A Wizard With No Choices
Marco:
We're actually three minutes early today for I think the first time ever.
Marco:
Might be.
Marco:
Are we supposed to kill time to give people a chance to actually tune in?
Marco:
Hello, computers are good.
Marco:
No, we just start early.
Casey:
We don't want to vamp?
Casey:
We can vamp.
Casey:
No.
John:
Doesn't that kind of disrespect people who try to get here on time?
John:
It does not.
John:
It so rarely happens.
John:
We have to take advantage of it because we got stuff to do.
John:
It's two minutes.
John:
What are they going to miss in two minutes?
John:
It's nothing.
Casey:
It could be the best two minutes in ATP history.
Casey:
You never know.
Casey:
Odds are low.
Casey:
Yeah, well, apparently we're just getting started, so here we go.
Casey:
All right, so as you hear this, it is likely September, or if it's not September, it is really, really close to September, which means it is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.
Casey:
And for the nth consecutive year, I don't know how many it's been now, that's okay.
Casey:
For a few years now, we've joined ourselves slash our friends at RelayFM in order to raise money for St.
Casey:
Jude Children's Research Hospital.
Casey:
So if you're new here, let me explain it to you.
Casey:
If you've been here before, well, you know what?
Casey:
You should be excited about this.
Casey:
This is a great time of year.
Casey:
So St.
Casey:
Jude Children's Research Hospital is a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, that our mutual dear friend Stephen Hackett, he and his family went there when their eldest son was afflicted with childhood cancer at like six months old.
Casey:
And they got literally millions of dollars of treatment from St.
Casey:
Jude.
Casey:
And what's magical about St.
Casey:
Jude, one of the many things that's magical about St.
Casey:
Jude,
Casey:
is that they don't charge their patient families anything at all.
Casey:
They don't charge for travel in some cases.
Casey:
They don't travel to put them up, or excuse me, charge to put them up.
Casey:
They certainly don't charge for the services.
Casey:
It's really unbelievable.
Casey:
And especially in a broken freaking country like ours is, it's doubly unbelievable.
Casey:
So here's the thing.
Casey:
Even if you're not from America, though...
Casey:
It's it's a research hospital.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
And so, you know, childhood cancer research can take five to 10 years per project to complete and it can cost millions and millions and millions of dollars.
Casey:
So just as a silly example, maybe not a silly example at all, but an example, the St.
Casey:
Jude Pediatric Cancer Genome Project, which is revolutionizing how cancer is treated worldwide, began in 2010.
Casey:
And it's cost more than $100 million.
Casey:
$100 million that St.
Casey:
Jude has put into this.
Casey:
And they share these results.
Casey:
And they make these public so that other people, other doctors can use this stuff.
Casey:
So here's the thing.
Casey:
And I'm going to let Marco take over here in a second and do his normal annual iPhone time speech.
Casey:
But I'll just tell you that...
Casey:
No matter where you are in your life, you probably can spare a few bucks and throw it St.
Casey:
Jude's way.
Casey:
Don't feel like five bucks isn't enough.
Casey:
Five bucks is great.
Casey:
You know, 10 bucks is better.
Casey:
100 bucks is even better than that, and so on and so forth.
Casey:
Whatever you can spare, even if it's just a few bucks, that doesn't matter.
Casey:
It adds up.
Casey:
I mean, Relay is on track.
Casey:
to raise a lifetime total of $2.5 million.
Casey:
And that's because of all of you.
Casey:
So please, if you have any money to spare, go ahead and go to stjude.org slash ATP.
Casey:
And I believe that will dump you directly into the Here's My Money page, which is what we want.
Casey:
We want you to give St.
Casey:
Jude your money, please and thank you.
Casey:
So perhaps, Marco, you can talk about why this is a good idea in September.
Casey:
And then, John, you can talk about what the three of us have done, please.
Marco:
So, you know, there's not really a bad month to donate.
Marco:
This is very childhood cancer curing and research like that.
Marco:
That's a that's a pretty substantially great cause.
Marco:
And, you know, it can be it can be difficult if you want to donate money to a good cause.
Marco:
It can be difficult to kind of suss out like what is a good cause?
Marco:
And this thing that I that, you know, is a big name thing?
Marco:
Is that really good?
Marco:
Is the money really used well and everything and everything else?
Marco:
This actually stands up to that kind of scrutiny.
Marco:
St.
Marco:
Jude is a great organization.
Marco:
They do a huge amount of great work.
Marco:
And it doesn't merely affect our friends.
Marco:
It affects hundreds of thousands of people around the world, probably millions of people around the world.
Marco:
And and again, like the research component is important.
Marco:
So not only, you know, if you if you are a child with cancer, not only will they help to cure you and not charge your parents money, which is massive.
Marco:
But again, they also do research, which they share with the world to try to help improve everyone's success rates and try to really, you know, make a huge difference for everyone around the world.
Marco:
So this is a great cause.
Marco:
Now, here's what's about to happen.
Marco:
In about two weeks, most people listening to this show are going to watch an Apple event, and they're going to see a bunch of new iPhones and possibly Apple Watches get announced at this event.
Marco:
Most of the people who are hearing this message already have an iPhone that works just fine.
Marco:
And Apple's going to show us why we really should probably spend another $1,200 or whatever on a new iPhone, even though the one that we already have pretty much works fine.
Marco:
And many of us are going to rationalize this.
Marco:
We're going to say, you know what?
Marco:
I need this.
Marco:
Or I deserve this.
Marco:
Or simply, I just want this and don't care.
Marco:
And that's great.
Marco:
I'm going to be one of those people.
Marco:
Casey's going to be one of those people.
Marco:
John, I forget.
Marco:
Is it your year, John?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
It's not my ear.
John:
I'm not going to do that.
John:
I may put a new case on my existing phone.
John:
Exactly.
Marco:
And a case, I mean, look, I'm in a new case for a good brand.
John:
It's the case that I already bought.
John:
Remember, I got two of them.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
Well, okay.
Marco:
Everyone except John is going to rationalize some kind of big purchase.
Marco:
And here's the thing.
Marco:
You'd be fine without the new iPhone this year, unless your phone is actively broken.
Marco:
You don't really need it.
Marco:
It's a discretionary, fun purchase because you're probably some kind of working professional and, look, you deserve a new phone sometimes.
Marco:
They're nice.
Marco:
We're not going to argue with that.
Marco:
However, I would encourage you to help rationalize that decision in your mind, to help justify your shameless consumerism.
Marco:
And when I say your, I mean our shameless consumerism.
Marco:
especially my own i'm not i'm not even coming anywhere near not owning this myself like i am i am as bad as anyone on this um to help justify our shared shameless consumerism please donate something to saint jude um and and you know again casey said it said it well if you don't have a lot of money five bucks ten bucks twenty bucks that's fine that's that's great it's way better than zero and that's awesome um
Marco:
I would encourage those of us in the audience who can afford to buy a new iPhone that is not super necessary in our lives, give a little bit more.
Marco:
My rules in the past have been, hey, whatever kind of add-on that you tack on to the iPhone sale without really scrutinizing it too much, maybe that's sales tax.
Marco:
Maybe that's a case.
Marco:
Maybe that's AppleCare.
Marco:
That's a good ballpark for kind of what amount of money you could spend without missing it too much.
Marco:
I would say start there as your minimum for St.
Marco:
Jude.
Marco:
So whether it's $100, $70, whatever it is, more than that maybe if you have been fortunate in life, that's great.
Marco:
Start there and give what you can from there.
Marco:
And that will help absolve your rampant consumerism guilt that we all will have in two weeks when we get phones we don't need that are still nevertheless very cool.
Marco:
so st jude.org slash atp uh start you know start in that price ballpark maybe like whatever you would spend on like a ram upgrade for a mac that you don't really think you need the ram upgrade but you think you might maybe someday maybe possibly use it no no no hold on hold on we're trying to get a lot of money so what you would spend on an ssd upgrade oh yeah yeah
Casey:
That's what we're talking about.
Casey:
Now we're cooking with gas.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So there you go.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
If you're like, hmm, I think two terabytes enough, but maybe four terabytes.
Marco:
I might use the four terabytes.
Marco:
Maybe that's your donation amount.
Marco:
Whatever makes you feel better at night about your rampant consumerism, I strongly suggest please donate what you can.
Marco:
Thank you.
Casey:
John, can you talk about what we've done, please?
John:
As always, we are trying to set an example on this program.
John:
We're not just here to tell you that you should donate because you're going to buy a new iPhone.
John:
We're going to buy new iPhones, at least some of us.
John:
And we've also donated, as usual, collectively.
John:
ATP has donated $21,000 to St.
John:
Jude Children's Research Hospital this year.
John:
The way we normally do it is we divide that amount by three, and then all three of us donate that amount at the same time.
John:
and it's a little game we play although this year some people forgot we were playing that game because there's a there's a leaderboard on the uh the the website for donations that shows who the top donor is i'm tired okay it's been a long day they show who the top donors are and it's kind of fun to be the top donor there if only briefly before the real big spenders come in and the pledge drive has just started you know it's september are we doing it the whole month or whatever uh you know so we're just beginning september
John:
and so there is a chance for one of us to be the top donor at this time and so we said okay everyone enter your amount uh which is 21k divided by three and we entered our amounts and then we hit the buttons and marco we're gonna do dnf did not finish oh my god he donated exactly seven thousand dollars which is not even playing the game casey
John:
Knew the game existed, but became very, very bad at it by donating $7,000 and one cent, which is the lowest amount you could possibly donate and still be playing the game.
Casey:
Each of us said to each other, $7,000, right?
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
$7,000, right?
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
$7,000, right?
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
So I thought, you know what?
Casey:
These two, they're going to actually donate $7,000 and it's going to be even better that I snuck in with that one cent because those two knuckleheads will be on the nose.
Casey:
And then some asshole swoops in and...
Casey:
and decides that it's not just one cent to get the padding.
Casey:
What did you do, Syracusa?
John:
I did 7-11, $7,011.
John:
You know, the whole point is you can't just go, oh, I'm going to do 7,500, I'm going to do 8,000.
John:
Like, we're not playing that game.
John:
It's supposed to be like, it's around the amount you want, but then some extra pocket change to see which one of us will come out ahead.
John:
And once again, for the second year in a row, I have won with my $11 bonus donation.
John:
So please follow our example and compete amongst your friends to see who can donate the most to St.
John:
Jude.
John:
you can get on the leaderboard uh there's no reason you can't beat us normally someone i think like one password came in last year and uh beat us out pretty quickly so i will enjoy my brief time at the top of the leaderboard yeah so if i donate another like 50 bucks now is that no no the game the game has i mean you can totally donate more you have to donate another 7 000 though like exactly it doesn't get added to your total it's it's individual line items
John:
How badly do you want to be up there?
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
Oh, gosh.
Casey:
I'll have to think about it.
Casey:
Anyway, stjude.org slash ATP, S-T-J-U-D-E dot org slash ATP.
Casey:
You're going to hear this at the beginning of each show for the month of September.
Casey:
And I would apologize for that, but I'm not going to because you know what?
Casey:
Sick kids need our help.
Casey:
And like Marco has said, we are all at some time or another.
Casey:
We are all guilty of rampant consumerism, even John.
Casey:
So give the sick kids some help.
Casey:
stjude.org slash ATP.
Casey:
Thank you so much, everyone, for even thinking about donating or actually donating.
Casey:
All right, let's do some follow-up.
Casey:
First of all, I wanted to call attention to, this is breaking news.
Casey:
My good friend, Ben McCarthy, has released Obscura 4.
Casey:
Obscura is...
Casey:
a absolutely bananas camera app for your phone.
Casey:
It is amazing what you can do with this thing.
Casey:
There are so many tweaks and features and fiddly bits, but yet it's very, very straightforward to use.
Casey:
It's excellent.
Casey:
I wanted to congratulate Ben, who helped me out a lot
Casey:
with the design on call sheet.
Casey:
Most of the things, if not all of them, that look good on call sheet are because Ben said, hey, why don't you try this?
Casey:
Or why don't you do that?
Casey:
So any of the good parts are Ben's fault.
Casey:
Any of the bad parts are my fault.
Casey:
And so if you want to see what it's like when you have someone that not only has a good design eye, but also is a good developer and can run free with their own ideas,
Casey:
check out Obscura.
Casey:
It's worth looking at, if not actually purchasing, which I strongly suggest as well.
Casey:
So we'll put links in the show notes.
Casey:
The website is obscura.camera, O-B-S-C-U-R-A, which is actually a very good URL, not only because it's .camera, but because Camera Obscura.
Casey:
Anyways, and we'll also put an App Store link in the show notes.
Casey:
My thanks to Ben for not only helping me with Call Sheet while they were supposed to be working on Obscura
Casey:
But also for making Obscura because it really is just phenomenal.
Casey:
So Obscura.camera, check it out.
Casey:
Also, we had some feedback from Chris Berryhill with regard to TCL TVs with flashing LEDs.
Casey:
Chris writes, I too have a TCL Roku TV that I bought around 2018.
Casey:
I have it blocked at my router and have been dealing with the flashing LED for years.
Casey:
I tried early on to disable the LED as well, but could not find a setting to turn it off.
Casey:
I recently had a discussion with a friend who's super into TVs.
Casey:
I mentioned to him that I don't let any of my TVs connect to the internet.
Casey:
He implored me to allow it to connect every now and again to get firmware updates in order to have the best picture.
Casey:
I followed his advice and updated all my TVs over the past week.
Casey:
When I updated the TCL Roku, it went from 10.x to 12.x.
Casey:
I played around with the settings on it last night, and lo and behold, under the power menu, there's a setting to disable the LED.
Casey:
Not sure if it was there before I updated, but it certainly is now, and it works as expected.
Casey:
So number one, great tip.
Casey:
Number two, John, corollary question, is this an acceptable approach to never, but great once in a while, connect your TV to the internet?
Casey:
Like your beloved Sony TV, is it on the internet?
Casey:
I don't recall.
John:
Just like Chris's friends who's, quote, super into TVs, I also recommend periodically connecting your TV to get firmware updates because they fix stuff.
John:
They fix stuff having to do with pictures quality.
John:
They fix bugs in their features.
John:
Like, these are little computers at this point.
John:
Forget about, like, the online stuff.
John:
Just the features of the television for playing video in terms of how does it handle all the various features of HDMI 2.1.
John:
If there's bugs and it's, like, variable refresh rate code and, like...
John:
And they improve picture quality.
John:
They can change this thing over time.
John:
So I would encourage you to connect it periodically to get firmware updates.
John:
But of course, that's how they get you, right?
John:
You don't want to have it connected to the internet, but you do want the firmware updates.
John:
But I thought this was great because connecting to the internet actually fixed an annoying problem with the stupid blinking LEDs.
John:
And I did get an answer from some people like, why aren't people just putting tape over it?
John:
What's the big deal with the LED?
John:
Why are they yanking it out of the circuit board?
John:
Why don't they just put some tape over it?
John:
I think what these manufacturers do, at least some of them, is they put the blinking LED...
John:
inside the same sort of plastic housing as the ir receiver so you can't really block it without also blocking the ir receiver it bothers why these tvs don't have bluetooth remotes all the time but anyway um that's why they don't just put a piece of tape over because apparently to put enough tape to actually block the light the your remotes don't work anymore
John:
um so yeah i my television is connected to the internet i do not fear the internet connection although i do have a bunch of features turned off on it so it is nicer with an internet service um but in general i don't use the smart features of my tv but i do do the firmware updates every time i'm prompted for them and i would encourage everyone else to at least periodically let's say every six months or so uh see if there's a firmware update for your tv
Marco:
And I would argue, I mean, I know you can exert some control over your network with fancy Wi-Fi stuff, but I would say if you're going to temporarily connect your TV to the internet for this purpose, use wired Ethernet.
Marco:
That way, when you unplug it, it's really offline.
Marco:
There's no like, oh, you told me not to remember your Wi-Fi password, but I actually did remember your Wi-Fi password.
Marco:
It can't be anything like that.
Marco:
You can really physically connect it, and then when you're done, physically disconnect it.
Casey:
That's a really good tip.
Casey:
You know, something that this is a total tangent, Marco style.
Casey:
So I'll be the Marco this episode.
Casey:
I'm so sorry.
Casey:
When I was traveling a couple of weeks ago and we went to Pennsylvania, I don't remember how much we talked about this on the show.
Casey:
But this is when I was talking about my travel router, I think.
Casey:
Well, anyways, I typically will bring an Apple TV when we're traveling for more than just a day or two.
Casey:
So if Aaron and I want to watch something or if the kids, if we have enough downtime, the kids want to watch something, we can just do that on the Apple TV.
Casey:
Well, we were in this this this very cool and very unique hotel that was a bunch of converted railroad cars, which in America, seeing a railroad car at all is kind of unique and interesting.
Marco:
But leaving that aside, don't worry, it was very low speed.
Casey:
Yeah, right.
Casey:
But even staying in one is extremely cool, and that's not an opportunity that you generally get to have.
Casey:
Well, we were in a converted mail car, which had just been refurbished or redone or whatever, and they had this obscenely large TV that...
Casey:
That was up against one of the walls.
Casey:
It was like a 60 or 70 inch TV for a, that was on the side of a train car.
Casey:
The whole damn train car is what, like 10 feet wide.
Casey:
Like, I don't know why we needed a TV this big, but whatever.
Casey:
Well, anyway, so I go to hook up a HDMI port or HDMI cord to it.
Casey:
And I brought my own cord that, that wasn't the issue, but the damn thing was like stuck there.
Casey:
to the exterior wall, which makes sense since it's so short.
Casey:
So, you know, squat.
Casey:
But I couldn't reach my hand behind it to put the damn cable in.
Casey:
And so although I am in full support, Marco, of the idea of using Ethernet, sometimes that just ain't possible.
Casey:
Now, I know that John will now jump in and tell you it's barbaric to put your TV on the wall, but I'm not here to have that argument.
Casey:
It's not barbaric to put your TV on the wall.
Casey:
It's barbaric to put it over your fireplace.
Casey:
Well, you know, you do what you got to do.
Marco:
I would also argue that Ethernet cables typically have two ends.
Casey:
That's true.
Marco:
So you could just leave the other end unplugged?
Casey:
Well, yeah, but that is true.
Casey:
That is true.
Casey:
But in this particular case, I know I'm taking your example and completely bending it over until it breaks, but I couldn't get behind the damn TV in the first place.
Casey:
So what if you mounted your TV like that, perhaps not above the fireplace, and now you've got to unmount the damn thing just to plug in the Ethernet cable that one time?
Casey:
It's very frustrating.
Casey:
All right, let's talk child Gmail accounts.
Casey:
So Henry Sivanen writes, there is a significant gotcha with recommending a Gmail address for a child.
Casey:
Children are not allowed to set up email forwarding, so there's a rather serious risk of lock-in.
Casey:
We'll put a link in the show notes to some information about this.
Casey:
And from Google's FAQ page or whatever, for the most part, Gmail will be the same for children as it is for adults.
Casey:
There are only a few Gmail features that aren't available to children under 13 or the applicable age in your country.
Casey:
And so those features are ads.
Casey:
Google will not serve ads in Gmail or process Gmail messages for advertising purposes.
Casey:
Automatic forwarding.
Casey:
Children can't automatically forward emails to another email address.
Casey:
Gmail offline.
Casey:
If their device isn't connected to the Internet, children can't read, send or search their Gmail emails.
Casey:
Labs, the children cannot turn on.
Casey:
Experimental Gmail features.
Casey:
Mail delegation, children can't give someone else access to read, send, or delete their emails.
Casey:
And spam, if Gmail identifies an email as spam, it won't get delivered to your child's inbox or spam folder.
Casey:
Note that these restrictions don't apply if your child is over 13 or the applicable age in your country or had supervision added to their previously existing Google account.
Marco:
Oh, so wait, that seems like a big way out.
Marco:
If you have them create an account separately, and then you add supervision to it, is that a way out?
John:
I mean, you could just lie about your kid's age, which is what you talked about doing, but honestly, I always tell the truth about my kid's age, and these features that are in there for kids, I don't mind.
John:
The not having automatic forwarding, I think, is not a problem, because it's not like children, again...
John:
They're not like, oh, I need to have all my email funnel into a single place.
John:
So it's really important that I have automatic forwarding.
John:
No, they don't care.
John:
They just they should just be there for them and they can use it as their address.
John:
They'll be over 13 before you know it.
John:
And until they are, they're probably not going to be using their email directly anyway, but they might still need to have an email account.
John:
to use to sign up for things i mean they're going to want to you know register for the i don't know the web forum on the minecraft mod thing minecraft mod web forum that they want to be part of and they don't know that you need an email i just register so basically you're going to be using this as an adult but uh i i told the truth about my kid's age and didn't regret it um if you want to lie about their age and just say your kids start off as being older over 18 you can do that too but i don't know if that will cause problems later when you try to recorrect their birthday but
Casey:
it's good to know what these restrictions are again we'll link to the document you can decide whether you want to tell the truth about their age or not then additionally sriram kara writes i work in the sign in and account recovery team at google you'd be surprised how often this happens a parent would create the quote-unquote perfect gmail account for their newborn a few years roll by before they feel the need to actually use it for something by which time they have long forgotten the account password and of course they haven't set up a recovery phone or recovery email in that account
Casey:
The result is that they can't access the quote-unquote perfect Gmail account that they lovingly created, and there's nothing anyone can do to help them.
Casey:
It sucks for everyone.
Casey:
For many years now, when you create a new Google account, you can mark it as an account you're creating for your child.
Casey:
This gives you some parental controls, including the ability to reset their account password if needed.
Casey:
As for your own Google accounts, please turn on two-step verification and save those backup codes as John rightly, as always, pointed out.
Casey:
In addition, do add a recovery phone and recovery email address for the same added redundancy in case you forget your password.
John:
Yeah, like Apple has a lot of things for iCloud now, too.
John:
If you could designate somebody as your backup or, you know, put someone else's email as a recovery thing, these are all things you can do to protect yourself.
John:
And of course, if you use a password manager of some kind, hopefully you won't have to worry about remembering that password.
Casey:
Aaron Walker writes, I enjoyed the iMac special episode, but was disappointed that you completely missed one of the main benefits of the iMac G5.
Casey:
The iMac G5 was one of the few Apple products that was incredibly user-serviceable.
Casey:
It was definitely not sleek, but you could remove the back panel and replace components easily.
Casey:
Later, iMacs were sleeker and prettier, but any modifications or upgrades are ludicrously more complex than they were on the iMac G5.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, this is a fair criticism because the iMacs really did get awfully unserviceable towards the end there.
Marco:
Like any of the big glass front with the metal chin, for typically to do almost anything to those, you had to take the screen off and get in from the front.
Marco:
And that was not an easy or safe process for almost anyone to do themselves.
Marco:
So that is definitely a big bonus for the G5.
Marco:
That being said, it was so hideous looking that you wouldn't probably keep it long enough to actually have it break.
John:
Yeah, so it's not just that this was a thing for iMac specifically, but I don't know what happened with this machine.
John:
I would love to see the story on it.
John:
But this was the first Mac in ages and the last Mac in ages where Apple officially supported the person who bought the computer doing tons of stuff to it.
John:
like not just changing the RAM, changing the hard drive, like just like any kind of thing.
John:
They're like, yep, sure.
John:
No, you just, this is totally a normal thing that you can do.
John:
You don't have to send away for special tools in a Pelican case.
John:
We'll have instructions right on the website.
John:
You don't need like a heat gun to like unglue something from something like, and I don't know what happened.
John:
It was like when they did this, like, is this a new age for Apple?
John:
Are they going to be selling Macs that are user serviceable without special tools, like designed to be that way?
John:
And the answer was no, they're not going to do that.
John:
somehow this machine came out uh being officially user serviceable without having to do anything complicated and then they just never did that again i don't remember if it was the back panel or the front panel but i do remember uh looking at them and thinking that's great it's real easy to upgrade but also thinking like marco said but i don't want this computer
Marco:
To be fair, I think this was a couple years before, but in 2006, when the plastic MacBook came out with the wonderful Core Duo processor, John, that computer, the era of the plastic MacBook before they went all unibody, you could very easily, and I did very easily, not only replace the RAM, but also the hard drive.
John:
Yeah, they had that little secret hard drive door where the hard drive would pop out into the battery bay.
Marco:
Yeah, and there was no adhesive.
Marco:
You didn't need special tools.
Marco:
It was just like a small Phillips head, I believe.
Marco:
So I upgraded so many hard drives and plastic MacBooks for both myself and for other people.
Marco:
It was so easy.
Marco:
And back then also, that was when two and a half inch hard drives were really growing rapidly in capacity in the market.
Marco:
to the point where for much of that laptop's lifespan, you could buy a larger hard drive from third parties than Apple would sell you.
Marco:
So you'd get it with, I forget, it was something like you'd get it with the 60 gig hard drive and you could upgrade it to 120 gig or something like that.
Marco:
And because it was third party hardware, it was really cheap to do that too.
Marco:
Whatever the hard drive would have been, would have been
Marco:
$150, $200 for a much larger amount of space.
Marco:
So it was very serviceable back then.
Marco:
And then all of that went away when we went to unibodies.
Marco:
And of course, SSDs ruined it further.
John:
That one is kind of more targeted.
John:
You could do the specific things they allowed you.
John:
My recollection of the iMac G5 is the entire thing was open and every single thing inside of it was user serviceable because it was just right there in front of you.
John:
But I may be misremembering.
John:
But anyway, that did not become a trend.
Yeah.
Marco:
Also, to be fair, RAM was user-serviceable on almost all of those iMacs until the iMac Pro.
Marco:
The iMac Pro didn't have any door whatsoever, but all the rest of the metal era all had user-serviceable RAM.
Casey:
Yeah, but you would do that at your own peril.
Marco:
Yes, you would!
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I think, Marco, you are the keeper of the ATP YouTube channel, but I think it's mostly John that's doing any of the work on it.
John:
Marco tried to let me have access to it, but YouTube has a feature that says, let other people help administer your channel.
John:
Just enter their email address here.
John:
And he's done it like twice and nothing happens.
Marco:
So bad show, YouTube.
Marco:
I am not a professional YouTubist, but it seems like about a third of the features in the YouTube creator control panel are always broken at any given time.
Marco:
I've only used it a handful of times.
Marco:
I've uploaded a couple of videos myself.
Marco:
I had our Minecraft gaming channel for our family where I did a lot more of them.
Marco:
And then a couple of little ATP things that John has created and then I upload them because we can't figure out how to give him access to the account.
Marco:
And it just seems like the YouTube Creator Studio control panel, whatever it is, it just is so broken all the time in various small ways that change over time.
Marco:
And then you go search for... A lot of times I will have to literally Google for how to do something in the YouTube control panel because I can't find something.
Marco:
And even Google's own documentation on YouTube, which they own...
Marco:
is out of date and things have moved since then.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
Honestly, Swift's documentation I think is better than Google's.
Marco:
YouTube, for so many reasons, I'm very happy to be a podcaster and not a YouTuber.
John:
Yeah, I mean, I think the experience of using YouTube's admin interface is not uniform.
John:
I think the people who have real channels with lots of subscribers have a different experience.
John:
I know the very, very top super-duper elite have entirely other features that other people would kill for.
John:
I think CGP Grey has talked about...
John:
how you can't replace a video.
John:
Like if you have a video that has an error in it, you can't replace that video.
John:
You could upload a new one, but then you lose all the views on that one and it doesn't, you know, you lose all your search juice or whatever you've got on that whole thing.
John:
Ew.
John:
But if you are super duper elite,
John:
guess what?
John:
You can replace videos.
John:
Really?
John:
And so whatever that is, the super duper elite, the ATP channel is the opposite of that.
John:
This is a channel with no listed video.
John:
So if you go there, it's literally empty.
John:
The only reason we have it is because we needed someplace to upload the video recordings of our member special when we do tier lists.
John:
And honestly, there's not much video content.
John:
It's just us dragging things up onto a tier list.
John:
But hey, it's a visual thing.
John:
If you want to see that, that's fine.
John:
So we've been doing that just because it's a nice thing to do.
John:
And then people are like, I tried to watch the tier list video, but every five minutes an ad comes up.
John:
Can you stop that from happening?
John:
And I'm like, oh, that's terrible.
John:
We should stop that.
John:
And the answer is no, we can't stop that.
John:
And why can't we stop that?
John:
Because again, whatever the opposite of having the super duper elite features is,
John:
We have no views.
John:
We have no subscribers.
John:
We have no videos.
John:
And so the feature that lets you turn off ads, like, hey, don't show any ads on this.
John:
We're not trying to monetize anything.
John:
Not that we would get money from those ads anyway, mind you, because to get any money from YouTube, there's a threshold before you can turn on monetization so that you get money.
John:
We're not even close to that.
John:
Like, I think it's like you have to like a thousand subscribers or something.
John:
We're not even close to that.
John:
So not only are we not getting any money, but because we don't have monetization turned on, we can't stop YouTube from running its own ads on our videos, which is kind of sucky.
John:
So maybe we'll look at Vimeo next time or something.
John:
But anyway, we just want to apologize to everybody.
John:
We're not trying to run ads on these videos.
John:
They're just there as a fun and nice to have thing for the members.
John:
Sorry about the ads.
John:
We would turn them off if we could, but we haven't figured it out yet.
Marco:
i'm not honestly interested in vimeo but whenever i tried to use vimeo in the past i would always get yelled at by somebody who worked there for using it wrong this is not the kind of video we want yeah no matter what it was it was not what they wanted so i'm pretty sure that's not the site for us they don't want to see it like a static tier list screen with us dragging icons up onto it occasionally i seriously doubt it yeah yeah so i'm not sure what this will probably we'll probably continue uploading to the youtube channel this is
John:
i mean i'm not gonna say this is a reason to subscribe to youtube premium so you don't have to see ads but not seeing ads on youtube is a nice upgrade to the experience maybe if we get more than a thousand subscribers uh we'll we'll be able to turn on monetization and then turn use that use that newfound ability to turn off ads i don't know youtube is weird anyway we just want to apologize
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
All right, let's go to truck GPS corner.
Casey:
So Ezekiel Ellen has a hat trick of feedback at this point.
Casey:
Ezekiel writes, truck maps, which we'll put a link in the show notes, has a skip button below the phone number prompt.
Casey:
It's practically invisible.
Casey:
I'm sorry, I should have given some context.
Casey:
This is, I believe, Marco, what you used and you were complaining justifiably about having to issue them or hand them your phone number in order to use the app.
Casey:
But it turns out, apparently, if you have eagle eyes, you could have hit the skip button.
Marco:
yeah which i apparently did not see was it like super duper light gray on a white background yeah right probably i mean i mean look apple uses a lot of those these days to themselves but uh but yeah apple's not doing it on purpose though yeah so anyway i missed that sorry again app review where were you but hey doesn't you know here we go um and that's all right that that was the app that would announce a turn once four miles at a time and then never tell you about it again so i i didn't spend too much time with that one
Casey:
All right, then Jonathan Yamas writes, I'm a semi-long-time listener, and I have a CDL, a commercial driver's license.
Casey:
I have sent countless emails to Tim Cook requesting truck routes be baked straight into Apple Maps.
Casey:
I've tried using the same truck route app that Marco used, and it was frustrating to say the least.
Casey:
Garmin sells GPS navigators specifically made for truck routes.
Casey:
You can input the height, width, and length of your vehicle, and the device routes you the safest way.
Casey:
But personally, I don't want to fork over $300 for a device that has the UI of the early 2000s.
Casey:
I wait with bated breath until Apple implements truck routes and Apple Maps.
Casey:
Until then, I'll stick to using my iPad Pro 11-inch mounted on my dashboard.
Marco:
Yeah, and we actually we got a number of emails from people who drive trucks for a living who almost all said that pretty much the big the big dog in this space is still hardware GPS units that are, you know, these ones that Jonathan's talking about, like the Garmin makes them specifically made for trucks.
Marco:
And like, because the apps are so bad, many people still use hardware GPS units.
Casey:
Which, I mean, it does make sense, but that is a bummer that that's the state of the art.
John:
Yeah, I mean, basically because once smartphones chased all these things out of the dashboards of regular people's cars, they retreated to smaller and more lucrative markets like this thing.
John:
And some people said about these GPS device things that they like the idea of you just buy this one dedicated device, you pay a couple hundred bucks for it, and that's it.
John:
As opposed to like the crappy app that Marco was trying to use where it was like $250 a year.
John:
I don't think there is...
John:
an expensive subscription or if there is any subscription it's less expensive than that so yeah I know some people were very satisfied with these some people thought they were crappy and anachronistic and some people were very satisfied with them because they were crappy and anachronistic so there you go
Casey:
Then Andrew Larson writes, I genuinely, I know I've said this a couple times, I love that we have listeners in every freaking corner of the universe.
Casey:
I really think at this point, I know Hello Internet has been defunct for a while, but I really think we're getting to Hello Internet levels of coverage in terms of our listeners.
John:
I don't think we have any astronauts yet, right?
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
Not to my recollection.
Casey:
We'll work on the astronauts.
Casey:
But yeah.
Casey:
Anyways, Andrew Larson writes, I'm a general manager at a U-Haul retail store.
Casey:
For apps for routing, I recommend two things.
Casey:
There's an app called InRoute.
Casey:
That's I-N-R-O-U-T-E.
Casey:
This app is super cool and has many features you've maybe never thought to have in an app for routing.
Casey:
It's affordable and includes something called RV mode, which may help.
Casey:
For anyone super concerned about the routes that allow or don't allow trucks, I recommend the out-of-app purchase of a hardware GPS.
Casey:
Long after the average consumer driving their Honda moved on from TomTom and Garmin, the market specialized in more niche features such as these, as well as marine-focused models for Marco's inevitable future boat purchase.
Casey:
It's the other market to retreat to.
Marco:
Yeah, right.
Marco:
So speaking of listeners in all sorts of places, not only is Andrew's recommendation of the InRoute app pretty apt.
Marco:
I heard about it from a few people.
Marco:
We also heard from the developer of the InRoute app.
Marco:
It's made by an indie developer.
Marco:
And the developer, Rob, wrote in...
Marco:
um unlike the two apps that i tested it reroutes you if you go off route and there's no pricing tricks after a seven-day trial it renews for five dollars a month discounted plans there's apps for carplay mac under catalyst and ipad and unlike most navigation apps your data is completely private and rob links to the whole um you know the whole privacy policy thing so pretty cool that like you know not only not only do do we hear from people who can tell us like which apps and gps things are better but literally the author of one of them is also a listener of our show and wrote it that is very cool
John:
Yeah, and you can see it from the screenshot of Zap here.
John:
It lets you enter the height, width, and length and weight of your vehicle.
John:
You have options to avoid tolls, avoid ferries, because you might not want to drive a big truck onto a ferry, avoid highways, and you can have routes that are the most curvy or the least curvy or the least ascent of elevation.
John:
So...
John:
Exactly the options you'd want to have because you have all those things.
John:
It's more than just like, hey, will I shear off the top of my truck on a bridge?
John:
Stuff like how curvy it is and how much it goes up and down and avoiding ferries are things you would not think of for regular routing but are very relevant if you're driving a big truck.
John:
Uh, so yeah, this is definitely an area where the platform owners probably need to get a little better, especially since in America anyway, pretty much everybody is driving these monstrous vehicles that can't park in normal parking spots.
John:
I mean, maybe they don't care about, uh, curves or shearing off the top of their things, but if the current trends continue, they're not going to be able to fit in parkways either.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So anyway, uh, next time I rent some kind of truck or RV, I will try in route because that sounds like the best option.
Casey:
Again, I love the coverage that we have.
Casey:
It makes me so very happy.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And then finally, John, how is your gift box coming along?
Casey:
How are things going in HomePod land?
John:
Shortly after the end of the show, I did come up with the use.
John:
I think I might have come up with this on the program or maybe on the bootleg.
John:
I don't remember.
John:
I'm like, I know what I'll do with these.
John:
I'll put them in my wife's office because she currently uses a very small, not very good sounding Sonos Toblerone thing.
John:
I think I did talk about this in the show.
John:
Anyway, I'll put them down there for her.
John:
And so the day after we recorded, I'm like, OK, I'm going to get these two HomePods.
John:
I know where they're going now.
John:
Bring them down to the office.
John:
Set them up on our desk as a stereo pair.
John:
This should take five minutes, right?
John:
No, of course not.
Marco:
I don't even think you can reset them in five minutes.
John:
Well, so first I was trying to, yeah, I was trying to be like, OK, so it should just work.
John:
I plug it in.
John:
And of course, it's not showing up.
John:
And I go to Home app and I try to add accessory and they're not showing up.
John:
I'm like, I probably have to factory reset these.
John:
So I look up the instructions on how to factory reset them.
John:
uh and i do it like three or four times and it doesn't work and then i even got to the point where i messaged marco and i said are these still attached to your apple id can you delete them from your apple id so i was like maybe he needs to do something at his end wait i didn't get those messages where'd you message me son one of the many places that you don't look apparently
Marco:
Was it in the, was it in the document?
John:
No, it was in Slack.
John:
I believe you were at mentioned.
Casey:
Oh my God, Marco.
Casey:
So the listeners missed.
Casey:
So we got to back up because this is a good story.
Casey:
So we had agreed to talk about and do before the show or St.
Casey:
Jude donations, as we talked about.
Casey:
And so a few days ago, uh, John had said to the two of us, Hey, let's do this, you know, 15 minutes early in that.
Casey:
And, you know, is that cool with everyone?
Casey:
I said, yeah, sure.
Casey:
So I am sitting at 7.45 our time waiting for Marco to hit go on the Zoom room.
Casey:
And then Marco shows up, you know, and I'm immediately there.
Casey:
He goes, oh, what are you doing here?
Casey:
I said, well, we agreed to be early.
Casey:
We did?
Yeah.
Casey:
so it is made clear to me that marco you either need to we either need to move our slack communications to like iMessage or something or you just never care about what we say and that makes me sad no i normally i am better at this but it's been look i'm like selling one house renovating another house doing all this back and forth like it's been it's been quite a few weeks i mean i'm not it's not a
John:
didn't have an expectation that you'd immediately respond to me or whatever but i figured you would have seen it eventually within a week that's all i'm saying like so and when i did send that message i thought about how should i send this and i briefly thought oh i'll use i'll use i message but i'm like no in the sort of in the hierarchy of importance this is
John:
not that important i don't care if he ever see you know it doesn't respond to me immediately i'll just send it through slack so and what happened was before i could get a response i figured it out so it didn't matter anyway but that's that's a level i was thinking but you know so i'm not who cares that you didn't respond to it but i figured you would have at least seen it a week later but that's that's the hole in your system although actually in marco's defense i can't come i can't put my finger on this message because i was going to try to figure out when it was
John:
oh i deleted them i deleted oh all right oh so okay so i can't be at fault for not seeing it in like i deleted like 24 hours later well i figured i didn't want you to be distracted because i'm like i know you're busy and maybe if you saw it 24 hours later you're like oh i need to help john you don't i got it figured out so i first i first i put a message that said don't worry i figured it out and i left that there for 24 hours after 24 hours that i don't want you to accidentally see the other ones and not see they figured it out and so i deleted them all
John:
you know i'm all i am so here for busting marco's chops but in this one i think he might get a pass on this particular well this doesn't explain the let's let's uh get online 15 minutes early thing that's just still sitting in there anyway all right so i did figure out the factory reset and for people who don't know if you read the instructions and it's like you know unplug your thing for 10 seconds plug it in wait 10 seconds then hold your finger on the thing for 10 seconds and it's uh
John:
You would think it's like, oh, yeah, they want me to unplug it, plug it in, then hold my finger on the top of it, right?
John:
If you do that and don't exactly follow their instructions, nothing happens.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So you have to plug it in, wait 10 seconds.
John:
If you plug it in and then just lazily wander over to it later and put your fingers on it, it doesn't work.
John:
Anyway, my bad.
John:
So I reset the thing.
John:
uh configured it and i'm doing like the right one you know it gets set up it takes a long time and asks me a bunch of stuff i give it a name blah blah you know fine whatever then i go to do the left one and it is not happy like it does through all the steps it goes to reset uh add device it shows up says set up do all the things blah blah blah you don't really have any options like basically you're just tapping through a wizard where there are no choices
John:
It's like, do you want to transfer settings?
John:
It's like, well, it's literally the only button and there's no X or closed box or whatever.
John:
So yeah, I guess I'm transferring settings.
John:
Anyway, the left HomePod gets stuck on a thing where it just says configuring.
John:
And like the other one said configuring for a while too, but then it didn't say configuring.
John:
And when it's in configuring, you can go to the options and it says not all the features of this HomePod are available yet, but when it's done configuring, they will be.
John:
And you can do stuff with it like play audio, but you can't put it in a stereo pair.
John:
You can't do timers.
John:
You can't do all sorts of other stuff.
John:
Whatever.
John:
I'm sure it'll be fine.
John:
I just leave it down there.
John:
I come back down an hour later, it's still configuring.
John:
Whatever.
John:
Go back through some other stuff.
John:
Come down two hours later, it's still configuring.
John:
Now I'm Googling for HomePod configuring for hours.
John:
Million results.
John:
Everyone's HomePods are configuring.
John:
Configuring for hours.
John:
What should I do?
John:
Oh, you know, burn down your home and move to a new country and get a new identity.
John:
Like, that's always the answer.
John:
Because, like, when people have computer problems, they're like...
John:
Delete your Apple ID, you know, marry someone else, like send your children for all for adoption.
John:
Like it's just reset the world.
John:
And like maybe they do that and it solves their problem.
John:
But I'm not going to delete my Apple ID.
John:
I'm not even going to sign out of my Apple ID.
John:
I'm not going to reinstall my operating system.
John:
Like I'm not going to, you know, I'm not doing those because I'm like, that doesn't make any sense why that would work.
John:
Uh, and they're like, oh, it's configuring because, uh, they just updated a new version.
John:
And if you have the old version of, because you know, they did the thing where you update your, uh, your, uh, home, the Apple home thing or whatever updated.
Casey:
Quick aside.
Casey:
Is that safe?
Casey:
Cause I've been staring at this thing for probably months now and I'm so scared to do it.
Casey:
Is that safe to do?
John:
I think it is.
John:
I did.
John:
I finally did it online.
John:
Okay.
John:
But when that just came out, people were like, oh, don't upgrade your home because if you have some old HomePods, they won't be able to join the new home and blah, blah.
John:
One of the things they did suggest that they did try was like try making a new home like in the home app and then try setting up the HomePod on the new home.
John:
And I did notice that this HomePod was running whatever the OS is called, version 15, and the current version is like 16.6 or something.
John:
So I'm like, it just needs a software update.
John:
So I just need to – maybe I'll just put it in the fake home and get it to update.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Uh, and eventually I got it to the point where I would try setting it up.
John:
I've reset the thing so many times now I try to set it up and it would be like, it would go through all the steps and it would be like, okay, we're going to update your HomePod.
John:
I'm like, yes, yes.
John:
Update it to 16.
John:
Uh, but then it would just be stuck on configuring.
John:
And so I gave it like eight hours and it was still configuring.
John:
And then I gave it 24 hours and it was still configuring.
John:
And again, if you Google for this, so many people are like my HomePod stuck in configuring.
John:
What do I do?
Uh,
John:
And so I figured, all right, I'm going to make a Genius Bar appointment.
John:
I'm going to make an appointment.
Casey:
Oh, my.
Casey:
This is so much worse of a gift than mine was.
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
Oh, my word.
John:
You know, I'm going to make a Genius Bar appointment.
John:
And what am I going to do?
John:
I'm going to carry my HomePod to the Apple store and I'm going to put it on the counter and say, can you please update this to whatever OS 16?
John:
That's the only thing I wanted them to do because I figured the problem's got to be that it's running 15 or something and it just needs to be running 16.
John:
Maybe it can't be in a stereo pair with one that's on 16 or like maybe you can't join to the new house.
John:
But I just wanted to run a software update, but I could not for the life of me figure out how to get this thing to do a software update.
John:
Like that's all I want.
John:
I don't want it to join anything.
John:
I don't need to just like just run a software update.
John:
This is actually a little bit easier on the HomePod Mini, by the way, because the HomePod Mini has like a, what is it?
John:
Yeah, Marco probably knows.
John:
A USB, a micro USB connection?
John:
What does it have on it?
Marco:
Wait, the Mini has a connection?
Marco:
I thought it was a fixed wire.
John:
No, there's a USB port on the HomePod Mini because one of the options was, hey, do you want to, basically you want to update the OS by doing a restore, by connecting it to the Finder?
John:
You know, to connect to your Mac with USB, launch the Finder and basically do like an OS restore.
John:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, the end of the power cable is a USB-C plug.
John:
Yeah, all right.
John:
Anyway, there is a way to sort of hardware restore, because I was like, let me just, can I just get the version 16 of this OS and just blast it onto there with the wire?
John:
But with the original HomePod, the answer is no.
John:
So I made the Genius Bar appointment, and then it was like the day before the Genius Bar appointment was supposed to come, and then I went down there to get the HomePod.
John:
But before I did it, let me just look at the Home app to see what it's like, maybe take a screenshot of it being in configuring, and it wasn't configuring anymore.
John:
hooray so and it updated itself and the answer is how long does an original home pod take to update itself from the whatever the os is called version 15 to 16 the answer is somewhere between 24 and 48 hours so with no progress indication whatsoever that it's doing anything it just says configuring and then of course once it updated itself it it joined into a stereo pair just fine or whatever so
John:
these products boy just a combination of so many of apple's greatest hits just completely opaque no progress indication and just it just took way too long like it shouldn't take that long what is it i know they're slow i know they're like little crappy watch processors but more than 24 hours for an os update i think my series zero watch updates its os faster than that it was ridiculous
John:
they are configured now still haven't gotten any opinions from my wife on them i'm not sure if she's even actually used them because she hasn't actually been working from home recently she's had she's been traveling for work and has been going into the office so uh i await reviews but they are at least configured oh and by the way out of sympathy my upstairs home pod decided that it was not going to work correctly anymore i asked her to turn off the lights and it's like i had some bs excuse about like i'm not on the network and don't know what you're talking about
John:
so anyway i asked the google thing to turn off the lights and then luckily i'm now an expert in resetting home pods and i reset the one upstairs and restored that to factory configuration and reinstalled everything the one upstairs is on the thing where it's like you're not signed into your apple id please enter your apple id password have you seen that one marco in your life um like on the iphone
John:
Yeah.
John:
Like if you go to the home app on the iPhone, it would be like your HomePod is not signed into your Apple ID.
John:
And if you go to the settings, you go to the settings for the HomePod and it will say, please enter your Apple ID password.
John:
And I've been doing that for years.
John:
Every once in a while, it just forgets my Apple ID password or thinks it does.
John:
So I manually reenter it on the phone.
John:
This time it said, I don't know.
John:
I'm not signed into your Apple ID.
John:
Please enter your Apple ID password.
John:
So you go to settings.
John:
It has a little button, basically some blue text that says enter password.
John:
I tap that.
John:
Does it prompt me to enter a password?
John:
No, it does not.
John:
No text field appears.
John:
Instead, I get an indeterminate spinner and it says authenticating.
John:
I'm like, authenticating with what?
John:
I haven't entered a password yet.
John:
The button says enter password and normally it shows a text field.
John:
But now it just kept showing a spinner.
John:
But don't worry, that spinner spins for like three minutes and then just goes away and you're back at seeing the screen that says enter password.
John:
So that's why I factory reset that one.
John:
So now all my HomePods have been factory reset on average, let's say seven times.
John:
And so far, so good.
Casey:
Wow.
Casey:
That sounds fun.
Casey:
I got to tell you, this is definitely making me love my Sonos stuff even more because that stuff really does just work.
Casey:
It's incredible.
Casey:
I've never owned a HomePod, and it's because all I've heard is that they're garbage.
Casey:
I know they sound great.
Casey:
You know what it is?
Casey:
It sounds like me describing my BMW, which to this day, I will say, God, I love that car so much.
Casey:
God, it was such a good car, but it was only running for about 10 minutes at a time.
Casey:
And that's how all of you sound when you describe your HomePods.
Marco:
That is very apt.
Marco:
Look, I have a long history with HomePods.
Marco:
I'm back on the rollercoaster of HomePod opinions.
Marco:
It is a rollercoaster because when they work, they sound so good.
Marco:
And they do sound better than almost anything else in their category, especially if you care about size.
Marco:
Like if you're looking for something that is small and sounds good, there is almost nothing else in the market.
Marco:
That being said, I am currently testing a pair of Sonos Aero 100s in replacement of my HomePods.
Casey:
Oh, really?
Marco:
I will have more to say on that in a future episode.
Casey:
Just to be clear, though, I am becoming one of those Sonos a-holes that I will perhaps quit the show if you tell me that you don't absolutely love them.
Casey:
So consider your opinions wisely.
Marco:
Let me just say that the relationship with them is more complicated than I would have expected.
Marco:
Oh, really?
Marco:
Really?
Marco:
But not in bad ways for the most part.
Marco:
So anyway, I will have more to say on my Sonos Era 100s in a future episode, but they are still in the place that my two new HomePods were.
Marco:
So the experiment hasn't failed, but it's also, it isn't all roses, but there are some surprising roses.
Marco:
So anyway, we'll get to that another time.
John:
And just keep in mind, by the way, these HomePods that I have are mine is like the very first one off the, you know, like when they just were released and probably at least one of Marco's is like that.
Marco:
I think both of the ones I sent you, I had four of that of the first gen HomePods.
Marco:
I sent you two of them.
Marco:
I still have two.
Marco:
And I bought them all fairly early on in the HomePods life.
John:
Yeah, you can kind of tell because I've spent so much time in this stupid home app that if you look at the model number, like the model number looks way shorter than you think it should on these things.
John:
Like the normal model numbers for Apple things is like MLA something something slash A, you know, those things.
John:
The model for these things is MQHV2.
John:
That's it.
John:
That's the whole model number.
John:
It's way shorter than like if you look at what the model number is, I think, on the version two ones or any of the modern products.
John:
So that's my indication that all the ones I have are super duper first generation.
John:
I'm just glad they work at all, I guess.
Marco:
well do they i mean and by the way what is the os called i know it used to be called audio os but is it not called that anymore what is it doesn't say what the name of it is what is the os it was it never had a public facing name and it still doesn't when apple refers to it they will always refer to it obliquely with they'll say something like like our home platform or something like they'll always refer to it not by name because it officially does not have a public name
John:
But it was called Audio OS internally for a while.
John:
I'm just not sure if it's still called that.
Marco:
It was.
Marco:
And I'm not even sure if the HomePod Mini and HomePod 2 even run that.
Marco:
Like that was what it was called on the HomePod 1, the original one.
Marco:
But I think they might have changed the software stack for the Mini and the 2.
Marco:
But no one really talks about it.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
That kind of game.
Marco:
It's super fun.
Marco:
I love shoot em up slash shmup games.
Marco:
I love them.
Marco:
And what's great about Seltrios is unlike many modern games, there are no ads, there's no in-app purchases, there's no subscriptions, and nothing is locked.
Marco:
You can play it over and over again for as long as you want with lots of customization options to keep it fresh and available exclusively for Apple platforms.
Marco:
Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV.
Marco:
CellTrios has 13 stages.
Marco:
You can start from any of them.
Marco:
You don't have to worry about losing your progress or anything.
Marco:
If you quit the app, you can resume play later.
Marco:
And they have all sorts of abilities.
Marco:
They have customizable ship configurations, randomizing, so kind of keep it fresh, all sorts of varieties of ways to play.
Marco:
And this has a huge, high-quality soundtrack.
Marco:
When I first played this, I played it with no sound.
Marco:
And then I played it later with sound, like, oh, that was a mistake the first time.
Marco:
The soundtrack is awesome.
Marco:
There's over 45 minutes of music in Seltrios.
Marco:
They keep expanding the game.
Marco:
Over 75 free updates have been released so far.
Marco:
And the entire game, all of Seltrios, was made by an independent developer.
Marco:
They support one or two-player play.
Marco:
On the Mac, you have various inputs.
Marco:
On the iOS, you need to use a game controller for two-player, which makes sense.
Marco:
So it is a great game.
Marco:
Check it out.
Marco:
Get Seltrios if you love traditional shmups, or you just want a quality game that's fun to play again and again with none of the usual annoyances of other modern games.
Marco:
Mac on Seltrios, Mac is available on Steam with a free demo, or you can go over to the Apple App Store to get Seltrios for iOS and tvOS.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Seltrios for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We got news yesterday, I believe, that the next Apple event, which is presumably the iPhone event, is on September 12th.
Casey:
It will be at 10 o'clock in the morning Pacific, which is one o'clock in the one-room time zone.
Casey:
As expected, none of us got an invite to be there, but that's okay.
Casey:
We'll watch.
Casey:
We're going to talk about predictions next week.
Marco:
but for now marco reminded us that we should probably do some exit interviews so marco do you want me to quarterback this or would you like to um i can do it um so yeah so this is the this is the um even though i have the least experience of the three of us working in corporate jobs um i came with this idea a few years ago to do an exit interview of the outgoing devices that we have been using for the past year on the eve of the new ones presumably being released or announced and
Marco:
Because I feel like, you know, it's one thing when in this case, you know, we're going to talk about the iPhone 14, the Apple Watch Ultra and the Apple Watch Series 8 and maybe some other stuff like the lightning port.
Marco:
It's interesting, you know, when these things come out, you can talk about, oh, you know, and we will when, you know, when the iPhone event show happens in a few weeks, we will talk about like, oh, here's the cool new stuff.
Marco:
This sounds good.
Marco:
This looks good.
Marco:
You know, the reviews say this is pretty good.
Marco:
Then you get it like, oh, yeah, this feels good.
Marco:
This looks nice, whatever.
Marco:
But it's different after a year.
Marco:
After a year, the novelty has worn off and you get to really evaluate how was the iPhone 14 Pro or how was the Apple Watch Ultra version 1 actually living with it for a longer term?
Marco:
How does it perform long term?
Marco:
Are there any flaws that didn't seem like a big deal at the beginning but became a big deal later?
Marco:
Things that you thought would be a big deal that weren't a big deal later?
Marco:
um so i i feel like this is kind of a fun segment to do and i don't think anyone else really does it um so this is kind of like the atp innovation besides um one of us i think might have invented follow-up at some point that was me it was me just oh yeah it was yeah yeah that makes sense um so anyway you can't put that on the record it's just gonna confuse the ais they're already confused you now need to make a very uh neutral direct statements correcting the record
Marco:
No, they're already hallucinating as if they're at a Phish concert, which we will also get to later.
Marco:
But anyway, so exit interviews.
Marco:
First, the big one, the iPhone 14 slash 14 Pro.
Marco:
Now, John, you have the 14, right?
John:
I have the 14 Pro.
Marco:
Yeah, that's 14 Pro.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
And so do I. And Casey, you haven't dropped this into a well yet, right?
Marco:
You still have a 14 Pro?
Casey:
That is true.
Casey:
There are a couple of very, very, very hairline scratches, not impacts, but scratches on the screen.
Casey:
But yes, it is, for all intents and purposes, a fully functional, unshattered iPhone 14 Pro.
Marco:
I will say the screen on my 14 Pro, you know, every year the phone tweaks the screen glass formulation in such a way to try to make it more drop and shatter resistant.
Marco:
And some years and even even within variations within certain years, some years you get a screen that just scratches like crazy.
Marco:
Because usually to make things more shatter-resistant, sometimes they have to tweak the properties of the glass in some ways that make it a little bit softer and make it more scratch-prone in exchange for not shattering as easily.
Marco:
My 14 Pro has been either the most or the second most scratch-prone iPhone I've ever had.
Marco:
This screen had visible scratches on the screen within, I think, two weeks of owning it.
Marco:
And it's only gotten worse over time.
Marco:
And I know I don't just carry around sand in my pocket because...
Marco:
are you sure yeah exactly are you sure there's not sand in your pocket i mean granted of the three of us i'm the most likely one to have sand in my pocket but this doesn't happen with any of my other devices it hasn't happened with past phones with a couple of exceptions from long before like before i was at the beach um it doesn't happen with other devices like it's just certain phones have very scratch prone glass for whatever reason and the iphone 14 pro for me has been the worst for in a long time
John:
So I have scratched my screens, minor scratches over the years.
John:
So I know it's not like it's impossible for me to scratch a screen, but I'm looking at this and I'm cleaning it off with my shirt while you're talking.
John:
I can't find a single scratch of any kind, any size, any lightness anywhere on my screen.
John:
And I'm not...
John:
super careful with my phone i just use it as a phone it's fallen off my nightstand 50 times onto the ground in front of it like i've dropped it while walking down the stairs like you gotta use mag safe man i put it in pockets all the time all i put it in jacket pockets i put it in my jeans pockets i put it down on surfaces right side up and front side down not a single scratch anywhere on it so i'm i like the sand in the pocket theory i don't know what you're doing to your phone
Marco:
No, and usually that, my phones usually are like that.
Marco:
They're usually scratch free.
Marco:
And that's why it's notable when one isn't.
Marco:
But anyway, we've heard before, like some years, like there will actually be variations in this property within different phones of the same year.
Marco:
Like different iPhone 14 Pros might actually vary in this way.
Marco:
So I can't fault the whole line for it, but that was a very kind of unfortunate thing about this phone right from the start for me.
Marco:
um but moving on from that physically speaking this phone is heavy and dense and i really don't like it and and i really am very excited about the rumors of the next ones being more used uh more using titanium for the frame instead of stainless steel because steel is really heavy titanium is is less so aluminum is even less so and actually um in in a few months ago i bought a yellow uh
Marco:
aluminum iphone 14 non-pro as a test device because i needed more test devices as i discussed previously and the 14 non-pro feels great in the hand in large part because it is noticeably lighter weight than the 14 pro it's not a small difference like if you look at the actual weight numbers the weight numbers make it seem like oh that's maybe that's maybe a moderate deal when you hold it in hand it's a huge difference the 14 non-pro feels fantastic
Marco:
and it still has the giant glass back glass is heavy but it has obviously a much simpler camera module because there's only there's only two cameras not three and they're smaller so that's probably some of the weight right there but it also doesn't have the stainless steel edges it has aluminum and aluminum is actually even lighter than titanium in most uses depending on you know structure and everything but
Marco:
If you think that the new phones using titanium are going to automatically get as light as the non-pro phones, probably not.
Marco:
Because not only will they still have giant cameras, and non-pros probably won't, or less giant, but also aluminum is still lighter than even titanium, which we actually see in the Apple Watch, which we'll get to in a little bit.
Marco:
So anyway, the 14 Pro is super heavy and dense, and I'm glad to hear rumors that they're going to maybe address that.
Marco:
I hope they go as far as they can with addressing that.
Marco:
One of the reasons they might not want to address that is battery life.
Marco:
I have found the 14 Pro to have okay battery life.
Marco:
It's not great.
Marco:
It's not bad.
Marco:
It's okay.
Marco:
And batteries are very heavy and very dense.
Marco:
So maybe that's part of the reason why this phone has to be so much heavier because it needs that additional battery power.
Excuse me.
Marco:
It needs that additional battery power to power the always-on screen.
Marco:
And I think of all the features and updates to the iPhone 14 Pro line or 14 at all line, the always-on screen of the 14 Pro, to me, is the single standout feature of this generation.
Marco:
Because Promotion, that was last year, wasn't it?
John:
Yeah, it's been around for a while.
Marco:
Yeah, Promotion launched on the 12 or 13 Pro.
Marco:
So that wasn't new this year.
Marco:
But the always-on screen, that was the big new thing.
Marco:
And that changes so much about how many of us, not all of us, but how many of us can get value out of our phones.
Marco:
A lot of people don't use it.
Marco:
A lot of people, they just kind of don't have their phone resting in a place where they would see the screen.
Marco:
So they don't really use it or they don't like how it behaves.
Marco:
In some ways, they turn it off.
John:
I turned it off.
John:
I tried it for a couple of weeks and I turned it off.
John:
I've never looked back.
John:
I just do not want that feature.
John:
And the extra battery life is a bonus.
John:
But I have to say, my battery life has also been...
John:
It's weirdly variable, kind of like when you run betas and you're like, oh, I'm running a beta.
John:
Something must have gone nuts in the background and burned down my battery.
John:
Every once in a while, I'll have a day where it'll be like 5 p.m.
John:
and I'll look at my battery power.
John:
I'm like, what the hell happened today?
John:
Why am I so low on battery?
John:
But that's rare.
John:
Most days...
John:
I talked about this when we first got the phones.
John:
Part of it is because of my MagSafe charger in my car.
John:
You know, it's a MagSafe mount, but it also charges the phone.
John:
So if I'm driving anywhere, it's like 8 p.m.
John:
and I have 85 percent battery, right?
John:
Because I've been just driving around running errands and every time I'm in the car, the thing is stuck to the charger.
John:
But even days when I don't drive anywhere.
John:
Just battery life is just a non-issue.
John:
Like, I mean, and maybe also because I'm on Wi-Fi a lot.
John:
Like, I go for dog walks and stuff like that.
John:
Just, battery life has been fantastic.
John:
Except every once in a while, it'll just be like, where did my battery life go?
John:
I don't know what's going on.
John:
Obviously, I think it's a software issue.
John:
I think what it shows is the 14 Pro has...
John:
a good sized battery and it's only betrayed occasionally by software features whether that be just the the the baseline overhead of always on screen which again i don't use but if you do use it you're you're spending some battery on that obviously or the something weird has gone on with some app or some part of the os on this particular day in the bird my battery but in general i would say the battery life of this is i think probably the best it's been in recent years for me on phones
John:
I remember my 12 being worse.
John:
And I agree this phone is big and dense and heavy, but that's a trade-off I'm willing to make to basically not have to worry about battery life anymore.
Casey:
Yeah, my battery life, I think I echo what John is saying.
Casey:
Now, it's also hard for me because I often have my phone plugged in for doing testing or whatever.
Casey:
So consider your source.
Casey:
I am at best an unreliable narrator for this.
Casey:
But I echo what you're saying, John, that there are days that like a process just runs away or something happens that I feel like something wrong has gone on and my battery is just slaughtered.
Casey:
And Erin has actually been saying, because she doesn't have her phone, her 14 Pro on a charger very often during the day.
Casey:
And she has been saying that her battery life has gotten real bad recently.
Casey:
And I've taken a couple of glances at the battery stuff in settings, and I can't say I've come up with anything obvious that, you know, oh, this is exactly what it is.
Casey:
And when I've looked at it on my own phone...
Casey:
I've definitely seen some occasions where Instagram has seemingly gone kind of bananas.
Casey:
But my goodness, I feel like normally my battery is pretty darn good.
Casey:
Her battery, I think like Marco, because Marco, you said yours was really crummy, right?
Casey:
I said it's okay.
Marco:
It's not great.
Marco:
It's not bad.
Marco:
It's okay.
Casey:
Well, hers is like crummy to OK.
Casey:
And then, yeah, mine waffles and varies between the two.
Casey:
It's very unusual.
John:
Well, that's been a story recently.
John:
People are like, oh, the 14 to the 14 Pros have some kind of manufacturing problem with the battery and they're only a year old and their battery, like that battery health number they give you, it's like lower than people expect.
John:
Where is that?
John:
I'm trying to find it in settings and I can't find it.
Casey:
Settings and then battery, I thought.
John:
All our phones are basically a year old because we all got them on the launch day, right?
John:
Actually, mine is a little bit younger because I got it replaced because of the camera within the first month.
John:
But anyway, what is your battery health at on your year old iPhone 14 Pro?
Casey:
100%.
Casey:
I'm kidding.
Casey:
Mine's at 90.
Casey:
93.
John:
Mine's at 97.
John:
Oh, wow.
John:
Goodness.
John:
Again, I think, you know, I did get mine replaced.
John:
I forget when I was.
John:
You go back in the archives.
John:
Remember, my camera was weird.
John:
That's another thing about this phone.
John:
This is the first iPhone I think I've ever gotten that basically had a manufacturing defect.
John:
which is, you know, it's just a lottery, whatever, you know, but I've had a lot of iPhones and this year I got unlucky.
John:
Uh, I had that fogginess to the camera.
John:
And so I think it was in, it was within like the first month or two that I had the phone.
John:
Uh, but yeah, their solution was to give me an entirely new phone because apparently I didn't want to replace the camera module.
John:
And a couple other people have that problem as well.
John:
So whatever.
John:
So mine is actually younger than a year, but 97% after, you know, nine months or whatever, still pretty good.
John:
And both of your numbers seem reasonably, but some people like,
John:
oh i've had it for a year and it's like an 81 and this is a manufacturing defect batteries are kind of one of those things even more so the screens that marco was talking about where uh you know you never know what you're going to get you might get lucky or unlucky with the build quality on the battery there they are complicated uh delicate sandwiches of chemicals that can go wrong in all sorts of ways uh solid state batteries can't get here soon enough but in the
John:
Pretty complicated little lithium-ion sandwiches shoved inside our phones.
John:
And, you know, I don't know, maybe there was a manufacturing problem.
John:
Maybe they've changed suppliers midway through or whatever.
John:
But my personal experience is, you know, after less than a year, you know, nine months or whatever it is, 10 months, 97% capacity and pretty good battery life, except for when the software goes off the rails.
Marco:
So going back to the always on screen for a moment, I think if you were one of the people who was turned off by it initially and then turned it off initially, in one of the later point updates of iOS 16, they added the option to make the background of the sleep screen just black instead of showing your wallpaper in like a dim state.
Marco:
And I found as soon as that came out, I turned it on and I've left it on since then.
Marco:
Not only does that probably save some tiny amount of battery life because it's not lighting up all those pixels, but also not so not so tiny amount of battery because it literally isn't lighting them up.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
But I mean, but I mean, but it's lighting them up very little in the other mode.
Marco:
But anyway, I have found that helps a lot with the the awkwardness and downside of always on when we were first all getting used to it was sometimes it was difficult to tell whether the phone was active or not.
Marco:
And you had to like tap it to like brighten it up.
Marco:
That distinction is much easier to see and detect when the background is black when it's in the sleep mode.
Marco:
So I have found that option significantly improves the always on screen for me.
Marco:
And so if you haven't tried that option, I would say try it.
John:
Yeah, I did.
John:
I did try that one.
John:
And when it came out, it didn't really change it for me.
John:
I don't know what it is.
John:
It's not like that I hate it or anything, but it's just that I just don't want the screen on my phone on when I'm not using it.
John:
Like it's never in a context where I would look at it to provide useful information.
John:
And I can never build that habit by like, you know, putting it on.
John:
It wasn't I wasn't doing it for battery life.
John:
It was entirely just the user experience of like, I just want my phone to be off and completely black when I'm not using it.
John:
Uh, and, and I like the idea of tapping to wake it up and I don't just don't want anything on the screen.
John:
So I don't think I'm ever going to go back on this feature because it's just not, I just haven't been able to build the habit of looking to my phone to see useful things on it when I'm not using it.
Casey:
Yeah, Erin is in the same boat.
Casey:
She almost immediately turned off the always-on display, which is why it's even more striking that her battery life is such garbage because her display is off a lot.
Casey:
So I don't know what's going on there, but it's frustrating for her, and I don't blame her at all.
Marco:
Overall, I would say iPhone 14 series, pretty good.
Marco:
The main areas I hope to see improvement are weight and maybe some of this battery inconsistency management in some way.
Marco:
Well, that is very likely to be software influenced, if not 100% software related.
Marco:
But yeah, the size and weight, I would love to see this thing get a little bit lighter.
John:
Yeah, I would agree with that.
John:
One of my concerns about this generation of phone, and this is probably not a real concern, but it's the thing I think about a lot, is the camera system.
John:
Obviously, the 3X camera is still not great, which is disappointing because sometimes I want that reach, but I tend to avoid it because I know how much worse the 3X camera is.
John:
And it didn't get any better this year from last year, I think.
John:
And I would like to see some advancement in the 3X camera.
John:
And then the 2X camera, like the 2X camera being also...
John:
the 2x camera is worse than the 1x camera but i think you it also does a thing where it will take a crop of the 1x camera at certain distances for 2x that's what it is that no that there is that is there's a 3x there's a 3x ultra wide you're right all right so it's a crop of the of the 1x camera 2x is always a crop yeah okay so and like the thing is i never like when i when i find myself at 2x i'm like oh but i don't want a crop of the 1x camera i should just take this at 1x and crop it myself because why it's it's like you know
John:
I have cameras that can go into crop mode, too.
John:
And if I had to put an APS-C lens on it, yes, of course you need to use crop mode.
John:
But otherwise, I would never use crop mode.
John:
Just take the full shot and I'll crop it later.
John:
Why make that decision ahead of time and lose information?
John:
So every time I go to take a 2x picture, I'm like...
John:
i should change to 1x and just crop it myself later and i don't like that tension i mean half this is a me problem not the phone problem but 2x is a convenient distance a lot of the time for me and i really wish i didn't have to make that trade-off like i didn't i wish that wasn't a thing i wish i could get like basically i guess i'm asking for
John:
uh a 2x camera like the ultra wide i know it's the third you know third camera on here and i do use it like when taking pictures of like my son's dorm room when you want to get the whole room or whatever but i don't know i'm i'm dissatisfied with the zoom ranges is what i'm trying to say with the camera and it's not a particular fault of the 14 pro because it's not much different than the the 13 pro before it or like the apple's been doing this thing the difference here is you got the 48 megapixel thing where you can take the full 48 megapixels and i have to have done that a few times and that's fun or whatever
John:
but i'm dissatisfied with given the amount of area they use here and given the amount of cost and everything on all these cameras i wish there was a better balance of zoom ranges for me to take photos with that were more satisfying to me i don't i don't again this is this is just a me thing probably because of the way i take pictures and and the fact that i'm used to using my quote-unquote real cameras much more often than when i'm using the iphone i find
John:
my camera choice is somewhat frustrating and I fluctuate between them.
John:
And so if they, if they could resolve that or like improve on that measurably, I'd appreciate it.
John:
Like a better three X camera would be a step in the right direction, a better balance between one X and two X, uh, you know, I,
John:
I'm going to say ditch the 0.5x, but I wouldn't ditch it.
John:
Maybe just make that camera a little bit better, too, because honestly, those pictures don't come out great.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I'm very picky.
Marco:
Well, I'm glad you brought up the cameras, because I actually forgot to mention this, and this is kind of a big thing.
Marco:
I'm not a huge fan of the default photo processing on the 14 Pros cameras.
Marco:
In particular, it tends to look like too much 1990s unsharp mask usage.
Marco:
It tends to crank up the contrast on edges too much, and it makes photos look a little bit too over-sharpened and unrealistic and over-processed by default.
Marco:
And whenever I'm seeing an iPhone photo in my library at anything bigger than the phone's screen size, so maybe if I'm viewing it on my Mac or on an iPad or something, that jumps out at me.
Marco:
Like, ooh, that looks a little harsh.
Marco:
And that's the word I would use for it, is harsh.
Marco:
Now...
Marco:
the iPhone still remains the best camera for weird or variable conditions or poor conditions.
Marco:
Because, you know, what it does computationally is still excellent and it's much easier and faster and more consistent to get a usable shot from an iPhone in weird or poor conditions than from any other camera, really.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
In good lighting, the iPhone looks really weirdly over-sharpened now.
Marco:
The picture from the iPhone 14 Pro... And I know they did all this stuff with the 48-megapixel sensor, with the weird pixel-splitting thing...
Marco:
Frankly, I have not seen what appears to be a noticeable improvement from that.
Marco:
I don't shoot raw.
Marco:
Maybe that's my problem.
Marco:
Maybe I should be using a pro camera app and I should be shooting raw and doing that kind of processing and everything to have better control over it.
Marco:
But whatever it is, I am not super happy with the photos I've gotten out of the 14 Pro.
Marco:
So I'm hoping every iPhone that comes out, Apple tweaks the treatment of the camera, whatever the built-in filters and stuff are.
Marco:
They tweak it all to match whatever the sensors and ISP are that year.
Marco:
And that's great.
Marco:
And some years, it's better than others.
Marco:
And I think this is one of the kind of down years.
John:
Well, I think part of the problem with what they do with those tweaks, because, you know, they do, they change this offer every year.
John:
And it's not just to match the hardware, but they make different artistic decisions, essentially, of like, I assume probably internally chasing like the worst case scenarios.
John:
Like, oh, when you take a picture in this kind of lighting, our current algorithm for sharpening or edge enhancement changes.
John:
really just overdoes it and it looks terrible so we should tweak it so that that worst case scenario is not as bad um and all that adjustments to software you know and they brag about them in the keynotes and they will again say look at our processing look at what a great job it does on this thing right um think the fundamental problem that both uh that i probably have and you marco will as well maybe casey won't mind is that they their target
John:
Like, what is the goal if we've done a good job at this?
John:
Their target is we want this camera to take photos that most people are happy with.
John:
And kind of like all the TVs that people have in vivid mode all the time or whatever, or with motion smoothing turned on, what most people are happy with is not what we're going to be happy with.
John:
And so, like, their default processing may be getting closer and closer to succeeding, but as it gets closer and closer to that, it's not what we want.
John:
Like, you know, if you want the cameras to look neutral and not too enhanced, use a third-party app like Obscura or, like, what is that other one?
John:
The...
John:
hallowed yeah there you go um like there are there are other choices you don't have to use the apple one although apple does make it very convenient to use the apple one maybe you can use the action button on the new iphones to to launch the camera app of your choice um but i but i feel like their goal is to achieve something that we don't want that most people will find the look of over enhanced over sharpened very contrasty photos
John:
to to give a thumbs up and say i like that better it looks good but that's just not what we want out of it so i feel like we are it's hard to fault apple for that like they should make things that that make most people happy but if you have different tastes in photos or like don't want them to look that way you're gonna have to try a third-party app
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I'm certainly a less sophisticated photographer than either of you two, but I don't think the camera is bad at all.
Casey:
And I don't generally disagree with the choices that it makes.
Casey:
And in fact, to my eyes, I think that my 14 Pro camera is, except in like perfect sunlight, the best camera we have in the house.
Casey:
Like I love my Olympus Micro Four Thirds, but indoors, it's not even a contest.
Casey:
It's not even in the
Casey:
And outdoors, the Olympus is better for sure, unless I want an HDR photo or, you know, or whatever the case may be.
Casey:
Like there are other times that the iPhone is again better than the Olympus, even outside, although it's much, much, much more rare.
Casey:
i quite like the iphone camera although i desperately want a longer reach like i would love a 6x camera and so i i don't think i've told either of you this yet but if we do get that periscope camera and if it is only on the max i am strongly considering going for the obscenely oversized phone for next year because i really just would love to have a much much deeper zoom and i
Casey:
I think I might be willing to try it to try the big one.
John:
Have you been keeping up on the rumors?
John:
I don't remember what the rumored zoom range is, but I don't recall it being 6.
Casey:
I thought 6X?
Casey:
I thought, no.
John:
We'll do more research on it for next week's episode when we actually do our predictions.
John:
But as usual, pretty much everything about all these phones is leaked.
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
All right, we should move on from the iPhone.
Casey:
I do not have an Apple Watch Ultra, so I have nothing to say about that.
Casey:
John does not have an Apple Watch Ultra, so he has nothing to say about that.
Casey:
So Marco, what do you think?
Marco:
I do have an Apple Watch Ultra, and it is better than I expected.
Marco:
I did end up switching away from it during beta season, because I devoted it to a different beta path than my main watch, because you can't back restore watches to previous versions.
Marco:
So I haven't really worn the Ultra since the summer began, for the most part, but...
Marco:
It's very interesting.
Marco:
I think the Ultra has largely succeeded at being a new market for the Apple Watch.
Marco:
I don't know to what degree it has succeeded in being an extreme watch for extreme sporting people who were previously buying garments and stuff.
Marco:
I have a feeling it probably hasn't eaten too much into that market because a lot of that market, it still doesn't have certain features or characteristics to address.
Marco:
But just anecdotally, I see tons of Ultras out in the world.
Marco:
Tons.
Marco:
It seems like this has been a very successful and well-selling product.
Marco:
And I have to give Apple credit for it being the first really new and different Apple Watch since the introduction of the Apple Watch.
Marco:
It was a major change, a major departure in lots of different ways, especially in the physical design of it.
Marco:
And I think they largely succeeded.
Marco:
I assumed when they announced the specs and the size, I assumed it would be comically way too big on me.
Marco:
And it isn't.
Marco:
It's not small.
Marco:
I would say it couldn't get any bigger on me.
Marco:
But it actually works because of the design of it.
Marco:
Some of the angle that the straps exit the sides, certainly some of the dimensions and some of the way it falls in your wrist, it actually fits on more wrists than you would expect based on its stated measurements.
Marco:
So fit-wise, it's great.
Marco:
I think the industrial design of it succeeds in making it look more rugged and hardcore.
Marco:
And in certain ways it is.
Marco:
Not in all ways, but in certain ways it is, and that's good.
Marco:
Battery life on the Ultra is indeed great because it is a much bigger battery.
Marco:
I love the use of titanium as the only choice of material because that made it light enough still because you would think it would be really big and heavy.
Marco:
And it's not light, but it's not noticeably too heavy.
Marco:
It's like right in the middle.
Marco:
It's right where you want it to be.
Marco:
So that's really nice.
Marco:
I love the orange accents on the action button and on the crown.
Marco:
One of the downsides, though, is that this watch having these prominent orange-themed accents, that restricts what strap colors look good with it.
Marco:
And also the design of the Ultra, the watch being large to begin with and a slightly different strap exit angle on it to make it fit better with its big size...
Marco:
That actually changes what straps look good on it compared to other Apple Watches, and it has its own collection, but I would say it needs more.
Marco:
The strap selection for the Ultra is still pretty limited in terms of what both looks okay with it and works well with it physically.
Marco:
I think the rubber straps, is it the ocean band?
Marco:
Is that what they call it?
Marco:
The rubber ones with all the rod holes throughout them.
Marco:
Those, I think, are the best strap for it overall.
Marco:
And the navy blue one, I think, is the easiest and the best looking one overall.
Marco:
I wore that most of the time with it.
Marco:
I also later on put the silicone loop on it, which doesn't quite look as right, but it was a little more comfortable on my wrist.
Marco:
But I would love to see more strap options, and maybe – I know this is heresy for people who love orange, and I love orange in case you haven't noticed with my app icon and everything.
Marco:
um but maybe an option where the side button is not orange to give it a few more color options with straps um we'll see about that but anyway um the speaker on it's nice and clear and loud you know i don't i don't personally use it for anything but i'm glad it's there different hardware is good the crown guard on it the you know like the the protrusion around the digital crown and and side button to make them harder to like hit off basically if you're climbing a wall um
Marco:
I was hoping the crown guard would make it more difficult for the buttons to be pushed, say, if you are wearing weightlifting gloves and your hand tilts up, like if you're in a high plank or a push-up, so your hand's up relative to your wrist.
Marco:
It's very easy for the corner of a weightlifting glove to accidentally push the crown or the side button if you're wearing your watch in the regular orientation on your left wrist.
Marco:
and i was hoping that the crown guard and the ultra would prevent that kind of accidental crown crown and button pushing from happening with certain workout gear and it doesn't because the crown and buttons still protrude out slightly from the guard and so something that pushes flat against the guard will still push those buttons casey johnson would want me to tell you you're not supposed to wear gloves when you lift weights i'm sorry that would solve your problem though right
John:
um that would solve it sometimes i mean certain certain positions of my wrist like even the skin bunching up could theoretically push those buttons yeah but it certainly happens a lot more while wearing gloves yeah you know speaking of this guard the crown guard and what it's supposed to do and how it's working for you this whole watch kind of reminds me of i mean i don't know a lot about the watch world so maybe this is a non-apt analogy but and maybe there's a better one in cars but like
John:
And for it being like for extreme sports or whatever, it seems like the Apple Watch Ultra is the watch that people buy because it looks like a watch that someone who did extreme sports would use.
John:
But of course, they're not going to do it to kind of like the, you know, aspirational.
Marco:
It's like aspirational off-road SUVs.
John:
Yeah, like the Rolex Submariner.
John:
You're not going to go diving with that watch, right?
John:
Of course.
John:
Almost no one does.
John:
And so it seems like the Apple Watch Ultra, I mean, I guess it does probably have more abilities for the supposed purpose than maybe some of the other watches.
John:
But the entire watch market seems to me to be...
John:
get this watch that looks like a watch that a mountain climber would use, but you're not a mountain climber.
John:
Get this truck that looks like someone who's going to go off-road would use, but you're not going to go off-road.
John:
You're going to drive to Starbucks, right?
John:
And so get the Apple Watch Ultra because it looks, I mean, and the watch market, every watch to me looks like, why does this watch look this way?
John:
The explanation is like, oh, that's for like when you're climbing a mountain or when you're under the water that you could just like, but you're never doing those things.
John:
It's like, yeah, but you don't understand.
John:
Like the whole watch market seems to be like that.
John:
So to me, the Apple Watch Ultra seems like it hit that bullseye perfectly, which is,
John:
No one's actually going to take this thing diving, but you see so many of them around for the same reason you see all those other ridiculous watches around that have features and looks to them and crown guards or whatever.
John:
It's like, well, you know, when I'm when I'm picking up my coffee from the desk, what if I hit my wrist on the edge of the desk?
John:
This crown guard will prevent me from accidentally hitting a button, you know?
Marco:
No, I mean, there are legitimate reasons for the crown guard to be there for some people.
Marco:
You are right that the vast majority of Apple Watch Ultra buyers will never do anything extreme enough to justify them.
Marco:
And that's OK.
Marco:
People buy watches, number one, because they look cool.
Marco:
And then number two, because they provide some kind of utility.
Marco:
And that utility usually is not super ultra damage protection in your extreme sports.
John:
Although you have talked about like the actual utility this watch provides is a big flat screen.
John:
Yes.
John:
Which has nothing to do with extreme sports and has everything to do with like, oh, do you actually want to use apps on your watch because you get utility from them?
John:
Well, using the apps on this screen is nice because it's big and it's flat.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
And that is one area where the ultra really excels.
Marco:
If you are using your smartwatch like a computer, it's simple as that.
Marco:
Like, you know, for many people, the Apple watch is mostly doing passive, like, you know, tracking, tracking your activity, maybe popping up an occasional notification, but you're not really like interacting with it that much for most people.
Marco:
But if you're a nerd and you're actually interacting with apps on a regular basis on the watch, you're trying to read long texts or whatever, having that larger and totally flat edge-to-edge screen actually makes those things a lot better.
Marco:
So from that point of view, it's like the Max phone in the sense that if you're really heavily using it as a computing device, having a bigger screen is nicer.
Marco:
So from that point of view, the Ultra succeeds as well.
Marco:
The last thing I'll say about the Ultra is I think the action button is...
Marco:
has been kind of a miss, both in the physical placement of it and in the software abilities that it offers.
Marco:
It's very difficult to use the action button well.
Marco:
And also, it is, in my experience wearing the Ultra,
Marco:
I hit it accidentally all the time.
Marco:
And I think that could be significantly improved.
Marco:
Right now, the action button is on... If you're looking at the watch in the regular orientation, it's kind of in the bottom left side of the watch.
Marco:
I think if they swap it with the speaker and put it at the top left...
Marco:
That will improve it because right now it's very difficult if the watch is on your left wrist, as it usually is for most people, if you want to push the crown in, what you will typically do is, using your right hand, pinch the watch with your index finger on the crown and your thumb right on the action button.
Marco:
Ha ha ha!
Marco:
So even after wearing this watch for months, I never got used to that.
Marco:
I would constantly still hit the action button inadvertently.
Marco:
And so I ended up turning off its function.
Marco:
And I tried.
Marco:
That's the other thing.
Marco:
The functions that it offers are very specific to certain workout needs.
Marco:
And I didn't have any of this particular need.
Marco:
So I tried things like maybe I should have it start the stopwatch or stuff like that.
Marco:
And I never found a good use for it that, first of all, would tolerate accidental input without being too annoying.
Marco:
And second of all, that justified the kind of clunky nature of using it.
Marco:
So I think the action button, it's a good idea to have more buttons on the watch that are software programmable.
Marco:
That's great.
Marco:
It needs some tweaks, both in its physical design and its software design.
Marco:
And maybe we'll see that in future versions.
Marco:
But other than that, I really think the Apple Watch Ultra was extremely successful in what it set out to do.
Marco:
It seems to be very popular.
Marco:
And I think I'm looking forward to where it goes next.
Marco:
That being said, for most of the year, I was spending much more time wearing my Apple Watch Series 7.
Marco:
I'm not talking about the Series 8, which we're about to mention, because the Apple Watch Series 7 is the one I prefer over the 8.
Marco:
The Apple Watch Series 8 now deserves an exit interview.
Marco:
It was just like the 7, with almost nothing changed.
Casey:
So why do you prefer the 7?
Marco:
because I guess they don't have enough titanium to make all their watches out of it, so they removed the titanium option from the regular Apple Watch Series 8.
Marco:
And the Series 7 comes in titanium, so that's what I've been wearing.
Marco:
And titanium is by far my preferred Apple Watch metal these days.
Marco:
It is almost as light as the aluminum.
Marco:
Not quite, but it's in the ballpark of as light as the aluminum.
Marco:
It looks very nice.
Marco:
I think it looks significantly nicer than the aluminum, with its nice brushed pattern and the way it reflects light and everything.
Marco:
um and it's a little bit less flashy and less um noticeable with scratches than the steel so i love the titanium and if i'm if i was gonna buy a new apple watch today of the regular series i guess i'd get steel but which i and i wore steel for years and i love it but i love titanium more um and they got rid of it with the eight and you know presumably because they don't they probably didn't sell a ton of it and maybe because they wanted to save it all for the ultra but
Marco:
I'm hoping in future Apple Watches that makes a comeback as an available medal for the regular Apple Watch series.
Marco:
Because ultimately, the regular Apple Watch series is more comfortable on me.
Marco:
That's why I used it more than the Ultra for the last half of the year.
Marco:
It's more comfortable on me.
Marco:
It fits my wrist a little bit more gently.
Marco:
And I like the way the straps work a little bit better on it.
Marco:
So that's why I went back to the Series 7 and not the Series 8.
Marco:
And the Series 8 really...
Marco:
doesn't offer a whole lot over the 7.
Marco:
In fact, between 6, 7, and 8, there have been very few changes.
Marco:
They're all even running the same system on a chip, the same processor.
Marco:
And rumors are they're going to finally update it for the 9.
Marco:
We'll see.
Marco:
But the grade I would give the Series 8 is it wasn't even interesting enough for me to buy.
Marco:
And that's saying a lot because I buy freaking everything.
Marco:
And even the Series 8, I couldn't justify it.
Casey:
So I have a series eight and I mostly agree with you.
Casey:
I like it.
Casey:
It's not terribly interesting.
Casey:
I wish I had a better battery.
Casey:
That's all I got.
Casey:
I am the small series eight.
Casey:
I am on the 41 or whatever it is millimeter.
Casey:
The battery is sufficient.
Casey:
I typically work out half an hour to 45 minutes every single day.
Casey:
And I will top up when I'm showering.
Casey:
And if I do take a little siesta, which used to be fairly common, but now is fairly uncommon, I'll top it up while that's happening.
Casey:
But, you know, today I didn't lay down or anything like that.
Casey:
And I had a fairly busy day.
Casey:
I did a 45-minute workout and I'm at 14% and it's about 9.30 at night.
Casey:
So it is enough to get me through a day, but not with a lot of breathing room.
Casey:
So I would love either...
Casey:
A watch with a much bigger battery that is not the Ultra.
Casey:
I'll have to try the Ultron again whenever I do upgrade because maybe it would work on my wrist.
Casey:
But nevertheless, I would love either a much bigger battery if possible or perhaps more likely a much more power efficient CPU because these watch batteries really are, to this day, are still being stretched to their breaking point, I think.
Casey:
And I would love to have more.
Casey:
Just give me more.
Marco:
Yeah, it does depend a lot on what you do, like especially it depends a lot on things like how how long in a day you're running it in a workout mode.
Marco:
And then certain certainly like whether that workout mode is using GPS.
Marco:
So like if you're going on an outdoor run.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, that's not typically what I'm doing.
Marco:
But yeah, especially if you are like using cellular to stream the music like that's that's just about the most power intensive thing you can do on the watch is like workout mode plus GPS plus cellular that will drain it significantly.
Marco:
Whereas if you are just mostly in regular watch mode, sitting around somewhere where you have Wi-Fi, not doing a whole lot with it, that'll last a long time.
Marco:
And certainly, I never really got into sleep tracking.
Marco:
So I don't do that whole game where you try to charge it when you're in the shower.
Marco:
I never got into that.
Marco:
I'm just charging it overnight and when I'm in the shower.
Marco:
So my battery life has been great.
Marco:
I'm also using the larger one, the 45 millimeter Series 7.
Marco:
But this is a song about Alice.
Marco:
We're talking about the Series 8.
Marco:
Series 8 Apple Watch, it's totally fine, but it's barely anything changed from the 7, which itself was not a massive change from the 6.
Marco:
So hoping for better things with the 9.
Marco:
But the Series 8 is still a great watch overall.
Marco:
It just doesn't really provide much over the predecessor.
Casey:
And then finally, Marco made a really good point.
Casey:
All the rumors are pointing to this is the year of USB-C.
Casey:
It's finally happening.
Casey:
So the iPhones that we have in hand are the last iPhones with lightning ports.
Casey:
RIP the lightning port.
Casey:
And I will start by saying this can't come soon enough.
Casey:
I am...
Casey:
I am so ready for this.
Casey:
I am so ready to ditch lightning.
Casey:
I don't have any particular problem with lightning.
Casey:
And I think in the context of a phone, it actually is really, really nice.
Casey:
But at this point, I will take ubiquity over any niceties of the lightning port.
Casey:
And I think that's probably no small part influenced by the fact that I use Qi charging overnight and
Casey:
uh i i do have a dock that i'll have to replace on my desk for when i'm working but other the only time i ever really plug in my phone because i have that you know wireless carplay dongle it's the car link it one i don't mine is ancient just get car link it and that's the one because i i put this in the show notes and every single time people like what one do you have car link it c-a-r-l-i-n-k-i-t well anyways
Casey:
I have wireless CarPlay for me.
Casey:
Now, Erin, I could get her one of these, but I don't think she cares.
Casey:
So her car will need to get a different cable, presumably.
Casey:
But by and large, in my day-to-day life, the only time I'm plugging in my phone is when I'm having one of those Syracuse-style off days with my battery.
Casey:
And we have one of the iPad or whatever watt chargers, you know, hooked up to a USB to lightning, a USB-C to lightning cable down in the living room.
Casey:
And so we'll use that as like our emergency top-up station.
Casey:
That's about the only time I plug in my phone.
Casey:
And any other time I am wirelessly charging or doing development on it, so whatever.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I am so here for USB-C.
Casey:
I would love to not have to worry about lightning anything.
Casey:
And I say that as someone who never touches lightning.
Casey:
Even my travel setup, as we talked a couple of weeks ago, is that Qi-based Mophie 3-in-1 thing.
Casey:
So I don't even bring lightning cables when I go traveling.
Casey:
But still, it would be so nice to go USB-C only.
Casey:
I mean, hell, when I go to Wegmans or whatever to do work because I want to get out of the house, I would love to not have to bring a lightning cable and worry about that.
Casey:
It's just...
Casey:
The ubiquity is what does it for me.
Casey:
The world has moved on, although not from micro USB, but that's neither here nor there.
Casey:
The world has mostly moved on.
Casey:
Asterisk, dagger, double dagger.
Casey:
So please, please, please give me the USB-C iPhone.
Casey:
The lightning port was great.
Casey:
It served its purpose well, but it's time.
John:
you know for exit interviews i think we could give i think i would like to give an exit salute to lightning because i feel like it has served its purpose very well uh people who don't remember how old this is so 30 pin lasted what like almost 10 years now we're like 11 years for lightning yeah it was the iphone 5 that launched with lightning yeah so so for in terms of how long a connector lasts
John:
it's about average and as casey pointed out like this one apple has been essentially drag kicking screaming it's upgrading like it's not like they did it super fast and i bring this up because the story about these connections is always everyone's annoyed when things change right you know people don't like change i understand that but timing wise this makes some kind of sense and if you go back to the beginning of when the light lightning came out
John:
it was replacing 30 pin which there are people listening to this program don't know what that is go find one and look at it you'll be like people used to connect their phones with this it is it's hilarious and like in the way that like a vhs tape would be hilarious to someone who watches netflix yeah it basically looks like a scuzzy cable like compared to lightning it's just so big and so awkward and delicate and weird and apple replaced it with this one
John:
extremely tiny they didn't just make it a little bit smaller they made it smaller enough that it's you know we're not going to have to worry about the size of this connector for the foreseeable future they made it so there's no wrong way to plug it in micro usb and basically every usb except for usbc yeah it's no wrong way to plug in it works both directions they made the little connectors are a little tiny solid piece of metal that is not going to bend or break or whatever like the connector itself was the thing that you plug in was very solid
John:
and this was coming into a world where there was no equivalent usbc didn't exist at that point so they had to make something themselves which is people say you know might think it's apple at its best and worst it's at its best because they're like they saw a technical problem they solved it in a very clever way with something that was better than anything else in the market and it's at worst because lighting was 100 proprietary you had to pay apple money if you wanted to sell accessory that had them made for iphone whatever you know and for a while i think apple was like the only factories that made this connector maybe they still do and like it's it's
John:
proprietary and you know apple made money off of it and it would no no other phone in the entire world used this but the apple sells a lot of iphone so it was fine right and the thing is they made this proprietary connector and eventually usbc came out with some help from apple that had many of the same advantages but was industry standard and eventually that rolled out across the industry but what apple didn't do
John:
was as soon as lightning had essentially served its purpose and now we have an industry standard connector that we can all go to, they didn't immediately leave that.
John:
Part of that was because they don't want to give up that made for iPhone money, right?
John:
I get that.
John:
Part of it was because they're putting off the painful change because whenever you change, people complain and it's painful.
John:
But part of that, I think, is let's just give lightning its natural lifetime.
John:
One new connector for your phone every decade is a reasonable cadence for technological progress.
John:
30 pin, lightning, USB-C.
John:
If each of those three gets 10 years, that's fine.
John:
I know everyone's going to complain because they're going to be like, oh, I just got this phone and now the connector changed.
John:
And, you know, like it's
John:
you haven't had that phone for 10 years maybe this is your very first phone and all and you buy all these lighting accessories and you didn't know this event was coming and then it comes out and the phones are all using different things next year you got to get rid of all your like change is always going to be hard for somebody i get it but apple did not make a proprietary connector and then say oh never mind we don't need that anymore and switch after two years because that would have been worse for customers that wouldn't have allowed the ecosystem to build the whole ecosystem of docks and other things that work with lightning connectors um
John:
And on top of that, Apple did improve the lightning connector over the course of its life.
John:
They couldn't fix some of the fundamental things about it.
John:
In particular, I think we've talked about this before, but all kinds of connectors or most kinds of computer connectors have some part of it that's springy and some part of it that is rigid.
John:
And the springy things grip on to the rigid part.
John:
The rigid part doesn't move.
John:
It just is there to be solid, and the springy parts grip it, right?
John:
And in Lightning, the springy parts are inside the phone, and the rigid part is, of course, the connector.
John:
If you look at a Lightning connector, nothing on it flexes.
John:
It is just a solid piece of metal with little divots on the side, and the springy parts are in the phone.
John:
USB-C is the opposite.
John:
I believe in USB-C, the springy parts are inside the connector, and the rigid parts are inside the phone.
John:
In practice, that hasn't been that big of a deal, but in general, the USB-C design is smarter because if some springy thing is going to get loose from constantly having the connector put in and taken out, it'd be better if that thing that gets loose is on a cable you can throw away versus inside the phone that you can't really replace the plug on it that easily, right?
John:
The other thing is we all remember, and probably many of you are still experiencing this to this day.
John:
I know I am.
John:
You can look at a lightning connector and see those little black smudges on them.
John:
Yep.
John:
that is a thing that as far as i know apple did fix in later revisions of their devices and cables that are that work with lightning because i think that was because one of the pins constantly had some amount of power on it and get these little black scorch marks and there was a period when the lightning cable went from like the little apart the little plastic part that wraps around the metal thing with the contacts on it that plastic part got thicker and
John:
And I think it's because they changed the chip that was in there.
John:
People might not know, but a lot of Apple's cables have actual computer chips inside them, which doesn't really justify their price.
John:
But anyway, it's not just a bunch of wires with the connector.
John:
And I think they changed it to make whatever that pin was that was getting the black marks, like PULSE,
John:
it's uh energy instead of doing i'm probably getting the details wrong here but the point is apple revised lightning somewhere within its lifetime to fix one of the few actual flaws that it had and even that flaw wasn't that bad because we all have these little marked lightning cables i use them all the time they still work fine they don't damage your phone they don't cause your you know it's not a hardware virus that infects all your phones and now nobody can charge the main problem
John:
that people have with lightning which i'm not sure will get any better with usbc is pocket lint and crap getting jammed up there and that is more of a mechanical issue than an electronic one but it is a issue with all these types of connectors i'm not sure how usbc will go because i've never had a usbc phone before but fingers crossed but anyway that electrical problem with it they fixed in a later revision and you might not know that because if you still are using your old cable with the very small very slim piece of plastic around the lightning connector
John:
You're not getting the advantage of that.
John:
I think you have to have the newer cables that are identifiable by me anyway among Apple's cables as being a little bit thicker around that thing.
John:
And for those ones, I've tried it.
John:
I have some of those cables and I have some that aren't.
John:
And the newer cables with the thicker thing never get the black marks.
John:
And the old ones still do.
John:
So...
John:
i think apple has been a an excellent steward of this proprietary connector i don't really begrudge them the made for iphone things there's plenty of third-party ripoff things that uh that you know that didn't pay for it or whatever but it's had its run it did its job i'm glad it was there i'm glad i didn't ever have an iphone with micro usb on it god forbid right i'm glad we didn't have 30 pin for longer
John:
And I was happy to use lightning for all this time.
John:
But, of course, as all we tech nerds agree, it's time to go to USB-C.
John:
I'm not sure if when we go to USB-C I'm going to miss lightning.
John:
Lightning is still a tiny bit smaller, a tiny bit thinner.
John:
But, you know, it's time.
John:
I'm ready to take the hit.
John:
I'm not sure what the public reaction to it will be.
John:
But there's really just no alternative.
John:
Setting aside the EU stuff and all them being forced to do it or whatever...
John:
lightning has run its course and of all the things that apple has done hardware standard wise i think they did a pretty good job of it's not perfect again the little black marks and the the many cables they made with inadequate strain relief and all the other things they've done but there's been a pretty good third-party ecosystem for lightning and
John:
I don't think it has ever had any catastrophic errors where like, oh, we screwed up with the connector and it just doesn't work.
John:
The pocket length thing, again, I don't know if that's going to be better or worse with USB-C, but I, you know, I'm trying to think of everything in terms of tier lists.
John:
I don't know if Lightning would be S tier, but it would definitely be A. I think it did a great job.
John:
I salute Lightning as it is on its way out the door.
Marco:
Yeah, I think the key innovation of Lightning was the reversible connector.
Marco:
That was unheard of before.
Marco:
I don't think any major computer connector was reversible before that.
John:
You know what did that?
Marco:
The headphone jack.
John:
Couldn't put it in the wrong way unless you had an original iPhone and tried to use a regular headphone.
John:
But setting that aside...
John:
Like there have been connectors where you don't have to worry about how to put them in.
John:
I think it was a computer innovation to say, oh, guess what?
John:
We have connectors, but they only fit one way.
John:
It's like a kid's shape sorter.
John:
Isn't that easy?
John:
And I was like, okay, maybe for literal SCSI cables, it's pretty obvious which way the shape sorter goes.
John:
By the time they're the size of micro USB or God forbid USB-A where it's externally symmetrical and internally asymmetrical, mistakes were made.
John:
And Apple corrected that and Apple helped correct that with USB-C as well.
Marco:
yeah like you the only reason why we are down on lightning now is that the rest of the world went to usbc and now we are so close to the you know one cable basically although a million asterisks on it the rest of the world and also apple apple everywhere except for the iphone and the airpods and the keyboards and the mouse
John:
yeah right but you know even even setting aside all of those accessories which you know i know there's rumors they're going to do new airpods cases that makes sense you know probably with airpods cases with usbc i'm sure we'll be able to buy the case for like 70 bucks yeah you have to get rid of lightning everywhere like i know we'll talk about predictions but like getting rid of lighting on the phones like that's the big one but it has to go everywhere and eventually i'm assuming it will go everywhere i just hope they don't drag their feet on it and have like keyboards that connect with lightning four years from now on max
Marco:
Yeah, and that's my fear, because they really don't update the peripherals that frequently.
Marco:
I mean, the Magic Mouse hasn't been updated since it used AA batteries, and the trackpad, I think, was never updated until, well, the current design of it.
Marco:
It's many years old now.
Marco:
The keyboards got updated with Touch ID fairly recently, so I don't know how much they're going to update them again.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
But anyway...
Marco:
So what's great about this move, if this happens, is that I'm going to be able to get rid of maybe 40% of the cables that are in use in my backpack and around my house.
Marco:
So traveling is going to be so much easier.
Marco:
I can't tell you how often I go to reach for either a USB-C cable or a lightning cable, and the one I find is the other one.
Marco:
And so that's going to be really, really nice.
Marco:
Also, a great thing about USB-C over lightning is that both ends of the cable are the same.
Marco:
It's going to be great when it comes.
Marco:
But yes, the lightning port itself, for when it was designed, it was way ahead of its time.
Marco:
And it has really served us pretty well with surprisingly few downsides all this time.
Marco:
And so it really has been extremely successful.
Marco:
And yeah, I think giving it an exit salute is totally warranted.
Marco:
I won't even like put one finger down to simulate the blackened pin.
Marco:
Like, no, I'll give it all the fingers.
John:
Yeah.
John:
that's the thing about the blackened pin like none of us like it because no one likes to see anything blackened on a piece of electronics but practically speaking like i think that is basically a cosmetic issue that only annoys people who want things to be perfect like i've never even heard of it causing problems again the problem people have is lint lint fills the things and they don't work oh no it caused me problems the the blackened pin it it would eventually make a device or its cable not charge anymore
John:
Really?
John:
I've never seen that happen.
John:
And we have I like to have like a original lightning cables that are black and just completely messed up with it.
John:
But they still work.
John:
So I don't know.
John:
Maybe I've just been lucky.
Casey:
I'm between the two of you.
Casey:
It happened to me.
Casey:
I don't remember if it was devices, but certainly to cables.
Casey:
But it was very rare when it did happen to me.
Marco:
And it was usually on older things.
John:
To avoid it, you have to use one of the new cables with one of the new phones.
John:
And it's so easy not to do that because we just have all these cables around and you just mix and match or whatever.
John:
And you're like, what are you talking about?
John:
They never fix us.
John:
All my cables are blackened.
John:
I did the test myself several years ago and I said, I'm only going to use this new, what I know to be one of the supposedly fixed cables on my nightstand with my phone.
John:
And I've used it for years.
John:
It's perfect.
John:
No blackened things on it.
Casey:
The lightning cable, it was a little annoying to be its own thing.
Casey:
It was a little frustrating to run into someone with an Android phone and not be able to charge your phone because they had micro USB or whatever garbage connector.
Casey:
But even still, I think it's an S-tier cable slash port slash whatever for me.
Casey:
It really did serve its purpose well.
Casey:
It's riding into the sunset.
Casey:
It's riding high into the sunset.
Casey:
Happy and accomplished.
Casey:
I salute you, lightning port.
Casey:
I salute you.
Marco:
Oh, man.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Next member special.
Marco:
Tier list, different connectors.
John:
Gosh.
John:
The list.
Marco:
That's not a bad idea.
John:
I know.
John:
I'm literally putting it on the list.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsor this week, Seltrios.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join us at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
And we will talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Casey:
So this is going to be quick, partially because we're running long and partially because I don't actually have that much to say yet.
Casey:
But last week I had teased, certainly in the bootleg, I don't recall if that made the released version, but I teased that, are you ready, Marco?
Casey:
I will give you a moment to grab what you need to grab.
Casey:
I teased that I have bought a new Synology.
Ding!
Casey:
I did get a new Synology.
Casey:
I did get a slight discount on it from the Synology folks, which is very kind of them.
Casey:
Synologists?
Casey:
Yeah, the Synologists.
Casey:
I will talk about what I got and briefly describe why, but I haven't really started using it that much, and I'd like to get this off my chest first because I'm very annoyed and frustrated.
Casey:
I love Synology products.
Casey:
I love, love, love them.
Casey:
I talk about them incessantly because I love them so darn much.
Casey:
I adore them.
Marco:
And also... You can hear the comma going right there.
Casey:
And also, I am real crabby about their migration story.
Casey:
Now, I will probably get the details wrong because I was doing this in haste and I was doing it like a week ago.
Casey:
Now, I did take some notes for myself.
Casey:
But the migration story for Synology...
Casey:
The thing they want you to do, and this is genuinely very cool that they support this, but what they want you to do is take all the drives from one Synology, slap them in the new one, and call it a day.
Casey:
What?
Casey:
Which, that's what they want you to do.
Casey:
That's like the easy-peasy way to do it.
Marco:
I would assume that wouldn't work.
Casey:
I know, exactly.
Casey:
So that's why I do genuinely think it's pretty cool that that's supported.
Casey:
No BS, I really mean that.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
I have noticed in the intervening 10 years, so we were gifted from Synology, each of us got a DS1813+, and 18 indicates 8 bay, if I understand Synology nomenclature properly.
Casey:
The 8 indicates 8 bay.
Casey:
The 13 indicates that it was new on or around 2013.
Wow.
Casey:
And this is a like extremely beefy for home use or really meant for like small office use Synology.
Casey:
Eight drives.
Casey:
Ours all came preloaded, I believe, with three terabyte drives.
Casey:
I know mine is a darn ship of Theseus at this point.
Casey:
I can't speak for Marcos.
Casey:
I think, John, you said you've only replaced a couple, but... I've replaced zero.
Casey:
Oh, that's nuts.
Casey:
Seriously, most of mine are replaced.
Casey:
But anyways...
Casey:
I adore my Synology.
Casey:
It's run great, but it's getting long in the tooth.
Casey:
And I wanted to get a new one.
Casey:
And so what I decided was I'm going to get a slightly smaller one.
Casey:
I will get a six-base Synology, and I got a 1621+.
Casey:
And I did that because, hey, guess what, fellas?
Casey:
In the last 10 years since we got our Synologies, our jobs have gotten big.
Casey:
Old-school platter spinning disk drives have gotten freaking big.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And Prime Day rolled around, and I think, I genuinely don't remember, but I think it was something like $1,200 all in, which is unquestionably a buttload of money.
Casey:
It's a mountain of money, but once every 10 years, I don't think that's so bad.
Casey:
So I got four Western Digital Red, 18-terabyte drives.
Casey:
If you don't care for Western Digital Red, I don't want to know.
Casey:
Ignorance is bliss.
Casey:
It's fine.
Casey:
This is what I've chosen.
Casey:
Please don't scare me with horror stories about Western Digital, because I can already hear you clacking on your keyboards writing me emails.
Casey:
Nevertheless, I bought four 18-terabyte Western Digital Reds, and that's what I put in this new Synology, four drives.
Casey:
And not only could I not move all eight drives from the old Synology, but now this new Synology supports BTRFS, butter file system, whatever you want to call it.
Casey:
And I would like to move to that because I do a podcast with a Mr. John Syracuse who is very opinionated about file systems.
Casey:
And my impression from John was that butter or whatever it's called is better.
Casey:
So I wanted to do that.
John:
You could have used that on your old one too.
John:
Some of my things are BTRFS, I think.
Casey:
Not without reestablishing the entire volume.
John:
Yeah, you got to reformat stuff.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
So I go to install the drives on the new Synology and that works fine.
Casey:
It does say, oh, these aren't the drives we prefer because Synology has very annoyingly gone and started selling their own hard drives.
Casey:
So of course they get very picky or they can get very picky about what drives you use.
Casey:
And in fact,
Casey:
I didn't get, part of the reason I didn't get a newer Synology was because they have cranked that up as the hardware's gotten newer, the annoyance and like, oh, you're not using our drives, you're not using our drives.
Casey:
And I didn't want anything to do with that.
Marco:
That's kind of crappy.
Casey:
It is undesirable to say the least.
Casey:
And trust me, oh, trust me, I have lit up.
Casey:
my context, that's an analogy about how I think this is really gross.
Casey:
Don't you worry.
Casey:
I cannot believe they didn't send this with like a bomb inside of it after all the complaining and moaning I've done to them.
Casey:
But nevertheless,
Casey:
I put in the drives that works no sweat.
Casey:
It installs DSM, Disk Station Manager, which is their operating system, whatever.
Casey:
All well and good.
Casey:
So I go to make the volume, which is Synology speak for basically binding all these four drives together.
Casey:
I chose Synology Hybrid RAID 2, which is to say I could lose two drives and still have enough data in the remaining drives and parity checks and whatnot
Casey:
That's because I did SHR1 in the 8-base synology, and you will recall right at the beginning of COVID, I lost a drive, and then in replacing that, almost lost a second drive and almost lost my entire data set, which would have been absolutely terrible.
John:
Refresher memory, though, both your old one and your new one, you're essentially setting up as a single volume.
Casey:
No.
Casey:
Well, yes to the new one.
Casey:
No to the old one.
Casey:
The old one, six of the physical drives was one massive volume.
Casey:
And then two of them, I did whatever the equivalent, whatever the rate is that it's just, it's two physical hard drives.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
Treated as one.
Casey:
And the only thing that goes on that volume is time machine.
Casey:
And so that's all redundant.
Casey:
If I lose it, I lose it.
Casey:
Not the end of the earth.
Casey:
I am issuing Time Machine entirely on this, or maybe I will choose, maybe I'll get an external drive or something to do Time Machine in the future, but I am not doing anything with it on the new Synology.
Casey:
So it is four drives, two empty bays, one giant volume of what is, I think it's like 34, 36 terabytes, because it's two times 18 minus some overhead.
Casey:
I want to say it's like 34 terabytes.
Casey:
And my current Synology, the volume is something like 12 or 15 terabytes, and I'm using 10-ish.
Casey:
So I have two spare bays, and I have something like 20 terabytes, 20 extra terabytes of free space anyway.
Casey:
So I make the volume, and it says, oh, these aren't Synology drives.
Casey:
I say, I don't care.
Casey:
And it's OK.
Casey:
Fine.
Casey:
I've established my SHR2 volume with butter, BTRFS, whatever, whatever, all is well.
Casey:
I go to do migration assistant, and the first thing it said was, well, you should really just move the physical drives.
Casey:
I said, I can't do that because I have two freaking less spots.
Casey:
Okay, fine.
Casey:
So then I go to do the migration assistant again, and I can't get it to work.
Casey:
And the reason is, is because I have two-factor auth on my old Synology, and I will on the new one when I finally get it up and running.
Casey:
But I have two-factor auth on the old Synology, and the old Synology is so long in the tooth now that when the migration assistant goes and does whatever verification it does for the two-factor auth, it doesn't complete in time, and the two-factor auth times out.
Casey:
So I created another user that doesn't have two-factor auth, and I go to do that whole dance with the migration assistant, and it's like, yep, you're good.
Casey:
Oh, oh.
Casey:
No, you're not good.
Marco:
Oh, God.
Casey:
You're not good because your old Synology is on, I don't even, I genuinely don't remember what file system.
Casey:
I guess X2 or whatever, like the... Yeah, EXT4.
John:
EXT4.
Casey:
EXT4, there you go.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
The old Synology is EXT4.
Casey:
Your new volume's BTRFS.
Casey:
So guess what?
Casey:
Get beeped.
John:
So... Oh, actually, so wait...
John:
Replacing the drives.
John:
You mentioned that a couple of times now that that's what they want you to do.
John:
And at first I was like, well, that's dumb because the whole point is you want to get a new Synology that could store more.
John:
And if you get a new Synology and put the old drives in it.
John:
But here's what I think they want you to do, which is even worse.
John:
I think the idea is take the old drives, put them in the new thing.
John:
Let's say you have the right number of base to do it.
John:
And then what they expect you to do is to basically swap them one at a time.
John:
Take out one, put in a new bigger.
Casey:
Take out another one.
John:
Yeah, maybe.
John:
But remember how long it took for you to replace one drive on your old Synology?
Casey:
Literally days.
John:
And that had a third of the storage under this one.
John:
So it would take you like a year and a half to replace all the drives, during which time the thing would just be thrashing constantly.
John:
Like, I don't know what they expect you to do.
John:
So it's very disappointing to hear that their migration assistant for what I think is the more sane approach is not ideal.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So if you are someone who has a better answer for this, I am all ears.
Casey:
But basically what I did was I said, all right, here we go.
Casey:
So the way I have my files organized on my Synology is that the top level has a handful of folders, but the primary one I happened to name Archive 10 years ago.
Casey:
And within my archive is like everything that's in Plex.
Casey:
And all
Casey:
and all sorts of other junk.
Casey:
Like basically 98% of the data in my Synology is in the archive folder.
Casey:
Maybe not literally 98, but a lion's share of that data is in the archive folder.
Casey:
And I mounted the old Synology as a network share from the new Synology and said...
Casey:
go and a day and a half i think it was later uh because i'm running this uh there the the old synology is on a bonded two connection you know gigabit ethernet connect uh to the to the switch this new one i only connected one of them i don't know if it really makes a difference anyway but it took like a day and a half to transfer something like eight terabytes but the problem that i have and why i've been kind of
Casey:
kicking this can down the road a little bit for the last week, is that the old Synology is a moving target.
Casey:
Like, I'm constantly adding, updating, changing, whatever, on the old Synology.
Casey:
So, I think what I'm going to have to do is, like, either log into one of these via the terminal, which you can do and is very easy, or somewhere else, set up some sort of, like...
John:
fairly regular uh rsync which synology can do that they have a feature that can because i i sync one of my synology volumes to another separate physical synology with a feature built into their operating system to do that for you well then you and i need to talk after the show see me you think i actually know where that setting is in the settings no i set that up 10 years ago but yeah i could probably find it again
Casey:
Well, let's talk about this after class.
Casey:
But yeah, so I'm going to need to do something like that to do, to some degree, have a, not a literal, but a figurative hot swap between these two.
Casey:
Because at some point, I'm just going to need to move from one to the other.
Casey:
And my intention is that the old one will be a, not maybe a hot swappable, but a local backup in the same way that I have a Synology remotely at my parents that has a full backup.
Casey:
I'm hoping that the eight bay one I'll move to a different room or put in the garage or something like that.
Casey:
And that'll become a local backup for emergency purposes.
Casey:
But nevertheless, at some point, I need to cut everything over, which means I need to get all the data in sync between the two, which isn't that big a deal, but is something that would require some sort of automated thing like our sync.
Casey:
Or whatever Synology's bespoke thing is.
Casey:
And actually, I believe that one of the migration assistant approaches is basically our sync under the hood or something like that.
Casey:
Or maybe it's not migration assistant.
Casey:
Maybe it's something else.
Casey:
But nevertheless, I'm going to have to do something along those lines.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
As much as I am super jazzed for this new Synology, and I mean that, and they still have a full-throated endorsement from me, or maybe not a full-throated, maybe an almost full-throated endorsement, the one gotcha that I have had in the 10 years of Synology Bliss.
Casey:
is wow is this migration story real bad and it really really bums me out and it's I'll get through it I'll get past it and as with many things if this is the most of my problems right now I am so very incredibly lucky but golly what a pain in the butt it is and so at some point I will have more to say about this but that's basically all I got for right now
John:
I was thinking about getting a new Synology and someday my thing is going to blow up and I'm going to be sad.
John:
But like what I think about is like, oh, you know, I kind of made a mess of my various volumes and stuff.
John:
I'm like, oh, I wouldn't want the new one set up this way.
John:
And what I periodically do because I'm paranoid is I do the thing in Synology where you can essentially back up your system settings to a single file.
John:
Right?
John:
Have you done that?
Casey:
I know of what you speak, and I think I did it, like, a couple of years back, but I don't think I've done it since.
John:
Yeah, you can do it to the network, and you also download a local file.
John:
And this is just, like, the settings of, like, I guess it's stuff like, what network am I on?
John:
And, like, you know, I don't know.
John:
It can't be that much.
John:
Obviously, it's not the data, right?
John:
It's just a tiny little file that does the configuration.
John:
So my thought would be I'd get a new one.
John:
I would...
John:
do a backup of my old system settings, restore that backup onto the new one, set up all the volumes how I want, and then I would essentially do, like, I guess the equivalent of a clean install on a Mac, where I manually, well, you know, with rsync or whatever, copy the files from, like, oh, here's all my Plex stuff, manually copy those to where the Plex stuff is on my new thing.
John:
I'm not sure how I would handle, like, the Plex metadata, because I honestly don't even know where the heck that is hiding on my Synology, but, like, basically...
John:
take all the files and app configuration from my old one and put it in where their new home is going to be on the new one myself, one batch of things at a time until I had everything updated.
John:
And because that process would involve something like our sink,
John:
to catch up to essentially, you know, to say, okay, now I need the last little bit before I cut over.
John:
I just repeat those same commands that I ran before.
John:
And hopefully they just take less time now because most of the time they're saying, I already got that, got that, got that, you know?
John:
Um, and that, that was my plan.
John:
And you describing their migration assistant makes me think that I should continue to have that be my plan because at least that's a plan.
John:
Probably.
John:
that's 100 under my control and it probably would be slower and less thorough but because i'm not getting rid of the old synology it you know i just got to do that to the point where i think i got it set up do the cut over and the old synology for a long time will probably still be there and i won't use it as a local backup of anything i'll just let it sit there exactly as it is encased in amber and if i'm like oh something's not set up how is that set up on the old synology i'll just go look
Casey:
until a year has passed and i'm satisfied with the new one yeah does everything the old one did and then i'll wipe the old one and you know use it as a backup or something yeah no i completely agree with that approach the only thing i would say is i'm not sure what the writer answer is should you put the data there first or should you restore the settings i i i'm quibbling over a minor issue at this point you got to do the settings first
Casey:
Well, I don't know.
John:
I'm going to do restore the settings, and they're not going to be quite right.
John:
And things are going to be screwed up.
John:
And maybe you'll even conflict with the old one because it'll just be like, I want that IP.
John:
No, I want it.
John:
I want the dynamic DNS.
John:
I'd want it to be entirely empty while I'm screwing with getting the system settings right and changing my mind about how to format things and looking at all the different features.
John:
And they're like...
John:
the data would be the last thing i would do or like okay now it's set up the way it's named the way i want dynamic dns is set up the networking is the way i want i figured out the ethernet connection everything's all good it's in physically the place where it's supposed to be then i would start copying data over the only the only big question for me is the only app i really care about that has metadata is like where is the plex database where is that plex thing hiding i don't actually know
Casey:
There's a really good write-up that I'm not going to be able to find and we'll forget to put in the show notes.
Casey:
But Plex does have a migration like FAQ or instructions doc or whatever somewhere online.
Casey:
And I've followed it before.
Casey:
And I think I've done this like four or five or six times.
Casey:
And I think all but one.
Casey:
It worked pretty much flawlessly.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And it will describe to you where you need to look for the metadata and things of that nature.
Casey:
And if you follow the instructions and if you follow them fairly religiously, it turns out it will generally work.
Casey:
So you're going to have to dig it up somewhere.
Casey:
But if you follow those directions, it should be fine.
John:
well that's good to hear yeah plex is pretty good i just haven't ever tried it before but it occurs to me that i have no idea where it is and also every time you install plex in the synology it makes a bunch of directories where it thinks you should put stuff and of course i never put my stuff there so i don't know how many of those directories i have hanging around it's like decoys with this little tiny like trivial empty databases and metadata stores that are just waiting to trip me up well that's not the real location that was five versions ago where i put it yeah yeah yeah
Casey:
Anyway, so I am excited.
Casey:
I am genuinely excited.
Casey:
And again, don't take this one faux pas.
Casey:
Maybe that's not what I'm looking for.
Casey:
This one stumbling block as a reason not to get a Synology.
Casey:
Because they didn't ask me to say anything about this.
Casey:
And I'm telling you the honest truth.
Casey:
But I really do advise you.
Casey:
These devices are so nice to have.
Casey:
And it's so wonderful to not have to worry about hard drive space.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
Golly, if you're looking to upgrade, tread carefully, because it is a bit of a pain.
John:
Yeah, everyone sent hate mails to Synology that say it's unconscionable that you don't let people use third-party drives.
John:
Like, I don't begrudge them selling their own drives, and they can even say, this is the easiest way to do it, and they should offer a better guarantee.
Casey:
That's exactly what I said.
Casey:
When I was lighting up my couple of contacts at Synology, I was like, look, if you want to sell your own drives, fine.
Casey:
If you want to say that you get more or better support when you use your Synology-branded drives, fine.
Casey:
But to be sounding the alarm, oh, my God, oh, my God, you're going to blow up your Synology.
Casey:
Like, that's just not necessary.
John:
I mean, like we were saying when we talked about this, like they'll mark the volume as degraded and you can't even replace drives on it in the extreme cases.
John:
And, you know, there's third party ways to hack around this, but it's just you don't want to have a business where it's just routinely understood that you have to install a third party hack to allow you to use drives to work perfectly fine.
John:
So shame on you, Synology.