No Bum Cores
We're watching Severance.
Have you seen Severance?
No, no.
I'm not going to tell you anything about it, except that it's really good.
And I strongly suggest that season one just ended.
It's been renewed for a second season.
It starts out weird, and you're going to think, what am I watching?
It's very, very strange.
Where is the square footage going?
But trust me, it's worth watching this show.
It's very, very good.
We recently just finished The Dropout, too, the one about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos.
And we're trying to watch the WeWork one, but I don't know.
Are you able to watch shows about Silicon Valley startups and enjoy them?
I was going to say you're making some interesting choices of all the things you can pick.
Severance, good.
Thumbs up.
Nice selection.
WeWork and the Theranos one?
Are you going to watch the Uber one next?
That would not be on my list.
So the Theranos one, I was happy to get through because, first of all, it was very well done.
Amanda Seyfried was amazing in it.
And I wasn't really following the story when it was happening in real life.
So it was mostly new to me, or at least I knew the high-level overview, but didn't really know the details.
So that was nice.
And it was just a very well-done show.
But the parts that are more about glorifying Silicon Valley culture, which so far the WeWork one definitely is in that area.
I mean, it's just a different company, different show.
But I find that kind of show hard to get through as a nerd.
My favorite show of this type is Silicon Valley because it just did not even try to take our world seriously.
And I know so many people in our world did not think it was funny.
It kind of hit too close to home to them.
And I love that show so much because the world of our startup culture and everything is ridiculous and it is totally stupid.
And there's so much about it that is easily made fun of because it's so ridiculous and stupid.
But I have a hard time watching shows that glorify it non-sarcastically like the WeWork one so far.
Well, the other shows are based on real people and true stories.
I mean, Silicon Valley is just, you know, it's a comedy, a satire, right?
And there's lots of fictionalized things that have obvious analogs, like what they're making fun of, but it's not trying to be, you know, a dramatized version of real events at all.
And I feel like that's really hard to do because we've got the...
whole plumber problem is because we know a lot about the business and the companies that are involved and sometimes some of the people that are involved so if you try to make a tv show out of that the tv show ends up you know trying to dumb things down or there's a bunch of things that they gloss over that we know the intricacies of and just takes you out of it whereas silicon valley you know all it's trying to do is make you laugh and i feel like knowledge of silicon valley makes that show more funny not less
There were a couple of examples that I can think of of movies that I've seen that are at least adjacent to our world that I thought were enjoyable.
Maybe not good, but enjoyable.
What was the one?
The Pirates of Silicon Valley or something like that?
That wasn't fiction, though.
That was like a documentary thing.
That was like interviews and stuff, right?
No, no, no.
I'm thinking of the one with Noah Wiley.
Oh, yeah.
Noah Wiley.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That one I enjoyed.
What was the one with Tim Robbins and Ryan Philippe, Philippe, whatever his name is?
It was super campy and super silly.
He was like, Tim Robbins was playing like a Gates sort of character.
The Circle?
Yeah.
No, no, shoot.
I don't have to look it up.
But there was one.
It was years ago now because I'm old.
That one was enjoyable if dumb.
Let's see.
Oh, I liked The Social Network a lot, actually.
I thought that – oh, Antitrust.
Thank you, Bleh11.
The Social Network, I mean –
The Social Network was a good movie, but the more you know about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, the more there's sort of a dissonance with the stuff that's on the screen.
Well, sure.
It's hard to make movies about real people, especially when they're currently live.
Triumph of the Nerds was a documentary.
That's it.
That's what I'm thinking of.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Pirates of Silicon Valley was Noah Wiley.
It was the Steve Jobs one with Fassbender.
That one I hate, if I remember right.
I absolutely hate it.
I just don't watch the fictionalized ones because I know I'm not going to like them.
They're usually about some company, like the Facebook ones.
It would be easier to like the Facebook ones if I liked Facebook.
Instead, I'm watching these shows and it's like I hate all of the people in the show.
I hate every character in the show and in real life.
I just hate all these people.
It makes it hard to enjoy.
No finger traps for you.
Nice.
Oh, it's such a good show.
Oh, my God.
Marco just wanted to tell people about Severance, a TV show that he is watching not five years after the rest of the world.
You know what really sucks, though, is that now they just finished season one and they just picked it up for season two, which means they haven't made season two yet, which means I have to wait like a year.
Oh, yeah.
That's what happens.
Imagine that.
If you just waited five years and spent five years complaining about everyone telling you about Severance, why is everyone telling you about Severance?
I'm sick of hearing about Severance, and then you'd finally watch it after five years, and then you wouldn't have this problem.
It worked for me with Hamilton.
still haven't seen that still waiting for the hamilton sequel yeah it was i'll tell you what though it's weird like you know we've been watching a lot of you know current shows and we've basically we've run into old shows um and so we've been watching current ones you have not run out of old shows seriously for the record we'll leave that there but but it's it's so weird now going back to having to wait like a week for the next episode to come out because we we've largely not done that for years for almost anything we watched
Did you watch Severance in real time or did you just watch it once it was allowed?
We watched it, I think, like the first four or five in like a batch because we jumped in halfway through and then we hit the end and we're like, oh no, we have to wait till next week?
What?
And then it's just been excruciating.
what did you do for ted lasso you didn't watch that live so season one blew right through and then season two we had to do you know it live and it's it feels like going back in time to a long lost pain of our youth like what do you mean i can't watch everything i want all the time like whenever i feel like it how is that what do you mean how is this not available
So tangential to that, this pre-show is never going to end.
You've ruined everything.
So tangential to that, we have occasionally gone and eaten at like restaurant patios over the last few months.
The kids have completely forgotten how restaurants work, most especially that once you order, you have to cook the food.
Like it isn't that we've already ordered and we just grab it and go.
You have to sit there and entertain yourself and let the people cook the food.
And they do not understand this concept at all.
And so we are trying to break them back into restaurants, but they're having a hard time.
So it's funny how things are coming.
Everything old is new again.
And for us, it's restaurants.
Yeah.
Hooray!
It is t-shirt time, everybody.
T-shirts are back and, dare I say, better than ever.
So here's the thing.
You know, when you work with people that you genuinely, deeply enjoy and respect, the flip side of that coin is that sometimes they really tick you off.
marco has now twice come up with my two well he's done it in two different occasions come up with my favorite atp merchandise jokes the first one which john will probably tell me was actually his idea but my recollection is it was marco's idea was the uh watch edition shirt like there are the three different styles it was sports what was the middle one
Just like no name on the middle, sport on the bottom, and then the edition at the top.
Right.
That happened too long ago for me to remember whose idea it was.
Yeah, I honestly don't remember.
I'm pretty sure it was Marco.
I'm not 100% sure, but I'm pretty sure.
Normally, I am annoyingly accurate about remembering which things I should get credit for.
But in this case, I actually don't remember.
Yeah, that was a really long time ago.
I don't even know if our Slack scroll back goes that far.
Well, either way, that one was one of my top two favorites.
The other...
is actually, I should, honestly, I should attribute John for this because it was a group effort, but it was Marco's initial idea.
That was Marco's idea.
Yeah.
Wait, hold on.
The Slack t-shirt didn't get you, didn't make your list?
No.
No.
It was good.
We know that was your idea.
It was good.
So the store is up, and you can buy merchandise right now through the 30th of April.
Saturday the 30th of April is the last time you can get your shirts, and I'll do my normal spiel about that in a second.
But let's look at the merchandise.
So we've got the M1 Ultra shirt, which is exactly what you expect.
It's the M1 colorful logo with Ultra with a yellow background below it.
Very well done.
Very nice.
The back...
I don't even know what to say.
I think this shirt might have caused Syracuse to quit.
Because doing this must have been a nightmare.
I know you're going to say, oh, just copy-pasted.
No, I'm telling you, it must have been a nightmare to do.
No copy-pasting.
It was all done by hand.
Lovingly done by hand.
Every line drawn with the line tool or the rectangle tool.
So this is the shirt that broke Syracuse's back.
And for that, I will always be thankful for it.
However, where Marco comes in is the M1 Ultra Interposer shirt.
So, picture in your mind's eye, you've got the Six Colors M1 logo.
Below that, there is a very wide pill that is a yellow background, but instead of saying ultra, on the left-hand side it says the word max.
Then there's a crude illustration of an interposer.
And on the right-hand side, it says the word Max, but upside down.
Because that's what the M1 Ultra is.
It's two M1 Maxes, one upside down.
I love this so much.
I cannot even tell you.
I'm dead serious.
I love this shirt so much.
This might eclipse the different watch editions, whatever, the different watch styles, as my favorite merchandise gag that we've ever done.
I love this so much.
This is probably the nerdiest one because the number of, first of all, the number of people who are going to recognize an ATP shirt or know what the heck M1 is, it's already vanishingly small.
We all know that, right?
People who live in your house with you when you get the shirt, they'll be like, what the hell is this?
Maybe they'll get BMW, but no one's going to know what it's about.
But then within that tiny circle, to get this joke, you also have to know how the M1 Ultra is constructed with two Maxes.
Like, they're basically rotated.
Like, if you look at, take an M1 Max die and then rotate it around so it touches, you know, like, that's how the Ultra is formed.
And so we formed the Ultra badge with two Maxes.
And, you know, on the shirt it looks like one upside down one, right, set up.
almost nobody is going to get that like i bet in the atp audience most of you listening to me don't understand what i'm talking about and also don't remember how the m1 ultra is constructed and so even if i was explaining it better you still wouldn't get it very narrow interest and i will say because it's narrow interest this is probably the only time we're going to sell this shirt we've been doing like an on-demand thing like when the store isn't up you can get these on-demand shirts for all the people who watch the youtube videos and so they don't have to you know get illegal pirated shirts or whatever um
um we're probably going to put the m1 ultra up in the on-demand shirt but this one won't be there so if you want this insidest of inside joke shirt this is probably the only time you're ever going to be able to get it so m1 ultra interposer shirt check it out i when i suggested this i was joking like i made a quick little crappy photoshop mock-up but i'm like hey shouldn't it be like this but i know you are i do not think anybody will actually buy this shirt i literally think there will be zero sales of it
I can guarantee you I will be one of them.
There will be two sales.
If any of you out there actually want this, prove me wrong.
That's great.
I totally understand if you'd rather buy one of the other designs.
But I'd be shocked if anybody buys this.
We've already sold two of them.
yeah you and casey i didn't buy mine yet no me neither i was waiting till the end and almost forget to buy it and by the way just the final thing on these shirts these two these two shirts as we've discussed before all the m1 shirts uh these are like the most expensive shirts we've ever made because they have so many colors on them and every single color is a separate printing pass that's why the badges always match one of the colors in the stripes so we don't have to do yet another printing pass because every printing pass costs more money
And by the way, there's a printing pass on the back as well.
So we apologize for the cost of these shirts.
They are very expensive.
I will say that as we said in the past with the on-demand shirts, the on-demand shirts use a different process for printing.
That's why they're cheaper.
They do not look as good as these shirts.
These are the good looking ones.
So I know they're horrendously expensive.
We apologize for that.
It costs us a lot to make them because of all the different colors and everything.
probably i was gonna say this will be the end of the m1 shirts but we might do m2 shirts i don't know we don't know what we're gonna do but anyway i just want to put that out there um and that that brings us to the next shirt which is so you don't want to pay all that money for the 17 printing passes that it takes to make these shirts we do have an m1 ultra in monochrome we do not have the the max max joke in monochrome you want if you if you want the obscure joke you got to pay through the nose for it
I mean, just like if you want an actual M1 Ultra.
Exactly right.
All our cores are enabled.
No bump cores on our shirts.
And the good thing about the monochrome shirts, though, is that, you know, the M1 Ultra and the M1 Ultra Interposer shirts just come in black.
But the monochrome version comes in all sorts of colors.
So if you want a colorful shirt, go for the monochrome one.
It's cheaper because it's just one printing pass on each side.
You can get it in blue, purple, pink, lavender, green, all sorts of colors.
It's very nice.
And then we have the classic ATP logo shirt.
And then we have brought back the ATP hoodie, which is absolutely a delightful hoodie.
I cannot recommend it enough.
Very, very nice hoodie.
And then by popular demand, we have the ATP pint glass and a ever so slightly tweaked ATP mug.
To be completely honest with you, we would have left the mug alone, but we couldn't because they're not available right now.
Hashtag supply chain.
So the only difference on this ATP mug is that the interior rather than being red is like a gray.
Is that right?
It's like a grayish blue almost, like a slate.
I mean, we didn't do this on purpose.
We would have just got red if we could have.
We couldn't get either of these, by the way, during the last sale.
They just weren't available, period.
They're finally available now, but we couldn't get red.
But the way I would rationalize it now that we are forced to get gray because red is not available –
If you thought the interior of the ATP mug was too garish or you didn't like the color it made your beverage look because it was red and everything, which I can relate to, and you want something that's more neutral, this is it.
Black outside, gray inside, and then it makes the rainbow logo pop because it is the only splash of color on the thing.
I still think it looks pretty good, but if and when we can get red back, we will do so.
Also, to answer Melbo's question in the chat, no pins this year?
Yes, Melbo, no pins this year.
Because it took us 30 seconds to sell the first batch of pins and 30 years to sell the second batch of pins.
So we're never bringing pins back.
That may be true of the pint glasses and the mugs, too, because they're also the type of thing where we have to guess how many we're going to sell and then we buy them up front.
So I really hope we're not selling these mugs and pint glasses for the next five years.
But who knows?
It could happen.
So we'll see.
It's the danger of guessing how much people are going to want things.
Turns out supply chains are hard.
At the very least, my wife wants a bunch of pint glasses because now these are her favorite glasses in the house.
I don't want them because they're taking over the cabinet.
They're so much wider on the top.
I have my favorite glasses that are these cheap ones from Crate and Barrel or something that I like, and they're just cylinders.
It's a pint glass, so it's wider at the top than it is at the bottom, and we store them upside down.
These take up more room, and they're slowly overpopulating my kitchen cabinets and kicking out my glasses.
John, take your own advice.
Alternate.
You don't store them all upside down.
That's a deep cut.
That's a deep cut.
You can't alternate.
No, that's not good.
You save so much more space that way with, you know.
There's so much crap filtering out of the air in my house.
I don't want that settling in the glasses.
Inside the cabinets?
Yes, it's inside.
everywhere oh my gosh anyway all right so we've got the pint glasses those are dishwasher safe because the logo is etched it's not painted it's etched and then the ATP mug no not dishwasher safe you should treat this with care come now and I believe it's a 14 ounce capacity on that which hopefully is enough for whatever liquid you're putting in it so to recap the M1 Ultra shirt with a yellow Ultra pill underneath the M1 logo the colorful M1 logo the M1 Ultra Interposer shirt
Probably my favorite ATP joke shirt of all time.
Although I was reminded in the chat that I do take credit for the wheels on the Mac Pro shirt being a little more expensive.
I will take credit for that.
Still not on my list of my favorites, but a close runner-up.
Or honorable mention.
Excuse me, Marco.
Anyway...
M1 Ultra Interposer shirt with Max Max on it.
Those are available in black only in various sizes and whatnot.
Then the M1 Ultra shirt in monochrome, which is a little bit more affordable.
That's in a variety of t-shirt colors.
The ATP logo shirt, the ATP hoodie, the ATP pint glass, ATP mug.
All of this available until Saturday, April 30th.
Now, here's where I remind you of a couple things.
First of all, if you are an ATP member, which you can join if you want to by going to ATP.fm slash join,
If you're an ATP member, you will get a coupon code for you and you can enter it at Cotton Bureau and save, what is it, 15%?
Do I have that right?
15% off.
And if you spend, if you buy probably one or at most two pieces of merchandise, you've already basically paid for the first month of membership.
So definitely check that out at etp.fm slash join.
Secondly,
If you're driving, if you're walking, if you're doing the dishes, if you're doing something right now where you just can't place the order, do Casey a favor.
Stop what you're doing.
Pull over.
Pull to the side of the sidewalk.
Do what you... Put the dishes down for just a moment.
Go to atp.fm slash store and order now.
Because every time, every time I get...
Oh, did I miss it?
Yes, you missed it.
Order now.
ATP.FM slash store.
Some very enthusiastic people in the chat said they forgot to use their discount code.
Cotton Bureau is really good about that.
If you just email them and say, hey, I made an order and I forgot to use my discount code and then just send them the discount code you would have used, they'll give you the
credit for it i know it's a hassle to do it back and forth in the email but they will give you the credit for it so yes if you're an atp member don't forget to use your code just go to atp.fm store there's a link to your member page where you'll you know the paragraph of text at the top tells you what the deal is and links you to it so you can get your code and paste it in the promo code field when you're checking out and
yada yada so yeah and then the same picture we made last year like a case you were saying this is a perfect time for you to take advantage of this buy a membership buy a bunch of merch and then and then nothing and then nothing and then forget to cancel your membership and then walk away yeah i mean we'll see so last last year finally i have to say the last sale not last year i guess it was last year the last sale we did people finally took my advice we had this pretty substantial bump in membership and then most of it went away after the sale was over
So that's good.
You're using it the way it's intended.
You might as well just get the discount.
But the second thing I'll say about that, and this is special for this year, Com Bureau told us that the prices on all of our stuff is going up.
So the cost to us ATP on all these products has increased.
For this sale, we have not passed any of that cost on to you, unlike Apple.
Yeah.
So all the prices are the same as they were before.
Like, you know, the ATP shirt is the same as before.
The M1 Ultra shirt's the same as the M1 Pro and the Mac shirts.
You know, all our prices are the same, but you should know that our costs for each one of these is more than it used to be.
And so I will say what I've said in many past things.
Buy a shirt or a mug or a pint glass or whatever if you want that item.
If instead you're like, I want to support ATP, and you think, oh, if I buy a $35 t-shirt, doesn't that support ATP?
Buying a membership for $8 supports us way more, believe it or not, right?
Even just for one month.
What I'm telling you is that if you just want to give us money,
membership if you want a cool t-shirt pint glass mug hoodie these are cool products you should get them but don't feel like you're you know like well i don't really want this stupid t-shirt but i want to support the show and surely if i buy two expensive t-shirts i'm supporting the show a super duper amount if you just want to support the show buy a membership and you get something for membership too you get an ad free episode and you get the bootleg and you know you get stuff for the member too but if you just want to support it buy a membership if you want cool merch buy cool merch
And I will add that we have not changed prices, even though our costs are gone up.
I'm not sure how long we can sustain that.
We'll see how this sale goes.
If our margins are so slim that we barely make any money on the sale, next sale, maybe some of the prices will go up.
So if you want to get something, even if you just want to refresh your ATP shirt because your old one's looking a little ratty or whatever, buy now because prices may change during the next sale.
That is another thing that Apple won't tell you, but that we will.
Yeah, I wouldn't even say may change.
I think it's all but guaranteed that the prices are going to have to go up next year.
Unless the supply chain changes and all of a sudden our costs go down.
Who knows?
When does that ever work in our favor?
When does anyone say, due to supply chain efficiencies, we're now lowering our prices?
It never happens.
It happens all the time.
Apple just never passes the savings on to us.
They just keep selling the same 16-gig RAM upgrade for $600 for five years.
Yeah.
Exactly.
All right, we should move on.
But Marco, 16 sold, Marco, of the Max Max shirt.
16, baby.
What we should really not be saying is like, I don't think anyone's going to buy it.
What we should really say is the first person to give us a legit story of someone noticing the shirt and understanding it in public.
i'm gonna say noticing the shirt understanding in public who's not an atp listener that's going to be miraculous that's never that's never going to happen i don't think i even if you allow it to be a listener it's never going to happen and like and the best thing about this nerd shirt is if someone does interrogate you about it then you are kind of obliged to explain to them and there's no way to explain that without making you look like a giant nerd it's just i
just imagining like the the look on the other person's face as their eyes glaze over and like oh no why did i ask for more information about this i feel like you could like you could sheepishly explain it to be like i know this is boring but you did ask so i'll explain it or you could exclusively explain in which case they didn't be like what's wrong with this person
but i mean in all fairness i think certainly the three of us and probably most of our listeners have seen that look before yes exactly no but i that's why that's why i love this shirt because it's the type of thing it's it's like when you wear like a shirt from obscure band that you know nobody's heard of just how cool you are because you've heard of the obscure band only the uncool version of that
Wow.
Really, really sound it well there, John.
All right.
We got to do some follow-up.
And I would like to start with the most important and also tragic follow-up.
It breaks my heart.
It breaks my heart.
We've gotten news via Ari Badgers that Original Gravity, Marco and I's beloved beer slash sausage place in San Jose, one of two... Why is it not my beloved place?
I've eaten there plenty of times.
Is it one of your beloved places, John?
I mean, it's like one of the only places I've eaten, so yeah, I guess so.
It's one of the only tolerable places that we ate in San Jose.
Of the two places in San Jose that I can think of that the three of us approve of, this is one of them, except it's not the way it used to be.
So Ari writes to us, if you're coming to San Jose just because of original gravity, please don't.
They don't have any sausages anymore and have turned into a sit-down overpriced burger place just like any other boring place in South Bay.
So the beer and sausage place is now the beer and burger place and is apparently not as good.
And that's very sad.
I think I got a grilled cheese there once too.
Didn't they used to have grilled cheese?
Yeah, they had like 10 or 15 different things on the menu.
If it was like greasy and bad for you, they had it.
That's true.
And now they just have burger, which is greasy and bad for you, but it's just one thing.
Yeah.
And I'm not going to lie.
If you look at their website and you have to click on the food tab and then it just scrolls to the food section of the single serving page, the burgers do look pretty damn good.
And so do the French fries.
But I loved this sauce.
They had like 10 or 15 different sausages and they were delightful and not no more.
I mean, in all fairness, though, like at least they still have all the beer.
And what made them good was not just the sausages, but that they were, I think, the only place we found in our time in San Jose that actually had good service and consistent service.
That's also true.
And so as long as they have beer, some kind of food and good service, they're still significantly ahead of the pack there.
And they didn't just have good service for San Jose.
They had, I think, good service for anywhere.
Like, in particular, if it's the type of restaurant where you order at a counter and then you just go sit anywhere you want and someone comes and finds you and brings you your food, that never really works out that well.
Except at this place, they would come and find you and bring you your food in a timely manner.
I don't know how they did it.
It's a miracle of service.
Because most places where they have that, even if they have a system, they can't find you.
But if they don't have a system, it's like you'll never know if you're ever going to get your food.
Yeah, I ate at another place in San Jose that you order at the counter, they give you a number, you go sit down, and you'll be sitting there forever.
Because they gave you a number for no reason.
They don't actually ever bring the food out to you.
And you have to eventually walk up to the back of the counter and be like, hey, I'm just checking, you know, how's my order going?
And they'll be like, oh, here it is.
then why'd you give me the number that's this means something everywhere else in the world but not here i'm telling you all of san jose it's the truman show no one they're all actors no one knows how to do the job until you ask them they're like uh i i don't know what to do i guess i need to go figure out how to do this except original gravity there they seem to know what they're doing and so i hope this change doesn't ruin them because if i ever go back to san jose which we'll get to later i guess if i ever go back to san jose that's the first place i'm stopping
And since we'll get questions about it, what is the name of the vegan place that we all like?
Oh, it's like right across the street.
It's like a vegan Indian place.
It's called like Good Vibes.
It's like something like that.
Good Karma.
There it is.
There it is.
Yeah, right.
All right.
All right.
Yeah, that place is also very good.
We are sponsored this week by Mack Weldon.
This is my favorite brand of clothes, and it is by far the brand of clothing that I wear the most.
You know, we all want to look our best.
Now it's springtime coming up.
You might want to get some new spring essentials.
Mack Weldon makes the best essential clothing, and it's perfect for all seasons.
You know, go into the spring.
I'm going to look at some of my t-shirts.
Maybe get some new t-shirts.
Maybe keep some long sleeves in the wardrobe there.
Maybe get a nice new light jacket or hoodie.
And Mack Weldon has all these things.
It's so great.
They even have the deli wear system.
All their clothes work together.
So it's just a fantastic brand.
Let me tell you right now, I'm wearing Mack Weldon underwear.
You know, look, I'll say it.
I love their underwear.
I'm always wearing it.
That's 100% of my collection of underwear is there.
So I'm wearing that every single day.
I'm also wearing their boot socks right now.
Their boot cut socks.
These wonderful weave because it's a little bit cold today.
I got their silver t-shirt, which is made from actual antimicrobial silver fibers in the fabric blend.
And so it basically never stinks.
Like I wear these almost all the time.
Like I'm almost always wearing a Mack Weldon silver t-shirt.
Earlier today, I worked out, I use the Ace sweatshorts.
I love the Ace line.
They have sweatpants, sweatshorts.
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All right, so now that we've got that covered, we need to go to etymology corner.
I feel like we should be on fun fact right now.
Matt Rigby writes, as fans of arbitrary and obscure measurements, you may enjoy the additional info that a decibel is in fact one-tenth or a deci of a bell, with a bell being a measurement for the loss of signal power over a one-mile stretch of 19-gauge telephone cable.
The measurement we use today to measure all kinds of things, including an idling Mac studio, has its origins in the early telephone age of the late 19th century and is named after Alexander Graham Bell.
I love these units of measurement that are sort of not based on physical properties of matter, but instead are sort of, you know, experimental measurements.
And this one requires a mile of wire.
Like, if you want to just, you know, reproduce the, you know, where does this come from?
Unlike the old, you know, before, I think they've converted all the measurements to physical measurements.
properties like there used to be like the kilogram weight that would be kept in this little vacuum chamber but it would be losing atoms over the years and so the kilogram would be changing and people are all upset right for this one like i do you know i mean i'm sure it's probably physically based now someone will write in with more follow-up to explain it but like the idea that to sort of reproduce or accurately you know if you had to keep a round one you have to keep like a one mile stretch of 19 gauge telephone wire around and then you'd have to stretch it out and then decide what temperature it has to be and how long it has to
you know, that temperature has to be consistent over the mile that you stretch it and under what tension should it be under and should it be on the ground or not?
And then measure, you know, it's, and then, and now we're stuck with it, I suppose.
But, um, I really do hope that a decibel is, is switched to physics based measurement because it seems like the most inconvenient one to, uh, reproduce.
By the way, real-time follow-up here.
The M1 Ultra Interposer shirt.
I just got the email from Cotton Bureau saying that it's across the threshold to be printed.
Ah, there you go.
Some quick looking at the page indicates that they've sold 17 of them, which is outselling the other ones like four to one at least.
Oh, see?
See?
When the normal people come there, they'll get the normal shirts.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't expect this ratio to continue, but it's just kind of funny.
People in the chat room are disproportionately inclined to get the joke shirt.
Yeah.
That's fair.
All right, Carl Roseless writes, you mentioned the upcoming iPhone 14 non-Pro Max, saying that it gives quote-unquote normal people the option of a big phone.
Don't forget to pour one out for the iPhone 12 and 13 mini.
This is nice for people who want bigger phones, but sad for those of us that like the small or maybe reasonable-sized phones.
I forgot to mention that last time we were talking about the phone lineup.
I know we talked about it in past shows, but just to refresh everyone's memory, the current dominant rumor is that there will be no Mini 14.
So if you like the Mini, get the 12 or 13 Mini and then just try to use it for as long as you can.
Maybe Apple will bring back the Mini, maybe they won't, but it doesn't look like it's in the cards for the 14.
Yeah, it's a shame.
I mean, I see that, you know, I'm not helping here by having bought the 12 mini, but then a 13 pro, you know, so I'm not really helping the cause, but I really did love that phone, the mini phone.
And I wish that they would continue to, to try to make really great small phones.
And we'll see if that ever becomes a thing again because it really does sound like this is not a thing.
And the rumors have been no more mini with the iOS 14 or with the iPhone 14.
They've been saying that ever since like halfway through the 12 mini cycle.
So it seems like it just wasn't really selling well from the start.
Yeah.
We had our speculation for reasons.
Obviously, people do love big phones.
Even when they say they want small phones, they end up buying big phones a lot of the time.
But also, the question of whether there's a small phone market or whether there's a cheap phone market and the distinction between the SE versus the Mini.
and and and also our theories about like well maybe with covid people couldn't get to the apple store and actually see and feel these things and if they will have a chance to get in there and see and feel it maybe they'll be you know more swayed to it well now people have been able to go to apple stores for a while and it seems like it's still getting canned so that's unfortunate but we'll see maybe in the future they'll try to make their phones smaller and lighter again i hope so because the 13 pro is an amazing phone but it's a big heavy brick in my pocket
i still think it's a mistake to get rid of the mini like we said whenever we talk about diversifying product lines they can't all sell in equal amounts like there's always going to be the ones that are popular are the ones that are less popular and you get to have a diversified product line when you sell overall a lot of a product if you sell a small amount you can't have 17 different models because then you're just you know it costs a certain amount of money overhead for each new model you have right but i feel like the iphone sells well enough
There's room for small, medium, large instead of just medium, large.
I think there's room for the mini.
Large and extra large at this point.
Whatever.
A diversity of sizes and a diversity of price points.
The Mini, you know, sells way, way less than the other ones.
But does it sell so little that it's not even viable?
The total number of iPhones is so high that I think most phone manufacturers would kill to sell as many Minis as Apple did.
So I don't quite, you know, like I understand every new variation you add, you know, eats into your profit margins because it would be, you know, there's less overhead to make those same people just buy the next size up or whatever.
but i feel like this is a kind of an apple nickel and diming type of things like let's not super duper like it is your most popular product if you can't diversify your most popular product into a reasonable range of sizes then what can you do that with like if you just want to do the mini every other year or something i feel like there's a compromise here you know when everyone says oh the mini didn't sell well so it didn't make it i think people are envisioning that they sold like 10 of them right but they sold millions right just that's that's plenty to support a product so i do really hope it comes back
Quick aside, I keep thinking about poor original gravity.
Marco, can we promise each other, you and me, that if we get word that House of Prime Rib is folding, that you and I will make the trip for House of Prime Rib?
I know we've talked about this before, but for real, can we make sure that we do this?
I think they would be booked up solid and we wouldn't be able to get in at any price.
You're probably right.
It would be all the people who are the insiders who would get in.
We'd have no chance.
You're probably right.
But also, because they are always that busy, I think the odds that they are going to shut down are pretty low.
Agreed.
A thousand percent agreed.
But one of my favorite restaurants in the entire world.
I cannot say enough good things about House Prime Rib.
It is so good.
It's one of those things that like, what?
Really?
This is what you're excited about?
Really?
Really?
this thing that's been the same way probably for a hundred years yes that is what i'm excited about because it's freaking perfect it's like when you hear somebody describe a restaurant as an institution yeah house of prime rib is the institution like it is the epitome of that description of a restaurant it is the best version of that that i've ever seen anywhere in the world it is the institution
Anyway, sorry, I miss that place so much.
Let's talk about a friend of the show, Quinn Nelson, who has some very strong but unusual opinions about the studio display.
But one of the things that Quinn has said via Twitter in this case, and I'll just read his tweets...
I can't drop the idea that the studio display was originally slated to be the quote $2,500 to $3,000 quote mini LED and then changed late in production.
Another reason, math says that it has about a 285-watt power supply.
Even with the laptop connected, you know, input-output, screen brightness maxed, and speakers blasting, it barely draws over 165 watts with peak everything.
So that's a whole lot of extra power that the power supply can handle.
But why?
I don't personally buy this.
I think that this is just a quirk of the display or maybe Apple just leaving some padding, so to speak.
But I do understand where he's coming from, even though I don't personally think that this is the case.
Yeah, I mean, there's all sorts of complicating factors that could be, you know, the reason why that power supply is spec'd the way it is.
One of them, you know, I didn't follow Quinn's math here, like I didn't actually look into it, but, you know, keep in mind, again, like with all IO connected, like those are, those ports have a certain maximum wattage that they are
uh spec to supply um the laptop of course is going to be pulling you know 100 watts from the cable if possible you know so it it sounds like kind of for most of that but like if any of those were missed you know efficiency losses you know there's a lot of things that could be like slightly you know missed or could make a big difference here but the idea that apple would design this product
to have this fairly different component in it and then swap it out and not change the, not change anything else about it.
I think that's, that's generally not how Apple designs hardware these days.
Like it's, I think we've seen, we always hear stories from the room mill of like,
oh at the last minute they pulled touch id from this phone or whatever and it's like no that that was never meant to be there like the rumor was just wrong um i think apple these days apple when they design hardware they do so pretty intentionally and with a lot of lead time and the odds that they would have that big of a change so late in the game that they would not change out the power supply for that reason alone i just don't think it's very likely
There was at least one product.
I forget if it was like an iPod Touch or an iPhone or maybe it was an iPad even.
But it was some iOS device handheld thing where if you looked at the logic board inside it, you saw like the connectors where a component would be on the more expensive phone, but they just didn't put it in that one.
Do you remember the phone I'm talking about?
Are you talking about the iPod Touch with the missing camera?
Maybe.
That might be it.
My point for this is that that was a long time ago, and I think the Apple of today wouldn't even do that.
Sometimes you do need to make a quote-unquote last minute, meaning a year before the product is announced.
That's last minute.
Let's say you design a logic board and you decide, actually, we've decided this product isn't going to have a camera.
But you don't redesign the logic board.
You just don't connect the component there.
So, you know, it's just why go through the expense of redesigning and revalidating the board or whatever.
Just leave the traces with nothing connected to them.
Right.
So that can happen.
But the inside of the studio display, and we'll link to the iFixit teardown video if you don't know what the inside of this thing looks like.
I mean, I'm not going to say Quinn's not familiar with the inside of Apple products.
He's constantly tearing them open.
And he even said this in the video and in his tweets.
Apple overdesigns a lot of stuff.
That's kind of their thing.
Like, probably the biggest example in many senses of the word is the 2019 Mac Pro.
If you look inside that thing, it's so overengineered.
Everything in there is so much more expensive to make.
Every little part, every piece of plastic, every piece of metal, the circuit board, everything being...
machined and precisely fit and custom made and color matched, right?
It's massively over-engineered.
There's no reason any of that stuff needs to be like that.
It's, you know, it's the old Steve Jobs thing, which is, uh, it's not just his thing.
It's like a, you know, uh, uh,
Folktale, whatever, like the inside of a cabinet or a drawer that nobody ever sees or the back of a piece of furniture that's carefully designed, even though it's up against the wall and no one ever sees it, but the craftsman sees it.
The craftsman will know it's there, so they do a good job of it.
Apple over-engineers its hardware.
So when you look at the iFixit teardown of this laptop,
laptop this uh the apple studio display they do a gag in the beginning where they ask a bunch of sort of people who have never seen the insides and they show the insides of an iMac and the insides of the studio display and they say which is the computer and which is the display and a bunch of people get it wrong that doesn't show much of anything just because they both have circuit boards in them or whatever but look at the studio display and look at how
Look at how nice it looks on the inside, right?
That's how Apple makes things these days, especially things that go anywhere near the pro realm.
Look inside the Mac Studio itself.
It doesn't look like a Mac Mini in there.
It looks more like a tiny Mac Pro.
Everything precisely fit, all sorts of custom parts.
Everything is all color matched inside there as well.
Um, so when I look at the studio display, I think, yep, it's a typically over-engineered modern Apple, uh, piece of hardware, hopefully over-engineered in all the good ways as in, oh, they over-spec the power supply because it's, you don't want to run a power supply at the ragged edge of what it's able to support or whatever.
Um,
But not so much that like this was an entirely different product and they just sort of changed plans a year ago and made a slightly different one.
Now, that could be the case because Apple is known to reuse pieces like power bricks and other things where they're just like, why make one of them when, you know, if I make a power brick this size, we can use it with two of our laptops and we don't have to make one special for the other one because we can just use the same part for both.
That is definitely an Apple move.
So I would say watch to see if they do release the mini LED version of this.
And when that one gets torn down, how many parts does it share with this one?
Maybe that will bear it out because it is like Apple to say, hey, we're going to make a bunch of different versions of this, whether it's the Mac Studio with the Ultra and the Max inside it or whatever.
to basically try to share as many parts as you can or you know or like the m1 mac mini reuse the power supply from the intel one just because well i make a new power supply even though it's massively oversized for the m1 it works fine just keep using it right so i don't entirely discount this but i do say most of the most of the weirdness of the inside of this and other apple products is just because apple especially on their pro-ish products loves to over-engineer things as in
putting more time energy and also money into things that other manufacturers do not
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Oh.
All right, so we had a little bit of, well, more than a little bit of feedback about multiple computers and one Thunderbolt monitor.
And I'm not going to make the obvious joke here.
You're welcome.
Steve Wado wrote, I just got this to try to share my studio display between a MacBook Pro and a Mac Mini.
I have my peripherals plugged into the display, so when I switch with this, everything swaps over.
And this is...
Cable decon, USB-C, Type-C, 8K, updated switch, USB 3.1, C Gen 2 cable for video by direction, 8K at 30 Hz, 4K at 120 Hz, power delivery to 100 watts, 10 gigabit per second, data transfer splitter, converter.
Oh, I made it.
Okay, so this is basically like a HDMI switch, but instead of being for HDMI, it's obviously for USB-C or I guess not for USB-C.
thunderbolt maybe thunderbolt yeah no it's so it's it's it's very much like a kvm so it's like it's a two a one in two out or i guess two in one out um switch that only switches usbc not thunderbolt so what's interesting about this is that you know the in the description of it they specifically say you know in in their amazon description ease uh do not use this with the lg monitor and max so
Because the first generation LG Ultrafine monitors were Thunderbolt only.
I believe the newer generation of them added USB-C support so they could be used with iPads.
But basically, any monitor that did not work with the original iPad Pro will not work with this.
Because it is USB-C but not Thunderbolt.
And now it does seem to support all the high data rates and everything.
And so it is apparently supporting the USB-C display mode or whatever that is at the low level.
But it is literally just USB-C, not Thunderbolt.
But most...
like modern nice monitors, including the studio display, will actually switch properly that way.
So this should theoretically work with that.
Will it work with the XDR?
I don't think so, right?
I thought it would, but... I don't think it can do that resolution over USB-C, but I can't keep track.
Yeah.
It might work with the XDR, but it definitely does work with the studio display.
and this is the thing about a lot of like when you're looking for a thunderbolt whatever it's very easy to accidentally find a usb whatever that's not actually thunderbolt anything because the connector looks the same and often it will do the job that you want and so you don't care like if it supports the resolution you want and it supports all the peripherals and everything works then what do you care whether it's thunderbolt or usb but you do have to be careful and usually the way you can tell is if it's thunderbolt anything it's way more expensive
Well, if it's Thunderbolt anything, it will usually say Intel certified in the description, and it will always have the Thunderbolt little lightning logo on the port.
If you don't see that lightning logo, it is not Thunderbolt.
All right, so Steve continues.
I literally just plugged it in a few minutes ago, and it seems to work just great.
Unless I'm missing some little detail around resolution, etc., but I think it's okay.
Speakers and camera work great and everything still identifies to the system as a studio display.
I haven't messed with spatial audio.
I just use the speakers, which are excellent.
So according to Steve, this is an option.
If you just want a sort of KVM kind of thing, that's literally just one USB-C port that you can plug your studio display into.
Does it make some sense for Apple to have supported this?
They might just get it for free with the chips that they're using, but aren't there still, I mean, I suppose people have older computers, like a Macs that you might want to connect to the studio display that don't support Thunderbolt, but are listed as supported by the studio display?
uh like what like the i mean they still have usbc though like the first generation macbook the adorable maybe i don't think apple wants to acknowledge anybody still uses those things maybe they just get it free as part of the chipset i don't know but anyway the keyboards have already broken by now anyway not errands not errands by using this kvm you're basically like forcing your computer to speak usbc because the kvm this thing supports usbc but not thunderbolt and then once you do that apparently the thunderbolt display thunderbolt display oh
Apparently the studio display is just fine with that.
And, you know, that's why I asked the follow-up question, like, does the camera work?
Does the speakers work?
And yeah, apparently it all works great.
And then tangentially, an anonymous friend of the show wrote, there is in fact a KVM switch for Thunderbolt that would let you multiplex two inputs to one output and thus build a switch for multiple Macs to use one Thunderbolt monitor.
It's part of Intel's Thunderbolt developer tools, which are used for stuff like hot plug testing, since test software can poke the quote-unquote switch from input A to input B. But it seems like none of the Thunderbolt dock developers have yet thought of shipping this as an actual product.
So it exists, but you can't have it.
Yeah, this is like if you are a manufacturer, like say you're CalDigit and you're making their Thunderbolt docks.
This is apparently a piece of hardware that you can, I guess, get from Intel or somebody to help you develop your hardware product.
And it basically acts like a software control switch between your Thunderbolt things.
But I'm not sure you could just take that and say, OK, we're going to package this and resell it.
It's maybe part of some developer agreement when you get this piece of hardware.
But it shows that it's definitely possible.
It's just not a product that is in our lineup.
Yeah.
And the anonymous friend did share a picture with us.
We are not at liberty to share it with everyone else, unfortunately.
But I can assure you this picture makes me think that this is absolutely a factual thing.
And plus, this anonymous friend wouldn't lie.
So this is a real thing.
It's just we can't have it.
Now, tangentially related, there's been a lot of follow-up and kerfuffle with regard to USB Ethernet adapters that are apparently slow on modern Macs.
And James Badger writes, Gigabit USB-C Ethernet adapters mostly use the Realtek RTL8153 chipset.
Realtek's last driver for the RTL 8153 is for macOS 1015 Catalina.
On newer macOS versions, the OS will fall back to the default quote Apple ECM quote driver, which has slower transfer speeds and will noticeably increase CPU usage during transfers.
The 2.5 gigabit adapters sometimes use the Realtek RTL8156 instead.
The 8156 uses the NCM macOS driver, which is much higher performance.
We also got some feedback from Lex Posmo about this as well.
But yeah, apparently if you use the, what is it, 8153 chipset, which is like almost every USB-C thing dongle that has an Ethernet adapter on board,
uh that's no bueno in modern versions of mac os so you need to find something that's basically two and a half gigabit to be to be more likely in the safe zone yeah or use apple's thunderbolt controller which i'm using through that stupid adapter it's a little more pricey like you can get for reference like you can get a 2.5 gigabit adapter with the 8156 the good chipset for like 30 bucks so these aren't super expensive things um even if you don't ever plan to use the two and a half gigabit capability of it
um so that's that's one option and just to clarify um as far as i could tell i did some research on this earlier today as far as i can tell the apple sold belkin usb-c ethernet adapter is the crappy chipset the 8153 i as far as i can tell i i mine is about 100 miles away or about 50 miles away right now so i can't actually check mine but i did as much research as i could and it seemed to be that's the case and
um i also i somebody said somewhere like on hacker news that the caldigit ts4 the new caldigit dock might be the nice chip the a156 yeah how can i figure that out i'm running one right now how where can i go to find this out in system uh if there's like a kext command you can run to list like what it's using oh if you check out that blog post you it'll um it'll be in there
Yeah, but I actually emailed Caldigit earlier today to ask them, but I haven't heard back yet.
So we'll see.
But yeah, basically, if you want to be sure of it, if you actually search like Amazon or whatever for RTL8156 USB adapters, you will find adapters that are two and a half gigabit that actually say specifically they have that chip in them.
So that's that's probably the safest bet.
To be clear, it's not like the chipset is crappy or anything.
It's just that there's apparently no more custom driver for it.
And so it falls back to some generic driver that does a bad job.
And I think someone said that Apple's response to investigating this was like, oh, well, the manufacturers of those product need to supply Apple with the correct drivers for their new driver model, blah, blah, blah.
So this is basically just a driver issue.
This could be solved with software.
But I think it seems like Apple is saying that, well, it's not our responsibility to solve this with software.
The hardware manufacturers need to work with us to supply the correct driver that we will then bundle with macOS.
And then your RTL 8153 chipset will go back to performing the way it's supposed to.
Yeah.
I do think it's kind of galling that Apple is still selling that terribly slow Belkin USB-C adapter in their stores as their only USB-C Ethernet adapter.
There is so much info for me to look through on this command.
I am not going to be able to figure this out during the time that we're recording if you want me to participate at all.
That's fine.
Holy jamoles.
I'll have to look into this, but there's a lot here.
Yeah, there is.
I read it earlier.
It took a very long time.
No, no, no.
I'm not even talking about the blog post.
I'm talking about the command output from this command that I just ran.
I would put a gist up and have the chat room go through it, but I don't know if there's something private in here.
Who knows?
Nevertheless, we'll move right along.
Tell us about Canon EF lenses and how they can work or cannot work with mirrorless cameras.
Oh, yeah.
I put this in here.
It turns out – so there was a question an episode or two ago in Ask ATP about a person who owned a bunch of Canon EF lenses trying to choose between – going to the mirrorless world, trying to choose between the Canon ecosystem and the Sony mirrorless ecosystem.
And what we didn't know at the time, or at least we didn't say, we got a couple of people wrote in, both named Chris, who told us that Canon EF lenses can be easily adapted to their new RF mount on their mirrorless cameras.
The adapter is apparently about $100, and it works really well.
They say there's not really any major performance losses by using it.
So that's pretty cool.
I didn't realize that.
I figured there was probably an adapter, but I was surprised to hear that it's kind of, you know, once you pay for it, that it's kind of free in the sense that you don't seem to lose much benefit of the lenses by using them through the adapter.
Yeah.
that's cool and that changes things and if you know if i had a bunch of ef lenses which i mean we kind of do they're more my wife's but um that would certainly you know factor into my decision as well because some of those ef lenses are really really good and it would be a shame to lose them
there's always an adapter but like the thing that people you know the downsides that people have cited is like well maybe you get fewer frames per second uh if you use the adapter because the sort of communication between the camera and the focusing system and everything aren't that good but the second one that no one mentioned that I'll throw out there is you know the technology inside lenses moves on particularly the focusing technology is one of the reasons why I was uh kind of
Being a little bit hesitant about the 55 millimeter prime lens that we were talking about last time.
It's so good.
Every time a new lens is made, they improve the little motors that move the elements inside the lens, the focusing elements and everything, to make them faster and quieter or both.
And so if you have a big collection of really expensive Canon EF lenses, you know, that are many, many years old, they haven't gotten any worse.
They're just as good as they always were.
But it is possible that newer Canon lenses for mirrorless or otherwise have faster or quieter focusing or both.
And but otherwise, yeah, it seems like the adapter is able to pass through all the things that needs to pass through.
But sometimes the performance of your lens will even be slightly less than it was when it was directly connected to the full frame.
But in other cases, I would say like maybe there's a newer lens.
And the good thing about lenses, they have good resale value.
So if you really do want, even if you're moving to Canon mirrorless,
sell all your canon you know dslr lenses you'll make probably pretty good money on them and then to put that money into newer equivalent lenses that have more modern technology inside them i'm not sure if canon is as aggressive at updating the guts as you know sony is but i would imagine they are because even like the third party sony lenses uh from year to year you have to be careful you don't get the accidentally get the quote-unquote old one that has like the noisy then the
noisy focusing motors just like the noisy max studio is it totally inaudible or is it the loudest thing you've ever heard and you can't use it at weddings because it's so noisy
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So we have sort of kind of breaking news.
We have a new setup here at my desk.
That's not breaking news.
And it is breaking news.
It's more news when you don't have a new setup at your desk.
That's true.
But this is hypothetically the end of the road because I am looking at an Apple Studio display right now.
Hey!
It is beautiful.
And I love it so much.
It is so delightful.
I am so excited about this thing.
In so many ways, it is the anti-KC monitor because it was a fortune.
It doesn't do a lot of the things that I kind of wish it did.
I don't care.
It's so beautiful.
It's so, so beautiful.
Everything about it, I love it.
Physically, the case, I got the VESA mount, VESA VESA mount one, and I'm using it on a not particularly great stand, but that's a choice that I made.
It's not the fault of the monitor.
But the monitor itself, it looks so pretty.
It's so nice.
It looks beautiful.
And the screen, of course, is excellent.
I have it next to the ultra meh, and the ultra meh just looks awful and dated and chintzy and crummy by comparison.
And I mean both the physical case and the screen, it's probably a placebo, but I really feel like the screen is genuinely, not only is it brighter, but it just looks better to me.
Now, this ultrafine is on the earlier side of the ultrafine display, so that's probably part of it.
But nevertheless, I genuinely think it looks better.
The sound is way better.
Before we move on to the sound, I want to say on the appearance, that's not just your imagination.
We mentioned this on a past show that the studio display has a higher maximum peak brightness than the LG does, just from the product specs.
And also people have measured it and seen that's the case.
People have also looked at the actual model number of the panel, and it is not the same model number as in the LG.
It's also not the same model number as in the 5K iMac, I believe.
And in people doing side-by-side comparisons with measurement equipment and everything, not only does the studio display get slightly brighter, not a lot brighter, but brighter enough that you can notice it without measuring instruments, like you can notice it with your eyeballs, but the black levels are also slightly better than the LG display or the iMac.
it's not dramatic you really need to see them side by side to notice that but it is a real thing you can even see it in youtube videos like you don't need to you don't need measuring equipment you don't need to trust a bunch of people doing you can just look at the side by side photos of the two monitors right next to each other the blacks are a little deeper and the brights are a little bit brighter
I don't know if I want to tell Casey this to make him potentially find things wrong with his monitor, but the one complaint I have seen about the studio display, and I feel like it could be manufacturing tolerances, but it could just be a fact of life of the display, is minor vignetting around the menu bar.
I mean, the XDR has vignetting around all the edges, as Marco has complained about in the past.
Casey, it's hard to tell with the menu bar because the menu bar has shading and is translucent anyway, but if you just fill the whole screen with white from top to bottom covering everything, including the menu bar, you can check to see if you see a little bit of a shadow on the edges.
I'd rather not, actually.
All right.
Thank you for offering.
I'd rather not.
That's a thing you might note.
I only saw one person post a picture of it, and I could see it, and I could like, yeah, my XDR looks like that.
So even for $5,000, you can't escape that because it's just...
I'm not going to say it's inherent in the technology that they're using to backlight it, but it is difficult to control when you use this kind of technology to make a monitor.
I mean, if you can also find some masquerading in it, you can really make it a theme.
There it is.
I was waiting for it.
Nicely done.
Nicely done indeed.
So yeah, so this thing, I think it looks better.
It sounds so much better.
I was suffering through the Ultrafine speakers because I haven't yet put together an amp for the speakers that came in my Marco Christmas box.
What are you waiting for?
I've updated the firmware on my Marco Christmas present.
I've changed all the settings.
I bought a lens for it.
I bought a new SD card.
I'm just – you haven't even – is it still in the box?
I've been busy.
I've been busy, all right?
I've been busy.
Nevertheless, so the volume is great.
And you know what's an amazingly great feature on something that outputs audio?
Having a linear volume control.
Yeah.
And this has a linear volume control.
It doesn't go, you know, quiet, sightless, quiet, sightless, quiet, really loud, louder, et cetera.
Because that's what the LG does.
Like one, two, and three are linear.
Then when you jump from three to four, it's definitely by comparison.
Uh, and so this is linear, which is excellent.
Um, it works via the Caldigit TS4, which is also excellent because as mentioned earlier, the, uh, the LG ultrafine, at least the ultrafine I have doesn't get full 5k if I plug it in via the Caldigit, which is annoying, but you know, it is what it is.
Um,
The screen is completely happy going through the CalDigit, no issues.
It wakes much faster than the Ultrafine does, which I'm not at all surprised by.
Also, real quick about the CalDigit TS4, it is working really well.
It's a fortune.
It was like $350 or something like that, but I really like it.
The only thing I will say, and I don't think I said this on the show before, the onboard Ethernet, which I still haven't figured out if it's the good or bad Realtek, but the onboard Ethernet, which is 2.5 gigabit, it didn't work for...
beans when I first plugged everything in and it turns out that you have to go into, I know this is off the top of my head, in system preferences and network and then if you go into like advanced for the TS4 or for the Ethernet connection on the TS4, whatever that last like tab is, I think it's like the hardware settings, there's a bunch of different options including using energy efficient Ethernet and you have to turn that off because reasons.
I don't really understand why but CalDigit recommends this.
Once I did that, it's been extremely reliable and
I have heard from other people who sleep their computers frequently that waking the CalDigit up from sleep can be a little spotty.
I don't know if that's a macOS problem or a CalDigit problem.
I don't sleep my Mac barely ever.
So for me, this is not something I've run into.
But that is something to consider.
Also, finding a CalDigit TS4 right now is freaking impossible.
Yeah, you can't.
I tried to buy one.
When it first came out, I looked again today when I was doing this research.
They're nowhere.
Yeah, so it's a pain in the butt in that regard.
But as a quick aside, I do like the CalDigit TS4.
I give it a thumbs up for my use cases.
Again, be a little careful if you sleep your computer often or whatever the case may be.
We did a video call this morning using Zoom.
We were talking to someone, and that was my first experience with Center Stage.
The camera is kind of garbage right now.
Like, your face looks very porcelain.
I think I heard Snell describe it that way, and it was accurate.
I mean, I don't think it's... I shouldn't say it's garbage.
It's not garbage.
It's just not what you would expect from the hardware that you know is in the screen.
And we're being told it would have got better with time, software, software, software.
But...
I found it serviceable for the sorts of things that I need to do.
But if you're one of those people who wants, who is, you know, thinking about setting up a 4K camera pointed at your face, you know, on top of your monitor or whatever, it is not that nice.
But center stage, super cool.
And I did not see any, or if I didn't see any, I didn't notice of the like delay where you shimmy to one side or the other.
And then the quote unquote camera person is like, what?
Oh, shoot.
I got to move.
Yeah, I didn't personally see any of that.
I'm not saying it doesn't exist.
I'm not saying it's not a problem for others, but I didn't see any, and center stage is super cool.
It was Aaron and I talking to our financial advisor, and Michaela would come in and out of frame from time to time, and it would shimmy over to show Michaela, and then as she left, the frame would tighten up on Aaron and me.
It was really cool.
It wasn't 1,000% perfect, but...
I wouldn't say I saw a sleepy camera person.
It's just occasionally the camera person made a choice that I wouldn't have made.
But all in all, though, super thumbs up for center stage.
Let's see.
Oh, the LG.
Everything about it looks like garbage, and I hate it.
And one of the first things I thought to myself... So I'm using this two-monitor Visa stand because of reasons that are not interesting.
And...
So I have the studio display directly in front of me, and I have the LG taking the position that the 4K display had previously taken.
So it's offset to my right, and it's at an angle, you know, compared to the studio display.
And within two minutes of setting this all on my desk again, I had for a fleeting moment the thought to myself, should I get a second one of these?
LAUGHTER
this is how it happens because the lg i hated you whining marco about how the stand is and how oh you can see the lg logo no no hold on i don't think i ever complained about the logo oh you did you absolutely the whole thing is hideous for lots of other reasons you know the weird proportions of the bezel the big like forehead on top you know the plastic everywhere the stand is ugly like there's lots of other things about it that are ugly the actual lg logo i don't find that that offensive what i find offensive is the incredibly mediocre build quality of everything else
Yeah, so I agree with that, and hashtag Marco was right.
It is ultra meh, but I genuinely, for a fleeting moment, thought to myself, maybe I should just get a second one of these.
Wouldn't that?
No, shh, shh, stop.
No, no.
If you order it now, it'll probably come by the fall.
That's also true.
But then they'll have the pro version with the mini-LED.
So I'm genuinely worried that that's going to happen, that there'll be a pro version.
Are you kidding?
I'm worried.
My first studio display is probably going to come around the time of WWDC.
Yeah.
So I'm worried that the Pro versions are going to come out.
I'm going to be in another $2,500 for a monitor.
And then this will get shimmied over to where the Ultra Fine is now.
And this Phantom new Studio Display Pro will be in front of me.
I don't know, whatever.
But I adore this thing.
It is, by some measures, a crummy display.
It is, by some measures, deeply overpriced.
I don't care.
Snell, not on the most recent upgrade, I think it was last week's upgrade, Snell talked a lot about how people are expecting this monitor to serve purposes that it really probably wasn't designed to serve.
And he did a much better job.
I'm not even going to try to summarize what he was saying because I'll butcher it, but
I agree with everything Snell said in that episode of Upgrade.
If you want the sorts of things that I want, if you want something that's nice to look at, both in the sense of the screen is nice and in the sense of the industrial design is nice, if you want something that will work reliably with your computer, if you want something...
If you want something that has a webcam, if you want something that isn't $5,000, if you want something that's natively 5K, if these are things that you care about, this is the perfect display for you.
And I don't think it's poorly priced.
It is expensive.
I'm not saying it's cheap, but I don't think it's unreasonably priced.
And I am so thankful that I got this.
I am so excited about it.
I love it.
So two hyper-enthusiastic thumbs up for me.
Remind me of this when it crashes in the middle of us recording.
Sitting here now, two tremendous thumbs up.
I am in love with this thing.
As always, software could potentially be the Achilles heel.
We'll see.
We already talked about Thunderbolt display in the past having problems with software.
But that wasn't running iOS, so hopefully that makes this better or maybe worse.
I don't know.
We'll see how it goes.
One of my theories about why we haven't seen an update to fix the camera is that because the display is running iOS, you're not going to get an update until there's an iOS update, and we kind of know how long it tends to be between iOS updates.
It's not like they rush them out unless it's a security patch.
So I'm just assuming that whatever camera fix is going to come the next time our iPhones get a point update, right?
We'll see how that goes.
I mean, there's no reason they have to do that.
They could divorce the two versions.
make it called display os or whatever you know but right now it's the exact same build number and it's probably the same os and maybe that will diverge yeah there's a there's another weird side effect of that too somebody wrote in to point out of like and sorry i can't pull it up right now so sorry sorry i forgot the name but somebody wrote in to say like you know because it's based on ios right now and because it has an a13 in it when ios stops supporting the a13 will this monitor not be able to get software updates anymore
I mean, that's where they could just keep putting updates out only for the monitor.
Like Apple controls this whole stack.
They can do whatever they want.
But I feel like right now it's kind of in the sweet spot.
And when the A13 is no longer supported, Apple still has the source code to whatever the last OS that works with that is.
I mean, you're hoping with the monitor that it's not going to need so many updates after everything works in a satisfactory way.
Then it can just basically never change unless there's some kind of security problem.
um i'm still kind of hoping someone will like jailbreak this and learn and run mac os on it or whatever but uh so far that hasn't happened one thing i'll add to the list of things like casey was saying if you if you like x then you should buy this monitor if you uh value something that's over engineered we just talked about it before if you if you watch that tear down video and i fix it and you see what the inside of this looks like and you see how sort of overbuilt it is and how ridiculous it is inside there and that appeals to you
This is a product you might like because Apple makes a bunch of products that appeal to people who like that type of thing.
Now, I like that type of thing, both because I get a kick out of it, but also because in theory, that means like, oh, maybe it's more reliable because they use expensive, you know, they buy expensive components like...
And again, in theory, the giant fans that are inside my Mac Pro are expensive fans.
I mean, not super expensive, but like they're not like the cheapest fan that they could get of that diameter.
Right.
You know, and same thing goes for everything in there.
The screws, the little metal posts, all the little pieces they got, like everything in there is overengineered.
It's spec to be better quality than it technically needs to be to get the job done.
And what you're hoping is that all of that together makes for a more reliable product over the long term.
Not always true.
Software can destroy any, I'm sure the hardware people love this, but bad software can destroy any product.
Like if there's some kind of weird software bug or a driver issue or whatever, it doesn't matter how beautifully engineered the hardware is.
Um, and you can over-engineer stuff and still have a fatal flaw like the butterfly keyboard or, you know, the butterfly keyboard is probably over-engineered as well.
It was just a bad idea and had a, and had a problem that didn't, apparently didn't appear until it got into people's hands and people started, you know, eating, uh, potato chips over it or whatever.
Um,
So it seems like so far the studio display mostly is getting the benefits of being over-engineered.
Casey likes it.
It makes him happy.
It's a nice product.
It's very solid.
You know, it seems to work reliably with Apple stuff for now.
But the camera's a little wonky.
But even the over-engineered part of that is like, oh, well, it's running a version of iOS on an A13.
We have some hope that that could be corrected because it's not like they just built in a bunch of hardware that does one thing inside there.
It is a general-purpose little computer, and it has an OS...
And that OS, in theory, can be patched to do a better job of that.
And the final thing I'll add about center stage, I've seen a bunch of videos of people complaining about the sort of lazy cameraman in center stage, like, oh, I moved my head out of the way, and the camera follows me, but then I move it back, it doesn't follow back.
That also strikes me as a sort of a difficult-to-tune thing.
I think of things that are being tuned in games or even software inside a car's sort of control system.
The other extreme would be that it tracks you as fast as it possibly can.
which it could do because you know it knows exactly where your eyeballs are where your face is like probably multiple times a second but it this is for the same reason you don't do that type of thing in a game you wouldn't want to do it on the monitor it would be twitchy it would be like every time you move the camera would move and it would just be like hyperactive and if for a second it lost track of your eyes it would jump to another position and jump back on your eyes and jump jump jump just the other extreme is
super slow, right?
So you've got to find the happy medium there.
And everyone has a different opinion of what that medium should be.
As soon as you notice that you've moved back and the camera doesn't, you're like, oh, the camera is too slow.
But if you notice that it's being twitchy, like you just moved your head a millimeter and the camera moved and it's making people motion sick, you don't like that either, right?
So what you wanted to do is
Don't react too much if I do a little bit of motion, but eventually notice if I've made a net change in position and it seems like I'm going to stay there.
So you kind of want it to read your mind.
Am I leaning over to get a glass of water or am I shifting in my seat?
This is going to be my new position.
And the only way to tell it is to wait some amount of time and say, like, I think if you were the programmer trying to code this up or whatever.
How long should I wait after a move to decide that the person has actually repositioned and I should move the camera?
Or should I wait a little bit longer to see if they move back because they were just shifting a little bit?
And it's not easy to tune that.
It's kind of difficult to, you know, you can, it's just a bunch of different parameters, I'm sure, to whatever model they're using to do that.
But no matter how you tune it, once it gets out into the real world, someone somewhere is going to think it's either too fast or too slow.
They seem to have erred on the side of being too slow because I think too fast would look like more of a bug than too slow.
The slow will eventually catch up with you and it seems like, oh, maybe it's a slow computer.
It's not smart enough to go.
No, that's a deliberate choice.
Maybe they've made the choice to be slightly too slow, but too slow is probably better than too fast.
So I kind of feel for the team that is tuning this at Apple because...
There's almost no way to tune this to the point where everyone who uses it is happy.
That's their task.
That's what they have to try to do.
Find out that one that will make the most people happy.
And it seems like they missed on that.
But honestly, I do wonder with the next revision, if they're going to like overcorrect and make it twitchy, but we'll see.
In wildly unrelated news, your setup has changed and I owe you a little bit of an apology.
We were talking, was it on the show that we were talking about this?
It was, wasn't it?
That you wanted to rewire a portion of your house so you can have a smart thermostat and you didn't have a common wire where the thermostat was.
But you sent a picture to Marco and I, amongst others, saying you have successfully installed a new smart thermostat, which means your wiring project has succeeded.
I am very proud of you, John.
I'm sorry for doubting you.
Tell me about this new thermostat of yours.
Yeah, I'm going to reiterate the strategy of if you're going to change something about the thermostat in your house, don't do it in the middle of winter.
Don't do it at a time where as soon as you start the project, the clock is ticking until your pipes freeze.
So I wait until springtime basically to do this because I figured, look, if I screw it up,
and i just don't have any heat in my house because i just totally screwed it up to the point where i can't even put back the old thermostat i can call someone and they can come and fix it and we're not going to freeze to death in our house right so that was i love like just for reference this morning for my morning dog walk it was 40 degrees
It's still pretty cold.
You're not going to freeze.
Your pipes aren't going to burst at 40 degrees.
And we have actually insulation in our house now, so we can maintain temperature over just the sun coming through the windows during the day.
Heat is not really a factor around here anymore.
So I figured it was a reasonable time to do it.
um and so the one i ended up getting we'll put a link in the show notes i got the uh the ecobee their product naming is worse than apple's they used to have have them a bunch of products called uh i think it was called ecobee smart thermostat and they put a number on it and they got up to four and then they thought better of it and so now the new top of the line one is called the what is it called ecobee smart thermostat with voice control
Which you have to just understand, is that better than the four?
Is it worse than the four?
Is it better than the three?
Is three better than the... It's just... You could be kind of screwed up.
But anyway, as far as I can tell, based on the price and the newness of this, this is the fanciest one they make.
And it's not even that fancy.
It's not that expensive.
It was introduced many years ago, so it's not even that new.
I picked it mostly because I didn't want one that was particularly smart.
All I really wanted was to be able to control the temperature of my house from my phone, right?
So like if you're away for a while or if you're coming home on a car ride from a long journey, you can turn the heat on so it'll be warm when you get there.
I can tell you from experience that is 99% of the value of smart thermostats.
Like you really don't need more than that.
That alone is the best way to use smart thermostats.
Turn off all of the like automatic prediction features that you'll just be fighting with them forever.
Like just a thermostat that you can program on a schedule if you want to and that you can remotely control from anywhere.
That's what you want.
Yeah, and Ecobee had a good reputation as being kind of that back when Nest was, you know, kind of all the rage that Ecobee was like, we don't really do that.
We are just a computer-controlled thermostat with a schedule.
Since then, Ecobee has added a bunch of features to be smarter.
Obviously, they've added voice control.
It's right in the name of this thing, so it supports Amazon voice assistant and Apple's voice assistant, whose names I'm not going to say.
It doesn't support the Google one.
And it does have some smart features.
But all of that stuff, including the voice stuff, you can just flat turn off.
Right.
So there is a schedule you put heat comes on at this temperature.
It's a straight up schedule.
What time, what temperature until what time, then what other temperature, so on and so forth.
On top of that, it layers some mild smarts where it can tell it tries to tell if the house is occupied based on motion sensors that are in the thermostat.
And if it doesn't see anyone like walk by the thermostat or any of its other remote sensors, which we'll talk about in a little bit, it can decide, well, even though I'm supposed to be keeping the house at whatever temperature, it looks like no one's home right now.
So I'm going to turn the temperature down.
And it's very cautious.
Getting back to like the center stage camera thing, it needs to not sense motion for like two hours before it will make this decision.
And again, you can turn off that feature if you don't want it.
If you don't want to do that and you just want to stick to a schedule, you can turn that off as well.
So anyway, that's how I ended up picking this product.
It is a smart thermostat with reasonably good app support and support for at least two of the ecosystems that are in my home thing.
It supports HomeKit, you know, it supports the Amazon stuff or whatever.
And the little remote thingamabobbers, sensors that it has, they're kind of neat.
Part of the problem with our ancient house, like...
it's basically one big zone you know because the house from the 30s right it does not have separate zones for like the bedrooms or upstairs or downstairs anything like that it's just one big zone and the thermostat is in a single place in the house and that's where the little temperature sensor is it says okay what temperature is it in the house because again because we're in an old house and because you know it depends how it's positioned on the lot and the sun and everything there are rooms in the house that are way colder than the other rooms um
And the one the thermostat is in is not one of the colder rooms in the house.
So if the thermostat thinks, oh, it's perfectly fine in one of the bedrooms, it might be much, much colder.
But if you turn the temperature up there too much, you know, to make that bedroom comfortable, then other places will be too hot.
So it comes with these little tiny sensors, which are very adorable.
They're like power by absolutely better, like watch batteries or whatever those, you know, coin battery type things.
And I think they said they'll last for a year or whatever.
We'll see how that goes.
But they're completely wireless and, you know, tiny little coin battery things.
And you stick them and they're like the size of like a, you know, a half cent piece on a little pedestal.
Stick them wherever you want in the house.
And it's a temperature and motion sensor.
So one, it does like the presence thing of like, I think it does the presence thing as well to say, is someone in this room?
And two, it will take the temperature there.
And then it will sort of average all the temperatures together to come to a reasonable whole house temperature that it wants things to be.
And like all the other features, if you don't want to use these sensors, don't use them.
Don't buy them.
Don't add them to the thing.
The smart thermostat comes with one of these little sensors, but you can buy more and stick them around the house.
um the voice assistant thing i didn't i thought i was just going to turn that off especially some people said oh you know i don't like it because sometimes i try to talk to my phone but that thing answers or whatever but i think maybe home kit's gotten better with that lately like you know it's in my thermostat is in my dining room which is also where my google home is and also where my amazon uh voice assistant thing is so i have one room in the house where i can ask questions of all three assistants and you know how i love to do this so
of pit them against each other at the dinner table to see who is going to fail more spectacularly at answering some question that we have right hey alexa tell siri i'm not talking to google yeah exactly oh yeah i just yeah google destroys everybody just fyi
um it's just so much better because google search it's not it's not the assistant it's because google search is so much better at figuring out what you mean like basically all it's doing is it's like speech to text thrown into google search box and you know the same way you would do in a web page that's why google wins because it just does that and google search is so amazing um
Um, and of course, you know, Siri is weird and everything, but anyway, I turned it on to use it with Siri.
Um, it's nice.
You can ask it questions.
It'll tell you things.
Uh, it's got, uh, the, the display on the front of it has got like a weather display.
Um, and of course it shows the temperature and stuff like that.
This is one of the areas where I would have paid more for fancier technology, but there's obviously not a market for it.
If you look at the Ecobee, it just kind of looks like a,
black squircle it's a black rounded square thing it's not particularly attractive but like whatever and the aesthetic is like it's like the old apple watch where it's all black but then some portion of it is the screen and the screen is a black background with white lettering on it but it's an lcd and it's not it's not mini led right so the backlight is not entirely black especially as the lights get dimmer right
And it doesn't have an ambient light sensor in it.
So you have to kind of pick the backlight level that doesn't make it look like a gray rectangle where the screen is, right?
But also isn't too dim to see in the daylight.
Obviously, if they used OLED, maybe they'd have burn-in issues or whatever.
But it would be a little bit fancier if they had used like mini LED backlight or OLED or micro LED or some other ridiculously expensive technology just to preserve the aesthetic like the Apple Watch now does.
But they didn't.
Um, so yeah, I'm mostly happy with it.
It does what it's supposed to do.
Uh, I sort of told the story in reverse here.
I guess I should get to the installation part of it, which might have been exciting if I had destroyed everything, but I had a couple of strokes of luck.
Um, I will say for the instructions for installing these, all of these, every company that sells one of these things, like they know that installation is the biggest hurdle to getting you to buy one of these because you're like, Oh, if I buy one of these, like, how does it work?
I don't know how thermostats work.
I don't even know how mine work.
It's just on the wall.
I don't want to mess anything up.
Um,
They all have extensive like tutorials and instructions with immediate branching paths to say, hey, if you don't want to do this, hire a pro, find an expert in your area.
Like you just pay someone to do it or whatever.
But if you want to do it yourself, we'll have tons of instructions.
It comes with instructions.
There's instructions on the web.
There's instructions in the app.
There's a million videos on how to do it.
Like you could be has a thing where it's like, which product did you buy?
What does your thermostat look like when you pull it out of the wall?
Which ones do you see?
Do you see a thing that looks like this?
Do you see a thing that looks like that?
Like it's sort of like a, you know, a wizard type thing where they just interview you, take a survey and say, okay, you've described what you've seen and you've described what you bought.
So here's what you should do.
And it's a step by step.
Step one, label all your wires.
Step two, disconnect them and put them, you know, it's so good about telling you what to do.
But of course, it's trying to be step by step instructions based on what it thinks you'll find in your home.
And the thing I find in my home in the tutorial they give and all the tutorials is like, OK, look behind your thermostat.
What do you see?
OK, I see X, I see Y, I see Z.
And then you hit the next step and it says, sorry, you cannot use our products.
Like you flat out can't use it.
You need to get what Casey mentioned for a C wire installed.
And you probably don't know what a C wire is, but I'm just telling you like, there are no instructions for you.
You don't even have the thing.
You need to call somebody and get a C wire installed.
And they do have like a product that comes with this even that says, Hey, if you want to install C wire, that's a whole separate set of instructions.
And by the way, in the box, you'll find this little octopus of wires.
that if you can figure out how to install this octopus of wires onto your furnace or whatever, it will give you a C wire.
And we'll try to explain to you how to do that, but we'll give you lots of dire warnings about like, you could probably let somebody else do this.
Like, you know, they also have a thing of like, oh, and if you don't want to do that, what if you just, you know, we give you an AC adapter and you can just plug it into a wall plug, but who wants a wire running from like a wall adapter?
You know, you don't, you don't want that wire running to your thermostat on the wall.
You know, and it's like, well, you could run that inside the wall, but that wire is not rated inside the wall.
Like it gets real complicated real quick.
They're basically saying, if you don't have a C wire, you need to get one.
And there are lots of different ways to get them and they're all complicated and they're not that great, right?
So that was the problem I was facing.
That's why I was like, I'll just run myself a new cable.
And I knew I was going to be on my own on that.
Like I pulled up, this is the magic of the internet.
You can find like the PDF specifications for everything in your house, no matter how old it is.
You know, you just got to find the serial number, the model number, the make, hope the company's still in business.
And I found all like the wiring diagrams for my furnace, for the box that it's connected to.
And I figured, you know, I found the right cable to get and I found where it was routed and did all the stuff.
I was all ready to go.
I was like, I think I know how I'm going to run all this stuff.
I, you know, I have a, my furnace has like an external breakout box where all the relays and everything are.
It's by, I think, Taco brand, T-A-C-O.
It's a common brand of this type of switch.
And I found the exact model and saw the diagram.
And I'm like, this is exactly where the C wire will go.
And this will go there and this will go there.
And I'll, it's going to be great.
But then when I took the old thing off the wall, I had taken it off the wall forward to look at what wires I had to determine that I didn't have a C wire.
But now when I'm doing the actual project, I took everything off, like unscrewed the thermostat and also the thing that was mounted to, like the little plate that it was on.
And when I removed everything and saw the hole in the wall and started digging around in the hole in the wall to try to pull out these disgusting fabric covered non-colored wires from inside my walls,
What I found buried inside the wall when I was rooting around in there was another wire.
What?
A modern wire.
Because I could tell because I had just bought thermostat wire.
When you buy thermostat wire, the one I bought comes in a brown rubber sleeve.
Like the insulation is brown, which is not a color you usually expect to see, like kind of dark brown, right?
And you can buy thermostat wire.
It's like 18.3 and 18.5.
It's how many conductors are inside it.
This, I think, was, if there's such a thing as 18.2, I think, maybe 18 is the gauge or whatever.
Anyway, there were two conductors inside it.
So it's a brown thermostat wire with two conductors buried in the wall.
So I pulled it out of the wall.
I'm like, what the hell?
What am I going to do?
A C wire, just for people to know, is one wire that goes to the, quote, unquote, common terminal on your, you know, furnace thingamababa, right?
Yeah.
But I'm like, well, I know this isn't coming from my furnace thingamabobber thing because I know there's only two wires coming out of it.
I can see them.
They follow them.
And like there's only it's only two conductors.
That's the ancient, disgusting wire that's probably as old as my house.
Right.
So where does this black wire, the brown wire go?
So I followed the brown wire down through the wall, through the basement.
And maybe the people who installed the furnace like in like a 2002 or 2004, whenever we got our furnace redone.
maybe they did this but coming out of my what is it called the circuit breaker box what is that thing called the fuse the fuse box or it's not fuses it's called the circuit breaker or the the panel you know yeah there's there's a word for anyway the thing that has all the circuit breakers in it right the panel coming out of that was a you know there's a bunch of metal tubes coming out of it that contain wires or whatever one of the one metal tube was coming out of it
And it led to a box that had, you know, like a junction box.
And then stuck on the top of the junction box was what looks like a transformer type thing.
with two conductors coming off of it and those are the two conductors that go into that brown wire and i was like what the hell is this it's just coming out of my coming out of my circuit breaker someone's saying it's a doorbell wire it wasn't going to the doorbell it only went it went from there directly to the inside of the wall near my thermostat
And that little transformer thing is 24 volts.
This is a thing I had purchased as part of this project, which I should have had ages ago but didn't, was the multimeter.
Multimeters are very handy to have because I was just constantly going around probing everything.
What's the voltage between this and this?
What's the voltage between that and that?
Anyway, 24 volts AC coming right off the thing.
So basically coming out of the circuit breaker box thing.
What the hell is that called?
Someone in the chat room get it because I don't want to call it the circuit breaker box thing.
It's annoying me that I don't know.
Your electrical panel.
Yeah, I know, but I'm blanking on it.
That's what every electrician calls it.
Breaker box, whatever.
Coming out of there was a dedicated metal tube that went to a junction box that had a transformer that was giving me 24 volts AC.
And for people who don't know, the common wire and the thing that the Ecobee smart thermostat and all these smart thermostats want, they want 24 volts AC.
That's how they function.
That's what they want from the common wire.
But the common wire is supposed to just be one conductor.
And let me tell you,
None of the instructions you'll ever find for a smart thermostat tell you, by the way, if you have two random ass wires with 24 volts AC on them, here's how to hook up our smart thermostat.
Cause they totally expect for you to have from your furnace, the wires with all these different names that do different things.
And also the common wire, right?
That's what the common wire is one wire.
It's just the, you know, another wire is like the, the hot wire for that.
That's like the, you know, the neutral versus hot wire, right?
Yeah.
But all the instructions are like, I don't have one common wire.
I have two, and they have the voltage we need.
How am I supposed to hook them up?
So the instructions were 100% useless to me.
I tried following the instructions to being like, I mean, even though I was avoiding everything I know about electricity and saying...
i don't know what if i just pretend what if i just pretend that the common wire from that uh that 24 volt uh you know terminal down there is the common wire for the thing but that doesn't work it's not even a complete circuit so that's if you do it the way they say and say i'm gonna label this the c wire and now i'll just hook everything up the way it tells me nothing works like you know it's not a complete circuit right
The second thing is in regular thermostats and most regular thermostats, there's some way to do a jumper.
People who do stuff on PCs know about this is basically take two pins and sort of short them out to each other to connect them.
So they conduct where you can say, OK, well, the wire, wire A and wire B, I'm going to put a jumper between terminals A and B. So A and B, that's the same wire.
Like they're just connected to each other.
the ecobee at least had no way to do that every one of the little places where you're supposed to put a wire the c wire the w wire the rh wire whatever there was just one hole you couldn't put more than one wire the one very small hole you couldn't even jam two of them in there if you like twisted them together or whatever but i was pretty sure based on nothing because the instructions were all useless to me that the only way i could get this to work was i needed to basically connect both of the wires from the 24 volt thing to make a complete circuit and
one of them being the common wire and the second one being basically the rh wire but i already had an actual rh wire from the from the furnace so i had to sort of connect the you know the hot wire from the 24 volt thing to the rh wire and then put the the the now fused rh and hot wire into the rh terminal oh god and that finally worked
I cannot believe you did this.
I would have had no confidence that this would work.
I would have bailed immediately.
I mean, I tried a whole bunch of different combinations because I was like, well, they must account for this.
Like there must be a way to do it.
But like it's basically because my old thermostat, there was a jumper between two things or whatever.
But there was just no way to get more than one wire in there.
I'm like, well, you know, and to answer people's question, no, I didn't solder it.
I probably should have soldered it.
But here's what I was trying so many combinations that I had just sort of like, you know, sort of wire nutted essentially the two conductors I needed together and put it on.
And this was like try 857.
Right.
So I was taking it off, put it on, take it off, put it on, take it off, put it on, take it off, put it on.
Right.
When it worked, I thought to myself, you should really take that off one more time and solder it together.
And I said, you know what?
I've had enough of this project.
It's working.
And it's, you know, I don't think it's going to catch on fire.
And if a wire nut is good enough for other kinds of connections, I don't think I need to make this into a soldering project.
And so I just didn't take it back off.
I love the, I don't think this is going to catch on fire.
Right?
I don't think it's going to catch on fire.
It's 24 volts.
It's nothing.
It's fine.
It's well connected.
I did a good job.
It's not like I, you know, it's not like it's just loosely touching and arcing or something like that.
It's fine.
And this is so dumb because, like, my, the...
What do I have in my house to control the temperature?
I have an on-off switch for a heater that is either 100% on or 100% off.
That's it.
I have no cooling of any kind.
I don't have air conditioning.
I don't have fans.
I don't have hot air.
I don't have filters.
I don't have humidifiers.
I don't have air-to-air heat exchangers.
I just have literally a button that says make house hot now and stop.
That is all I have is 100% on or 100% off.
That's it.
So this is the simplest possible scenario.
And even that, like, because I had those two random wires coming off of the breaker box thing, it ended up being completely beyond the instructions.
The instructions want to tell you, like, we're not going to tell you, we're not going to show you a circuit diagram ever.
We're just going to say, you, homeowner, just do what we say.
Do you have wires with these labels?
Then do this.
And it's like, but I have a different situation that you haven't foreseen.
So I need to see a circuit diagram.
And I had to basically guess, like, look, I know this is just basically saying this probably, you know, in the parlance of people who think about DC, a plus and a minus, you know, a hot and a neutral.
And then one other thing that can, you know, the Ecobee thermostat just basically controls.
Should there be power going to the thing that tells the heater to turn on or not?
and hits trips a relay right i knew it had to be simple i just you know i spent a long time banging my head against the thing surely they don't need me to like you know fuse two wires together and stick them into one of these wire holes there must be some way to do it otherwise and as far as i could tell there was not so
It was a little bit of an adventure and a little bit frustrating, but I was pretty determined not to give up on it.
And I was glad I could.
Apparently.
I mean, a worst case scenario, I could have just run the new wire because I do know where the new wire would go.
The five conductor wire there is 24 volt AC, you know, common wire terminal inside the taco connector box right next to everything else.
And it would have just been fine.
But I was glad that I didn't do that.
I love that you have something called a taco connector box.
Yeah, taco.
I want a taco connection box in my house somewhere now.
You might have one.
It's kind of a teal box thing with a bunch of relays in it and a bunch of transformers.
Sure.
So Ecobee, my suggestion to you is maybe say, look, do you know what a circuit diagram looks like?
here's what you're trying to accomplish.
And maybe you have some other way to accomplish it.
If so, feel free to do that because all this, like all the wires inside here have like names that are like W1, W2, G, Y, RH, RC.
Some of them make some sense.
Like RH is supposed to be for heat and RC is for cooling.
But the W is, the G is not ground.
Don't, you know, there's a Y and of course the C for the comments.
Like, I know there's probably lots of history behind what these things are called, but like,
For my simple scenario, I just need to know, show me the circuit.
Show me where the electricity flows and which thing is the switch, and I'll figure it out.
Yeah, these things were not designed by people for good interfaces.
I feel bad for the... At least people do this for a living.
It's all second nature.
But if you have a complicated scenario, remembering which one is Y and which one is G and, you know, and the RH and the RC and different zones and just all the different variety of equipment that you can have, because my taco box thing also has, like...
uh you know zone priority and this that like i have like this four zone thing that's down in my house like my house only has one zone so this is like of all the different relays that are right maybe this is the smallest taco box that you get or maybe they just charge me for a fancy one who knows it's just two little wires it's not entirely true the room and now is zone two zone two is my computer room and it is its own zone with its own non-smart thermostat and is literally for this one single room
So getting back to the thermostat itself, I've had Echo Bees in my house now for about, I think about a year is when I tore it on my nests in Rage and replaced them all with these.
Did you have any issues getting them onto HomeKit?
um let's see so when i i added the home kit uh it threw up the qr code and i just scanned it with my phone uh and then in the home app it threw up a thing in front of me and it said please name these three things i was like all right and it said thermostat thermostat one thermostat two and i was like
what i just installed one thermostat is i think i installed two and so i deleted the name off thermostat two and thermostat three and just changed thermostat one to be called thermostat and i tried to proceed and it said nope sorry you got to pick a name for these three things and i was like i don't know what you're talking about go away and i just canceled it right and
And then I but then I looked at the home app on my phone and saw that it thinks now I have a thermostat or something.
And so I deleted the device from home.
I think every time I go into the home kit involves deleting the device at least once.
So I deleted the device once and then I added it a second time and it did the exact same thing.
And what I figured out based on the icons and nothing else because the home app was terrible was that.
One device is a thermostat, one device is a motion sensor, and one device is a heat sensor or something.
That's probably for automation.
So when you can automate, oh, when it detects motion and such and such, or when it detects the temperature, blah, blah, blah, then do this.
yeah but it was confusing because the icons i was like i can imagine there being a thermostat and an ir sensor but is like what one detects motion but doesn't it detect motion isn't that the ir sensor as well i don't understand anyway i once i figured out that it was three different sensors i gave them somewhat sensible names based on their icons and then it added them to home kit and
And after that, yeah, it seems to work fine.
It's in HomeKit.
I don't do anything within a HomeKit.
I use the Ecobee app if I ever need to mess with the schedule.
But I could, to Casey's point, do automations in the Home app if I wanted to based on those new devices that are now there and I'm able to, you know, do things based on them.
See, what I want is... So, I've had some issues.
I haven't had them recently because one thing I very quickly learned setting these things up is once you want to control them with HomeKit...
never have their actual app interact with them in any way because they will fight.
And they will fight in weird ways that have weird results, not just like, all right, you said it's a 68, you said it's 65.
Not like that.
They'll change each other's modes in weird ways.
It breaks in very strange ways.
And so what I ended up having to do, because I want to control things primarily with HomeKit,
So what I ended up having to do is turn off every bit of automation, every bit of scheduling, programming, automatic mode, turn off everything in the Thermostat app.
And then never open it again.
And then control it exclusively via the Home app in HomeKit.
And once I eventually got it to stop doing literally everything in its own app, then it started working again properly and reliably in HomeKit.
But there were a couple of weird snags that I hit.
And
Like what's what's great.
So I have, you know, the aforementioned like video camera situation.
I'm still using the Logitech Circle View cameras, which are HomeKit secure video.
And what's great about HomeKit secure video cameras is that they don't have their own apps like the ones that are purely HomeKit secure video.
They literally don't have apps that can control them.
They can control they can be controlled only via the home app.
They're made to natively interface with that with that directly.
And that's it.
I wish somebody would make that for thermostats because the Echo Bees, they work eventually once you get them set up and once you turn off all the crap in the app and figure out how to make them stop fighting and figure out how to add them to HomeKit.
They do eventually work and once it's set up, it's okay.
But I lost hours to this, and it could have been so much easier.
If my goal is only to ever control this via HomeKit, someone should make a thermostat that is just a HomeKit thermostat.
And it's designed for that, and there is no other app, and that's it.
And I understand why these companies don't do that.
I mean, frankly, I don't understand why the thermostat market is so crappy, because our only options for good Wi-Fi thermostats seem to be either the Nest thermostats, which I would say are previously good, but no longer good.
But Nest still has by far the nicest looking physical designs and the nicest looking hardware.
Or the Echobee, which is fine design-wise, but it's not good.
It's not like a really nice thermostat.
It's a fine Wi-Fi thermostat.
It's ultra fine.
It's fine, but it has nothing on the Nest design-wise.
However...
It works.
If you look at the – this is what I was looking at before I looked at the Ecobee.
I also looked at the brands you don't think of.
Not Honeywell, but like the one I had before was like Lux Pro or whatever.
The ones that – these are brands that existed before smart thermostat existed.
And their thermostats don't look smart.
They look like a beige box with an LCD segment display, like an old thermostat.
Not as old as the –
The ones with the little metal coils inside them with the bimetallic strips and everything, not that old, but the ones with the mercury switches, not that old, but the ones right after that.
Ooh, modern digital.
They take like two AA batteries and they have a little, you know, LCD segmented display and you program them like you program a VCR, right?
Those companies do make Wi-Fi enabled devices.
thermostats and i looked at those because i'm like look i just want to be able to control it through an app i should look at some of these as well and maybe they work with my weird wire setup because the the whole reason you need the common wire as far as i'm able to tell is you need to power the little computer that's inside your thermostat because without that there is no complete circuit to power the thermostat unless the heat or ac is on
Right.
And so but with these these other brands, they're so low power that you just put two double A's in there.
Right.
And so I'm thinking, well, are any of those are there smart thermostats that I wouldn't need a common wire for because they're just so like, you know, such a tiny there.
They don't have a big display to power.
They don't have a complicated computer inside there.
Not if they have Wi-Fi.
Yeah, Wi-Fi probably kills you with the battery thing.
But anyway, those companies do make smart thermostats, but they do not look smart.
But some of them have Wi-Fi.
But as far as I can tell, most of those don't know or care what HomeKit is.
And so that's not a solution to your problem.
But it is a thing to think about that if you just want...
a smarter thermostat, you can get one that's not going to fight with HomeKit because it doesn't know what HomeKit is, right?
But you'll still might be able to, you do need a common wire, but you still might be able to control with Wi-Fi.
And the other thing that was making me think of is, I think I talked about this on the past show, the air quality sensor I got from my basement.
Did I mention that at some point?
um i don't think you might have anyway i'll talk about it in a future show but um the one i got uh has an e-ink display which i think is actually a pretty good idea for a smart thermostat oh is it the eve it's no it's like air things okay i have an eve one well sorry i have two eve ones because the first one broke really really early nice that's a whole separate story everything i've gotten from eve um
Let's just say, I think our friend Merlin has had better experiences with the products from this brand than I have.
I have had mostly bad experiences with Eve products so far.
I'm sure they're good for somebody.
But yeah, they have not been good for me.
Yeah, but e-ink, I think, is actually a pretty good solution for an attractive smart thermostat because I don't need fancy graphics or pictures of my kids or whatever.
You know, even though the little weather display is just line art or whatever, and it looks really good.
It's a good solution to how do you put something, a computer display that's in...
Difficult lighting additions.
E-ink is reflective.
You don't need a backlight at all.
You can front light it if you want it to be visible at night.
And it looks nice on the wall.
And now all you need to do is surround that E-ink display with a nice looking physical design, which granted is a challenge for some of these manufacturers.
But I think there's a lot of possibility for
What I'm thinking of is what is the next step up?
You have the little metallic strip coil mercury switch.
Then you have the little LCD thing.
And then we jump right from that to tiny Wi-Fi computer.
And I feel like there's something in between there, which is...
whatever the next step up is before you get to a full-fledged computer it still can have wi-fi but could be its own little system and you know and in your situation if you have a house that does not just have one giant zone essentially and have actually have cooling and more complicated things to control that's where i'd be looking for like the uh
the lutron caseta of thermostats like a whole house solution where you know it's all going to work together does that exist though i don't know but that's like that's that's kind of what you're looking for it's like i don't need to be on the cutting edge with my thermostat i just need it to to work in my house and look nice on the wall and lutron is you know does that it's like works reliably works fast it's a good company it's well supported they can run anything in your house and not overly concerned about supporting google amazon and apple's ecosystems to the nth degree or whatever
But I think like what for me, like what and yeah, disclosure, sponsor Lutron Caseta.
But what I love so much about the Caseta system is that it is its own like local communication protocol in the physical side.
Like it has its own RF protocol so that it's super reliable.
It's way more reliable than Wi-Fi.
It's better than everything reliability wise.
But it has a little hub that integrates all of its stuff with HomeKit.
And so I have that rock solid reliable control that doesn't require HomeKit.
to communicate with themselves and to work, but I have full control of the system from HomeKit.
And I feel like that's kind of what limits my options here.
But that being said, I don't want to go back into the Amazon ecosystem and control everything via their crappy voice cylinders.
and i don't really trust google enough even though how the people like you saying how good their voice system is definitely has tempted me a few times like maybe i should try them because you're asking you trivia questions or what movie somebody was in or something from their dinner table that's what it's good for i don't i can't vouch for it as a home control device although i did just just today i ordered another uh nest outdoor cam another one of my long-standing products so i'll give you an update on that if i can figure out how to get that installed yeah
No, I actually just ordered two more of the Logitech Circle Views to finally decommission two very old Nest Cams I have just because I've been running them forever.
Are they actual outdoor cams or are they indoor ones that you're running outside?
The Logistics Turbo View is actually an outdoor cam, but the power brick for it... It has a permanently mounted USB cable that's about maybe two meters long, and the power brick for it is not outdoor rated.
But you can do things... They sell little boxes.
Basically, little sealed shoebox kind of things that just have big rubber gastics, and you can put...
uh an electrical brick in there with you know plug it into an outdoor extension cable seal the whole thing up and then run that extension cable somewhere else you know so you could do something that's kind of my plan for this thing this is an indoor outdoor camera that google makes it doesn't didn't get great reviews but i'm kind of desperate at this point and i'm going to sort of they give you a quote-unquote weatherproof cable
It is just like you said, it is supposedly weatherproof and the camera can get rained on and snowed on or whatever.
But at the end of it is a plug that goes into an AC outlet and that's not weatherproof.
So luckily I have a situation where my camera is near my garage and I can go from the little eaves where the camera is or whatever into my garage where there is an outlet inside my garage that is, you know, sealed from the weather because it's inside the garage.
And that is my current plan.
We'll see how that works out.
All right.
Speaking of breaking news, and this time not about my studio display, WWDC has been announced.
It is, as always, the first week of June.
And there's not too much to talk about, I don't think, except one little blurb that was said on the announcement.
So the announcement is, join developers worldwide from June 6 through 10 for an inspiring week of technology and community.
Get a first look at Apple's latest platforms and technologies and sessions, explore the newest tools and tips, and connect with Apple experts and labs and digital lounges, all online and at no cost.
Here's where it gets interesting.
In addition to the online conference, Apple will host a special day for developers and students at Apple Park on June 6th to watch the keynote and the State of the Union videos together, along with the online community.
Spaces limited in details on how to apply to attend will be provided soon.
So first of all, Marco, you dodged a bullet in that you turn 40 after WWDC is over, so you're welcome.
But secondly, this whole thing about people actually being on campus, that was unexpected in my eyes.
And I think that's interesting.
I don't plan to apply.
I don't plan to fly to California just to watch a couple of videos I can watch at home.
But it's interesting.
Yeah, I mean, I think this makes a lot more sense for people who live locally or at least almost locally and can drive there.
And are enthused about being in a tight space with a bunch of people.
I mean, it's just... Yeah.
Anyway, I know Apple's making all their employees go back to the office for certain days of the week and it's a controversial thing or whatever, but sort of an optional gathering of people in close quarters.
I feel like there needs to be something offsetting that.
It's like, okay, there's a risk.
What's the reward?
And if the reward is...
You get to watch the same video, to Casey's point, that you could be watching in your house.
But other randomly selected people are also there with you?
I don't find that as much of a reward to account for the risk, especially if you're traveling.
But even if you're not, like...
So it's not like you and all your friends are going to be there.
It's going to be some kind of lottery or something, probably.
Space is limited, and I don't think you and all your friends are going to get in.
And if you want to watch with your friends, you just watch it in your house with your friends.
Like, I don't want to be in a room full of strangers all breathing on each other so I can watch a video on a screen.
Exactly.
not not appealing to me and it's weird because like i mean we still assume at this point you know apple hasn't really said otherwise but like obviously the wdc went online because of covid and there was a debate of like even when covid is quote unquote over will they go back to in person we don't know because i feel like covid is still a thing now despite again despite apple calling all its employees back because
There's new variants, and despite the CDC changing its scales or whatever, there's still a lot of people getting it.
There's just fewer people getting super sick because a lot of people are vaccinated.
It is still a thing, let's say.
So if you're going to hold a conference online, I imagine at least partly because COVID is still a thing that people are concerned about, why then subvert that by saying, but also let's have at least one place where we can sort of have a super spreader event?
We got to get some people in here to be next to each other.
And it's like, OK, maybe if you gave them a live show and you broadcast the keynote live and the people who were there saw the keynote in person, live on stage people, and then all of us streamed it live, maybe that would be a reason to show up because, you know, watching a live show, it's spontaneous.
Interesting things can happen.
It's just a more exciting event than sitting in a room and watching a video.
But they're not doing it live.
They're going to pre-record everything just like they have in the past.
And then you're just going to get to watch the video in a room with a bunch of other people all breathing on each other.
No thanks.
And they're basically like, the whole thing with WDC is...
No one caught COVID at last year's WWDC, like no people who attended it anyway, because it was all online.
We were all sitting in our own houses, right?
And they're not going to be able to say that this year.
People are going to come to this thing, and I don't know what their requirements are going to be for vaccines and masking or whatever, but people are going to catch it.
They're going to catch it when they're traveling.
They're going to catch it when they're in the room.
And, you know, because we're probably all vaccinated, you know, hopefully a lot of people aren't going to die because of it, but they're contributing to the spread for a sort of optional event that doesn't seem particularly rewarding to offset that risk.
i don't quite understand why they're doing this because you know because everything having to do with apple is going to be story you know if five people get covid and have the sniffles it's going to be a story it's like oh apple held this thing in person and these lottery winners what did they win in their lottery they won covid right it's gonna happen just because anything apple does is a story and i'm not i'm not faulting apple for us i think it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do and if you choose to go like
maybe you've never been to wdc and you just want to do a fun thing or whatever no big deal it doesn't appeal to me but it seems weird that apple would give this option knowing that there is a big pr downside for it and i don't see any upside for apple in doing this right because again they don't get to perform live it's not too influential press it's not like what does apple get out of doing this just all potential downside for a story for people getting covid and no real upside of them and
Giving, you know, maybe, I mean, I don't know, maybe the people who attend feel better about Apple than the people who don't attend because, you know, it's an exciting experience or something, but I find it a little bit baffling.
yeah it seems you're right the the like risk reward or or cost reward even you know even if you're not as concerned about covid just i don't the idea of going there you know i i guess i i would like to see apple park i think that would be fun and so that would be the value to me in like i would love to see this this really cool office park that they've built you just go there they don't have snipers
Wow.
No, you can't.
The visitor center is like... Quite a ways away.
Have you ever known people, maybe even in your family or friends, who are like, they really don't like people.
And even when they like you, they kind of want to keep you at a distance.
And they kind of don't want you touching their stuff or anything.
That's Apple.
Apple really does not like people coming into their space and looking at their stuff and touching their bed and stuff.
They don't want that.
It's so...
The Apple Park Visitor Center is hilarious because it is, first of all, beautiful.
It is an amazing... They made this amazing building.
It's basically a really nice Apple store with some bonuses.
However, if you go to Apple Park...
the only thing you're allowed to go to is the visitor center and the visitor center can basically not, it can like barely see the rest of the building.
And this, the visitor center itself is not in the building.
And so if you're going to see the building, you don't get to actually see it really.
Like you get to see, like you can like peer out a window and kind of see it off in the distance.
And that's it.
Like you see it between some bushes.
And so actually being able to get into Apple park, that would actually be an interesting thing to see.
Well,
They're not going to have this at a park, though.
It's going to be in the Steve Jobs Theater, which is also a little bit distant from the ring.
Oh, I assume they were going to have it in that big outdoor thing in the middle with the big rainbow stage.
Hmm.
Maybe.
Maybe you're right.
I mean, there's not a lot of details about it.
I just imagined it would be in the theater, but maybe you're right.
Well, being in that park would be better because people could spread out and they could use the big rainbow stage, but I've never...
I don't think I've ever—has there ever been a thing where they've taken random general public people in large numbers and ferried them into the center of the ring?
I don't think so.
Not the ring.
I mean, so they used to, in very olden days, before we went to WBDC, the beer bash, I believe, used to be held on Apple's campus.
Yeah.
Yeah, but that was Infinite Loop.
Despite my joke about there not being snipers, Apple Park is way more nailed down than Infinite Loop was.
Like, Infinite Loop is just an office park.
You just walk in there and there's parking lots.
It's not like you could wander into the buildings, but you could walk along the sidewalks and see all the buildings and do all this stuff.
Whereas Apple Park, despite the fact that there probably aren't snipers...
It really has a go-away vibe, right?
Oh, yeah.
It's not – they do not want you to be near the actual Ring building if you are not an Apple employee because it's not made like an office park where it's like, oh, just drive right in.
There's a parking lot, park, and then you can walk up to a door.
And then as soon as you get to a door of a building, of course, you can't really get much farther because there's someone stopping you in security.
But Apple Park is –
Very much like it's I don't think there are even fences so much as there is landscaping that is telling you, like, there is no path for you to go here.
If you drive your car and you you have to you either an Apple employee and you're going to one of the Apple employee parking garages, which is still distant from the buildings, or you're going to the visitor center.
And then if you're walking along the path to the building, like.
I don't actually know.
I'm sure like a bunch of high school kids who live near there because there are houses near there have probably like explored Apple Park at night or whatever and found out the extent of the security guards and cameras that are probably all over the place.
But yeah, it's not it's not inviting.
And that's what I said about going into the center of the ring.
The beer bash.
They didn't care if anyone went into Infinite Loop.
You can just drive your car right in there, and if you can find a parking spot, congratulations, you're in Infinite Loop, right?
But that's not Apple Park at all.
So I don't even know, like, where would people park?
How would they be escorted to the place where they're supposed to go?
They do have a lot of parking.
I know they have a lot of parking.
But it's not – it would seem weird to me.
So I just assumed it would be in the Steve Jobs thing.
I mean, I don't know.
If it's just going to be getting together to basically have a viewing party for a pre-recorded keynote, that feels like less of a community event than would be worth going to.
They'd probably be pastries.
That's
Fair.
There's going to be like some bad California bagels, some coffee that I can't comment on the quality of, and then some kind of pastries.
As I said, it's for the keynote and State of the Union.
So there's going to be a break between there, right?
Probably.
And that's a long thing.
So it's going to be come in.
Maybe someone will be there in person today or whatever.
People in the chat room are asking.
Someone was surprised to say it's not going to be press.
It seems like...
It says space is limited and detailed how to apply will be provided soon.
Maybe Apple will, you know, let in any press that wants to go.
But honestly, why would press show up if they're not going to be able to get information that they couldn't get from being at home?
Will the press be meeting with people?
Would press come and sit there and watch the video if there wasn't...
Also, interviews with Apple people afterwards.
And so far, we don't know what the deal is.
Generally, like with most most press events they hold, there is some kind of component of like briefings or hands on areas or something.
And so it does make sense.
Usually, like if you're caught out there for press, then do that.
But I mean, they haven't held an in-person press event since COVID either.
It remains to be seen whether this will become that or not.
And would they really want to do that?
Because now it's like not only are you gathering a bunch of people together, but you're gathering all of your press together into a potential, you know, let's get as much of the Apple press to get COVID all at the same time when our products are being announced.
Anyway, I think this is – what this mostly is is what we thought it would be, which is remote.
And I think that, again, because of everything we said last week, I think that's great because –
The remote conference really is better in more ways for more people.
And that's ultimately what they have to focus on now.
At the scale they're at now, even if COVID wasn't a thing right now, the scale Apple's at now, they serve so many more people so much better with the types of remote conferences they've been doing for the last couple of years.
And so to go back to a traditional in-person setup now, I think really would be a regression in a number of pretty big areas.
So to see them doing this again, viewing party aside, because we don't really know what that's going to be, but to see them doing the remote conference again, I think is a very good thing.
And I'm looking forward to it.
I think the hybrid approach does make a lot of sense because like the risk reward starts to make way more sense when you get into like, you know, a concert type thing.
Right.
I mean, going to a music concert or a live performance or something or even arguably going to the movie theater.
Like if you're there to be entertained in a way that you can't be entertained at home either because you don't have a movie theater in your house or because you're not going to have a live band playing for you.
then you're like, okay, risk reward, right?
You know, then you can balance and say there is a reward for doing this.
And so it's worth it for me to take the risk because I'm all vaccinated and everything and everyone will be wearing a mask and we'll be outdoors and we'll be spaced apart and I'll get to see my favorite band.
That's worth it, right?
But to go in a room and watch a video with a bunch of random strangers, the risk reward is terrible.
So the hybrid one is you do the keynote live.
Bunch of people on stage, you know, wherever it's going to be.
You could do it outdoors if you want people to have more room to spread out, but you do it live and you...
broadcasted live they broadcast the keynote live all the time right it's free for everyone the whole rest of the conference is the same pre-recorded sessions free for everybody blah blah blah but you do the keynote and maybe even the state of the union live and then afterwards you have press briefings and the people who get to attend are all the press that you invite plus a lottery for other people who want to essentially attend the apple concert right
That, I feel like, has the best of both worlds from Apple's perspective.
No, it doesn't have the best of both worlds for the attendees' perspective, because you don't get the whole week of networking with people in in-person labs or whatever.
But from Apple's perspective, putting on the show in person, gathering the press, and then briefing them, that's a big benefit for Apple.
And it seems like they're not going to get this in this one.
Because it's just going to be, here's a video, here's some pastries, it seems like.
But anyway, none of us are going, just needless to say.
I don't think any of us are even going to apply to go.
I certainly wouldn't go.
But I hope somebody goes and reports back to tell us what it is and what the pastries were.
Yep.
That's the important news.
What are the pastries?
They might get a boxed lunch.
Oh, my God.
$150 boxed lunch in between the keynote and the State of the Union to get the real WWDC experience.
My goodness.
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Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
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So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R
It's the Taco Comfort Solutions SR504 Switching Relay.
PDF is in the... Taco Comfort Solutions?
Yeah.
Take a look.
I put a link up to you for Casey for you to put it in the show.
I saw it.
Yep.
four zones with zone four priority 24 volt ac power just sitting right there ready ready to be tapped by those wires yeah well i'm glad to hear that your home got smarter indeed yeah so there goes i did save my old thermostat because of course i did um
the whole thermostat is pretty put in the attic the reason i was replacing it is because the buttons were literally not working anymore so when i tried to like adjust the program for the winter like it's got like you know set and up down and next buttons and like the up button and the next button like wouldn't work like you'd have to press them really hard and wiggle your finger and it was like if those buttons don't work it's kind of a problem because i do need to like
you know set things up or change things or whatever so i'm like it's time to get a new one but the amazing thing about this old you know pre-computer technology thing i was worried like that when i take the batteries out that it's going to lose my program of like you know this time turn the heat under this temperature you know the schedule basically nope
No backup battery either.
It's not like there's a watch battery in there that I was afraid because I took the batteries out because I didn't want it to explode.
Then I was like, where's the little watch battery?
Maybe I should be worried about this or whatever.
And I read the manual for the thing and it's like, don't worry.
The only thing you lose when the batteries take out is after one to two minutes, presumably when capacitors like discharge, you will lose the date and time.
But your program will be saved forever in some sort of non-volatile memory that's inside this thing.
So I'm saving it.
Yeah, if this Ecobee thing, you know, craps out or dies or something like that, I can just rip it right off the wall and put the other one back on.
Thank you.