Accidentally Made It Too Good
John:
Yes, I was a few minutes late today because I was battling with broken computer stuff.
John:
Uh-oh.
John:
Oh, me too!
John:
No, not that kind of broken computer stuff.
John:
I didn't know not to do this right before I was supposed to record a podcast, but whatever.
John:
um my son is setting up his uh account at his college he's selected a college he's enrolled oh congrats you know you get to get set up your computer account right and i wanted to go through it and make sure everything was all right or whatever and do all this stuff um and the account made him set up two-factor whatever i don't know it asked him to set up two-factor and he did uh and he used the google authenticator app because it's an app that he had used previously i think for two-factor stuff but anyway he had it on his phone and he did that
John:
But I wanted to get it set up in the Apple two-factor thing because it's nice when you're in Safari or on your Mac or whatever.
John:
Apple has, people who don't know, the Apple has a thing in their sort of iCloud keychain thing where it can do two-factor stuff for you.
John:
You don't have to launch a separate app or whatever.
John:
It will autofill right in the thing out of your iCloud keychain.
John:
That's what I wanted to set up for because, yes, you can have the Google Authenticator app, but it would be nice for also it to be integrated with, you know, iOS and macOS and all that other stuff.
John:
Seems like a simple task.
John:
It is technically possible, technically 100% possible, but frustratingly annoying to do.
John:
Um, so here are the two things.
John:
So first of all, this wouldn't, I wouldn't be angry and late if it wasn't for the fact that the school's thing is broken.
John:
Right.
John:
So that's the first problem.
John:
The first problem is, right.
John:
Definitely not your fault, John.
John:
Definitely.
John:
I'll tell you how the school thing is, because the school thing was broken in a pretty bad way.
John:
But how did I find out the school things are broken?
John:
Well, I was trying to accomplish that task, right?
John:
So he'd already set it up.
John:
It was set up and we logged in with it with two-factor.
John:
He's got a username.
John:
He's got a password.
John:
He's got two-factor right out of the little authenticator app, logs you in, right?
John:
Anyone who's ever done this, again, it is technically possible to take that information and shove it into the Apple thing.
John:
But it is not easy and is definitely not easy to do when you're trying to do 10 minutes before you have to podcast.
John:
Right.
John:
So here's the problem.
John:
The Apple thing wants you to go on the happy path, which is I am using Safari to set up my account on this website.
John:
I'm going to enable two factor.
John:
It has presented me with a QR code or some other thing.
John:
Oh, look, in Safari, I can just right click on that.
John:
And it says, do you want to set this up as the authentication thingamabobber?
John:
And I say yes.
John:
And it magically goes in.
John:
That's what they want you to do.
John:
But of course, that already happened a while ago, right?
John:
It's already set up in two-factor, and we didn't do it the Apple way, right?
John:
So here we are now.
John:
I say, I want to get this two-factor thing into the Apple system.
John:
without you know invalidating the existing thing again technically possible right especially since google authenticator added an export function you could export and it'll show you a qr code with that export information or whatever and then you can uh you know decode that qr code and then you can d base base 64 decode it and then you can run it through a protobuf thing and try to get out the data and like this is what i'm doing 10 minutes this is seriously what you have to do oh my god
John:
I mean, but the point is, it's not like the data is there.
John:
Like QR cards aren't magic.
John:
It's just data, right?
John:
But, you know, because you can export two-factor stuff from the Google Authentic App as a QR code.
John:
What you can't do easily is get that QR code, as far as I know, into Apple's system.
John:
Right.
John:
So you go to the Google Authenticator app, you get the QR code, you can take a screenshot of it, you can take a photo or whatever.
John:
I just want to get that into the Apple system and they make it so hard.
John:
The way I used to do it is I would go to the two factor setup page of the website and I would take the the QR code from the Google Authenticator app.
John:
save it as an image turn it into a data url use the dom inspector to paste it in as the image source oh my word of the setup thing and then safari would be tricked into thinking oh do you want me to use that qr code as the setup thing because it's on a setup page like whatever heuristics it uses i would bring to the real setup page but i wouldn't like click through it i would just bring to the real setup page and i would replace the image with a data url of the qr code from the google authenticator app
John:
That used to work.
John:
But now when you're right clicking Safari, somehow it's smart and it goes, I don't see any QR code here.
John:
I don't know what you're like.
John:
It doesn't even show the line item for setup verification system.
John:
So please, please, Ricky, if you're listening, please.
John:
i just if i've got a qr code like if you go to the passwords thing and system preferences it says oh do you want to enter a setup code here i don't know what it wants for me from a setup code like i've got a qr code and i can decode it and i can pull out different pieces but but i don't know what it wants for me from a setup code like please can you can i just give you an image of a qr code i've got a ping i've got a jpeg can i just can you let me scan it with my phone that's the one thing i didn't try maybe there's a way if you do it on ios maybe you can just
John:
take a picture of it with the phone's camera and it'll let you add it but i couldn't figure it out and that was making me very angry and it's like i'm so close like why why why is safari like because they want it to be magic oh you just right click on the qr code and it says set this up as authentication but it somehow is angered by me editing the dom which maybe makes sense you know like if you were to look at the web page you say there's a qr code when i right click it in safari why doesn't it take it it's like well it's not
John:
the real qr code it's the one i made into a data url and pasted into the source thing you know i kind of get it but it's just it's just so much harder than it needs to be because it's like you guys the data is right here like it's often on the same computer because i had like one window logged in and like chrome and then the safari window it's like same team people we're all here let's just make this happen and i just could not do it um so anyway that's
John:
That's just angering me.
John:
And so I'm like, OK, well, why am I trying to do this?
John:
This is just a stupid thing to be doing.
John:
Like, oh, you have the two factor already are set up and you're trying to transfer it to the Apple thing.
John:
Well, yes, again, it is technically possible.
John:
I know I've done it.
John:
I've done it multiple times.
John:
But oh, you can't figure out how to get to work this time.
John:
It's obviously not a supported use case.
John:
Just forget it.
John:
And what's the thing you should do then?
John:
How about just start over?
Marco:
Or use 1Password.
John:
Use 1Password.
John:
No, I want it into the Apple thing.
Marco:
This is the most effort I've ever heard to avoid using 1Password.
Marco:
Right?
Marco:
Thank you.
John:
I don't want to use 1Password.
John:
The goal is I want it in the Apple operating system thing in addition to other places that it might be.
John:
So yes, it could be in 1Password.
John:
But if it was a 1Password, I would also want it in the Apple thing.
John:
like that's the goal here to get in the ios iCloud keychain you know that whole deal right anyway so i'm like okay well you can just reset up two-factor anyone who has two-factor knows you can do this if you just say okay i want to set up two-factor again i got a new phone or i'm gonna get a new phone or whatever you can just go and you log in with your existing two-factor and you say i want a new two-factor and it gives you a new qr code and you scan the new qr code or you're right clicking in safari and
John:
or whatever, and that's your new two-factor, right?
John:
And since I'm doing that from the beginning, I can do that from the beginning from Safari, right?
John:
The happy path.
John:
Oh, I go into doing Safari, I right-click, then it does give you the option, set up a two-factor.
John:
And of course, like all good two-factor things, it says, but I'm not letting you off the screen until you type in the magic code that you now get out of the Safari Apple thing, like to show that you successfully did it.
John:
So I do that, I set it up in Safari, it says, please enter the six-digit code here.
John:
And Safari autofills a six-digit code, right?
John:
Because that's the whole point of this feature.
John:
And it works.
John:
And it says, great.
John:
I believe that you successfully set up two-factor.
John:
Right?
John:
It even gives you backup codes, the whole nine yards.
John:
You're like, this is awesome.
John:
Everything's great.
John:
But this is where the school's bugs come in.
John:
If then you try to log in in any other web browser, your codes won't work.
John:
The six-digit code will just will not work, right?
John:
And I tried it in different accounts and different devices or whatever.
John:
And even though it successfully worked when I configured it, it won't work anywhere else.
John:
And that's a scary situation to be in, where you think you've just successfully set up two-factor, you've verified to the system that you've set up two-factor by entering the six digits from the QR code that you just scanned, and it says, yes, great, that's good, but you can't log in anywhere else, because everyplace else you go, you enter a username, password, it prompts you for the code, and whatever code you enter from your thing, it says, nope, not valid.
John:
That is not encouraging at all.
John:
That's the school's bug.
John:
OK, because that's not the way the world's supposed to work.
John:
That's just broken.
John:
It's a bug.
John:
But then what do you do?
John:
So luckily, the school had a big honking button on there on the setup screen, which I'm frantically making sure that I stay logged into.
John:
Right.
John:
That says disable multi-factor authentication.
John:
Like, all right, let's just I got a podcast.
John:
Let me just disable multi-factor authentication entirely.
John:
click disable multi-factor and says boop it goes back and goes back to the screen and now the button is set up multi-factor authentication right the disable button's gone and now i have a button to set it up but i don't want to set it up i don't want to deal with this now let me just disable multi-factor but of course me being me i don't trust the system anymore i try logging in from literally anywhere else and it prompts me for please enter your verification code for your multi-factor oh no like i just disabled it i'm i'm logged in here i'm staring at the screen where it is disabled
John:
so angry i'm like it's just just totally broken and of course none of the you know no codes from the existing ones that i had saved before worked the original one or the new one doesn't matter what you enter nothing works and i knew i knew for a fact that if i logged out of that one window where i was logged in i would never be able to log in again right i just know now i know the system is broken i know how it's broken it thinks i've disabled two-factor but it's still prompting me for it
John:
So the best I could do was it seemed there was an iOS app.
John:
So I downloaded the iOS app on two different phones.
John:
I logged into the iOS app using a special iOS app specific login QR code.
John:
So now I'm logged in on two iPhones.
John:
And then I logged out in the web browser.
John:
And sure enough, no web browser can ever log in again because even though two-factor is supposedly disabled, it prompts you for the two-factor code.
John:
So then from one of the logged in iPhones, I contacted the online support chat and said, here I am.
John:
And I'm locked out of my thing because says because I disabled two factor, but it thinks I still have it enabled.
John:
And they just directed me to talk to some other thing or whatever.
John:
And then I had to start podcasting.
John:
So school stuff is broken, whatever.
John:
That's annoying.
John:
but i feel like the main you know i that's just that's just bugs that's just whatever but i really wish and again if you can do this in ios i didn't get a chance to to look at that but i really wish there was an easier way to say i've already got two-factor set up somewhere whether that's in one password in google authenticator and one of the 50 other in authy and one of the 50 other two-factor apps almost all those systems have a way to you sort of export that two-factor thing either by showing a qr or code or whatever
John:
I want what's the point of exporting if I can't import it.
John:
The only thing I can find to import an Apple thing is cleverly make a Safari web page on the actual website.
John:
So you can trick it into showing that line item on the right click menu, which apparently I've now lost the ability to do no matter how clever I get.
John:
Or enter what it calls a setup key, and I have no freaking idea what it wants for me there.
John:
Like, is it the base 32 decoded section of the base 64 encoded data section of the protobuffer from the Google?
John:
I don't know.
John:
But anything I entered there, it would accept all sorts of garbage, but it wouldn't be right.
John:
So I'm obviously entering the wrong thing there.
John:
So...
John:
Please make this easier.
John:
Like two-factor information is our information.
John:
We should be allowed to have it in Authy, in 1Password, in Google Authenticator, and in iCloud Keychain.
John:
There should be a way to go from one place to the other, and it should be way easier than it is.
Casey:
So Alex's first real interaction with his forthcoming school is going to be his dad breaking his login.
John:
I didn't break his login.
John:
The school broke the login.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
It's not my fault, you guys.
John:
It's not my fault.
John:
If I click disable multi-factor authentication and then it proceeds to always prompt me for multi-factor authentication, that's not me.
John:
That's not on me at all.
John:
That's just a broken system in the school.
Casey:
You know, I wasn't hacking.
Casey:
I was just discovering vulnerabilities.
Mm-hmm.
Casey:
I'd like to start with a little bit of follow-out, if I may.
Casey:
Clockwise, episode 449, it featured one John Syracuse.
Casey:
And this is remarkable because of all the guest spots that you've done, John, on all the great podcasts and all the great shows, it was very unusual, if it has ever happened, and I know there was a little bit of debate on the show, but if it has ever happened, it's very unusual for you to be able to record Clockwise at noon your time on a Wednesday.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
But it's a whole new world, baby.
Casey:
And here is John Syracuse appearing on Clockwise.
Casey:
Made me very happy.
John:
Yeah, Dan tells me that I did it in the past.
John:
And I probably did back when Jason was hosting like years and years and years ago.
John:
But I had no recollection.
John:
I didn't even remember how the show worked.
John:
I didn't even know that there was a fixed order that people go around in the clock.
John:
So I was just total, you know, as Allison called me on the show, I was a total noob.
Casey:
Well, it was a good episode.
Casey:
And well under 30 minutes, I was quite surprised.
Casey:
But I'm using this as a crummy excuse to ask you, you know, how is your new world?
Casey:
I know a lot of this is covered on Rectifs, and I know I'm kind of inviting myself into Merlin's world, and I apologize profusely.
Casey:
I'm stealing Merlin's valor on this.
Marco:
He's so mad.
Casey:
How is your whole new world?
Casey:
He's so mad.
Casey:
How is your whole new world?
Casey:
Is there anything you'd like to share with the group right here on ATP, on your big show?
John:
I don't think there are any new developments in that area.
John:
I did talk a lot about it on Rectifs and how weird it was and how strangely stressful.
John:
And that kind of continues because I'm still doing... I'm still working on those boulders, that giant life backlog of things that I have to get done.
John:
And we were still...
John:
working through them every time i think we're making progress i did make progress on one i mean you've seen this in the neutral channel we had a little problem with the car we had a kind of a fender bender uh and getting that repaired was a surprise thing to be thrown on the pile and we actually finally got the car back and despite the only bad thing that happened as a result of that aside from us having to pay our deductible is they tried to clean the inside of the car and they use like armor all and you know how that is i don't like it
John:
oh god it's everything's all slippery and shiny yeah it's gross and so i spent a lot of the spent a little while this afternoon trying it was like outgassing onto the windshield and gross i spent a little while trying to essentially wipe off the armor all from the inside yeah you gotta get in there like with a towel yeah
John:
Yeah.
John:
Spent some time doing that this afternoon.
John:
But anyway, that's an example of like a surprise thing.
John:
It's like, surprise, you got to deal with cars and insurance and whatever.
John:
And I'm just glad I got that done.
John:
But there's so many other big backlog items that I just trying to drag kicking and screaming across the finish line.
John:
And I look at them and like I have a to do list, you know, a notes thing or whatever.
John:
And I don't check them off until they're done.
John:
So there was an item that said, you know, fix car.
John:
Right.
John:
I just check that off because like car is back on the driveway.
John:
It is fixed.
John:
Uh, and I checked it off, but I can't check off any of the other ones because they're all like still one or two more things to be done.
John:
And that's kind of still the phase I'm in working on those boulders.
Marco:
Thanks for listening.
Marco:
We'll be right back.
Marco:
24 7 365 no matter how much you're paying them there's no like different levels of users like a different quality of support everyone gets that same support whether you're paying them like five or ten bucks a month or thousands you know it's everyone gets the same support and i've used it before and it's just they are really really good support and finally biggest reason for me is it's an incredible value at linode this is why i've been with them for the better part of a decade now and i've
Marco:
Every time the technology moves on that allows them to offer you more for your money, they do.
Marco:
So they either drop the prices of what you were getting or they give you more and they make migration super easy.
Marco:
And so it's been the best value I've seen in the business for the entire time I've been a customer there.
Marco:
Never so often, I'll look around and I'll see, like, what's everyone else charging for these kind of resources?
Marco:
And Linode is always either matching or beating everyone else that I can find.
Marco:
And they just have incredible service with that.
Marco:
So I just love Linode.
Marco:
They make cloud computing fast, simple, and affordable.
Marco:
So you can focus on your projects, not your infrastructure.
Marco:
Go to linode.com slash ATP, create a free account, and you get $100 in credit.
Marco:
You can give them either your Google account, your GitHub account, or just your email address, no matter what.
Marco:
$100 in credit with any new account.
Marco:
Once again, linode.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Linode for being an awesome host and for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
That brings us to my victory tour.
Casey:
There was a great showing for t-shirts and membership recently.
Casey:
So genuinely, thank you so much to anyone who even thought about buying a t-shirt or a mug or a glass or has considered a membership or maybe bought a membership.
Casey:
Maybe you canceled, but you certainly don't have to.
Casey:
Maybe you didn't.
Marco:
Well, and honestly, we're doing great.
Marco:
And it's very clear that there was a John Syracuse is now self-employed bump in membership.
Marco:
oh yeah that's no joke that's for real you know normally when we have merchandise sales we get a small bump um just because you know people actually listen to john and like you know sign up for a little bit get the code and then maybe cancel later if they if they want to but you know you don't have to um but this is a substantially bigger bump than we than i think we usually get from membership sales and i i attribute that entirely to the john effect because john is the public's favorite member of the show by a long shot and so i don't know about that
John:
oh a thousand percent true i think the bump was the same size as it always is if you want if you want to make it a bump for me what i would say is more people need to forget to cancel so that's what we'll see because what we see is we see the bump i didn't measure it last time but my recollection is that is a similar size bump that people know what we say sign up for the membership get the discount and then cancel if you want to but it's like how many people don't cancel how many people stick around or will we just fall back to the levels we were before all of them all of them should not cancel
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And so the final results, this is where my victory lap begins.
Casey:
The Ultra Shirt, 311 sales as of when I looked right after the sale ended.
Casey:
The Interposer Shirt, 1,676, baby.
Casey:
That's 5.3 times.
Casey:
So hashtag Casey was right.
Casey:
Well, I'm kind of stealing your valor now because it was your idea in the first place, but then you poo-pooed it.
Casey:
I don't care.
Casey:
I'm taking it as mine.
Casey:
Hashtag Casey was right.
Casey:
5.3 times.
Casey:
I am so excited to get my Interposer shirt.
Casey:
Thank you genuinely to anyone who has signed up for a membership or even considered it, who's bought a t-shirt or any of the other merchandise.
Casey:
Oh, and I should mention that...
Casey:
If you did miss the sale, you do not have to tweet me, either comically or otherwise.
Casey:
But we do have the old shirts, the pre-Ultra shirts are up.
Casey:
The print-as-you-want shirts are up.
Casey:
And remember that these do not have anything on the back.
Casey:
And the shirt themselves, or is it the shirt or the printing?
Casey:
I always get it wrong.
John:
The printing.
John:
And we have the whole range up.
John:
You're blowing this one.
John:
Let me help you.
John:
The on-demand products that we have available are all of our M1 shirts.
John:
M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, M1 Ultra.
John:
Not the joke shirt.
John:
Nothing on the back of any of these.
John:
These are on-demand printed, so the printing is not as nice as it is on the real shirts.
John:
These shirts are also cheaper.
John:
That's why I tell all the people listening to the show, buy during the sale.
John:
Those are the good shirts.
John:
They cost more, but they're better.
John:
but if you totally missed it and you want one the on-demand printings is more like i don't know what the process is but it is not like it's like they they lay down kind of like a lighter color and then do do printing on top of it as opposed to the the real shirts where they do multiple printing passes i think which with colored ink so yeah i think that's right i hope you got one during the sale we just have those ones up there for the people who see the shirt on a youtube video so we can have them you know buy a real shirt instead of one of the million counter for ones that's out there
John:
Right.
Casey:
Anyway, enough navel gazing.
Casey:
Let's move right along.
John:
We have some real time, real time follow up before you go into that.
John:
This is killing me, but I'm just looking at the screen right now.
John:
If I had just done it on the phone, the phone has a scan QR code option.
John:
The Mac doesn't have that.
John:
The Mac says, please enter a setup key, whatever the hell that is.
John:
I wish the Mac had or drag an image here.
John:
And I would have done that because I had an image of it and I should have just used the phone and done scan QR code.
Marco:
uh my bad doesn't change the fact that the website of the school is totally hosed and hopefully i'll get that resolved but the next time i do this after we get everything resolved uh you know i'll do the right thing i'll tell you what a quick derail here uh because you know it's always a quick derail with me uh my my tech to-do list is growing oh i feel the same way but what's what's your why don't you lay down on the couch and tell us what's bothering you
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So, you know, first of all, yes, I'm back with the ultra fine for for this recording because I happen to be here this week and I hate it and everything's diagonal and I can't get the monitor straight and all this.
Marco:
Anyway, that's a separate thing.
Marco:
So recently when recording another show that isn't out yet, so I won't spoil what it is, but it's on it.
Marco:
But I lost a portion of my audio.
Marco:
Oh.
Marco:
Oh, this has not happened to me in years.
Marco:
I can't remember if I ever lost a recording or part of a recording before this.
Marco:
I might not have ever done it.
Marco:
So this shook me to the bone.
Marco:
And here's what happened.
Marco:
Listeners may recall a long time ago when I had to do MacBook Pros, the 14 and the 16, and the 14 was always doing time machine backups over Wi-Fi because that's how it was backed up.
Marco:
And I noticed that on a pretty regular basis, I would open it up from sleep after not using it for maybe half a day or a day.
Marco:
things would be kind of unresponsive.
Marco:
I would right-click on something and nothing would happen.
Marco:
Or I'd try to open or close an app or navigate to a different page in Safari and it would just hang weirdly or nothing would happen.
Marco:
Shortly after that, usually it would kernel panic.
Marco:
And the kernel panic indicated something deep in possible file handling code or something.
Marco:
And I eventually realized, let me try disabling network time machine and see if that fixes it.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
And it did.
Marco:
That problem has never reoccurred since then.
Marco:
But for some reason, that problem, even though I used Time Machine on my desktop laptop, that problem never occurred on it.
Marco:
Now, I speculated at the time, maybe it was because it was Wi-Fi.
Marco:
Because the desktop laptop is always Thunderbolt Ethernet connected.
Marco:
And the laptop laptop is always just on Wi-Fi.
Marco:
And so I thought maybe it was that.
Marco:
And so I kind of left it alone.
Marco:
Well...
Marco:
As we're recording this podcast, people are talking, I'm occasionally talking, and I'm occasionally navigating to a page in Safari to look something up.
Marco:
And I noticed that pages in Safari kind of stopped loading completely.
Marco:
And at some point I went to go, I was going to relaunch Safari.
Marco:
I was going to, you know, right click on the dock icon, hit quit, relaunch Safari.
Marco:
I right click on the icon and the dock beach balls, like the dock process beach balls.
Marco:
And I think, oh no, this is not good because this is how this problem began before on the other computer.
Marco:
I'm in the middle of a recording.
Marco:
I can't launch any new apps or close any apps I have running.
Marco:
And the recording is still going.
Marco:
Like in the recording app I'm using, it's still going.
Marco:
So I thought, okay, don't touch anything and just hope I can get through.
Marco:
We were most of the way through the show, so I thought, let me just hope I can get through the rest of the show.
Marco:
I won't touch any apps.
Marco:
I'll just let the recorder go with Finder Beach Ball in the background, and I'm just going to let this go and hope I can make it.
Marco:
And then every so often the, uh, the other person on, on, um, it was, it was Skype.
Marco:
The other person on Skype would just cut out for a few seconds, but then they'd come back.
Marco:
So I thought, okay, that's not good.
Marco:
That's not good.
Marco:
But we're still going to record and look, it's still going.
Marco:
It's still, you know, the, the recording app still says it's going.
Marco:
Okay.
Okay.
Marco:
eventually skype the other party just drops out completely i mean i'm hearing no nobody and i thought okay well this i can't recover from let me just reboot everything and so i typed a quick message in the slack you know brb computer trouble came back and i learned after after i came back i did finish the show i learned afterwards that i was missing something like 10 minutes of audio in the middle there like basically since the problem had begun i
Marco:
It stopped recording.
Marco:
I had no data from that segment.
Marco:
And this shook me to the core.
Marco:
Again, I've been podcasting professionally for a very long time.
Marco:
I have never lost a recording as far as I can remember.
Marco:
If I did, it's been a long time ago.
Casey:
Oh, you get used to it.
Casey:
Don't worry about it.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So to lose 10 minutes or so of audio, that killed me.
Marco:
I can't believe I lost that audio.
Marco:
It drives me crazy.
Marco:
I can't believe that happened.
Marco:
And so instantly I thought, I have to make a change.
Marco:
This can never happen again.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
My recording setup for, I don't know, the last two or three years has just been the sound device USB Pre 2, which is my favorite preamp I've ever used for a microphone USB kind of interface.
Marco:
I love it.
Marco:
And in part, I love it because there is absolutely no software.
Marco:
It is just a simple...
Marco:
USB preamp that is covered in knobs and buttons and LEDs.
Marco:
There's no software.
Marco:
There's no touchscreen.
Marco:
There's nothing like that.
Marco:
It's just covered in knobs and buttons.
Marco:
And so everything is done in hardware.
Marco:
And as far as I can tell, the signal path that goes through between the microphone and the headphone monitoring output is
Marco:
seems to be 100 analog which means that when i'm speaking through the usb pre there is zero latency between the voice of that's going into the microphone and the voice i'm hearing in the headphones no latency whatsoever and that is something that is only possible when the microphone is connected via analog to the headphone output in some fashion so it's not zero but well what you mean
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
It's not going through an analog-to-digital converter, being processed somehow, being routed anywhere, and then being spit back out.
Marco:
There's nothing like that happening on that signal path.
Marco:
And this is the way almost every low-end to mid-range...
Marco:
USB XLR interface works they almost all work this way anything that has a headphone output or a monitoring output usually they work this way until you get into like the more advanced ones that have usually they have multiple like more than two inputs sometimes they have built-in mixing capabilities things like the sound devices mix pre-series the zoom f6 like things like this
Marco:
Uh, these are mixers that usually have digital routings.
Marco:
You can like change, you know, what signals contribute to the headphone mix and stuff like that.
Marco:
And so all of that is, is always, at least as far as I can tell it, it seems to be always done now in the digital domain.
Marco:
So you first convert the signal to digital, route it, process it, whatever you want to do, then you output it to analog.
Marco:
And that introduces usually on the order of a few milliseconds of latency.
Marco:
And the way this manifests itself to me is I sound a little bit worse to myself in my headphones and
Marco:
It's not a huge difference, but I notice it.
Marco:
And I know it's related to latency.
Marco:
Everyone on Twitter is like, you must not be hearing something right.
Marco:
Maybe it's a face thing.
Marco:
Everyone's, of course, telling me that the problem I'm having is not really the problem I'm having.
Marco:
And I'm telling you it is.
Marco:
And the way I can tell is because when you change the sample rate of the interface, it decreases the latency and it makes the problem less bad.
Marco:
So normally I record everything at 44.1 kilohertz.
Marco:
But if you change the sample rate of the interface from 44.1 all the way up to like, you know, 192 kilohertz, then it's almost real time.
Marco:
Like that becomes the point where I can't really hear much of a difference.
Marco:
But at 44.1, I very much can.
Marco:
And so everyone keeps telling me I can't hear it.
Marco:
I assure you, I measured the MixPre line.
Marco:
It gets about 3.4, I think 3 point something milliseconds of latency.
Marco:
And I absolutely hear the difference.
Marco:
It's clear as day to me.
Marco:
And I think I'm a professional podcaster.
Marco:
I should sound in my ears as good as I possibly can to myself because this is
Marco:
this is what i do i deserve to have you know myself be happy and sound good in my ears okay so but the problem is that almost anything that has built in recording to like you know almost any interface that records to an sd card goes through that analog to digital um cycle before before the output because they almost all have some kind of mixing features or something like that and so i don't i don't think there are any that that
Marco:
I can really replace this with that, that had that.
Marco:
And furthermore, I love the USB pre to for lots of reasons, including the fact that it has analog limiters.
Marco:
And this is again, something that almost no modern interfaces offer analog limiters.
Marco:
So that way I can't clip and it doesn't sound bad.
Marco:
Like, you know, some other methods do, and there's no latency like digital limiters introduced.
Marco:
So,
Marco:
All of this is to say, I want to keep my USB pre too.
Marco:
So I have this huge, ridiculous setup now.
Marco:
Part of it is still coming from Amazon.
Marco:
Part of it is in process now where I bought a little Zoom F3, which is this little tiny newly released Zoom recorder.
Marco:
that right now I'm going through it at 182.
Marco:
Once I get all my wires from Amazon, I'll be able to actually not listen through it and just have direct output from the USB-P2.
Marco:
Anyway, so I had this whole process going.
Marco:
What I should probably do
Marco:
is switch to the mix pre and just suck it up and maybe maybe run it at 192 but that's that's its own you know can of worms so i don't really want to deal with that and the great thing about this setup having it totally separate is that even if the computer reboots even if the usb connection gets flaky this has nothing to do with usb right now it's running on batteries like it's just it's totally separate so anyway happy with that so moving on from that that's problem number one that i'm dealing with so my computer now did that by the way
Marco:
To try to, you know, try to figure out what the heck that was, you know, first, you know, the next day I'm using my computer and it just keeps happening.
Marco:
So I'm using my computer regularly, not recording a podcast, not running Skype, doing other things in my computer.
Marco:
And the problem recurs where all of a sudden I can't click on apps, can't close apps, then I eventually have to reboot.
Marco:
And I try, all right, let me switch over and stop using the Synology for time machine.
Marco:
Let me change over to, I have a little external SSD, a USB SSD.
Marco:
I'll try that.
Marco:
That way it's not network time machine at all.
Marco:
So I turn off the network time machine.
Marco:
I connect the USB thing, format it, you know, clear, start new, go.
Marco:
And within a half hour, it happens again, even with that.
Marco:
So now I'm thinking, is it not time machine?
Marco:
Or is it just any time machine?
Marco:
Turn off time machine?
Marco:
Problem hasn't happened since.
Marco:
So the problem happened, I believe, four times in eight hours.
Marco:
And then zero times after turning off time machine.
Marco:
So I think it was probably time machine.
Marco:
But what the heck is that?
Marco:
And now I don't have time machine.
Marco:
So that's problem number one.
John:
When I see errors like the one you're describing, maybe it's just me.
John:
But I always think my file system is host.
John:
Thank you.
John:
And you were like, well, why would that manifest with Time Machine?
John:
Time Machine, especially doing a full backup, has to touch every part of your file system.
John:
And if there's any part, it's like bad disk IO, bad sectors, corrupt file system things.
John:
If it gets to some point where it's like crawling over your file system and it's trying to read a file and it wanders into like a blocking IO call, right?
John:
And that thing just hangs forever because it's local IO call and it's blocking and there's no timeout on it.
John:
That's where you get like, you know, something gets hung up in a beach ball or whatever.
John:
So the first thing I do when I see something like that is, you know, this first day at FSCK, all that whole nine yards boot into recovery mode.
John:
See if they have a corrupt snapshot in time machine, which happened, which happens in APFS a lot.
John:
See if I have any errors.
John:
And like, I always suspect this guy, because if, if, if this guy goes bad, that manifests in hard hangs from whatever is trying to do that.
John:
And that eventually cascades into terribleness.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Like it, it feels like the disc has just stalled or, you know, we're running out of file descriptors or something like that.
Marco:
Some kind of disc related.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
That could also be one of them.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But what, what leads me to believe it might be like a Mac OS bug is that this happened on the 14 inch months ago.
Marco:
And that, that was a brand new computer.
Marco:
These are both brand new MacBook pros from, you know, last fall.
Marco:
So I think any kind of like hardware disc failure, like bad sectors, I think is unlikely to have happened both like this.
Marco:
Not hardware failure, but like, you know, uh, uh,
John:
What do you call it?
John:
File system structure.
Marco:
Right, right.
Marco:
But the other thing is they were both clean installs.
Marco:
And they're both used very differently.
Marco:
The small laptop has almost nothing on it and is only used once every day or two.
Marco:
And there's very few apps, very little new writes happening.
Marco:
And these have very, very different usage patterns and very different conditions.
Marco:
And that's why I think...
John:
i think it's a bug i think it's a mac os bug or an m1 max bug or something there's something wrong here um so we'll see and maybe i'll try your suggestion see if they find anything but probably not during the show but wow yeah and by the way if you do find a corrupt snapshot you can just delete that snapshot that's you know not that you have i don't think you have any other choices in fact i don't think you can repair a snapshot but if you find a bad snapshot you can use tmutil to delete that snapshot and then
John:
do another run of of you know disk utility from recovery mode and make sure it gives you a full clean bill of health because you'll see it checking the the all the things you know check the the you know top level thing of the device and then check the individual volumes and it'll check all the snapshots and once you get a clean bill of health on all those things then at least you know that's not the problem all right i'll give that a shot so anyway the other area that has been failing
Marco:
the home pods they're on their last legs.
Marco:
So now here's the thing though.
Marco:
I actually, I am slightly optimistic for, for a reason that I probably shouldn't be, but it makes very little sense.
Marco:
But here's the thing.
Marco:
So I,
Marco:
My HomePods are continually having ridiculous problems.
Marco:
Like, they barely work anymore.
Marco:
They work, you know, maybe two-thirds of the time I ask them to work.
Marco:
That's not a good ratio.
Marco:
And the number of bugs happening, especially with the stereo pair, the number of bugs where the stereo pair breaks or one of them drops out or they just become two separate entities for some reason, or like...
Marco:
It's happening a lot now.
Marco:
Something is seriously wrong.
Marco:
And it's very clear that Apple has totally broken the software on them or the hardware or both.
Marco:
And it's not going to get fixed in a reasonable way anytime soon.
Marco:
So that being said, when you write an audio app for iOS and you pay attention to what your users say or what you experience on the iOS point release betas,
Marco:
you can usually predict when Apple's about to either add a major audio feature or release new audio hardware, which usually comes with a new major feature.
Marco:
So every time Apple has released new AirPods, say, or something like that, or the HomePod,
Marco:
they have usually somehow royally messed up audio.
Marco:
Usually in an iOS point release, like 15.1, 15.2, not like 15.0, like a regular point X release, audio gets messed up in the betas, usually shortly before they're about to release new audio hardware that uses something like that.
Marco:
And that just happened for the first time in a while in the 15 point, what are we on, four?
Marco:
Whatever the recent iOS 15 point whatever beta is.
Marco:
They completely and in a major way broke AirPlay audio for I think two beta builds.
Marco:
And then they fixed it.
Marco:
Like, and they haven't touched AirPlay audio in a little while.
Marco:
So I'm kind of thinking that we might, this is, again, this is the only thing I have to support this, this hypothesis, but we might be about to see new HomePod hardware.
Marco:
If that, like this, again, this is just a hunch.
Marco:
I have nothing to support this.
Marco:
There's no rumors to this effect, so it's probably wrong.
Marco:
But I think we're about to maybe see new HomePod hardware.
Marco:
And while that would be great,
Marco:
I don't know if I'm going to make it because we use them every day and they're breaking so badly.
Marco:
And so here's what's probably going to happen is I'm going to get fed up with these and replace them with something else.
Marco:
And then that will guarantee new HomePod hardware will come out shortly after.
Casey:
Hey man, my Ultrafine says the system works because I bought this Ultrafine and then sure enough, we got the studio display just a few months later.
Casey:
So you're welcome, world.
Marco:
Yeah, so maybe I will conjure new HomePods into existence by replacing mine with something else.
Marco:
But we'll see.
Marco:
They're almost ridiculously broken now.
Marco:
Nothing is working reliably anymore about them.
Marco:
It's quite sad.
Marco:
We'll see.
Marco:
We are brought to you this week by Collide.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
collide is built by like-minded security practitioners who saw in the past just how much mdm was disrupting their end users often frustrating them so much they would just give up and switch to using their personal laptops without telling anybody and that's not what anybody wants everyone loses in that scenario so collide is different instead of locking down a device collide takes a user-focused approach that communicates security recommendations to your employees directly on slack and
Marco:
After Collide, device security turns from a black and white state into a dynamic conversation, and it starts with the end users installing the endpoint agent on their own through a guided process that happens right inside their first Slack message.
Marco:
From there, Collide regularly sends employees recommendations when their device is in an insecure state.
Marco:
This can be simple problems, like the screen lock isn't set right.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thank you so much to Collide for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
We had a lot of discussion last episode about double clicking for wallets and how we could save the quickness or make the lock button quicker by disabling, double clicking, triple clicking, things of that nature.
Casey:
And we were wondering, well, how do you get into Apple Pay if you can't double click the side button?
Casey:
And we didn't have a really good answer for that at the time.
Casey:
Well, a few people have written in.
Casey:
Trevor Kay writes, for getting into Apple Pay without the side button, double-click, first open the Wallet app, then select a card, and then double-click the side button.
Casey:
And then Andrew notes that this method still works even when double-clicking the side button features disabled globally.
Casey:
So again, if you're deliberately going into the Wallet app, selecting a card, if at that point you double-click, it apparently will work.
Casey:
Additionally,
Casey:
Some other people have written in that you can add a wallet button to Control Center, which brings up the same double-click side button UI when you're on the lock screen.
Casey:
And Michael Samuels writes, "...important that tapping the button in Control Center will open the payment sheet only if the phone is locked.
Casey:
If the phone is unlocked, the button will jump to the wallet app instead."
Casey:
So that's worth noting.
Casey:
And then finally, I tried this earlier today when I was in Publix, which is a grocery store in the southeast.
Casey:
If you just hold a completely sleeping locked phone up next to a payment terminal, it will actually pop up as though you've double clicked, which I had no idea.
Casey:
And a few people have written in about that.
Casey:
That was news to me.
Casey:
So that's kind of cool.
Casey:
So you can do that as well.
Casey:
Obviously, you know, and a lot of people wrote in and said, well, don't you wear an Apple Watch?
Casey:
Well, yes, but we weren't talking about the Apple Watch at this point.
Casey:
I almost never Apple Pay with my phone anymore because anytime I have the occasion to, I have a mask on.
Casey:
And so I would just use the watch, which is much easier in my personal opinion.
Casey:
But yeah, those are three different methods to, or a couple of different methods to do the double click dance without having it enabled all the time.
Casey:
So still keeping your very fast lock button.
John:
The mask unlock is working pretty well for me, speaking of doing face ID with mask.
John:
And I think one of the this was working kind of before mask unlock.
John:
But often when I'm brushing my teeth, I will look at my phone and have to unlock it while I'm brushing my teeth, which I think is a challenging face ID scenario, because at the very least, it's a toothbrush coming out of my mouth.
John:
And also my hand is kind of in front of whatever.
John:
And I have pretty good success unlocking my phone while brushing my teeth.
John:
I think I had pretty good success doing that before mask unlock.
John:
But I wonder if it helped a little bit.
John:
But anyway, yeah, Mask Unlock has been working pretty well for me.
John:
And I don't wear an Apple Watch, so I can't do Apple Pay with Apple Watch.
Marco:
What did people do while we brushed our teeth before smartphones?
Marco:
You walk around.
Marco:
Yeah, that's what I do.
Marco:
Yeah, no, but then doesn't toothpaste, doesn't a little toothpaste flex have the risk of getting to other places and you don't want to?
Marco:
Not only if you're really bad at brushing your teeth or you're five.
Casey:
The real question is, what did people do when they were pooping before Wi-Fi?
Casey:
That's what I wanted.
John:
Yeah.
John:
You read.
John:
I read entire books on the toilet.
Casey:
Oh, that's true.
Casey:
That's a good point.
Marco:
Palm Pilot.
Marco:
I played Mealborn a lot and Hearts.
Marco:
I read books on my Palm Pilot.
John:
160 by 160 pixels.
John:
Perfect for reading a book.
Yeah.
Marco:
I wonder if the smartphone era has actually made people spend more time brushing their teeth.
Marco:
It's easy to get to the full two minutes on the electric toothbrush because you have something to do.
Marco:
You're moving it around casually, but I feel like it was much easier in the pre-smartphone era to rush through it and accidentally not spend your full two minutes brushing your teeth that you're supposed to.
John:
That's why walking around is the old standby.
John:
So it always works.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So we got some news about WWDC 2022 and specifically the event, the in-person event that's happening at Apple Park.
Casey:
And so there is a special page on the developer site with the URL slash WWDC22 slash special hyphen day.
Casey:
But anyways, on that page, it says we're hosting a special all-day experience at Apple Park on June 6 to kick off WBC 2022.
Casey:
Gather with others in the developer community to watch the keynote and State of the Union videos alongside Apple engineers and experts.
Casey:
Explore the all-new Developer Center and so much more.
Casey:
We can't wait to connect in person.
Casey:
I'm sorry, all-new Developer Center?
Casey:
What?
Casey:
Explore it.
Casey:
Let's explore our desks.
Casey:
And then one of you, I presume, John, put this link in the show notes that I completely missed when it flew by, which was apparently this time last year.
Casey:
And this is a link to Mac Rumors, and it says Apple's Building Developer Center at Apple Park Campus.
Casey:
And in this, it says that Apple is working to build a dedicated developer center on its Apple Park campus, Apple fellow Phil Schiller said today during his testimony in the ongoing Epic versus Apple trial.
Casey:
Schiller did not provide additional detail on the developer center and has not been previously announced by Apple.
Casey:
So little information is available at this time.
Casey:
Again, that was a year ago.
Casey:
So I don't know what this is about.
Casey:
We can come back to that in just a moment.
Casey:
But moving right along to the actual details about this event that's happening next month, attending this event is free and open to members of the Apple Developer Program and Apple Developer Enterprise Program.
Casey:
Invitations will be allocated through a random selection process and are non-transferable.
Casey:
This sounds exactly like WWDC, actually.
Casey:
Submit your request between May 9th at 9 Pacific to May 11th at 9 Pacific.
Casey:
You'll be notified of your status by May 12th at 6 PM Pacific.
Casey:
It requires a negative COVID-19 test no more than three days before the event.
Casey:
Masks are currently optional.
Casey:
We'll provide details on the latest requirements to attendees prior to the event.
Casey:
One thing I would love to know, and I think James Thompson pointed this out, where is this happening?
Casey:
Like, is this an indoor thing?
Casey:
Because that would make the very – I'm not going to sign up regardless.
Casey:
But, like, if I was going, if this is an indoor thing, eh.
Casey:
I don't know about that.
Casey:
If it's an outdoor thing, hey, I think I can handle that.
Casey:
So what do we think of this event?
Casey:
What do we think of this developer center thing?
Casey:
What do we think?
John:
I wonder if the developer center is like a trap.
John:
The reason I pulled out this story from May, right?
John:
For what?
John:
it's it's like a developers check in but they don't check out i don't know like yes it's the developer re-education center i know i like it's i like i like this quote from the uh from the macromers thing of saying uh you know that schiller talked about it in the trial i mean you know why they bring it up in the trial it's like apple would be like what do you mean we love developers in fact we're building a developer center right now and as the quote said you know has not been previously announced so little information is available at this time that was may 2021
John:
Well, I can tell you right now in May 2022, little information is available at this time.
John:
What the heck is the developer center?
John:
Presumably it's like a bunch of machines and like you can go.
John:
It's like imagine like WWDC Labs, right?
John:
But on Apple's campus where a place where developers are allowed to go.
John:
So it's no secret Apple stuff there.
John:
You go in there, you bring your laptop and your app and there's a bunch of.
John:
you know, Apple engineers there to help you with your app or whatever you need help with.
John:
You need help with UI design, you need help with a particular API, just like WWDC Labs, except a dedicated little room for it in Apple Park, cordoned off from everything else.
John:
That's my best guess at what the developer center would be.
John:
But...
John:
They didn't say, you're going to be here in person.
John:
We're going to watch videos.
John:
All right, sure, whatever.
John:
We're going to explore the developer center.
John:
I don't know what that means.
John:
And so much more.
John:
They can't wait to connect in person, even if you're not vaccinated and aren't wearing a mask, which seems ill-advised to me, especially since this is a lottery.
John:
And honestly, how many people can they let there?
John:
It's not like they're going to have 10,000 people at Apple Park, right?
John:
It's going to be a small number of people.
John:
Uh, it seems, I don't know.
John:
I, I still feel like this entire thing is kind of ill-advised, but you know, that's, that's what they're choosing to do.
John:
It's a small in-person gathering of potentially maskless, potentially unvaccinated people who three days in the past, uh, did not test positive.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Well, we'll see, but I find the developer center somewhat intriguing.
Marco:
Yeah, there's so much that we don't know here.
Marco:
And I think we say that, oh, we got an update from Apple about this whole thing, but the update really only added new questions.
Marco:
It's like an episode of Lost.
Marco:
It's like, all right, well, now we know a little bit more about it, but now we have these new questions of what's the developer center and why no masks?
Marco:
This whole thing is baffling to me.
Marco:
And I do still wonder, as you said, John, they're certainly incurring some degree of COVID risk here by having this event.
Marco:
And while it's probably going to be a low risk, generally speaking, compared to worse scenarios that could exist in worse seasons and worse places –
Marco:
It still doesn't really seem like it's worth the risk to have an event at all right now if it's going to be so limited and still bear some risk.
Marco:
I feel like either have WWDC or don't.
Marco:
But I don't know.
Marco:
I could be wrong.
Marco:
Maybe this is just going to be the way forward indefinitely for WBDC.
Marco:
They've had this issue that we've talked about before, how they made it online only for the last couple of years, and they accidentally made it too good, and they spoiled us, and now we realize that actually this is better for most people most of the time, and it's better for all people in certain ways.
Marco:
And so maybe this is the new kind of compromise of like, okay, well, we still are going to have some kind of in-person component for those who want it, but it's not going to be the full conference in-person the way it used to be.
Marco:
And so we'll see what that means.
Marco:
Again, I still have so many questions about how this actually works in practice.
Marco:
And what, you know, what is the developer center even?
Marco:
What are their plans for that?
Marco:
I mean, I'm sure that got derailed by COVID, but you know, what,
Marco:
What do they plan for that to be?
Marco:
Who gets access?
Marco:
What does it take to get access?
Marco:
What do you have access to once you get there?
Marco:
Is it going to be like labs that are open year round?
Marco:
That's kind of awesome if that's what it is.
Marco:
And that's kind of what it sounds like it might be.
Marco:
so we'll see there's just there's so much unknown and apple keeps dropping like one sentence at a time of what you know what this thing even is what this event is and it's it's hilarious that like when when they drop these sentences here and there they act as though we all already know yeah and i'm sure they know what they're doing you know but still like it's just kind of funny like they're like oh yeah they'll preview the new developer center and everyone's like wait record scratch what like
John:
And then you dig up the the Mac, the article from Mac rumors from May of last year.
John:
I mean, obviously, like doing the PR drip is a common strategy of releasing a little piece of information at a time.
John:
And also, like Apple probably doesn't know the details of exactly what it's doing at this point, because they always plan this stuff at the last minute.
John:
They probably know more than they're saying, but.
John:
It's the combination of those two things.
John:
But, you know, yeah, it gets us to talk about it again because they revealed a little bit more information.
John:
But still, my main overriding sense about this thing is it's weird that they're doing anything in person at this particular time.
John:
You know, I don't oppose the strategy of having a limited in-person thing combined with a mostly online thing.
John:
I think that's great.
John:
And, you know, especially if they have a, you know, a developer center that's always there or more accessible.
John:
That all makes sense, too.
John:
But.
John:
The details of this particular event at this particular time seem strange to me.
John:
And I continue to question who's going to be super enthusiastic about going to this and who's going to be super enthusiastic about being the Apple people at this.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like, because there have to be Apple.
John:
Presumably there's other Apple people at the developer center, unless it is just like one tour guide walking you through backwards, like Casey at Virginia Tech saying, and here's a developer center.
John:
Nice pull.
John:
Nice pull.
John:
Were you actually able to use the developer center?
John:
This is where you would sit and get help.
John:
But anyway, let's continue on.
Casey:
So let me be serious and then let me be silly for a minute.
Casey:
I remember when the Apple Watch first came out.
Casey:
that a lot of developers that were potentially publicly considering writing Apple Watch apps, they quietly got whisked off to San Francisco or Cupertino or whatever and were able to bring their code and run it against not yet released Apple Watches.
Casey:
I only ever heard this through the grapevine, and I don't know that this is true, but I'm pretty sure it's true.
Marco:
and oh no they they it was a public program oh was it okay okay i wasn't sure if it was yeah well there were there's two stages to like pre-release hardware stuff you know there's like before it's even announced certain you know apple might approach certain developers to say hey can you can you make us a demo for our new hardware that we can show off during the keynote that's a very very small group that's kept very under wraps with lots of limitations on you know how they even see the hardware how like it's usually in big boxes it's guarded like it's a whole thing
Marco:
um whereas between when something's been announced to the public and when it's available to the public sometimes you get more access and in in the case of the apple watch what happened was with the the announced it i believe it was it was like a few months before it was going to be available something like that right
Marco:
And so there was a big gap between announcement and availability.
Marco:
And so during that time, they actually launched a program for developers to apply to have this pre-release access so that you could go.
Marco:
It was already announced and shown to the public.
Marco:
So you didn't have to worry about like, you know, breaking the secret of this thing existing.
Marco:
And if you were accepted as a program, you would go and you say they whisked them there.
Marco:
No, the developers had to pay to whisk themselves there.
Casey:
Fair, fair, fair.
Marco:
but uh but yeah so you know if you were accepted you would have like one day you'd be like okay well you could be here during this one day and you'll have access to the hardware um and be able to bring bring your app already mostly done from the simulator and you can run it on this on the actual hardware and make tweaks for one day and then and then see you later um so that's that's what was happening i don't know if that has happened in any other way for anything else they've done in recent history
Casey:
Yeah, I'm not sure either.
Casey:
But I'm thinking of that, and I'm wondering if that's one of the uses of the developer center is to be able to have a specific place to – well, I was going to say bring people – but to have people arrive at and let them play with something.
Casey:
And then it got me thinking – and this is where I'm getting a little bit silly –
Casey:
What if this is all in preparation for the supposedly forthcoming AR glasses?
Casey:
Like, what if this is, I'm sure it's going to be used for other things too, but what if this is in large part to prepare a space, or prepare the way even, you could say, for developers to come and use AR glasses and test their presumably simulator or whatever driven code on actual hardware?
Casey:
Like, I could see a world in which that's what this is about.
John:
It's just a room full of AR tables.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
Just empty blank tables.
John:
Like big places for you to be able to walk around and not bump into things.
John:
Speaking of this, by the way, like the latest, I mean, rumors, whatever.
John:
The latest round of rumors I heard was that, oh, Apple was planning to do the AR stuff at this WWDC, but it got pushed.
John:
But we'll see.
Marco:
I mean, that's been the rumor for every WDC for the last three years.
Marco:
So far, it's been true.
Marco:
I remember the last one they had in person.
Marco:
I remember I was in the room for that one with you guys, I believe.
Marco:
And I remember before the keynote started, they have the screen showing the little animations or whatever.
Marco:
And the animations they were showing looked very much like they would be the style of something drawn for air glasses.
Marco:
It was it was almost like those like laser portraits in the 80s, but like forming shapes.
Marco:
You know what I mean?
Marco:
Like everything was made out of lightsabers.
Marco:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marco:
Like it was that kind of style.
Marco:
And even I remember looking at thinking, oh, my God, are they about to do the AR thing right now?
Marco:
Because that sure looked like that art style sure looks like it.
Marco:
And it turns out it was just that was just the art style for the year.
Marco:
It meant nothing.
Marco:
It was just what they thought looked cool.
Casey:
It was like a virtual boy.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
Getting ready.
Casey:
Yeah, I don't know.
Casey:
We'll see what happens.
Casey:
I mean, I'm enthusiastic about this for other people.
Casey:
You know, it's one of those things like, would you hire this person for your team?
Casey:
No, but I'd hire them for that team over there.
Casey:
I think this is an interesting way for Apple to dip their toe in the water.
Casey:
Personally, for me,
Casey:
I am not in love with the idea of getting on an airplane yet, much less going to a place where a bunch of people are milling about, potentially indoors, potentially without masks.
Casey:
That's not my jam.
Casey:
But if it's your jam, feel free.
Casey:
And I'm very, very excited to see pictures, what people will be allowed to share anyway, pictures and information about how this goes down.
Casey:
But we'll see.
Casey:
All right, our friend Jason, friend of the show Jason, had something to talk about with regard to the Apple Studio Display and settings.
Casey:
And Jason lamented in Macworld, in his periodic column in Macworld, that it would be cool if we had settings for the Studio Display webcam.
Casey:
Wouldn't that be interesting?
Casey:
So Jason writes, we can debate the wisdom of putting center stage on a display, most likely designed for the desks of nerds, but let's leave that aside.
Casey:
Actually, I would like to talk about that briefly.
Casey:
I stand by, I love center stage, and I think this is a reasonable application of it.
Casey:
I think I'm the only one, or maybe Jason was saying the same thing.
John:
I agree with you.
John:
I think center stage is good here.
John:
It's just they need a camera that is capable of doing center stage and not also look like crap.
Casey:
Agreed.
Casey:
So anyway, so back to what Jason wrote.
John:
By the way, the update to the firmware still looks like crap, right?
John:
We all are in agreement on that?
John:
Yeah, some people say it's getting slightly better, but that's why I put this article in here.
John:
I think Jason really nailed the heart of how Apple's traditional ethos hurts it, makes it more difficult for Apple to get out from under this bad hardware that it has chosen to put in its display.
Casey:
Right, so continue with what Jason wrote.
Casey:
How about the audacity of Apple shipping it without any interface to speak of?
Casey:
And how much better might the camera on the studio display have been received if it could be tweaked by its users to produce more pleasing images?
Casey:
The studio display users are reporting that occasionally the studio display's audio speakers or microphones or both get a little choppy.
Casey:
Again, this is me interjecting.
Casey:
That is absolutely factual.
Casey:
Occasionally, the speakers will have... I don't even know how to describe it, but they'll have like...
Casey:
uh just a few milliseconds where they where there's no audio it's enough that you notice but not enough that it's extremely jarring um and then occasionally and this happened to me today i was listening to a podcast using overcast on the mac and i don't think this was overcast i think it was the display uh i'll be listening to something and i'll get and it'll just freeze like that for a while and eventually and what makes me think it was the display is eventually it stopped and
Casey:
And then when I adjusted the volume just to see if anything was working, because I turned back on the pops when you adjust the volume, the boop-boop-boops.
Casey:
Well, anyways, when I did that, I heard it on my clamshelled MacBook Pro.
Casey:
So even though the sound settings last I touched it were set to the studio display, suddenly after the g-g-g-g-g-g-g, the MacBook Pro is what was actually emitting sound.
Casey:
And then I went back in System Preferences, moved it back to the studio display, and everything was fine.
Casey:
It was very weird, though.
Casey:
So, yeah, a little bit of audio problems are definitely happening from time to time.
Casey:
Anyway, back to Jason.
Casey:
The studio display's audio speakers and microphones or both get a little choppy.
Casey:
That's a common problem with audio hardware on the Mac, but it's fixed by the classic tech problem solver.
Casey:
Turn it off and back on.
Casey:
Except the studio display does not have a button.
Casey:
If the audio on the studio display gets weird, your only option is to crawl onto your desk, pull the plug, and then plug it back in.
Casey:
All true.
Casey:
All very true.
John:
and that's because as we noted before you can't even pull the the power cord out of the back of your monitor you can if you really want to pull really hard but that's not supposed to be pulled out it's not a regular connector it is really well wedged in there and it's not the type of connector they want you connecting and disconnecting so even though technically you can yank the cord out you really shouldn't and so because it doesn't have a power button because why would you ever need a power button right apple you have to go and crawl into your desk and find where it's plugged in and unplug it right so
John:
So these two things, like the typical Apple ethos, you don't need a power button because why would you ever need one?
John:
It's just smart enough to know when to turn on and smart enough to know when to turn off.
John:
You don't need to worry about it.
John:
That fails you when it turns out.
John:
Actually, sometimes you do need to turn off because there are bugs.
John:
And then the total lack of settings, right?
John:
A lot of webcams...
John:
have and you can read the article see this there have been third party apps in the past that have let you tweak the image of your apple built-in camera and then of course third party cameras you often come with their own app where you can tweak the brightness the contrast the exposure the focal distance you know all sorts of those things that maybe you could fiddle with to make the image of yourself
John:
in center stage look more pleasing to you.
John:
Like you said in past shows, a lot of the complaints about the center stage camera, aside from the low resolution, is that there is like some over-processing that really smooths out presumably the noise in your face.
John:
And it's like low contrast and overexposed.
John:
And so the over-processing, if you could disable the processing or weaken it, that might help.
John:
But simple things like exposure, right?
John:
And contrast.
John:
Those are basic settings that a lot of webcams have.
John:
And it could just be that people would be happier if they could just have two sliders to mess with those things to make it look more like it does on the iPad.
John:
Again, nothing's going to save the hardware like a lot of people who are frustrated by the studio display are getting third-party devices.
John:
uh webcams or taking like a you know a point and shoot digital camera or a mirrorless camera or whatever and those just look fantastically better so you know there's no no substitute for cubic inches but the nice the with the existing hardware that's there some amount of settings might have actually saved apple from this because the only alternative people have now is there's no as far as i know there's no third-party apps that you can mess with this internal camera with
John:
And people are just waiting around for new, you know, beta versions of macOS that come with slightly tweaked firmware, which again, you can't change.
John:
The only setting you have is basically, should I do center stage or not?
John:
Jason also mentioned if you could select how big of a crop it takes another setting that Apple just doesn't give you.
John:
Oh, Apple changes it from beta to beta.
John:
There's not like they give you a setting of like, how big do you want the crop to be?
John:
And that could also help you be happier with your camera.
John:
So yeah.
John:
Lack of settings, it's a known thing with Apple, and when there is a problem, the lack of settings, as we've discussed in the past, when troubleshooting things, really makes it so the user has no recourse, except for just to wait around and hope Apple fixes their problem.
Casey:
For what it's worth, the LG Ultrafine also has no buttons whatsoever, which is also kind of annoying.
Casey:
honestly they would just screw them up probably it's better for lg to attempt fewer things because they obviously can't do even the basics correctly oh as quick aside speaking of screwing up buttons did you guys see i'm not gonna be able to find the website while we were talking but i'll put a link in the show notes did you see the new um the thing about the mechanical watches
Casey:
This was posted in a Slack role.
John:
I think I still have it open with my windows.
John:
I haven't finished going through it, so it's still in a browser window.
John:
I will have it for you in a second.
John:
Here you go.
John:
I got it.
John:
I got it.
Casey:
I'm not going to try to pronounce this name because I'm not going to do it any justice.
Casey:
But this is a website that this person does some phenomenal live animations of things in mechanical engineering.
Casey:
And discusses how things work.
Casey:
If I recall correctly, the same person did an absolutely brilliant version on the internal combustion engine.
Casey:
This is so cool.
Casey:
And to see... I knew a little teeny tiny bit about how a mechanical watch worked...
Casey:
But this is one of those things where you literally build a mechanical, well, not literally, I shouldn't say, but you effectively build a mechanical watch from first principles and from nothing into a fully functioning watch with a complication, the whole rigmarole.
Casey:
Marco, if you haven't read this already, this is straight up your alley.
Casey:
This is super cool.
Casey:
But yeah, with regard to the display, for my personal needs, the camera doesn't really bother me that much.
Casey:
Of course I wish it was better, but I'm not sitting on Zoom calls all day long.
Casey:
If I was sitting on Zoom calls all day long, this would really tick me off.
Casey:
Center stage is awesome, and it works.
Casey:
I tried it with, I think it was with Zoom, and it did work with Zoom.
Casey:
And I, again, I stand by Center Stage.
Casey:
I think it's you, John, me, and I think Jason also did as well, if memory serves.
Casey:
But we might be the only ones that, there are dozens of us, we might be the only ones that are enthusiastic about it.
Casey:
But nevertheless, I still think Center Stage is a perfectly reasonable application, or it's perfectly reasonable on the studio display.
Casey:
And, and for my uses, I'm not too bothered by all this, but golly, if I was sitting on zoom all day, every day, this would really, really, really frustrate me.
Casey:
Moving on.
Casey:
Uh, we can't go another episode without talking about Elon Musk apparently.
Casey:
So we had some feedback.
Casey:
Um, I don't want to read this person's name just in case that would get them in trouble, but we had some feedback and it is as follows.
Casey:
It's a little bit long, but it's, it's fascinating.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
The plaintiff in our case actually sold very few Twitter shares, a lot of money for him, but not a lot of money in the scheme of things.
Casey:
There's a system, and the attorneys who will ultimately lead the case will be the ones to represent the investor who lost the most money and wants to serve as lead.
Casey:
That may or may not be us.
Casey:
We take all our cases for securities fraud and other security law violations on contingency and at risk, and get paid a percentage of a recovery if we are successful.
Casey:
This model may not be ideal, but it's the system we have.
Casey:
Contingency class action lawyers are often maligned, and I agree with much of the criticism, millions of dollars of fees for the lawyers, when the injured class members get a coupon in the mail for 10% off another product from the company that wronged them.
Casey:
Our cases don't settle for coupons.
Casey:
The class usually gets around 75% of any recovery we ultimately obtain.
Casey:
The security laws are written in such a way that there aren't any punitive damages, so recoveries are often not 100%.
Casey:
But I feel great about what I do, both because of the recoveries we are able to get for the classes we represent and for the hopefully deterrent effect we have in the markets.
Casey:
Unfortunately, in Elon's case, I don't think the system can provide much of a deterrent because there's no amount of money that will cause him to lose sleep.
Casey:
But that doesn't mean he's above the law, and hopefully we'll get a chance to remedy that for those who sold their shares too cheaply when he was hiding his stake.
Casey:
It's fun to hear my case discussed, sorry Marco, even for just a few seconds.
Casey:
In a prior life, I used to defend Apple in privacy-related class actions, so I guess it isn't the first time.
Casey:
I just thought that was all super interesting.
Casey:
So thank you to that anonymous person.
John:
Yeah, it's interesting that the one he's representing is not some super rich shareholder, but, you know, obviously, you know, they're working, you know, they said, we don't make money unless we win.
John:
And they get, you know, it's not like class action, like you said, but he described it well with the handful of lawyer gets millions of dollars and the class gets some, you know, pittance.
John:
But it is actually similar because if they get a percentage of,
John:
If they're representing someone who had millions and millions of losses, they're going to get back 75 percent of their million.
John:
And that means the lawyers get 25 percent of that million back.
John:
So anyway, I guess they don't get anything if they lose.
John:
I mostly agree like that it is good that someone's trying to, you know.
John:
Hold him account for doing a thing that he ostensibly wasn't supposed to do.
John:
It's kind of sad that this is this is supposed to be against the law and you're not supposed to do it according to whatever against the the rules of the SEC that are supposed to govern business in the United States.
John:
But you can just flout those rules and just assume no one's going to come after you because apparently the SEC can't or won't kind of like how our IRS is.
John:
can't go after rich people because they don't have enough money to audit them because it's very expensive and time-consuming to audit rich people because rich people have lots of lawyers and accountants and everything.
John:
So the IRS goes, ah, we can't go after rich people.
John:
We'll just go after slightly less rich people who we can afford to pursue, which is a totally broken system.
John:
And in this case, it seems like the SEC is not interested in going after clear violations of their rules and
John:
And so they leave it to the private sector, quote unquote, where lawyers will take it up because if they can recover some of the money that people say that they lost, because, you know, again, he was hiding his stake in Twitter and had people known that he was buying up all those shares, they would have acted differently, but they didn't.
John:
So they ended up losing money on stock.
John:
It's seems like it's a difficult thing to prove or at least the very least a difficult thing to obviously you can't you can't even get all your money back.
John:
You can get some percentage of your money back, but some percentage is better than zero.
John:
So yeah.
John:
we can just like if this succeeds it will be added to the list of sort of slap on the wrist things that elon has run afoul of so when someone says elon musk has never done anything wrong you can say well he has he hasn't done anything wrong that has caused him to as in the words of this uh you know feedback lose sleep like nothing has actually hurt him because he's when you're very wealthy it's very difficult to have anything that hurts you but has he ever done anything wrong and you know
John:
provably wrong like where everyone agrees he did a wrong thing and then he got either convicted or sued and lost or whatever yeah sure happens all the time i mean we'll see what happens with for example all the discrimination lawsuits in the tesla factories or whatever and add that to the column of things that probably don't you know make a difference in the grand scheme of things to ellen musk personally but never let it be said that he has never done anything wrong and is blameless the blameless angel that some of our listeners may believe he is
Casey:
Alright, I wanted to channel upstream and do a couple of quick things, cover a couple of quick things that I thought were super interesting.
Casey:
Over the last couple of weeks, there's been rumors that Sunday Ticket might be coming to Apple TV+.
Casey:
Marco, could you describe to me what Sunday Ticket is, please?
Marco:
Yes, you are going for a drive on the weekend and you go a little bit too fast and an officer of law prevents you from going further and gives you a piece of paper that makes you pay money.
Casey:
I'm kind of annoyed at how good an answer that was.
Casey:
That is not at all close to what it actually means, but that was an annoyingly good answer.
Casey:
Well done, sir.
Casey:
So Sunday ticket is a thing for American football.
Casey:
It used to be for years, and as it stands, still is, for years and years and years and years, the only way you could get access to, with exceptions, any NFL football game was to pay an obscene amount of money to a particular cable provider.
Casey:
And it's actually not cable, it's satellite provider.
Casey:
so dish network which has had other names in the past had a exclusive deal with the nfl such that in order to get sunday ticket and again this is the thing that lets you watch whatever games you want with exceptions uh any no matter where they are and and it has some other features too like a channel that showed only the super exciting plays in football because as much as i do love football let's be honest it's kind of boring um i'm sorry it's direct tv not dish thank you cmf
Marco:
You're going to anger so many people.
Marco:
This is going to be fantastic.
Casey:
I can't wait.
Casey:
I love football, even though I shouldn't.
Marco:
But nevertheless, let's be honest.
Marco:
Just a quick aside, because I don't know what you're talking about for the most part, but just a quick aside.
Marco:
You mentioned it lets you watch some of the games.
Marco:
Well, most of the games.
Marco:
Well, you know...
Marco:
the feeling the feeling i get and maybe you know i could be wrong i don't know anything about sports i'm probably wrong but it seems like the leagues really hate the fans like that's factual they absolutely hate you all the crap they make you go through to have subpar experiences and so many limits and and i know that i know why i know you know it's because of
Marco:
basically large money deals between large companies.
John:
They don't hate the fans.
John:
They just love money.
John:
Right.
Marco:
It seems like they hate you so, so much.
Marco:
Again, maybe it's just me and my lack of a traditional father growing up, and that's why I'm not into sports at all, but I don't understand why people would...
John:
care so much to get through all this crap meanwhile i guess i mean i'm buying apple products and putting up all their software bugs and everything so maybe maybe a bad example how much you went through back in the day to watch the uh quick time for uh streaming video from wwdc you know you would have gone through a lot to do that and people are willing to do exactly that much think of think of our friend that we know who has a sling box in the midwest to view something to view
John:
sporting events on the other side of the world like we would totally do that if that's what we needed to do to be able to see wwdc keynote live so i don't think we have any sort of uh high ground to stand on here i suppose that's and by the way it's not a sling box it's a prior sponsor channels which is excellent uh
Casey:
But anyways, I take your point, Marco, and it's exactly what John said.
Casey:
It's not necessarily that they hate the fans, although in some cases I think that's kind of true.
Casey:
But it's more that they want money, money, money, money, money, money more than anything else in the world.
Casey:
And they make these ridiculous deals with anyone who gets near them about, oh, well, we can show this game in these areas and these markets, but not that market and not when it's too close to home and so on and so forth.
Casey:
It's a mess.
John:
Yeah, they want to sell exclusive rights because you make money by saying we will sell you this and it's valuable because you will be the exclusive rights holder to air this type of game for this team in this area or whatever.
John:
And the exclusivity makes it valuable.
John:
And the exclusivity means now all of a sudden there's a bunch of rules about what you can show on like the blanket streaming service or in their app or whatever.
John:
It's like, well, we have this, you know, it's –
John:
It's just, you know, it's how they make money.
John:
Right.
John:
And sometimes it's a huge amount of money and sometimes these are weird legacy deals and they'll slowly fade out.
John:
I'm sure, you know, listen to someone talking to a sporting podcast about how the age of streaming is changing the landscape of local television contracts and blackouts and a lot of this stuff.
John:
But.
John:
stuff like that changes slowly.
John:
And in the end, there is value inherent in the sporting events because people want to see them.
John:
It's just a question of who is going to, how much money that value is going to make and for whom.
John:
And so I think the total amount of money it's going to make is probably going to stay the same, but that money is going to move around.
John:
I'm hoping, I bet sports fans are hoping that by the end,
John:
There is a simpler way as a fan to give the amount of money required for you to see the things you want to see.
John:
Right now, it seems anything but simple because we seem like we're in this in-between period of, you know, cable and streaming services and over-the-air live TV all in the mix.
John:
And I don't know how people even keep it straight of, you know, how they have to watch the thing.
John:
But, you know, then again.
John:
it's like that for streaming tv that's why things like just watch exists the just watch app and whatever it is just watch.com it's literally the second place i go i first place is what am i going to watch second place is how do i watch that and i just go to just watch and say just watch please tell me how i can watch this and then it tells me of the umpteen services i've subscribed to here are the different ways you can watch it uh that's not an app i needed when i was a kid and i had 13 channels yeah it's so true and this is all relevant because um
Casey:
You know, the NFL wouldn't sell you.
Casey:
The NFL had a streaming product years and years and years ago.
Casey:
Before that was super duper popular.
Casey:
The NFL had a streaming product.
Casey:
And I'm sure like the baseball people say, oh, baseball was for it.
Casey:
It doesn't matter.
Casey:
But the point is, years ago, it had a streaming product.
Casey:
But you could only subscribe to it if you were not American.
Casey:
And if you entered American contact information or came to the NFL website from America, they would say kindly pound sand and pay direct TV.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So a friend of the show, Lex Friedman, many moons ago, and this website is now gone from the Internet, but many moons ago, he put up a post that said, hey, you can pay a company to give you a DNS server that's way off in Europe.
Casey:
And that was all you needed in order to get the NFL to serve you the European page.
Casey:
And then you could pay the NFL like 150 bucks to get Sunday ticket.
Casey:
via streaming, but you had to masquerade as a European to do it, and it was a total mess.
Casey:
Well, anyways, all of this to say, yes, I totally understand, Marco, why this seems bananas to you, and you're not really wrong, but a Sunday ticket may be coming to Apple TV+, which would be wild, and I think a huge deal, because a lot of Americans, myself included, although I mostly don't pay attention to the NFL anymore, a lot of Americans really love American football and the NFL, and
Casey:
And for Sunday Ticket to be available via streaming would be a big deal.
Casey:
And maybe it is already on DirecTV and I misunderstand it, but my understanding is you cannot get Sunday Ticket without being a DirecTV member.
Casey:
And yes, I would presume that you wouldn't be able to get Sunday Ticket in this potential new world unless you're an Apple TV Plus member.
Casey:
But that is a much easier thing to do than putting a satellite dish on your friggin' house.
Casey:
So I just think this is fascinating.
Casey:
Even though I don't pay attention to the NFL, I still think it would be super cool if Sunday Ticket came to Apple TV+.
Casey:
And I know they're doing the Friday Night Baseball games, and they're kind of dipping their toe in the water of sports stuff.
Casey:
So I really, really am keeping a keen eye on this to see where it goes.
Casey:
And I think it's a fascinating play.
Casey:
And then additionally, very quickly, there was a rumor or there's been a statement, actually.
Casey:
This is from the Registered Citizen, which is a paper that I don't remember ever hearing about before.
Casey:
But apparently Apple TV Plus has commissioned a movie on the Danbury Trashers.
Casey:
And you might say, well, what in the hell are the Danbury Trashers?
Casey:
So the story of me driving a family friend's Ferrari says,
Casey:
The family friend was the owner of the Danbury Trashers minor league hockey team.
Casey:
And this you may have heard about many, many years ago in the early aughts because he then made his then 17-year-old son the general manager of the Danbury Trashers minor league hockey team.
Casey:
And so there was a documentary done about this.
Casey:
It is on Netflix.
Casey:
It is excellent.
Casey:
It is called Untold Crime and Penalties.
Casey:
And I will put that link in the show notes.
Casey:
I would watch it again, but I just canceled my Netflix subscription, but that's neither here nor there.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
But either way, yeah, so there's a documentary about this.
Casey:
It's like an hour, hour and a half, and it's excellent.
Casey:
And then I talked about all this on Analog because, you know, this guy, Jimmy Galante, he was in the garbage business, hence Danbury Trashers.
Casey:
He was very Italian.
Marco:
Had a lot of money from the garbage business, and he was an Italian from New Jersey.
Marco:
Okay.
Casey:
And he went to jail for tax evasion for a while.
Casey:
So I'll let you put the in-between together.
Casey:
But he was always super nice to me.
Casey:
He was always super nice to me and let me drive a Ferrari once.
Casey:
And that was pretty cool.
Casey:
So anyway, so I just thought this was fascinating.
Casey:
And this is a little bit selfish, but I think it's super interesting and neat.
Casey:
And apparently one of the stars of, shoot, what is this?
Casey:
Stranger Things.
Casey:
This gentleman's name is David Harbour.
Casey:
He's going to play the aforementioned Jimmy Galante.
Casey:
So it hits close to home.
Casey:
It was super weird watching this documentary and seeing their kitchen and being like, wow, I've stood in that kitchen many times before.
Casey:
This is really weird and creepy.
Casey:
But anyways, I just thought that was fascinating.
Marco:
I will say, too, while we're on TV for a moment, in a failed effort to find anything else to watch for the moment, Tiff and I decided to just start watching Severance again.
John:
Yeah, I was just talking to Aaron about this.
John:
What do you mean again?
John:
I thought you already had started.
John:
Did you start over again?
Marco:
yeah so we you know we finished the season that you know right now they're between seasons oh you're watching it a second time now yeah so we're we're going back and re-watching a season one and they're like we're only a couple episodes in but there is so much to pick up on a second watch through so if you if you enjoyed season one and if you don't what's wrong with you but if you enjoyed season one i strongly suggest go back and watch it again like while it's still fresh in your mind and there's so much there that you will pick up the second time so it's pretty cool
Casey:
Yeah, you know, I would recommend that for you as well, John, but I hear that you don't like, you didn't like Severance at all.
Marco:
Wait, I haven't heard the episode yet.
Marco:
Saving it for a long drive tomorrow.
Marco:
I am.
Marco:
I'm actually watching it a second time because I'm watching it with a wife.
John:
The frustrating thing that annoys everybody that I will say again, so all you and all the listeners can also be annoyed is, you know, a lot of the things that Mark was picking up on the second time were possible to also pick up the first time.
Casey:
If you were paying attention.
Casey:
Not all of us are smart and observant as you, John.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
John:
That's not about being smart and observant, actually.
John:
What it is, and this is why Marco is ill-equipped to deal with it, is experience watching similar programs, right?
John:
It's basically like, do you know the tropes?
John:
Do you know how things are normally telegraphed?
John:
When you see X, like, I don't want to spoil anything, but there's, like, what they do in the, like, previously on, right?
John:
When they do the previously on?
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
I never watch those because they spoil too much.
John:
Right.
John:
So the reason they do the previous sound like I think on episode eight or nine, they do a previously on that reminds you of something that was in episode one or two, because because they assume most people have forgotten by now about episode one or two or the thing that they are showing you previously on wasn't noteworthy to people because they're not familiar with the tropes.
John:
But if you've seen lots of shows like this, when it happened in episode one or two.
John:
you go, oh, that probably means that X and Y are going to happen.
John:
And then when X and Y do happen, and it's not about being observant or being smart.
John:
It's just like, how many shows like this have you watched before?
John:
And for Marco, that number is usually zero, right?
John:
Unless he's watching a sitcom, right?
John:
So that's why, you know, it's not a character judgment and it's not because Marco wasn't paying attention and he was on his phone or whatever.
John:
It is just simply like, how many similar shows like this have you seen before?
Casey:
I was just talking to Aaron and my parents about this, and my mom and dad had just finished Severance for the first time, and dad was like, man, I've got to watch it again.
Casey:
I was thinking about this too, and Aaron and me and dad were talking about this.
Casey:
I feel like I do need to do a rewatch, because I really enjoy it.
Casey:
We don't need to go into this much more.
Casey:
I really enjoyed it.
Casey:
I don't know if I enjoyed it quite as much as everyone around me enjoyed it, but I definitely enjoyed it a lot, and I feel like I missed a lot, and I need to go through it one more time.
John:
And the best kind of rewatch, my favorite kind of rewatch is the kind I'm doing where I get to introduce the show to someone who hasn't seen it.
John:
I haven't watched it and liked it.
John:
And I could say to my wife, I like the show and I think you'll like it too, which are not always the same thing.
John:
But in this case, I think you'll like it too.
John:
And then to be able to take her through with it and then refuse to answer her questions when you ask me because I don't want to spoil anything.
Casey:
I'm pretty I'm pretty sure, John, that Merlin said that you didn't like it.
John:
That's not what I heard.
Casey:
All right, let's talk iPhone 14 display panels.
Casey:
There's been a picture leaked that purports to have the iPhone 14, 14 Pro, 14 Max, and 14 Pro Max all arrayed.
Casey:
And it is, well, other than way too many words and way too many names, way too many numbers.
Casey:
It looks like about what everyone's been saying it's going to look like.
Casey:
So the iPhone, let me paint you a word picture.
Casey:
The iPhone 14 Pro and 14 look to be approximately the same size.
Casey:
The 14, the non-Pro, appears to have the traditional notch, whereas the 14 Pro has, what are we calling this?
Casey:
The pill and something?
Casey:
The pill and lozenge?
Casey:
Is that right?
John:
The sideways eye.
Casey:
A sideways eye is actually a pretty good description.
Casey:
No, it's not a pill.
John:
That's not what people are going to call it, but it looks like a little stylized letter I on its side.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
And then the 14 Max and 14 Pro Max, I think they're the same size.
Casey:
But again, the 14 Max, the notch, the 14 Pro Max, the sideways i, sideways lowercase i. And...
Casey:
Again, this is around the time of year that we would see fairly accurate leaks.
Casey:
To my eye, this looks accurate, but I'm no expert on these sorts of things.
Casey:
And this is about what we'd expect.
Casey:
I'm intrigued that the pro models are the only ones that go notch and hole or whatever we're calling it, the side eye.
Casey:
But one way or another, this looks like it smells like it's probably true to me.
John:
Yeah, all the iPhones always leak.
John:
Everything leaks.
John:
It's impossible to keep it.
John:
These are real parts, I'm sure.
John:
We've got everything about it that has leaked.
John:
We've got the hole.
John:
We've got what the case looks like.
John:
We've got what the cameras look like.
John:
We've got some specs on them.
John:
Obviously, we don't have the colors, but we've got probably the names.
John:
We don't have the prices.
John:
But anyway, the reason I thought this particular leak was fun was because these phones, especially in a year when there's not going to be a quote-unquote redesign, which basically means they change the sides and the back, these phones are so sort of...
John:
defined by the by looking at the face of them like that this part this one part which is just like the cover glass or whatever if you see that you've seen the whole phone basically right because you know what is it going to be it's going to be a rectangle that's going to be that big and it's going to have these features on the screen which is kind of what we're interested in terms of like is it full screen how big is the notch what else is there and then there'll be a phone behind that
John:
right and what will look like will look like your current one it's got a flat size got a flat back it'll come in a bunch of different colors or whatever right and and then obviously what's inside it really counts like what processor is this the specs on the camera of course that also leaks in separate rumors but this one little part is such a sort of like yep this is what the next set of phones are going to look like and the reason i thought this was interesting is because despite all the rumors of us talking about we talked about this on past shows like the whole the little hole punched out for the camera and the slightly longer hole for the face id sensors versus the notch or whatever one thing that really stands out when you see you know the parts
John:
sitting in front of you there's a thing a lot of the rumors had mentioned but it's like it's more visceral when you see it is that the little you know we'll put the link in the the show notes so you can see the image but if you don't know it's like a circular cutout and then like a lozenge shape next to it as opposed to the notch right because the circular cutout and the lozenge
John:
are near the top of the display where the notch would be, but there's screen between them and the top of the phone.
John:
Unlike the notch, there's no screen between the notch and the top of the phone.
John:
The notch is the top of the phone.
John:
The screen ends, the notch begins, and that's it.
John:
And this thing, if you're going up the middle of the phone, you hit the lozenge, and then you hit some more screen, and then you hit the top of the phone.
John:
So I'm not sure of the exact measurements, but it looks to me like it's possible that the little lozenge thing...
John:
is lower on the screen than the notch yeah it does look like that from this picture it could just be a weird perspective trick but i think it does look like it's a little bit lower and so you get more pixels of lit up screen but some of those pixels are on the other side of the lozenge and like if the lozenge is blocking part of your like video if you turn it landscape and you're watching some video and the lozenge is blocking it the notch blocks video sometimes too right but
John:
the lozenge would block the video and then you'd also be able to see a little bit of the video on the other side of the lozenge.
John:
And I do wonder, I know this is the pro models, only the pro models have this, only the more expensive ones will have the lozenge.
John:
And I'm wondering,
John:
yeah you get more lit up pixels numerically on the pro ones but would you prefer to have the smaller notch from the non-pro or the lozenge and i'm looking at this and i'm wondering if i wouldn't rather have the knots just because it would be it it might intrude less far into the content you know what i mean
Marco:
Yeah, this does not immediately appeal to me very much because, you know, what the notch effectively becomes is a status bar.
Marco:
Like, this is just where we shoved the status bar, which wasn't exactly useful space before for, you know, full color, full width stuff before it was a black bar.
Marco:
And, you know, you'd have stuff on the sides and maybe a little thing in the middle and that would be it.
Marco:
Like, you know, the clock would be in the middle or whatever.
Marco:
And they just, you know, they rearranged the status bar when they brought the notch into things.
Marco:
And they just shoved the stuff on the sides, and that was kind of it.
Marco:
And so we didn't really lose much.
Marco:
You know, similar, see also when they added the notch to the MacBook Pro last year, that, well, where the notch covers in the MacBook Pro is just usually a blank part of the menu bar.
Marco:
And so we weren't really losing any useful screen space by that.
Marco:
It doesn't really matter, right?
Marco:
And so on the iPhone, same thing.
Marco:
It's like they rearrange the status bar to work around it.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
to then try to, you know, change from the notch to this weird hole punch thing, are we actually really gaining anything from that besides it looks cooler?
Marco:
Now, that being said, it looking cooler is a major reason why they might want to do this because...
Marco:
You know, the hole punch style is already occurring in the Android world.
Marco:
That does, I think, look slightly more modern.
Marco:
And so to have a visual differentiation, especially for their pro models, that does make sense.
Marco:
I see why they're doing it.
Marco:
But from a utility point of view...
Marco:
I don't see how that helps us with the exception that like I will get to see a little bit more blue at the top of my screen, you know, from my wallpaper on the lock screen.
Marco:
That's like I'll see a little bit more sky.
John:
Well, it's narrower than the notch, too.
John:
It seems like so you get a little bit in terms of content.
John:
It's a look for the status bar, for example, up there in the ears of where the ears of the notch are.
John:
There's a little bit more space.
John:
And then it also means when you're, you know, I'm thinking of like losing landscape video when you're in landscape mode and the content is trying to go to the edge of the phone, but there's either the notch or the lozenge there.
John:
The lozenge will cover less of it just because it's not as wide.
John:
But my main thing is like, OK, so it's not as wide, but if it is lower on the phone, that it is intruding farther into my content.
John:
Again, I'm sure this is mostly a non-issue because.
John:
like the notch, we will eventually just get, you know, notch blindness, ad banner blindness, hole punch blindness.
John:
We will just, we will all just collectively, we learned this with the notch.
John:
We were worried about how it would be.
John:
We all got our phones with the notches.
John:
Now we just do not see it and think about it at all, right?
John:
I think that is universal.
John:
And I'm sure that will happen with this too.
John:
I'm just like, when you were getting at it, Marco, I'm like, but is it actually any sort of upgrade or is it just status quo?
John:
Like if you didn't have this, right?
John:
I guess the only upgrade is that,
John:
You can it's easier to visually distinguish the more expensive phone.
John:
So whatever thrill you get from having the more expensive model is a little bit keener or something.
John:
And I don't even know if it looks cooler because like hole punch phones remind me of Android.
John:
They've had it for years and years and years.
John:
And so for me, it's not a status symbol.
John:
It's on the way towards, you know, let's not have, let's have a full screen phone, right?
John:
We're not there yet.
John:
Presumably we'll get there eventually, but not this year and probably not next year, but eventually iPhone 16 maybe, or whenever they go full screen, we talked about this when the notch came out.
John:
It's like Apple does not want the notch.
John:
It is a necessary evil.
John:
And the moment Apple can get rid of the notch, they will.
John:
Can't get rid of a net.
John:
They've shrunk it and now they've turned it into a lozenge.
John:
And eventually it will be gone entirely and we'll all be happy.
John:
But until they can get there, it's just,
Marco:
keep pushing on the perimeter of that thing and then we'll just you know we'll ignore it out of the corner of our eye and just you know go on with our lives yeah i mean i i do think though like having it look different and cooler and newer even if the function is not that different that is a major thing that apple is always seeking and needs to seek you know they they have challenges getting people to upgrade their phones if their phones still work
Marco:
And if Apple doesn't change much year to year, they get criticized for it.
Marco:
Like, oh, why does this phone look the same as my old one?
Marco:
So they do actually need things like this to keep moving the design forward, to keep appealing to people, and to look fresh and new.
Marco:
So even if all it is is like a reshuffling of the existing trade-offs with a new shape that doesn't actually really give you that much extra –
Marco:
that is itself a valuable thing because people will say, Oh look, they redesigned it.
Marco:
It looks fresh and new, you know?
Marco:
So that I, I see why they're doing this if they can.
Marco:
Um, but you know, for actual utility, it won't matter too much.
Marco:
I don't think, but it will look cooler, you know, temporarily.
John:
Yeah.
John:
and that probably is for all the tech nerdery that we talk about that probably is one of the most important factors making a regular non you know tech nerd enthusiast people get the pro we know that the pro according to the rumors is going to have a totally different system on a chip that's going to be way better than the 14 because the plane 14 is going to have a 15 and the protein pro is going to have the you know or a 15 and the 14 pro is going to have the a 16 right but nobody cares about that except for us like
John:
that that is a way bigger differentiating factor if you wanted to say what's the difference between the pro and the max well the cameras are going to be different but also an entirely different system on a chip and the new one presumably is way better in a bunch of ways right but nobody cares about that but everybody can see notch versus lozenge and does it matter like we said is there any practical benefit no but look lozenge and they tell me lozenge is better so therefore you know it's like like that is so that and colors are
John:
are like so much more important to getting people to upgrade to the pro than trying to explain to them that the number after the A on the system on a chip that people don't even have any concept of.
John:
It's one bigger on this one.
John:
This is a 16, that's a 15.
John:
What difference is it like with the sort of AB test?
John:
Put the two phones in people's hands and cover up the lozenge and let them swipe around.
John:
How long do you think it would take a regular human being
John:
or us for that matter, to be able to tell one is an A16, one is an A15.
John:
You're never going to be able to tell looking at Safari, looking at... You'd have to run a benchmark or maybe play a game with an FPS counter because if you just play a game, it's so hard to tell, right?
John:
Or you'd have to use it all day.
John:
Say the A16 has better battery life.
John:
It's...
John:
Even though that is the differentiating factor of these phones and the A15 is an existing chip that you can buy today, what people will probably care more about is lozenge versus notch.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And I think when you look at this lineup, the other big piece of news here is that this...
Marco:
pretty clearly you know is supporting the the rumor for a while that there's going to be a a quote low-end max and i i know this is all it's all relative right these are all expensive phones uh apple doesn't make a low-end phone but um you know so they're going to have not only the like you know
Marco:
regular 14, 14 Pro, and 14 Pro Max, but now they're also having a 14 Max that is not a Pro.
Marco:
So they're going to have two sizes with two families, and you'll have all four combinations of which pairing you want to get.
Marco:
And because they're moving to that, and I think it's fairly obvious to guess why they are doing that, because
Marco:
they will capture more of the market by having a large phone that is not super expensive.
Marco:
It's only regular expensive, which is as best as Apple can hope for.
Marco:
So there is market to capture there, and so I see why they are doing that.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
This also being the year that they are more differentiating the pro family from the non-pro family, I think it's not a coincidence that they're adding that big non-pro phone the same year the pros are going to have more differences between them and the non-pros.
Marco:
And that goes from both the system on a chip that allegedly is happening where they're only going to have the 16 and the 14s are going to keep the 15.
Marco:
This is getting very confusing.
Or
Marco:
and also you know they're going to look visually different still now i think personally apple overvalues the difference in materials used on the phone because what they've done so far with the pro phones you know in recent years is they have this stainless steel band which makes it heavier and they have the the like textured glass back which makes it more slippery to hold
Marco:
So the way they make the pro phones look different from the non-pro phones to date has made them physically worse phones by being both heavier and slipperier.
Marco:
And so maybe by taking a different method of, you know, these screens are going to actually look different from the front.
Marco:
It's going to look very different.
Marco:
Maybe they can stop using the fingerprint magnet heavy stainless steel on the case band and maybe make it a little bit nicer of a phone to hold by maybe shedding some weight.
John:
I hope I don't get rid of the stainless steel.
John:
Yes, it is heavier, but it's not that much heavier.
John:
And I really do think it feels more expensive.
John:
It's like in luxury cars.
John:
You can do things to the control surfaces that don't make them any better.
John:
And in fact, are probably heavier than the previous ones, but they feel more expensive.
John:
I love the feel of the stainless steel.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And they probably do want to use a more expensive material.
John:
That's the whole point.
John:
It's like, you know, heavy AV equipment where they put lead weights in it.
John:
They just want it to feel more expensive.
John:
And in some ways, being a couple ounces heavier and having that stainless steel feel is that luxury feel they're going after.
John:
The slipperiness is harder to excuse, though.
John:
It's like even if you really like a matte surface, how much are you going to like it when your phone falls out of your hand and...
Marco:
breaks in the ground so and yeah i mean everyone uses cases i know i know yeah they need but still they they should not make the pro one slipperier but i'm okay with it being a little bit heavier in exchange for the really cool stainless steel because i think it's great we are brought to you this week by squarespace squarespace is the all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online you can stand out with a beautiful website engage with your audience and sell anything you want products your content that you create even your time all
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Marco:
And when you're ready to launch, use offer code ATP to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
Marco:
Once again, squarespace.com slash ATP.
Marco:
And when you're ready to go, use code ATP to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Squarespace for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, so let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
Andre Videla writes, is Casey still using Combine?
Casey:
If so, what is it like since it came out in 2019?
Casey:
How does it compare to RxSwift in practice, and what's the future of declarative or event-based frameworks on the platform?
Casey:
And have Marco and John tried them as well?
Casey:
So I do still use Combine, but relatively sparingly.
Casey:
So Combine is, I would argue, functional reactive programming.
Casey:
It's trying to embrace that, hey, things are going to happen asynchronously over time.
Casey:
Let's just make that a thing.
Casey:
Let's deal with that in an intelligent way.
Casey:
And what's great about Combine and RxSwift is that you can take something...
Casey:
An event happening and you can say, all right, well, out of this class that represents this event, I only care about this object and then I want to do something with it and this, that and the other thing.
Casey:
And you can kind of transform these chains of events or you can make these chains of functions that transform an input into an output and do something with it.
Casey:
And Combine lets you do this.
Casey:
ArcSwift lets you do this.
Casey:
A great example of this is using Notification Center.
Casey:
If you're an iOS developer, Notification Center is a way to pass messages around your app.
Casey:
It's kind of the global message bus that I feel like, maybe it's a me thing, but all developers eventually want a global message bus.
Casey:
And that's what Notification Center is.
Casey:
And Combine has a really great, or Notification Center has a really great Combine API for it, where you can say, all right, when such and such notification happens, give it to me, and then I'll do things with it.
Casey:
That's a great example where I still use Combine.
Casey:
But I don't really let it take over my apps in the same way that I did with RxSwift, and that's largely because with RxSwift, it had kind of a subproject called RxCoco, which gave you observables, that's kind of like publishers and CombineSpeak, but it gave you
Casey:
It gave you events when things happen with Coco.
Casey:
So, like, when buttons were tapped, when things were scrolled, and so on and so forth.
Casey:
And Combine doesn't really touch Coco Touch.
Casey:
Like, that's its own thing.
Casey:
Like, it doesn't really touch UIKit.
Casey:
And there's good things about that.
Casey:
There's bad things about that.
Casey:
But because it doesn't really have an equivalent of RX Coco, I don't use it near as much as I used RX Swift.
Casey:
And I think for the most part, that's probably okay.
Casey:
But I definitely do use it sometimes.
Casey:
Now, with regard to what's the future, I think it's pretty clear that async await is where Apple thinks the future is going and where they're putting their efforts.
Casey:
And this has been made even more clear with the recent, just in the last month or two, release of async algorithms.
Casey:
And async algorithms is an open source package that's not part of the Swift runtime or package.
Casey:
But it's stapled on the side of Swift, or optionally you can staple it on the side of Swift.
Casey:
And what it basically does is it fills in a lot of the gaps that Combine doesn't have on its own.
Casey:
Or excuse me, that Async Await doesn't have on its own.
Casey:
So it has operators like Combine Latest, Join, Zip, Merge, things of that nature, and different ways of creating asynchronous sequences and things like that.
Casey:
And so this fills in a lot of the gaps that Combine was able to do that Async Await was not.
Casey:
And I haven't really played much with async algorithms yet, but it seems clear to me that for most use cases, in my opinion, I would start with async await, maybe paired with async algorithms.
Casey:
And then I would use combine, not when I'm forced to, because obviously I'm never forced to, but only when that is really, truly, clearly the best available option.
Casey:
With all that said, I'm happy to honor questions if either of you two fellows have any, but I'd love to ask John.
Casey:
I mean, you're not really doing iOS development at the moment, so I assume you've not really touched Combine.
John:
I haven't.
John:
And hearing you say all these things, and I also saw the async algorithms thing when it was announced.
John:
I'm wondering, what do you think this means for Combine?
John:
Is Combine going to go away and these are the replacements?
John:
It's so weird because Apple releases these things to the public.
John:
So Combine has to exist because people wrote apps against it, right?
John:
So it has to be there.
John:
for some period of time, but do you think this is a sign that Combine is out of favor at Apple and they prefer to go with just, you know, SwiftUI async await and async algorithms instead?
Casey:
Oh, yes, asterisk.
Casey:
So I think you're absolutely right in your implication that Combine is kind of on life support, maybe going the way of the Dodo.
Casey:
I think that's pretty clear because since Combine landed in 2019, it's basically been crickets since then.
Casey:
The only...
Casey:
thing that gives me pause about Combine really and truly going away, other than a lot of people like me have embraced it, is that a lot of SwiftUI is leveraging Combine under the hood, like observable objects, for example.
Casey:
published properties, for example, things of that nature.
Casey:
And so they would need to revise their story and replace Combine in order to really and truly deprecate it, or replace it in the context of SwiftUI to really and truly deprecate it.
Casey:
I think in the future, yeah, Apple's star eye emoji is looking at async await and async algorithms.
Casey:
But yeah, for the time being, I don't think Combine is necessarily going away.
Casey:
And if they do replace things like published or even just re-implement the internals and we somehow found out about it of like published and observable object and things like that, I think that's when I start to get really worried about the future of Combine.
Casey:
Although I think the official word is, no, it's not going anywhere.
Casey:
But I think it's pretty clear to me that that's where the wind is blowing.
Casey:
Marco, you've used a little bit of combined here and there, haven't you?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So, you know, besides published an observable object, which I've used, you know, as I...
Marco:
bridge my old code into the swift ui world um so i use that and i've also i i make pretty good use recently in my recent code of the um the uh like the the publisher for kvo bridge thing that like there's like a method that you can get a publisher for uh for like a key value uh thing on an object so i use that a lot um and otherwise that's about it and
Marco:
So I've never written something that you would recognize as like functional reactive program ever.
Marco:
That being said, I do intend to lean more into the async stuff shortly.
Marco:
I have recently crossed over the threshold that I think it's safe for me to require iOS 15 for my app.
Marco:
I don't require it yet just because I don't have any reason to yet.
Marco:
But next time I do a major thing, which is probably going to be when I redo the now playing screen,
Marco:
I'm probably going to require 15 from that point forward because there's a couple things I want to use from it.
Marco:
And so once I start requiring iOS 15, which will then allow me to use the native Swift async stuff, then I will probably jump more heavily into it.
Marco:
But that being said, I still have a ton of legacy code in my app that works fine and doesn't justify replacement.
Marco:
And that doesn't use this whole system.
Marco:
I mean, most of it isn't even Swift, most of that kind of stuff.
Marco:
You know, I already have libraries for things like collating messages over time and stuff like that.
Marco:
Like, I've already written a lot of those and they work and they're already done.
Marco:
So a lot of that stuff, I'm, you know, just my legacy baggage is going to keep me from using a lot of stuff because I don't need to.
Marco:
But, you know, over time, I'll start using more and more of it.
Casey:
Yeah, that makes sense.
Casey:
Stephen Garrity writes, Marco has talked in the past about designing directly via code.
Casey:
I'd like to know what the design process for the recent Overcast redesign was like.
Casey:
Did you redesign major screens with the actual code in app?
Casey:
Or did you use any design tools and mockups?
Marco:
One of the reasons why it takes me a while to design things in the app is that I build everything.
Marco:
The way I design something is I try it in the code.
Marco:
I just try doing it.
Marco:
And I see how it looks, how it works, what challenges have arisen as a result of me doing that.
Marco:
And so I end up building a lot of things that I never ship design-wise.
Marco:
I try a lot of weird little tweaks here and there.
Marco:
and that's just how I work I I've never gotten into design via you know design apps you know never got into graphic you know photoshop or the the mock-up tools that exist now that aren't you know that aren't exactly photoshop but you know allow you to do mock-ups in a more specialized tool I've never gotten into any of those things and part of that's simply because I'm not a designer part of that's simply because I can't draw but part of that is also just like
Marco:
the language i use like the the creative tool i use to try out a design is just building it that's it's as simple as that and and until i build it i can't really tell whether and how it's going to work i build it and i put it on my phone on in hardware so off of my you know mac screen like let me see it in hardware to see how this works and and how it feels and everything and that that's how i design so
Marco:
It takes a while, but that's just always been how I do it.
Marco:
And yeah, that's as simple as that.
Marco:
And I think this is also kind of the luxury of being a one-person shop that because I'm doing the design myself, like, you know, because I'm conceptualizing design myself,
Marco:
I don't have to worry about the intermediary representations or steps or processes.
Marco:
If I'm working with a designer, obviously I wouldn't expect the designer to be able to code everything up in UIKit or SwiftUI, so that would be a different story.
Marco:
I would have to use one of these tools.
Marco:
But because I'm the programmer and the designer, and I'm coming up with these designs myself and trying them out, I have that feedback loop of like, okay, well...
Marco:
i think this might look good if i do this let me let me try this and then i see okay well here's the challenge of doing that if i if i do that it's going to break here here and here or i can do you know 80 of what i want visually for 10 of the effort in the codes let's probably do that instead like i have all the benefits of that kind of feedback loop um and and i can see instantly like what doesn't work what works what you know what's made difficult by the frameworks what's made easy by the frameworks
Marco:
And that allows me, I think, to have a lot of advantages in the way I do that.
Marco:
But the disadvantage is that it does take a little bit longer to iterate on a design because I'm actually building and like, I'm not even using like the live previewing stuff in Swift and Swift UI because it always breaks for me.
Marco:
I can never get it to work reliably.
Marco:
So I'm literally just like trying something and hitting build and run every single time.
Marco:
Every time I change anything, tweak a color, tweak a spacing, change it in the code, hit build and run, pops up.
Marco:
I'm doing all of that every single time.
Marco:
And it works for me.
Marco:
But obviously that kind of thing does not work for everybody.
Casey:
All right, so Carl Fryer writes, I'm new to the Mac, and I am missing a feature on Windows called Sound Mixer.
Casey:
It is a function of the audio system that allows the user to control volumes of specific applications.
Casey:
Is there a good third-party program for this on the Mac?
John:
Is there ever.
John:
Is there ever.
John:
I put in the screenshot here.
John:
He provided a screenshot of the Windows feature that shows little application icons with volume sliders.
John:
And the matching screenshot from Rogue Amoeba SoundSource that shows little icons of applications with volume sliders.
John:
It was so perfect.
John:
It's just right on their marketing page.
John:
I didn't even know if SoundSource did this, but if your question is how can I do something with audio on the Mac, Rogue Amoeba is the place to check immediately.
John:
Paul was on the talk show and he was saying they have Rogue Amoeba, but Rogue Amoeba is hard for people to spell because they write rouge and who knows how to spell amoeba.
John:
So I think they have like...
John:
macaudio.com anyway learn how to spell the word rogue and the word amoeba it's a good exercise and go to rogue amoeba.com and check out sound source which looks like just a very fancy way for you to pick the source of your sound but it has so many features and one of them is per application volume control thanks to our sponsors this week squarespace linode and collide and thanks to our members who support us directly you can join atp.fm slash join and we will talk to you next week
John:
Now the show is over They didn't even mean to begin Cause it was accidental Oh, it was accidental John didn't do any research Marco and Casey wouldn't let him Cause it was accidental Oh, it was accidental And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S
Casey:
So I've realized something about myself and maybe everyone around me knew this, but me, but I feel like I am following in my dad's footsteps as I get ever older and I need a project.
Casey:
So if you remember early on in pandemic, my project was use 300 Raspberry Pis to do something very, very simple because I can.
Casey:
And then I didn't have a project for a long time.
Casey:
Then I had the replace all the switches in the house with, I think they're called decorator switches instead of toggle switches, which in my opinion look way better.
Casey:
Maybe you disagree.
Casey:
It doesn't really matter.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
Now that I've completed that project, I need a new project.
Casey:
And I have semi-decided that my new project is going to be put at least a couple of Ethernet drops in the house, in the walls.
Casey:
Oh, boy.
Casey:
Which is not something I should be doing for about 300 reasons.
Casey:
But that is the project that I'm considering embarking on.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
The issue that I have, I have many issues, trust me, but one of the primary issues that I have is that I would like, so my office, if you imagine my house as a, I was going to say a big rectangle, but it's not a very big house.
Casey:
But if you imagine my house as a rectangle, and if you think about the northeast corner of the rectangle, that is where the office is.
Casey:
I would like a Ethernet drop on the western side of the house.
Casey:
So clear across the house, but also upstairs like my offices.
Casey:
So presumably I can get into the attic and go across the attic and that wouldn't be too terrible.
Casey:
But the other place I want an Ethernet drop
Casey:
is directly below my office and across the house the short way.
Casey:
So my office and my bedroom are across the house the long way, but on the same floor.
Casey:
The living room, which is the other place I want the Ethernet drop, is across the house the short way, but down a floor.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I don't know what to do about this.
Casey:
Because at first I thought, oh, you know, let's just assume I can get into the walls, so to speak, and like fish, you know, wire through the walls.
Casey:
Well, that shouldn't be too bad.
Casey:
But then I got wondering, well, if I'm doing that, is it really the right answer to put like a panel of Ethernet drops in the office?
Casey:
Is that the place that terminates all these Ethernet drops?
Casey:
Because what if the office, which is bigger than Michaela's bedroom that she's using right now,
Casey:
What if she moves into the office at some point and I go back to her bedroom, which was my original office when Declan was first born, when we first moved in the house?
Casey:
So then I've got all these Ethernet drops terminated in her bedroom.
Casey:
And then that makes me wonder, well, okay, where would I terminate all these Ethernet drops otherwise?
Casey:
I don't particularly want it in my room.
Casey:
The garage.
Casey:
Well, and so that's, I think, the most logical conclusion.
Casey:
And
Casey:
I guess my question, I'm mostly just talking just because I wanted to tell the story and see what you guys had to say about it.
Casey:
But one of the things I was wondering is if I terminate in the garage, that has some semi-wild temperature swings.
Casey:
I'm not saying it's as much as you guys get.
Casey:
It doesn't matter.
Casey:
It's different for sure.
Marco:
For this kind of stuff, it doesn't matter.
John:
so that's what i was going to ask like does your average not crappy switch and like euro for example could that handle the you know 20 ish degrees to well and this is outdoors but euro euro is maybe not as robust as like a business enterprise data center type thing because data center stuff are built to handle you know difficult temperature situations i'm not sure if the euros are did i miss the part where you eliminated the basement
Casey:
Well, I only have a crawl space, and that is a possibility for sure.
Casey:
And the crawl space is not terribly, like it's more of a crouch space than a crawl space, but it is not.
John:
How is the environment control in there?
John:
Is it better than the garage in terms of temperature fluctuations?
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
maybe it would be a little better but not tremendous but the thing is i don't want to terminate all the ethernet down there because what if i have to futz with it then i don't want to have to crawl under the crawl you want the garage it's like here you know i've had i've had switches in my garage here for 12 years um the first i had an hp big you know 18 port one and then i moved over to the ubiquity stuff you know whatever that was four or five years ago
Marco:
it's been it's been fine it's been rock solid i've never had a problem it's and the garage here is uninsulated it only it's only touching the house on on two of the of the four walls and so you know it has like you know one exterior wall plus the big front wooden door thing so it's been fine it's been totally fine and so that's that's your answer
John:
I mean, you don't you don't have that many devices, though.
John:
I mean, like I know Marco's got the overkill thing with a rack and rack mounted things or whatever.
Marco:
But like, honestly, how many things?
Marco:
I mean, rack is generous.
Marco:
It's it's a, you know, bent piece of metal that holds three or four you just against the wall.
Marco:
Like it's not.
John:
But you can just Velcro Velcro an eight port switch to any wall and it's fine.
Marco:
Yeah.
Casey:
Well, and I think I would probably do something like that.
Casey:
The other thing that's really appealing about using the garage is that when the house was built, it was a single zone air conditioner and the furnace was in the garage.
Casey:
And so that means there at the time was a bunch of, I don't know the technical term for this, but a bunch of duct work running under the house to service the downstairs.
Casey:
And then there is some duct work that was running up to the attic to then split off to the upstairs.
Casey:
Well,
Casey:
Around the time Declan was born, we went to a two-zone system, so now there's a furnace in the attic and there's a furnace in the crawlspace.
Casey:
And that means, interestingly, that the area that is in the garage where the ductwork went to the attic is just empty now.
Casey:
Like, it's capped off, but there's basically ductwork that is not being used and nothing in it.
Casey:
And it's an obscenely large circle in which I can put Ethernet cable to get from the downstairs to the upstairs.
Casey:
But then what I need to do, though, is I would need to run one or more Ethernet runs from the office, at least the way it is today, clear across the house to go down into the garage.
John:
But you're running across in the attic, right?
John:
That's ideal.
Casey:
Yes, absolutely.
Casey:
Yes, I am running across in the attic, but I'm talking about considerably more distance than I would otherwise need to do if I was just going.
John:
I think that's fine.
John:
I think you have an ideal scenario.
John:
You have a way to easily get from your garage up to your attic, and from your attic, you can go across to any room and drop down into the walls.
Marco:
Yeah, that's pretty good.
Marco:
Hypothetically, yeah.
Marco:
That's what to do.
Marco:
Because, you know, think about, like, you can burn length like crazy here.
Marco:
Because, you know, the Ethernet is pretty good up to 100 meters without any really compromises.
Marco:
100 meters can, like, wrap around your house a number of times.
Marco:
Like, on the outside.
Marco:
Like, you'd be fine.
Marco:
So, you know, it would be... You can...
Marco:
Do things that are that you wouldn't necessarily think of as solutions, like what John said, like just everything goes up to the attic and you go across, you move laterally across the attic as much as you need to.
Marco:
And then you drop down through the wall cavities as you go.
Marco:
Like that's that's the way to go.
Casey:
Yeah, I think you're probably right.
Casey:
And the only thing that gives me a little bit of pause is, and I forget the numbers off the top of my head, but, you know, I started asking these questions in some slacks that we're in, and I think you had pointed out, Marco, that Cat 6, and jump in when you're ready.
Marco:
6A is what you want.
Casey:
Well, so hold on.
Casey:
So Cat 6 can only do 10 gigabit, which I do not have a single piece of 10 gigabit equipment in the house right now.
Casey:
But eventually I might.
Casey:
And Cat 6 can only go something like 100 meters, which is like 300 feet or something like that, without having real problems at 10 gigabit speed.
Casey:
But Cat 6a, to your point, can go something like 500 meters.
Casey:
And although I agree, I don't think any single run would be 100 plus meters.
Casey:
That makes me wonder if I should go 6A, but I've heard rumblings having never had to crimp or anything with Cat 6 versus Cat 6A.
Casey:
I've understood that 6A is kind of a pain in the rear to deal with as compared to 6.
Casey:
I am talking way outside.
Marco:
Not as much as 7.
Casey:
Well, so I hear Mr. Cat7 everywhere.
John:
What's the difference between 6A and 6 in terms of crimping?
John:
We know why 7 is a mess.
John:
It's totally different, like, end connector.
Marco:
Yeah, it's solid core, which is the worst.
Marco:
Yeah, the solid core is the worst because it pulls out of everything.
John:
And also that has the conductor sheath thing that has to be, like, grounded.
John:
The 7 is a big pain, but 6 and 6A should be the same, right?
John:
Like, what's even the difference?
John:
Maybe a little bit thicker wires?
Yeah.
Casey:
I think the wires are thicker and I thought that there was some sort of like sheath around all the twisted pairs, like more than normal or something.
Marco:
I think that's seven you're thinking.
Marco:
Seven definitely has that.
Marco:
Regardless, oh, RPL Mac or RLP Mac in the chat says 6A also has metallic shielding.
Marco:
So maybe it's just metallic shielding, but not solid core cables.
Marco:
But either way, like that's a minor difference.
Marco:
But, you know, one thing you want is, you know, first of all, future proofing, et cetera.
Marco:
But also you have to account for the fact that your installation is going to be imperfect.
Marco:
and so it's you know if you can get 6a instead of 6 maybe the metal shielding is a little bit of a pain but that might get you a little bit more protection against like this one cable that has you know a bend in it that goes in a way it shouldn't or that got a little bit scraped along the way into the connector or something like you get like a little bit more forgiveness buffer there for when things don't go exactly perfectly according to spec with your actual installation and
Marco:
So that's why it's nice to have some kind of headroom.
Marco:
But again, there's a balance here.
Marco:
If it's going to make every single termination point much more likely to have problems or fail or to not be in spec at all, then obviously that might be going too far.
Marco:
But I would say...
Marco:
Cat 6 is totally fine.
Marco:
If you want to just run Cat 6 and be done with it, that's totally fine.
Marco:
I would look into 6A just because it is the higher standard and if it's not going to be too much more trouble to run 6A, you might as well have that additional flexibility and possible speed down the road.
Casey:
Yeah, I agree with you.
Casey:
So who did this?
Casey:
Neil underscore underscore put in the chat an image that they found that's a really good visual, if this is accurate, and I have no reason to believe it isn't, a really good visual representation of what this looks like in the difference between 6 and 6A.
Casey:
And that looks to me like it's kind of a pain in the butt, but again, I don't know what I'm talking about.
Casey:
I did help my dad run God knows what version of, it was probably Cat 1.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
if such a thing even exists, uh, ethernet through our house back in the late nineties.
Casey:
Um, and, but this was, you know, what, almost 30 years ago now.
Casey:
So I barely remember any of that effort, but, um, yeah, six, it looks like it's a minor pain in the butt.
Casey:
Um, but maybe it's not as, maybe I'm, I'm getting myself worked up over nothing.
John:
Plus then you'd be future proof for when your max finally get the stuff that my Mac pro already has 10 gig ethernet.
Casey:
Ah, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
John:
It'll trickle down to lesser max eventually.
Casey:
And in the chat says it's really not that bad to go 6A and I should just stop being a baby.
Marco:
I would also put forth the idea that you don't necessarily need to do this entire job yourself.
Marco:
I know this is foreign, but...
Marco:
Like, so for instance, it might be worth hiring someone to maybe do the patch panel for you.
Marco:
You know, maybe you run the cable if you insist on running the cables, but like wiring up a patch panel sucks.
Marco:
And if you can have somebody do that who is an expert in that field and who doesn't think it sucks or is being paid to ignore the fact that it sucks, that is potentially a huge like headache saver for you while you still get to have the rest of it be a Casey project.
Casey:
that is a fair point you're also not considering jacks too oh jacks jacks and patch panels you know that's it that sucks you don't want to do that well and it from what i saw i watched a friend of the show quinn nelson's video on when he wired his house and it didn't look like jacks were that terribly bad but again i haven't done this in a long long time so maybe i'm dead wrong maybe it's a
John:
But the good thing is you don't have to do a lot.
John:
That's what I'm saying.
John:
You don't have to do a lot of them.
John:
You're going to have like what?
John:
Like five jacks.
John:
Right.
John:
And so you do it 10 times.
John:
Each one you do twice.
John:
Like you're going to screw it up a whole bunch of times.
John:
But eventually on the third or fourth try, you'll get it right.
John:
And then you're done.
John:
It's not like you're trying to wire an entire office building.
John:
Yeah.
John:
There's going to be trial and error.
John:
Maybe you even have to buy twice as much cable as you screw it up.
John:
But like in the end, it is a tractable problem because you are not doing like a wiring convention center.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
And beyond that, with regard to a patch panel, also consider that if this does go in the garage, which I think makes the most sense, I'm not necessarily above having a bunch of Ethernet cables just appear out of this plenum or whatever it is, this hole in the ceiling, and then just come into a switch.
Casey:
I am not above that.
Marco:
Look, I have that with my stupid cat seven setup and it sucks because that's why like one time I had to replace the switch.
Marco:
So I had to unplug all the cables and put them into a new switch.
Marco:
And then three of them, like some pin pulled out somewhere and they stopped working.
Casey:
Like, well, that's why, that's why you don't go cat seven.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But the point is, even if you're going to go 6A, every time you have to unplug those root cables, whatever you refer to those as the main backbone cables to your house, you don't want to have to be unplugging those ever.
Marco:
You want those to terminate into something that is fixed in position, like a patch panel and like wall jacks.
Marco:
You don't want anything to ever have to flex those.
Marco:
You get it working, and then you don't touch it.
Casey:
And again, I mean, consider I think you're right that the right is the answer is to pay somebody to do the whole damn thing.
Casey:
But the whole point is to keep me from there to keep me from going bananas while I'm still not quite out in the world.
Casey:
Although supposedly Michaela is going to get her shot in the next couple of months.
Casey:
Oh, that's great.
Casey:
Fingers crossed.
Casey:
I mean, this is still they're talking about it next month.
Casey:
They should have been talking about it already, but it's neither here nor there.
Casey:
But they're going to talk about it in June, so maybe July.
Casey:
It might be a 4th of July miracle or something like that.
Casey:
But anyways, since I'm not back in the world quite yet in any meaningful way, I need something to do with my time, and I've gotten masquerade over the line.
Casey:
I actually have a peak of view update, a very minor peak of view update, waiting to be released, which I'm excited about.
Marco:
Yeah, so I come through Tesla.
Marco:
It kind of made me smile.
Marco:
I'm like, oh, yeah, peak of view.
Casey:
That's still a thing.
Casey:
Who knew?
Casey:
But anyways, so yeah, so I need something to occupy my time.
Casey:
And it also is worth noting, I should have said this at the beginning, I have no need for this, like zero need for this.
Casey:
Because remember, I am a humongous fan and a cheerleader for Mocha Bridges.
Casey:
So thanks to the coaxial cable that's in the house,
Casey:
The, the place, the main place that I really want to have ethernet other than in my office is downstairs in the living room because that's where the Apple TV is.
Casey:
And that's also where the porch, the porch, the screened in porch has an ethernet jack in it and that's connected via the living room.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
I can get like 600 megabits through Ethernet to MochaBridge to coax to MochaBridge to Ethernet.
Casey:
I can already do that today.
Casey:
There is no point in me doing this other than I need something to occupy my hands and my brain and my time.
Casey:
So I just want a project.
John:
You get 300 to 400 more megabits.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
That's the thing.
Casey:
I could get more.
Casey:
I could get more of the bits, man.
Casey:
I want the bits.
Casey:
You got the moths?
Casey:
I got the moths.
Casey:
So anyway, that's a reference, John.
Marco:
Also, why do you want all those different bridges and everything?
Marco:
That's just more things that can go wrong.
Marco:
The simpler you can make it, the better.
Casey:
That is true, but A, how many wires are in Cat 6?
Casey:
Eight?
Casey:
How many things can I make go wrong?
Casey:
Fair.
Casey:
And B, these Mocha Bridges have been freaking bulletproof.
Casey:
They have been some of the most bulletproof hardware I've ever owned, as I knock furiously on wood, but they are...
Casey:
just preposterously reliable especially since the the coaxial cable was an afterthought in this house and must have been run in like the early late 90s early 2000s and i'm still getting almost a gigabit through it so this is entirely useless but that is basically the definition of my life so here we are uh but anyway uh so if you had genuinely all kidding aside if you have done this yourself
Casey:
And have tips other than hire somebody, which is the correct answer.
Casey:
Please reach out via Twitter or email if you must.
Casey:
If you've been here, lived it, done it.
Casey:
If you have like a YouTube video that you suggest me to watch, I'm all ears because I would really love, I'd really love pointers because I'm probably going to screw something up doing this.
Casey:
But that's part of the fun.
Marco:
I will say, too, this is one of those areas where if you're going to do this, figure out what the really good tools are and just buy the absolute best tools, the best crimp things.
Marco:
Mark will find a way for you to spend money on this.
Marco:
Surprise, surprise.
Marco:
Well, they aren't that expensive.
Marco:
It's maybe $100 at most for the combination of things you're going to need here.
Marco:
But there's certain things that you can do stuff without crimping, crimpless kind of things or these weird pass-through things.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
every time i've tried to do this i've failed so maybe i'm not the best person to take advice from but having like having the right tools for this job can make a very big difference in how much work it is how you know what your failure rate is for your punch downs or your connectors like it's it's very much you know definitely like figure out what the right tools are and get them um you know get it get a tester you know all this heck i'll probably just mail you mine because i can't use it
Casey:
Ask Quinn what he used, because he apparently... Well, in actually, Quinn's video, if you look at the description, he includes almost everything, like Amazon links, presumably affiliate links, because that's what I do, links to almost everything he used and suggested in the video, and including a couple things that he actively suggests not to use.
Casey:
So I've gotten a lot of the tool recommendations from his video.
Casey:
I haven't actually spoken to Quinn about this.
Casey:
I should at some point, but...
Casey:
But yeah, if you have personal experience with it and have pointers, I'd love to hear.
Casey:
Or if you need to, maybe the right answer is all of you just tell me, don't do it, don't do it, which maybe is the best answer.
Casey:
But I need a project, y'all.
Casey:
I need a project.
Marco:
No, and honestly, it's fun.
Marco:
Like, dealing with ease and that stuff, like, it's kind of old school, you know?
Marco:
So it's very, like, physically satisfying.
Marco:
Like, you know, you get to...
Marco:
physically like punch these wires into these things and then all of a sudden your stuff is fast and reliable like it's it's it's very cool and and having ethernet in your house is a very good idea like that for all the mentioned reasons i just mentioned like you don't want to have to deal with bridges and weird other broadcast standards and you know you want to be hardwired directly from your computer through a switch to your fios box like you want all that to be hardwired ethernet like
Marco:
exactly as fast as it can be you don't want to have to deal with you know oh i can only get three to six hundred megabits no get your gigabit like get gigabit don't you have gigabit uh ethernet service to like from bios yeah so get your full gigabit like that you should have that you're a computer professional like it's if it takes running like one fifteen dollar span a wire between your computer and the garage to make it happen make it happen you know
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And it's actually one of the things I looked at that's giving me a little bit of pause because I'm cheap is the cheapest spool of Cat6 or Cat6A maybe I was looking at.
Casey:
It's like $200 for a spool of like a couple hundred feet of Ethernet cable, which is probably reasonable, but I did not realize it was that expensive.
Casey:
It's like, holy God, I better be really sure that I accomplish this if I'm going to spend a couple hundred dollars on cable alone.
Casey:
But this all started, the funny thing is this all started with, you know, I kept going to Monoprice, which I do love, and buying like a one-foot Ethernet cable here, three feet there, two feet there for like one-off little uses all around the house.
Casey:
And it occurred to me, none of these, I always, even if I measure, I always get it wrong.
Casey:
I either buy something too short or too long.
Casey:
I could fix this.
Casey:
Like, I have crimped Ethernet cable in the past.
Casey:
Granted, I was, like, 16, but I've done it.
Casey:
And it's easier now with, like, the pass-through stuff, like you mentioned, Marco.
Casey:
So, like, why don't I just buy a spool of Ethernet and just make my own little one-foot, two-foot, three-foot cables?
Casey:
And then it's a small jump from there to, you know, screw it.
Casey:
Let's wire the whole darn house.
John:
you don't you don't want to do that that because like first of all like getting really good ethernet cables pre-made is actually not that expensive no but when you're doing it the pre-made short ones use stranded wire too which is way more sort of supple and flexible for short runs whereas the spools you're going to get are all going to be stiffer and gnarlier and you're not going to want to use them for your two foot cable
Marco:
Yeah, because if you're going to get a spool, presumably you're going to want some kind that's rated to be in walls.
Marco:
That's a somewhat important factor here.
Marco:
So that's going to be thicker, as John said.
Marco:
But also, that's not worth the time to crimp on an end.
Marco:
When you can get a really good Ethernet cable for a few dollars, yeah, just buy them.
Marco:
And one option you may want to consider, I don't know if you should consider this off the top of my head,
Marco:
especially in regards to things like in-wall ratings that I literally just mentioned.
Marco:
But another option you could get is just buy a few 100-foot Ethernet cables pre-made and just fish them through the walls.
Marco:
That is an option.
Marco:
I don't think it's a very good option, but it would avoid a lot of problems.
John:
so like it is what i did in my house right now is i bought a couple hundred feet of cable with that is not exactly the right thing but it is long enough to reach everywhere that i get all with pre-made ends on them and uh so far so good for 10 years or whatever i've been running this
John:
yeah like that is a totally valid option you could totally do that because i only have to go to like i go to the computer room and i go to the television uh what do i go anywhere else no that's it computer room and television and and so that covers my playstation all the computers in the house and anything ever connected to the tv all directly connected to ethernet which by the way your kids will appreciate because they will have lower latency when playing online games
Casey:
Well, and there is an Ethernet drop via MoCA, via coax, in the living room, but I hear you.
Casey:
Now, so somebody in the chat room suggested TrueCable.com.
Casey:
TrueCable.com's Cat6 plenum unshielded, $200 for 500 feet.
Casey:
What's 1,000 feet?
Casey:
Shoot, that's not fair.
Casey:
So it's $289 for 1,000 feet of Cat 6.
Casey:
Do you need 1,000 feet?
Casey:
Probably not, but it's almost $300.
Casey:
The smallest amount of Cat 6A I can get that's plenum rated is 1,000 feet.
Casey:
$513.
Casey:
Holy jamoles, I don't need that.
John:
Well, wait till you see how much it would cost to have someone else do it for you.
John:
Well, that's true.
John:
That's a fair point.