The Bluetooth Adds Warmth
Marco:
So I went on a little break, you know, a little vacation for Thanksgiving with the family.
Marco:
And in order to keep things simpler, uh, as I frequently do when I travel, uh, I did not bring my Apple watch because I figured that's one less charger I need to deal with.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So I'm going to a bunch of different places.
Marco:
Let me, let me just bring my phone charger and not have to worry about like a whole size, a whole second one.
Um,
Marco:
And I really missed it.
Marco:
Uh-oh.
Marco:
I finally reached the point in my Apple Watchdom and in my watch nerdery, I think, where I want to wear it most of the time.
Marco:
And I mostly only want to wear fancy mechanical watches when I'm like going out.
Marco:
Like, you know, for dinner or like for a special occasion or for like, you know, non-common everyday things.
Marco:
Like for common everyday use, I'm pretty much wearing the Apple Watch now.
Marco:
Apple Watch, the sweatpants of the watch world.
Casey:
So wait, so what is it that you missed out of curiosity?
Casey:
Was it notifications?
Casey:
Was it the tracking of your fitness and movement and things of that nature?
Casey:
What did you miss about it?
Marco:
Notifications, I miss initially.
Marco:
Like the first time I get the tap tap in my pocket and I look at my wrist and I can't tell what it's for.
Marco:
Then I'm like, oh, I guess that's kind of unfortunate.
Marco:
But I forget about that within a day and don't miss it anymore because I don't enable that many notifications.
Marco:
It's mostly text messages and calendar alerts that I really want to be notified of.
Marco:
It's almost nothing else.
Marco:
What I did miss was the complications, three in particular.
Marco:
number one i missed the day of the week regular watches have that too right they do occasionally it's not a very common complication which honestly frankly doesn't make sense to me because mechanically speaking it's extremely similar to a date complication and it's usually triggered by some of the same parts
Marco:
So it doesn't really make a lot of sense why you wouldn't have that on more watches than it is on.
Marco:
But it's on very few relative to the world of mechanical watches on a whole.
Marco:
Almost every mechanical watch that sells in reasonable numbers has a date.
Marco:
Very few have the day of the week, relatively speaking, to the date.
Marco:
So that's – and I've occasionally had mechanical watches that have had it.
Marco:
Like I had this wonderful Damasco for a while that had it.
Marco:
And I love having the day of the week because I actually need to know that.
Marco:
Like I have things that only happen on certain days like most people do.
Marco:
And I don't know why this is not a more common complication with the exception of maybe just not wanting to take up the space with another wheel inside to have like the day wheel next to the day wheel and everything.
John:
It was like a cautionary tale for the self-employed.
John:
Most people do know what day of the week it is.
John:
I was thinking the same thing.
John:
If you are self-employed and if there's nobody in your house who has a jobby job, you can lose track.
John:
And you live at the beach, you definitely can lose track of what day it is.
Marco:
Number two thing I missed was the temperature.
Marco:
Very simple thing, I know, but this is something that, you know, no mechanical watch can do that.
Marco:
Well, actually, that's not entirely true.
Marco:
There should be occasionally mechanical watches that have thermometers in them, but they don't work very well because they're on your wrist.
Marco:
But anyway, you know,
Marco:
For the most part, that's not a thing that mechanical watches ever have.
Marco:
And so I definitely miss that.
Marco:
You know, that's a common thing that as things are getting colder here, I like to know, like, what jacket should I put on?
Marco:
And that's something I find out by looking at the temperature.
Marco:
And then finally, I missed timers.
Marco:
I frequently will do things like make coffee or tea and I need to know, I want a countdown timer for that.
Marco:
Or Adam will ask, he'll request me, count him down a five minute timer for a math worksheet he's doing.
Marco:
It has to be a timed sprint for a math worksheet.
Marco:
Stuff like that.
Marco:
I use timers all the time, it turns out.
Marco:
This is part of the reason why I'm so annoyed at how mediocre they are on all Apple platforms.
Marco:
All Apple platforms do timers in a way that I think could use significant improvement.
Marco:
And then kind of a fourth little bonus one.
Marco:
Sunset time.
Marco:
Something I never care about in the summer because it's late.
Marco:
But sunset time is very important when it happens at like noon, like it does in the winter.
Marco:
So when, you know, when the sun's and it's not that bad, but it's like, you know, four o'clock maybe or four thirty.
Marco:
And when when the sun is setting at four thirty in the afternoon, I need to know like I need to be able to do my dog walk before then because my dog is old and won't want to walk in the dark.
Marco:
These kind of things are all on my watch face all the time on the Apple Watch.
Marco:
And so I actually did really miss it for this time.
Marco:
You know, I finally reached an equilibrium point with the Apple Watch where I have stopped trying to make it an analog watch because it's a terrible analog watch.
Marco:
So I just use the, what is this face?
Marco:
Infograph Modular.
Marco:
I use Infograph Modular with...
Marco:
complications, some of which I've made, most of which I haven't.
Marco:
And I leave it there now.
Marco:
It's a digital watch.
Marco:
I'm fine with that because it's a really good digital watch and a really terrible analog one.
Marco:
And I have the Albihan display that makes it very useful.
Marco:
And now complications have gotten a little more reliable than they have in the past.
Marco:
So ultimately, I'm now at the point where...
Marco:
i am actually liking the apple watch and i say that kind of reluctantly because i also love mechanical watches but i do miss the utility of the apple watch when i'm not wearing it so that that has been what i've worn most of the time for the last uh year really and i think it's going to keep going for a while
Casey:
This is basically the strategy that I have for my mechanical watches.
Casey:
I have very unremarkable mechanical watches compared to what you're used to.
Casey:
I have a Citizen that I really, really like that Aaron got me many years ago.
Casey:
It is not anything to write home about, but it's important and special to me.
Casey:
And I have a, what is it, Movement and MVMT?
Casey:
I think something like that.
Casey:
that my immediate younger brother had gotten me as a present for being a groomsman at his wedding.
Casey:
So that's special to me as well.
Casey:
And every great once in a while, like probably two or three times a year, I'll put on one of those, typically The Citizen, for like a wedding or something like that.
Casey:
And that's about the only time I wear a mechanical watch.
Casey:
And I do...
Casey:
I do really enjoy wearing mechanical watches for those kinds of situations.
Casey:
I think it makes a lot of sense, especially for something like a wedding, where if you have a piece of technology visible for pictures and things like that, you're immediately dating those pictures.
Casey:
For the most part, if you ask me, for the most part, a men's suit or a woman's dress, I know we're talking about fashion.
Casey:
We have no business doing so.
Casey:
But generally speaking, a decent suit or decent dress or whatever...
Casey:
will mostly hold up over the years.
Casey:
I mean, it may look a little dated, but not outrageous.
Casey:
But if you see like a honking, like, or if you saw like an iPhone 3GS today in a wedding picture, you'd be like, whoa, that was a long time ago.
Casey:
Same thing with an Apple Watch.
Casey:
Like, oh, in five, ten years, we're going to look at these things that are so thick and beefy and whatnot and think, wow, those things were ugly.
Casey:
And so I really don't like the idea of flashing or flaunting to some degree any sort of technology on a picture that's going to hopefully last for years to come.
Casey:
And so I basically have been in this mode that you're now finding yourself backed into, which is, you know, hey, if you're doing something special or fancy, then put on a special or fancy watch, you know, commensurate with the event.
Casey:
But otherwise, it's nice having a little teeny computer on your wrist.
Casey:
Is it required?
Casey:
Of course not.
Casey:
But is it convenient?
Casey:
Heck yeah.
Marco:
yeah and and you're right like if you've ever seen a tv show that features iphones in the show that's another good example that happens a lot apple is always you know getting themselves put in tv shows and everything but they age so like they age not only do they age you know proportionally to the actual age they age faster because when apple releases a new iphone design the previous design looks old like you instantly think it looks older and it looks older than it is
Marco:
You know, you actually if you're looking at a pair of pants from, you know, three to four to five years ago, that's going to look pretty much the same as it looks today.
Marco:
Whereas if you look at a phone from three or five years ago, it's going to look like DOS.
Marco:
Like it's going to look so old.
Marco:
comparison because this world moves so quickly and the apple watch is also you know it still moves quickly like you know if you look at an apple watch even already like now that now that we've had like the series four five six seven design where it's like the more rounded corners and you know a little bit adjusted shape the previous generation apple watches which they're still selling with a series three but the previous generation apple watches looks really like old and clunky by comparison
Marco:
And that's going to keep happening over time.
Marco:
An Apple Watch, on the formality scale, an Apple Watch is like a right down the middle of the road pair of sneakers.
Marco:
So anytime you would not wear a pair of sneakers, you shouldn't be wearing an Apple Watch.
Marco:
So if you're wearing a suit,
Marco:
That is not an appropriate combination, you know?
Marco:
And look, and there's plenty of time in life where a pair of sneakers is totally fine.
Marco:
I wear sneakers most of the time.
Marco:
It's fine, but you can't wear them with every outfit.
Marco:
And as you get up to the fancy level, you should not be wearing sneakers at a certain point.
Marco:
And that's how the Apple Watch is.
Marco:
Anytime you would question sneakers, you should also be questioning your Apple Watch.
John:
I think it's fine to wear an Apple Watch with a formal outfit.
John:
I don't think it's the equivalent of sneakers.
John:
I know what you're saying about that.
Marco:
No, it's better to be wearing no watch than to be wearing an Apple Watch with a formal outfit.
John:
No, I think it's... It's more subtle than you think.
John:
From a distance, it could be mistaken for a regular watch because at this point, it is not so ridiculously differently sized and shaped than the...
John:
especially men's those giant men's watches may even be bigger and beefier than this so i think it's fine it's not like the screen is visible and glaring in the face of all your photos if you see a little bit of an apple watch peeking out from your suit jacket it's fine you have my permission you don't have mine
Casey:
Yeah, I think you're both right, but I tend closer to Marco.
John:
How can we both be right?
John:
We have literally the opposite opinion on this issue.
John:
That's the way of the Casey.
Casey:
No, first of all, have we met?
Casey:
This is episode, what, 400 and something?
Casey:
No, what I mean by that is I think it is not as egregious as Marco says, but ultimately I come down more on Marco's side than John's in that –
Casey:
I think you can get away with an Apple Watch, like John said, in situations where maybe you couldn't get away with sneakers, but I still think that is a reasonable metric by which to question whether or not you should be wearing an Apple Watch.
Casey:
Like if you're in a position that sneakers really aren't socially acceptable, God, how are we talking about fashion again?
Casey:
If you're in a situation when sneakers are perhaps not socially acceptable, then I would say that you should at least consider taking off your Apple Watch and or replacing it with something else.
Marco:
I will say there's an exception to this principle, and that is if your more formal than sneakers situation is just like your everyday work, like if your office happens to require non-sneakers as office wear, like, okay, you're fine to wear an Apple Watch to work.
Marco:
I'm talking about like special occasions, family events, fancy parties, like whatever that kind of thing, things like attending a wedding or a funeral, something like that where you would be going to a formal event.
Marco:
not like, you know, going to your office where they require you to wear khakis.
Marco:
That's, that's different.
Marco:
Plus God, I mean this, the things people wear at their offices, the most like ill fitting, like baggy, you know, baggy suits and bad khakis.
Marco:
Like, yeah, your Apple watch is not the thing dragging that outfit down.
Yeah.
Casey:
I have a revelation as well.
Casey:
So, you know how you kind of came crawling back to vinyl like a year or two ago and you're like, well, you know, it still sounds like dirt and I hate everything about it, but it actually has its place.
Casey:
Remember that whole conversation?
Marco:
We're going to get more into similar topics later.
John:
I don't remember that exactly.
John:
I don't remember when it was.
Marco:
I developed an appreciation for what it's good at.
Marco:
It's not sound quality or convenience or reliability or anything like that.
John:
I mean, I remember when you made the little physical digital media player with the SD cards or whatever.
John:
And I guess you did get a turntable at some point.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Maybe I blocked it out.
John:
Stop listening to vinyl people.
Marco:
Oh, and you got to... I got to tell you one more thing.
Marco:
Sorry, Casey.
Marco:
One more thing on that topic.
Marco:
Oh, no.
Marco:
So one of the places we went last week for Thanksgiving... I already told you this, Casey, but...
Marco:
oh yes i did see that was this one of the saddest things i've ever seen yeah so i so we we stayed a night in a hotel room and it was like a somewhat recently redone place um so it was like a little bit hipster and they had advertised that there was a record player in each room with a curated selection of records you know for each so that's so great
Marco:
We go in and there's like, you know, there's a bunch of like, you know, nice classic rock albums from like the 60s.
Marco:
There's, you know, some Beatles, some Dylan, you know, Van Morrison, like, you know, some Zeppelin.
Marco:
Like it was a pretty nice collection of a handful of records and everything.
Marco:
And they had this modern audio technical record player there.
Marco:
So, you know, you have this beautiful, you know, all analog medium.
Marco:
The whole point of vinyl is it's all analog.
Marco:
So what is the speaker of choice?
Marco:
Next to the record player is a small Bose battery-powered Bluetooth speaker.
Marco:
Emphasis on small, as in smaller than a tissue box.
Marco:
Yeah, like about the size of like, you know, maybe a large stick of deodorant.
John:
So you might as well have just played it on your phone.
Marco:
Yeah, and so the record player, apparently modern record players often, especially at this moment from Audio Technica, often offer Bluetooth output.
Marco:
And of course, when I got there, it wasn't working because most Bose portable speakers have multi-pairing.
Marco:
And so I went up and no sound was coming out.
Marco:
I'm like, all right, let me see.
Marco:
And I eventually pushed the Bluetooth button on the record player.
Marco:
That lit up, so it wasn't even on.
Marco:
Okay, okay.
Marco:
so i turn that on and then still nothing's coming out i turn up the volume on the speaker nothing coming out so i i finally found the button on the speaker that was like the input select button and you push it and you just keep pushing it says iphone iphone iphone bob's iphone jane's iphone iphone iphone and eventually audio technica at bola so then i then i finally found out how to do it but my god a record player through a bluetooth through a crappy little bluetooth speaker
Casey:
It does not sound good.
Marco:
And what's the point of the record?
Marco:
I mean, maybe the Bluetooth speaker adds warmth and charm.
Casey:
No, that's the other side of it.
Casey:
That's the other side of it.
Marco:
Nostalgia for crappy Bluetooth speakers.
John:
The records that were there were also completely destroyed because records...
Marco:
yeah like any any of the records that were from like the most popular artists like like the beatles records were unplayable like you know you get through half a song before it would start start a skipping loop where just play the same segment skip play the same segment it's almost as if this format has drawbacks that beg for it to be replaced by something better
John:
no surely not like the idea of having public records like i mean i guess it's better than the idea that people are going to bring their vinyl records and pack them in their suitcase so they can all shatter when like the you know they're thrown in the back of their car um but but you go there it's like no worry we've got we've got records for you just a public correction of records like and you just know they're gonna look like like the toys in the waiting room at the doctor's office for the kids they've just been mangled by wave after wave of sick children that's what these records are like
John:
yeah it was funny like i i wanted to like we got like halfway through rubber soul and i wanted to finish the album but it kept skipping so badly so i used to open up my laptop and played it there and it was so much better you can play it on the same bluetooth speaker and get the same high fidelity audio no i just played it out of the built-in speakers on the new 16 inch and they're great you should compete which has more base this deck of cards bluetooth speaker playing it that's playing vinyl or my iphone
Marco:
well i mean even and by the way the vinyl format itself is not super great at bass for many good reasons but um but no actually the i think the bluetooth speaker did have more bass but because that's one thing the modern so this is also my first time traveling with the new 16 inch it's really surprisingly decent it's but it's still like for speakers but it's still not speakers like it's still not big speakers uh it still sounds like laptop speakers it just sounds like really good laptop speakers but yeah it's still very much laptop speakers
Marco:
But still, very impressive device overall.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So Casey, sorry.
Casey:
So you have been for two or three years now, maybe even more than that for all I know, on a bit of a crusade trying to tell everyone that the LG Ultrafine monitor is neither ultra nor fine.
Casey:
And I've had one for a couple of weeks now.
Casey:
And I have to say, when everything is working appropriately, not unlike my BMW, it is a great monitor that I got for a really good deal, and I don't regret it not one bit.
Casey:
I mean that genuinely.
Casey:
However, this particular example is on the older side, and it appears based on not very scientific testing at all that John will surely poke holes into.
Casey:
It appears that perhaps the main USB-C connector on the back, so there's four USB-C connectors, and one of them is the one that you're allowed to transmit power and the video signal on, and the other three are just like a USB hub, right?
Casey:
The one connector that transmits power and data and all that...
Casey:
seems to be a little bit on the flaky side.
Casey:
And so I think that's what happened last week when we were recording was it just decided, or maybe I, I don't know, maybe I grazed the cable or something like that.
Casey:
And it just decided, I think I'm going to not work right now.
Casey:
And, uh, that was undesirable.
Casey:
So, uh, of interest to you, Marco, my mix pre three is connected directly to my laptop this week and not through the monitor.
Casey:
You're welcome.
Casey:
Not through the monitor as it was last week.
Casey:
um have you tried it just for the sake of argument have you tried a different thunderbolt cable i have i have and so i actually went to apple and bought their 40 whatever it is like two and a half foot uh thunderbolt cable and had no better luck with that in fact that cable is currently carrying this audio from the mix p3 to the laptop as we speak but i tried that one well it's a little overkill but hey it does the job um
Casey:
I tried that one.
Casey:
I tried a Amazon one that I had laying around that I think was not Thunderbolt 3.
Casey:
It was like some other flavor of Thunderbolt.
Casey:
I'm really starting to hate USB-C in a whole new way now because now it matters to me what cable quality I have for these sorts of things, and it's completely unintelligible.
Casey:
But nevertheless, I had an Amazon cable around that would run the monitor actually fairly consistently at like 4K, but it wouldn't do it at 5K, which is very frustrating.
Casey:
Anyway, so I'm back on the cable that came with the monitor, and 98% of the time it works great, but every great once in a while it decides, nope, I'm going to just sputter to death.
Casey:
And then I have to reach behind and jiggle the little connection, and suddenly it all comes back to life again.
Casey:
But it is very frustrating.
Casey:
I still stand by the purchase.
Casey:
And I know that my friend Chris, who sold it to me, is probably listening to this and freaking out right now.
Casey:
I stand by the purchase.
Casey:
I would say that to make him feel better, but it's also true.
Casey:
I stand by the purchase.
Casey:
I got this at an incredible steal.
Casey:
And it was infinitely cheaper than a ridiculously overpriced Apple Pro Display XDR.
Casey:
However, I kind of want a Pro Display XDR right now.
Casey:
It is just barely frustrating enough to get on my nerves.
Casey:
Because the thing is, when it's working properly, as it is right now, it really is a great monitor.
Casey:
The stand sucks, but the monitor's fine.
Marco:
Great might be a stretch.
Casey:
well i would say it's ultra fine yeah ultra fine it's an ultra fine monitor when everything is working properly uh but yeah this it could probably just this particular example which again i got it to steal no regrets truly no regrets i i think this was the best uh i don't know compromise i could come up with but if any of you would like to go to atp.fm and supply me with a pro display xdr i wouldn't complain
Marco:
Yeah, so a few things.
Marco:
Number one, tell your friend this is why you don't sell technology to people you know.
Casey:
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Casey:
He has nothing to feel bad about.
Casey:
Truly, he has nothing to feel bad about.
Casey:
He really, really doesn't.
Casey:
Because as far as he knew, everything was working perfectly.
Casey:
And 98% of the time it does.
Casey:
And he gave it to me at a great deal.
Casey:
So he has nothing to feel bad about.
Casey:
Hand to God.
Marco:
this this is the story of the lg 5k it's it's kind of similar but not as bad but kind of similar to the butterfly keyboard thing where like you would have a problem with it and if you ask people like on twitter or whatever a third of the people saying yeah i had the same problem mine flaked out or died or whatever and you'll have other people saying like what do you mean mine's been rock solid like what are you talking about yeah
Marco:
And it's enough people say it's been bad for them that there's definitely clearly problems with reliability.
Marco:
But then somebody will say like, oh, I manage a fleet of 50 of these for my office and we've had zero failures.
Marco:
And you're like, what?
Marco:
But yeah, there's definitely something up with them.
Marco:
They have made multiple minor revisions over time.
Marco:
And so some people try to say, well, the first A and B revisions were bad, but then they fixed the C revision.
Marco:
But who knows?
Marco:
It's hard to get solid data on that.
Marco:
But the result is...
Marco:
You're having a very similar experience – actually, you're having a worse experience than I was with mine.
Marco:
Mine works.
Marco:
It's just mediocre.
Casey:
See, I actually genuinely – it's stand accepted.
Casey:
Like my friend Chris, he said the stand is a piece of garbage.
Casey:
You have said the stand is a piece of garbage.
Casey:
Guess what?
Casey:
It's a piece of garbage.
Casey:
Like it's –
Casey:
It functions as a stand, and that's about the most praise I can give it.
Casey:
But that bill of goods was as it said on the tin.
Casey:
Chris said to me before he sold it, he said, I'm telling you, this stand's a piece of trash.
Casey:
And I was like, okay, it's fine, it's fine, fine.
Casey:
But the display, again, it really is a nice display.
Casey:
It's not stupendous.
Casey:
It's not as fancy as your XDR, but it is a nice display.
Casey:
And when paired with the laptop, especially this one, which is happy to run in clamshell mode,
Casey:
i really truly do love it i really really do it's just that persnickety like every great once in a while i'm done that's that gets a little frustrating to say the least yeah and and the ports being unreliable is is also not great well yes and no like now that i'm not plugging my usb interface my microphone interface through it it's fine because i don't really have anything of note plugged into the back of it except that's actually a perfect segue i owe you a dollar
Casey:
uh it's a perfect segue to i sell segways obviously no i i i have plugged in my brand new uh apple magic what is it a magic trackpad whatever the external trackpad is yeah i am running it plugged in because i don't know if it's a i don't know if the trackpad is a lemon i don't think it is i'll explain why in a second maybe my computer's a lemon i don't know
Casey:
But the Bluetooth issues that I have never had in my entire life, that's the same thing as you were talking about with the butterfly keyboard, the Bluetooth issues that I've never, ever, ever had with any computer I've ever owned, it's killing me with this one.
Casey:
So what seems to happen, this is, again, John can poke a million holes in this, but the feeling of what's happening is that either the laptop or the trackpad or some combination thereof are...
Casey:
are like trying to go into low power mode too often.
Casey:
So like the second I stop mousing around, I don't notice any difference, but then I go, like I pick up my finger or whatever.
Casey:
Then I put my finger back on the trackpad and I go to mouse around some more and it's like, hmm?
Casey:
What?
Casey:
Oh, oh, oh, yes.
Casey:
Okay, sure.
Casey:
Yeah, I'll do that.
Casey:
And it's like the most frustrating, infuriating thing.
Casey:
And I haven't gotten scientific about it.
Casey:
I haven't moved the computer and trackpad elsewhere, I don't think.
Casey:
But I did try the trackpad that worked great with my iMac Pro, the same iMac Pro that was sitting at the same desk.
Casey:
And that had a similar problem.
Casey:
Now...
Casey:
I do believe I have used the trackpad without the LG plugged in, and it still had the same problem, because early LGs, of which this might be one, did have that Wi-Fi interference thing, but I've never noticed anything with this particular LG in that capacity.
Casey:
So I don't know what the deal is, but I've tried two different trackpads, and they both seem to express the same problem.
Casey:
I'm hoping that some sort of software or firmware update or something can make it better, but currently I have it plugged into the damn back of my...
Casey:
I haven't plugged into the back of this LG because it's more reliable that way.
Casey:
And it's preposterous.
Casey:
I shouldn't need a cable for this damn trackpad that I just bought for a gazillion dollars.
John:
I've heard a couple of reports of Monterey having some weird issues with Bluetooth stuff.
John:
And anecdotally, my wife's crappy third-party Bluetooth keyboard that she likes to use has been like spitting out double characters and other weird stuff since upgrading to Monterey.
John:
I hope it's a just, you know, software stack thing that they sort out in 12.1, but we'll see.
Marco:
...or podcast hosting... ...or video stuff...
Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Uh, so apparently taking me to task about vinyl isn't quite done yet.
Casey:
So Marco, what else would you like to say, dear?
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
So you were on a delightful episode of the double density podcast.
Marco:
We'll link to it in the show notes.
Marco:
That was a nice, nice interview you did there.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
You briefly breezed by and did a quick little hit on audiophiles, like the PH kind, not the F kind.
Marco:
And one of the things you remarked upon is something that I hear all the time that I used to believe.
Marco:
The ability on whether audiophiles are able to hear...
Marco:
what's between the stair-step output of a digital sound wave as opposed to an analog wave from a record would be a continuous sound wave.
Marco:
But when you digitize sound, you sample it, and so you visualize it as a stair-step.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
I think I mentioned this a long time ago on the show.
Marco:
You did.
Marco:
Yeah, I did.
Marco:
But we will once again link to this wonderful pair of videos on Ziff.org by this person, Monty, who I think invented the AugVorbis format, or at least was involved in the inventing of it.
Marco:
But the idea is the way that DACs work, that convert digital sound back to analog for Waves,
Marco:
The output of digital sound formats, like when you output digital audio back to analog, is not a stair-step wave.
Marco:
The way it works is complicated.
Marco:
I don't fully understand it, but watch this video.
Marco:
You will see.
Marco:
He uses an oscilloscope and shows you, even through a regular consumer-grade DAC,
Marco:
the the digital input and you know and and what samples are producing what output on the oscilloscope and it produces perfectly smooth waves that's that's what dax do that's how they work the conversion is not like a thousand percent flawless but it's close enough that humans can't tell the difference and within sampling theory it's important to know also that you're not losing any frequencies
Marco:
If you are capturing things with a high enough sample rate so that the Nyquist level or whatever is within the realm of human hearing, and 44.1 kHz is within the realm of human hearing, it'll capture every frequency we can actually hear.
Marco:
So digital audio is not missing information that analog formats like records have that is within human hearing.
John:
They're missing the noise, though.
John:
The noise added by hundreds of hotel guests scratching up the record.
John:
That's missing from the digital version.
John:
You can't get the noise into it.
John:
No matter how many times you play it, it doesn't get scratched up.
John:
I mean, I guess you can have BitRod eventually, but that's not really the fault of the file.
John:
It's more of the fault of the media that it's on.
Marco:
right and and you know and dax aren't perfect and they can have components that flake out or die as well but it the the flaws inherent in digital conversion are well well below what humans can hear like in the in their levels and frequencies and everything like that so the chat room is on the same wavelength as me i was going to say if you would like to learn more about this topic more than perhaps could be covered in a youtube video get an undergraduate education in electrical engineering and take a signals and systems class
Casey:
I did, but it was 20 years ago.
John:
But Casey either flunked that class or forgot everything in it.
Casey:
Okay, that's hurtful because I think I might have.
Casey:
And secondly, it was 20 years ago, so I've absolutely forgotten it.
Marco:
What you need to know to be a responsible nerd, listeners out there, is that digital audio output from a DAC is not a stair-step wave.
Marco:
It is a perfectly smooth wave that perfectly represents the frequencies that were input within the rings that we can hear.
Casey:
All right, I'm sorry.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Casey:
There are many regrets, and the offending person has been sacked.
Casey:
All right, tell me, I think, John, about Apple's monitor pricing conundrum.
John:
Yeah, we should have gripped this up with a monitoring talk, but it's fine.
John:
It's a slight diversion into vinyl.
John:
I was thinking about this because we talked about it on the last show, you know,
John:
the monitor, well, maybe the show before that, the monitor situation and how Apple needs to make a monitor.
John:
And we were also talking about the new displays in the MacBook Pros.
John:
And I realized that kind of, you know, in rectif's parlance, Apple kind of missed their window here.
John:
We've been complaining about the lack of a reasonable Apple monitor for many years now.
John:
And our old complaint was, hey, everybody loves the 5K iMac.
John:
why not just make a 5K iMac without the Mac?
John:
Same display that's in there, put it in a smaller case, don't give it a chin or whatever, and sell that to us.
John:
And you could sell it for a pretty high percentage of the cost of a bottom end 5K iMac because you're Apple.
John:
We kind of know what the price ceiling is.
John:
It's like, well, if I can get a 5K iMac for this price,
John:
Surely just the monitor part would have to be the same price or less.
John:
I mean, it stands to reason you're moving the computer.
John:
No, no SSD, no CPU, no speakers.
John:
No, it's just, well, yeah, maybe you could with speakers.
John:
Anyway, just give us that monitor.
John:
But Apple never did that.
John:
And we complained for years and years and they never did it.
John:
And it was all sad.
John:
And, you know, we never got what we wanted.
John:
But that's kind of the mindset we were in where we were saying like, oh, Apple should just make like a $1,500 to $2,000 monitor.
John:
That's the idea of the 5K iMac without the iMac in it.
John:
That's what we're thinking.
John:
But these new laptops have really screwed things up.
John:
And that's why our previous discussion about pricing, you know, went in surprising directions.
John:
The new laptops are...
John:
all have screens that are like, you know, better miniature Pro Display XDRs.
John:
Obviously not as big as a Pro Display XDR.
John:
They have fewer pixels in them, but they go just as bright, 1600 nits max brightness.
John:
They have way more zones, although I haven't been able to confirm this.
John:
They talk about how many LEDs are in there, but the number of LEDs is not necessarily matching the number of zones.
John:
So I can't tell if these things actually have 10,000 zones or they just have 10,000 LEDs.
John:
But either way, they surely have more zones and more LEDs than the Pro Display XDRs.
John:
They have great color reproduction.
John:
They have high refresh, which the Pro Display XDR doesn't have, right?
John:
So these are their pro laptop screens.
John:
The specs on these are so good that it doesn't seem like an Apple-ish thing to do to introduce a standalone screen that does not at least match the specs of their pro laptop screens.
John:
Because historically, when Apple sells a big monitor, a 27-inch monitor or whatever, or a 5K monitor...
John:
it's something that you're selling to go along with the pro stuff, right?
John:
If you're just getting a MacBook Air, maybe you're not going to get a 5K monitor to go with it.
John:
Like those are two different price classes of things, right?
John:
There's nothing stopping Apple from making essentially the, you know, an LG Ultra Finder or a 5K iMac without the iMac, right?
John:
They could do that right now.
John:
Do it today.
John:
Sell it for $1,500.
John:
It's a perfectly fine product.
John:
But it doesn't fit with Apple's line now that they've made the laptop monitor so good.
John:
And as we discussed in previous shows, if you look for a 5K-ish or even 4K-ish monitor with similar specs to what the new MacBook Pro screens have, it costs huge amounts of money.
John:
First of all, they're hard to even find.
John:
especially if you want everything i want high refresh 1600 nits 99 p3 color gamut coverage uh like good luck finding a monitor that even does that and if you do find it oh it's three thousand dollars it's five thousand dollars right and then it's like well apple already sells a almost you know a more than five thousand dollar monitor it's the proto specs the r and it doesn't have high refresh
John:
And it doesn't, you know, it doesn't have as many backlight zones on it.
John:
And that's what we were trying to avoid.
John:
Hey, Apple, you should make a monitor that's not the Pro Display XDR.
John:
So it's got me wondering if, you know, because Apple decided to never make the 5K iMac without the iMac.
John:
They never did that.
John:
Seems like they probably never will.
John:
And then I'm trying to figure out, is there a space in the realm of reality for an Apple monitor that costs less than the Pro Display XDR, but is as good as the laptop monitors?
John:
Granted, it would be smaller, 5K instead of 6K, let's say, right?
John:
But then, again, how much would a 5K monitor with similar specs to the MacBook Pro screens cost instead of being, what is the XDR?
John:
$6,000?
John:
Maybe it's $5,000.
John:
And is that worth making a product because it's $1,000 less?
John:
Is it a $4,500 monitor?
John:
Because, you know, just look for a PC.
John:
You know, I was looking for my PlayStation.
John:
Just look for a 4K PC monitor, quote unquote PC monitor, a 4K monitor from any manufacturer that matches the specs of the MacBook Pro ones.
John:
If you can find one, then see what the price is.
John:
I don't really understand how Apple can introduce a...
John:
large 27 inch ish retina monitor that matches the laptop's way.
John:
And if they can't do that, I don't really see them ever introducing a non HDR 5k monitor at this point.
Marco:
what we'll be telling is what the heck do they do for the large iMac?
Marco:
That's the real question here.
Marco:
I can't imagine them launching a high-end, larger iMac with a worse screen than the MacBook Pro either.
Marco:
So I think whatever they do there, that's our answer.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
I can't imagine that they would price the large iMac at greater than like a $3,000 starting point.
Marco:
Because the previous 27-inch was somewhere in the high 2000s, right?
Marco:
I think that's right.
Marco:
Yeah, so it's probably going to be like...
Marco:
At the most, a $3,000 entry price for whatever larger iMac they end up making, assuming there is a larger iMac coming, which I don't necessarily know that that's a guaranteed thing, but I think it's a very likely thing.
John:
I think it is coming, and I think you're hitting on what the key thing is.
John:
Everything we're talking about is either old technology, like the old 5K iMac, or currently released technology, like the laptop screens.
John:
But the same way we couldn't have these laptop screens a year ago...
John:
When they come out with that bigger iMac, presumably it will have a screen made with technology that was not available.
John:
It's not available now.
John:
It wasn't available six months ago when the current crop of monitors were made.
John:
Display technology marches on.
John:
So I fully believe that when they come out with a big iMac, it will have a much better screen in terms of HDR and all that stuff than the old 5K iMac.
John:
I just wonder how good they can make it without destroying the price.
John:
Because the laptop screens are small, you can sort of go all out because it's a 14-inch screen.
John:
And so we can afford to make it really good because it's just not that much of it.
John:
But once you go out to 5K, there's so much more of it, you might have to hold the price.
John:
Obviously, I don't keep up with the latest in the panel market or whatever.
John:
Maybe it's very easy to find
John:
uh scaled up versions of the macbook pro panels and just oh i just want that panel at 5k someone did that math i think one of our listeners uh sent in like if you just scale up in terms of square inches like the display in the the 16 inch macbook pro costs this much and so if i scale up to 5k it costs this much and you know it that math mostly works out to a reasonably priced iMac and then we're back into the previous situation which is okay we'll just give me that iMac without the iMac
John:
And then Apple could field that display.
John:
But the point is, we haven't seen that yet.
John:
That doesn't yet exist.
John:
And I don't think it exists.
John:
What I was trying to get at is I don't think it exists anywhere else either.
John:
I don't think there's any sort of Microsoft Surface Studio with these specs.
John:
There's no gaming monitor with these specs.
John:
This is technology that has not yet been released to the mass market as far as I know.
John:
So it's kind of an unknown.
John:
Obviously, it will be possible eventually.
John:
Hopefully, it will be possible in the first half of 2022 when I hope to see the new iMac.
Casey:
So if you do need a 5K iMac without the iMac, what you can use is, I think, long ago sponsor Luna Display, which just released a new version.
Marco:
Yes, they did sponsor us.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
They just released a new version that offers 4K and 5K support officially.
Casey:
So I had tried this before I packaged my iMac Pro up for sale.
Casey:
And in my experience, this was a couple of weeks ago now, it was beautiful.
Casey:
basically unusable.
Casey:
And as it turns out, I think that's because I didn't know at the time it wasn't really officially supported.
Casey:
Now it is.
Casey:
So you can get 4K at 60 hertz on a Mac or a PC, and you can get 5K at 30 hertz on a PC or 45 hertz on a Mac.
Casey:
I can't speak for 45 hertz, but I have seen 5K at 30 hertz in a different situation, and it is not great because your mouse cursor seems like it is totally wigging out and not moving the way you expect it to.
Casey:
I have not tried it with Luna Display, so maybe Luna does a better job.
Casey:
Who knows?
Casey:
But...
Casey:
I do think that's pretty cool that you can do 4K at 60 hertz on a Mac or a PC.
Casey:
And if my iMac can't get sold by some other mechanism, then maybe I will just turn it into an external display if a combination of the iMac not selling and this LG just completely pooping its pants happens.
Casey:
But anyway, for those of you who happen to have an old iMac laying around, you might want to give that a shot.
Marco:
I love the idea of you having this Xeon workstation that's sitting there doing nothing except showing a video display from another computer.
Casey:
You never know.
Casey:
It could happen.
Casey:
It is sad, but this is the world I'm living in right now.
Casey:
We also got some really good follow-up from Nick Matsakis with regard to junior versus senior developers, which was an Ask ATP from last week.
Casey:
I just wanted to read a quick excerpt from Nick.
Casey:
To get hired or promoted into senior software engineering in his particular corporation, you also need to have the skills to deliver technical artifacts through others.
Casey:
This means you need to be able to mentor junior engineers, put processes and tooling in place so things don't go off the rails, and know when you need to go deep versus trust your juniors to get the job done.
Casey:
Nick continues, I feel that developers are more often career-limited by their soft skills.
Casey:
These skills are hard to quantify and develop not, quote, more of the same of what you were evaluated at as a junior.
Casey:
Junior devs love to build stuff, that's why they got into the game, and get obvious rewards for building stuff.
Casey:
It's in the job title.
Casey:
So many hit a wall when they try to move to senior development and the job is changed out from under them.
Casey:
Or worse, they get promoted based on strong technical skills but then make bad decisions or fail to adequately mentor their juniors so the team falls apart without them.
Casey:
I thought that was pretty good.
John:
Also known as the Peter Principle, being promoted to your level of incompetence.
John:
Hey, I was a really good developer.
John:
I keep getting promoted and promoted, and now I'm in charge of other people, and I'm not good at this job, and now I stop getting promoted.
John:
That's what the Peter Principle is for people who weren't around in the 60s or whatever the hell it was made up.
John:
And it is still a thing.
John:
Yeah, I think the Ask ADP question was focusing on the technical stuff.
John:
It's like, what kind of things do I need to learn?
John:
Object-oriented programming.
John:
That's kind of why we went off in the direction of technical skills and stuff like that.
John:
But this is all definitely true.
John:
This is just to get anywhere in the workplace.
John:
Forget about your job changing, which is definitely true as you march up in seniority.
John:
I think we touched on a little bit of saying like,
John:
You know, if you keep getting promoted, you'll eventually be like CTO.
John:
And the job of CTO is so incredibly different from the job of entry level developer.
John:
But there is a career path between them.
John:
But there are big leaps in there, depending on your organization, even if you're never going to management, even if you're an individual contributor for the entire time, you still have to learn how to, you know, work with and through others and mentor people and these.
John:
you know, calling them soft skills is generally a derogatory term.
John:
It's like, well, these are the hard manly skills like programming, but then there's the soft skills like writing.
John:
It's like, wait, how are they different?
John:
Well, you see, writing is squishy, but when you write things that aren't words, that's hard.
John:
Anyway, as anyone who has, you know, programming, at least you have a compiler to check your syntax.
John:
And no, Grammarly doesn't count people.
John:
So anyway, all I'm saying is that the quote-unquote soft skills are
John:
much more difficult in the grand scheme of things than the quote-unquote hard skills especially at almost all levels of software development that people are likely to engage at just because even at the junior and mid-level of being a developer you have to write documentation and you have to communicate with people to do your job and that means you need to be able to express yourself through the written word and you need to be able to read words written by other people and understand them and those basic you know
John:
skills of reading and writing might not seem like what you thought you were getting into when you were a software developer.
John:
They're part of every job.
John:
Especially now in the age of email, there are very few quote-unquote knowledge worker jobs where you will not be leaning heavily on and be eventually perhaps limited by your ability to communicate
John:
well in the written word in you know in prose like not code like just you know writing people emails writing documentation writing proposals or even speaking speaking in a meeting pitching your idea to a larger group like those are going to come up in every job not just software um so uh it's very people like to focus on oh you know which three-letter acronym and programming do i have to learn to become a super duper senior whatever and
John:
Uh, when in the reality is, and I'm not even touching up this like office politics, but the reality is that the thing that really makes you good at the next level of your job might have nothing to do with programming.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And office politics can be quite an adventure depending on where you are.
Casey:
So be careful for that too.
John:
Yeah.
John:
That's a, that's a different skillset.
John:
And I think the key skill there is knowing when it's time to leave.
Yeah.
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:
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Marco:
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Marco:
And it's not some weird, like, you know, cheap thing that I don't really necessarily want on my network.
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:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
That's Lutron.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Caseta by Lutron for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
Let's talk about Mac Mini rumors.
Casey:
So this broke originally back in like May or something like that.
Casey:
And this was Jon Prosser, if I recall correctly.
Casey:
I will put a link to his YouTube video in the show notes.
Casey:
But I guess there's been some new developments.
Casey:
I haven't seen this myself.
Casey:
I went looking and I must have missed it somehow.
Casey:
So what's what's going on these days?
John:
I was expecting to see, like, okay, well, you know, this is just a fanciful idea, but now the rumors will get more solid and we'll find out what the real deal is going to be as we get closer.
John:
And from my, you know, vague glancing off the Mac rumor sphere, it seems like those old rumors are just being repeatedly...
John:
If not confirmed, then supported by all the evidence that we have.
John:
So I thought it might be time to talk more seriously about these Mac Mini rumors, start taking it more seriously as a possibility that Apple might introduce a thing like this.
John:
Because I look at it and I'm like, yeah, okay, I get what you're doing there.
John:
Like I see, okay, that gives me the spirit of what a new Mac Mini might look like.
John:
But now they're saying like, no, this isn't the spirit of the new Mac Mini.
John:
This is literally going to be the new Mac Mini.
John:
And I look at it and I have lots of thoughts and questions.
John:
So to describe what we're talking about here, think of a Mac mini as it looks today, but even lower, even skinnier, even flatter, right?
John:
And that's...
John:
Why is it flatter?
John:
Well, because it's got ARM CPU and then they use less power and you don't need all that space and, you know, we can make it smaller.
John:
And I kept going back and forth on this when thinking about this topic.
John:
It's called the Mac Mini.
John:
It's right in the name.
John:
The fact that it's small is the selling point of this computer.
John:
It's the smallest Mac.
John:
It's Mini, right?
John:
I get it.
John:
But I do look at this and say...
John:
What has been gained by making the Mac mini not as tall on your desk?
John:
Because they reduced it.
John:
Let's say they reduce it by like a centimeter or something, right?
Yeah.
John:
You've made it minier, I guess, but you've made it minier in a dimension that I don't think matters for anybody except for Mac Mini Colo.
John:
Because they're putting them in racks like books, you know?
John:
Even then, like once it's smaller than a U, like who cares?
John:
No, but they stack them like vertically like books.
John:
Oh, that's right.
John:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John:
So they can fit more into the width, right?
John:
So maybe it matters to them, but to the regular person, yeah, you have made it minier.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I'm not sure you've bought anything.
John:
Like if I wanted to make this minier, how about width and depth?
John:
Because it would take up less room on my desk, right?
John:
Rather than height, because I'm not stacking them, right?
John:
And there's no sort of height restriction.
John:
And so making it lower down doesn't help me.
John:
And, you know, fashionably, it looks cooler or whatever.
John:
And if we never made them lower, they would still be like, you know.
John:
three times as high like the original mac mini was like i get all that like i'm not i'm not saying you can't ever make it smaller but if i had to choose which dimension to make it smaller i might pick a different one and the other reason i think this is relevant is there were some rumors recently more fanciful rumors of trying to think like would apple make a mac mini with a m1 uh max duo like basically two m1 maxes you know the the rumored jade 2c dye thing like would they ever make a mac mini with that
John:
And I don't think these renders of a very slimmed down, even lower to the desk Mac Mini can support enough cooling for a Duo.
John:
Because they're so thin.
John:
I mean, they're not as thin as a laptop, but they're close to.
John:
And I don't think the laptops can support a Duo.
John:
I don't think...
John:
This can support.
John:
And so that brought me back to the other thing.
John:
It's like, what is gained by making this lower?
John:
Well, it looks kind of cooler, right?
John:
What is lost by making it lower?
John:
If you had left it the same height, could you support a Duo in there?
John:
Maybe that's a ridiculous machine.
John:
No one wants to spend $3,000 on a Mac Mini.
John:
Although you might be able to with this one, depending if you put like an 8TB SSD in it or something, right?
John:
But...
John:
I guess what I'm getting at is what is the role of the Mac Mini in Apple's lineup?
John:
It has long since stopped being like, oh, if you want the cheapest possible Mac, get this one.
John:
Remember when the Mac Mini was $499?
John:
I think when it was first introduced or something like that?
John:
Those days are gone.
John:
If you want to get a decent Mac Mini, you're at a four-digit price immediately, and it goes way up from there.
John:
And I think they're great.
John:
I think this is a great machine to have in the lineup.
John:
It doesn't come with a keyboard and a mouse, and you can connect an external monitor if you can find one.
John:
Sorry, Casey.
John:
yep but hey it can drive the xdr if you've got tons of bucks and if you want a desktop mac but don't want to have an integrated display apple offers you your product i'm just wondering like where where is this product what what is the pitch of this product like to say a little bit more about the the rumor diagram here they also show the uh the magnetic connector power connector thingy from the imac right
John:
uh and that presumably and the rumors say that like this wouldn't have an integrated power supply so it would have a power brick with the magnetic connector thingy right but the magnetic connector it's like big and proprietary and it snaps into the little thing or whatever um but on the the 24 inch imac it also has ethernet on the power brick but this mac mini has ethernet on the actual computer
John:
So why would it use the same connector that has the ability to tunnel Ethernet over it?
John:
Why not just use like an Apple TV type plug?
John:
And more importantly, why is the power supply outside the Mac Mini?
John:
It becomes substantially less mini when a brick that is close to the volume of the entire Mac Mini has to be dangling behind your desk somewhere.
John:
So these rumors confuse me, and I'm not sure what to think about a Mac Mini like this.
John:
Obviously, the performance would be great.
John:
It would be great to have a Mac Mini with an M1 Pro or M1 Max inside it.
John:
It would be faster.
John:
It would be a great little developer machine if Apple ever made it as an external monitor.
John:
All that is great, but I don't understand the sort of design brief for this computer other than to say, imagine a 24-inch iMac but without the screen.
Yeah.
Marco:
yeah i this these rumors i think you're right that they are confusing how like you know the police kind of know when a story is or like when when someone's lying or like grown-ups know when kids are telling a story about what happened and it doesn't make sense because that usually means someone's lying like you can always kind of tell like all right this this story that like like whenever a kid is explaining to you something that happened that is disputed
Marco:
Or that somebody got in trouble or should get in trouble for it.
Marco:
The first version of the story never makes a lot of sense.
Marco:
You're always like, wait, why would this person do that?
Marco:
There has to be more information here that I'm missing because that version of the story doesn't make sense.
Marco:
And usually that's because either something's being left out or something's being lied about.
Marco:
So in the case of Apple product rumors, if something about the rumors is really weird or doesn't make sense, they're probably just wrong.
Marco:
Not to say that they're intentionally lying, but just whatever information source this came from is probably either incomplete or just flat out wrong.
Marco:
now occasionally we do get surprised occasionally the rumors do say something that seems like it would be impossible or nonsensical and then apple actually releases it just like that and the rumors were right and we're blown away like oh my god i can't believe they i found a way to do this or this this actually happened but usually the rumors where we can't quite piece together like how or why it would work that way usually those end up being wrong and
Marco:
I, frankly, I don't believe this Mac Mini rumor in its entirety.
Marco:
The allegedly leaked schematics of this case, the exterior case band that they have, I don't necessarily buy that.
Marco:
And the render that they made based on that leak is not only a bad representation of the leak.
Marco:
If you look at things like the vertical centering of the ports, it's just wrong in the render compared to the leak schematic.
Marco:
But also...
Marco:
I just don't buy that the Mac Mini would be this aspect ratio and would have those ports.
Marco:
So the ports are the more interesting thing to me, and I think the reason why this makes even less sense.
Marco:
Now that we've seen the MacBook Pro story of Apple Silicon...
Marco:
One of the biggest problems that this purported Mac mini has is it has too many USB ports.
Marco:
Now, one of the many problems with this design, as depicted here in the allegedly schematic and in the render they made from it, is that the USB-C ports are too close together.
John:
I was going to say that when I first saw this thing, that's what made me think, okay, this is a fanciful render, but someone didn't think this through because those USB-C ports are so close together that I don't even think Apple's slimmest USB-C connectors could fit.
John:
What we're saying is if you filled all the ports, there's four of them there, and they're vertical, right?
John:
If you put four USB-C connectors in those four ports, you'd put the first one in?
John:
Fine.
John:
Then you'd try to put the one right next to it, and it wouldn't fit because the plastic parts would hit each other.
John:
These are so close together.
John:
The space between the ports is like half the distance away.
John:
of the half the width of the ports themselves but then there's the schematics and the schematics are like well if you know we have actual cad files this is a real thing so i'm at the point now i'm kind of panicking and i'm saying i really hope apple didn't make a computer with usbc ports that are so close together that we're have to gonna we're gonna have to buy like there'd be this whole sort of like mini market for like
John:
These USB-C cables, new, narrow enough to fit on Apple's new Mac Mini, like a sub-market where there'll have to be special products that they can gouge you on.
John:
It could be like the original iPhone's headphone jack.
John:
Exactly.
John:
It's a great, I mean, peripheral makers much love it.
John:
It's just like, hey, I know you have a ton of these cables already, but they're all useless.
John:
You have to buy our special one.
John:
And by the way, each one of them costs five bucks more.
Casey:
You know, I wonder if this schematic or the renderings were wrong.
Casey:
Like, I will be the first to tell you this is a very shaky theory.
Casey:
But what if those four USB-C ports... So let me describe the renderings that we're seeing here.
Casey:
So there's a circular power button, a larger circle that is that, you know, iMac-style Mondo power connector.
Casey:
Then four USB-C ports, as you guys described, way too close together, just uncomfortably close together.
Casey:
Two USB, what is it, A?
Casey:
I always get it wrong.
Casey:
USB-A ports, an Ethernet port, an HDMI port.
Casey:
What if, and this is based on schematics that aren't entirely clear as to what each of these ports are, so, you know, some best guesses are being made.
Casey:
And I think the best guesses do make sense.
Casey:
you know, the, the proximity of the USB-C ports notwithstanding, but what if the four USB-C ports are actually like a vent in the two USB-A ports are where USB-C is going.
Casey:
So there's only two USB-C ports and there is a vent between the power and the two USB-C ports.
Marco:
Well, so if you look at the current M1 Mac Mini, it does have two USBAs, HDMI, Ethernet, and it has two USB-C ports.
Marco:
If you also then look at the MacBook Pros that were just released, they have three USB-C ports.
Marco:
And it seems like one of the reasons why, like, from some of the, like, you know, visualizations of the chip diagrams and everything, it seems like there might not be enough Thunderbolt controllers or bandwidth, like, in the chip to supply for independent Thunderbolt 4 ports.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
I'm guessing the next Mac Mini, unless it's based on the Duo chip, which I'm with John, I don't think it would be for lots of reasons.
Marco:
But unless it's based on the Duo chip, I don't think anything based on the M1 Pro or M1 Max is going to have four Thunderbolt 4 ports and two USB ports.
Marco:
That to me, that's wishful thinking, I think.
Marco:
And also, there's so much about this that seems weird.
Marco:
So the Mac Mini,
Marco:
for all of its like you know bad history of being neglected and everything when apple updated it in what was a 2018 when they brought like they kind of like reinvigorated it with that that event uh in brooklyn right wasn't that the mac mini uh i thought that was mac with a random macbook air it was both it was it was pretty sure it was the same event so yeah it was like october 2019 2018 we were there you and i were there that's why it sticks out of my mind
Marco:
Anyway, so I'm pretty sure there was a Mac Mini there, and that was like the big revival of the Mac Mini, right?
Marco:
And one of the things that was clear at that time was Apple had finally realized what the Mac Mini was and what it wasn't anymore, if ever.
Marco:
And one of the things that the Mac Mini wasn't anymore was an alternative to an iMac that most people should buy as a desktop.
Marco:
They realize instead that what the Mac Mini had been being used for for a long time and what its natural role in the modern Apple product line is, is not a desktop most people should buy to put on a desk, but some kind of utility Mac.
Marco:
that you need for some reason that's not covered by the iMac or MacBook Pro lines.
Marco:
So whether you're running something headless somewhere in a data center or in a closet or as like a file server in your office or something, or whether you're running a media center or some kind of specialized role, maybe like a build farm, stuff like that, render farms, that's what the Mac Mini is for.
Marco:
It is not considered an iMac alternative for most people.
Marco:
Once Apple realized that and when they launched it in 2018 with this new direction, they loaded it up with ports.
Marco:
They maximized utility.
Marco:
They stopped trying to make it a very low-end product and just made it a nice mid-range product that had actually some pretty high CPU options if you wanted to spec them up.
Marco:
They went all in on the utility.
Marco:
It's almost like a pro product where they don't seem to expect most consumers to want to buy this computer.
Marco:
And so if they still see it that way, which I hope they do because I think it has been much more successful that way ever since they've kind of like redirected it like that.
Marco:
If they still see it that way, it makes very little sense to me to make compromises to make it more like the new thin iMac.
Marco:
When the product is not really being used in a way that would reward or even want those compromises.
Marco:
So one of those compromises for me is the external power supply.
Marco:
I hope the Mac mini doesn't have an external power supply.
Marco:
I don't think that's a very good idea for the product.
Marco:
And no one cares about making it a little bit smaller.
Marco:
No one is looking at the current Mac mini and saying, well, I would buy this, but it's too big.
Marco:
That's not a decision that anybody makes about that product.
Marco:
People who buy the Mac Mini buy it for some kind of utility that is not covered by the other Macs.
Marco:
And it's already pretty small.
Marco:
It could be made a little smaller, but that's not a very important thing.
Marco:
And if the way you make it smaller is by pushing the power supply outside of the case...
Marco:
Well, that's kind of a cheap, crappy way to make it smaller because then we have a big power brick to put somewhere.
Marco:
So, like, that's outsourcing the problem to the exterior of the case.
Marco:
It's basically a dongle, right?
Marco:
And it makes sense kind of maybe with the new iMac because of the ultra-thin, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.
Marco:
It's very impressive.
Marco:
I'm very proud of them.
Marco:
I'm very happy that everyone's happy about it.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
It doesn't make sense for this product, where this product is often put in tight spaces or places where you're putting a lot of them together for some reason, where having a national power supply is a big pain in the butt in that kind of context.
Marco:
So I hope they're not doing that.
Marco:
And similarly, the idea of trying to make it as thin as possible, similar to the new iMacs, I don't see why that would make sense either.
Marco:
Again, that's not being demanded by the customers of this product.
Marco:
And if it's going to have an Ethernet jack in it, which I think, A, it should for utility purposes, but B, if that's going to be in there, then it's going to be a certain minimum thickness to fit the Ethernet jack.
Marco:
And if you can fit that, you can probably fit a power supply in there.
Marco:
And if you can't, you should redesign the case so you can because external power supplies suck for Mac minis.
Marco:
That's a terrible idea.
Marco:
Please don't do that.
Marco:
So this is one of the many reasons why I assume most of what we've heard has been wrong.
Marco:
I also think it's interesting that the MacBook Pro event came and went and there was no Mac mini.
Marco:
there still remain more products in the lineup, the Mac Mini and the big iMac, that we expect to probably have M1 Pro and Mac's chips in them.
Marco:
So maybe these rumors that came out almost a year ago, maybe these were based on previous concepts that they decided not to go with.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
It's probably just wrong.
Marco:
That's the most likely scenario here.
Marco:
These are probably just wrong.
Marco:
And frankly, I hope they're wrong because...
Marco:
If they go in this direction with this product of trying to make it as tiny as possible at the expense of utility and the way it's actually used, I think that is a reversion to some bad IV in times that...
Marco:
they seem to have thankfully moved away from like they seem to have seen the error in their ways with some of their priorities being out of whack and they're now much better at making products that actually fit the customers who buy them and fit their needs and so to make the mac mini fit people's needs worse i don't think is the right move and because they've had such a good record of that recently that also makes it seem less plausible that they would do it like i i have a hard time believing that
Marco:
that they would make decisions about this product that would make it worse for its users at this point, which is great.
Marco:
I trust them to finally be doing things well on a reliable, regular basis.
Marco:
And this concept would not be doing things as well as it could.
John:
Yeah, there's a couple of big question marks there, because we don't... I know what you're saying, like, oh, the Mac Mini is kind of like a pro product now, but it's not...
John:
It hasn't really been.
John:
You're right that it's no longer like, oh, this is a cheap bargain basement thing.
John:
And you're right that they leaned into utility, but it's always been kind of this middle space where they haven't really, like, they never made a Mac Mini with a Xeon in it, right?
John:
So it's not, you know, it's not...
John:
It's not as pro.
John:
Like the MacBook Pros were easier.
John:
There's pro right in the name.
John:
They made them for pros so clearly.
John:
They made them, you know, they didn't try to make them as thin as possible.
John:
They put a bunch of ports in them or whatever.
John:
The Mac Mini has always kind of been there since 2018 with all those ports in the back and everything.
John:
But it hasn't been the type of thing where they try to crank up the specs to, you know, the degree they did on the MacBook Pros.
John:
one thing that does fit with that sort of utilitarian almost pro kind of rumor is the fact that this has all these ports and you mentioned like for usb c and everything like on the macbook pros the reason they have the number of ports to do is they want each one of them to have the full bandwidth of thunderbolt 4 or whatever right right oh and by the way for the record
Marco:
The current Intel Mac mini does have exactly these ports.
Marco:
It does have four USB-C and two USB-A and HDMI and Ethernet.
Marco:
It's only the M1 mini that drops it down to two USB-C for bandwidth reasons.
Marco:
But again, I think because we didn't get four USB-C on the new MacBook Pros, I think that would be unlikely to see that configuration in a computer that's probably using the exact same chips as it is.
John:
Well, the reason I think it fits to have four of them, not necessarily in this arrangement, is because on the Mac Mini, it's definitely a Mac Mini-ish thing to do to say, well, in the case of the Mac Mini, it's okay for two of those ports to share a single, you know, Thunderbolt bus.
John:
Like, they're sharing the 40 gigabits between the last two ports.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like...
John:
You can add plain old USB-C ports as much as you want.
John:
You're just stealing bandwidth from the Thunderbolt ones.
John:
Those aren't all 40 gigabits per second, which is fine for a Mac Mini having that tradeoff of saying, in exchange for not having full bandwidth in every one of these ports, I'll have to maybe know which ones are full bandwidth, but I get more places to plug stuff in.
John:
i just don't think the physical arrangement makes that much sense and on the physical specs here and with casey's idea that those could be vents right the reason that's interesting is because if you look at the supposed cooling design according to these renders and these specs the supposed cooling doesn't make that much sense either it's got like it's got these long ski feet which are like on the bottom of the the imac the 24 inch imac has these ski feet on the bottom of it right
John:
like long strips of rubber instead of little dots of rubber on the corners.
John:
And then it's got a downward facing vent in the bottom.
John:
And then I think they're trying to say that like around the top, there would be an opening all around the top edge for intake and then it would exhaust out the bottom.
John:
But in general, you don't want to exhaust hot air at the bottom of anything.
John:
You really want to exhaust hot air out the top or maybe the back.
John:
But what I'm saying is I don't understand how this machine cools itself according to these renders.
John:
And in that world, those USB-C ports, they should be a vent because it would be more efficient to eject the hot air from that than it would be to blow the hot air out this little skinny downward-facing thing.
John:
Like, just...
John:
And I was thinking of power bricks, by the way.
John:
I was thinking of having this in an entertainment center.
John:
I connect this Mac Mini to my TV, which is a thing a lot of hobbyists do with their Mac Minis.
John:
It fits into an entertainment center.
John:
And I thought of the back of my TV, the giant rat's nest of wires back there, and there are way too many power bricks back there.
John:
So the Mac Mini would fit right in with its stupid, annoying power brick alongside all the other stupid, annoying power bricks.
John:
that are back there and then you know trying to eject hot air into your little entertainment center from this tiny little port like i don't understand this machine um but like i said the the rumors that i've been seeing have not been in the vein of like oh that was totally wrong the new mac mini is totally different but on the other hand we haven't actually seen this machine released either to marco's point so maybe this was once the plan and is it now um
John:
I don't know.
John:
But it is confusing.
John:
I don't think they'll ever be a Mac Mini Pro because that machine doesn't make sense to me.
John:
So I still think them making it lower to the desk, like flatter, is a reasonable... Is a thing that I wouldn't be surprised if they did, right?
John:
Because it's kind of like, what do we... What bonus do we... Like, the M1 Mac Mini, the one that's out now, like...
John:
to the point in case people want to bring it up like they don't need to transition the mac mini to arm they already did that yes they did it's got a plain old m1 in it right but it is the type of that was the conversion where they essentially took the existing mac mini ripped out its guts put in way smaller guts and left a lot of empty space inside there kind of like they did with the macbook air right what we're looking at here is like the 24 inch imac or the new macbook pro version it's like okay but what if we designed a mac mini knowing ahead of time we have these amazing arm chips what would that look like and i
John:
I'm not sure what Apple's... We don't have any evidence of Apple's thinking for its desktop computers.
John:
We have evidence when they make their pro laptops that they're going to make all the right decisions, and we've talked about that before, right?
John:
But when they decide to redesign the iMac, they made very different decisions, the smaller iMac.
John:
They made very different decisions, right?
John:
So when they redesign the Mac Mini, if they redesign the Mac Mini with ARM chips in mind, do they take it in a MacBook Pro direction or do they take it in a 24-inch iMac direction?
John:
And it's not clear to me, given the history since 2018 of the Mac Mini, which direction is more likely, because I don't see them bringing in the MacBook Pro direction, right?
John:
To say, this is a Pro machine, we got to do the Pro stuff, and we got to, you know, like, really beef this thing up and put an SD card slot back in there and do all... Like, I don't see them doing that, because it's not a Pro machine, as from Apple's stance.
John:
But it's also not...
John:
To Margo's earlier point, a consumer machine.
John:
It's not like, hey, everybody loves you.
John:
They come in fun colors.
John:
It is not a mass market consumer machine.
John:
Not even to the degree the iMac is.
John:
The mass market machines are laptops.
John:
Already when you're talking about a desktop, you're narrowing your focus to this tiny sliver of the population.
John:
And even within the realm of desktops,
John:
I don't know where the Mac Mini should go.
John:
I guess the real solution that Apple could do is, what if we just don't update it for two years?
John:
And then whatever we release, you'll be so happy to have any update at all that you won't be able to complain about this stuff.
John:
But right now, we're still hungry for new machines, and we believe that... The reason we believe it is we see the MacBook Pros with the M1 Pro and the M1 Max, and we say, those CPUs would work great in a Mac Mini.
John:
Release one with those in it.
John:
But then all we've got to look at are these weird renders of this computer that we don't understand.
John:
So hopefully this will be resolved eventually.
John:
But I think it's an interesting mystery about the Mac lineup.
John:
What will Apple do with the Mac Mini?
John:
And then the larger mystery, what will Apple do with a desktop, with a Pro desktop?
John:
We have no evidence of that.
John:
We're kind of like where we were before the new MacBook Pros came out.
John:
We didn't know for sure what Apple would do.
John:
what is a pro computer with an arm chip in it look like and now we know that answer on a laptop and it's great we still don't know the answer to the desktop we hope it's great we hope what we essentially see is oh the big iMac came out and it is essentially just as great an iMac as the new MacBook Pros are at doing their job but the Mac Mini I don't have a good read on where that's going
Casey:
Can I give you one more stupid theory?
John:
Absolutely.
Marco:
That's what our show is for.
Casey:
What if the Mac mini is so thin because it's being passively cooled?
Casey:
Like the whole shell is one big heat sink.
Marco:
That's an interesting theory, but I don't think that product needs that.
John:
Where are the antennas, though?
John:
I think the top has to be not metal, and that's bad for dispersing heat.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Marco:
Also, if it's going to have an M1 Pro and Max in it, we haven't seen any of those be passively cooled.
Marco:
We've only seen the M1 be passively cooled, and even the M1 Mac Mini has a fan.
Marco:
So I think it's unlikely.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Most of it is Overcast, and I have all servers there.
Marco:
When you need a server, you need root access, you need to be able to install your own software and configure it however you want, choose your resource levels and all that.
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:
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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:
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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:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thank you so much to Linode, my favorite place to run servers, for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
And let's start with Ryan, who writes, if Apple acquired and successfully integrated the best of Apple and the best of one of the following companies, Canon for their big camera optics and computational photography, BMW for perhaps the Apple car, or Nintendo games on Apple Silicon, which would you be most excited about?
Casey:
I'm really having a hard time.
Casey:
This is such claim chowder, but I'm really having a hard time getting excited about the Apple car.
Casey:
In fact, just today, I think I saw a post somewhere about how another one of their executives have left to go somewhere else.
Casey:
I'm having a hard time finding myself getting excited about an Apple car.
Casey:
I like Nintendo.
Casey:
I've always liked Nintendo, and I like the idea of getting Apple into gaming, but...
Casey:
I really think that Apple and Canon or equivalent, if not Canon, someone else, just bringing the best of both worlds together would make me personally the most excited.
Casey:
To really see Apple go even further in the deep end with incredible optics, I think would be super cool.
Casey:
But Marco, where do you land on this?
Marco:
All right, so Nintendo having games on Apple Silicon, that to me, I think I would rule that out because as awesome as the Apple Silicon hardware capabilities are, the iPad and the iPhone are gaming machines in a certain way that we've talked about, but Nintendo-quality games and game systems...
Marco:
they tend to require like dedicated game hardware.
Marco:
Um, and, and I don't see Apple really being, doing a good job at making that, um, or running it.
Marco:
Even if, now see, this question leaves a lot of room by, by saying like, if Apple acquired and successfully integrated the best of, you know, these companies.
Marco:
And that, and that's, that's a very interesting question.
Marco:
Um, but I would say Nintendo, I'm, I'm less excited about, um, BMW with the idea of, you know, becoming a car company.
Marco:
I'm with you.
Marco:
I don't see the point of the car project.
Marco:
There was actually a really good discussion about this on the talk show this week with Gruber and Jim Dalrymple.
Marco:
If you think about the kinds of things Apple is good at and cares a lot about, most of that is not the car business.
Marco:
The things that you need to succeed in the car business and the kind of success you would get in an ideal scenario –
Marco:
is really not Apple's wheelhouse or even something that Apple would seem to want.
Marco:
So we have enough information to suggest that the car project is almost certainly real.
Marco:
What form is it?
Marco:
It is now or has taken in the past is certainly up for debate, and there's a lot of changes that seem to be going on over time.
Marco:
But for the most part, we have a pretty clear picture that there is a large car project going on at Apple and has been for some time.
Marco:
I do not understand why.
Marco:
I really honestly don't.
Marco:
I don't think it's something that they can make.
Marco:
I don't think it's something they should make.
Marco:
And I certainly don't think it's something that is worth taking talent away from their other efforts.
Marco:
And it seems like it has done a lot of that.
Marco:
So I frankly...
Marco:
I think it will be interesting to look back on this era of Tim Cook's leadership and to see, like, was this a good bet or not?
Marco:
Because it's a big bet and it's a big project that's taking a lot of resources and churning through a lot of people.
Marco:
And is that a good use of the company's resources?
Marco:
Is that a direction you even want to go?
Marco:
frankly i don't see it but anyway so i wouldn't want them to become a car company in any way i still think they shouldn't and the fact that they have gone so far i think they should shut it down and you know count their losses and move on um that leaves canon and and the idea of integrating you know big camera optics that i think is by far the
Marco:
The most likely to succeed, the most likely to be useful, and the most valuable thing they could do.
Marco:
Because, again, what drives iPhone upgrades?
Marco:
Cameras.
Marco:
And broken screens and dead batteries.
Marco:
But mostly cameras.
Marco:
Let's be honest.
Marco:
That's why most people upgrade their phones.
Marco:
Either their previous phone has died or has gotten so old that they can't use it anymore.
Marco:
And or they upgrade to get the new cool camera.
Marco:
And so anything that can push Apple's phone camera tech forward is very valuable to Apple and very useful to all of us consumers, most of whom are only using our phones as our only cameras now.
Marco:
Like, we don't usually use big cameras anymore as consumers.
Marco:
Like, phones are by far dominant.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
That would benefit all of their customers, and it would be a thing that would work very well with what they already do, what they're already good at.
Marco:
And depending on what integration of Canon would entail, does that mean Apple would start making bigger cameras?
Marco:
That would be interesting.
Marco:
I've talked about it before.
Marco:
I would never expect that to happen, but I would love that.
Marco:
You know, like what can Apple do with larger sensors, with larger optics and a larger device?
Marco:
That would be awesome.
Marco:
But yeah, that I think is by far the clear choice here is, you know, make Apple better at cameras before you make them better at games or cars.
Marco:
John?
John:
So Nintendo, I know the question says successfully integrate the best of or whatever.
John:
Nintendo, I would never want Apple to get near Nintendo because they would ruin it.
John:
Right.
Marco:
Even if they integrate.
Marco:
Is that like when Spotify integrates a podcast?
John:
So if Apple successfully integrated the best of Nintendo, it would mean that Apple suddenly learned how to make innovative gaming hardware and good gaming software.
John:
But what's missing from that is – because we're just assuming the success of the scenario in the questionnaire.
John:
What's missing is that that also means that Nintendo would no longer exist as an independent company outside of Apple's influence.
John:
So even though Apple absorbed the best of it and, you know, oh, you'd still get –
John:
nintendo quality games they just come from apple now nintendo as an independent entity would no longer exist and therefore it wouldn't be able to do things like make the wii because that's just not something that apple would do because it's such a weird nintendo thing a standard definition console with motion control when everyone else is doing hd what a stupid idea that's going to be an incredible failure right and you know then you get virtual boys mixed in there too but like nintendo as an independent company is
John:
is much greater than just the best of nintendo i don't want the best of nintendo to be absorbed by a bigger company that makes cars and computers right i want nintendo to exist continue to exist as an independent company that does weird nintendo things so no don't like that one bmw we've talked about this before like uh and marcus said the same thing like it
John:
apple does have a tiny bit of overlap with a company like bmw and that apple is good at manufacturing things and is very careful about it but manufacturing the things that apple manufactures with partners is very different than manufacturing things that bmw manufactures with partners um it's just different scales um and in terms of repair repairability and reliability it's whole different worlds of a you know a car versus a you know a delicate little device that you try to seal against dust and water but that's about it um
John:
So I don't think there's too many synergies there.
John:
The Apple car thing, the latest rumor, you just mentioned this now, like the latest rumor is like, oh, Apple's really heavily concentrating on full self-driving, right?
John:
It's kind of... It's not quite the same as the AR VR stuff because...
John:
even though no one has really solved that problem i think you can see a path from current technology of like oh these big heavy goggles you can just extrapolate from existing tech and say okay well but that tech will get lighter and the resolution will go up and the battery life will get better because that's just the path like these are not mysterious technologies it's happened look look at how much better our screens are on our laptops look how much thinner they are look how much brighter they are look how much higher the refreshes look how much lower power and higher performance the cpus are like all those same effects
John:
will slowly bring AR, VR things from where they are now as gigantic ski goggly things to be smaller and smaller, right?
John:
So even though that problem hasn't been solved, as we've mentioned in past shows, we haven't gotten to the threshold where it's a consumer product that everyone gets and is everyone's comfortable with, even though it's still a weird thing that only weird techie people use, right?
John:
We can see a path to that.
John:
Right now, nobody can see a path to human-level driving ability in computers.
John:
And so it's great that Apple wants to sink some of its billions of dollars into that, but it is...
John:
So much less likely to happen in any time frame that anyone cares about than the AR VR stuff.
John:
AR VR stuff is Apple should be working on.
John:
Everyone's working on it for a reason.
John:
Apple should be working on it.
John:
Apple is making good progress.
John:
That's a good use of Apple's money, even though it still hasn't produced any products other than, you know, LiDAR sensors and AR kit and all that other stuff.
John:
Right.
John:
the car though you can make a good car i think that's a reasonable thing for apple to do but if your car project is now like uh you know human level self-driving or bust i'm voting for bust but my money's on bust because no one's done it and there's not even a path to it no one has any idea it's just like people seem like well we got like 50 of the way there so
John:
like if we just extrapolate from current trends we'll do it and it's the same type of thing of like in the 50s where people like well look at look at how smart a computer is today and you know 1950 uh and they can answer these questions it's almost like a little human i can type in the thing and it tells me a question if i just extrapolate by 1982 the computers will be smarter than all the humans combined and you know there's just it's the story of ai that they always just push that farther and farther out because you get to 1982 and it's like well actually this is a harder problem than we thought and computers are still pretty dumb
John:
But by the year 2000, computers will be so smart that humans won't have to do any work and they'll solve all our problems.
John:
Actually, the year 2000, they're still pretty dumb, but you can get music for free on the Internet.
John:
It keeps getting farther out because we don't understand the problem space, right?
John:
I think that is true of driving as well.
John:
The problem space of driving in the general case is very similar to the problem space of general human level intelligence.
John:
We like to think it's not, but it's like you don't need to be as smart as a human to drive.
John:
You just need to know where the road is and stay on it.
John:
Isn't that easy?
John:
You can get real close.
John:
But it's that last little bit that makes all the difference.
John:
And so, again, this is just based on rumors.
John:
It's like Casey's monitor.
John:
Yeah.
John:
If the rumor is true that Apple says is really, the rumor is like Apple basically wants to sell you a car without a steering wheel.
John:
Right.
John:
Which is that's that's the physical incarnation of what I'm describing here, which is like it doesn't even have a steering wheel.
John:
Why would it have a steering wheel?
John:
You're never going to drive it.
John:
It doesn't need you to drive it.
John:
It drives itself.
John:
No steering wheel, no pedals.
John:
That's the goal.
John:
And if that's the goal, Apple, you are not going to ship.
John:
Like, because no one's done that.
John:
And you don't know how to do it because nobody knows how to do it.
John:
And it's not directly, we can't get directly there from where we are now.
John:
There is a leap that we have not yet made.
John:
Maybe Apple has made it and they'll wow us all and say, guess what?
John:
Here's a car with no steering wheel and you never need it and blah, blah, blah, right?
John:
Or maybe they'll sell that car but they can only drive around Cupertino because they've 3D mapped every inch of the roads and it never has weather, right?
John:
I don't know.
John:
But if that rumor is true, it makes no sense and it makes me more pessimistic about the car project.
John:
If Apple wants to make a car,
John:
i think the synergy between bmw and apple because bmw for all its faults knows way more about making cars than apple does uh if apple just wanted to make a car just a plain old car that human beings drive and has driver assist functionality like a car as we currently understand them bmw would be a good partnership and i think they could make a better car than apple on its own because apple on its own is not going to make as good a car as apple plus the integration of the best of bmw would make
John:
but the rumors are that apple doesn't want to make a car they want to make a fantasy pod with no steering wheel and that doesn't exist so skip bmw finally we land on the camera thing with canon and what this made me think of is there is actually the reverse synergy um so sony is a company that makes camera sensors and their own they may also make big you know interchangeable lens cameras and small point and shoot cameras they make a lot of stuff right
John:
Sony also makes smartphones, Android smartphones.
John:
Sony actually made a smartphone that integrates the best of a smartphone company with the best of its own cameras.
John:
They took a one inch camera from their own RX 107, like point and shoot camera, or one inch sensor rather, a one inch sensor from their own camera and shoved it inside a smartphone.
John:
So they basically took like, oh, imagine if Sony, the camera company merged with Sony, the smartphone company.
John:
What could they make?
John:
They did it.
John:
They just literally took a sensor from one of their quote unquote real cameras and put it in the phone.
John:
And if you look at the phone interface, suddenly when you go to take a picture, it looks like the back of a Sony camera.
John:
Like they put the software, like the software that you see on the back of your Sony camera, like when you're taking a picture and how it like that's there.
John:
their their autofocus technology that's in their cameras that finds what it wants to focus on in the frame and grabs like when you use this smartphone it looks like you're using a really really really flat sony point-and-shoot camera and it's literally got the same sensor from one of their point-and-shoot cameras so i think it's a fascinating example of like how could you bring you know what it would look like if canon and apple combined or if sony and apple combined like
John:
Could they take the best of their cameras, you know, their big sensors, their big lenses, maybe even also like, you know, again, I would say the Sony autofocus system is better than what's available in iPhones, right?
John:
It's better, especially with moving subjects and everything, just because the sensors are bigger too.
John:
It's better at finding what you want to focus on and grabbing onto it and staying, keeping that focus with lots of photos way better than the iPhone.
John:
And the interface to doing so, the UI for how you do that with, you know, in a situation where you're trying to take a picture of, you know, someone speeding by in a race car or like...
John:
kids running or whatever the interface for doing that the physical interface and the on-screen ui interface for doing that on sony cameras is better than it is on iphones it should be because it's a whole dedicated device just for that purpose right this smartphone which is called the xperia pro i by the way we'll put a link in the show notes
John:
takes the sony camera interface and puts it on a smartphone so i think i agree with all three of you that if apple could combine itself with the best of some big camera company they would have they could have a better camera experience on their phones setting aside like making apple interchangeable lens cameras which i think would be awesome right
John:
But, like, what I'm saying is there is room for Apple to learn from these companies because these camera companies' products do lots of things better than Apple's phones do in terms of the UI and, of course, in terms of the capability.
John:
Would Apple put a one-inch sensor inside an iPhone?
John:
Probably not.
John:
Like, this is an extreme example.
John:
You're really sacrificing a lot of internal space for this.
John:
You're sacrificing battery.
John:
Like, and by the way, this phone is $1,800.
John:
Like, it's, you know...
John:
It's a strange product, but it is weird.
John:
And by the way, there's a bunch of YouTube reviews of this too.
John:
You should take a look at it.
John:
If you are familiar with Sony cameras, it seems like a fantasy mock-up that somebody made of like, imagine a Sony camera, but it's a smartphone.
John:
And it's both because it's just Android.
John:
You know, it's like an Android phone, but then when you put it into camera mode, it's even got like a mechanical aperture on it.
John:
Like it really is like, you know, an RX100 squished really, really flat.
John:
And also it's a smartphone.
John:
Fascinating product.
John:
But yeah, so I guess unanimous.
John:
Apple should...
John:
Not buy, not merge with, but integrate the best of one of these companies, and it is some camera company.
Casey:
I dig it.
Casey:
All right, Joe Athman writes, between services like online photo libraries, Google Docs, iCloud Drive, Dropbox, and Git, I'm having a hard time thinking of any circumstance where I'd utilize my backups from Time Machine or some other online backup place.
Casey:
Am I wasting my time with these additional backups?
Casey:
No, you're not, but...
Casey:
But you make a good point.
Casey:
As I've said to you many times, I do think of my computer, my laptop, previously when I was in a two-computer world, I do think of my laptop as basically ephemeral.
Casey:
Now that's less so since I'm down to a one-computer life.
Casey:
But when I was taking things off of my iMac Pro and moving them onto my MacBook Pro, almost everything...
Casey:
was either stuff that I just hadn't processed, you know, like movies or not movies as in like, you know, falling off the back of a truck, but like things I've downloaded that I need to file away or something like that.
Casey:
Or I don't know, audio concerts that I've downloaded from, you know, from artists that allow you to do that sort of thing.
Casey:
All these sorts of things that I just was too lazy to file away.
Casey:
But in terms of like the stuff that actually mattered, like I don't have like a huge repository of office documents anymore like I used to.
Casey:
Uh, all of my code is in Git, like Joe said.
Casey:
So there was not that much of like important stuff that didn't exist in 13 other places.
Casey:
So I do totally get Joe's point, but I am of the opinion that the more backups you have, the better off you are.
Casey:
Since Marco went first last time, let's start with John.
Casey:
I presume you're going to be on the backup everything 18 ways train.
John:
Yeah, I understand where people come from.
John:
They're like, well, everything's already in the cloud.
John:
Well, I need to have the backup.
John:
Well, so the first and most obvious thing is having a single backup that's on somebody else's computer is not sufficient for backup, right?
John:
You do have one backup, and it's a cloud backup.
John:
And by the way, it is a distributed cloud backup distributed across multiple companies, which in some ways is good, but in some ways it's very bad.
John:
But the bottom line is just having cloud backup as your only backup is not sufficient because what happens then if you want to get your stuff back and it turns out
John:
you've corrupted it in that backup or that company goes out of business or whoops you tried to get it back from that company but you couldn't get it back because there was some kind of error on their side oh well some kind of error in your iCloud drive sorry there's nothing we can do about it right do not just rely on a single backup for your backup no matter what the backup is if it's a cloud backup if it's a local backup or whatever just having one of them is not enough
John:
And you want the more sort of diversity in your backup scheme, different companies, different media, different locations.
John:
That's what you want to have.
John:
Right.
John:
So that's the other the first important role of having something besides the cloud backup is you.
John:
A, it's a second backup and B, it's a different kind of backup.
John:
Right.
John:
But the second thing is you talk about wasting your time.
John:
You want to see wasting your time.
John:
Try, oh, you know, my computer broke and I need to quote unquote restore for my backup.
John:
That's going to be a waste of your time because trying to get back up to like where I was before everything went wrong, before I spilled the liquid into my computer or whatever.
John:
Have fun pulling everything down from all those cloud services and redoing all your settings.
John:
There's tons more sort of data that you put into your computer that is not represented in iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Git.
John:
This is mostly Apple's fault because Apple could do a way better job of essentially iCloud backup for Macs, right?
John:
But they don't do that.
John:
On the phones, they do.
John:
On the phone, you can throw your phone into the ocean.
John:
And if you have a recent iCloud backup, you can eventually be up and running essentially right where you left off as of that last backup.
John:
You can't do that with a Mac.
John:
Apple doesn't have that feature.
John:
They should, but they don't.
John:
So what that means is if you don't want to waste your time, if you want to be up and running like right where you left off, your only and best option is to have one of the fully supported, you know, Apple blessed backups, essentially Time Machine or a disk clone like SuperDuper or whatever, right?
John:
Because those are the only ways to get, quote unquote, everything back to the way it was, right?
John:
If you restore from a Time Machine backup, your Mac will look like it did at the time that backup was made.
John:
Same thing with a SuperDuper clone or something like that.
John:
That includes all the cloud stuff.
John:
That includes all your connections to the cloud stuff.
John:
That includes everything, right?
John:
Individually, iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Git does not include everything.
John:
All of your settings are not there.
John:
All your preferences are not there.
John:
User accounts are not there.
John:
Like tons of stuff is not there.
John:
And having to manually reset that stuff up, even if you have cool little scripts like Casey has with his brew installs and stuff like that, that is way more of a waste of your time than it is to sort of mindlessly restore from a time machine backup or a super duper clone.
Casey:
Marco?
Marco:
Yeah, I'm pretty much with John.
Marco:
I think there is definitely a gradual move that we have here to what Joe is saying here, where for many people and for an increasing number of people...
Marco:
An increasing amount of their actual data that they would need to backup is on cloud services that kind of ostensibly are their own backup solution in some way, which, again, it's questionable whether that is a backup.
Marco:
But anyway, it is true that, like, over time, more of our stuff is moving towards things like this that we have to worry a lot less about than, like, a single hard drive in a single computer on our desk.
Marco:
So obviously the risk profile is different and better when you have these things here.
Marco:
And there are certain features that you get from backup services that might not be in some of those services, things like history, being able to undo accidental changes or accidental deletions or protect yourself from ransomware, encrypting all your files and stuff like that.
Marco:
So there is certainly some value there.
Marco:
Obviously some of these services have history built in, like Dropbox, GitHub.
Marco:
Obviously there's some history.
Marco:
mechanics already built in there so anyway i think ultimately though john's right that like what the backups give you first of all is another copy because that is after all what a backup is so if you only have your stuff stored in one location that can be
Marco:
you know a hard drive on your desk or it can be one online service and what if you know john said what if the service goes out of business you know one thing that you also might want to consider is like what if the service suspends your account for some reason like what if there's some like you know alleged tos violation and google photos decides oh you know what your google account's dead well good luck contacting google to get your data like really good luck with that um so
Marco:
There are definitely other risks from these services that if you don't have your own backup strategy that is owned and controlled by you, you're not really as protected as you might want.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
I still think it's worth having backups.
Marco:
And the fact is, you know, backups are really cheap with today's storage and services.
Marco:
Like, whether it's a cloud backup, like our, you know, Frequent Sponsor Backblaze, I mean, that's six bucks a month, you know.
Marco:
Or you can get, like, a time machine drive, which is not that much money.
Marco:
Like, external hard drives and SSDs are pretty inexpensive these days for large amounts of space.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
I would say the value of having an actual backup that you control in addition to all these online services far exceeds the cost of doing so.
Marco:
So you might as well keep doing it.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Linode, and Lutron Caseta.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
We will talk to you next week.
John:
Now the show is over They didn't even mean to begin Cause it was accidental Oh, it was accidental John didn't do any research Marco and Casey wouldn't let him Cause it was accidental Oh, it was accidental And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM And if you're into Twitter
Marco:
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss.
Marco:
M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T.
Marco:
Marco Arment.
Marco:
S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
They didn't mean to.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Tech Podcast.
Casey:
So long.
Casey:
So I've been waiting for like a week and a half, because we were off on Thanksgiving break, all three of us, and I think I might know what the answer is, but I genuinely don't know for certainty what the answer is to your beep conundrum.
Marco:
So would you... And I also, I had a guess, but like, as... So John sent us a recording of the beeps, we pasted it into the last episode...
Marco:
As I was hearing, I'm like, I've heard this exact song a lot before.
Marco:
Something in our house plays this exact song.
Marco:
And I was like, is it the Roomba?
Marco:
Like, what is it that plays it?
Marco:
And then I played it for TIFF.
Marco:
I'm like, what is this?
Marco:
Something we have plays this exact song all the time.
Marco:
What is it?
Marco:
And somebody on Twitter said that it's from Whirlpool washers or dryers.
Marco:
Like when you turn on the dryer and like that's it.
Marco:
It's when you turn the dryer on or something like that.
Marco:
Because that's the dryer we have.
Marco:
So I'm really curious if, John, is this the fault of a washer or dryer?
John:
So my goal with talking about on the show, because I was kind of at my wits end, was like, you know, deploy the Internet.
John:
Surely someone knows us.
John:
And I was hoping for exactly the same thing.
John:
And Marco said, like, someone's got to recognize this song.
John:
Right.
John:
And then that'll help me narrow it down.
John:
Right.
John:
I also talked about doing recordings and narrowing it down that way and all that stuff.
John:
So let me take you through what I did and how I solve this, because I did solve it.
John:
I solved it pretty quickly.
John:
It was like two days after the show recording.
John:
So the system works.
John:
So the first thing I did was I did start recording.
John:
down there and i i did pull out an old iphone i found an old iphone 6 boy they were so thin old iphone 6 yeah they're so thin they bent yeah i know but they're so thin and so slippery yeah right did you instantly drop it yeah um so i put that and i found like a bunch of long cables i i i gathered like you know a power brick and a bunch of long cables i went down to the basement i plug everything in i go to plug it in and i'm staring at a usbc connector i'm like whoops damn it
John:
That's not going to plug into this phone.
John:
It's just that a lot of the long cables in the house are now USB-C cables, and that's not what it is.
John:
Anyway, so I put the iPhone 6 in the middle of the room, recorded it, and captured it.
John:
That's what you heard in the last ATP was my first recording that I captured.
John:
I just put it in the middle of the finished room because that was just my first guess of a recording location, and I got the beeps, right?
John:
so great i got the song i posted it on twitter marco put it in the podcast now it's out there right then i moved the the recorder i moved the iphone i put it basically inside like the fios box there's like an outer like gray plastic fios box and inside that is the little box i put the phone literally inside that box like i routed the lightning cable up through one of the little cable holes in it right so i'm like look if it's the fios box making this thing it's going to be so loud because it's like an inch from the phone
John:
All right.
John:
I left it there.
John:
Caught it again.
John:
Looked at the recording.
John:
It was quieter.
John:
It was quieter than the previous ones.
John:
I'm like, all right, I have ruled out the Fios box and also anything in that same closet with the Fios box because it was way quieter than it was when it was just, you know, the phone in the middle of the room.
John:
Right.
John:
Around this time, I was starting to get barraged by people on Twitter saying, it's your washer, it's your dryer, blah, blah, blah.
John:
Like lots of people talking about washer, dryer stuff.
John:
And I was like, you know what?
John:
I shouldn't investigate this because one of the reports, my wife, she was downstairs.
John:
She was in front of the washer and dryer.
John:
She heard it go off.
John:
She said, I think it was the water heater, which is like to the left of the washer and dryer.
I'm like...
John:
Maybe, you know, it's noisy.
John:
Maybe it's the washer and dryer.
John:
I need to investigate this.
John:
Right.
John:
And also there was a lot of people saying that modern washer and dryers can play songs as a form of diagnostic because I'm trying to think of like, look, this is not like an alarm and it's not a dying battery.
John:
It does it so infrequently that maybe it's just like maybe the washer and dryer just trying to tell me something like mournfully, like.
John:
you should replace my belt.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Like, and maybe it only says it like after a cycle when it's like, I, by the way, I finished a cycle, but I also noticed like something is screwed up.
John:
Um, so I did some research into that and, and there was also, you know, a part of this was that someone posted a tweet that said, uh, this, someone made an account for this.
John:
Uh, what is that beep?
John:
Uh, all one word on Twitter posted, uh, this tune sounds extremely like a whirlpool front load washer dryer and it triggers when the power button is pressed.
John:
And we will put a link to this tweet in the show notes.
John:
You will be able to play the video of the sound.
John:
And if Marco can put in the two clips, here is my sound.
John:
And here is the sound of Whirlpool front-loading washer.
John:
it's the same song right marco correctly identified the song it's the same song now part of the reason i was insistent that this is not a thing is because we don't have a whirlpool washer or a dryer but hold on is it like a white labeled what's is that is that a problematic term now anyway it's like a white labeled whirlpool that's actually being sold as like a kenmore or something yeah
John:
I was going to say, I also know that in the realm of washers and dryers and lots of other appliances, there are a lot of brands that are really the same as the other brands.
John:
I can never keep track of which ones they are, even though I know that Nissan is Infiniti and Honda is Acura.
John:
I know all of those, but I don't know if Maytag and Kenmore are the same thing or if Kenmore and Whirlpool are the same.
John:
I don't remember those.
John:
like i know them like how every microwave is the same microwave that like medea whatever brand it is like every single microwave except for like two is that microwave setting aside the current practice of like people sell the same product under different names like there are brand sharing things right you know i didn't know that that maz and ford collaborated on like the ford probe but i don't remember anyway i've lots of uses car knowledge is what i'm saying
John:
But, you know, so that's why I was saying, look, maybe maybe I just don't know the brand things.
John:
Even though I don't have anything Whirlpool, I need to investigate the washer and dryer.
John:
So I started investigation.
John:
So I went and we have two different branded washers and dryer.
John:
I think that we replaced them at different times or I don't remember how.
John:
One of them, they both have a thing.
John:
If you look at the front of them, they have some kind of thing where they do a diagnostic thingy involving sound.
John:
Uh, one of them had an app.
John:
My washer had an app.
John:
That's what I expected.
John:
Go download the app.
John:
You press the buttons, you know, on the front of the thing.
John:
And by the way, if anyone has ever, uh, I can't imagine any homeowner hasn't done this, but, uh, Googling for the PDF of the manual of your appliance is usually more efficient than saving all your manuals.
John:
So you can, you can Google for the PDF manual of almost every appliance, you know, so I recommend that.
John:
Anyway, found the manual, press this button, do this thing, blah, blah, blah.
John:
It plays a little song.
John:
um this is the first time i had ever done this i just had reports of people on twitter talking about it but as soon as i heard it i know this is not i'm barking up the wrong alley here because that's not an expression anyway um the song it plays sounds like modem beeps it sounds like essentially it's just i'm assuming that's what it is it's like it's transmitting information over or an analog signal right so you've launched the app you hold it up to your thing you press the button it plays the song and it sounds like you know your modem before it connects
John:
right it is not a song it is not a melody right it is data transfer and it sounds like data transfer and by the way i found out my washer is fine it has no complaints right then i went over to my that's good yeah everything's working great
John:
Then I went over to my dryer.
John:
My dryer has, it's a different company, and my dryer has some kind of tech that was so ill conceived.
John:
It must have been like on the cusp of the one that the washer has.
John:
There's no app for it.
John:
Like if you have a newer one, they have an app, right?
John:
But this was like before they had the idea of having an app, right?
John:
What they wanted you to do was call someone on the telephone, like a support person,
John:
And then they would say, okay, hold your phone receiver up to the thing.
John:
And then you'd play the song over the phone line.
John:
And then the thing on the other end of the phone line and the call center would interpret your beeps and tell you if they're okay.
John:
I'm like, great.
John:
Maybe that was the correct technology for the day, right?
John:
Maybe, you know, people didn't have smartphones, but now we do.
John:
So just make an app.
John:
I don't want to have to call somebody.
John:
Wait, was that like automated or does the person have to be like, that sounds like Eddie Vedder.
John:
Oh, it's the motor.
Yeah.
John:
yeah i mean there is a human involved presumably but then there's you know the computer doing the interpretation right um and so i spent a while to eventually discover that like yeah you can't do this anymore like there's no one to call like whatever call center they had running this they that doesn't exist i did spend a while on hold trying to get through but it was like i'm pretty sure you can't do that anymore i couldn't do it anywhere after like 30 minutes on hold
John:
While I was on hold, though, by the way, I'm like, okay, what could my dryer be complaining about?
John:
I had a long, thorough session of spelunking the lint trap on the dryer.
John:
I have lots of interesting tools to do this.
John:
They make lots of brushes and stuff.
John:
I used the headlamp that Merlin gave me a while ago, one of the best gifts I've ever received.
John:
Thank you, Merlin.
John:
Do you guys have a headlamp?
John:
no no it's elastic band with a little led light with a rechargeable battery that you that's in the front of your forehead great for things like this where you're digging around and you don't have an extra hand to hold a uh flashlight even a tiny one and no you don't want to hold it in your teeth you're gonna wreck your teeth i just i took my took it like under my chin which is even harder to hold and then i can only look at stuff that's directly below me yeah so anyway i got it i really got in there i do this periodically to clean out the lint thing and the dryer and you know
John:
get all the stuff because I was like, maybe it's complaining that it thinks there's a lint blockage or a sensor or something like that.
John:
And I just really thoroughly, I spent, this is what I'm doing when I'm on hold.
John:
I'm on hold with what I think is a line that's going to eventually give me a customer service person who I can make it play the song for, who can tell me whether my dryer has something wrong with it.
John:
But like in the meantime,
John:
what the only thing i can imagine is wrong with my dryer which otherwise seems to be perfectly fine is there is a lot of lint just down around the edges of the thing and i had to replace like the lint filter a while ago and you know so i spent a good half an hour 40 minutes digging around in there with my little flashlight with various tweezers and sticks and brushes and vacuums and compressed air and just getting everything out of there and while i am like you know forearm deep in the lint trap
John:
the beep goes off and i'm in the i'm in the basement and i can hear it and i don't know what's wrong with everyone else's ears in my family but when i was in the basement when i went off i immediately looked at directly what it was because my ears work i have two of them they both work and my head my head just went around like a swivel like aha
John:
It was not hard to identify.
John:
I immediately looked exactly what it was.
John:
And what was it?
John:
What's your guess?
John:
Based on everything I said so far.
Casey:
The washer?
John:
I'm still going to say the dryer.
John:
I still think it's the dryer.
John:
I mean, this is kind of unfair because, you know, you don't know everything that's in my basement.
John:
Although technically, I'm sure I've mentioned this before.
Casey:
What about a humidifier or dehumidifier?
John:
I told you I unplugged that.
John:
That was my big theory was like it was dehumidifier.
John:
But then, you know, once the winter came and we don't run the dehumidifier anymore, it's unplugged and it was still going off.
John:
right that was that because we had just added we got a new dehumidifier this year um and that's what i thought it was for ages but no not the dehumidifier um but no what it was what my head swiveled to was our downstairs freezer oh guess who makes our downstairs freezer whirlpool
John:
Whirlpool.
John:
I didn't think of this because who thinks of the freezer?
John:
I walk past this freezer every day.
John:
It's just a white, nondescript freezer.
John:
And Whirlpool, I think of maybe dishwasher, washing machine, dryer.
John:
I do not think of freezer.
John:
We have a Whirlpool freezer.
John:
Why is it singing to you?
John:
Well, I'll get to that.
John:
But anyway, that's what's making this noise.
John:
It was as clear as day.
John:
And it's on the other side of the basement.
John:
I was all over by the washing dryer.
John:
But when it went off and it played that song, I turned my head.
John:
I'm like, it's you.
John:
and then i like ran over to it and i said whirlpool because it's the whirlpool song as marco pointed out as a twitter person that's a whirlpool song somebody whirlpool wrote this melody which by the way did a terrible job of of rendering and lots of people on twitter were trying to put notes on a music staff to show what the song is and then all the music nerds were fighting amongst themselves about how
John:
the different ways you could notate it and did they get the notes right so i wanted to put one of those in the show notes but there are too many arguments and i don't know anything about music so i don't know which one is right but anyway that is the whirlpool song there's also like a reverse version of it which you'll hear in the tweet thing all right and so we have a whirlpool freezer and that's all i needed to be off to the races because once you know what to google for you can find it if you're just googling for like beeps song whatever especially if you're going for washer and dryer like i wasn't finding it i wasn't finding the song right
John:
But now I knew what to Google for.
John:
And what I knew to Google for was Whirlpool freezer beeps.
John:
And that will get you results.
John:
So here we go.
John:
The first one I found was a forum post on AppliancePartsPros.com from Stand4 on March 15th, 2020.
John:
The subject is Whirlpool freezer song, seven note chime.
John:
There's lots of debates about how many notes there are here.
John:
Okay.
John:
All right.
John:
And Stan says, it's a song coming every few hours from our garage.
John:
The only thing capable of making noise in that part of the garage is our Whirlpool upright freezer.
John:
And he puts the part number, which is my exact part number, which I also Googled.
John:
or our very turned off weekend car.
John:
And I've already checked with the service department.
John:
No chiming song is made by this car.
John:
So here's another person calling a bunch of people who make products and saying, does our car, I know this is a weird question, but does this car make any beeps?
John:
And they're like, no, no, sir.
John:
Our car does not make beeps.
John:
Anyway.
Marco:
uh stan says it's a seven note chime like a song totally random times pretty loud we actually hear it in the house it's six notes by the way it's clearly so like if you look at like if you look at last week's episode i put as the chapter art for last week's after show the the like spectral frequency view of the of the notes it's clearly and you can see exactly what the frequencies are so the music nerds can can figure out what notes those are it's very clearly six notes and anyone who's ever heard it would know it's six notes
John:
Well, the problem with the music narratives is, yeah, they can figure out the frequencies, but you can sort of notate the same frequencies in different ways with music notation, right?
John:
And that's kind of what they were debating.
John:
But yeah.
John:
Anyway, they're hard to hear, but some of them are hard.
John:
Anyway, Stan says...
John:
yeah it's pretty loud we actually hear it in the house the one day i was sitting in the car and heard it everything in the freezer seems fine freezing well no buzzing motor noises extra heat red lights or beepings any sign of anything missed with the freezer itself any ideas thanks in advance so this is a person with literally the same problem they're being haunted by this chime they can't they can it's so loud they can hear it in the house they can't figure out what it is they were he was in the car when he heard it but he he knows it's his freezer right
John:
Here is another one from applianceblog.com.
John:
Mike Hotsteller from January 13th, 2021.
John:
About six months ago, we would randomly hear a chime coming from the freezer.
John:
I unplugged it to investigate the sound slash melody it makes when the freezer is powered back on and played.
John:
That is the sound it makes every few hours.
John:
My items stay frozen.
John:
I'm just wondering if this is telling me something.
John:
it's definitely not the high temperature alarm or the door jar alarm.
John:
Anyone else have this problem, right?
John:
So as soon as you know what they Google for, you find the people like down to the part number, like W, what is it?
John:
Like WZ, F5, 6R, 1, 6D, W, 0, 0, like my actual freezer part number.
John:
People are being haunted by this damn chime.
John:
And then what you will also find is an answer from Nitram987 or Nitram and various things.
John:
Unlike every one of these boards, Nitram visits like a fairy and posts like the answer fairy of saying, here we go.
John:
Are you having this problem?
John:
Here's what Nitram says.
John:
It's the control board being inadvertently affected by noise it's picking up from the wires, feeding the rather distant alarm PZO, which happens to be located at the bottom right near of the chassis behind its cardboard shield.
John:
You will need to find technical service pointer W10854827, which lightly describes this, and then install W10861568, which currently supersedes W10846247.
John:
Oh, great.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yes, it does seem to coincide with the end of a compressor cycle, but that is only because any on-off cooling command to the control board begins with the compressor turning off for some minutes.
John:
You will notice that if you unplugged it and plugged it back in the freezer, it will produce a different tune.
John:
Don't confuse that problem with yours, that you think you have a main power problem.
John:
As mentioned above, this tune is the same as the tune you hear by manually turning off the cooling.
John:
This same answer, pretty much verbatim, is copy and paste it to everyone who has this problem.
John:
So you're like, not only have I found...
John:
the problem with lots of people being haunted by this chime nitram has the solution it is a technical service pointer you can look this stuff up you can see hey the problem is this thing you buy this part you rip out the little like sensor thingy and you put in the new one with has shorter wires and your problem is solved right
John:
So you would think I would run out and get myself a W10846247 kit.
Marco:
Is option B just, like, disconnecting the piezo buzzer inside?
John:
Well, so here's the thing.
John:
Other people, you know, before Nitram came in and saved everybody's problem, people were like, can I just disconnect the buzzer?
John:
But...
John:
one of the important features of a freezer like this is like the like the alarm that tells you if it went over temperature right or if the door is left open that's the same buzzer so i wasn't going to disconnect that like we had a freezer that didn't have the buzzer and it's bad like if a kid leaves it open you everything spoils in there right that happened to us this yeah you you need the buzzer and it and the buzzer needs to be loud so you can hear it and it is because you know when that buzzer plays a song we hear it through the whole damn house um
John:
So I'm looking into this, but I'm not done here because just because I find a bunch of people the same problem.
John:
But I'm suspicious when I notice the same person is posting the answer everywhere.
John:
Right.
John:
And that was from February 2021, this particular one.
John:
But it's like January, February, March.
John:
Nitram's going around putting the answer.
John:
Here is an April 2020 update from Nitram.
John:
The solution that Whirlpool offers in its W10861568 kit, as it turns out, did not resolve, all caps, my melody issue in the long run.
John:
I apologize for the this works in all caps and quotes previously.
John:
It was premature.
John:
You think, Nitrium?
John:
You think it was premature?
John:
He posted the same answer, like, on seven different bulletin boards.
John:
And then he comes up with an update.
John:
Oh, by the way, remember when I said this works?
John:
Didn't solve the problem.
Casey:
Whoopsies.
John:
So, I did not order this kit.
John:
I kept reading, you know, I wasn't about to just order this thing, because what I wanted to see is...
John:
More than one person says this solves the problem.
John:
I want to see everybody saying, I installed this kit and it solved it too.
John:
And the reason I was super suspicious is one, the I am electrical engineering parentheses, but two, the idea that it's like long wires are affected by electrical noise and
John:
that's causing this like it didn't make sense to me because i'm like what has changed i even like what has changed in my basement environment that would like what is it picking up and i did recently put a new euro down there so i unplugged the euro even with the euro unplugged the thing still went off right so my diagnosis as some as a bunch of other people said in their problem reports is my freezer is having difficulties
John:
I don't know what those difficulties are, but like Casey's monitor, it is unwell.
John:
Oh, come on.
John:
Something about it is unwell.
John:
Come on.
Marco:
My freezer works fine.
Marco:
You must be the problem.
John:
And by the way, this thing about you can play this song, this is what I did.
John:
I showed everyone in my family.
John:
I said, come down to the basement.
John:
Let me show you something.
John:
I can make it play the song by essentially turning the cooling function off.
John:
If you hold like the little button for three seconds, you can turn the cooling function off.
John:
And when you turn it back on, it plays the song.
John:
Right.
John:
So whatever something is happening, probably like at the end of a cycle, like a compressor cycle.
John:
Right.
John:
That is causing this thing to think, hey, the cooling is off and now it's back on.
John:
That's not healthy.
John:
It's not losing power because that's a different issue, as pointed out in these things.
John:
If you lose power and it like boots up, if you unplug it and plug it back in, it's a different song.
John:
This is the song of like, I'm on and I'm plugged in, but someone has turned off the cooling function, but now they've turned it back on.
John:
But I was plugged in the whole time, right?
John:
That's the song it's playing.
John:
And no one is turning the cooling function on and off.
John:
And there is a low temperature alarm and it's not getting below temperature, right?
John:
It's just that at the end of a cycle, something happens that makes it think, oh, cooling is off.
John:
Oh, cooling is back on.
John:
Like immediately, right?
John:
Maybe I could hook it up to a UPS.
John:
Maybe it doesn't need a line conditioner or nothing.
John:
Nothing has changed in that regard.
John:
The power it is being fed is the same power it's always been fed.
John:
I haven't put new things on a circuit.
John:
It's like nothing has changed.
John:
What has changed?
John:
This is a pretty old freezer.
John:
So my solution, again, I marcoed the hell out of this one, is new freezer.
John:
Like, I don't care what the problem is.
John:
I have too much stuff in this stupid freezer.
John:
That was the right move.
John:
Because you know what it's like if you have a downstairs freezer.
John:
I have it because certain people in my family like to have lots of food in the house.
John:
And one gigantic refrigerator is insufficient for their needs.
John:
And therefore, we have a freezer in the basement and we have tons and tons of food in it because it's just the way it is, right?
Yeah.
John:
losing power or having a freezer that breaks and having to like throw all that stuff out i know it's the window and you can put it in the garage like we've been we've been down this road before the bottom line is it is a disruption to lose your refrigerator or your freezer unexpectedly it is much better to sniff out the potential future betrayal of an appliance
John:
and preempt it by saying i'm gonna replace you now while you're still working it's like bad sectors on a hard drive like you don't want to leave that just to go forever right and you know and it's like this is a pretty old thing i think it's like seven or eight years old like it's not like i'm getting rid of a one-year-old thing and it still works and so we'll give it to someone for free and say look if you want a free freezer it's pretty good it plays a song every few hours i'm like
John:
And by the way, the randomness of it is essentially, hey, when does the compressor run?
John:
And that depends on how often the kids have been down there to sneak frozen cookies out of it or whatever, right?
John:
So it is random because human behavior is like mixed into it, but it is regular enough because the compressor does eventually need to come on, right?
John:
And with a freezer, if no one's going into it and it's well sealed and no one opens it, it can be a pretty long stretch between the compressor coming on and off, right?
John:
So I ordered a new freezer.
John:
It's slightly bigger than the previous one.
John:
It's a different brand, I think.
John:
It is arriving on Saturday.
John:
Anyway, the solution to the problem is that was the Whirlpool song.
John:
We have a Whirlpool freezer.
John:
The Whirlpool freezer is actively in the process of betraying me, and I am preempting that.