This Is Not Your First Plane Crash
Casey:
So, update.
Casey:
As I'm sitting here, can you still hear me?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Oh, no.
Marco:
What did you touch?
Casey:
I didn't touch anything.
Casey:
I'm sitting here minding my own business.
Casey:
Is anything wet?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
I mean, other than my forehead now.
Casey:
I'm sitting here minding my own business.
Casey:
And the LG was like, eh.
Casey:
I don't know about this.
Casey:
And it turned itself off.
Casey:
You don't need to see the screen to podcast.
Casey:
And then turned itself right back on.
Casey:
Which is weird, though, because I'm talking to you on the USB Mix.
Casey:
That's fine, Casey.
Casey:
It's fine.
Casey:
I'm talking to you on the Mix Pre 3.
Marco:
Which is plugged into that, right?
Casey:
Yeah, I don't understand what the hell just happened.
Casey:
That was weird.
Casey:
All right, well, Godspeed all of us.
Marco:
So, okay, question.
Marco:
Do you have batteries in the battery sled on the back of the Mix Pre 3?
Marco:
Yeah.
Casey:
I do.
Casey:
And in fact, I have a reminder in Do, D-U-E, to check those batteries every six months to make sure they haven't exploded acid everywhere.
Casey:
And that six-month reminder just happened a week or two ago.
Marco:
Oh, for God's sakes.
Marco:
Spend the extra four bucks to get lithiums.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Do they not explode everywhere?
Casey:
They don't.
Marco:
No, they're incredibly stable for like 10 years.
Casey:
Oh, I genuinely did not know that.
Marco:
And they weigh basically nothing.
Marco:
They're fantastic.
Marco:
The only problem is- They don't last as long as alkalines, right?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
No, lithium, no, they're great.
Marco:
They're a little expensive, and they're not rechargeable.
Casey:
When Marco says a little expensive, that's dangerous.
John:
By last as long, I mean if you try to drain them, they don't have as many watt hours, do they?
Marco:
No, I think they still do.
Marco:
Rechargeables don't, usually.
Marco:
Rechargeables don't last as long as non-rechargeables.
John:
Oh, I know what you're talking about.
John:
You're not talking about lithium ion rechargeable, but I'm talking about the plain old lithium one.
Marco:
Yeah, I'm talking about the single-use, non-rechargeable energizer or lithium, whatever.
Marco:
They're awesome for things where weight matters because they're very, very lightweight, but also for things where long shelf life matters.
Marco:
Here's a life hack.
Marco:
If you have one of those smoke alarms with 9-volt batteries and they beep every three years because the batteries just die...
Marco:
Use lithium 9-volt batteries.
John:
Just buy a 10-year smoke alarm.
Marco:
That too.
Marco:
But assuming that's for people who still use the 9-volt ones or who are stuck somewhere where they can't control the smoke alarms, put one of those 10-year 9-volt batteries in there because they are awesome.
Marco:
Because when your smoke alarm beeps for low battery, usually it's not because the battery was used to depletion.
Marco:
It's because the battery is basically slowly self-discharged just with age.
Marco:
And the lithiums last way longer than that.
Marco:
So, yeah, definitely a little life hack there.
Marco:
Use those in your nine volt smoke alarms instead of the alkaline ones.
Casey:
So I'm not trying to be funny.
Casey:
This is all new thought technology for me.
Casey:
So you're saying a lithium battery will never just vomit acid every because, you know, an alkaline battery after a long time, oftentimes it'll just like explode acid everywhere.
Casey:
You're saying lithiums don't do that?
Marco:
Yeah, if you leave an alkaline battery in something long enough, it will do that, like, every time.
Marco:
It's just a matter of how long it will be.
Marco:
The ones I'm talking about, now this is different from, like, lithium-ion batteries that are rechargeable that are in our computers and phones.
John:
That's a different... They also won't puke stuff all over the inside of your stuff, by the way.
Marco:
Right, yes.
Marco:
But they have other issues, like if you charge them and they might swell and explode.
Marco:
But what I'm talking about is the single-use, non-rechargeable lithium AA's and 9V.
Marco:
Those, I've only used the ones from Energizer.
Marco:
I don't know if there's other brands that make them, probably, but I've only used the Energizer ones.
Marco:
But they are great because they have very, very, very long shelf lives and weigh nothing.
Marco:
So if either of those things are important to you, oh, and they're very stable and they won't leak crap all over stuff.
Marco:
So if you're putting batteries into something expensive where leaking battery acid into it might not be a very good thing or somewhere that you expect to have to have the batteries in there for a very long time, like multiple years before opening it up or replacing them, go lithium.
Marco:
It's better.
Casey:
Huh.
Casey:
I'll have to do that.
Casey:
Although $15 for Energizer, a four pack of Energizer lithium double A's.
Casey:
My word.
Marco:
That's, that's a lot.
Marco:
Usually they're about $2 each.
Marco:
Goodness.
Casey:
Well, either way, I guess, I guess you guys are worth it.
Casey:
So I'll, I'll, I'll put that in my shopping cart.
John:
That will not cause your LG monitor to stay on all the time, unfortunately.
Casey:
no it won't but at least give you a consistent recording when your lg monitor inevitably continues to flake out because it's so fine it is ultra fine hey if it i mean honestly if it really is that bad i'll just plug in the mix pre to the to the computer if i really need to i just don't want to i shouldn't have to darn it and you know this would all be better if apple just made a monitor have we ever talked about that we should talk about that no one's ever brought that up before nobody at all oh god i have i have some news
Casey:
Oh, tell me more.
Marco:
I don't know if I should share this, but I think I'm going to.
Marco:
Oh, no.
Marco:
Tiff told me the other day, she's like, can I tell you something?
Casey:
This is never, ever good, but carry on.
Marco:
She said, I kind of missed the touch bar.
Marco:
oh oh no whatever that's fine for emoji no for autocomplete in web forms which honestly that's the only thing i ever liked about it like that that i totally understand that because it is really nice to have those little autocomplete blobs when you're filling out a web form and you know you have them on the ios and you have them in the touch bar and they never brought them to mac don't you see the autocomplete options in the text field like i mean i guess it could show the same thing in the touch bar but aren't they already on your screen
John:
well if it's like a username and password yeah but if you i'm talking about like filling in like an address or or name or email like those kind of things you know where it'll offer the autocomplete just like chrome does that you should use chrome oh yeah right it does no chrome chrome says like if there's a first name field like and i just click in it there it shows a pop-up menu with like my name my address or whatever like all my contact info and then i just pick that autocomplete and it fills in all the rest of the fields in the forms
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I mean, Safari has a feature like that, but it doesn't always kick in.
Marco:
By the way, oh, my God.
Marco:
I just have started using as part of my new setup, like when I redid everything for the new computers.
Marco:
I enabled the 1Password Safari extension, like the new one.
Mm-hmm.
Marco:
Now, every time, so I use one password.
Marco:
I also use iCloud Keychain.
Marco:
I know I probably should just pick one or the other and go all in on one of them, but I like different parts of each one.
Marco:
And so right now I still use both.
Casey:
This is the most Casey thing you've ever said in your entire life.
Casey:
I only use one password.
Casey:
I have no other password managers.
Casey:
I only use one password.
Casey:
And you're sitting here saying, well, I kind of like this one.
Casey:
I kind of like that one.
Casey:
So I'm going to use both and make my life a living hell.
Marco:
No, I think the most Casey thing would be if I'm like, well, I really want to only use one password, but because I'm paying for iCloud storage, I feel like I should take away the one I like more that works better and switch over to this other one that doesn't work as well because I'm paying for it.
John:
The real Casey answer is he'd keep a text file on his desktop and anytime he needed to autocomplete something, he'd open up the text file, which is encrypted and copy and paste the passwords out of it into his forms.
John:
Because then he knows where all his passwords are and they're not in an opaque data store that he has no control over.
John:
You'd be looking for your passwords, but Casey knows they're all in that file on his desktop.
Marco:
That's almost too simple, though.
Marco:
I feel like you have to involve the garage door opener somehow.
Marco:
Like, how would he know what state his garage door is in if it didn't involve an encrypted text file?
John:
I guess the file couldn't be on his desktop.
John:
It would have to be on a Raspberry Pi attached to the outside of his house that he connects to through SSH.
Casey:
First of all, I'm still here.
Casey:
Second of all, I'm going to need so much therapy after this episode.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
Anyway, so in your bananas... And you thought we didn't have a pre-show.
Casey:
Yeah, seriously.
Casey:
In your bananas two-system setup, you were trying to do something dumb.
Marco:
I'm just throwing it out there.
Marco:
Viewing any web page that has a text field, it's like my screen gets covered in dialogues that... Like, the 1Password extension is...
Marco:
It's aggressive in how much it covers up on the screen and how it shows this giant floating box under every login form that it finds.
Marco:
And it usually asks me to unlock it because it's not currently unlocked because I haven't used it in a little while or something.
Marco:
And then that seems to fight with the iCloud keychain.
Yeah.
Marco:
If they're both trying to suggest passwords, it's kind of unclear which one wins.
John:
Can you put your one password into iCloud Keychain so that you can unlock one password with your iCloud Keychain?
Marco:
That might create some sort of singularity.
Marco:
I don't know if it'll autofill that.
Marco:
The box that's injected into the page from the extension, yeah, probably not.
Yeah.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
Let me just tell you, people out there, don't do what I'm doing.
Marco:
Pick one or the other and go all in on it.
Marco:
What I have now is a total mess, and I don't recommend this mess.
Casey:
The ATP store is different now.
Casey:
This is where I would normally say it's gone and you're not allowed to use it anymore.
Casey:
But that's not true.
Casey:
We now are back to the on-demand store and it is slightly different than it was before.
Casey:
Before you could get the original M1 shirt.
Casey:
Again, this is rainbow colors in the front, nothing on the back.
Casey:
You may not have John's incredible chip diagram because you missed out on the limited time offer.
Casey:
Well, now we also have M1 Pro and M1 Max equivalents.
Casey:
Again, nothing on the back.
Casey:
So you cannot have the sweet chip diagrams, but you may have M1, M1 Pro, or M1 Max all available on demand in TriBlend or 100% Cotton.
Casey:
whenever you want.
Casey:
And I believe I actually should have checked this before I started talking, but here we are.
Casey:
I'll just vamp for a little bit while I figure out the answer to my own question.
Casey:
You can also get these apparently in sweatshirt form, which was news to me, but tank top form and also onesies.
Casey:
So that's kind of cool too.
John:
Yeah, these aren't for the people who listen to the show.
John:
We said this before.
John:
These are the people who don't listen to the show.
John:
I don't know what we're talking about on the show, but we should at least mention it.
John:
If you missed out and you want to get a lesser inferior shirt, you know, this is... Which episode did we talk about this on?
John:
I don't want to explain it all again, but...
John:
Sometimes people wear our shirts in YouTube videos and then people who watch YouTube videos really want the shirts and then they're not for sale anymore.
John:
So we wanted to have some way where if someone sees it in a YouTube video, they can at least get the shirt.
John:
Because if we don't do this, people illegally sell our shirts all over the place.
John:
That's not a joke.
John:
That does happen.
John:
Like for real, like multiple times.
John:
I think we're up to like five or six times we've had to do like copyright takedown notices on people trying to sell out a shirt.
John:
So this is entirely for that.
John:
And those people have no idea what ATP is and they don't listen to this podcast.
John:
So this on-demand store mostly exists just so we can put a legit link in for people who want the shirt.
John:
But you, dear listeners, to the actual podcast, you can wait until our next sale.
John:
Thank you very much if you participated in our recent sale.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
Thank you very, very much.
Casey:
That sale actually went really well.
Casey:
And, you know, come to think of it, I should have done some analytics.
Casey:
Oh, man, I've been doing much better about being on top of things with this show.
Casey:
And apparently I've just failed with this two-show week.
Casey:
But nevertheless, I should have done some analytics to see whether the Macs beat the Pro, which I'm pretty sure it did and how handily it did so.
John:
It absolutely beat it.
John:
It was like two to one.
Casey:
Was it two to one?
Casey:
Thank you, John.
Casey:
See, you're not supposed to be doing any research, but here we are.
Casey:
All right, let's do some follow-ups.
Casey:
So apparently someone from within Facebook was trying to defend their honor as much as somebody who works at Facebook can.
Casey:
Tell me, John, what's going on with meta and enterprise stuff?
John:
Yeah, there's a couple of points from an anonymous Facebook employee talking about the meta stuff.
John:
So on the enterprise, uh, this person says it was mentioned that Facebook has no experience in the enterprise.
John:
I would simply like to point you to workplace.com, a website that I had never gone to or heard of until this email.
John:
It's essentially Facebook, but for work and has been quite successful.
John:
So says the person who works for Facebook, um,
John:
So Facebook does have some experience dealing with in selling services to businesses, and meetings and VR directly tie into the same service.
John:
Further, Microsoft Teams integrates with Workplace, so many businesses that use Workplace also pay Microsoft.
John:
I'm not saying Microsoft slash Salesforce don't have more success with business, but Facebook isn't entirely new to this either.
John:
If you go to Workplace.com and look at it, and you see the header on the top of the website, it says, predictably,
John:
workplace from meta because they're not going to say from facebook because the workplace and facebook do not mix so more evidence of the branding being important to trying to sell into the enterprise but i'm assuming this product predates the meta rebranding i don't actually know what it is
John:
Presumably it's like Facebook for work, but they don't want to say that.
Casey:
Man, this is big.
Casey:
This website is big corporate software energy.
John:
Yeah, but that's what you have to do to sell to businesses.
John:
This doesn't look any better or worse than any other enterprise thing, but Facebook does have a toe in that market at least.
Casey:
I'm sorry for interrupting you a second time, but here we are.
Casey:
If you were to both load workplace.com and scroll down, do you see the parallax sort of situation going on there?
Casey:
So it has this company announcements image in the upper right.
Casey:
And as you scroll, it also scrolls the company announcements to give you a sample of what it all looks like.
Casey:
Are we digging that or are we not digging that?
Marco:
I hate any kind of scroll-based animation.
Marco:
To me, any kind of scroll jacking or things like this, I know why people think they're fancy or they're cute or they're cool or whatever.
Marco:
But to me,
Marco:
interfering with scrolling is like interfering with text selection and cut copy and paste like this is a fun like scrolling is a fundamental feature of the ui that i feel like the content should be below that layer it should not operate with that layer you know like it shouldn't react to it it should just allow you to scroll however you need and want to and the content should just be scrollable content
Casey:
So I mostly agree with you.
Casey:
However, in this case, it's not like Apple's oftentimes way overdone scroll jacking where it completely disrupts the way a web page is supposed to scroll.
Casey:
In this case, we're just getting sort of like a parallax-y sort of effect where it's not interrupting how the web page scrolls.
John:
it's not parallax it's it's trying to make it like oh and by the way you're also scrolling the view in this screenshot because the screenshot is also of a window and the window has scrollable content so imagine if when scrolling the page of the screenshot is on you're also kind of sort of tiny little bit scrolling the stuff in that window which is cute and honestly not as offensive as the apple
Casey:
I agree.
John:
I agree.
John:
What Marco's talking about is basically like we want it to be because we're funny studies or some people want it to be like you printed out a web page and then put it in a big long scroll behind a viewport and then just moved the piece of paper that you printed up and down through the viewport.
John:
Right.
John:
That it is essentially a static thing and scrolling just changes where the viewport is.
John:
um i'm and obviously that is a tried and true model and it's very stable and people understand it and it's simple the apple model is more like uh to give a to use the scroll wheel as an example because that's why you happen to use a scroll wheel because i'm weird and old um it's as if the scroll wheel is like turning the crank on a mechanical box that has a bunch of animated toys inside it it's like what does it do it just turns the crank
John:
Stop thinking of it as scrolling.
John:
Start thinking of it as this is a clockwork toy that has an animation that goes forward and backwards.
John:
And when you turn this crank, you make the animation go forward and backwards, right?
John:
And that, all right, that's also a thing.
John:
I find that very frustrating when I'm looking for content because all the tools that we're used to using, quickly scrolling from one place to the other, home and page up, page down, the find tool, find in browser window, tend to work in strange ways with this clockwork mechanism that used to be
John:
a static document but is now uh you know a wind-up toy um so it can be done well it can be done poorly but the worst i feel like is when i'm reading like a news story on like a newspaper website that is just simply prose and it's doing that it's like who are you trying to impress you have text and maybe you have like two photos
John:
right i know new york times like oh new york times interactive snow thing but it's like there's a time and a place for that if you want to show off go for it but if i'm just reading a 15 paragraph text story with two photos you're not gaining anything by making it a clockwork toy i agree so i'm like i was looking for something to put in the show notes for scroll jacking in case you know people weren't familiar and i stumbled upon envato.com envato.com it'll be in the show notes and
Casey:
And as I'm scrolling down, just kind of trying to quickly skim this to make sure it's not complete and utter trash, look at what they use as one of the examples of terrible, terrible usability.
Casey:
If you wouldn't mind scrolling down below the Delicacy of Usability heading, what do they have there, John?
John:
I'm still scrolling.
John:
It's so hard to find the mute button and zoom.
John:
Oh, the Mac Pro page, the old Mac Pro page.
Casey:
The trash can Mac Pro page.
John:
It was bad.
John:
But like every Apple page is like that now.
John:
We've just gotten used to it.
John:
Like the Mac Pro is no worse than all the Apple web pages that are on now.
Casey:
Yeah, it says in this site, let me state that I've seen amazing parallax layouts that perform great when designed properly.
Casey:
Apple's Mac Pro site is, in my opinion, one of the worst offenders of bad parallax design and scroll hijacking.
John:
I mean, they're saying parallax because it's like the animation technique where the things that are in front of you move more than the things that are far away to make it look like, you know, a 3D type world.
John:
Anyway, but that's not necessarily what a lot of these things do.
John:
They're not trying to induce parallax like these things are closer to you and those things are farther away.
John:
So when you scroll, the things closer go by faster than things.
John:
It's not what they do at all.
John:
They're just like, well, we have arbitrary number of layers and by turning the crank in this machine, some of them fly by faster than others.
John:
It has nothing to do with any sort of
John:
like simulating depth from the viewport or anything like that which is fine again it doesn't have to simulate depth it can but these little clockwork machines i feel like they need to be really amusing and engaging or serve a purchase a purpose and a lot of the times when i'm going to the mac pro page at apple.com i'm there to get information like my task is not let me be wowed by uh your your little clockwork toy my task is i want to know information how much what's the maximum amount of ram uh
John:
uh you know what what date was this page updated like i don't know like i want to find something out or i want to see a picture of something that's the worst if you want to see like where is the close-up picture of the ports in the back of this thing and you realize you can't get to them by grabbing the scroll thrub and thumb and moving because it'll just fly by too fast because it's like an animation that anyway this is this is a tangent we need to get off this sorry we've been scroll jacked by scroll jacking
Casey:
Nice.
Casey:
So we were talking about Workplace from Meta is where we left off.
John:
All right.
John:
So next point to be addressed by the anonymous Facebook employee, would Facebook be the company to solve the hardware problem?
John:
Oculus is the most successful company selling VR headsets today.
John:
It's still relatively niche compared to smartphones, but based on public data, Meta slash Oculus is the leading company in the space.
John:
It doesn't automatically mean no one will do a better job and win, but if you were to think of who's most likely to make VR hardware that's good enough to win, Oculus should at least be considered as a strong choice.
John:
I did point out that Facebook bought Oculus, which was a good idea.
John:
I did point out that Oculus was the leader when they bought them.
John:
But also, as we talked about, not that they fumbled Oculus, but they have not.
John:
It has not been a continued smashing success and other competitors have gained ground on them.
John:
But the more important point is, despite Oculus being the leader in the space for some time and arguably maybe still now, depending on how you look at it.
John:
neither oculus nor any of its competitors have solved this problem have you know have have cracked the problem in the way that the iphone did for smartphones right we're still in the stage where people are trying things seeing what will work the technology is just not there yet we don't have anything that's small enough light enough cheap enough you know like the dream of having a thing that looks like a pair of regular reading glasses that
John:
has a high resolution high refresh you know screen going into your eyeballs and like and can like blank out the view whatever like we're not there yet so all of these companies are still you know despite that you you've got the leader but no one has figured it out yet so we don't know who's going to figure it out and yes oculus is in the running and it's good that facebook bought them but when i said i don't have faith that
John:
facebook can solve this problem because they haven't before now that's not to say that they won't there's lots of things that apple hadn't done before apple had never made its own chips before and they're really good at that and they did it by buying a company like it's not impossible but you would like when a company that has never achieved something before boldly proclaims that it will not only do it but be the leader and usher in a revolution before they've actually done anything it's worthy of skepticism right
John:
Like Apple's not out there saying, you know, five years ago, we're going to be the leaders in self-driving cars, right?
John:
They were trying to do that.
John:
They're buying lots of people and, you know, working towards it, but they didn't sort of pre-announce that we've solved this problem before they even solved it.
John:
And you say, well, but they bought all, you know, I don't know, they probably did buy companies, but we've hired all these important people.
John:
They didn't, to give another example, and they bought PA Semi.
John:
They didn't say, we will soon be the leader in the silicon chip space.
John:
They never said that.
John:
They just didn't, they didn't say anything until they were.
John:
And even now they don't.
John:
brag about it because they don't have to because they've got the goods and this Facebook employee says this is nothing like Apple and social networks as in Apple is you know
John:
notoriously bad at social networks and saying facebook isn't that bad facebook at least bought a company that was good at it and hasn't entirely screwed them up so that is true but then again apple has actually tried to field social networks and failed so it's not like apple has never done anything they've just not shown that they're good at doing it yet and i think facebook has also not shown that they're good at that they've shown that they're good at buying a company that's good at it but that company that they bought didn't sort of continue on its rocket-like trajectory and has competitors that are gaining on them i feel like
John:
to the point that games are creating software people actually want to use.
John:
Facebook has already been buying companies that make the most successful apps and games for the Quest.
John:
Most recently acquired the company behind Supernatural, which is a popular VR workout app.
John:
Yeah, as I said, it's not that Facebook has to do it itself.
John:
It could just wait for someone else to do it and buy them.
John:
Buying companies that make good VR games makes sense because if no one is making games or whatever for your platform, or if the people doing it aren't successful, it behooves you to fund them or buy them.
John:
But I feel like there may be a limit to...
John:
how successful you can be by acquiring companies that were good at doing the thing that you weren't able to do yourselves again pointing to apple they've done that many times it's an important thing how they bought next it saved the entire company it was kind of a reverse takeover like i don't you know i'm not saying that's not a viable strategy but it's also not an easy strategy the history of big companies buying little companies that are more innovative and that working out well
John:
is littered with the bodies of companies that just bought up all all these great smaller companies and just squandered it right apple is the exception there is not the rule and so far facebook has been continuing like most big companies they buy small companies you get talent occasionally you can make an important strategic acquisition mostly the the most successful acquisitions are buying companies that already have big customer bases like whatsapp and stuff where really what you're buying is not so much the application or the technology but the people we want the whatsapp user base we want the instagram user base
John:
And yeah, there are apps and blah, blah, blah, but that's not really the whole story there.
John:
And then the final point, why do you need to wear VR headsets for hours at a time?
John:
This person says, another thing I didn't understand is the assumption that VR needs to be comfortable to wear for many hours at a time to be successful.
John:
I don't see that.
John:
I think if VR becomes something that you use a few times a day for 15 to 30 minutes each, that's likely a success.
John:
I don't believe VR is supposed to replace any of our current devices.
John:
It should be a new medium that becomes a new option to take part in.
John:
As the hardware gets better, it'll probably become a big thing to play or hang out in for a little while at a time.
John:
Now, it's true that VR doesn't have to be something that's comfortable for hours on end.
John:
You could just use it for your one or two meetings per day if you have a very optimistic view of how many meetings people have per day.
John:
Again, I can't... If VR was used for any kind of meeting, the idea that that equals 15 to 30 minutes... Well, maybe I just have too many meetings.
John:
But the metaverse...
John:
the pitch of the metaverse is not that it's going to be a thing you do once per day for 15 to 30 minutes, or even three times per day, 15 to 30 minutes, but more like it would be a place that you want to spend time.
John:
And the same way that people don't play World of Warcraft a couple times a day for 15 to 30 minutes.
John:
Right.
John:
The reason people have longer sessions with those type of environments is because those are places where they want to be because it's immersive fun.
John:
It has all the qualities that they say the metaverse is going to have.
John:
Or even just as simple as staring at a computer or your phone using your web browser to buy stuff, shopping, potential use of the metaverse ties well into Facebook's advertising business.
John:
People don't shop in, you know, tiny increments of time.
John:
People spend time going through websites, looking for sales, clicking around, because it's a pleasurable thing to do, to window shop online, to browse for things, to do product research.
John:
Almost anything that has been described as being part of the metaverse that people already do but not in VR, they do for extended periods of time because it's an enjoyable or productive thing to do.
John:
And so for VR to be part of that...
John:
It can't be so onerous that you can only tolerate it in small chunks.
John:
It should be either completely transparent or else, ideally, desirable.
John:
That I would prefer to do my research on what my next dishwasher will be on my big computer with the big screen with a thousand browser tabs, because that is a tool that helps me get that job done better.
John:
I don't go there and go, oh, I have to endure my computer.
John:
I hope I don't get too motion sick during this one hour dishwasher research session.
John:
I want to go on my computer instead of my phone because it has a bigger screen.
John:
And that's a useful tool for me to do that task.
John:
Shopping, whatever.
John:
Repeat for any other activity, whether it's hanging out with friends or like playing a game or even, you know, taking a meeting or something.
John:
I don't want to feel like, oh, I got to put on the VR headset again for this meeting and just thinking of that sweaty thing stuck into my face.
John:
Like...
John:
You know, same thing with a laptop or a phone.
John:
We don't say that you have to hold your phone in front of your face for eight hours today and stare at it.
John:
But we do have to say you will feel comfortable having your phone with you all day long and using it whenever you need to use it because you need to use the phone for something.
John:
Right.
John:
Same thing with your computer.
John:
Doesn't mean you have to sit there in front of it all day long for eight hours and stare at it.
John:
But it should be the type of thing that you can sit at with it on your desk at work all day long and use it for its intended purpose without undue effects again.
John:
See also RSI, having a good chair, all that other stuff.
John:
So VR needs to fit into that.
John:
And right now...
John:
Even just the ordeal of putting the thing on your face for a couple meetings would start to feel a little bit onerous.
John:
Even if when you're in those meetings, it offers a superior immersive experience that you wouldn't get by staring at your laptop with Teams.
John:
But see, past episode where Mark talked about how many people might not want their meetings to be more immersive.
John:
It's a whole other debate.
John:
The final point here.
John:
the dream for ar is something different and i don't think the two should be confused that i kind of disagree with because i mean obviously they are different ar is where you're seeing the real world and it is being augmented with virtual stuff but in the end it's it's more or less the same idea it's just a question of what canvas you're painting on ar is harder but ar also is potentially richer because all the things that you can do in vr you can also do in ar and
John:
by augmenting the real physical world with this virtual stuff, many new possibilities open up.
John:
Technologically speaking, and in terms of what does this offer that looking at my phone doesn't offer, it's the same.
John:
The advantages of AR and VR, what they offer over mediums that don't have an R at the end, what they offer over your phone, your laptop, your computer, is the fact that it's like a 3D world that reacts to where you're looking around.
John:
And yes, the technology is technically different, but
John:
The sort of mental, the something extra special that AR and VR have, it's the same something extra special.
John:
It's just a question of where they're painting that, whether it's just on a blank field of pixels that they control entirely or onto the real world.
Marco:
Thank you.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
So we also got a little bit of feedback with regard to Apple TV and Apple TV+.
Casey:
Don Liebs writes, the Apple TV app is not the only way to watch Apple TV+, which we all knew, and I think every single one of us forgot.
Casey:
Don writes, I watch it in my web browser at tv.apple.com, which, again, I think we all knew that.
Casey:
We all completely forgot.
Casey:
So there is that.
Casey:
Then Igor Makarov writes, I tried Apple TV+, on a Windows PC, and, well, the web app is really awful.
Casey:
Apple doing a poor web app?
Casey:
You don't say.
Casey:
Igor continues, I watched one episode and there were weird black screen blankings at random times.
Casey:
Well, that's a little uncomfortable.
Casey:
I mean, watch it as ultra fine.
Casey:
It's not the fault of the web app at all.
Casey:
Maybe that's the case.
Casey:
And three times the player just halted and wouldn't restart.
Casey:
I had to reload the page to get going again.
Casey:
The app forgot my progress, of course.
Casey:
My network connection is good.
Casey:
And while the video was playing, the quality was good.
Casey:
There are four identically labeled options for English subtitles, not counting the closed captioning.
Casey:
The first one simply didn't work.
Casey:
And the app also didn't remember my selection.
Casey:
Sweet.
Marco:
Sounds like the web experience of Apple TV Plus is not great, maybe.
Casey:
Yeah, perhaps not.
Casey:
Goodness.
Casey:
And then Joe Mesterhazy writes, with regard to Marco's HomePod, the HomePod popping is a design problem that will eventually kill your HomePod.
Casey:
Cool.
Casey:
This guy diagnosed it, but there's no cure.
Casey:
And there's a YouTube link, which we will put in the show notes.
Casey:
It is a timestamp link to about 40 seconds.
Casey:
There is a 1 to 3 volt DC offset always being fed to the speaker, which slowly cooks it.
Casey:
Lost one HomePod.
Casey:
My other is doing it now, too.
Casey:
Awesome.
Marco:
The good thing is, so I am a little bit validated with the HomePod feedback so far, both that...
Marco:
it seems like my HomePod problems happen to a lot of people, and also there are a lot of people out there who like their HomePods as much as I like mine, and are very disappointed also that there seems to be no replacement coming anytime soon, if ever, for the full-sized HomePod.
Marco:
While I'm sad that it does sound like
Marco:
I'm probably going to lose these HomePods pretty soon.
Marco:
I'm not the only person who likes my HomePod.
Marco:
It was such a relative flop in the market.
Marco:
You wouldn't expect many of us fans to really be out there, but there are dozens of us.
John:
They're all listening to the show.
John:
This YouTube video, I don't know how much steak I put in.
John:
I don't know enough to judge whether...
John:
this analysis in this video is correct or entirely wrong.
John:
It's just an example of someone who's got some HomePods that are doing weird stuff and is trying to fix them and getting weird results.
John:
So, you know, take it with a grain of salt, but it does seem like HomePods have a series of potential ailments that are causing them to
Casey:
not be reliable that's that's the bottom line the bottom line is people who have home pods and have had them for a while say it's just not working like it used to where the fault lies we're not entirely sure but either way it's not good because as mark pointed out they're not making more of them indeed so i've been on a journey y'all uh we talked i think last week in an aside about plex and two speaker feedback or playback or you know two zone playback so what i want to do is i want to have a video playing using plex and
Casey:
in my living room, and then have the audio being piped not only to the living room, but to the screened-in porch, or perhaps some other place in the house.
Casey:
And I've been saying that this, with Plex specifically, once I selected the screened-in porch as an additional speaker, the audio would only come out in the screened-in porch.
Casey:
It would not come out in the living room anymore.
Casey:
So Ebernet on Twitter points out, the issue is a lack of AirPlay 2 support in Plex, and it's not a problem with tvOS.
Casey:
So I think to myself, fine, now I finally have to listen to the entire internet who has told me I really need to use Infuse.
Casey:
The Infuse fans are rabid.
Casey:
They are, to Tesla, no, nothing's as bad as Tesla, but they're rabid, I tell you.
Casey:
And so everyone has been telling me for years, try Infuse, try Infuse, try Infuse.
Marco:
So I do.
Marco:
And this is basically an alternative tuplex.
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah, so I'm a little ignorant on this because I've only used it for a few minutes, but my limited understanding of Infuse is that it is similar to Plex and it's like an omnivorous consumer, but unlike Plex, it doesn't require server-side software.
Casey:
So you can just point it at like a network share, for example, and it'll slurp up all the media that's there and similar to Plex is fairly omnivorous in what it'll eat, you know, it'll...
Casey:
It'll play an MKV.
Casey:
It'll play AVIs.
Casey:
It'll play all sorts of different things.
Casey:
And supposedly it runs really well on Apple TV for reasons.
Casey:
And so it's supposed to be very good.
John:
Well, the thing I use Infuse for, the thing that distinguishes it for me, distinguishes it from Plex.
John:
You're right what you said about what it does and how it operates.
John:
But the main reason I installed it and the main reason I turned to it is that Plex, being a server,
John:
will depending on your settings and sometimes in ways that are unexpected try to feed you video that it thinks is appropriate for your device which may involve transcoding right happening on the server and that can be a problem if you have a weak server or if it's transcoding something in a weird way or if it's transcoding when you didn't want it to be whereas in fuse there is no server so if you point it to your smb share setting aside it's all metadata look up and all this other stuff if you pointed your smb share you know that the
John:
the video video and audio decompression of that file off of your server is happening on your device and so if you think you have a fast device like an ipad pro but your plex server is choking on something try and fuse because then it's going to give your ipad pro a chance to do the decoding and then you'll know like is this file screwed up or is it just because my plex server is too slow
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
So the onboarding for Infuse was not super obvious to me.
Casey:
Maybe I'm just a dummy.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
But it did eventually slurp up my Plex library by connecting to Plex.
Casey:
And I guess it just basically looked at everything and said, OK, this is what's available.
Casey:
And I know how to consume it.
Casey:
But frustratingly, it doesn't use any of the Plex server's metadata that you kind of alluded to this a moment ago.
Casey:
It will go and figure out the metadata for each of these files on its own.
Casey:
And my very limited understanding is for a long time that was really crummy because then every one of your infused clients, like your iPad, your phone, your Apple TV, they all need to repeat the same work over and over again.
Casey:
Sounds like Apple, doesn't it?
Casey:
So anyway, but I tried it, and sure enough, it worked no problem.
Casey:
So I could broadcast in both the living room and the screened-in porch video.
Casey:
Well, the video was only in the living room, of course, but the audio was going to both destinations.
Casey:
And so I go back to a friend of the show, Ryan Jones, and basically say, what the hell?
Casey:
And he's insisting that it works for him in Plex.
Casey:
And Ryan is not a dope.
Casey:
So I'm really wondering what the hell is going on here.
Casey:
And it turns out both of us are right.
Casey:
So Ryan's setup, and his is a little different because I'm on the Plex beta and he is not, but his setup was that it was working just fine with Plex as configured out of the box.
Casey:
And I go looking in the settings for my copy of Plex, which is on, you know, test flight.
Casey:
And there's an option, which I don't know if this is released or not.
Casey:
So we're just going to pretend that it is.
Casey:
There's an option for Plex to use its old video player.
Casey:
It's literally called use old video player.
Casey:
And they encourage you to do that if you need higher compatibility.
Casey:
They're not specific about what compatibility you're talking about, but compatibility.
Casey:
So I think to myself, hmm, I wonder what this does.
Casey:
And so I turned on use old video player, thus turning off the new video player.
Casey:
And I'll give you one guess what works.
Casey:
No problem now.
Casey:
So I suspect, I don't know this, but I suspect that the old video players, like the out-of-the-box AV player or something along those lines, and their new video player is something custom.
Casey:
And because the out-of-the-box, again, this is all supposition, but the AV player out-of-the-box solution...
Casey:
that obviously will support all the things that Apple supports because it's Apple's video player.
Casey:
But Plex's new video player only supports the things that Plex supports.
Casey:
And from the rumblings I've heard, they really don't give a crap about AirPlay 2.
Casey:
So my near-term solution, until I can't do it anymore, is to use old video player.
Casey:
And then if that eventually becomes not an option anymore, then I'll probably switch to Infuse on the occasions that I would like to listen to something in two locations.
Casey:
But man, I've been on a journey.
Marco:
What a pain.
Casey:
It is a pain.
Casey:
It's understandable, but it's definitely a pain.
Marco:
My favorite thing about this journey is that what you're trying to do is play audio in two rooms that are very close to each other physically in the house.
Marco:
And this would be so easily accomplished with wires.
Marco:
Well, yes.
Marco:
With the oldest potential technology in the world.
John:
Or turning the volume up in one room.
Casey:
Yeah, right.
Casey:
I mean, literally, the door to the screened-in porch is on the edge of the living room.
Casey:
Now, Marco's seen my living room.
Casey:
It is a very squat but wide room.
Casey:
But nonetheless, your point is completely fair.
Casey:
And yes, if I made the living room loud enough, and as long as this door was open at the screened-in porch, you could absolutely hear everything in the screened-in porch.
Casey:
So you're not wrong.
Marco:
And you could fairly easily run a second pair of speaker wires, basically, from your entertainment center in the living room out to the porch.
Marco:
And then you could have just passive speakers there and have a receiver in the living room controlling both.
Marco:
I mean, we talked about this before, that you'd have problems remotely controlling volume independently with that kind of setup.
Marco:
But there are ways that can be done.
Marco:
But it's so funny to think playing music in two rooms
Marco:
is a very simple solved problem like 15, 20 years ago.
Marco:
And now it's very complicated and it doesn't work half the time because we're trying to do it in all these new ways.
Casey:
Yeah, and it's funny you say that because literally the speaker wire that is connected to the speakers in the screened-in porch
Casey:
it enters the house right behind my entertainment center.
Casey:
But the reason I do it this way is exactly the things you said.
Casey:
Like, you know, there are occasions I want to have two different things playing.
Casey:
There are occasions I would like, well, basically always, I would like independent volume control.
Casey:
And again, there's ways I could get around this.
Casey:
But when this all works, I swear to you, it's delightful.
Casey:
But getting it all to work has been far more, to your point, of an adventure than I wanted it to be.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
Speaking of adventures that are way too long, tell me about your newest case for your iPhone.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So I mentioned last time when I was doing my big case review that there were a couple that hadn't come in yet.
Marco:
One of them was the Bullstrap leather case that did since come in.
Marco:
It very much is like the kind of leather cases Apple used to make before they made...
Marco:
closed bottoms like the way the way they do now um so it it really is like a very good alternative to the apple leather case if what you want is that um the bottom is open and i will say in in my time using it so far i have really enjoyed that feeling of like feeling the nice sharp phone edge on the bottom swipe when i'm like swiping up instead of having to hit a case there so i i kind of i hate to admit that john was a little bit right about that but i think john was right about open bottom being better
Casey:
So you like it when your bottom's open?
Marco:
Well, I like it when my case's bottom's open.
Casey:
Gotcha.
John:
He likes to feel a bare bottom.
John:
That's what we're going for here.
Casey:
Well done.
Casey:
That was a much better joke, John.
Marco:
Well done.
Marco:
This is why we have him on the show.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So a few other things about it are pretty nice, and a few things are not so nice.
Marco:
So the camera plateau area...
Marco:
most cases for the iphone 13 series when they transition from the back of the phone to the camera plateau usually it's like a hard plastic ridge or it's some other kind of like abrupt rising and what they do with the bullsharp case is they have like a nice gentle like slope upwards like it kind of curves up it makes for a very nice premium feel in the pocket and
Marco:
um like so you're not because you're not feeling around that camera you're not feeling that hard plastic edge or that big sharp bump you're feeling just this nice smooth transition so it's very nice very nice feeling overall um some things that are not so great about it the um the buttons are plastic not metal
Marco:
Apple other cases always have metal buttons, at least recent ones do.
Marco:
This has plastic, so it's less nice feeling on the buttons.
Marco:
It's fine, though.
Marco:
It's just not as nice as Apple's.
Marco:
And the mute switch cutout hole forms a fairly deep thing that you have to poke your fingernail in to switch the mute switch.
Marco:
So flipping the mute switch in the bull strap case is something that you don't want to do very often.
Marco:
The other thing is that the color I got, I got the ocean color.
Marco:
And I think their photographs on the website of the Ocean Color are generous.
Marco:
It is in practice much darker than it looks like on their site and has a bit more of a greenish tint along with the blue than their photos suggest.
Marco:
I don't like their giant bull logo on the back.
Marco:
Maybe it's because I don't like cattle that much.
Marco:
Giant is an exaggeration.
John:
It's smaller than a dime.
Marco:
Yeah, a dime could cover it just barely.
Marco:
The other thing is that the leather they have used has a pretty strong smell.
Marco:
And, you know, leather, you know, part of the appeal of leather, which I'll get to, but part of the appeal of leather is, you know, it has that nice smell of whatever the hell chemicals make it what it is.
Marco:
But this smells a little bit...
Marco:
like bad it's not it's not a hundred percent great smell it's kind of a bad smell um that's fairly strong um i will say the mag safe works well and everything uh but ultimately you know i it's funny i actually after the last episode where i said it hadn't come in yet i had ordered it and i had convenient i emailed them saying hey can i cancel this order and they didn't respond and then it shipped the next day cool and then they responded saying sorry it already shipped yeah
Marco:
Neato.
Marco:
I'm kind of stuck with it now, but if you want a nice leather case, this is a nice leather case.
Marco:
I think I actually don't like leather anymore for my phone case.
Marco:
Now that I have tried the other better plastic options...
Marco:
I'm really very much enjoying the soft, squishy TPU of the Clear case and whatever the heck the Cotabay case is made out of.
Marco:
I'm really enjoying those.
Marco:
So I think, ultimately, I don't want leather anymore most of the time.
John:
Maybe you want a plasticky leather because the Bullstrap one looks like a leathery leather, like it's very grainy, leathery or whatever.
John:
But the Olex R case I have for my 12 Pro is a very plasticky leather.
John:
Like if I were to give it to you and not tell you it's leather, you would say this is the worst fake leather I've ever seen.
John:
Apparently it's real leather, but it looks and feels very much like plastic.
John:
But I still like it because the experience I've had with all the Apple leather cases and this Olex R one is you get it and you're like, oh no, I've made a mistake.
John:
It's too slippery.
John:
But then it breaks in a little bit.
John:
And that's true of this leather case as well, like that it gets tackier over time as the weather as the leather sort of wears a little bit.
John:
But mostly it seems completely uniform, almost like it's a plastic surface.
John:
So if I was to design a plastic, say I want a plastic case that's, you know, not as grippy as the silicone one, but, you know, a little bit grippy, like I would design something that's like this one, like this, this OXR leather case and the Apple leather cases do not read like leather.
John:
They read like simulated, like they read like vegan leather or something.
John:
But I like how they work in the hand.
John:
I do feel like I have a good positive grip on it, but it slides in and out of pockets real easy.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But ultimately, I actually have switched back to the Cotabay one because I'm going to do some car driving over the next week or so.
Marco:
And so I wanted the nice MagSafe.
Marco:
But I think I'm totally fine with my new plastic lifestyle.
Marco:
uh because you know again like with the leather one i was afraid of like setting it down on a wet counter or anything like that and and you know it's kind of nice with plastic to just know like yeah this thing can get a little bit wet and it's fine what about your bare bottom i i i recognize that the bare bottom is nicer but because i have i have had a covered bottom for for you know months now um i we'll get to your pants in a second
Marco:
Yes, but that's different.
Marco:
Different cover for a different bottom.
Marco:
Oh my.
Marco:
This kind of convinced me that a bare bottom is better, but I don't necessarily need it.
Marco:
Because when I don't have it, I don't really notice that much.
John:
I can't believe OXR does not have any iPhone 13 cases still.
John:
I just went to the website to check again.
John:
It's a good thing I didn't get this.
John:
Well, I guess these are options, but yeah, there.
John:
It says iPhone 12 Pro Max, new.
John:
Not new, guys.
John:
Sorry.
Marco:
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Marco:
Number one, they're isolated from other tools.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thank you so much to Rose for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, so we really don't want you to have a bare bottom, Marco, so tell us about your pants.
Marco:
Going back again to phones and cases and pants.
Marco:
So the original problem I stated was that my new iPhone 13 Pro, which is significantly larger and heavier than the mini I was carrying on last year, it just kept sliding forward in my pocket and looked stupid and was uncomfortable on walks.
Marco:
And I got this wonderful email from Samuel Cohen.
Marco:
who said, I share your frustration with phone slippage and standard jeans pockets.
Marco:
To combat this, I sew the walls of the pocket flap in half to create two separate pocket chambers, one sized perfectly for my phone in the spot where I want it to stay.
Marco:
See attached mock-up.
Marco:
And Samuel has this amazing diagram.
Marco:
It is extremely good.
Marco:
Which is part of this amazing email included step-by-step steps such as remove pants.
No.
Marco:
But the basic idea, I actually had a couple people suggest this, but Samuel illustrated it best.
Marco:
The basic idea is turn the pants inside out or whatever, and you pull the actual pocket out, which is this double-sided piece of fabric in there.
Marco:
And you actually sew a seam down the middle of it vertically so that you're basically dividing it into two vertical chambers.
Marco:
So by making the one closer to the side of your leg just big enough to fit the phone,
Marco:
then it can't slide over into the front of your leg, which is a fairly labor-intensive solution to this problem where I should have just probably gotten a smaller phone to begin with.
Marco:
But this is actually a really hilariously clever solution.
Marco:
I have not tried it yet, though, because I found a different solution.
John:
Before you move on to the different solution, the problem I see with this solution is
John:
Now you have a line of stitching going down the center of your pants that people can see from the outside.
John:
No, no, no.
John:
No, you don't see it on the outside.
John:
Why wouldn't you?
Marco:
You're only stitching the inside of the pocket.
Marco:
You're not stitching.
Marco:
I mean, you might see like the imprint of having something thicker there.
John:
Oh, I see.
John:
You're just stitching the liner part.
John:
All right.
John:
Well, then anyway, the second problem with this thing is now you can't put your wallet in your front pocket.
John:
well who does that you put in the other one i just i'm just telling you you're compromising your pocket like like car trunks that have a divider let you remove the divider because sometimes you need to store larger things i feel like this is uh decreasing the cargo capacity of your pants you can always you can get just a second pair of pants for your extra car capacity you get like maybe like a velcro in there so like when you wanted to you can zip it apart but then but i don't
Casey:
when do you ever share the phone pocket with anything else that's true i don't i mean i don't carry my phone the way you do so i'm just saying i feel like i feel like sewing the phone gets its own pocket because like that that other part of the pocket is now wasted what can you put there two pens well that's the thing now i mean i i think this is a bit bananas but with that said in the defense of this bananas idea then you can put something else in the other part of the pocket because you're not worried about it clanging against the phone and scratching it or whatever
Marco:
Yeah, this actually adds car capacity because it has a divider, you know, as opposed to this one thing that you don't want anything to touch.
John:
You can't have an item that would span it as long as I can.
John:
It also says not to scale in this drawing, so I don't know what to think.
John:
Like, how big is that phone really?
Marco:
The only reason I haven't attempted this yet, well, number one, we don't have a sewing machine here and I don't want to do it by hand.
John:
And number two... You knew somebody who could sew.
Marco:
I know.
Marco:
She also doesn't have her sewing machine here and also doesn't want to do it by hand.
Marco:
But...
John:
She's too embarrassed to sew your pockets on your pants into little phone caddies.
Marco:
But no, my only concern with this approach would be that I think inserting and removing the phone from the pocket might be a little more of a sensitive operation there because now you have an opportunity to hit that divider and miss, basically, and so you have to be a little more careful.
John:
Now you have to go in with two fingers, like a little pincer, like one of those arcade machines with a clamp.
John:
law you probably don't have to be that tight of a fit on it but anyway and then next year when you know bigger phones come out then you have to get on your pants yeah you can't can't put your hands in your pocket anymore speaking of things that won't fit in your pocket you can't do like a cool pose yeah that's i didn't think about that you you you got to do the the uncool pose because everyone knows that smoking is terrible and you'd have to say you'd have one hand in your pocket and the other one flicking a cigarette
Marco:
ah yeah yeah thank you yeah anyway yep 90s reference for you too you lucky ducks yeah that's true actually that uh that documentary just came out a day or two ago is there one about about her the album or what no about the jacket little pill about the album it's about full house what no right get it i get it i've stated before on top four that i think jacket little pill is possibly the most influential album of the 90s
Casey:
You know, I could buy that.
John:
Just try to keep your music opinions to top four.
John:
I don't know if they can survive exposure to a broader audience.
John:
Well, I would also buy that.
John:
Well, then again, you talk a lot about fish on here, so you're probably fine.
Casey:
Anyway.
Casey:
Speaking of bad music opinions.
Casey:
Anyway, you know, plus, you know, if you really do have cargo-related problems with your pants, I think there is a style of pant that one could get that would help with your cargo.
Casey:
I think such a thing exists.
Casey:
I wish I remembered the name of it.
Marco:
Yeah, yeah.
Marco:
Utility pants, maybe, too.
Marco:
Speaking of the 90s, actually, that was tactical before tactical, right?
Marco:
Every single one of these pants links people have sent me for some other kind of pants that has extra pockets, there's always a picture of the dude in the photos putting a gun magazine in these extra pockets.
John:
I'm like, really?
John:
I mean, what else?
John:
You can sew your pockets so the gun magazine fits exactly and doesn't move towards the middle of your leg.
John:
Yeah, so I don't need any place to put gun magazines.
John:
Also, it's not called a magazine, Marko.
John:
It's important if you're going to talk about firearms that you'd be technically correct because that's what's important.
Marco:
What's the long, slightly curved thing that holds the bullets for the machine gun?
John:
I don't know.
John:
I'm just making a joke.
John:
I actually have no idea what it's called, nor do I care.
John:
Please do not send corrections.
John:
I've become early.
John:
Yeah, we really don't care at all.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Anyway, so we do not care.
Marco:
I actually have solved the pants problem mostly.
Marco:
And that is, again, damn it.
Marco:
I think John was right.
Marco:
I just started wearing tighter pants.
Yeah.
John:
oh my god tighter pants with a bare bottom that's a different style but nonsense he's he's moved the chaps just chaps i was just about to make the same joke beat me to it yeah so wow do you have a man bun and a beard and you do handstands because that's what's on the front of this website i do have a beard the rest no
Marco:
but i would love to see marco with a man he just needs that bun and he needs to be able to do a handstand oh my god must be a long wait for a train that ain't coming for that man harsh anyway so uh the the pants that i have that i've worn for a few years now at least i've been a big fan of the banana republic um traveler line and the quote rapid movement denim
John:
Because that's what you need when you sit in front of a computer for eight hours a day.
Marco:
I know, right?
Marco:
Now, I can assure you, rapid movement denim does not necessarily need you to move rapidly in order to enjoy it.
Marco:
Because what that actually means is stretch pants.
Marco:
Cool.
Marco:
And stretch pants are awesome.
Marco:
And I strongly recommend...
Marco:
If those of you who are out there wearing jeans right now, if you have not yet tried stretch jeans, I strongly recommend you try them.
Marco:
Because imagine jeans but comfortable all the time.
Marco:
That's stretch jeans.
Marco:
It's like jeggings but for men.
John:
Yes.
John:
Well, that's why they had to call it rapid movement denim.
John:
Yeah, they had to call it tactical rapid movement tough guy pants.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
Rapid assault, whatever it is.
Marco:
But yeah, so I've been wearing those forever.
Marco:
I have a few pretty old pairs, so they're pretty broken in.
Marco:
And those, I have this problem severely.
Marco:
I know this because I put one of those on today for the first time in a while, and the problem was way worse.
Marco:
What I realized was so different is that for the last month or so, I've been heavily wearing my new brand of pants, Spoke London.
Casey:
So those are trousers then?
Marco:
Well, they, I mean, they're from London.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So I guess they would call them, I guess they do call them trousers.
John:
Right.
John:
It's the top nav item right next to the spoke logo.
John:
It says trousers.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But this is, they make pants that are not super cheap, but not too ridiculously expensive.
Marco:
You know, a decent pair of jeans is like 140 bucks.
Marco:
So it's not, you know.
Casey:
What?
Casey:
!
Casey:
Well, compared... Oh, my God.
Casey:
People spend $140 on jeans?
John:
They spend a lot more than that on jeans, but... Jesus!
John:
But the ones that really cost a lot already have holes ripped in them, so... Yes.
Marco:
No, these are, you know, intact pants.
Marco:
But I got a pair of their corduroys last fall, and so I knew about them from that.
Marco:
And I decided to try their jeans this fall, and they're kind of amazing.
Marco:
So this is why... What got me to this company... Yes, of course, it was an Instagram ad.
Marco:
They work very well on me.
Marco:
But what got me to this company was that
Marco:
As listeners and certainly hosts know, I am not a tall person.
Marco:
Now, if you try to buy pants that do not advertise their length, like a lot of these fancy companies... Wait, they don't have a length?
Marco:
No, no.
Marco:
A lot of these... Yeah, a lot of fancy companies, if you try to buy some pants from whatever people are recommending, which I saw a lot of during the recommendation, the great recommendation surge of October, a lot of them, if they don't sell...
Marco:
pants as like their main thing or if it's not a big thing if it's some brand that just happens to have made a few a few models of pants they'll sell all the pants at the same fixed length which is usually 34 inches inseam my inseam is not 34 inches not even close my ideal pant size is 32 by 29
Marco:
and even that leaves some you know some hangover on my shoes i just think it looks nice i you know probably more like 28 uh but certainly 29 is my ideal length marco you are a wee man but you are not that that much of a wee man i mean come my goodness you must be in the no are you really thinking seriously maybe his upper body is normal size it's just the legs
Marco:
32 waist 29 inseam that's that's when pants look good on me and what's nice about spoke is that they actually stock all of that and so anyway one of the things they they have uh you know like you you pick obviously the waist and the length and they have those in one inch increments which is awesome thank god because yes i it drives i hate it that uh when you shop for jeans or other men's pants it's two inch increments because my ideal length i feel like is like 33 but i always end up getting the 34s
Marco:
yeah and like and sometimes i'm a 31 or sometimes i'm a 33 and like on the waist and so like it's really nice to have one inch increments on both uh the other thing is they allow you to pick the like thigh thickness so i i've been wearing thigh thickness b this winter because i crammed a year of restaurant eating into one summer um so i'm a little bit thicker than i than i
John:
have been in the past this this uh this thickness thing is a little bit normative because the options are a narrow thighs b regular thighs all right so that now we're just shaming everybody who's not b i guess and then c instead of saying adjective thighs like narrow thighs and regular thighs c says for the wide thigh guys
Marco:
Well, let me tell you that I think that's accurate because I thought B was a good default and it turns out I am definitely an A. So I bought a pair in B. I later tried a second pair of a similar model in A. Not only does it fit better and look better and I'm not kind of swimming in a bunch of extra space down there.
Marco:
Also, it fixed my phone problem.
Yeah.
John:
oh gosh so it turns out the answer to fixing the phone problem is either sew a line down all of your pockets or buy tighter pants get clothes that fit spend an absolutely obscene amount of money on trousers slash pants get clothes that fit is the solution you don't have to spend an obscene amount you if you do spend an obscene amount maybe i mean like you you spent a lot and still got pants didn't fit because you picked the wrong option so i guess it's just get clothes that fit wherever you get them from
Marco:
Yes, and that's why I like this company, because it makes it easy for me to get stuff that fits me, which is not easy to do in this area.
Casey:
You know, I do like, on Spoke's website, I'm looking at their trousers, and it says compare our styles.
Marco:
Stop, Casey, do not give in.
Marco:
They're really good, I'm telling you.
Casey:
You're right, I probably shouldn't.
Marco:
The 10-ounce jeans, oh my god, they're like sweatpants.
Marco:
They're so comfortable.
Casey:
Just hold on, I'm going somewhere else with this.
Casey:
And they have orange accent stitching, oh, it's so cool.
Casey:
Oh my gosh.
Casey:
So it says, you know, compare styles and they have fives and cords and heroes and house trousers.
Marco:
The cords are really good, by the way.
Casey:
And all of these are like the bottom half of an adult male, like walking or standing or whatever.
Casey:
And then the very first one is called sharps.
Casey:
And they really went all in on the sharps because it has a guy with one leg straight down and one leg straight out at a 90 degree angle who has apparently used his sharps pants to cut a watermelon in half.
John:
This is the best marketing image.
John:
The crease is so sharp, he's using them to play Fruit Ninja.
John:
When I went to the site, the main navigation at the top makes me have flashbacks to my honeymoon where the dress code at the resort we were staying in used a bunch of words I didn't understand.
John:
What the hell is smart?
John:
Do you know how to dress smart?
John:
What does smart mean?
Marco:
I barely know how to dress at all.
Marco:
I'm pretty sure that means like khakis and polos, right?
Casey:
I have no idea.
Casey:
You're the most fashionable of the three of us.
John:
I know what the word formal means.
John:
I know what the word casual means.
John:
I do not know what smart means.
John:
I'm sure everybody in the UK knows what it means.
John:
But when you say dress smart, I just think of Maxwell smart.
John:
I don't know.
Casey:
Was he the one with the shoe phone?
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
Yes, I think.
Casey:
Oh, goodness.
Casey:
Why do we ever talk about fashion?
Casey:
Marco, why do you do this?
John:
You're welcome.
John:
Because he wants to buy smart trousers.
Casey:
Oh, golly.
Casey:
For his smartphone.
Casey:
Smart trousers for a smartphone.
Marco:
I actually haven't bought their khakis or anything like that, but I do have their jeans and their corduroys, and both of those are awesome.
Marco:
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Casey:
So we wanted to actually more John than anyone, but all three of us wanted to use a YouTube video that we saw as an excuse to kind of lay out what we think of as the Apple Silicon roadmap.
Casey:
And so I presume it was John put this Max Tech video in our show notes, which, of course, will be in the show notes that you guys can see.
Casey:
And it's kind of a... I don't know.
Casey:
It's a really long video.
Casey:
It was like a 17-minute video, which is rich coming from the three of us.
Casey:
I understand that.
Casey:
But it was a really long video where most of it I didn't think was that new and interesting to me.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
they did do a really good job of taking what we know about today's world and trying to extrapolate actual performance numbers, which, again, are all extrapolated, so who knows if they're true or not, but trying to figure out actual performance numbers of what a mythical iMac or Mac Pro would be like.
Casey:
And that I did think was pretty interesting.
Casey:
And suffice to say...
Casey:
The mythical forthcoming Mac Pro, if it's what we think it is with, you know, the J2 die or whatever, is going to be really freaking fast.
Casey:
So, John, tell us about this, if you don't mind, please.
John:
Speaking of the Mac's tech channel, I like this channel because despite the sort of...
John:
samey cadence that the people who uh mc the channel have um which is no worse or better than anything else but it is it is what it is um i think they do a good job of like just like you said uh distilling available information summarizing it uh and trying to extrapolate and but the most important thing about the max tech channel is they just keep trying
John:
they'll make a new video when new information comes out.
John:
And I can relate to that because that's what we do on the show.
John:
We talk about a topic, we say what we have to say about it, and then when new information comes to light, we talk about it again and again.
John:
And, like, we build towards an understanding.
John:
And that's what the MaxTech things do as well, I feel like.
John:
So I enjoy watching them to see them build towards an understanding.
John:
Anyway, that was just a jumping-off point for this because when watching it, I felt like the people making this video, A, should listen to ATP, and B, if they don't already, and B...
John:
They were dancing around something that has been in my mind when we've talked about this topic many times, but I realized we've never really explicitly laid out in a boring way.
John:
I think it's worth doing so now, just in case everyone else listening doesn't also have this in the back of their mind.
John:
So this is not an incredible insight.
John:
This is a thing that was so obvious that I left it unsaid for many episodes, and we all kind of left it unsaid.
John:
And it's not necessarily what's going to happen.
John:
It's just the obvious thing.
John:
So...
John:
And the obvious thing in terms of Apple Silicon roadmap is using past events and what we know of Apple's current roadmap to say, if the future rolls out like the past has, this is how it will go.
John:
And so the past we're drawing from is basically...
John:
intel pc chip business for many many years intel has been the big supplier for uh you know chips personal computers including eventually apple computers intel had a particular way of doing things some of which is like oh it's the way intel decided to do things but a lot of it has to just do with the nature of the business of making silicon chips and the nature of that business has not changed in fundamental ways in recent years so it is reasonable to say that
John:
Intel wasn't just doing what it did for the hell of it.
John:
There are reasons to do it the way they've done it, which means Apple will probably do it the same way.
John:
And so far, that has been true of what Apple has released.
John:
And the plan is this.
John:
You design your processor, right?
John:
The parts of your processor...
John:
All the adders and multipliers and the registers and all your branch predictors and your caches and everything that goes into the CPU.
John:
You design your GPU cores and how you're going to fit the GPU cores together.
John:
You design your memory interface.
John:
You design all these different little pieces.
John:
In Apple's case, they basically do that design for the phone because it's their biggest product.
John:
It's their most important product.
John:
And they have, that's, you know, it's worth investing a lot of money in there.
John:
So let's say they make the, I don't remember the numbers on these things, but like what are the M1 cores?
John:
They're like A14 cores or something?
John:
Yes.
Casey:
I forget.
John:
Yeah, whatever.
John:
They make the A14 and they design all those pieces, right?
John:
Put a lot of money into that.
John:
Making a new chip, like a new CPU, new GPU cores, all that stuff, that is a big investment, right?
John:
Even if it's like an evolution of the previous one, it's essentially a new design.
John:
And hopefully it's better than the other one in some ways, you know.
John:
And maybe you build it on a new process node, but either way.
John:
That's where you put in your big money, right?
John:
Then you take that investment and you make the Mac version of that chip, which would be the M1, which basically is the A14-ish cores.
John:
You have to add some stuff that the Mac needs.
John:
Use maybe the same GB core, slightly modified for different texture formats or whatever.
John:
Basically, you're building on the work that you did for the A14.
John:
You make a slightly bigger chip that's the M1.
John:
it's got more cores than a phone more memory more interfaces it's got a thunderbolt controller it's got all that stuff that maybe the phone doesn't have or maybe just the ipad has or you make the m1 right that's a little bit bigger the next thing you do is you take that chip and you put more stuff in it more cores
John:
access more memory more controllers you get the m1 pro and the m1 max right it's the same cores it's the same a14 cores that they made for the for the phone back then and then you make the m1 and then you make the slightly bigger ones and that one as we talked about the the jade die whatever i forget what the
John:
is that what it was called yeah yeah it was yeah yeah jade die is we said the building blocks raffles pro computers that potentially that is potentially the biggest die they're going to make with this stuff on it right and then the next step up is you're going to release a thing that's two of those dies or four of those dies right with an interconnect fabric between them right
John:
and that timeline of from the time that you released the a14 obviously you started building the a14 before the phone with the a14 and it came out right but you released the a14 then a little bit later months later you released the m1 then a little bit later you released the m1 pro and the m1 max then a little bit later you released the you know m1 pro max duo which has two of those things and a little bit later after that you let you launch the m1 uh
John:
pro max quadro in the mac pro or whatever that's like a like a two-year span in there or i don't know it's it's months months and years between the time when you when you originally made like we're going to make a new cpu core and a new gpu core they first appear on a phone and then like a year to two years later you get the you know four of those giant chips that have
John:
a bunch more of those cores, and a bunch more of the GPU cores, and a bunch of Thunderbolt controllers, and a bunch of new memory controllers, and four of those things all shoved onto one jack.
John:
Like, that's how long it takes from the time the A14 comes out to the time that thing appears in a Mac Pro.
John:
And the question people had is like, well, does that mean it's going to be like...
John:
two to four years between each one of these computers, it's a pipeline, right?
John:
So while that's going on, while we're waiting, we're sitting here waiting for like, you know, the iMac that's going to have two, you know, JC dies inside them, right?
John:
We're still waiting for that to appear.
John:
While that's happening, we already have A15 things in our phones, right?
John:
So the A15, they did the work for the A15, it's slightly different CPU cores, it's slightly different GPU cores, that's released, right?
John:
The next thing that's going to appear in, in this pipeline, is the MacBook Air with the A14 core.
John:
So it's the M1 size chip, probably going to be called M2, but it's got the A15 stuff in it.
John:
right and then after that that you know macbook air with the a15 stuff and it comes out what's the next one the macbook pros with the a15 stuff in it so you get the m2 max and the m2 pro right and what comes after that the big iMac that has two of those things in it but also supports the the m2 pro and the m2 max and what comes after that the m2 pro and m2 max quadro and the big mac pro this is the
John:
assuming no surprises which is not guaranteed but i just want to say like laying out this is the expected boring no surprises easy to predict pipeline of stuff and it's not just for the hell of it like it's like why don't they just release the mac pro one first why don't when the a14 comes in the phone at the same time why don't they release the mac pro
John:
with 40 of those cores in it.
John:
When the, you know, A16 system on a chip comes out in next year's phone, why don't they just release all the Macs at the same time?
John:
They can't because it's a new thing that when you're manufacturing a new thing, it takes a while to figure out how to manufacture that thing.
John:
successfully economically without errors on the new process size or whatever right that's why you have this rollout of first we make the small chip then we make the medium then we make a little bit bigger then make the giant one that's not for that's not for building suspense that's not because they don't sell a lot of the big ones although that is somewhat of a factor or whatever it's mostly because you can't jump right in and make a you know a four die giant package thing on day one for a chip that you've never manufactured before for
John:
cores that you've never manufactured before on a new process that you've never made anything on before that's why it part of the reason Intel did the same thing they would make a new chip and then two years later the Xeons would be updated with those cores in them that's why the Xeons were always behind in terms of like whatever lake chip came out or like we're on this lake here on our MacBooks but the the CPU cores in the Mac Pro are two years old
John:
And it doesn't mean that you have to wait X number of years between updates.
John:
It's just a pipeline, like pipelines and chips, right?
John:
Once you get into this cadence, you can assume that, assuming Apple stays on a yearly cycle or whatever, around this time every year, there'll be new MacBook Airs.
John:
with the new cores in them just like around this time every year we get new phones with the new cores in them it's just they they shift down the line so by the time you're getting the mac pro it is not going to have the same cores that are in the phone it's not going to have the same cores that are in the macbook air it's like i don't know how much apple can compress these timelines but this is the expected cadence of rolling out chips from you know starting from something maybe as small as the watch all up to the thing the size of the mac pro um i don't know if there's any way apple can change that but
John:
there is a possibility that apple decides not to do that cadence but instead holds let's say holds back the mac pro until they can put an m2 in it or something like put put an a15 core in it or something like that just because the the mac pro is such a low volume product that there's no big hurry to get it out i don't think they're going to do that this time because they are kind of in a hurry to get out they have to finish their transition or whatever um but you know
John:
Lots of things can happen.
John:
But if you're expecting, you know, when the iPhone 14 comes out with the new A16 system on a chip inside it to also have on the same day a Mac Pro with 40 of those cars, don't expect that, especially if it's new process.
John:
No, that's probably not going to happen.
John:
This is sort of the natural cadence of learning how to manufacture whatever thing you designed in bigger and bigger sizes in a way that doesn't lose you money.
Marco:
I think also there's, first of all, I agree with all of that.
Marco:
I do think that we've already seen some of how Apple does this with iPhones and iPads.
Marco:
iPads typically get the big version of the same processor that's in the iPhones.
Marco:
But that usually happens maybe six months to a year afterwards.
Marco:
And critically, not every iPhone chip becomes an iPad chip.
Marco:
They do occasionally skip one.
Marco:
And so I think we're likely to see similar things play out here, where so far, you know, it seems like if they wanted to, and we'll see how this plays out over the next year or two, but if they want to, they could theoretically...
Marco:
update the M1-based products now, you know, the MacBook Air, you know, the low-end Macs, they could update those every year, either with the launch of the iPhone or a few months later.
Marco:
You know, they could totally do that if they wanted to, barring unforeseen, you know, problems.
Marco:
But,
Marco:
We don't necessarily know that they're going to do that every year.
Marco:
We don't actually know that everything that becomes an M chip, you know, like the M2 or M1, we don't necessarily know that there's always going to be a Pro and Max version of that.
Marco:
And we don't necessarily know that there's always going to be whatever the Mac Pro 2X and 4X versions are called.
Marco:
That all is like a maybe.
Marco:
That's probably how it's going to work most of the time and maybe in most generations.
Marco:
But we also won't be able to depend on that because they've already shown between iPhone and iPad that occasionally doesn't fit the cycle for whatever reason.
Marco:
Maybe it's certain cores not being worth it or maybe it's certain things like certain products that they don't think are worth updating.
Marco:
I would not expect the Mac Pro version of these chips to be an every year thing.
Marco:
I I'm guessing we're going to get in every two years on average for the Mac pro version.
Marco:
And maybe the pro version that go, maybe the pro and max version, maybe that's on a two year cycle too.
Marco:
I don't know until we see this happen.
Marco:
It's we're not really going to know.
Marco:
And it's,
Marco:
It could change over time.
Marco:
So I wouldn't expect this to always be a reliable thing where, okay, first we make this one, then the bigger one comes out in this month, then the bigger one after that comes out in this other month.
Marco:
Years could be different and cycles could be different or things could go wrong with one of them or it's not worth it or it doesn't work the same way.
Marco:
So it's probably going to be roughly this cycle, but there's a lot of details that we don't know yet.
John:
two things on that one like the reason i think it's going to be like that this time is because apple's on a timeline like they they don't have arm versions of a big imac or you know a multi-core thing they don't have an arm version of a mac pro they are on a two-year timeline the timelines basically line up to say if you do the the rollout that i described you get your a14 you get your m1 you get your m1 pro and max you get your dual and you get your quad and
John:
That's two years.
John:
That's a two-year timeline right there.
John:
They will just make their thing.
John:
They can't wait until later, the first year you have to do them all, right?
John:
After that, it's definitely true that Apple could choose, especially on the high end, like the M1, whatever they call it, the one with the A14 cores, but you get 40 of them.
John:
Yeah, you can wait two years between that one just because you don't sell a lot of it.
John:
But the second thing is part of Apple's frustration with Intel is sometimes Intel just didn't have the chips that Apple needed to sell the computers that it wanted to make.
John:
And it's frustrating for Apple.
John:
You know, if they don't have a high-powered one, the Xeons haven't been updated in a while.
John:
They don't have a
John:
But a lot of the reason we were unsatisfied with the performance or the incremental year-over-year performance of Mac laptops before we all got mad about the keyboards was because Intel just didn't have chips to offer that were compelling in the computers that Apple wanted to make.
John:
So one of the advantages of Apple making its own silicon is that it is now on the table for Apple to do the boring every year update that I described.
John:
And if they don't do it, it's probably not because they can't or because it didn't work out or there was some kind of manufacturing problem or something, because so far Apple's been pretty good at that stuff.
John:
it's probably just because things sell in such low volume it costs so much money to develop a gigantic 40 core cpu maybe we do that every two years because we can't recoup the cost because so few people buy mac pros that will be the reason not because oh we couldn't you know we couldn't do that roadmap this year if they sold as many mac pros as they sold iphones they would do this every year the proof is look what they do with the iphone every year somehow they have a new system on the chip that's better than the previous one i don't know how long i can keep up but they've been doing it you know
John:
what not 14 times because they started with the a4 right so 10 times right uh and they haven't missed one yet and even when this year like oh they came out with it but it's not even that much better than the previous one um it turns out it was pretty good so i think if they do skip it is a product decision and not a tech decision but from it that's exactly what apple wanted the ability to decide on its terms what chips it wants on the timelines that it wants
John:
The main reason I want to put this in here is when the Mac Pro comes out in December of 2022 and it has, quote unquote, only M1 cores in it, this will be why.
John:
And it will be fine.
John:
Trust me.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
It'll still be ridiculously fast and I will want it.
John:
It'll be 40 of them.
Marco:
Yes, exactly.
Casey:
It'll be okay.
Casey:
All right, let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
Stefan writes, I have a 2015 MacBook Pro, and although it was a great computer in its day, I've recently begun to notice that it struggles with a few tasks that one would imagine a Pro machine could handle deftly.
Casey:
Running Visual Studio Code in particular seems to be onerous enough to require persistent use of the fan with the eyes raised emoji.
Casey:
or eyebrow raised emoji.
Casey:
What can I do to keep the old boy ship shape for a few more years?
Casey:
My recommendation, which is probably garbage, but what I would consider is if you can offload all of the data onto something else, like an external drive or something like that, consider doing a fresh install of macOS.
Casey:
This isn't like Windows, or it isn't nearly as much like Windows used to be, where literally every six months I would reinstall Windows, otherwise it would run like garbage.
Casey:
But
Casey:
It may help.
Casey:
It couldn't hurt.
Casey:
But I wonder if either of you guys, maybe we'll start with Marco, have a better solution to the problem.
Marco:
It depends on how involved are you willing to get here.
Marco:
I like Casey's perspective here of see if we can fix it via software first.
Marco:
Keep in mind the 2015 MacBook Pro, you know, compared to modern machines, not only is the processor going to be obviously much more outdated, but also things like GPU and SSD speed are going to be way, way, way slower than what we have today.
Marco:
We've made lots of advances in those two areas in particular over the time when even though the processor was making advances much more slowly, GPU and SSD really did advance a lot.
Marco:
And other things like memory throughput and stuff like that have also increased over time.
Marco:
So that's definitely areas that you're not going to be able to solve.
Marco:
And external SSDs are probably not going to help you too much because that machine is limited to, I believe, Thunderbolt 1 or 2.
Marco:
I think Thunderbolt 2.
Marco:
But you could go that direction and strap a Thunderbolt disc to the back of it, but I wouldn't recommend that kind of thing.
Marco:
I think you are... Just enjoy the hardware you have for the time being.
Marco:
If...
Marco:
There is someone around you or someone else who's comfortable working on the hardware on the inside.
Marco:
That's a big if.
Marco:
But if you are willing to do that and willing to take the risks associated therein, after such a long time, with a laptop in particular, you are likely having not very good thermals.
Marco:
And so if you can open it up and service it, and if you're willing to do that and take those risks, cleaning out the fans and possibly laying down new thermal interface material on the processor and anything else that has heat sinks on it might be something that it needs by this point.
Marco:
That's worth considering.
Marco:
But ultimately, I would say the risk of opening it up, you know, you might actually break it or make certain things worse.
Marco:
So unless you're really comfortable opening MacBooks, I wouldn't necessarily take that route.
Marco:
Otherwise, I'd say stick with the software and just, you know, tolerate it for a while longer because, you know, it's
Marco:
It's already old.
Marco:
It's going to get older.
Marco:
But if it still works today, that's great.
Marco:
And keep using it until it doesn't work anymore or until you can motivate yourself to somehow get an upgrade.
John:
John?
John:
My advice is to do what Marco said, crack the sucker open and try to replace that thermal compound and totally break the computer, which will finally force you to get a new one because you desperately need a new one.
John:
I know that's not the question.
John:
The question is, how do I keep the old computer running?
John:
But the thing is, like, I understand this motive as someone who kept the same computer for 10 years.
John:
I understand why you want to keep the old computer running because, you know, you're just not ready to buy one yet.
John:
Um, but sometimes you just need a little push.
John:
And so trying to fix it yourself and inevitably screwing it up might be that push that you need, uh, to now, but now I really need a computer because now it sounds worse than ever.
John:
And now smoke is coming out of it.
John:
Now it won't even turn on.
John:
Uh, then that will be a clarifying experience.
John:
But seriously, um,
John:
the the arm max like this is this has happened a couple times in the history of mac this is like a discontinuity in in the performance in the performance characteristics especially of laptops the new macs even the new super cheap macs are so much better than that computer like you should rent an m1 macbook air find someone that will rent you one
John:
That will be a better use of your time and money while you wait to buy a new computer or a quote-unquote new computer, like a good new 16-inch MacBook Pro or whatever.
John:
Rent a MacBook Air.
John:
I know this is not a thing that exists.
John:
It's kind of like lensrentals.com.
John:
Do they rent MacBook Airs?
John:
It's a $999 computer.
John:
Get the lowest basis-based one.
John:
It will crush this computer in everything except for maybe screen quality.
John:
This is a really good time for you to upgrade your computer.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I know you want advice on how to keep it going, but I'm going to tell you it may be time to say goodbye to the 2015 MacBook Pro.
John:
Man who petulantly kept the same computer for a decade suggests... It wasn't petulance.
John:
I was waiting for them to build a better one.
John:
And when they did, I bought it even though it cost a bazillion dollars.
Casey:
Guilherme Allais writes,
Casey:
Mainly, what I am looking for is a quote-unquote safe zone for my pictures that I can show to people without worrying about showing something useless or inappropriate.
Casey:
Hey, I have an app for that.
Casey:
It's called Peekaview.
Casey:
You should check it out.
Casey:
But in the actual answer to your question, just stop stressing about it.
Casey:
There's going to be garbage in there.
Casey:
That's the way of the world.
Casey:
This is the way.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, everybody's photo libraries are filled with useless garbage.
Marco:
So, you know, people expect that.
Marco:
And they will forgive you if you hand them their phone and they accidentally see a screenshot of a weather app or a bank receipt picture or something.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
That's not a big problem.
Marco:
That being said, you can try to go through and organize stuff.
Marco:
One thing I have found...
Marco:
there are now smart albums that apple automatically creates for you for things like screenshots but if for some reason you don't want to use those or you wanted to go with a little bit different angle on it you can do things that create smart albums for certain resolutions of images that like you know a screenshot has a certain resolution that photos don't you can also do things like filter making smart albums filtering by camera
John:
and other other xf data bits that might apply to one of these types of things more than others but for the most part i mean yeah just don't worry about it yeah we've answered similar questions to this before but i think the particular angle on this one was uh having the safe zone and the garbage like receipts and other stuff like that so for the receipts things apple you know apple added the screenshot library a couple versions of ios ago i hope they do more of that stuff with machine learning um
John:
Like, yes, screenshots are easy, but like pictures of receipts, especially now they're doing text extraction, seems like it could be another smart album that Apple could give.
John:
So I hope Apple gets better at this, but I wouldn't spend too much time trying.
John:
I mean, look, if you want to go through every one of your photos and organize them, like go for it.
John:
Like it's that that system will work, but that's a lot.
John:
a lot of effort but for the safe zone thing the only way to do that and a reasonable way to do that it's got to be opt-in you have to manually select the pictures that you want to be in the safe zone and i know that might seem like but that's too much i don't want to do that if you want a safe zone the only way for that to exist don't leave it to ml don't leave it to smart albums don't leave it to anything it has to be you manually picking that gets back to my you know if you're going to do one thing with your photos fave the good ones and once you fave the good ones you're
John:
your favorites view you don't have to make this it's already built into the photos app your favorites view you have now manually selected photos that are your favorites and now your favorites view is the safe one it means that you have to sacrifice faving your favorite sexy picture of your spouse right because now that's not safe to show other people so you can no longer use favorites as like this is my favorite photo you have to use it as by hitting this heart i am saying this will go into the collection that is safe for everyone to view
John:
If you don't want to do that, use tags, use manual organization or whatever.
John:
But the only true, the only way to get a truly safe thing, which is making me think you have like sexy pictures you don't be able to see is you have to pick the pictures and put them into the album that you deem to be safe, whether that be favorites or something else.
Casey:
Roar Lochar writes, which is a great name, very good name.
Casey:
I've spent some time trying to figure out the differences between a junior and senior developer.
Casey:
A certain amount of experience in years seems to be a given, but what about technical skills?
Casey:
What would you guys put on an essentials list for junior and senior developer skills?
Casey:
For example, design patterns, oop and pop, or proficiency in a specific language?
Casey:
Is it an implementer of system versus designing a system perspective?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
I think it would be fun to do this from the least qualified to answer this question to most.
Casey:
So Marco, why don't you start us off?
Marco:
What's POP besides like post office protocol?
Marco:
What does it mean in this context?
Casey:
Is that protocol oriented?
Marco:
Oh, maybe.
Casey:
I think, maybe.
Marco:
You would learn about that at WWDC.
Marco:
Well, again, Casey is correct.
Marco:
I am the least qualified among us to answer this.
Marco:
But what I would propose is that anybody talking about design patterns is probably a junior developer.
Marco:
Junior developers are smart people who maybe don't have enough experience to know how to rein it in and what not to do and how to choose what to build.
Marco:
Not necessarily the technical smarts of how to use this cool new feature, but what do you not do?
Marco:
A senior developer, I would expect to have wisdom.
Marco:
which is different from intelligence, usually comes with experience.
Marco:
And to be able to make those kind of decisions of like, what cool fancy thing do we not use in order to get the job done better?
Marco:
Or how do we avoid having our junior programmers exercise their 20-year-old intelligence by doing all these cool language tricks that
Marco:
that actually make harder to maintain and harder to read code.
Marco:
A senior developer should have the wisdom to be able to direct people to do things in a more boring way that actually ends up working better for pragmatic purposes.
Casey:
I have to confess that that was actually an astonishingly good answer, which I almost entirely agree with.
Casey:
In my experience, a junior developer is someone who needs hand-holding.
Casey:
And that's not too different than what Marco said.
Casey:
A junior developer may be a quote-unquote self-starter, but ultimately needs a lot of guidance.
Casey:
They need guidance on what to do and how to do it.
Casey:
Whereas a senior developer, by comparison, typically needs little to no guidance.
Casey:
You can have them look at a board of tickets or whatever, a to-do list, effectively.
Casey:
And they're probably going to be able to deduce what is the most important thing for right now.
Casey:
And then once that implementation is underway, it's exactly what Marco said.
Casey:
There's a pragmatism there that a junior developer just doesn't have.
Casey:
A wisdom there, like Marco said, that a junior developer just won't have.
Casey:
And that's kind of how I look at it.
Casey:
I think, yes, if you wanted something more concrete, you could distill it in years of experience or techniques that they're familiar with or something like that.
Casey:
But ultimately, I think Marco absolutely nailed it.
Casey:
To me, it's about wisdom and pragmatism in summary.
Casey:
But John, as the most qualified of all of us to make this distinction, where is it?
John:
There's two different ways to take this question.
John:
One of them is probably inspiring this question the way you see the internet a lot, which is basically those nature films when they show the male birds doing displays with their feathers to try to compete for the attentions of the females.
John:
And they have who has the biggest feathers.
John:
They're doing a funny walk.
John:
They're collecting blue pieces of plastic.
John:
Whatever it is they're doing.
John:
On the internet, amongst people who are learning programming or into programming, there is this feather display thing of trying to...
John:
show that they are the biggest, toughest developer.
John:
And part of that is debating who is allowed to call themselves a senior developer, who is still junior, am I a senior, am I a junior, let's all argue about it because I want to feel like I'm a senior.
John:
It's total, you know, whatever the nature term is for that, like mating dance, feather plumage, you know, whatever.
John:
That is mostly a sideshow, but still is a bunch of programmers trying to figure out...
John:
Am I improving?
John:
What am I shooting for?
John:
What is my goal?
John:
Am I still junior?
John:
Or can I now call myself senior?
John:
The second place this comes into play and this place that I have more experience is in big companies.
John:
In big companies, there are actual titles.
John:
They may not be called junior or senior developer.
John:
Every company has their own weird title structure and different cohorts for jobs.
John:
But those titles have meaning within the company.
John:
They mean different pay scales.
John:
They might mean different amounts of vacation days.
John:
They...
John:
They might mean different amounts of stock awards if you're in a startup or a public company.
John:
Those have real consequences.
John:
And the second conversation about this is like, I'm in a big company.
John:
What do I have to do to get from...
John:
whatever level i'm at now to the next or if i'm trying to be hired into a big company should i try to be hired at level x level y or level z whether they're called junior senior whatever they have you know terrible titles that marco luckily has never had to hear in his life and i'm not going to subject him to them now but there's lots of different levels with lots of different words and the words are meaningful then they're meaningful to your life they're meaningful to deciding like should i you know if if i was in company x and my title was this when i go to company y
John:
what title should I be saying that I deserve to get?
John:
Am I a senior developer or am I not a senior developer?
John:
And that conversation is, I think, much more important and has life consequences versus just arguing on Reddit whether you're a real senior developer or a real junior developer or whatever.
John:
But the third one, which is kind of the question that both of you answered, is setting aside companies and their titles and real consequences and setting aside people arguing on the internet about who's the biggest, toughest programmer and
John:
I would point you both to the tweet I linked here, which is a funny image.
Casey:
This is delightful.
John:
Well, it's terrible, but delightful.
John:
So it shows scenes from, I believe, well, it's the pilot episode of Lost.
John:
And then I think like maybe episode two or three of Lost.
John:
I don't remember the timeline.
John:
Maybe it's still episode one.
John:
But anyway, Lost is a cool show.
John:
You should check it out if you haven't seen it before.
John:
I'm not spoiling too much in the pilot episode.
John:
There is an airliner crashes and a ridiculous number of people survive it, which is awesome.
John:
right away unrealistic and get ready for more of that but anyway um an airliner crashes and there is a a girl uh standing in the uh a young lady standing in the rubble crying things are on fire behind her pieces of fuselage are everywhere and she is crying because she's just been in a terrible plane crash above that one it says junior developer right and
John:
Uh, the right side of the image shows that same girl a couple episodes later, uh, laying on a blanket on the beach with the wreckage of the plane still smoldering behind her.
John:
And she's just sunbathing.
John:
And that one says senior developer over the top.
Yeah.
John:
this reminds me i'm gonna go one more level deep before i start talking about these of a quote that i think was from an interview with gene hackman but i could not find it on the internet so who knows who it is i don't do kids know who gene hackman is selects luther no you don't even know that i can't even make a reference gene hackman anyway he's famous actor um he was on uh what was the other good submarine one uh crimson tide he was the he was the other captain on crimson tide
John:
And there was an interview with him that I remember reading years and years ago where they were asking about his experience as an actor.
John:
At the time, he was already like an older, elder statesman actor, right?
John:
He's kind of balding, got gray, curly hair, even at that time, even like 20, 30 years ago.
John:
And they asked him to talk about acting or maybe he was like in the actor studio on PBS or something.
John:
And he basically said, when you've been acting for a really long time and you've been in a lot of big movies, again, he was in the original Superman as Lex Luthor.
John:
And like he's been around for a long time.
John:
Right.
John:
And this was this was like in the 80s or 90s.
John:
And he was he was already a big name in the 70s.
John:
And when you've been in a lot of big movies and a lot of big TV shows.
John:
And he says...
John:
After doing that for many, many years, you develop a certain kind of poise in the face of the things that you're asked to do as an actor.
John:
And that poise, which really doesn't have anything to do with the job of acting, just has to do with the fact that, like, you've done this before.
John:
So you have a certain level of poise that, say, someone who's on their first big movie doesn't have.
John:
And people see that poise on the screen, and they interpret that as good acting.
John:
He was trying to basically make a joke that he said, I'm not a good actor.
John:
It's just that I don't panic.
John:
And that poise, people look at that and say, wow, this is the world's greatest actor.
John:
But really, I'm just chill.
John:
And so this junior-senior developer thing, there's a crash plane with rubble and flames in both of these pictures.
John:
The junior developer is just standing there, not knowing what to do, crying.
John:
And the senior developer is sunbathing.
John:
doesn't mean the situation is any better in the big company that you work for your code base is still a mess you know everything's all broken nobody knows how anything works everything's crashing all the time but when you're the senior developer you it's like that this is fine uh meme to use a more recent thing you've this is not your first plane crash
John:
You've been through this before and you develop a certain amount of poise and people interpret that poise as seniority.
John:
Now, this is a cynical and funny way to view this, but there is a grain of truth to it in that the thing you were talking about gaining experience.
John:
Really, there's kind of no amount of knowledge or skills or acronyms that you can know in your very first job as a programmer that's going to make you quote-unquote senior the day you land in your very first job as a programmer.
John:
Right?
John:
Right.
John:
The only thing that will make you senior is hard-fought experience.
John:
And not just experience, because on the show Lost, not everyone deals with what happens on that island in the same chill way, including, by the way, the characters in this scene.
John:
It's not a great example, but it works visually.
John:
You can be at a company as a programmer or multiple companies for years and years and never graduate from a sort of junior developer mindset.
John:
Maybe you don't want to.
John:
Maybe that's not your ambition, right?
John:
But it's not simply a matter of being in the seat for years, typing on the keys.
John:
You can't help but gain a little bit of experience from that.
John:
But to climb the ladder of actual experience, setting aside the plumage displays on the internet and setting aside the climbing the corporate ladder and different titles, if you actually want to develop your skills to a higher and higher level, you have to not only have experience, but that experience has to produce results, right?
John:
You have to have worked on big, complicated systems and successfully created them or made them better.
John:
You have to have set goals for yourself and eventually accomplish them, even if you failed the first two or three times you did.
John:
It's not just experience.
John:
It is experience doing more and more complicated things and eventually succeeding at them or at least doing them better than you did before.
John:
merely doing the same thing for 20 years as a programmer and never getting any better that's called a career you can have that career everybody knows people who have careers like that that's not a shameful thing to have if you think of somebody who like you know i don't know like fixes power lines and they fix power lines like after the first one or two years in the job they've got all the skills they need to have and they work fixing power lines for 50 years and they never get any better at fixing them
John:
They're good enough at fixing power lines to fix the power lines.
John:
They're doing the job.
John:
Maybe they never wanted to be the person who says, I have a new way to redesign the whole power grid.
John:
That's not what they want to do.
John:
They just want to fix the power lines.
John:
And they're good at fixing the power lines.
John:
And if you want someone to fix your power lines, that's the person to do it because they've been doing it for years and years.
John:
But they're never going to graduate to the level of, I'm going to design the power grid for this new city.
John:
Because that's not the job they want.
John:
Usually in real jobs, it's clear, you're either the person who fixes the power lines or the person who designs it.
John:
There's not a lot of crossover in those jobs.
John:
But in programming, there is no city.
John:
There is nothing there.
John:
It's just ones and zeros.
John:
It's characters on the screen.
John:
And people doing quote unquote the same job
John:
One person maybe just want to be the person who fixes the power lines when they go down after the winter storm, and they want to do that for 20 years.
John:
And the other person wants to essentially design the solar system.
John:
And you don't get to design the solar system unless you work your way up to that by...
John:
trying to design a chair and then a house and then a city and then a government and then a planet and you know you work your way up to it and you have to successfully do those things because otherwise they're not going to let you design the city if you if none of the houses you designed like if they all fell down and you know crumbled to dust right
John:
And so that's what makes an actual junior, senior, whatever, whatever, level two, level three, whatever.
John:
If you want to climb that ladder, you have to do difficult things and eventually accomplish them and do more difficult things and accomplish them and do more difficult things and accomplish them.
John:
And notice I haven't said anything about technology stacks, languages.
John:
you know, object-oriented, protocol-oriented, Swift, GUI, server-side, client-side.
John:
None of that stuff matters.
John:
Every single realm of programming, whether it's writing COBOL or, you know, programming Perl, writing C++ or Swift, like it doesn't, you know, client-side, server-side, any of those realms, pick any one of them, this ladder exists within all of them that you can climb if you want to.
John:
But you don't necessarily have to.
John:
If you want to be a quote-unquote junior developer your entire career,
John:
that's a perfectly fine career that's one of them you know the final thing i'll say on this topic is one of the most important things to know is what do you actually want to do do you know what a quote-unquote architect in your company does and once you find out do you still want that job or would you rather like like think of what you would like to be doing and then figure out within whatever company you're in or working for yourself what
John:
What job title does that?
John:
And what job titles don't do that?
John:
Or what job titles no longer do that?
John:
Used to do that, but then when you go up to the next job title, you no longer do that.
John:
It's really important for you to figure that out.
John:
Because if you just say, I'm going to climb the ladder as high as I can, eventually you're the CTO.
John:
And let me tell you, there's not a lot of programming there.
Casey:
Nope.
Casey:
And if you are doing programming, that's a very bad sign.
John:
Well, maybe you're the only programmer in the company.
John:
You're the CTO, the COO, you're the Marco of the company.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Well, could be.
John:
Marco wants to do is on tech support, as we've seen, sometimes live on the air.
Yeah.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Memberful, Rose, and Ernest.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
We will talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was 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-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R
Casey:
So long.
John:
John, tell me about your beeps.
John:
I keep calling it the three beeps, but I think technically there's four.
John:
This is a multi-month thing.
John:
I'm just bringing you in on it now because I feel like, I don't know, it's either coming to a head or I'm starting to give up and I have to deploy the internet to save me.
John:
There's still one step I really have to take to deploy the internet, but I figure it's time for ATP audience to know.
John:
For the past several months, somewhere in my house, a couple of times a day,
John:
we hear three beeps, sometimes four.
John:
And it's a little song.
John:
It's like a three-note scale.
John:
I can't carry a tune, and I do not have perfect pitch.
John:
Don't care.
John:
Try it.
John:
So I can't reproduce it for you.
John:
Do your best.
John:
Oh, you must try it.
John:
But it's probably... Maybe.
John:
My notes are all off.
John:
But it's three notes like that, but it's... Three notes ascending?
John:
Yeah.
John:
And then the fourth one is super high-pitched, like... Hmm.
Okay.
Marco:
Quick little update from the future.
Marco:
John recorded it and it sounds like this.
John:
okay back to the show all right so that couple months this has been going on um the sound it only happens a couple times a day it's not at any particular time it's not on the hour it's not on the 15s it's not on the 30s it's not a fixed time it's not as you know it's there is no discernible pattern to the time except for the fact that you will hear it a couple of times a day only during the day or is it at night like in the middle of night
John:
at night too but i mean you know it's not so loud that you'd hear it when you're sleeping right as far as we can tell it's coming from the basement because we've been at various times it's gone off i've been in every room on the first and second floor when it's gone off i've been in the bedrooms i've been in the living room and in the room and now in the kitchen the dining room if it was any of those rooms you'd be able to tell no matter what room in the house you're in sounds like it's coming from the basement
John:
A couple of us have been in the basement when it's gone off.
John:
I haven't been, but a couple of people have.
John:
And that has helped us.
John:
Well, I don't know.
John:
Has it helped us locally?
John:
There's been various reports when you're in the basement of where it might sound like it's coming from.
John:
There's been various reports.
John:
Right.
John:
Sometimes it seems like it's coming from one place.
John:
Sometimes it seems like it's coming from another place.
John:
My parents were here recently.
John:
We have like a finished room in the basement with like a guest bedroom and they were sleeping down there.
John:
They thought it was coming from the room that they're sleeping in.
John:
And I said, where?
John:
Where?
John:
where in the room and they just you know it's it's a type of little ditty that it's hard to isolate because it's a it's a computery type sound right so there's a couple of problems with this one in the beginning it was just kind of amusing like hey what is that beeping sound but now several months in now it's a mission right so started to do the process of elimination
John:
you have an idea of thing you think might be making three beeps, shut it off and then wait to see if you hear the three beeps.
John:
If you hear them and the thing was off, it's not that thing.
John:
Okay.
John:
So what, what things are in the basement?
John:
Like is laundry down there?
John:
Yeah.
John:
So one of the questions is what changed?
John:
Because we've been living in this house for 20 years or whatever.
John:
There hasn't been three beeps.
John:
What changed in the basement recently?
John:
Have you gotten anything new or whatever?
John:
That's kind of the first stuff we tried.
Uh,
John:
we got like a new carbon monoxide detector near the furnace right um so one of the first things i tried was okay i'm taking that thing and i'm bringing it i'm taking it out of the basement and putting it into the room where i am for a day i just carried around with me for a day i'm like if this thing goes off it's going to be two feet away from me i'll know it uh and three beeps went off and it wasn't the carbon monoxide detector
Casey:
Oh, you know, I think the chat room has already solved it.
Casey:
I bet I know what it is.
Casey:
And I'm stealing Ted from Ohio or Ted O's answer.
Casey:
Where is your Fios ONT?
John:
Right.
John:
So, I mean, yeah.
John:
So let me just take some more stuff that I've learned.
John:
All right.
John:
All right.
John:
There's a bunch of other stuff down there.
John:
There's both of my synologies.
John:
There's a UPS attached to them.
John:
There's an Eero.
John:
i shut down all those things in turn including turning off the ups which is kind of a pain because i had to you know plug things directly into the wall it's not either one of the synologies it's not the ups it's not the euro i didn't uh unplug slash replace the switch because if i if i turn off that switch internet wired internet in-house no longer works so i suppose i could replace that switch with another one right um
John:
water heater uh nothing's changed with the water heater recently but i figured we'd give it a try like searched on the internet like is there any speaker inside the little pilot light because they have a gas water heater and there's a little box with thermocouple and in the pilot light or whatever like does that box have a speaker period right like trying to get the manual for that or whatever obviously i can't i can't disable that and turn that off because we need hot water or i wouldn't want to obviously um
John:
but I'm pretty sure it's not that.
John:
The Fios thing was an option.
John:
If you Google for Fios box beeps, you'll find a million people.
John:
You remember this, Casey, when Fios box, or maybe Marco does too.
John:
Remember it had the big battery backup thing?
John:
Yeah, it happened to me too.
John:
They don't have that anymore.
John:
The modern ones don't.
John:
If you get gigabit fiber like I have, I think they took away my backup battery.
John:
I think I see where it used to be attached.
John:
There's like a DC input on the thing.
John:
It's supposed to keep your plain old telephone system line active.
John:
Like if you lost power, you could still make telephone calls.
John:
And so you can see where my telephone wire goes to the rest of the house and there's this Fios box that has a DC input thing on it.
John:
But the battery that used to be there, it used to be like a big, heavy, probably lead-acid rechargeable battery.
John:
And when that battery started to die, the old Fios ONTs would beep.
John:
But they would not play a three beep song.
John:
You can go find a YouTube video.
John:
They would go beep.
Casey:
That's what I was just doing.
John:
Beep.
John:
Beep.
John:
Like a smoke detector.
John:
You know, smoke detectors would go every 60 seconds or every 30 seconds.
John:
UPSs will make a racket and they'll make lots of beeping, beeping.
John:
Tons of things will beep.
John:
But they will not play a three, possibly four note song in an ascending scale with the super high pitch one at the end.
John:
Nor will they do it once every, let's say, six and a half to eight hours.
John:
like it's not like it's going off once every 30 seconds it's a you know does it sound like a is like a happy song or is it like discordant to alert you of something you think it's not like a song that you're watching when you know the washing machine and dryers play these little songs now it's not that kind of a happy song it is a is it a more electronic thing but it is three distinct notes with a fourth
Marco:
higher pitched but it sounds like it's making like a like a complete major chord so it's like a pleasant sound instead of like a it isn't trying to like have like a it's not just i don't know the music theory for it but it's not discordant it sounds like a major scale type of thing okay so it sounds like probably a happy alert
John:
I don't know how happy it is, but it's not like intentionally scary sounding.
John:
Right.
John:
OK.
John:
Now, the files thing is still potentially suspect.
John:
I looked up like, you know, I have so many pictures of like the serial numbers of all these boxes just so I can Google for like this exact thing.
John:
Like the first thing I always want to know is, does this thing have a speaker inside of any kind?
John:
Right.
John:
As far as I can tell, the very, very tiny modern gigabit files thing does not have a speaker anywhere in it.
John:
Nor can I find any reference on the Internet to the Fios box that I have ever making any noise because there is no battery backup inside it.
John:
Right.
John:
There's no flashing light.
John:
There's no alerting thing.
John:
There's no battery.
John:
There's nothing.
John:
And if any of these things were in distress, when something is going wrong, they're broken or they have a failing battery or whatever.
John:
They tend to get your attention more urgently.
John:
So other things I've done.
John:
I have an in-ground sprinkler system for my lawn.
John:
That has a battery.
John:
Replaced it.
John:
All the smoke detectors downstairs, removed them from the basement and brought them up with me.
John:
Like I took them on a car trip with me and whatever.
John:
You're like, oh my gosh.
John:
This is the way to take it.
John:
I was leaving the house.
John:
I said, I'm going somewhere in my car.
John:
I'm taking the smoke detectors with me.
John:
If when I'm gone, you hear the three beeps, it's not these smoke detectors.
John:
Like this is how I'm limiting stuff.
John:
Honestly, I am running out of things in the basement of my house to even suspect.
John:
Today, I was Googling for the N-Star electric meter because I think some of the – or the gas meter because, like, you know those things where they take the meter reading, like, remotely, like, wirelessly as the truck drives by?
John:
I don't know if you guys have those things.
John:
Yep, yep, yep.
John:
We do.
John:
We do.
John:
I think there's some kind of wireless connection there, so I'm Googling for, like, N-Star gas electric meter using the exact model numbers and everything to say –
John:
is this a sound but like again what change we don't have new meters we haven't put new meters in or anything like that do they have a battery that's dying and if it's dying why is it telling me about it three times per day at random times as opposed to constantly beeping why is it playing a song why is it playing three notes possibly four beep beep beep beep
John:
that the high pitch one is so high pitch you can't even really hear it unless you're close right so this is escalating because months of this is like now it's like why why can't i find this so my next step in because i'm really i'm really scraping the bottom down for a long time during the summer we thought it was the new dehumidifier we bought and we're like oh don't worry when we when i unplug the dehumidifier it'll be fine but the dehumidifier is unplugged now still going on it's not the dehumidifier because that was a new addition to the basement and it does make noises when like its filter gets needs to be changed or whatever
John:
But now I'm running out of stuff to remove.
John:
So my next step is, and this is an annoying step, and it's a step that Marco would probably enjoy because it involves buying stuff.
John:
I need to record the sound, right?
John:
And to do that, I need to get a small recorder that can run for essentially eight hours on battery.
John:
An iPhone.
John:
And just constantly record stuff in the basement, right?
John:
An iPhone.
John:
An old iPhone.
John:
Yeah, that's a good call.
John:
I don't know if an iPhone can last that long.
John:
And also on the iPhone.
Casey:
Oh, heck yeah.
John:
I do want, I wonder if the microphone in an iPhone is good enough to pick up this noise.
John:
I've done this before of like just putting an iPhone down to record something.
John:
If it's really far away, like if it's like in the other room, I don't know.
John:
As I was thinking of finding like an SD card powered, like tiny little recorder that you'd put on the table when you're interviewing someone that's like sort of omnidirectional pick up everything microphone thing.
Marco:
I think you will find, I mean, unless, unless you go pretty big on that, I think you will find that the microphones in a modern iPhone are actually better.
John:
Well, I'm not going to use one of our iPhones because it can't be without your iPhone for eight hours.
John:
You don't have old ones?
John:
I suppose I can look up there.
John:
The old ones the kids are using.
John:
We can hand it down.
Marco:
What about your perfect jet black iPhone 7?
Marco:
Yeah, I do have that somewhere.
Marco:
I mean, that's a little older, but I think you'd probably still have...
Marco:
pretty good luck with that i mean you could get a little recorder believe me i've i've gone through them they're very they're very fun but unless you get something very nice like maybe like a zoom like h5 with its awesome little xy capsules i don't think you're gonna get better sensitivity than an iphone built-in mic
John:
Yeah.
John:
I mean, the other thing I was thinking of was like, obviously, if you really want to do this right, you get three microphones and you triangulate, right?
John:
So you have to get precisely synchronized clocks and you'd get the three microphones and you'd get the recordings and you'd get the little song to play and then you'd bring them back and then you'd have them time code synced and you'd be able to triangulate.
Marco:
You don't need them that synced.
Marco:
You just line up the waveforms and see which one's loudest.
John:
yeah you can do that too um but yeah and the thing is guessing where i'm going to put this i'm probably going to put in the room where it seems to be the problem is we had reports of it sound it sounded like it was coming from the water heater and then we had it sounded like it was coming from the room i'm sleeping in those are on the opposite ends of the ends of the basement cool so again i have never been in the basement when it has gone off but we have very conflicting reports of people who have been in the basement when it's gone off you know a couple of senior citizens and someone sitting next to a running laundry machine
John:
Beeps are hard to isolate in that way.
Casey:
You have a laptop for work, do you not?
John:
I'm not going to leave my laptop down there.
Casey:
No, no, no, no, no.
Casey:
You're going to go down there and work on your laptop tomorrow.
Casey:
Maybe, maybe.
John:
It's not nice in the basement.
Casey:
I didn't.
Casey:
Do you want to know the source of the beep or not?
John:
So the goal of recording is mostly so I can post the recording on the Internet.
John:
And so people can say, oh, I've heard that little sound.
John:
It's from X. And yes, I'm going to have to endure all the people saying, are you sure it's not your dryer singing a song to you?
John:
I know my dryers and washer songs.
John:
And I have these are old appliances that we've had for many, many years.
John:
So, yeah, this is the mystery in my house, and I figured I would bring this up today just because, like, I'm kind of at my wit's end, like, having, you know, powering down my Synologies, powering down the UPS that they're attached to, powering down my basement Eero, like...
John:
It's not those things.
John:
And if it is the Fios thing, like, the problem with the Fios thing is all the Google growths are polluted by people with the beeping batteries.
John:
Like, you just can't penetrate.
John:
You will just find years and years of people with their failing batteries and their Fios ONTs that are the old version.
John:
You'll find YouTube videos of it.
John:
You'll find webpages.
John:
You'll find bulletin boards.
John:
And when you start putting in the model number of my thing...
John:
nothing having to do with beeping ever comes up it was getting to the point of where you do like what is it called google whacking or whatever you find one result right it's it's really brutal out there because if you say beep or song or anything like that a bunch of legit problems pollute
John:
your results.
John:
That's why I feel like I need to get the recording.
John:
When we do get the recording, maybe we'll play it on the show and maybe someone will recognize the tune.
John:
But what a weird mystery because it's either a new addition to my basement, which I feel like there hasn't been a new addition, or it's something that's been in my basement for at least a decade that has suddenly decided to start singing a song every once in a while for months, like three times a day.
John:
i mean if a battery was dying it would be dead by now i'm sorry john that's very frustrating i mean it's not it's not that loud but you can hear it on the the second floor of the house from the if it is ostensibly in the bay it's in the basement you're on the second floor of the house and if you're attuned to do do do you can hear it hmm the most frustrating thing it's like it's like an alien signal it's like when you hear it you know well i won't be hearing that again for six hours
John:
do do do do do so it's never more frequent no nope if it was we'd be like running down there like where is it where is it nope you it does its thing and you will not hear it again for hours every time you hear it right down at the exact time
Casey:
That's what I was going to say.
John:
I was doing the logging to try to find a pattern.
John:
I gave up when there was no pattern.
John:
It's not even on five-minute increments.
John:
It's all over the map.
Marco:
So it's not like every seven and a half hours.
John:
No.
John:
Sometimes it'll only be a three-hour gap.
John:
you're like i just heard that three hours ago sometimes you'll go the whole day and obviously you're not in the same place all the time so it could be going off when we're not there but i'm in the house all day long and i like went down to hear it today i heard it i think like at 9 12 or something and then it like 4 22 uh and then i haven't heard it since then uh but it could have gone awful i was in here recording i might not have heard it because i've got headphones on and everything like that um
John:
Yeah, but sometimes you'll hear it.
John:
I remember when my parents were here, sometimes they said, we heard it like three times in the night.
John:
We heard it at like 10 p.m., at like 2 a.m., and 4 a.m.
John:
And they had various theories about what they thought it might be.
John:
And that's a lot.
John:
That's a pretty frequent thing.
John:
But sometimes you won't hear it for a much longer stretch.
John:
It's super weird.
Yeah.
Casey:
Remember, um, remember you and I have, well, all of us actually have visited Underscore's house a couple of times and you slept in their basement a couple of times.
Casey:
And one time, I don't know, it was two, three years ago.
Casey:
I forget what, what Underscore was trying to ship, but he did a gray style staycation by basically actually, Marco, you'd probably remember this by sequestering himself in his own basement and basically coming up for food and little else.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And I think what you need to do is an underscore slash gray style staycation in your own basement and just dedicate 24 hours to living down there.
Casey:
Never leave unless you absolutely have to.
Casey:
And if you do, you better get a proxy down there to sit and listen for you.
Casey:
And if you really, really do want to fix this problem, and if it is indeed in the basement, you will fix this problem.
John:
Yeah, it needs it needs to be a recorder, though, because like say I'm sitting in the finish room and it goes off.
John:
I'm not confident that I could isolate it because you've got like fractions of a second to hear the little song.
John:
And I could probably tell directionally it's in that half of the room.
John:
But beyond that, like, you don't realize how much you rely on the repetition of a sound to get closer to it.
John:
Like, if the smoke alarm only chirped once and didn't keep chirping every 30 seconds, you would never find it.
John:
It's so hard to find it even when it chirps every 30 seconds, right?
Marco:
Yeah, you gotta, like, start, like, hunting in your house.
Marco:
Like, all right, try this room.
Marco:
Stand here.
Marco:
My next one, then, oh, it's this direction.
Marco:
All right, go stand over here.
John:
And imagine if it chirped twice per day, separated by eight hours.
John:
You would never freaking find it, right?
John:
That's what this is like.
John:
Anyway, I'll try to get a recording.
John:
If I get one, I will post it on Twitter and I will bring it to the show and give it to Marco and he can play it for all the ATP listeners.
John:
And I'm hoping someone somewhere is like, oh, I know what that is.
John:
It really is the Fios ONT.
John:
And then I can call Verizon and say, hey, the one thing I can't turn off in my house is making a noise.
John:
Come and fix it.