
Casey:
No, I don't want Backblaze there.
Casey:
Can I remove it?
John:
Yes.
John:
Go to the prep frame.
John:
Go to the prep frame and uncheck the checkbox.
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
where i don't see any such checkbox for you um i don't even know what half the stuff my menu bar is backblaze oh my god there it is settings oh john i love you it's not new it's always been there i don't doubt it i've just never noticed i love you john that's that's all right so i save you some space uh what else can we get rid of you can't get rid of skype because it puts that up here whenever it's running that'll go away do is there bluetooth do you actually use that menu mark
Casey:
I used to more often than I do now, so I could probably remove that.
Marco:
Yeah, Control Center now makes that a lot less necessary for a lot of people.
John:
Do you ever disable Wi-Fi or pick a different network?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
Get that out of there.
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
John:
Good idea.
John:
We're really cleaning house here.
Casey:
Oh, okay.
Casey:
I'm liking this.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Can I get rid of the Wi-Fi?
Casey:
Yes, you can.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, I can.
Casey:
Command-drag.
John:
Command-drag.
John:
And it's still available under Control Center if you ever actually want to do it, so it's technically still in your menu bar.
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
Oh, you're performing a wonderful service, John.
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
And then get rid of fuzzy clock because it's dumb.
Casey:
I like fuzzy clock.
Casey:
For those who don't know, fuzzy clock is, right now it says five, literally the words five space two.
John:
F-I-V-E space T-O space T-E-N because it's five to ten.
John:
I like fuzzy clock.
John:
And it's like, how can we make time really hard to read quickly?
John:
I know time is easy to tell at a glance because people are used to looking at both analog clocks and digital clocks, but can we slow them down?
John:
Can we add cognitive load?
John:
Someone said, yes, we can.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
I'm also taking away day one.
Casey:
I used to be religious about taking a note as to what I work on each day.
Casey:
That's the little bookmark.
Casey:
Yeah, that's the bookmark.
Casey:
And I don't do that anymore, so I'm just taking that away.
Casey:
Dropler, I use enough that I want it in the menu bar, even though I probably should just remove it.
John:
What's the lock icon on the far left?
Casey:
That's my garage door, man.
Casey:
It's closed.
John:
Oh, that's right.
John:
Okay.
John:
But you need a custom icon for the garage door.
John:
Now that we've made all this space for the glory item, which is the garage door, you need a custom template image for garage door open and garage door closed.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Casey:
Everything else, I have iStat menus, which I know is your favorite app of all time.
Casey:
Let's see.
Casey:
Can I get rid of Time Machine up there?
John:
You can get rid of Siri.
John:
I would recommend it.
Casey:
Can I?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
God bless.
Casey:
How do I not know all these things?
Casey:
God, I'm an amateur.
John:
Because you don't use a Mac.
John:
I don't know.
Casey:
Seriously.
Casey:
Good grief.
Casey:
Oh, this is looking so much better, John.
Casey:
I would get rid of the clock, but now that's the freaking notification center, so I can't get rid of that.
Casey:
I can't get rid of Spotlight either.
John:
Hey, you've got fuzzy clock and you've got the analog clock.
Casey:
I know, I know, I know.
Casey:
Then Synology Drive.
Casey:
Yeah, see, this is looking much better.
John:
I'm basically making your screen bigger.
John:
Pretty soon, it'll feel like you have an XDR.