Sandwich-Closing Force
Casey:
Have you ever been in a position where you haven't messed with a portion of your own code for a while, and you think that something should be there that just straight up isn't there, and you're like, hmm, this is weird.
Casey:
Because I'm diving into peek-a-view, which I haven't been looking at for a while, and I'm looking for something, and I'm not finding it, and it's freaking me out.
John:
Maybe you added it in a dream.
John:
I've had that happen a couple times.
Marco:
How is the code that you've written in your dream?
Marco:
Does it make sense?
John:
I mean, I think it's pretty good.
John:
Like, best case, you added it in your dream and you remember how you did it so you could just do it again.
John:
But worst case, it's like, I added it in a dream and I was so happy to have that thorny problem solved, but I don't remember how I did it.
John:
And then it's just like, well, in a dream, you can kind of gloss over the details because, you know, it just whatever dream logic.
John:
And then in real life, you actually have to have the code.
Marco:
I have occasionally I don't think I've ever actually coded in my sleep.
Marco:
I have, however, fixed bugs right before falling asleep many times.
Marco:
as my brain is clearing itself out for the night right before I fall asleep, I will occasionally realize, oh, either I will discover a bug right before I go to sleep, or I will realize, oh my god, wait a minute, in this case, then this case happens, and I didn't account for that, or that's going to be wrong.
Marco:
It happens so often that
Marco:
Tiff can tell when I am being kept awake by, by this.
Marco:
And she will just say, just, just go fix it.
Marco:
Just go.
Marco:
And I'll be like, all right, I'll get up out, get out of bed, go to my computer, like write down whatever to write down or do what I have to do.
Marco:
Like it's, it's, it's a thing.
Marco:
Totally a thing.
Casey:
Now, but important question though, do you have your lights on while you're doing this?
Casey:
Are you doing this in the dark?
Hmm.
Marco:
The crazy way that you podcast in your dark cave of sleepiness.
Marco:
I don't know how you do it and stay awake during the show.
Marco:
It's like, you know, we do this at night.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I have.
Marco:
I've been doing a lot of like.
Marco:
So, Casey, you started the conversation about how you've been looking at very old code that you were forever ago and having, you know, being surprised by it.
Marco:
Over the last couple days, for reasons that aren't very interesting, I have been basically tearing apart some of the foundations of Overcast's UI code and sync code and stuff like that.
Marco:
It's kind of like the point in the project where...
Marco:
You've had just parts all over your floor for days.
Marco:
I couldn't even build it for like a week.
Marco:
What I was doing was, for, again, uninteresting reasons, I was taking my five-year-old Objective-C app delegate and I was bringing it into the modern environment of scene-based APIs and Swift at the same time.
Casey:
Oh, that scares me.
Marco:
And so I rewrote my giant app delegate from Objective-C into three or four different Swift classes that are now using the modern API and much cleaner.
Marco:
And I had to do a lot more Swift to make this happen.
Marco:
I just today...
Marco:
a few hours ago just got to the point where it now builds and runs and it seems so far to work i haven't done a lot of testing yet but i have finally gotten like gotten the thing back together again and it's a glorious feeling when when you've been literally just you know it was the kind of change where like all right the first thing i do is rename my app delegate and pull it from the build so then you see the hundreds of things that break yeah
Marco:
and then you wait for the you know wait for the ability to all right well i fixed that error you know if i at best i can like search and replace for this constant that no longer exists but otherwise i just gotta hit build and just see what happens and oh here's five more errors and fix those and hit build again oh here's something i have to write in swift and here's something i have to figure out a new way to do it because it won't work this way in swift or whatever and
Marco:
I think I have it back together.
Marco:
But this has actually been a really interesting exercise in modernization of my code for one thing, which itself is a fun thing to do.
Marco:
But also learning more about Swift, getting more into the Swift mindset of how do you do this weird...
Marco:
what the nice nice that was from my watch how did oh my god what i don't know learning about swift that doesn't sound like i wasn't even pushing the button sound like the activation word god sir is the worst who's looking forward to the new home pod
Casey:
I have not bought a HomePod yet to this day.
Casey:
Not one.
Marco:
Actually, I am very curious to hear the HomePod Mini.
Marco:
I think I will be ordering one as soon as I can just because I am so curious about it.
Marco:
Because honestly, again, as I mentioned last week, I love the first HomePod for certain aspects of it.
Marco:
but yeah siri unfortunately is not one of them but the sound is great and and if the you know if the little one actually does sound at all reasonable for for 100 bucks then uh it'll it could be could be quite useful but we'll see i don't think we forgot to mention this last time but you uh you can pair the little home pod minis to each other in a stereo pair but you can't pair a big one and a little one so you've got to have the same kind for pairing for stereo pairing
Marco:
I mean, in all fairness, you can get three and a half of the little ones for the price of one big one.
John:
You can play the same music simultaneously across them, each as mono, essentially, speakers.
John:
So it's not like if you have a house with some big ones, some small ones, you can still play on all of them at once, but you can't stereo pair them.
Marco:
yes that's true um but yeah i i'm actually i've i've been away from my home pods for a few months and uh last time i i visited them i realized how much i love their sound like so i've been using i guess that's still the pre-show sorry for topic uh structural reasons but that's not are you though oh
Marco:
I've been using the, I think I mentioned recently, I've been using the Sonos One, which is, it's basically Sonos' little $200-ish smart speaker, and it has Alexa built in, and you can pair a pair of those together to make a stereo pair.
Marco:
And so that's what I've been using in my main kitchen area to get sound.
Marco:
And the Sonos One is an okay product.
Marco:
What's great about it is that it has the Alexa voice assistant, which I think is generally the best voice assistant,
Marco:
And it also has AirPlay 2.
Marco:
For whatever reason, Amazon doesn't want to work with Apple directly to build in AirPlay 2 support into the actual Amazon Echo family of products.
Marco:
I don't know why.
Marco:
I mean, I can guess it's corporate BS reasons, but I wish they would.
Marco:
As far as I know, the Sonos ecosystem is the only way to get something that has the Alexa voice assistant and AirPlay 2.
Marco:
But because it's not an actual...
Marco:
Amazon Echo, it's like a built-with Echo, supports Echo, whatever, you know, Alexa built-in.
Marco:
It's kind of a second-class citizen with the Alexa functionality, and most of it is in ways I don't care about.
Marco:
But there's been two things that have been kind of irritating me about the Sonos One system.
Marco:
Even though they are about the size of a HomePod, and even though you can stereo pair them, they don't sound anywhere near as good as HomePods.
Marco:
The Sonos One is a really okay sounding speaker.
Marco:
That's the best thing I can say about it.
Marco:
It sounds okay.
Casey:
But I thought Sonos – I was going to say made all its money, but that's not fair – but became popular because it was like the fancy person's speaker because it sounds so good and it auto-tunes its – well, not auto-tune, but you know what I mean?
Marco:
That's not quite it.
Marco:
I mean the reason Sonos got really big early on was first of all that they had this –
Marco:
cataloging app like that so you could basically have like a music server somewhere in your house and they've always been very big in custom integrators like people who you hire to build to build yourself like a whole house audio system or a custom home theater like which is a business i don't actually know anything about because i've never used it or seen it but i know it's a big business part two which was probably the biggest part is they mastered multi-room audio before pretty much anybody else did and
Marco:
And they have a large range of products they've sold throughout the years, most of which are very expensive for what they are.
Marco:
But it was kind of like what Apple offers of like you'll pay a little more for this thing, but you'll have this integration of this ecosystem.
Marco:
And if you're really in the ecosystem, it's great for those purposes.
Marco:
These days, though, like multi-room synced audio is kind of table stakes for a lot of these platforms.
Marco:
Many things offer it.
Marco:
And it doesn't seem like Sonos is any better than anyone else's in ways anybody would notice.
Marco:
Their speakers, you know, some of them sound good.
Marco:
Some of them are okay.
Marco:
The Sonos One is their lowest-end speaker.
Marco:
It is their simplest, lowest-end thing.
Marco:
It's their cheapest thing, and it shows.
Marco:
It seems like a product that is made by a company that doesn't want to be making it, which might be what the HomePod Mini ends up being.
Marco:
We'll see when we can hear one.
Marco:
Anyway, problem number one I have with the Sonos One is that it only sounds okay, and I think these days...
Marco:
that is not good enough.
Marco:
The market has heated up.
Marco:
They have way more competition for $200 price point for a smart speaker.
Marco:
It should sound better than it does.
Marco:
And then problem number two, I mentioned the Alexa thing being kind of second class.
Marco:
It's a little bit buggy.
Marco:
Sometimes home voice assistant bugs are ways that I can tolerate.
Marco:
Like, you know, if it occasionally gives me a stupid answer to a question, or occasionally, you know, thinks it's been hailed when it hasn't been, I'll forgive that as inherent to the technology.
Marco:
But this week, our Sonos One started losing timers.
Marco:
When you tell your voice assistant to tell you in nine minutes that the eggs are done so that you can not overboil your hard-boiled eggs, and then about 12 minutes later, you're like, did I set the timer?
Marco:
And you ask it, hey, timer status, and it says, there are no timers set.
Marco:
And you're like, oh, no.
Marco:
At first, you might blame yourself because, dear listener, we are not perfect.
Marco:
Sometimes we forget to tell Alexa to set the egg timer.
Marco:
Okay.
Okay.
Marco:
But fortunately, this thing is useful slash creepy enough that if you go into the app, you can see a history of what you have said to it and conveniently what it has said back to you.
Marco:
And so you are able to see and you can check and verify that, yes, indeed, 12 minutes ago, you did say, hey, Alexa, set a timer for nine minutes.
Marco:
And then it said back to you, nine minute timer set, right?
Marco:
So you're able to verify, oh, it got the timer.
Marco:
It just didn't keep the timer.
Marco:
So that happened.
Marco:
And I thought, well, that's weird.
Marco:
Let me try it again.
Marco:
So like, you know, a few hours later I was in the kitchen.
Marco:
I'm like, let me, let me just see.
Marco:
I'll try it again.
Marco:
I set a timer on that, raise my watch, set a timer on my watch too.
Marco:
So to remind me, otherwise I don't, I totally forgot that I even did it.
Marco:
Sure enough, lost it again.
Marco:
And eventually, oh my God, this is weird.
Marco:
So I unplugged them, both Sonos ones, plugged them back in.
Marco:
As soon as they booted up, three alarms went off in a row for Tyrus.
Marco:
Nice.
Marco:
And they occasionally have other weird bugginess, like you'll tell it to stop playing audio and it'll interpret stop as play the next track.
Marco:
So, you'll say stop, and it'll stop.
Marco:
Then it'll start playing something else.
Marco:
And then you'll say stop again, and it'll start playing something else.
Marco:
And it just gets... It's just buggy enough in annoying ways on a regular basis, but then losing a timer, to me, that's like a catastrophic failure.
Marco:
That is like...
Marco:
The one thing I am here in this ecosystem for is kitchen timer.
Marco:
It's like that is like the biggest thing that it's the biggest thing that the Echo is usually extremely good and consistent at.
Marco:
So I've decided like we're going to fire the Sonos ones and I'm going to bring two of my home pods here and replace that pair with those.
Marco:
And since we are a family of split opinions on kitchen voice assistants, we have ordered one of the new Echo Balls.
Marco:
And that will be our kitchen timer slash TIFF's music device in the kitchen.
Marco:
And I will use the HomePods.
Marco:
And that will be that.
Marco:
A good question from Riffalo in the chat.
Marco:
Why not HomePod minis?
Marco:
That's a great question.
Marco:
The main answer is I already have like four HomePods, I think.
Marco:
Holy smokes.
Marco:
Also, it's where they're going.
Marco:
It's kind of a large space.
Marco:
It's like a big open space.
Marco:
And so I don't think the minis would sound very good there.
Marco:
I'm going to preorder one HomePod mini to see how it is.
Marco:
I need a AirPlay 2 test device in my office.
Marco:
And that seems like a good one to use because it's small and it'll give me a chance to see how it sounds.
Marco:
And my office is a pretty small room here.
Marco:
So we'll see.
Casey:
I kind of want a HomePod and a lot of the time – like I definitely don't want a $350 or whatever the normal price is HomePod.
Casey:
And I think it's Best Buy had or perhaps does on occasion put them on steep discount.
Casey:
And anytime that happens, I'm like, do I want one?
Casey:
But for better or worse, and yes, I understand all the implications of it, but we have an original tall echo in our kitchen area, and then we have dots in the master bed, in the office, and in Declan's room.
Casey:
And they've been working pretty well for us.
Casey:
And they've been sufficient for the needs that we have.
Casey:
And we'll occasionally play music on them.
Casey:
And it sounds god-awful.
Casey:
Like, I'll be the first to tell you it doesn't sound great.
Marco:
I was going to say, please just tell me you don't play music on the dots, please.
Casey:
Oh, occasionally.
Casey:
And it sounds like utter garbage, but it doesn't happen that often.
Marco:
Played out of your phone speaker, it sounds better than a dot.
Marco:
Oh, it's not that bad.
John:
No, it really is.
John:
More importantly, the thing you just glossed over is that he's got one of these things in his bedroom.
Casey:
That's true.
John:
That's a line I will not cross.
Casey:
I mean, to be honest, it probably doesn't need to be there.
Marco:
I wouldn't do it, but I understand why people who are super into the ecosystem do it.
John:
You just went through on how it has a recording of everything you said, and some of them also keep audio recordings of everything you said.
John:
And yes, you can purge that and so on and so forth.
John:
Yeah, it's definitely a little bit gross.
Casey:
I mean, as with everything else, there are tradeoffs.
Casey:
And I don't need to be lectured about how bad this is, everyone, mostly talking to the people that are not listening to me, the two of you right now.
Casey:
But anyways, I haven't had a problem with the Echo devices in my house.
Casey:
Like occasionally they'll think that we have hailed them when we haven't, but that's actually pretty rare.
Casey:
And we don't use it for music that often.
Casey:
And so I feel like in so many ways...
Casey:
Even though I want really good speakers from the HomePod, I want that in my life, but I don't want to rely on Apple's person in the tube because I know that it stinks.
Casey:
I use it on my phone, I use it on my watch, and it's extremely frustrating.
Casey:
I don't want to add more of Apple's person in the tube into my life.
Casey:
I want less of it in my life.
Casey:
And so even though I really, really would love these very fancy speakers, I bet they sound phenomenal.
Casey:
there's no way that I would want to rely on that is my only shout into the air device.
Casey:
And I guess I could, you know, Hey dingus on my phone or my watch or whatever.
Casey:
But again, I don't want more devices.
Casey:
of Apple's person in my life.
Casey:
I want less.
Casey:
And so on the one hand, I was going to make fun of you for having two different setups in the kitchen and how ridiculous it sounds to me.
Casey:
But I could totally understand how you'd end there.
Casey:
You know, it does make sense.
Marco:
Yeah, because it's sad, but this is kind of what we mentioned last week.
Marco:
The HomePods really kick butt in the sound department.
Marco:
It's not even close.
Marco:
They're way better than the Echoes and way better than the Sonos.
Marco:
Again, not even close.
Marco:
It goes back to what made the HomePod such a relative market flop in the first place.
Marco:
One of them is pretty good sounding.
Marco:
Two of them are great sounding.
Marco:
But two of them at their original list price is $700.
Marco:
And that's a pretty tough sell.
Marco:
That ain't happening.
Marco:
At their frequent sale price of $200, that becomes significantly better.
Marco:
That setup for $200 for one or $400 for two, that's a really good price for what you're getting.
Marco:
It's great for that.
Marco:
And I think the official price is now $300, but you can still find them fairly regularly for around $200 or $250.
Marco:
And for that, I hope that Apple wants to keep making high-end HomePods if they keep making Siri better.
Marco:
At this point, I would just take...
Marco:
Even if Siri is as dumb as it always is, but if it just... Is it just faster?
Marco:
Like, how about just make it faster?
Marco:
That alone would so dramatically improve how useful it is.
Marco:
Because it's... When you compare it to the Alexa ecosystem, it really is... It's the difference between, like... When you say, like, hey, dingus, pause.
Marco:
Or, hey, dingus, play.
Marco:
Just even those simple commands that you would think would be able to be processed 100% locally, simple things like play and pause, basic media stuff, it has like a two or three second delay to respond to those compared to every other voice system is so much faster and it responds just with so much more responsiveness.
Marco:
And so I really just...
Marco:
Please make Siri better because I love everything else about this product line.
Marco:
Just make Siri better.
Marco:
And if you can't make it smarter, at least make it way faster.
Casey:
It's so easy for me to say.
Casey:
I feel like we've made the speech to each other a hundred times.
Casey:
It's so easy for me to be like, you're the biggest company in the world.
Casey:
Throw some frigging money at the problem and fix it.
Casey:
Like, I understand that that's easy for me to say.
Casey:
With all that said, you're the biggest company in the world.
Casey:
Freaking fix it.
Casey:
How is this still a thing all these years later?
Casey:
I just don't get it.
Casey:
And the other thing is, I was talking to somebody about this the other day.
Casey:
I can't remember who it was, but
Casey:
You know, you can use the crutch slash excuse, well, you see, Apple does much better with privacy, and that makes it much more difficult for them to do things in the cloud.
Casey:
Well, yeah, okay, that's true, I'm sure, to some extent.
Casey:
But, like, if you really care about privacy so much, then when you say, hey, dingus, pause my music, don't send that to the cloud.
Casey:
It's exactly what you were talking about a minute ago, Marco.
Casey:
Like, then move some of that on device.
Casey:
Like, these processors, the A14, we're getting benchmarks now,
Casey:
And they're phenomenally fast.
Casey:
Like, why are we needing to send all this to the cloud?
Casey:
The good news is we can send it to the cloud super fast on Verizon 5G.
Casey:
I couldn't get it out with a straight face.
Casey:
I was trying so hard.
Casey:
I promise that'll be the only time.
Casey:
I promise that'll be the only time this episode.
Casey:
Oh, it was too good to pass up.
Casey:
But you know what I'm saying?
Casey:
Like, I do recognize that I am deeply ignorant in so many ways, but particularly when it comes to this, because it is a far harder problem than I'm giving it credit for.
Casey:
You know, it is an extremely difficult problem, especially to do it with the privacy that Apple wants.
Casey:
But at some point, like, I don't understand how this isn't better yet.
Casey:
In the same way, like...
Casey:
A few years ago, and sometimes even today, we'll complain about why Apple software is as unreliable as it can occasionally be.
Casey:
Like, at some point, how do you not just look around and say, this has to change and we have to fix this?
Casey:
And I get it's a big company.
Casey:
I get things move slowly.
Casey:
But gosh, I just don't understand.
Casey:
You want to start some follow-up?
John:
Normally Marco gets like one or two of those, but he managed to wedge in three topics this time.
John:
I'm going for a personal record.
John:
And Casey, you did a good job of stretching it out.
Casey:
Yep, that's what we're here for.
Casey:
Was that a hat trick for Marco?
Casey:
Is that how that works?
Casey:
Anyway, so let's start out with, apparently there's some patent that flew by sometime this month about magnetic connectors for future devices, for future iDevices, Macs, and accessories.
Casey:
I glanced at this and...
Casey:
reading the headline, I assumed that meant something along the lines of the MagSafe of 2020, but with data somehow flowing through it.
Casey:
And then looking at the pictures shown in this link, which of course will be in the show notes, it looks more like MagSafe of the aughts, but with other connectors or something.
Casey:
So John, can you maybe shed light on this and help me understand?
Yeah.
John:
So usual disclaimer about patents, companies patent anything and everything they can possibly patent because our patent system is dumb and it incentivizes them to do that.
John:
So this doesn't mean this is ever going to actually be in a product.
John:
But this is just one more example of using the magic of magnets to make connectors less...
John:
fussy i guess right so we had magsafe with power on laptops a long time ago now we've got the big magsafe ring on the back of our phones also with power but with a you know with a contact type of thing like uh i don't know what you would call it we call it wireless charging but there's really a big wire attached to a big puck and the puck sticks to your thing right so it's basically a giant magsafe connector but i guess without uh direct uh conductive connections between two you know two conductors do not touch each other
John:
That doesn't have the same ring to it as wireless charging.
John:
Anyway, this thing looks like a, like Casey was saying, a magnetic connector where conductors do touch each other, but possibly not limited to just power.
John:
It looks like the type of thing that if you would imagine that Apple was going to, say, replace Lightning with something that's not USB-C but still have something that people could squint their eyes at and say looks like a connector, you could say maybe something like this.
John:
The fact that we're seeing this patent now and there's no product along with it probably means this is never going to be a product, but it's interesting that Apple continues to investigate Lightning.
John:
approaches like this using magnets to make connectors less fussy so you don't have to align them up perfectly so they don't have these little tiny delicate pins i suppose like they just sort of snap into place and you can yank them out and all the benefits that we like from magsafe and this mostly got me thinking about
John:
Like, you know, our computers have fewer and fewer ports of them and fewer and fewer kinds of ports as compared to if you look at a PC from the 80s or 90s, you just count the different number, you know, like the different sizes and shapes of ports, right?
John:
There used to be a lot, especially on a Mac, used to be ADB ports for the keyboard and mouse, serial ports, which were exactly the same shape, but different pins for printer.
John:
Then you had SCSI ports of different varieties.
John:
Sometimes you had a dedicated floppy drive port, depending on your computer.
John:
Like there's all sorts of, you know, PCs and Macs had all sorts of
John:
differently shaped ports and fast forward to today and it's just especially on apple's computers it's just on the laptops a bunch of usbc shaped holes right um but they're still like plugs right and you know a mag safe was good for power and now you know it's good for power again on our phones i suppose magnetically connecting uh
John:
You know, connector designs are have advantages and disadvantages to become dislodged easily and so on and so forth.
John:
But it makes me wonder, like, if the eventual future of all kinds of wired connectors, even just plain old wired connectors that touch two conductors together, you know, traditional connectors.
John:
might eventually all have magnets incorporated into them in some way.
John:
Obviously, it's more expensive to make them that way, and it's probably more difficult, and there's a whole bunch of reasons keeping us away from it.
John:
But the line of connectors, the sort of trend line, has been...
John:
I think to be willing to spend a little bit more, you know, for like a USB-C style or even like Thunderbolt or whatever, where there's a little chip in the connector, willing to spend a little bit more for a benefit in miniaturization, ease of use, where you can put the USB-C port in either way and it still works.
John:
That costs extra money to do that as opposed to having it just fit one way.
John:
So all this is to say is that I hope someday Apple revisits the idea of essentially a data connector that incorporates magnets and
John:
just to make it nicer and easier to use.
Casey:
Yeah, I completely agree.
Casey:
I just still miss MagSafe.
Casey:
And there was just a week or two ago a time when I think I had tripped over the USB-C charging cable on my computer, which was sat perilously, more perilously than it should have been.
Casey:
And it almost took a spill.
Casey:
I know, right?
Casey:
And it almost took a spill onto the floor.
Casey:
No, not that kind of spill.
Casey:
And so, yeah, I miss MagSafe.
Casey:
Like, I understand why it's not here anymore, but I do miss it.
Casey:
The old MagSafe.
Casey:
But we'll see what happens in the future.
Casey:
Michael Betsy all wrote accessory design guidelines for Apple devices exist.
Casey:
And there's a PDF where it describes all the stuff about MagSafe, which is super cool.
Casey:
And I had no idea existed.
John:
Yeah, this is I mean, I went to looking into this because it was a response to my question, like, how strong can the magnets be?
John:
Like, what are the requirements for MagStave?
John:
Could you have a pop socket or a car mount that is stronger than apparently Apple's cases are, you know, in terms of how well it attaches to the back of the thing?
John:
This document tells you if you want to be a MagSafe connector, here's the maximum and minimum force and magnetic interference requirements and how to test whether you're compliant and all that other stuff.
John:
But I can't eyeball the numbers and say, oh, yeah, I can tell what that is.
John:
I don't even know what the units are.
John:
So anyway, if you're curious or if you're just trying to design a MagSafe device, the PDF link will be in the show notes and you can read all about it.
Marco:
Yeah, I tried also to read this document and realized very quickly that I was in way over my head and realized, OK, I'll just wait till the reviews come out.
Marco:
Unfortunately, many reviews have come out already for MagSafe stuff and the first batch of iPhone 12 and 12 Pro embargo reviews are out.
Marco:
And the answer about how strong it is, basically, everyone seems to agree that it's kind of strong, but not super strong.
Marco:
Basically, it's strong enough to help hold some stuff on, but not strong enough to hold things firmly.
Marco:
So not strong enough that if you are...
Marco:
like using it solely as a car mount and you hit a bump on the road your phone will probably fall off of it and you can't like you know swing your phone around like a rodeo rope you know from the end of the cable like you know it'll fly off of that as well so it's strong enough for convenience but not strong enough for like really holding it strongly in place
John:
It does give a range in the document.
John:
So you could say, well, maybe the cases are currently at the low end of the range, but the range is only 800 to 1100 of this unit that I don't understand.
John:
So clearly the range is not very large.
Casey:
It's funny because I am not a pop socket person.
Casey:
I don't really understand it, which means I'm destined to have one in like a year.
Casey:
But nevertheless, I feel like this would be such a cool thing if you could, you know, attach a pop socket simply with magnets.
Casey:
And
Casey:
Based on the reviews and not having one in hand yet, it sounds like that's unlikely to work out very well.
Casey:
And I saw, I'm not going to be able to find it for the show notes, but I saw a tweet where somebody was recording themselves putting a iPhone 12 or 12 Pro with the wallet attachment into their jeans.
Casey:
And I guess they had relatively tight jeans on.
Casey:
And the wallet just kind of like slid right off as the phone was going into the jeans.
Casey:
And again, I haven't had this in hand.
Casey:
Maybe I'm making a mountain out of nothing.
Casey:
But it certainly seemed like, as you said, Marco, it was, I guess, sufficient adequately strong, but not super strong.
Casey:
And I feel like...
Casey:
It would be neat if it was possible for the other side of the magnet to be crazy strong.
Casey:
That's probably also not how magnets work, but whatever.
Casey:
I just think it would be neat to be able to do like a car mount with only a magnet, a pop socket with only a magnet.
Marco:
Yeah, well, I think the problem is that magnets hold pretty strongly in one direction, but pretty weakly in the other.
Marco:
And so the force of the magnets clinging together.
Marco:
The sandwich closing force between the wallet and the phone, if you think about them as pieces of bread, the sandwich pushing together force is strong, but the slidey force, when you try to slide them laterally from each other, is very weak.
John:
You're killing the physicist in the audience.
Marco:
Yes, sorry, I don't know the term for this.
Marco:
But basically, if you tried to pull the wallet straight off the back, it would take much more force than if you slide it off the back.
Marco:
And so I think that's going to impact like what kinds of accessories make sense and what kind of strength you actually get in practice.
John:
I think you can overcome some of this because like so this document with the requirements, people don't have to follow these requirements.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I'm sure people can ship whatever they want.
John:
So if you want to make a pop socket with those super strong rare earth magnets inside it and see if you can find a way to get that to successfully attach to a MagSafe iPhone without destroying the phone, that will be harder to pull off and could work with a pop socket and will totally probably not be compliant with this document at all.
John:
But...
John:
If it can be made, people will make it and try it.
John:
And one of the PopSocket brands said they were making some kind of MagSafe PopSocket.
John:
It wasn't clear to me whether they were saying they were going to make a PopSocket that can attach with MagSafe or they were going to make a MagSafe-enabled case that had a PopSocket mechanically part of the case, which is another thing you can buy.
John:
So we'll see.
John:
There's magnets inside the phone.
John:
What is outside the phone is up to whatever people can manufacture that will still function.
Marco:
Yeah, I think I'm going to recommend that if you want to use any kind of magnetic pop socket, I'm going to recommend you also get AppleCare.
John:
It'll come with the pop socket.
John:
With the wallet attachment, a lot of people have done that in their reviews of trying to stick it in their pocket and showing how the wallet just slides off.
John:
It doesn't look like it's particularly firmly attached.
John:
I think maybe even Gruber mentioned this, that you could actually use that little wallet just as a wallet by itself without attaching it to your phone and just have it attached to your phone sometime if it's in a loose pocket.
John:
But it's a little bit like the infomercials on...
John:
not infomercials like the the as seen on tv product advertising said does this ever happen to you and you're trying to scramble eggs and you catch your house on fire right yeah they're doing it wrong maybe that actually happens to casey like if uh if you actually had that wallet attachment and you wanted to put in your pocket you just turn the wallet part to face your leg instead of facing out and then slide it in your pocket and it would probably be more successful let's say like i can't imagine no no think about the protrusion of the phone that would result from having it wallet side in yeah
John:
I'm not saying that the wallet attachment is perfectly fine in your pocket.
John:
Clearly, it's like you said, Marco, the force in that direction is enough to dislodge it no matter what.
John:
Even if you turned it around the face of your leg and slid it in, it still could dislodge the wallet just so they would both be in your pocket at the end.
John:
So it's not a good design.
John:
This is not a good accessory.
John:
But I feel like the people making the videos put it in the worst possible light to show how it pops off.
John:
Because it, you know...
John:
all i can say is if you plan on putting your phone in a pants pocket uh don't bother getting the wallet thing because you'll forget and put it the other way or it'll slide off and you won't notice and that's probably not great in a jacket pocket i think it would fit fine but yeah or even just like you know loose pants or a purse like if you have like you know cargo shorts like those are super loose you could you could i don't know about a purse
John:
Purse is a hostile environment with lots of stuff sloshing around in there and they could get dislodged from each other.
John:
Personally, I don't actually understand the idea of putting credit cards attached to your phone.
John:
I guess it's like people have such a minimal wallet that they don't carry anything except for like one or two cards and a little tiny bit of cash.
Casey:
You don't even understand what that means.
Casey:
That is impossible for your brain to understand the idea of a minimal wallet.
John:
So this thing on the wallet, again, it holds three cards.
John:
That's what it holds, three credit cards.
John:
It doesn't hold four.
John:
You can do two or one, right?
John:
How minimal does your life have to be that you only have three cards?
John:
Okay, driver's license, two credit cards?
John:
That's pretty minimal.
John:
That is a very demanding minimum.
John:
I don't know how many people can pull that off routinely.
John:
Okay.
John:
um maybe you don't need any credit cards because you pay for everything in apple pay that's fine too and maybe you normally take your big wallet but sometimes you don't but i just feel like it's so minimal like for something from apple they're usually trying to find to aim at like the mass market i feel like that wallet accessory is not aimed at the mass market it's aimed at like a minimal wallet people or people who love to just move their driver's license or their id or whatever to and from or maybe people don't take their ids with them i don't know i don't know how regular people live with their wallets it just seems like it's it's so minimal and so fixed um
John:
You can have two credit cards and how many bills can you fit in there if people still carry cash?
John:
No coins, obviously.
John:
How about like a transit card, one credit card in your ID?
John:
But no cash then because there's no more room for cash?
Marco:
Health insurance card?
Marco:
Does anybody?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I am a fairly minimal wallet person, but even I can't get down to just three cards and nothing else.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
They also have a line of tech cashmere stuff and all sorts of, you know, long sleeve tees that are super soft.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Most of my socks and most of my T-shirts are theirs.
Marco:
And many of my long sleeve things as well.
Marco:
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Marco:
They have a great hoodie.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
John, why don't you tell us about periscope camera lenses, please?
John:
This is from Timo Grun, who says that the phone cameras in Android phones that are that are periscope lenses, which is not like a submarine periscope where like, you know, periscope comes out of submarine.
John:
Think of that.
John:
That would be a lot cooler.
John:
yeah yeah think of that but the entire periscope is inside the phone and just the little part that pokes out is parking out of a hole in the phone right anyway uh he tells me that there is no moving lens elements in those it's just a way to get more focal length right so they are inside the phone and there's this long tunnel where the lenses are away but they don't actually move relative to each other so it's a way to get a big zoom
John:
But it still fixed zoom.
John:
I don't know if there's some Android phone out there that actually has moving lens elements, but according to Teemo, no such lock.
John:
So that makes a little bit more sense.
John:
And it still is like the only way to get a reasonable focal distance without actually have something sticking out of your phone.
John:
But no, no optical zoom.
Casey:
So I'm not trying to be snarky or funny or anything.
Casey:
I feel like I've heard people that we know and trust, different people, say the iPhones have absolutely become cheaper this year.
Casey:
And then I've heard other people say the iPhones have absolutely become more expensive this year.
Casey:
Can one of you shed light on this?
Casey:
Like, what is the real deal here?
John:
It depends on what you care about.
John:
Some of the price comparisons are confused by the $30 discount that you get for these special deals with everybody, which, by the way, has been extended to T-Mobile as well.
John:
So now in the US, at least, it's fairly uniform that they all do this $30 off for some special offer or whatever thing.
John:
But also because of the mini.
John:
and if you're trying to compare like what the cheapest new iphone was that's not a continuing model from last year uh but then you say but wait a second it's not the same because last year i could get an 11 a non-pro 11 but it's so much bigger than the mini so how can you tell me the mini is the new version is the replacement for the 11 but it's so much smaller so isn't that a worse phone unless you like the mini better and then it's a better phone but then what about the storage size comparisons it's
John:
It's a little bit confusing.
John:
I think net net, I would say the new iPhones this year are slightly more expensive towards the bottom of the range because of the OLED screens.
John:
But it's confused by the fact that they're different sizes and the storage changes and the partner deals and so on and so forth.
John:
When it was LCD on the lower end, you probably got more or less more phone for your money.
John:
But in the grand scheme of things, I would just call it a wash because the differences we're talking about here are $10, $20, $30, and maybe more if you start subtracting out, which we'll get to in a second, the power adapter that you might have to buy and stuff like that.
John:
So I can understand someone making the argument and being successful in the numbers that they are slightly more expensive this year, especially on the low end.
John:
Yeah.
John:
It's not the type of difference that I think is either lasting or particularly significant because I think the OLED screen prices next year will go down and things will basically even out.
John:
And related to that, we talked about this with the new iPhones and how they don't include headphones or a power adapter.
John:
But it's like, but we don't know how much the new iPhones cost.
John:
again, with the OLED screen, like maybe the new iPhones just cost more.
John:
So the fact that they didn't really adjust the prices as compared, it's not clear to us that we're saving any money by not having those accessories in the box.
John:
In fact, the prices look more or less the same as they were last year in the ballpark.
John:
So it feels like we're getting cheated out of that money.
John:
And what I said in the last show is like, if, for example, they take an existing phone that comes with headphones and a power adapter and removes those from that existing product and keeps the price the same, then you know Apple's just taking that as extra profit, right?
John:
Well, that's exactly what they did.
John:
The XR11 and SE, exactly the same phones as they were last year.
John:
If you buy them now, you get them without headphones and a power adapter.
John:
And did Apple adjust the prices?
John:
No, they did not.
John:
At least now they're being consistent.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So, I mean, it's just, you know, a little bit of extra profit margin on some old phones.
John:
And, you know, who knows if the margins are exactly the same on the new phones because the OLED prices have gone down since the iPhone X, but OLEDs are still more expensive than LCDs.
John:
So I feel like the reason the prices are up a little bit on the low-end phones is mostly due to that OLED screen, which...
John:
if the parts reports of past phones are to be believed were the most expensive part in the iPhone line with the interaction of the X. More expensive than the system on a chip, more expensive than the battery, the biggest single expense was, more expensive than the case, the biggest single expense is the screen.
Casey:
Another thing that's probably expensive within these phones is batteries.
Casey:
John, where could I find the official battery specs for every Apple product ever?
John:
Apparently it's in some weird, you know, some legal compliance document where they have to list all this stuff.
John:
So we'll put links in the show notes.
John:
It's a little bit of a trick.
John:
You have to start off at like apple.com slash legal slash more resources slash gtc.html.
John:
And from there, it links to another page.
John:
And from there, it links to a PDF.
John:
And there you can find it.
John:
Specs on all the batteries for all the products not just the new phones The problem is probably my perspective because I don't know what this means is it gives the battery Ratings in watt hours and watt hours is the same as milliamp hours divided by volts But I don't know what voltage to divide by to convert watt hours into milliamp hours because we're always used to like comparing the you know the iPhone battery sizes by milliamp hours, right and
John:
aren't they usually around like 3.7 volts for lithium but i don't know it's there could be like there's like slight variation some years i think that makes it hard to calculate yeah anyway um so uh roland who sent this in did some calculations uh and i guess we can't really put these in the show notes but you can look them up in the document if you want so the iphone 12 mini has an 8.57 watt hour battery but there's nothing to compare that to so we don't know if it's bigger or smaller
John:
The iPhone 12 has a 10.78 watt hour battery, which is down 9.5% from the 11.
John:
So smaller battery in the 12.
John:
12 Pro is also down, or has the same size battery, and that's down 7.6% versus the 11 non-Pro from last year, right?
John:
Because that was, I suppose, a smaller battery?
John:
Oh, yeah, it's a smaller battery in the Pro.
John:
Because the 11 was the beefier phone last year.
John:
Um, and the 12 point, uh, the iPhone 12 pro max has a 14.13 watt hour battery, which is down 6.1% versus the old max.
John:
So all the batteries on the phones that have roughly comparable phones last year got smaller.
John:
Uh, it makes kind of sense.
John:
Like we know the phones, the new pro phones are like 0.7 millimeters thinner.
John:
So where is that going to come from?
John:
You got to have a smaller battery in there.
John:
That makes sense.
John:
Um, also the, like the old iPhone 11, uh,
John:
There is no phone that size anymore.
John:
Now it's kind of shrunken down.
John:
The 12 Pro has the similar size screen, but in a smaller case, right?
John:
So these batteries are all smaller.
John:
The battery ratings, according to Apple's battery lifetime, look like they're in the same ballpark.
John:
I suppose the five nanometer system on a chip is where the savings come from.
John:
How can we get away with having anywhere from a six to almost 10% smaller battery and still have similar battery life?
John:
Hey, five nanometer.
John:
Maybe that'll do it.
John:
So once we get these phones, we'll see what the battery life is like.
John:
But...
John:
In case you're wondering, it seems like if watt hours are any kind of reasonable comparison of battery capacity, for example, if the voltage is the same across generations, then these are slightly smaller batteries in these phones.
Casey:
So we have a old, old bet to settle from two years ago on the 13th of September, 2018.
Casey:
John said in the next five years, Apple will sell a new phone that is smaller than the 10.
Casey:
And Marco said something along the lines of, I'll take that bet.
Casey:
And then there was a back and forth and it was concluded that if that happens, Marco will own John a dollar.
Casey:
So, Marco, if you wouldn't mind Apple Pay cashing John $1 as we're sitting here, you can do it on the show.
Casey:
I'll allow it, John.
Casey:
Then if you could please settle that bet, I would appreciate it.
John:
I'll attempt to do that right now.
John:
I'd forgotten all about this bet.
John:
So did I. I mean, it was said within the next five years, and we're like two years and change into that, so I got it right in the middle of the range there.
John:
Marco was adamant that they wouldn't make a new, smaller phone, not like some existing phone they were still selling, but a new, smaller phone than the X, and I was pretty sure they would, and they did.
Casey:
How about them apples?
John:
Marco wanted to bet $5, but I talked him down to $1.
John:
How's that for shrewd negotiation?
Casey:
This was from Tim Chatton, by the way.
Casey:
Oh, I heard that.
Casey:
I know that noise.
Casey:
Well done.
Casey:
See how easy that is?
Casey:
You can do it while you record.
Casey:
And you didn't even put an ampersand in, did you?
John:
I heard the noise over on Marco's side, but that finally came through over here.
John:
I was like, what is this lag?
Marco:
I just want a dollar to somebody.
John:
Yeah, I don't know.
John:
I think I have auto received now.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Received just now.
John:
I did it.
John:
I got a dollar.
John:
Yay.
Casey:
I got a dollar.
Casey:
I hate being in debt.
Casey:
I had to pay immediately.
Casey:
Hey, hey, hey, hey.
Marco:
Oh, I have some very quick follow up before I forget on my broken time machine drive with the 7.68 terabyte micron SSD.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
What technology did you buy?
Yeah.
John:
They have a new one with Verizon CPUs in them.
Marco:
With Verizon 5G CPUs in them?
John:
That's what I said, yeah.
Marco:
So anyway, I got a new enclosure.
Marco:
My first theory was, well, I have these two giant SSDs in this enclosure.
Marco:
It was kind of seeming flaky.
Marco:
Maybe the enclosure is bad.
Marco:
So, you know, before I go through the hassle of, you know, trying to get some kind of warranty service from Micron, you know, let me replace the enclosure because they're really cheap.
Marco:
And I ordered some enclosures, came in, and I learned very quickly that almost all...
Marco:
2.5-inch disk enclosures don't support the capacity of 7 terabytes or 7.6 terabytes.
Marco:
Oh, interesting.
Marco:
They have capacity limits still.
Marco:
In this day and age, you can get a brand new USB-C, USB 3.0, whatever enclosure for a SATA drive today that if it's made for 2.5-inch drives, which all these little bus-powered ones are, most of them have a capacity limit of 4 terabytes.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I don't know why this hasn't... Well, I guess I do know why because hard drives, like 2.5-inch hard drives, I don't think are available anything bigger than 4 terabytes.
John:
I think there's one that maxes out at 5.
John:
People used to sell 5s, but it was actually two 2.5-inch drives combining to 5, but I think there might be a single 5-terabyte mechanism.
John:
But anyway, it seems kind of borderline to have chipsets limited to 4 when that is even anywhere close to the actual maximum drive size, but...
John:
Right.
Marco:
And I would assume that the 2.5 inch interface chips would probably be the same chips as a 3.5 inch enclosure is that, you know, 3.5 inch drives are routinely above eight terabytes now.
John:
Oh, no, because the 3.5 ones aren't going to be bus powered.
John:
Right.
John:
So the 2.5 ones, the entire chipset has to be bus powered.
John:
And that's a whole other kettle of fish.
Marco:
Yeah, well, anyway, so anyone out there who for whatever reason wants to buy an almost 8 terabyte SSD and you want to put it in a USB enclosure know that most of them don't support the capacity.
Marco:
The one I bought the first time happened to support it.
Marco:
I did eventually get another one that did.
Marco:
I will put a link to the good one that supports it in the show notes.
Marco:
It's by Cable Matters.
Marco:
And otherwise it seems fine.
Marco:
Anyway, I replaced the enclosure with, instead of the one double enclosure, I now have two single enclosures and they seem to work perfectly.
Marco:
I've been running it for almost a week now and I've had no issues.
Marco:
So it does seem like it was simply a defective enclosure and I'm happily back to my non-Synology lifestyle so far.
John:
Oh, fine.
John:
I should have made you a $1 bet about that, too.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Well, I just assume that I'm right from now on.
John:
It'll save us a lot of time.
Casey:
It would certainly save us a lot of feedback email.
Casey:
Moving on.
Casey:
Alex Chan had a very interesting blog post that went up over the last few days.
Casey:
And the question was asked on this show and other places as well.
Casey:
How much do I, you know, whoever, really use the ultrawide and telephoto lenses on my 11 Pro?
Casey:
And Jason Snell had answered this question by way of, what is it, smart folders in photos?
Casey:
Smart albums.
Casey:
Whatever it's called.
Casey:
Smart albums, thank you, in photos.
Casey:
And we'll put a link to that in the show notes.
Casey:
But Alex, coming right after my own heart, decided to use EXIFTool.
Casey:
And if you're not familiar, EXIFTool is a command line tool that lets you read or write EXIF data, E-X-I-F, which contains a whole bunch of metadata about pictures.
Casey:
And Alex wrote a one-liner that will...
Casey:
crawl a particular folder and spit out the results of how many of your pictures have been taken with each of the different lenses.
Casey:
Now, this gets very complicated very quickly because apparently in certain scenarios, you'll see kind of unusual lens names like dual camera, for example, which people thought might be portrait mode photos, except maybe it's not.
Casey:
And I could go on for hours.
Casey:
But
Casey:
Suffice it to say, I looked at my personal results for 2019 and 2020, and I'll put it in the show notes.
Casey:
But basically, the summary for me anyway, was I used the ultra wide for 7% of my photos, the wide for standard lens for 83% of my photos.
Casey:
And the telephoto lens for a full 10% of the photos I've taken with my 11 Pro, which is probably about on par with what I guessed.
Casey:
But it is nice to be able to see those numbers plain as day right in front of you.
Casey:
Oh, actually, I should specify this is both Aaron and me.
Casey:
I said me, but that's not true.
Casey:
This was our joint like merged photo library.
Casey:
So that was actually the both of us.
Casey:
But nevertheless, the list family, 7% ultra wide, 83% wide, 10% telephoto.
Casey:
And that's just how we stacked up.
Casey:
And I presume neither of you did your homework and that's okay.
Marco:
I totally did my homework.
Casey:
Oh my God.
Casey:
That is a bet I would have lost.
Casey:
That is a bet I very much would have lost.
Casey:
Holy smokes, Marco.
Casey:
I am so proud of you.
Casey:
So where did you end up?
Marco:
I mean, in typical fashion, I did it like 15 minutes before the show, but still.
Of course.
Marco:
That's when I looked at notes and saw this.
Marco:
I'm like, uh-oh, I better run these numbers.
Marco:
So I actually came out roughly where I expected to with a couple of exceptions.
Marco:
So out of the 2,400 or so photos I shot since having the iPhone 11 Pro,
Marco:
I have about 9% ultra-wide, 75% 1x, and about 16% telephoto.
Casey:
Oh, wow.
Casey:
That's fairly significant.
Marco:
That is more frequent use of the telephoto lens than I would have guessed.
Marco:
But it is also still just, you know, 16%.
Marco:
If 16% of the time the photos are a little bit worse because I had to use digital zoom to get them instead of using the actual optical lens,
Marco:
That's not great, but if it comes with other substantial benefits and I don't have the option to have both those substantial benefits and the cool telephoto lens, then I think I might accept those benefits.
Marco:
And so, you know, the ultra wide, if I need the ultra wide, that can't be simulated with the One X. Like if you need something wider than what you have, you can't interpolate it.
Marco:
You have to just capture it.
Marco:
So if I'm going to have only two lenses,
Marco:
I think I would pick the 0.5 and the 1X because I actually have ended up using the 0.5X lens more than I would have guessed.
Marco:
Like when they announced it last year, like, you know, this was the first year that had them.
Marco:
I thought I'm never going to use that.
Marco:
I figured I would take like one or two shots for the novelty value and it was brand new and I would never use it again.
Casey:
That's what I thought too.
Marco:
But in fact, I have actually used it.
Marco:
And I looked through the pictures like, you know, what are my ultra-wide pictures?
Marco:
And it isn't just all up front in the first few weeks of having the phone.
Marco:
It's spread pretty evenly throughout the year because I do actually end up using it more regularly than I would have guessed.
Marco:
And then I looked through the 2X pictures from the 2X lens that I'm about to lose by going to the non-pro phone.
Marco:
I was surprised, like, seeing a lot of them like, oh, yeah, I guess that is nice.
Marco:
But, again, when I open these pictures up and I view them at full size, I see, oh, they actually are noticeably crappier in quality compared to the One X cameras.
Marco:
They are significantly noisier.
Marco:
A lot of times the color isn't as good.
Marco:
The contrast isn't as good because it isn't as good of a camera.
Marco:
And so I'm not talking about going from having a 2x ability to having no 2x ability.
Marco:
I'm going from having one compromised 2x ability to having a differently compromised 2x ability.
Marco:
And from that point of view, I'm losing less than I would have thought.
Marco:
Now, one significant thing – this is, I guess, an important follow-up – one massive thing that people wrote in to point out that I just didn't even think about –
Marco:
is portrait mode because I never use it because I really still hate it.
Marco:
If you are a frequent user of portrait mode, yeah, you should probably keep the telephoto lens because it plays a pretty important role there.
Marco:
So, sorry for leaving that out.
John:
Don't the new phones do portrait mode without the
John:
Telephoto lens?
Marco:
They do, but it's worse.
John:
All right.
John:
I never use either.
John:
I don't know.
Casey:
I thought that, and I might be completely wrong about this, but I thought that LiDAR was also assisting on the pros anyway, was assisting with portrait mode.
Casey:
And if that's true, something I'm curious to see, and I feel like I saw this on Panzerino's review on TechCrunch, but one of the things, I actually mostly like portrait mode.
Casey:
Like for the purpose that it serves, I think it's pretty good.
Casey:
But some of the faults of portrait mode or the common faults of portrait mode are glasses and at the border between a person's hair and the background, things can get blurred either too much or too little or just weirdly.
Casey:
But the number one thing that drives me just batty about portrait mode is when, say, you're standing and you have your hands on your hips like Peter Pan style, you know what I mean?
Casey:
And so you have this empty space, like a triangle.
Marco:
Oh, yeah, the little window.
Casey:
Yeah, you have that triangle of empty space between your torso and your arms, right?
Casey:
Well, in portrait mode, almost always that triangle of space will be perfectly in focus because the algorithm hasn't realized it needs to blur that area.
Casey:
And then everything else can look pretty good.
Casey:
But as soon as you look at the insides of your Peter Pan arms, then you realize, oh, God, oh, again, ugh.
Casey:
And this happens to me all the time when I try to use portrait mode.
Casey:
And I wonder, and I haven't seen this written anywhere, but I really wonder if the LiDAR sensor is used for portrait mode, even in the daytime,
Casey:
Will that help fix this problem?
Casey:
Because for me, I'm not saying for Marco, but for me, if that triangle was treated appropriately by portrait mode or equivalent scenarios that are similar to it, I think I would use portrait mode a lot because I can get over the weird merging between a hairline and the background.
Casey:
That's not that big a deal to me.
Casey:
But golly, the triangles that peek through drive me bananas.
Casey:
And so I am hopeful that maybe the 12 Pro will make that a lot better.
Casey:
But again, I could be speaking way out of turn and maybe that's not even close to reality.
John:
lighter dots are pretty far apart right so if you're expecting it to make like a pixel perfect perfect depth map of your arm no it's not going to do that like you've seen all the things of like with an ir camera how many lidar dots there and how far it will certainly know that there are gaps there but then it will be up to coordination with the sort of ml thing to say okay
John:
uh lidar has detected that there's a big hole here but we don't know where the edges of the hole are we could roughly say they're kind of maybe triangular shaped but in terms of finding the actual edges then it would have to stick the ml on it and say find the edge of the arm and the body you know in theory you could definitely improve things but i i just don't like this whole feature so i don't really care how well it does but you try that out you try some peter pan arms when you get your phone and we'll see how it does
John:
i absolutely will i definitely will why is it why is it peter pan arms is peter pan known for hands on hips i guess i suppose i mean like i think of like hook the movie hook which i liked and i know nobody else did and that's the one with dustin hoffman yes and robin williams i love that movie okay sure yep no not the animated peter pan but that one all right
Casey:
Yeah, well, consider I was, like, 10 when Hook came out.
Casey:
And so I was, like, right in the rough age group for when that would be great.
Marco:
Hook was, like, contemporary for us.
Marco:
Like, it was made for us.
Casey:
Yes, exactly right.
Casey:
So, anyways, so, yeah, I just keep thinking of, like, Robin Williams, like, floating through the silhouette he had cut in Captain Hook's sail, you know, with his hands, you know, fisted on his hips, and he's just got that triangle on either side of him.
Casey:
Yeah, spoiler, literally.
Casey:
Mm-hmm.
Casey:
Actually, that is actually a pretty big spoiler for a 20-year-old movie, but here we are.
Casey:
So anyway, so the point is I'm going to try that once my phones come in, which I'm really looking forward to.
Casey:
John, I hope you didn't do your homework, but did you do your homework?
John:
No, I thought this was for Marco because he's the one getting the camera without the lens, but I don't have to check because I'm getting the camera with all the lenses, so I don't have to worry about that.
Marco:
Hey.com
Marco:
God, I wish I had this for the last 20 years.
Marco:
Or you can also give people a speakeasy code and they're allowed instantly like a club.
Marco:
And also, privacy is important.
Marco:
Hey isn't just an email client.
Marco:
It's a full-on email service provider.
Marco:
They never can read your emails or sell your information to companies or show you ads ever.
Marco:
Gmail and Yahoo cannot say the same thing.
Marco:
And Hey.com also automatically blocks the vast majority of tracking pixels.
Marco:
A lot of people don't realize that marketers and salespeople are spying on you all the time, trying to see when and creepily where you open your emails so they can sell you more stuff and steal more of your data and attention.
Marco:
So not only does Hey block spy trackers, but they even notify you when someone who's emailing you is trying to spy on you and tell you exactly which spy tool they're using, which I think is kind of great.
Marco:
So see for yourself at Hey.com.
Marco:
You can get a 14-day free trial there.
Marco:
Hey.com for a 14-day free trial.
Marco:
Try that today.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Hey.com for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
what did you buy and i'd also like to know did you buy a case and did you buy any sort of apple care plus and we will start with you john i got a graphite 12 pro 256 i got apple care because i always do which somehow prevents me from ever breaking my phone apparently did you do the lump sum apple care or did you do the month-to-month because i don't remember this being an option in the past it may have been it wasn't an option in the past it's been an option for a while
John:
I get the lump sum because I get a new phone every two years, so I'm just going to end after two years, no matter what, right?
John:
So it's not like I need to have it to continue to go on.
John:
I did not get a case because I want the leather one, provided the leather one has a cutout on the bottom like the clear one.
John:
If it turns out the leather one doesn't have a cutout on the bottom like the clear case, I don't know what the heck I'm going to do.
John:
I mean, I might start looking at third-party cases.
John:
I might try the clear one, although reportedly the buttons on the clear one are terrible, and honestly I don't like the look of it, but...
John:
I am very much anti-lip on the bottom.
John:
So I'm going to have to try to use this with AppleCare and without a case until the leather ones are available so I can make this determination.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
Did you get any chargers, MagSafe chargers or anything like that?
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
And I got the MagSafe puck.
John:
This actually already arrived.
John:
So that's upstairs now.
John:
I got the MagSafe puck.
John:
And the other thing that I was fretting about on Twitter before the day of ordering was the options they give you in the ordering process.
John:
uh are more confusing to me than they than i remember them being in the past in the past i would order my new phone on my existing phone and during the order process it would say hey i noticed you're ordering on an iphone because i'd be using like the apple store app do you want to buy a new phone to replace the phone that you're buying it on now i'd say yes that's in fact exactly what i want to do and and then i would just go through now that option wasn't presented to me instead i got two options neither of which made any sense to me because i don't understand the weird world
John:
of phones so I asked on Twitter hey which of these two options should I choose and pretty much half the people said the first option and the other half the people said the second option everyone was very sure that they were correct helpful that is absolutely I saw a lot of this go by because I chimed in with the actually correct answer but yes everyone was utterly convinced that they were correct either way
John:
Yeah, and the thing is they have the same reasons.
John:
They're like, you should pick the first choice because if you pick the first choice, you don't have to pay Verizon an activation fee.
John:
And people would say, you should pick the second choice because if you pick the second choice, you don't have to pay Verizon an activation fee.
John:
And some people said, no matter what choice you pick, you'll have to pay an activation fee.
John:
It was just all over the map.
John:
Like every possible permutation.
John:
So I was like, okay, well, apparently nobody knows because people had stories about what they did.
John:
I did this with this carrier and this time and this phone.
John:
This is what happened to me.
John:
But always like two or three variables would be different.
John:
Well, that wasn't this year.
John:
It was last year.
John:
Well, you're on T-Mobile and I'm on Verizon.
John:
Well, you live in a different country.
John:
And so, you know, it doesn't.
John:
So there was I thought it would be I thought it was clear cut and I just didn't know.
John:
But apparently it's very confusing.
John:
So anyway, the upshot is that I'm pretty sure I could have picked either option.
John:
It would have been fine.
John:
I think no matter what I did, I would end up with an unlocked phone.
John:
I think I could have bought a phone without a SIM and taken my SIM out of my existing 10S and put it in there.
John:
But although I wasn't sure which option would let me do that.
John:
And I think I can order one with a new SIM and just have it transfer service to that.
John:
In the final analysis, in the mad rush to try to get the phone on the morning of, I don't even remember which one I picked.
John:
I'm pretty sure I picked the top one, which I think means they're going to send me a phone with a brand new SIM in it.
John:
And when I turn it on, I'll activate it.
John:
But it'll be a surprise.
John:
Wonderful.
Marco:
uh marco you have not ordered anything is that correct or well you might have for tiff what did what did she do well i admit i was tempted and when the uh time came i was i was awake i was ready i was like you know already up working and i just got him back from school drop off and i thought you know what let me let me check the app and i opened up the app and there it is and i could order i still had day one delivery for whatever combo i would get for the uh for the regular pro and
Marco:
I mean, I was very tempted, but I let it go by.
Marco:
I didn't because, you know, as much as I think I'm going to miss that telephoto lens, when I look at the iPhone 12 Pro,
Marco:
compared to the iPhone 11 Pro, it doesn't excite me.
Marco:
I don't think 5G is going to be a meaningful deal for me during this year.
Marco:
I don't even think it covers where I am right now.
Marco:
I'm pretty sure there's no AT&T coverage where I am for 5G, and I'm not going to switch to Verizon for lots of other good reasons.
Marco:
Basically, it doesn't cover a lot of places I need to be.
Marco:
So, like my house.
Casey:
Have you looked at the 5G map?
Casey:
Because a lot of...
Marco:
Oh, no, no.
Marco:
I'm not talking about Verizon 5G versus LTE.
Marco:
I'm saying Verizon period does not cover my house.
Casey:
Sure.
Casey:
No, I'm sorry.
Casey:
I'm back on AT&T because there is a whole lot of 5G everywhere that I think you would possibly be on a regular basis.
Marco:
Seriously.
Marco:
I'll check.
Marco:
Maybe I could have read the map wrong.
Marco:
Anyway, I'm not super excited about 5G yet.
Marco:
I mean, you're getting 5G no matter what phone you get.
Marco:
So why are you talking about this?
Casey:
That's a good point.
Marco:
As an upgrade to the 11, if I look at my 11 Pro today, yes, I know for everybody out there, I know it's ridiculous to upgrade every year, but this is what we do.
Marco:
So compared to the 11 Pro, I don't see a major reason to upgrade if what I'm going to be getting is mostly the same as what I have.
Marco:
And when you look at 11 Pro to 12 Pro,
Marco:
If you don't care super strongly about 5G, well, what else is there?
Marco:
The 1X camera got a little bit better.
Marco:
The A14 is a little bit faster.
Marco:
And you got straight sides.
John:
It's a lot faster.
John:
And you get HDR video.
John:
But you also get the A14 with the mini.
John:
And you also get HDR video with the mini, just not as good.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And you also get the better 1X camera with the mini.
Marco:
In order to have a really big upgrade from the 11 Pro to the 12 Pro, I think you have to go max.
Marco:
If you want it to feel like a big year-on-year thing, the sensible thing to do is don't upgrade.
Marco:
If you have an 11, anything, because it's not better enough.
Marco:
But if you're going to be an idiot and upgrade every year and pick a new phone because you're fortunate enough to be able to do that...
Marco:
I don't get excited by going from the 11 Pro to the 12 Pro.
Marco:
I think if you're a Max person, like what Tiff is, Tiff's a Max person, she's getting a massive camera upgrade by going to the 12 Pro Max.
Marco:
So that's going to be great, and that makes total sense, and that's a good reason to be excited.
Marco:
And as this event, as this shopping day blew by, I realized I don't want the 12 Pro, I don't think.
Marco:
I mean, you know, somebody's going to play this back to me in a month when I've gotten the Mini, hated it, returned it, and gotten the Pro instead.
Marco:
But as we stand right now, I'm not super excited about it.
Marco:
I also, I saw all the reviews that came out over the last couple days, and I really don't like the massive fingerprint magnetness of the steel polished edges on the Pro.
Marco:
I really don't like that they kept the very slippery matte finish glass back on the Pro.
Marco:
So what they've made, and I'm happy to see that all the reviews basically say that if you've been using an 11 Pro or a XS or a X, it is basically that same size.
Marco:
Even though it is officially very slightly larger, it feels the same.
Marco:
That's good.
Marco:
I'm happy to hear that.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I'm not that happy with this size.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
I deal with it, but it's a little bit bigger and a little bit heavier than I want.
Marco:
And so that's why when I look at this lineup, the Mini excites me because this is not a massive year for huge gotta-have-it-hardware upgrades.
Marco:
Unless you're a max person, then you get that awesome camera.
Marco:
But otherwise, it's not a massive year for that.
Marco:
Again, 5G notwithstanding, because I just don't care that much about 5G yet.
Marco:
And so if it's not going to be a massive year for that, I feel like I have to make a bigger change if I want this to be worth doing at all.
Marco:
And I have thought about just skipping this year for the first time ever because, you know, whatever.
Marco:
But there is one massive change that I really want and it's the form factor.
Marco:
I really want that smaller phone.
Marco:
And I think even though I'll be giving up the 2X camera and I won't be getting like the full Dolby Vision 60 frames a second, I won't be getting the new ProRAW format, I don't think I would use either of those things.
Marco:
And I think, as I mentioned earlier, I think the 2X camera is complicated to the point where I don't think I'll be missing it as much as I might think.
Marco:
But again, we will see.
Marco:
But I'm super excited about holding that little phone.
Marco:
I have a feeling it's going to feel awesome.
Marco:
Like I have a feeling going back to that size and having such a tiny light phone, that's easy to maneuver in your hand and everything and going without a case.
Marco:
Cause I'll get the, you know, the, the low end glass, which will be more grippy.
Marco:
I'll have the low end aluminum sides, which won't show fingerprints.
Marco:
I will be able to go without a case because of its size and grippiness, which means the buttons will feel better.
Marco:
It'll feel better in my hand.
Marco:
It'll look nicer.
Marco:
So I think it'll be a substantial upgrade to go to the mini in terms of just handling and feel.
Marco:
I think it'll feel great.
John:
You can get a cool color, too.
Marco:
Well, asterisk.
John:
Why?
Marco:
You can get a cool color if you like blue or pistachio green.
Marco:
Uh, but I'm a red person mostly in colors and the red is not a good, it's not a good red.
Marco:
It's well, it's not a good red for me.
Marco:
It's not what I want.
Marco:
It's definitely like, yeah, it's, it's like a coral or salmon kind of color.
Marco:
It's, it's pretty far from like the blue.
John:
What's wrong with the blue?
John:
Let me, let me look at the blue.
Marco:
it's a little flat for me honestly but i'm i'm not much of a blue person like blue is not one of my like favorite colors like it's fine i get some things that are blue but i'm not i don't love it enough to make it my phone for a year whereas uh the red i would if it was like a more deep red but unfortunately it's not so what i think i'm this is the one thing i'm not excited about is the color um
Marco:
I think I'm going to go either white or black.
Marco:
I'm leaning towards white, and I'm not going to get a chance to see them in person, I don't think, anytime soon.
John:
Oh, the black that looks really black, too.
John:
Have you seen a black one in a review yet?
John:
Or I guess no one has, because the mini isn't out yet.
John:
But have you seen a 12?
Marco:
in black i have i've tried to find every video i can where people actually have them and are unboxing them and showing them off this is not very many videos yet and i i don't think i've seen a black one yet that's actually that's in one of like the youtube reviewers or anything like that
Marco:
but regardless uh i'm leaning towards white but again regardless i haven't ordered to answer your question in the longest possible way casey yeah i haven't ordered anything yet there's a long way to say i ordered nothing although you did you ordered a phone for tiff no i didn't order a phone for tiff the max and the mini are the same day oh that's right that she has to wait too yeah does she know what color she's getting to
Casey:
uh blue yeah like as soon as the the blue is shown on screen at the event she's like all right get me that that's it like all right biggest one of that that's it done you know i'd give i'd give us you and me marco if you were to get a blue mini which i know you're not but if you were to get a blue mini i'd say there's one chance in three that you and i will swap phones at some point this year
Casey:
I'm laughing, but I'm not joking.
Casey:
I think I said this last week, the meme with the guy holding the girlfriend's hand and looking back at the other girl.
Casey:
I am holding the hand of the forthcoming iPhone 12 Pro, but looking back at that mini thinking, hmm, is that the phone I really want?
Marco:
i again i think if if you're the kind of idiot like us who upgrades every year i think it's hard to get excited about about this one particular thing if you're in the middle size if you're at the small that's awesome it's a new a brand new size it's probably going to feel great it's going to have a few compromises maybe you know it's going to take a little while to get used to the typing i'm sure but like it's going to feel great if you're at the big end you get that amazing new camera upgrade if
Marco:
If you're in the middle, it's not a massive sell as a year-over-year upgrade.
Marco:
Again, I know it's ridiculous to have year-over-year upgrade discussions, but look, this is our show.
Marco:
This is what we talk about.
Marco:
If we're going to be these kind of idiots, I feel like there's going to be a lot of us tech podcasters and adjacent fans and enthusiasts who end up going through more than one size this year because you have this weird trade-off, and the middle size...
Marco:
is a pretty substantial compromise, whereas the top size and the bottom size are both much more exciting for different reasons.
Casey:
Yeah, I think that's fair.
Casey:
I still stand by that I think this lineup of phones with an asterisk here and a dagger there, I do think this is one of the most, if not the most compelling range of iPhones that Apple has ever offered.
Casey:
But yeah, if you're on the 11 Pro like I am today, it is of questionable importance whether or not you need to upgrade, like you were saying.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Um, but yeah, I, so I bought, uh, Aaron and I each a 12 pro, uh, both 256 gigs, uh, she white me blue, which I'm very excited about.
Casey:
Blue is my favorite color.
Casey:
Um, I'm super excited about this blue.
Casey:
It's funny.
Casey:
Um, when I'd seen the photographs of the mini blue and which I think they just call blue and the Pacific blue of the pro, I thought I actually preferred the minis for
Casey:
But now having seen some more like video and pictures and whatnot of the pro, I feel like I actually kind of prefer the more muted blue of the Pacific blue, the pro blue.
Casey:
But we'll, we'll see what happens.
Casey:
You know, at some point I'm sure I will see a mini and I might change my mind, but yeah,
Casey:
Nevertheless, we each ordered iPhone 12s.
Casey:
I got two years worth of AppleCare because I figure I'm probably going to run this caseless.
Casey:
We saw how that went last time, so it's probably wise for me to get AppleCare.
Casey:
Erin, what I did for her, which was the first time she's ever had AppleCare, I did month to month for her because we didn't...
Casey:
We haven't yet concluded what case she would like.
Casey:
And in the past, she's run like the very light pink silicone silicone silicone.
Casey:
I always get it wrong.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Casey:
The plastic case.
Casey:
And and this year, they don't really have a good pink option.
Casey:
And either way, those cases tend to fall apart on her after like six to eight months anyway.
Casey:
So my thought process was, well, I'll just do like a couple, like a month or maybe two months of AppleCare Plus for her.
Casey:
So God forbid she pulls a casey and drops the thing immediately, then we'll be all right.
Casey:
And then once she gets herself a case that she likes, then I'll just cancel the AppleCare on hers and we won't have to worry about it anymore.
Casey:
Um, but all in all, the buying process was pretty decent.
Casey:
It's, it's so much nicer doing it at eight in the morning rather than, uh, what was it?
Casey:
Three in the morning in the past.
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Uh, which was just awful.
Casey:
And it is funny to me hearing the, uh, people in the left, in the left coast whining about their five in the morning, because I would argue that getting up at five in the morning to order a phone, that's just inconvenient.
Casey:
Getting up at three in the morning is like disgusting.
Casey:
destroying your sleep for the night and it was so frustrating we did it for years um but yeah i used the apple store app uh and it worked reasonably well californians or at least apple never seems to be punctual so it wasn't till like 805 or something like that that it finally went and allowed me to buy the phones but it was fairly straightforward and
Casey:
Uh, and theoretically they're coming this Friday.
Casey:
Uh, what more errands is still in China.
Casey:
Mine is somewhere between Anchorage and my house.
Casey:
Uh, it's, it left Anchorage like a day or two ago and yet still hasn't moved.
Casey:
I think it's because they like, I forget where customs happens in this process.
Casey:
Every year I remind myself as I'm watching these, these tracking numbers fly by, Oh yeah, that's the time when they like finally let it through customs and it actually moves.
Casey:
And I can, I should write notes on this so I can remember.
Casey:
But, um,
Casey:
I haven't actually gotten, in case you're listening to this and you're like, wait, wait, wait, how does he have a tracking number?
Casey:
I haven't gotten the official tracking number from Apple, but the trick that we've talked about that works for many years, and I put a blog post up about it that we'll link to in the show notes, is if you go to UPS, if you're an American, if you go to UPS and you do a track by reference,
Casey:
and you use either the first like several characters of your order number i forget how many but more importantly if you use your phone number you know no hyphens no parentheses etc then almost always that'll come up with actual tracking numbers for your phones easily days before apple has issued a tracking number and additionally if you're ups my choice person uh it showed up in my calendar for today actually um
Casey:
It showed up on my delivery calendar two or three days ago.
Casey:
Obviously, it was not delivered today, which is of no great surprise, but that would have been a neat treat if it had worked out.
Casey:
But I plan, as John, to probably potentially get a leather case if I get one at all.
Casey:
I've always really liked the Apple leather cases, but given that I have AppleCare on it, I'll probably just roll caseless again, and we'll see what happens.
Casey:
But like I said, Marco, it would not surprise me.
Casey:
I really mean this.
Casey:
If you say to me at some point, or I say to you at some point,
Marco:
so marco how are you uh how are you liking that mini what are you thinking about uh maybe doing a little switcheroo for a little while like marco would ever wait to get your phone he would just order himself a 12 yeah that's true that's true also i i think i am i'm thinking about doing apple care myself because of that monthly option now uh because if i keep it for 12 months on the on the mini it's eight bucks a month so it's 96 dollars
Casey:
Oh, that's actually not bad at all.
Marco:
Yeah, and the leather case is going to be like $60 or $50, right?
Casey:
Yeah, that's true.
Marco:
So I figure maybe this will just be my case for the year.
Marco:
Because I do plan to go caseless with the Mini.
Marco:
I would like a small amount of protection maybe.
Marco:
And for $100 for the year to literally then not have to worry about it at all,
Marco:
It might be worth it.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
So I might try that this year because the monthly option really changes things.
Casey:
Yeah, I feel the same way in a lot of ways.
Marco:
Oh, interesting.
Marco:
M2 underscore Mike in the chat points out, Apple has never made a leather case for the non-pro phones.
Marco:
Is that true?
Marco:
I think that is true.
John:
I wouldn't know that.
Marco:
Get back into coach class, plebe.
Marco:
The kids say pleb now.
Marco:
Are you familiar with this?
Marco:
Are you being serious?
Marco:
Yeah, but now the little kids who hear these words on YouTube, they say pleb.
John:
Oh my goodness.
John:
They also say sus.
John:
I'm just ignoring them.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thank you so much to Linode for hosting all my servers and just being such an awesome host and for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, so 90 minutes into the show, should we leave follow-up?
No.
John:
As if we had any structure this week.
John:
Don't try to blame follow-up on this show.
Casey:
Should we just go into Ask ATP?
Casey:
I'm kind of not kidding.
John:
Let's do it.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Let's start with some Ask ATP now that follow-up's done.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
Have any of us tried watchOS sleep tracking, asks Eduardo Berner.
Casey:
I have not.
Casey:
I have used – oh, shit.
Casey:
I can't remember the name of the app, but I used an iPhone app years ago.
Casey:
where basically you would plug your phone.
Casey:
This is pre-Chi.
Casey:
You would plug your phone into your lightning cable and stick it like under your sheet, under your fitted sheet if you can, or like under your pillow or whatever.
Casey:
And I actually liked it.
Casey:
If I remember, I'll put it in the show notes, but it wasn't stupendous.
Casey:
I haven't tried the watchOS sleep tracking because honestly, I don't feel like I have real sleep problems generally.
Casey:
I mean, obviously I have a...
Casey:
night here and there where i can't sleep for nothing but generally speaking i sleep pretty well so i'm not too worried about it uh let's start with john john have you tried watch or sleep tracking you don't even really wear a watch do you right because you have like an ancient one yeah i do not wear a watch so no i haven't tried this and i do not have nights where i can't sleep
John:
I have mornings where I can't get up, which is all of them.
John:
Marco?
Marco:
I have never done any kind of sleep tracking for any device of any kind, including the Apple Watch.
Marco:
If I wanted to try sleep tracking, that's what I would do.
Marco:
But it's never been a thing that I particularly cared about.
Marco:
I kind of know already that I don't have any massive sleep problems, except like most people.
Marco:
I should probably get a bit more of it.
Marco:
And I know that already.
Marco:
And having a metric to be tracked, I don't think is going to motivate me to change that any more than my own internal guilt would otherwise motivate me.
Marco:
But I think it also helps that as I'm getting older and more boring,
Marco:
I actually am getting tired earlier.
Marco:
So I'm kind of automatically developing healthier sleep habits over time.
Marco:
It's something that's not really, I don't see a need for it in my life right now.
John:
As you get older, also, you enter the times when your quality of sleep may go down.
John:
So I think one thing that the watch can help with potentially is not just telling you how long you slept, because if you don't have sleep problems, like, well, I went to bed at this time and I woke up at this time.
John:
I can do the math.
John:
It's not difficult.
John:
But as you get older, you may various sleep problems may cause you to have restless sleep or sleep that is not as restful as the night of sleep that, you know, despite the fact that as far as you're concerned, you're asleep the whole time.
John:
Are you really getting refreshed?
John:
So the watch would tell you, you know, maybe maybe even tell you if you have, you know, breathing problems when you're sleeping based on your heart rate.
John:
Who knows?
John:
But that's that's a sleep.
John:
All I want to say is that sleep tracking is not just about, hey, how long did I sleep or did I sleep?
John:
OK, there's a little bit more to it than that.
John:
But I can't even bear wearing a watch during the day, though.
John:
I can't imagine wearing one while I try to sleep.
John:
I really don't want things attached to my wrist.
Casey:
I actually don't find it to be too bad, but I have no problem wearing a watch in general.
Casey:
So, you know, it's not surprising to me that you would say on no uncertain terms would I ever want this while I'm sleeping.
Marco:
Oh, actually, can I put some follow-up in here?
Casey:
Oh, sure.
Casey:
Why not?
Casey:
Just totally break the format.
Casey:
This is the follow-up that will not end.
Marco:
i that i've made you this follow for a while and i and i kept forgetting um i back when when i first got to try the new apple watch sport uh is it the sport loop the the new like fixed length one is that oh yeah i know what you're thinking i think that's right the sport circle uh solo loop
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
I knew I was wrong, but I couldn't figure out what.
Marco:
Okay, the new Apple Watch Sports Circle.
John:
Sports Circle is good, too.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Anyway, a few people wrote in to point out a benefit of that, because basically my conclusion, I'm still actually waiting for my correctly sized one to come in.
Marco:
I think it's coming in in a few days, but...
Marco:
My incorrectly sized one, I basically judge it as like it's nice, but it didn't seem worth the inconveniences compared to the regular sport band to be really worth it for most people.
Marco:
But a few people wrote in to point out something I hadn't considered, which is if you have metal allergies, which many people do, and like certain metals irritate your skin in certain ways –
Marco:
Usually, we heard from a number of people who said that they can't wear the usual sport band because where the metal pin is, even that little bit of metal touching their skin irritates them.
Marco:
And if you switch over to the sports circle, you don't have any metal touching your skin.
Marco:
The only things that touch your skin are the rubbery whatever of the band and the little bit of the ceramic circle on the bottom of the watch that forms the bottom crystal of the watch.
John:
What about the whole aluminum or stainless steel case of the watch?
John:
None of that touches you?
Marco:
That's a good question.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I mean, you can get a ceramic watch, I guess, and that'll solve that problem.
Marco:
Not anymore.
Marco:
Oh, you can?
Marco:
But if you're super reactive, titanium tends to be fairly unreactive.
Marco:
So that actually, that's still an option in the lineup.
Marco:
But if you look at the way the Apple Watch rests on your wrist, very little of the case really ever contacts your skin.
Marco:
But the big bulb on the bottom of the ceramic for all the lenses and stuff...
Marco:
kind of pushes the watch up above your skin so that might not irritate people very much and i think i mean i'm looking at the bottom of it now because the the bulb itself isn't the only ceramic part that whole bottom round rect the whole bottom plate of it is is the ceramic material
Marco:
So I think that actually might not be a problem for any of the metals, except for whatever like bit of like side touching.
Marco:
If you like flex your wrist up, you'd rub against a little bit.
Marco:
But for the most part, I don't know, we'll have to hear from people who have that kind of sensitivity on like how much that how much the case metal is a problem.
Marco:
But it looks like it wouldn't be much of a problem for most people based on its design.
Casey:
All right, moving on.
Casey:
Jayanth Vizweswaran writes, I'm curious what's taking up 128 gigs of space on your phones.
Casey:
I've been getting by just fine with a 64 gig device using only about 50 gigs, although I don't take a lot of videos.
Casey:
But even if I did, I'm guessing it should all just be backed up to iCloud anyway.
Casey:
Well, except for me.
Casey:
So I'm curious, what are the most data-heavy apps that you use?
Casey:
And as a side note, I'm somewhat annoyed that you can't choose how much local storage photos is allowed to take up.
Casey:
It only takes up 10 gigs with a library on iCloud of 100 gigs for this individual.
Casey:
But I wish I could limit it to take up just one gig.
Casey:
Yeah, that's fair.
Casey:
For me, I'll put in the show notes an actual screenshot of my iPhone usage, which I looked at and I haven't touched.
Casey:
But this is how I got to 121.5 gigs used on my iPhone 11 Pro.
Casey:
Um, basically it's a crud load of photos and a fair bit in the DJI go app, which is the app that I use for my gimbal.
Casey:
And those are all probably old and probably deletable, but, um, but they're still there.
Casey:
That's 11 gig or 12 gigs in there.
Casey:
Uh, and then overcast is using on nearly six gigs.
Marco:
I believe you mean you have chosen to download six gigs of podcasts in Overcast.
Casey:
Touche, touche.
Casey:
This is because I'm deeply behind on pretty much every podcast I like to listen to.
Casey:
And although actually the most surprising to me of all these was Safari using three gigs.
Casey:
I have no idea how that's happening.
Marco:
Maybe it's counting browser caches.
Marco:
I think it is, because it lets you drill down and you can see website data.
Casey:
Oh, I didn't even see that.
Marco:
And at first I thought website data was just whatever the persistent JavaScript crap that advertisers use, like local databases and everything.
Marco:
My first one for that is Shopify.com, 80 megs.
Marco:
I'm like, what the hell?
Marco:
But then right down there I see Overcast FM, 24 megs, and Marco.org, 14 megs.
Marco:
And I thought, well, that's weird.
Marco:
I know what Overcast and Marco.org do, and they don't do anything with local storage.
Marco:
what marketer doesn't even set cookies like how does it like how does it use 14 megs and so i think what it is when you have tabs open it might be like serializing that memory to disk so it can restore them and counting that at you know it has to store that somewhere has to be counted somewhere so that's my best guess
Casey:
That's interesting.
Casey:
Yeah, I'm trying to load it.
Casey:
Oh, there you go.
Casey:
YouTube is using 160 megs.
Marco:
Oh, and by the way, before I leave Safari, sorry, offline reading list is accounted for separately as well.
Marco:
And for that, I have 400 megs.
Casey:
Oh, wow.
Casey:
Yeah, like medium, because medium is so great in so many ways.
Casey:
It's 100 megs, New York Times, 70 megs.
Casey:
There's a lot of stuff here, some of which I would expect and some of which not.
Casey:
But apparently that website data adds up to 2.3 gigs once I drill into it.
Marco:
Yeah, mine was not that different.
Marco:
So I will point out also for yours, first of all, I also had the DJI app that was storing a copy of all of the video that my drone ever shot.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, that'll get big quick.
Marco:
Yeah, it was like six gigs or something.
Marco:
But when I first opened the screen, I had something like 130 gigs used.
Marco:
But with a couple of minutes of pruning, I have it down to 88 gigs.
Casey:
Oh, wow.
Marco:
And so I actually think I might do the 128 gig phone.
Marco:
Let's save 100 bucks.
Marco:
Wow, look at you.
Marco:
I'm really talking myself down in price on a few things here.
Marco:
This is not going to happen.
Marco:
You're going to get the 256.
Marco:
Why are you even pretending?
Marco:
yeah you are maybe well but one thing i'll point out like you know as as the listener uh mentioned photos only uses a much smaller amount of space yeah like for me photos uses well i don't know how it's accounting for this it says photos uses 117 gigs
John:
but yet i have not even close to that i don't know oh oh now it refreshed eight gigs god the screen is buggy yeah i don't understand the refreshing on the screen i was looking at it for this question i was looking at otherwise like what what changes in the first minute and the second minute the screen is up to adjust these numbers in such huge ways it's very strange
Marco:
I get emails all the time from people saying... Because Overcast, I have a storage manager screen in the app where you can see what is using all the space.
Marco:
And there's actually a small bug in the current version where it's not counting a second copy of your database.
Marco:
So whatever you see for data, double that.
Marco:
But the podcast things are accurate.
Marco:
But anyway...
Marco:
I get emails from people all the time saying, like, the storage manager screen says I'm using this many gigs, but the iPhone storage screen says I'm using, like, 10 gigs more.
Marco:
What's the problem?
Marco:
And I have no idea.
Marco:
Like, when I went into the DJI app earlier this evening to delete all those drone videos...
Marco:
I had to reboot the phone before the iPhone storage usage screen actually refreshed to display that information.
Marco:
So I don't know what is going on with the counting of the screen, but it's probably at least approximate.
Marco:
I am using 40 gigs for music, 22 of which is Phish alone.
Casey:
I'm surprised you have that much other than Phish.
Yeah, right.
Marco:
But that's the biggest user.
Marco:
My photos is only 8.6 gigs.
Marco:
And Casey, your photos are 41 gigs because you don't use iCloud Photo Library for some reason still.
Casey:
Well, because I just haven't gotten around to it.
Casey:
And because it's kludgy, because I want the system of record for my photos to be the synology.
Casey:
And I can't have a network drive as the system of record for photos.app on my Mac.
Casey:
That's the short of it.
Casey:
Now, I know there's ways around it.
Casey:
I'm not arguing that I can't fix it, but that's what it boils down to, is that I would have to duplicate my photo library onto, like, an attached drive or something like that just to get photos.app happy, which is really frustrating.
Casey:
But yeah, I'm actually surprised I have 40 gigs of photos because my workflow, which is extremely complicated but works for me, is that once a month I pull the photos off of my phone.
Casey:
And so I leave myself a month of photos.
Casey:
So I do this in the middle of the month.
Casey:
So just about a week ago, I took...
Casey:
I took all of the photos off of my phone and ingested them and stuffed them on the Synology.
Casey:
Well, I shouldn't say I took them off the phone.
Casey:
I imported them and then I put them all on the Synology, but I leave the most recent month.
Casey:
So I have on my phone basically photos since mid-September because I did this in mid-September and left a month before then.
Casey:
I did it in mid-October and I leave the last month.
Casey:
And so I'm surprised that I somehow got to 40 gigs on what should only be a month's worth of photos.
Casey:
And certainly what I need to do is sometime tomorrow in preparation for when the phone gets here on Friday, I need to clean a lot of this stuff up because the more stuff that I have going into...
Casey:
I almost said iTunes, into Finder, I guess, as an encrypted backup, that's all going to have to come back out on the new phone.
Casey:
And so if I can clean all that out for myself, then that'll make my backup and restore considerably quicker when the new phone arrives.
Casey:
So I need to do that.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And then finally, Tobo Granite writes, is John planning on ever buying an OLED TV or is he going to skip this technology and wait for the next, such as microLED?
Yeah.
John:
Is Casey ever planning to ask me about the storage on my phone or is he just going to skip that and go right?
Casey:
Oh, sorry.
Casey:
I completely forgot about you.
Casey:
Mark, when I flapped our gums so darn long, I completely forgot.
Casey:
I'm sorry, John.
Casey:
That's very rude of me.
Casey:
John, tell me about the storage on your phone.
John:
I'm using, you know, with the caveat that the screen is mysterious and adjust numbers by large amounts when seemingly nothing has happened on your phone.
John:
I'm using 120 gig gigs of storage.
John:
My top apps.
John:
Number one, what's your guess?
Marco:
I'm going to say number one, photos.
Marco:
Number two, music.
Marco:
Number three, messages.
Marco:
Casey?
Casey:
I would say photos first.
Casey:
I don't think you put that much music on your phone.
Casey:
I would actually say Overcast is in the top three and Messages is another good idea.
Casey:
Yeah, I would say that too.
John:
Casey is the closest.
John:
Number one, Overcast because I'm a hoarder.
John:
21 gigs.
John:
Oh my God.
Casey:
Goodness.
John:
You're killing me.
John:
On Overcast, I have some like whole shows that are no longer available.
John:
Just there.
Marco:
For reference, my Overcast is three gigs.
John:
All right.
John:
Yeah, now I got a lot of shows.
John:
I know I do.
John:
Now you know why I'm always asking for filtering and search box on playlists and stuff.
John:
Now you know why.
John:
Search box on playlists?
John:
I never thought about that.
John:
You have because I suggested it to you on the show.
John:
That's a good idea, but then you didn't write it down anymore.
John:
That's a good idea.
John:
I'll remember it.
John:
number two number two instapaper it's 16.5 gigabytes good all right it's been a while since i've seen that code but i how how what what are you saving in there i mean i guess it never gets rid of things like i instapaper a lot and i read them and i archive them but i guess they don't i don't understand how it is managing its storage i know i have a ton of stuff in instapaper from years of using it but i don't you know whatever anyway
John:
number two insta vapor number three music at 15 gigs number four photos at a mere five gigs remember i don't have the real photo library and i also tell it to optimize storage so whatever and after that is plex at three gigs uh books at two gigs garage band which i should just delete at 1.5 gigs and then it trails off from there
John:
And to be clear, people are like, why are those apps so big?
John:
This isn't the apps.
John:
The apps are tiny.
John:
It's the data that goes with the apps.
John:
That's all the top contenders.
John:
This is all just attributable to data associated with the apps.
John:
Eventually, as you scroll down, you get to things where it's just the app.
John:
But all the top consumers are apps that have data.
Marco:
See, mine was actually like part of the reason I got 30 gigs back earlier tonight was there were just I had some games installed that like somebody said this is a really good game.
Marco:
So I went and downloaded it and it was like, you know, 600 megs or whatever.
Marco:
And it's been sitting on my phone for three years and I've never launched it.
Marco:
And I deleted things like I deleted iMovie because I'm never going to use iMovie.
John:
You didn't enable that feature that it always suggests, which is like, hey, well, we will uninstall and offload apps that you haven't launched in a long time.
Marco:
It offers that to me and it says it can save a little over 10 gigs by doing that but I've heard bad stories about people who like it offloads an app that you really do need there.
Marco:
I don't like the idea of that being automatic.
Marco:
I think it would be a better idea for me to just go through one day, go through the whole app library and just delete any app that I can honestly say, like, I'm never going to use this.
Marco:
Or rather, this has been on my phone for three years and I have never used it.
Marco:
So odds are pretty good that I'm never going to use it.
Marco:
I'm never going to actually get to this game.
Marco:
I'm never going to watch the fancy movies on Netflix.
Marco:
I'm never going to play this game.
Marco:
I know that about myself.
Marco:
I don't play long games on my phone.
Marco:
I play crappy little two-second games on my phone.
Marco:
And so all these fancy games that have all this great art that are 600 megs each, I can delete all of them and I won't even notice.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
That kind of thing.
Marco:
I'm glad the screen was here, and I'm glad we had to look at it for this homework, because I got rid of a whole bunch of space from stuff that I didn't even know I was losing space to.
Casey:
All right, John, tell me.
Casey:
Tober Granite would like to know, are you ever planning on buying an OLED TV, or are you just going to skip this technology and wait for the next, such as microLED?
John:
Is this your attempt not to have the fact that you skipped over me in the last question included in the program by you trying to give a clean edit point?
John:
I feel like that's not going to happen.
John:
I was thinking about it, but now it's not going to happen.
Casey:
Why are you so mean?
Casey:
What does Merlin call you?
Casey:
You are my worst friend.
John:
Why am I so mean?
John:
You could have just, you already read this question.
John:
What about the live listeners?
John:
They're like, didn't Casey just read this question?
Casey:
Yes, but you know, we got to give the bootleg people something to be excited about and proud of that they get to hear, they get to hear this.
Casey:
So you are, as with Merlin, you are my, well, Merlin is not my worst best friend.
Casey:
You are my worst best friend.
John:
It's not worst best friend.
John:
You're blowing it in typical fashion.
John:
Whatever.
Casey:
Whatever.
Casey:
I don't care.
Casey:
It's you.
Casey:
It's you.
Casey:
Why are you always bad cop?
Casey:
That's what I want to know.
Casey:
All right, so answer the question, please.
John:
All right.
John:
I have been and I guess still am planning to buy an OLED TV, but every year it's been like, oh, well, this year there are some compromises with the OLED, but next year they'll probably fix these issues.
John:
And the number of compromises has been steadily decreasing, but still, every time I look at them, I go, well, I'll wait until the next year until I fix this thing.
John:
In particular, this year, first of all, I'm annoyed that in the U.S.
John:
we can't get Panasonic OLEDs because for a variety of...
John:
reasons they've had the best picture quality in a bunch of years including the current one if that's like what you care about but they're not even sold in the u.s and i don't want to buy some weird european one because there's always weird differences and you know yada yada anyway so i'm mostly looking at the lgs and the lg c10 or c roman numeral 10 cx
John:
has some weird actual regressions from the C9.
John:
Not only did they not fix every single thing that was wrong with the C9, but it brought some of its own new limitations.
John:
And it's like, oh, maybe it's because of COVID, and maybe, who knows what the upshot is.
John:
And there hasn't been much progress in panels, because LG is the only one who makes panels, so every other TV that you buy is just an LG panel in there anyway.
John:
and they're not really making progress on these panels because everybody is trying to pick their next screen technology.
John:
Samsung has one bet on a particular kind of panel technology, and LG is betting on a slightly different one, and it's not clear when they're going to be ready.
John:
So it's almost like this is the tail end of OLED because if LG is just going to keep making the same panel while shifting its focus to the other kind of panels, I don't know.
John:
So...
John:
i'm not i haven't made a decision that i'm just not getting an oled i still want to i just want there to be an oled that mostly gets rid of like that has all the interfaces that we want it has all the hdmi 2.1 with all the features and the maximum bandwidth that uh does you know really good black frame insertion instead of the weird one that has you know good near black handling uh
John:
You know, that has the auto-low latency mode and the variable refresh rate and all the features and the best software that handles all the new interfaces and works well with all the new game consoles.
John:
You know, all the things.
John:
And we're just not quite there.
John:
Every year, it's like, well, maybe next year.
John:
So this year is just like last year.
John:
I'm saying, oh, maybe next year the TVs will...
John:
there'll be a tv that has fewer compromises the good news is the prices are going down like you can get like a c10 55 inch c10 for like 1500 bucks now on sale so they're getting cheaper um and you know the uh the chips inside them for the user interface are getting faster and the apps that come with the tvs are getting better and so while i wait things are getting better and in the meantime you know my current tv is
John:
like it still looks good to me like i know it's not as good as an oled i know the blacks aren't as good it's not even 4k but the the hurdle for me getting a new one is like i have to upgrade everything to support 4k and that's a bigger task than just getting a new tv so i'm just still waiting so the answer is am i ever planning on buying one yes ostensibly maybe possibly oh that's funny
Marco:
Well, thank you to our sponsors this week, Linode, Hey.com, and Mack Weldon.
Marco:
And thank you to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can do that yourself if you'd like to by going to atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
Thanks, everybody, and we will talk to you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental, they didn't mean it.
Casey:
This would be a perfect time for Marco to tell us about his various adventures of Swift if he hadn't already told us half of them in the pre-pre-pre-pre-show.
Marco:
Well, first, I'm going to send this image in the chat, in the private chat, sorry, because it's earlier in the show when we were talking about 5G coverage.
Marco:
And I said, I'm pretty sure it doesn't cover where I am right now.
Marco:
uh casey sent these maps in our chat in our little private chat channel uh screenshots of at&t's coverage map showing that indeed it covers almost everywhere where i would probably go now i have uh figured out where my actual house is on this map and i have super superimposed it here and sent it back to you casey and you can see that while it looks like my house might have 5g coverage there's a huge hole in coverage and
Marco:
On half of my block and many of the surrounding blocks.
Casey:
Have you experienced that already?
Casey:
Because that looks like straight up little to no coverage from what I'm reading here.
Marco:
Well, the funny thing is that we have an AT&T cell tower on a water tower that I have line of sight to from my house and that covers this entire area very well.
Marco:
So I don't know why there is this hole in coverage right here where it doesn't have 5G.
Marco:
It just has the 4G LTE.
Marco:
I don't know why there is that hole there, but it's a few hundred feet from the tower.
Casey:
Is it directly below the tower?
Marco:
It's not directly below the tower, but it's like three blocks over.
Marco:
It's not far.
Marco:
That area that is blacked out from the 5G map can also see the tower with direct line of sight.
Marco:
It's a flat town with a water tower in the middle, and there's cell phone towers all over it.
Casey:
And somebody pointed out – we have to keep this in the show because this is kind of belated real-time follow-up, which I guess just makes it regular follow-up.
Casey:
Somebody pointed out in the chat, and I didn't have a chance to say anything during the show, but I don't know if the 5G that's listed on these maps is actual 5G or is it the 5GE or whatever that crap – 5G?
Casey:
Yeah, 5G!
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Is this all 5G or is this actual legitimate 5G?
Casey:
And knowing AT&T and how shysty they are, I bet you anything that none of this is honest to goodness 5G and it's actually 5G.
Marco:
I can tell you because walking around this town that is mostly covered apparently with their 5G official coverage, I've never seen the 5G thing on my iPhone.
Marco:
Whereas I do see 5G in other places.
Casey:
Okay, so that bodes well then, right?
Casey:
That would hopefully indicate that this is legitimate 5G.
Marco:
Yeah, so I'm pretty sure this does indicate that there is 5G in some of my town that has an AT&T tower in line of sight.
John:
This doesn't list the millimeter wave anywhere, though.
John:
It's not even a legend.
John:
Does AT&T have millimeter wave deployed yet?
John:
I looked this up because we got a bunch of feedback.
John:
They're like, oh, the reason why Verizon was in that thing is because Verizon is the only company in the United States that has millimeter wave.
John:
But that's not true.
John:
I think they all have it coming out.
John:
I think Verizon's first maybe, but AT&T is going to have it.
John:
I think even like T-Mobile.
John:
I did a little bit of research on it.
John:
So,
John:
I expect all the carriers to eventually have, to support millimeter wave somewhere, probably not anywhere near Marco's house, but like in certain streets in New York City, yeah, there will be millimeter wave 5G on all the major carriers, I imagine, at this time next year.
John:
But it's not, probably not relevant at all.
John:
I just comment that it's not even on the legend, right?
John:
So it's like, no, we're not even going to show you where that might be.
John:
Because like, you saw Gruber's map on his review.
John:
He had like, here's the city that I live in, and these six streets have millimeter wave.
Casey:
Yeah, and actually, to that end, I would like to file a formal complaint about Gruber's review.
Casey:
It was extremely good, except I don't think, for me anyway, that he had put enough emphasis on how incredibly fast the millimeter wave, or whatever it's called, 5G is.
Casey:
Because...
Casey:
He mentioned it as kind of like almost an aside in the review.
Casey:
I don't recall exactly what his speeds were, but it was something to the order of like two and a half gigabits per second on a freaking phone.
Casey:
Like this is real world actual results that he got on these on these review units.
Casey:
I know I've told the story a hundred times on the show and I apologize, but it's really is relevant.
Casey:
When we moved out of an apartment, moved into the home that I'm living in now, we were in a Comcast area.
Casey:
And I hated Comcast because everyone hates Comcast.
Casey:
And then we were moving into a Verizon Fios area.
Casey:
And this was in 2008 when Fios was still pretty darn new.
Casey:
And I remember vividly being overjoyed about a symmetric 15 megabit per second connection.
Casey:
15 my iphone 11 pro easily gets two to three times that without even trying you know again this is 2008 now we're in 2020 it's 12 years later but 15 megabit i was overjoyed by and then eventually i upgraded 75 megabit and and again like that was amazing it was so fast now i have the best bios i can buy i have symmetric gigabit service and
Casey:
In theory, not of course in reality, but in theory, there is no difference in me moving a big file from my desk to my Synology that's three feet away than there is from my desk to my dad's house, who also has a different ISP but also has gigabit, you know, 60 miles away.
Casey:
I know that's not literally the case, but, you know...
Casey:
On paper, it should be about the same speed.
Casey:
That is bananas how quick our internet connection is at home.
Casey:
And yet, and yet, on this little slab that's standing in the middle of a street in Philadelphia, Gruber got two and a half gigabits down?
Casey:
That is bananas to me.
Casey:
And I can't believe that it was just like a one-liner off to the side.
Casey:
That blows my mind.
Marco:
Well, because there's so many... It is amazing, technically, but there are so many asterisks on that.
Casey:
That's fair.
Casey:
That's fair.
Marco:
Yeah, it's only in these very small coverage areas, like millimeter wave or mmm wave.
Marco:
I don't know how I'm supposed to be saying this.
Marco:
It only covers these very small areas, and you basically have to... It's almost as if you have to put Wi-Fi routers everywhere.
Marco:
It's that kind of scale coverage.
John:
It's worse than Wi-Fi because it doesn't penetrate as well as Wi-Fi even.
John:
It's almost line of sight.
John:
It's not quite line of sight, but almost...
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And so like, you know, the example everyone keeps giving of like a sports stadium, that makes total sense.
Marco:
That's great.
Marco:
But in practice, you know, this is going to be a rare benefit for most people if it's ever a benefit to them, like if they ever happen to be in an area that has this.
Marco:
Also, again, burn through your data cap in two seconds.
Marco:
We're kind of solving the wrong problem.
Marco:
And then, of course, as a few people in the chat are pointing out, it's also interesting that the tests right now are with empty 5G networks.
Marco:
Once everyone has 5G phones, congestion will become a problem.
Marco:
Now, allegedly, 5G deals with congestion better than 4G, and that's great.
Marco:
I look forward to that, because that's the kind of thing that we actually need
Marco:
sell network advancements to solve like peak speeds in ideal conditions on an empty network with unlimited plans that don't throttle you that's a fantasy for most people but actually solving like real world congestion uh in in dense areas or you know in events event spaces like stadiums and concerts and stuff like that's a real problem to solve
Marco:
And if 5G brings significant benefits to that, that is useful and that is great.
Marco:
And it all just funnels into our continuing narrative of like, yeah, 5G will be pretty good once it's widespread, but I still think it's being kind of oversold in its benefits.
Marco:
We'll see when we all have it and when in two years it's ubiquitous and all the phones have it that everyone's using and then we can get back to complaining about how the coverage isn't good enough and data plans are too slow or too small rather.
Marco:
They won't be too slow.
Marco:
They will be too small and the coverage will still suck in half of our houses.
Casey:
I tell you what, though, it's interesting that you bringing up stadiums, and this is not new, but, you know, back in the before times 15 years ago when we still went to UVA football games, it was tough to do anything on the Internet in these football stadiums.
Casey:
And, you know, the football stadium is 65-ish thousand people, which is a lot of people in one small space for sure, which, God, is terrifying to think about now.
Casey:
Oh, my Lord.
Casey:
Even though it's all outdoors, it's still terrifying.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
But nevertheless, if I wanted to do anything on my phone during the game, it was an exercise in incredible frustration.
Casey:
And if Mwave does improve that as it claims to, that would be extremely, extremely welcome because that is one place when you have this extraordinary congestion situation.
Casey:
That is one thing that I don't feel like has gotten particularly better in the five or 10 years that we've had season tickets.
Casey:
You know, it's always a disaster if the stadium's full.
Casey:
And, you know, there are times when UVA can fill their own stadium and times when they can't.
Casey:
But nevertheless, when it's mostly at capacity, it is impossible.
Casey:
And that's outdoor.
Casey:
It's the perfect place to put like a series of Wi-Fi routers.
Casey:
And actually...
Casey:
I believe the UVA football stadium has Wi-Fi that's for free.
Casey:
And even that gets overwhelmed because that's not really designed for 60,000 people.
Casey:
You know, it reminds me of when we were at, you know, Moscone at WWDC.
Casey:
And I don't remember if they've done this.
Marco:
I was just going to say, like, does the sports team stop playing and tell everyone to turn off their Wi-Fis?
Casey:
No, no, definitely not.
Casey:
But I remember being like Moscone and they would put up like a four pack of TVs where they would show like the Wi-Fi and like where the coverage was being what was good and where it was bad and what the throughput of the entire event was.
Casey:
And I was always fascinated by that because it's so far out of my normal, you know.
Casey:
I don't have to think about that sort of thing.
Casey:
But yeah, here I am now shilling for this ridiculous Verizon thing that I made so much fun of last week.
Casey:
But I am very fascinated to see the real world effects of not only 5G, but most particularly this millimeter wave thing, if it does come to other carriers.
John:
The thing that was shocking to me about Gruber's 5G millimeter wave numbers was not the download, but how much worse the upload is.
John:
I mean, I suppose part of this is power limits on the phones because they don't have power transmitters.
John:
Maybe it's a choice about the network, but it was, you know...
John:
whatever it was, 1.8 gigabits down, 25 to 70 megabits up.
Casey:
Oh, that's a very good point.
Casey:
That's a very, very good point.
John:
Like that's not, you know, that's two orders of magnitude.
John:
Like, yeah, I mean, it's, it's fine.
John:
Like your FaceTime will work.
John:
It's not like you're probably going to be limited too much, but it's, it's not even a hundred megabits.
John:
It's not even like, like a hundred megabit ethernet.
John:
Right.
John:
So yeah, we'll, we'll see how this works out.
John:
oh and also more more more real-time follow-up from gruber specifically apparently there's no 2x button on your uh your mini with only two cameras marco as far as i know that that is always the case that the you only get those little quick jump buttons for the actual hardware lenses that the phone has so i will miss my 2x button but uh you know you can still pinch to zoom yeah or a gruber suggestion is to just just take the photo at 1x and then crop it later
Marco:
Well, there is a slight difference in things like, you know, how the JPEG compression, I won't have, I won't have pro raw.
Marco:
So I have to deal with like, you know, like JPEG artifacting and detail at different crop levels.
Marco:
Like the digital zoom is slightly technically better at capture time than taking a picture and then cropping it later.
Marco:
But it's not a big difference.
John:
yeah i'm surprised apple hasn't started promoting this because it's you know photoshop adobe had an announcement about the new version of photoshop and it's filled with all sorts of machine learning uh algorithms for doing stuff to photos look really cool and one of them that you see a lot of everywhere both just in still photos and even like even video games now nvidia has a bunch of uh tech that they have been advertising that will essentially allow you to zoom and add information that's not there through the magic of machine learning basically synthesizing pixels that don't exist
John:
to let you essentially zoom in on a photo and not have it become pixelated or more blurry because they will just take information that doesn't exist and say, but it might have been something like this and just add it.
John:
And that would be amazing technology for doing essentially 2X digital zoom that does not look as bad as, oh, we just blow up the pixels and smooth it over.
John:
Now, for all I know, Apple is doing some of that, but the latest tech in that realm where it's not just like we treat your image as a big grid of pixels and do the best we can.
John:
It's machine learning algorithms that try to figure out what it is they're looking at in some fashion and be able to essentially the old movie joke of now enhance being able to actually do that, albeit by making up data that doesn't exist rather than revealing information that's actually there.
John:
In video games, they do it to allow the game to render at lower res and then essentially upscale.
John:
But rather than just upscaling where it's like, oh, I can tell you're rendering this at, you know, 1080 and upscaling to 4K, the upscaling is so good that it's becoming more difficult.
John:
If you don't know what to look for, it's becoming more difficult to tell whether something is running in native 4K versus something running at 1440 being intelligently upscaled to 4K.
John:
And so you can get, you know, huge frame rate increase for a marginal loss in quality, right?
John:
So if I told you you could double your frame rate by having it look a little bit worse, you would definitely take that.
John:
So that's something NVIDIA is doing.
John:
And I hope Apple brings that with their next round of neural engine magic to say, hey, 2x digital zoom.
John:
But guess what?
John:
This new 2x zoom looks amazing.
John:
I mean, that's kind of what Deep Fusion does.
John:
Like, let me bring out detail that's not really there, but it's not as aggressive.
John:
So...
John:
All this to say is worst case, you take the picture at 1x, throw it into the latest version of Photoshop and let it work its machine learning magic to double the resolution and then zoom into 2x.
John:
Or like Casey, take all your photos and put them in a shoebox and then later try to find one, dig it out, put it in Photoshop and update it.
John:
I still can't believe you have this workflow that I still don't understand the benefits that it's providing because you keep telling us about the drawbacks, but it's like, just give it into iCloud Photo Library.
Casey:
Well, the benefit is that all of the data is, it's like the maniacs who insist on putting plain text on the file system, right?
Casey:
It's the same basic premise.
Casey:
Like all of the raw, not raw as in the file format, but all the raw files are just sitting on the file system.
Casey:
They're just there.
Casey:
Now they're organized by date.
Casey:
So if I need to find a photo, as long as I know approximately when it was taken, it's incredibly quick.
John:
a benefit you can find photos by date and i've got photo library i swear okay that's fair that's fair but okay i mean granted granted apple's photo does apple's photos app does make it way harder than it used to be i hate that app with such a passion but it is possible well okay but here you go like if you hate the app with such a passion what am i missing then what is good about it because i can do i can do all my crops and edits or whatever and they show up everywhere across the
John:
apple id that has this thing right uh and you know it's it i can have some of the photos and devices i can have all the photos and other devices like they're still just in the file system and they get backed up by all my backup programs right you know it's no i don't have a place where i have a bunch of files organized by date name especially but like don't you edit your photos like i crop rotate and adjust like any photo i care about how do you do that with a box full of jpegs do you make a second copy of the photo and
Casey:
No, I would do it at the time.
Casey:
If I cared that much, which I don't, I would do it at the time that I'm taking them off the device and putting them on the Synology.
Casey:
I would do it all then.
John:
So you discard the original then?
John:
Yeah.
John:
This is the worst.
John:
Oh, my God.
John:
Photoshop.
John:
Photoshop.
John:
Apple Photos saves the original always so I can always go back to it, but it also saves all of my edits and crops and keywords and tagging and face recognition and all the other things.
John:
You need to...
Casey:
get on this bandwagon eventually well the thing is is i just i really after having been burned by ever pics and picture life and google photos i just do not trust anything in the cloud as being the one true source of information i just don't but no but you wouldn't it would the one true source will be on your local discs and your local backups right
John:
I guess it would also be in the cloud and also be in your cloud backups.
John:
The only difference is it wouldn't be a file system of hand named handmade folders and files that you made.
John:
It would just be the Apple thing.
John:
But I assure you in the Apple photo library, there are eventually a bunch of JPEGs.
Casey:
Yeah, but I mean, if I were to go to iCloud Photo Library, what I would do is I would still insist that the source of record is my ridiculously named files because that works for me.
Casey:
I like it.
Casey:
It's reliable and it's repeatable.
Casey:
And again, like if, if, if photos would let me put this on a network share, I would have done this two years ago easily, if not more, but I just, I, I, I have such a problem with having to run like a fifth redundant backup of this, of all this stuff on a physical drive connected to my iMac, just because photos won't let me use a f***ing network drive for my photo library.
Casey:
Like that's so ridiculous.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
especially for something... The network drive thing is a problem, but I think you should let go of the carefully named files in folders.
Casey:
I hear you.
Casey:
I will not be listening to you.
Casey:
Because, again, I want the source of record to be effectively like plain text files in folders.
Casey:
I know that's not literally what we're talking about, but for people who have this note-taking system where they have this folder structure where everything is just .txt in this bespoke folder structure...
Casey:
I think that's bananas, personally.
Casey:
Like, I'm all in on Apple Notes for that sort of thing.
Casey:
But I totally understand why one would be like that.
Casey:
And so I want something like that, something that I am 100% in control of.
Casey:
I want that to be the source of record for my photographs because they're too important to me to trust anything else.
Casey:
I don't want Apple's file names.
Casey:
I don't want Apple managing them.
Casey:
I want to manage where the files are, where they go, how they get there, et cetera.
Casey:
It's the same reason, like, there are things that I'm very picky about, like pretty much every photo that winds up in my photo library and has wound up in my photo library for the last three, four years—
Casey:
pretty much everyone will have some amount of geotag information in it.
Casey:
You know, it might be approximate.
Casey:
It might not be the exact down-to-the-meter latitude and longitude I was standing at, but it'll at least get me to the city in which I took the picture, if nothing else.
Casey:
And I'll try my darndest to remember, oh, I think I was standing about there.
Casey:
That is bananas.
Casey:
I'll be the first to tell you, it's bananas.
Casey:
But it is not entirely unusual for me to want to look up
Casey:
a photo by the location in which I've taken it.
Casey:
And so because of that, all of my iPhone photos come in with all that caked in and built in automatically.
Casey:
But for my big camera, I will go through with the app geotag, which is okay, but it gets the job done.
Casey:
And I will mark where these photos were taken because that is important to me.
Casey:
In the same way, it's important to me that these files are in the exact layout that I want on the file system because there is nothing, this is not a challenge, there's nothing that,
Casey:
anyone can do other than me to ruin what is sitting on the Synology.
Casey:
Now, I can ruin it by deleting stuff.
Casey:
I can ruin it by not backing it up appropriately as we went through like a year ago when I almost had that happen.
Casey:
But my photos especially, I have like literally four or five copies.
Casey:
And so it would take...
Casey:
a serious amount of oopsies to happen in order for me to lose all my photos and that's the way i like it because i got burned by everpix i got burned by picture life i got burned by google photos i don't trust any of these anymore i just don't i mean after how many times of me getting screwed by these things why would and and that's the other thing like why would i go to apple of all people like if google can't get this right why
Casey:
Why in God's green earth would I trust Apple with this?
Casey:
Eventually, I will do it.
Casey:
I'm telling you I will eventually.
Casey:
One day on an infinite timescale, I will do it.
Casey:
But I feel like I see a million reasons not to do this and very few reasons to do it other than aggravation.
John:
There's tons of reasons to do it.
John:
I mean, it really depends on how much you want to do with your photos.
John:
Do you have a system of faving your photos in any way?
John:
No.
John:
You have so many photos.
John:
How do you find the good ones?
Casey:
Well, a couple of ways.
Casey:
First of all, I don't it's actually for all the time I'm spending telling you how important it is to keep this, you know, by date hierarchy and so on.
Casey:
It is not that often that I go spelunking into my photo library to get an old photo.
Casey:
And generally speaking, there are two ways I can find a photo that I care about.
Casey:
Number one is if it's something that I think is is good and even not even necessarily great, but good.
Casey:
I will usually put that in day one.
Casey:
And so I could cruise through day one.
John:
Don't trust Apple Photos, but day one is a good place for your favorite photos.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
Actually, yes.
Casey:
I trust day one a lot more than I trust Apple Photos.
Casey:
And I'm sure there's going to be somebody writing me saying, oh my God, I lost all my photos on day one.
Casey:
Very well could be.
Casey:
Who knows?
Casey:
But for me, day one has not yet burned me
Casey:
And I guess, strictly speaking, Apple hasn't.
Casey:
But everyone except day one has.
John:
That's the answer to your question, though, before, like, why in the world would I test Apple?
John:
Well, lucky you.
John:
The rest of the world, including me and Margo, have been testing this for you for years.
John:
So it's not a complete unknown.
John:
It's not like this is they're the new kid on the block and they're totally untried and untested.
John:
I'm not saying they're perfect.
John:
People have lost stuff with Apple Photos.
John:
I feel like it's the same trade-offs.
John:
If you have a bazillion backups like I do, you can have a bazillion backups of your Apple Photo Library.
John:
It's the same as having a bazillion backups of your files and folders.
John:
The only difference is, like, if you have some fear that Apple is going to no longer support the library format and you'll be stuck with this, you know, whatever it is, .photo library directory that you can't make heads or tails of,
John:
a the photos are still up to this point in there as randomly named garbage named files but they're all there but b i think apple has shown over the years they do continue to support this as a major part of their you know sort of suite of products that i don't see them abandoning anytime soon deciding you know what photos aren't a really important part of the apple experience and we're not going to support this app anymore because
John:
You take photos on your phone and it has to go somewhere.
John:
So, you know, I've had the same library from iPhoto days and I have never had to do anything other than continue to upgrade Apple operating systems and buy new Apple devices.
John:
And it has brought my library along.
John:
Even when they dropped the ratings, it made it easy enough for me to change the ratings into into likes.
John:
You know, likes are now Florps.
John:
Timeline goes sideways.
John:
But, you know, I haven't lost any data and I've been able to preserve my metadata.
John:
I feel like that's the main thing.
John:
The benefit you would get is the ability to do things to your photos, to put sort of work and labor into the organization of your photos in a richer way than just putting them into a directory or copying them into day one.
John:
And that includes things like geotagging, which I assure you you can also do in Photos.
John:
Photos does a superset of what you're doing.
John:
It just totally scrambles your files and directories, which I know can be upsetting because that's one of the things that you've put a lot of labor into is the careful organization of your files and folders.
John:
But if and when you're willing to let go of that, you will get benefits on the other side of it.
John:
And I don't think you'll lose anything in terms of reliability and data durability.
John:
You will just lose...
Marco:
file naming and directory naming well and even then like if most of your organizational strategy is just by date which i have always found to be the most useful photo organizational strategy you that you know that's just a shell script away like because the all the all the file you know all the all the original files that are in that apple photo library thing they all have exit data
Marco:
And so you can use your precious EXIF tool to actually very easily automatically rebuild a date-based directory structure from that Apple Photo Library file if you ever really had to.
Marco:
And I've also, just something else to point out, like, I have tried in the past many, like,
Marco:
Different organizational strategies, different programs, Aperture, Lightroom, iPhoto, doing my own folder structure.
Marco:
I think I have lost more photos to my own incompetence trying to run my own systems than I have to Apple Photo Library by a mile.
Marco:
Because when you run the system yourself, you aren't perfect either.
Marco:
And like and almost every year, like around Christmas time, we're trying to make our like Christmas photo album for the previous year to bring and show our parents, you know, here's what we did last Christmas.
Marco:
And Tiff and I are scrambling to figure out where are the pictures from that one camera from this from last year?
Marco:
I can't find those like because they didn't go through the system.
Marco:
They had their own system.
Marco:
And we can't find them.
Marco:
And God knows where they are.
Marco:
And occasionally we do find them.
Marco:
Sometimes we don't.
Marco:
And your own system is manual.
Marco:
And just like manual backup plans, there's a lot of potential for error there.
Marco:
Whereas the automatic built-in
Marco:
you know, method the system has to keep these things in sync, which again, look, I'm as much of a skeptic of Apple web services half the time as you are, but this one has proven itself to be really solid.
Marco:
And it, again, as John said, this is not a new thing.
Marco:
It's been really solid for, as far as I can tell, almost everybody for years, like Everest, even when it was new, it was pretty solid.
Marco:
And it's, it's gotten even more improved since then.
Marco:
And so ultimately, while I agree with John that the photos apps are pretty rough in a lot of ways, like for editing anything, as an organizational tool.
John:
They have way more features than the Finder.
John:
That's true.
John:
Although I will say this.
John:
So the task that Casey just described, finding things by date, photos can do that.
John:
But unlike versions of iPhoto, which had like a one-click way for you to show, just show me photos from this date, it's so many more clicks in photos.
John:
Whereas Casey can just go to the folder that's named after that year and find it faster than photos.
John:
But that's only because photos are so execrable that they refuse to give you like a quick search box and just let me type a date.
Casey:
But that's the thing is that I, it is non-negotiable to me.
Casey:
It is non-negotiable that the system of record, that all of my photos, iPhone, big camera, Aaron's iPhone, all of them, the system of record is the Synology.
Casey:
I will not budge on that.
Casey:
You can think I'm crazy.
Casey:
I will not budge on that.
Casey:
So I will never trust photos to just start ingesting things in, in, in,
Casey:
And assuming that it'll work, I will still do my process no matter what.
Casey:
Even if I embrace iCloud Photo Library, it is non-negotiable.
Casey:
And again, I don't care if the two of you or anyone listening thinks I'm nuts.
Casey:
That's fine.
Casey:
I will not budge on this.
Casey:
And so what I'm saying to you is I'm going to take an app that the both of you have spent several minutes describing how crappy it is.
Casey:
I want to take that and I want to use it in an extraordinarily non-standard way where I'm telling it,
Casey:
okay, I want you to use this external file system, be it on a drive or be it via network share, as where all the files are.
Casey:
I want you to keep it in that file system.
Casey:
I don't want you to screw with anything else.
Casey:
I don't want you to have your own copy.
Casey:
Just keep it all.
Casey:
If you're going to mess with it and mess with the originals.
John:
I don't think you can even tell it to do that.
Casey:
I thought you could tell it to just leave the files where they were.
Casey:
I don't think so.
Casey:
See, again, I don't understand what this is buying me.
Casey:
I don't.
John:
I mean, what you need to do is revisit your bedrock assumption of, like, system of record.
John:
Synology can be the system of record for your photos.
John:
It's just that you would have a second copy of it on your Mac and a third copy of it in iCloud and a fourth copy of it in Backblaze, right?
John:
It's just a way of looking at things, right?
John:
All the data, I have a complete copy of my photos on my Synology, right?
John:
In fact, I have two complete copies of my photos on my Synology.
John:
And if I just declare that that is my system of record, then success.
John:
I've maintained your status quo, right?
John:
Granted, on my Synology, they're in iPhoto photo library bundles, one of them from my Mac and one of them from my wife's Mac.
Casey:
Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
John:
But like, what is the system of record?
John:
How is that not the system of record?
John:
The data is there, but it's also – and not just like some of the data, all the data.
John:
Every single one of my photos is on my Mac, on my wife's Mac, and then on the Synology twice in the form of Time Machine backups and also into SuperDuper backups.
Casey:
I hear you, but I just – I don't – all I'm doing then if I am embracing photos is adding more steps to my process because my process will not change.
John:
No, fewer.
John:
All you do is you just take pictures with your phone and you're done.
John:
That's one process.
John:
And the second thing is I take pictures with my big camera and I import them into my photo library and I'm done.
Casey:
No, but I just told you I'm not negotiating that the system of record is the Synology.
John:
But they will travel from the thing where you imported them to the Synology to Backblaze.
John:
no no no no the files named the way i want in the full in the directory structure i want you're not gonna you're not gonna be able to keep the files named the way you want that's the only thing then it's a non-starter i don't i again you'll gain so you'll gain so much more like the ability what am i gaining your ability to organize photos into albums and fave them and be able to set things aside and do searches based on geography and do searches based on people's faces and find the picture of somebody who was in the kitchen on this particular date
John:
And make calendars because you have set aside all the pictures you wanted to include in the calendar for the relatives because you had previously gone through and cropped them and adjust them and put faves on them.
John:
So now they're all ready to go when you make the calendar at the end of the year.
John:
Nobody does this except you.
Casey:
Yeah, this is solving problems.
John:
Who takes thousands of pictures and then just allows them to be a sea of thousands of pictures?
John:
You have to do something with them.
John:
Otherwise, like, why are you even taking the pictures?
John:
Like, why don't you take the pictures and throw them in the garbage if you're never going to look at them again?
Casey:
I do look at them.
Casey:
I just don't look at them the way you look at yours.
John:
You take thousands of pictures.
John:
Ten of them are good.
John:
And those are the ten you put in the calendar.
John:
Like, it's not rocket science.
Casey:
I don't want a calendar, John.
Casey:
This is not something that I want in my life.
John:
But you put pictures in frames like you take all the pictures.
John:
You have to find the ones that are good.
John:
Right.
John:
Otherwise, why are you taking the pictures?
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
And I can do that with my system in ways that you will not approve of, but I can do it.
John:
They're on day one.
John:
Yes.
John:
Okay.
Casey:
No, that's not the only way.
Casey:
The other way is I shoot the big photos, the big camera photos in RAW in JPEG.
Casey:
I shoot everything in RAW in JPEG and I only keep the RAWs that are of decent photos.
Casey:
So I can just look for all the RAWs.
John:
You throw out the other ones.
John:
It's madness.
Casey:
I told you you're not going to like it, but it works.
John:
I think you're doing a lot of extra work for no features that you wouldn't get with iPhoto library.
John:
And there are features in iPhoto that you don't get with your current system.
John:
Now, there are attributes that you don't get with iPhoto library, which you say are deal breakers, but they're not features.
John:
They're not like a thing you can do in one case and you can't do in the other.
John:
They're just attributes as in
John:
I have folders and files that are named.
John:
You're right.
John:
That attribute will go away, right?
John:
But what does that attribute give you?
John:
No actual features, no actual benefits.
John:
Like, well, now I can search by date, but you can do that in photos too.
Casey:
Well, the other thing is that I have all of my iPhone photos going to Google Photos still to this day.
Casey:
And I don't trust Google Photos anymore with my big camera photos.
Casey:
But all of my, and actually it wouldn't get Aaron's either, but it will get my phone.
Casey:
Google Photos to this day gets my phone.
Casey:
And it has, up until a year or two ago when I abandoned the piece of garbage Google Photos uploader, it had everything.
Casey:
It had my photos, her photos, big camera photos, had everything up until a year or two ago.
Casey:
And so if I wanted to search for a person or search for geography or something like that, I would turn to Google Photos and I would do it there.
Casey:
And that would almost certainly get me there.
Casey:
The only way it wouldn't is if it was something that happened in the last year or two and the only way I documented it was the big camera, which I can't remember a time that I didn't snap at least one photo with my iPhone at an event where I was using the big camera predominantly.
Casey:
So even if you're insistent that having some sort of photo management app is the panacea that will solve all the problems that I don't actually think I have, then I have Google Photos.
Casey:
Leave me alone.
John:
like a photo app is another way for you to organize your photos your current way you organize your photos is you put your good ones in day one and you put the rest in date and date oriented files and folders and those are two ways to organize but there are many more ways to organize and and your approach to edits where if you make edits you'll do it on import and then throw away the original is also maddening because the idea that you will never change your mind about edits or want to later edit another picture like
John:
whatever it's just that's that's a weird system but anyway like if you ever want to do anything with your photos having them in an app lets you slice and dice those photos much more easily than dealing with like the finder the finder is a worse photos app than the photos app i think we can safely say that it isn't for all my annoyances of the photos app it is it is a better photos app for
John:
organizing for finding for editing you name it so those are the benefits i think you'd be getting by using the photo library it's not so much the icloud photo library part it's the it's the fact that now you have a giant bucket where you can do work to organize your photos in different ways and have that work preserved across everything all your devices all your apple things you know the
Casey:
So the only way that I feel like I'm missing out on something that photos would provide is that when I was all in on Google Photos, which again, screwed me like everything else has.
Casey:
When I was all in on Google Photos, I did create albums for bigger events like vacations and things like that.
Casey:
And it was nice to be able to just hop over to an album and be able to show pictures or at least narrow down pictures from a particular vacation.
Casey:
I absolutely 100% confess that I do miss out on that to some degree.
Casey:
But with that said, what date this event happened, I can jump right to the photos.
Casey:
Now, granted, admittedly, I will be jumping to a much larger pile of photos than I would probably want for the for, you know, this hypothetical where I'm sharing a photo with somebody, but or even just like an abridged version of our vacation with somebody.
Casey:
Um, but I could still do it.
Casey:
And alternatively, especially in the last couple of years, I've gotten really devout about day one.
Casey:
And I would just look for the tag in day one.
Casey:
That is, you know, Declan's fifth birthday Disney world trip.
Casey:
And then that's the best photos that we took from that trip.
Casey:
You don't have to like it, John.
Casey:
There are many different, there are many of them.
Casey:
There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Casey:
I butchered my own quote.
Casey:
Um, this is, this is the system that's, that works for me.
Casey:
And it's not often that I think to myself, ah, crap.
Casey:
I really wish I had a photo album that I could just show John of this vacation that we took.
Casey:
You're fixing problems that I really don't feel like I have.
Casey:
And who knows?
Casey:
Maybe tomorrow I'll set up iCloud Photo Library and say, holy crap, you were right.
Casey:
I can't believe I waited this long.
Casey:
But for me, I've solved all of the problems that I have had.
Casey:
By either writing a bespoke Swift app to name and place these files, which I've done, I've solved it by finding an app that works on macOS to add geotags, which I found, and maybe one day I'll write my own, but at least for now I've found something that'll do it for me or assist me in doing it.
Casey:
I mean, I have reminders that fire once a month at different stages of the month to remind me to pull pictures off of Aaron's phone and then pull pictures off of my phone.
Casey:
I mean, I'm not saying that it is a completely foolproof system.
Casey:
I'm not saying that it can't be improved.
Casey:
But I'm saying that all of the things that really were pain points for me –
Casey:
I feel like I fixed.
Casey:
It doesn't mean it can't get better, but anything that was actively painful, I fixed.
Casey:
And why would I screw with something that seems to be working?
John:
Well, on this very show, I think you described it as Byzantine and complicated or something to that effect.
John:
So that's really what the benefit I was hoping to get to you is you can simplify your life by not having to worry about all that stuff you just described and just having, doing what everyone else does, but just take pictures with your phone and then there is no step two.
Casey:
Agreed, but that's if I'm willing to give up the one thing I'm telling you is table stakes, which is I want these files where and how I want them and I will not give that up.
John:
You should work on giving that up.
John:
i will take it under advisement i will take it under advisement but there's it's not going to happen because i've just i've been burned too many times you should you should try you should try and experiment like leave your photos where they are and like start a new empty iPhoto library and like try it for a month or something because if you don't like it then you can just you can just export all those photos and then run your swift thing on them and then shove them into the synology right you know what i mean
Casey:
Yeah, but again... Not this year, next year.
John:
We're going to work on this for maybe next year.
John:
All right, maybe next year.
John:
Okay, Mark, go to swim in the ocean.
John:
We'll get you to try briefly the iCloud Photo Library lifestyle.
John:
And then you can report back on the show and say how much you hated it.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I think I use photos now.
Casey:
Part of my process was to use image capture to pull all these off my phone or Aaron's phone.
Casey:
And actually, since Heak and Heaf and HEVC and whatever they're all called became a thing, image capture will cause the phone to convert to JPEG.
Casey:
And if you use photos, you can export the originals.
Casey:
You can export the HEICs, whatever they are, HEVCs.
Casey:
I don't care.
Casey:
It's late and I'm tired.
Casey:
I should have the lights on.
Casey:
It would have woke me up.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
It helps.
Casey:
And it'll be called, you know, KC mid-October, whatever.
Casey:
And I'll do an import from my phone.
Casey:
I will then immediately export it all to a folder on my desktop.
Casey:
And then I will run my little Swift app to move them all to the Synology.
Casey:
And then I delete the photos library I just created an hour earlier.
John:
All right.
John:
The system is flawless.
John:
I take it all back.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Told you.