I’ll Meet You Any Time You Want
Casey:
I've got a problem.
Casey:
I don't understand the noises that my AirPods Pro, I call them the Mark II.
Casey:
So this is the AirPods Pro with the better ANC, but before you could get the USB-C charging case.
Casey:
I don't remember the technical term for it.
Marco:
AirPods Pro 2, because the ones with the case are AirPods Pro 2 parentheses USB-C charging case or something.
Casey:
Right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Casey:
We're saying the same thing.
Marco:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
So they're a little bit older now.
Casey:
I have had no battery issues.
Casey:
I've had none of the crackling or whatever it was that a lot of people, including I think Marco, had at some point or another.
Marco:
That was the first-gen AirPods Pro 2, or the AirPods Pro 1 that had those.
Marco:
I haven't heard of any of those issues with the AirPods Pro 2, and I certainly haven't had them myself.
John:
Yeah, likewise.
John:
I'm still waiting for you to close that parentheses, Casey.
John:
You're killing me.
John:
Keep going.
Casey:
Which parentheses?
John:
I've got a problem with the AirPods, and then you went off on a tangent about which model you had.
John:
I know what problem you have, because we talked about it before we started recording, but please get to it.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
So let's get to it.
Casey:
I got a problem.
John:
You tell the story.
Casey:
So here's the thing.
Casey:
I will put one or both of the AirPods back into the charging case, right?
Casey:
And I not infrequently use them in mono mode.
Casey:
You know, I'll have only one in my ear, the other in the case, but I don't think it really matters.
Casey:
I'll put one of them back in the case and I'll hear some sort of noise.
Casey:
And it sounds like a sad noise, almost as though they're not able to charge.
Casey:
It's like a doo-doo-doo-doo or something like that.
Casey:
That's probably wrong, but I can't remember exactly what it is.
Marco:
Is it from the case or from the pod?
Casey:
I'm pretty sure it's from the case.
Casey:
These are all fair questions.
Casey:
But I think it's the case saying something about this is unable to charge.
Casey:
But the problem is the extremely useful error information I get from the case, other than this just completely indecipherable noise, is that the light is orange.
Casey:
Is that a good orange?
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Is it a bad orange?
Casey:
Maybe.
Casey:
Who could know?
Casey:
So there's like that noise that happens from time to time.
Casey:
And then I feel like there's a doo-doo or something like that that happens from time to time.
Casey:
I really wish I'd had the patience, the energy, and the time to record these on the microphone.
Casey:
And we could play them now, but unfortunately I had none of the three things.
Casey:
So I don't know what the noises are that my AirPods slash the AirPods Pro 2 case makes when I try to reinsert an AirPod.
Casey:
And I did like five seconds of Googling trying to figure this out and couldn't find anything.
Casey:
I feel like somebody needs to, and I don't know, maybe it's even Robles or something, put a YouTube video up or something like this.
Casey:
But somebody needs to have like a knowledge base page or some YouTube video that goes through, here's all the different noises your AirPods can make and here's what they mean.
Casey:
Because I need help.
John:
If only you understood the binary language of moisture evaporators, you would know what they're saying.
John:
So I have AirPods 4, the non-pro, AirPods 4, and these are the first AirPods that have been trying to speak to me in the same way that your AirPods are trying to speak to you.
John:
And like you, Casey, I don't know what they're trying to say exactly.
John:
I give the sound designers credit for being able to convey some sort of emotional state through the beep boops.
John:
Right.
John:
Because my old ones did not make noises like this.
John:
The cases make noise.
John:
The AirPods make noise.
John:
When I plug the case in, it makes a noise.
John:
When I take them out, it makes a noise.
John:
When I put them in, it makes... And sometimes the light is orange, right?
John:
I'm not sure what it means, but I kind of like...
John:
emotionally feel what the airpods seems like you want to be charged now like orange makes me think it's not fully charged and it needs to be and sad noises make me think your battery is running low and so i just kind of like intuitively do what i think the airpods need me to do but you're absolutely right that's like i get this product that has no on and off switches and just one light that changes a couple different colors and it speaks to me with these little beeps and boops and i just have to sort of like
Marco:
do my best it's like it's like having a baby like you don't know what they want but you just got to try to figure it out yeah this was there was there were two good episodes of the podcast 20 000 hertz that went through like apple sound design and like they had some apple sound designers on there to actually interview them and it was they were great episodes highly recommended and they they did mention you know the airpods kind of you know sad battery noise but that's that comes from the airpods when their battery is low it sounds like what you're talking about is different but yeah there are so many more noises than that
Marco:
But give them credit for like you can describe it as a sad noise.
Marco:
Like you recognize like this is a sad noise versus the bing when you plug it in.
Marco:
Like, well, okay, I'm plugging it in and now it has power.
Marco:
Yay.
Marco:
Like you know that.
Marco:
There's no manual that tells you when it dings, that means I'm getting power.
Marco:
But you learn that.
John:
Well, it might have been a little piece of paper that no one ever looks at.
John:
Like the tiny sheet of paper with microscopic writing on it.
John:
I'm sure there's a web page somewhere just like there is for every appliance where it's like –
John:
if the white light blinks three times with two second gaps between that means this and if it blinks once every one second and you're like you're like trying to gauge is that 1.5 seconds between them or one second and you're trying to stop watching it's like we're crying out loud people just this is not a great intro i know you want to save money it's like it's like they're it's like telegraph we can do everything through morse code all we need is a single led we don't need any buttons any displays any readout we'll just make people go to this web page and decipher what it's trying to say
Marco:
And the bad part about using sounds is that you can't really copy and paste that into a search engine.
Marco:
So you can't go to Google and say, what does it mean when it goes... Exactly.
Marco:
How do you spell that?
John:
Right.
John:
You end up Googling for like blinking white light or whatever.
John:
And very often it's good that you'll find these thousands of other people who are like, what does it mean when my washing machine...
John:
blinks a white light or something but but if there's only one light and they use that with like oh it's it's not blinking as fast as sometimes the setup instructions say that if you have like gadgets where it's like during setup press and hold this button until the white light turns green stays green then blinks red two times then let go and it's like what the hell like what are we doing here it's so so byzantine so it kind of makes you wish for a terribly designed app on your phone to do it all
Casey:
No, it's very funny because some local friends of ours had some internet issues with their Fios.
Casey:
In fact, it's still going on.
Casey:
One way or another, we went and looked at their ONT, their optical network terminal.
Casey:
So we opened it up and I had my friend take a picture of it, you know, so he could call Verizon and be like, well, these are the lights that we have that are flashing at the moment.
Casey:
Meanwhile, he then Googled and found statuslights.com, which I just now, as we're recording, realized apparently that's based in Richmond.
Casey:
And they have photos of all this different like computer equipment and telephony equipment and whatnot.
Casey:
And they show exactly what lights should probably be lit up and what each of the status lights means.
Casey:
And so I need this, but for AirPod noises.
Casey:
So please, somebody get on it.
John:
I see this list of vendors on statuslights.com and Apple is notably absent from the A section.
Casey:
Yeah, I know.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
But anyways, I would just love if somebody could please point me to the thing that I should probably be able to Google on my own and apparently could not.
Casey:
that explains with little audio clips what are all the noises that AirPods could make.
Casey:
And just before we leave this topic, I wanted to reiterate what Marco said.
Casey:
I can't remember if I ever talked about it on the show earlier, but the sound of Apple 1.0 and the sound of Apple 2.0, which are the 20,000 hertz episodes from a couple of months back, maybe a few months back now,
Casey:
That whole podcast is tremendous.
Casey:
I love it.
Casey:
It's incredibly, incredibly good.
Casey:
However, even if you're not into it in general, anyone who enjoys this show would absolutely enjoy those two episodes, which we will link in the show notes.
Casey:
So you should definitely check that out.
John:
They did an episode on Rivian too, didn't they?
John:
Wasn't that the same?
Casey:
I think that's right.
Casey:
Yes.
John:
I believe that's right.
John:
And Rivian noises, by the way.
John:
That's what I mean.
John:
Like the noises that Rivian makes inside the cockpit.
John:
We talked about it on the show.
John:
Anyway.
Marco:
Yeah, that was one where they're like, well, we take this raindrop and then we distort it like crazy in these 10 different ways.
Marco:
So it sounds nothing like a raindrop, but nature.
Casey:
All right, let's do some follow up.
Casey:
The gas car review post that we've been talking about for the last couple of weeks.
Casey:
This started in overtime or in the bootleg a couple of weeks ago.
Casey:
Then we did some follow up last week.
Casey:
We thought we found the actual link that Marco was talking about.
Casey:
And it turns out we didn't.
Casey:
But now we have.
Casey:
So K writes, is this the gas car review Marco was trying to find?
Casey:
It's the one I remembered.
Casey:
And shout out to Kagi for making it pretty easy to find when searching for, quote, funny review of gas car, quote.
Casey:
And this is jeff.grier.fm.
Casey:
And it's a gasoline car review, which is a lot less looking down the nose than the one that we thought was the right one for a brief minute last week.
John:
To explain what we mean is a humorous review of a gasoline engine car for as if it had been reviewed by someone who'd never seen one to highlight how there are lots of weird things about gas cars that we don't think about because we're used to them as quote unquote normal.
John:
And every review of an electric car is like, can you believe it's electric car?
John:
Let me tell you about it.
John:
So that's the.
John:
That's the conceit, and there's just so many of these posts.
John:
This is apparently the one Margot was thinking of, but there are so many more.
John:
People keep sending them to us.
John:
It's not just the same posts sent over and over again in different places.
John:
There are variations on them, and now with AI, there'll probably be even more.
Marco:
Yeah, and I like this one the best in part because I think, honestly, I think it's better written than the others.
Marco:
Also, I think the whole arrangement of it around comparing electric cars to an old Miata is
Marco:
I think it's just kind of charming and fun, especially because I used to be able to borrow an old Miata sometimes and drive it, and that's what I learned to stick on.
Marco:
So I kind of have some fondness for that vehicle.
Marco:
But anyway, this I think was the better one, and this was indeed the one I was thinking of.
Marco:
So thank you, people, for finding it.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
With regard to Marco's lost MacBook Air, first of all, Marco, have you found it?
Marco:
I did indeed find it.
Marco:
It was in a tote bag on a coat hook behind three coats in the closet.
Casey:
How did you find it?
Marco:
So the way I found it was I first went to Backblaze because I said I couldn't see it in Find My.
Marco:
And I guess I must have had it disabled.
Marco:
I don't know why.
Marco:
Anyway, so I went to Backblaze because I think I'm like, Backblaze has some kind of finding functionality.
Marco:
And I hadn't apparently enabled – they have like a whole map functionality where you can actually locate your computer if you enable location services.
Marco:
I hadn't done that.
Marco:
But it did tell me the last IP address that it backed up from was my house IP address.
Marco:
And it said that the last backup was basically while I was – it was like a day or two before.
Marco:
It was while I was gone still.
Marco:
So I knew, okay, it's in my house somewhere.
Yeah.
Marco:
So I basically just exhausted every possibility.
Marco:
I searched everywhere, upstairs, downstairs, kitchen.
Marco:
I even looked in the garage.
Marco:
Did I somehow leave it in the garage when doing something and forget about it?
Marco:
I looked everywhere.
Marco:
But yeah, after about two days, I found it and still had 5% battery life left.
Casey:
Oh, well, look at that.
Casey:
But yeah, it turns out you can use Find My to ping or make a sound on a laptop, which is good to know.
Casey:
And thanks to Miles for reminding us about it.
Marco:
Yeah, and if you want a backup locating option for your laptop, maybe go to Backblaze and enable that map functionality.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
With regard to iOS 18 photos, we mostly got agreement from feedback.
Casey:
And this is not a vote.
Casey:
It's fine if you agree or disagree.
Casey:
I'm just saying, you know, the people who decided to share with us, I think mostly agreed with our assessment.
Casey:
But Tim Luft writes, I prefer the new Photos app.
Casey:
I really do think it's an improvement once you dial in your setup.
Casey:
Pinned collections are one of my favorites as they add a section at the bottom of the edit page called Any Collection or Album.
Casey:
which allows you to add more granular collections like media types or utilities.
Casey:
Also, John can rearrange his albums by opening it into the list view of albums, then tapping and holding on the album to move it up and down the list.
Casey:
When you come back out, that's the new order.
John:
I would never have discovered this for multiple reasons.
John:
So first of all, the convention for reordering things on iOS is either it looks like a thing that you can reorder or that you can go into that mode where it puts the little grippers on them, you know, the three little lines, right?
John:
This does not have that.
John:
It's a totally like unique view that has a bunch of rounded recs separated by margins with like shadows underneath them.
John:
And then if you hold down on one of those things, it brings up a menu, like a press, like a long press menu, like an actual like context menu, right?
John:
But like so many things that are elsewhere, like if you...
John:
hold down and the menu comes up but you ignore the menu and you swipe then it like releases into your hand and you can move it around but then all right so now you've got it you're like aha this must be reorderable as you drag it if you drag it over another one of the rounded rectangles it like highlights it
John:
Right.
John:
Right.
John:
And so I went to this list and I found one of my albums that I wanted to be at the top.
John:
And it's way down on my list of like dozens of albums.
John:
And I got it to lift up and I started moving it.
John:
And I realized I didn't want it to highlight another thing.
John:
And so I got it to open a little gap in a space.
John:
And then all right, now I just need to drag it up to the top of the screen.
John:
So it starts, you know, scrolling, paging down and it starts paging and paging and paging.
John:
And I get to the very top.
John:
And once I get to the very top of that thing in my hand,
John:
No little spaces are opening up for it.
John:
Nowhere.
John:
I can't drag it anywhere.
John:
I'm still holding down on it, right?
John:
I'm dragging it.
John:
I'm dragging it over the top of things.
John:
I want it to be the number one item, but I would settle for the number two or the number five or anything on the first page, but no space will open up for it.
John:
So I give up and like I have to find a safe place to release it because I can't hit the escape key like a Mac OS.
John:
I give up, drag it aside, let go, scroll down again.
John:
Maybe if I go real slow, you know, like the gap or I get the gap to open up and now I just need to like push it up to the top and the gap opens up and it goes gap, gap, gap, gap.
John:
I'm going to do it.
John:
I'm just I'm just leaving my finger right here.
John:
I'm not going to move it.
John:
It's the gaps are opening up and it gets to the very top and lo and behold, the gaps are gone again.
John:
And I had to take like seven trips, seven partial trips, always being sure to drop it in one of the gaps before the gaps stop appearing.
John:
Oh my God.
John:
What is the same people who worked on like control center and rearranging springboard and make this interface maddening.
John:
But anyway, I thanked him because I,
John:
did eventually get through by fighting with the system that i just described i did eventually get my top four or five albums to the top of that list that i had never thought was reorderable and never thought would have any effect on anything else but now in theory every time i go to get the list of albums those will be at the top so thank you tim and no thank you to whoever made that interface in ios 18 photos because it's bad
Casey:
Excellent.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We have a whole bunch of feedback with regard to the magic mouse and, uh, John, apparently you got a little bit confused with regard to side buttons.
Casey:
Do you want to, uh, fix your story?
John:
Yeah.
John:
I said the apology mouse had side buttons.
John:
Uh, easy mistake to make because the apology mouse has things that look for all the world, like the side buttons that would eventually appear on the mighty mouse, but they are not in fact buttons.
John:
Um,
John:
Someone sent me a video of the Macworld keynote where the apology mouse was introduced and talking about it and saying how Steve Jobs on stage, saying how everyone hated the hockey puck mouse or whatever.
John:
And I said, I'm in the audience in that video because I was there.
John:
I got the apology mouse for free, a thing Apple did very rarely.
John:
But one of the times they did it, everyone who was in the Macworld keynote got a free Apple mouse.
John:
Can you imagine a free Apple mouse?
John:
The other thing, by the way, it's like remembering the old days of Steve Jobs.
John:
Part of the presentation was...
John:
uh you know here's our new mouse uh people didn't like hockey puck here's our new mouse we think it's a great mouse and it's standard on every mac that we sell remember the old days when steve jobs was like as soon as you make a new thing the old thing is dead to me right just like forget it the old ones don't exist and now tim cooks like lightning accessories yeah we'll keep selling them forever anyway um my apology for getting the side buttons on the apology mouse wrong apparently it didn't have them but the mighty mouse did
John:
i'm glad that we got that resolved and speaking of getting things resolved mkbhd's uh interview with tim cook which all three of us were casting about trying to remember the exact circumstance of it john can you tell us what that really was all about yeah so i've uh as we established on the show it was wwc 2024 but i didn't remember the exact context so i watched the video again here was the context it was a blind ranking which i didn't know what it was until i saw this video and then forgot and then saw the video again and was reminded
John:
A blind ranking is where the interviewer tells the interviewee, I'm going to list the top five things here, and you have to rank them, but you don't know what the next ones are going to be.
John:
So if you're ranking like your favorite foods, and I said tomatoes, you don't know if my next one is going to be chocolate or prunes.
John:
So what do you rank tomatoes?
John:
It's a blind ranking.
John:
If you rank it, you're number one.
John:
What if something comes along that's better?
John:
I don't know.
John:
It's a fun way to try to get your true feelings about something.
John:
And have a, you know, a fun game where you never know what the next item is going to be and you may regret your earlier ranking.
John:
So that's MKBHD saying to Tim Cook, I'm going to rank these.
John:
And Tim Cook's like, well, is this supposed to be my top five?
John:
And Marquez is like, oh, it's just a top five.
John:
Anyway, he does blind ranking of a bunch of things.
John:
He lists a bunch of items.
John:
Eventually, one of the items he lists, he says, the magic mouse.
John:
that's it he's just like the first one is is you know i forget what the products were but it's like this product that product then he says the magic mouse and he doesn't say it in a snarky way or anything uh but it really looks like a total like self-owned by tim cook because first of all tim cook essentially uh if at the first item
John:
refuses to rank them like he won't give them numbers you're supposed to say okay you know uh apples is my number two and then the next one they say chocolate oh that's my number one and then they say something like better than you know he doesn't give numbers he says i'm not going to rank them so stim cook just refuses to play the game which fine whatever media training you don't have to answer the person's question i love all of my products equally yeah he does compare them to his children um but when they get to the magic mouse he could have just said something anything about it but he goes
John:
The magic mouse.
John:
Do we make a mouse?
John:
And then he said something really awkward, like it was such an incredible moment.
John:
Like, no, no, Tim, it was not an incredible moment.
John:
And you don't remember when it was introduced and nobody does because it's just the magic mouse.
John:
But anyway, I stick to what I said last week.
John:
I don't think Marquez was...
John:
coming out and saying hey tim cook everyone hates the magic mouse but tim cook's reaction to it made it clear that he was not prepared for this question and then so we'll put a link in the show notes to the video with a time stamp as we did last week um and then we'll also put a link to a very editorialized youtube short made by the mkbhd channel folks that makes it seem like does the like 10 000 years later thing from spongebob or whatever to make it seem like tim cook was bowled over but if you watch the actual video
John:
They're just playing the blind ranking game.
John:
Tim Cook is refusing to do it.
John:
And they get to one of the items.
John:
And I think the only thing Marquez says is the magic mouse.
John:
And Tim Cook self-destructs.
John:
So that's the context.
John:
You can take a look at it.
John:
I think the editorialized short is a little bit overdramatic.
John:
But it is one of the rare cases where Tim seemed flummoxed by not even a question.
John:
By just I'm listing items in this blind ranking game.
John:
And the next one I'm listing is a proper noun that is the name of one of your products.
John:
Go.
Casey:
Well, I do think that toward the end, it was a very short segment, but toward the end of this 35 seconds of awkward, Tim starts talking about how they really had to work on, I think, the ergonomics or something like that.
Casey:
And Marquez is like, the Mighty Mouse.
Casey:
You know, he's kind of saying to himself, in so many words, you're talking about, he didn't say this, of course, but you're talking about the ergonomics of the friggin' Mighty Mouse?
Casey:
He's the Magic Mouse.
John:
He's just trying to think of something.
John:
Tim is just trying to think of something to say, like,
John:
It's so clear.
John:
He's like, what can I say about this that is Tim Cook approved?
John:
What are mice like?
John:
Ergonomic?
John:
How often does he use one?
John:
When's the last time he touched one?
Casey:
Oh, my word.
Casey:
It was very funny.
Casey:
We also didn't touch on the most ridiculous of the most recent mouse rumors.
Casey:
This is from MacRumors.
Casey:
Late, late, late last year.
Casey:
A report from Korean leaker YEUX1222 this morning suggested that Apple has created a prototype magic mouse that includes a mix of touch voice controls.
Casey:
And hand gestures.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Mark Gurman says, voice control in the new Magic Mouse I wrote about this month makes sense in light of AI and the fact that Apple is on a decade plus cycle.
Casey:
From what I've heard, big focus is ergonomics and gestures and a relocated USB-C port.
Casey:
I'd expect a new keyboard too.
Casey:
Coming back to MacRumors, Apple reportedly plans to release a new Magic Mouse alongside the OLED M6 MacBook Pro in 2026.
John:
So Gurman says a lot of things, and this is just a real winner, like that the voice rumors make sense in light of AI.
John:
No, they don't.
John:
They don't make sense.
John:
Well, hold on.
John:
I have one theory.
John:
Before you get to the theory, I want to talk about this Logitech thing that was in the notes.
John:
I think it was before we had overtime.
John:
But it was in the notes, and it didn't make it to the show ever.
John:
But it was in there for a long time because Logitech, the mouse maker, came out with an update to their mouse driver that incorporated chat GPT
John:
into their mouse driver.
John:
So you could like use the mouse and map a button on your mouse to like, it would open up a thing.
John:
And then you could, I forget if you could speak a chat GPT query, you typed it, but the point was they added LLM chat GPT integration to their mouse driver.
John:
That's immediately what I thought of when I thought of rumors that the Magic Mouse is going to conclude with voice controls.
John:
All right, so go ahead, Marco.
John:
Convince me that voice control is going to be a good feature for the new mouse.
Marco:
Oh, I didn't say a good feature, but here's how this might make sense.
Marco:
Now, first of all, the report from the leaker says they've created a prototype that does this.
Marco:
That doesn't mean they're going to release it, but let's set that aside.
Marco:
Here's why they might put a microphone in a mouse.
Marco:
The people who buy mice are generally using them either with desktops that have built-in microphones or maybe a laptop.
Marco:
Now, if that laptop is closed, the laptop's built-in mic is disabled in hardware.
Marco:
Okay, so if Apple is leaning very heavily into voice control to command your computer to do things...
Marco:
microphones are very cheap hardware-wise.
Marco:
So maybe, because it also mentions the new keyboard, maybe there's going to put a microphone in the new keyboard and a microphone in the new mouse and a microphone in a new trackpad.
Marco:
And that way, whatever your setup is, if it includes any Apple peripherals, the computer can always hear you tell it a voice command.
Marco:
Because that way, even if you have a closed laptop docked to a monitor that does not contain a microphone, one of your peripherals would contain a microphone.
John:
Where is this microphone going to be that it's not smothered by your hand?
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, maybe on the side?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I didn't say this was a good idea, but I can see... And also, oh, keep in mind, if they indeed have raised up the profile very slightly to accommodate a USB port somewhere on the front, then maybe they could put it next to that.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
That's all I can think of.
Marco:
Why would you have a microphone and a mouse for quote AI?
Marco:
I think it's just like give one more input to Siri in the new AI version of Siri that might someday be out and might be good and might work.
John:
People are dying to use that, yeah.
Marco:
You know, give one more input and that way like we will hear you or maybe we'll hear you a little bit better.
Marco:
Maybe we can hear you if you talk a little bit quieter in case you're in like an office situation and you don't you know, you don't want to like be yelling all the time.
John:
You could pick the mouse up and hold it to your mouth and you might say, God damn it, John.
Casey:
I wanted to make the same joke.
Casey:
Why do you take it from me?
John:
I already posted the link to the.
John:
Oh, now I don't get any gold stars.
John:
You want to do the voice, Casey?
John:
You can do the voice.
John:
Go ahead.
Casey:
Hello, computer.
John:
That's terrible.
Casey:
I can't do James Doohan.
Casey:
No, I can't do James Doohan.
Casey:
Doohan, Doohan.
Casey:
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
Casey:
Now I'm so mad at you because I'm getting no gold stars from you for thinking of the exact same reference.
Casey:
Does Marco have any idea what we're talking about?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
However, that being said, honestly, that could be a feature.
Marco:
Because again, imagine if you're in an environment where you don't want to be talking very loudly.
Marco:
If you...
Marco:
pick it up to your mouth and just and the sheer act of picking it up oh my god triggers the microphone because you don't like you know use accelerometers to say oh they it's picked up now that could activate the microphone and you could say you know hey open up mail you could say something real quiet like oh my god that's not that crazy and then maybe we should put that as a as our next member special
Casey:
We should.
Casey:
Oh, that's such a good idea because Marco will hate every moment of it.
Casey:
It'll be delightful.
John:
Oh, God.
John:
All right.
John:
That's going near the top of my list.
John:
I think we should do that.
John:
No more discussion of it, Casey.
John:
We don't want to ruin it for Marco.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
I really have a lot of things I want to discuss.
Casey:
We also have some more mouse-related feedback.
Casey:
Mike writes, I feel like you missed the obvious change for a new mouse from Apple.
Casey:
The current mouse still has a physical button.
Casey:
I'd expect a new mouse to replace that with two or three taptic engines to provide clicking like every other device they make and probably haptics on movement as well.
John:
I think this is a terrible idea, but I also think Mike is very right that it is perfectly in keeping with the Apple hardware design ethos.
John:
I think it's a terrible idea just because it'll be draining your battery for no reason because you just do so much clicking.
John:
I think it's a terrible idea because I think you would find it annoying.
John:
And I also think it's totally something Apple would do.
Marco:
I mean, it's fine on the trackpad.
Marco:
Yeah, but the trackpad has a way bigger battery.
Casey:
Oh, that's fair.
Casey:
Well, is it fair, actually?
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I assume you're right.
John:
I feel like weight on the mouse is more important because you're actually moving it.
John:
The trackpad doesn't go anywhere.
John:
We'll see.
John:
If they pull it off, well, fine.
John:
But honestly, is this necessary?
John:
On the trackpads, it makes some sense because it's such a limited space and not having it move has space benefits.
John:
But like a mouse, there's plenty of room.
John:
It's out there in the open air.
Marco:
and on the trackpad too like the you can click anywhere on the trackpad and it feels about the same which is good it's a huge area so to have that like in the olden days when they when the trackpads were like big you know they called them diving boards or levers hinged on one side yeah you hinge on the top you click it on the bottom generally with your thumb and that was that felt good but if you clicked it near the top it wouldn't click or you wouldn't harder to press you had less leverage
Marco:
didn't they even put the feet as the clickers in the the first magic trackpad there was there was one that did feet clickers which was another clever idea but yeah yeah but anyway so the mouse though you're always clicking the mouse in a reasonably short area and it's like it's the same small area so i don't think that this is solving a problem in the mouse and you know there would be the downsides as you mentioned stopped apple before like i also don't think it's solving a problem but i apple loves taptic engines
Marco:
Also, like, I've used these mice for a very long time.
Marco:
I've never had the button go bad.
Marco:
Like, never.
John:
Yeah.
John:
It's easy to make micro switches, but Apple loves Taptic engines, so we'll see.
Marco:
Apple also loves profit margins.
Marco:
I bet Taptic engines are more expensive.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
That's true, too.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
And then we got feedback from Calamity Jan who writes, if Apple makes the mouse charge wirelessly, another reason to buy a MagSafe puck, they could make it symmetrical under rotation, which means they could design it to be configured for right or left hands.
Casey:
See the Apple watch.
Casey:
You could wear it on either wrist and orient it with the crown facing in or out.
John:
no this is a terrible idea i mean there's a lot of terrible ideas and the question is is this a terrible idea that apple would find attractive i think no on this one because i think uh it wouldn't be attractive enough to be symmetrical under rotation like i think they just want like actual actual vertical symmetry period not symmetrical under rotation
John:
And a lot of people did suggest wireless charging of various kinds.
John:
Obviously, they're just putting it on your MagSafe puck.
John:
People suggested it could work with the watch charger.
John:
They're obviously charging mouse pads that lots of vendors have, although I think Apple thinks mouse pads are gauche, let's say.
John:
In fact, in the Steve Jobs keynote with the apology mouse, he's like, and it's the first optical mouse that Apple has made.
John:
That means you don't even need to use mouse pads.
John:
I don't think Steve Jobs like mouse pads either.
John:
I still like mouse pads because I'm old and they're nice, but whatever.
John:
uh yeah there are lots of different ways to potentially wirelessly charge your mouse that is one way they could solve the uh harpoon turtle problem the other way is they could just put a port on it it doesn't see it doesn't it doesn't solve it because all that does is give you another reason you can't use the mouse while it's charging but now it charges more slowly yeah and produces heat i know i solve let's solve in scare quotes like like you said with the voice thing we're just trying to think what will apple do not necessarily is this a good idea
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Uh, Karan J writes the Logitech MX anywhere is a symmetrical low ish profile and way more comfortable than the magic mouse.
Casey:
I hope Apple copies this and we'll put a link in the show notes.
Marco:
It looks exactly like every other mouse.
John:
I think it's still too ugly for Apple.
John:
Like I agree with low profile.
John:
It is symmetrical.
John:
Also too ugly.
Casey:
I'll see you next time.
Casey:
And a plant-based box that's 100% vegan.
Casey:
Yes, you heard that right, 100%.
Casey:
Best of all, they take the hassle out of baking since all the items bake from frozen in 25 minutes or less with no mess and no cleanup.
Casey:
So they sent me a whole pile of stuff, some pastas, some breads, and they also sent apples, cider, donuts.
Casey:
Let me tell you folks, I love it.
Casey:
Love an apple cider donut, and I really loved these.
Casey:
They were nice and thick, cooked up real easily, and they were delicious.
Casey:
Additionally, with dinner tonight, we had their sourdough loaf, and I got to tell you, this thing was delicious.
Casey:
It was great, crunchy, crispy outside.
Casey:
You know what I'm going to do?
Casey:
I'm not even kidding.
Casey:
I'm going to squeeze the loaf right next to the microphone, and you're going to be able to hear the crunch of the exterior of the sourdough loaf, of the crust of the sourdough loaf.
Casey:
Here we go.
Casey:
How good does that sound?
Casey:
of artisanal breads, pastas, and pastries.
Casey:
For a limited time, Wild Grain is offering our listeners $30 off your first box, plus free croissants in every box when you go to wildgrain.com slash ATP to start your subscription.
Casey:
You heard me, free croissants in every box and $30 off your first box when you go to wildgrain.com slash ATP.
Casey:
That's W-I-L-D-G-R-A-I-N dot com slash ATP, or you can use promo code ATP at checkout.
Casey:
Thank you to Wild Grain for sponsoring the show.
Casey:
We got some very fascinating feedback with regard to Apple's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips.
Casey:
We were talking last episode, maybe the one before, about Apple potentially making their own chips for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Casey:
And Ian Williamson points out Apple already makes the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth silicon in the Apple Watch.
Casey:
This is the Apple Silicon W series.
Casey:
The Apple W2 used in the Apple Watch Series 3 is integrated into the Apple S3.
Casey:
What is the SIP system in package?
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
Apple claimed the chip makes Wi-Fi 85% faster and allows Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to use half the power of the W1 implementation.
Casey:
The Apple W3 is integrated into the Apple S4 through S10 SIPs.
Casey:
And then additionally, Winnie Lewis writes, to aid John in developing excitement for Apple-designed Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips, I've created this crackpot theory.
Casey:
Apple-made radio chips are the first step toward an Apple-meshed Wi-Fi system.
Casey:
No way, but that's awesome.
John:
Keep hope alive.
John:
Yeah, so this is about Marco saying, you know, if Apple made their own chips, it could have big power advantage to the watch, and I agreed.
John:
Looks like they already did that, and we forgot.
John:
Sorry about that.
John:
Did either of you know this?
Marco:
I did not know this at all.
John:
As soon as they said it, I'm like, oh, yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
that rings a bell uh but yes it makes sense that they've already done it on the watch um and like you know so they have the the h1 chip that we talked about on the show is their chip for handling wireless stuff inside airpods and it has special sauce that we think makes them better than just plain old bluetooth that was one of the examples we used she should have remembered that along with the h1 there's also the w1 w2 and w3 for the watch um
John:
But apparently on the Macs, they're still using Broadcon chips.
John:
So this is just continuing along the path they've already started down.
John:
And as for making it more likely to have a wet mesh system, there's just so much more to a Wi-Fi mesh system than the wireless chips.
John:
We all kind of wish that Apple would go back into that business.
John:
But, you know, I'm still waiting to hear those rumors.
John:
And so far, I haven't heard anything.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
In our final piece of follow-up for this week, James Andrews writes, one of the coolest LoRa projects, if you recall, LoRa is long range.
Casey:
It's what powers the Yolink stuff that John brought to the show and has now ruined my life because I want all of it.
Casey:
Anyways, James writes, one of the coolest LoRa projects is Mesh-tastic.
Casey:
It's more of a Radioham-esque thing, but it's super cool and a quote-unquote fun time sync.
Casey:
And this is described from MeshTastic.org as MeshTastic is an open-source, off-grid, decentralized mesh network built to run on affordable, low-power devices.
Casey:
I actually exchanged a couple of emails with James about this, or maybe it was masked on post.
Casey:
It doesn't matter.
Casey:
Anyways, James was saying that what you basically do is have a Bluetooth-powered LoRa receiver that works with MeshTastic, and that allows you to basically send text messages and potentially other data back and forth to other people on the mesh network.
Casey:
This is the sort of thing that I would probably spend way too much time messing with.
Casey:
So I don't ever want to think about it again.
Marco:
That's kind of cool.
Casey:
All right, let's do our first real topic.
Casey:
And Marco, I think you and I can buzz off from here on out because we're going to talk CES 2025.
Casey:
You two aren't reporting from the show floor?
Casey:
Nope, sure aren't.
Casey:
And I really don't care that much about TVs.
Casey:
They're certainly not in the way that you do, John.
Casey:
So take it away and wake me up when you're ready.
John:
Well, you should care a little bit because a lot of this TV tech eventually comes to computers.
John:
And there is some computer tie-ins, but yeah, a lot of this is about TVs.
John:
CES is the time of the year when television manufacturers show their new TVs for the year, but then don't tell you enough about them.
John:
And certainly don't have them for sale almost ever.
John:
Although TCL did something a little different this year.
John:
Anyway, just to set the frame here,
John:
Tons of TVs are announced at CES.
John:
I only care about a small subset of them.
John:
I care about the quote-unquote best TVs, the ones with the best picture quality, the ones that most accurately reproduce the picture of how it's supposed to look according to the people who made the TV show or movie, right?
John:
Because they make the thing in a certain way.
John:
The video is supposed to look this way.
John:
I want the TV to show it the way they made it.
John:
uh and i want it to do the best job possible so i only care about the top highest end tvs on that front sony has decided for the past few years they're going to be like apple and say we're not even going to show at ces everyone else can announce their tvs we're going to have a separate event later in the year just for sony so we get all the attention and we don't have to compete with all your other tv announcements and so far that's been working okay for sony because
John:
because sony is the big dog and so that's what they're doing sony was at ces sony was showing other stuff at ces but not tvs so okay sony you do you uh samsung uh maker of the quantum dot oled screen the best available screen technology for televisions has predictably a new generation of their qd oled screen
John:
uh i'll put some links in the show notes to videos that will tell you about it uh and the main thing that oleds including qd oled have been doing over the past several years is trying to get brighter uh because qd oleds in general are the best screen technology because every single pixel is individually controlled and
John:
you don't have to worry about backlight regions bleeding through and dynamically controlling them it's just individual pixels you turn them on and off when they're off they're totally off when they're on they're on one pixel doesn't affect the ones next to it there's no blooming like it's the best technology but the one weakness it has if you can call it that is it can't get super super duper bright of course the tvs that can get super duper right that aren't oled have all the problems with that bright backlight bleeding through surrounding pixels and doing all such other stuff but anyway um
John:
People who want to get the very best TV but also want to watch it with bright sunlight coming through the windows and hitting the TV screens, they're trying to help you out.
John:
So this year, here are the specs for the new generation of QD OLED that Samsung has.
John:
They're given in terms of how big a region of the screen is lit up because...
John:
If you light up the whole screen, you can't make it as bright as if you light up a small percentage of the screen due to power and heat reasons.
John:
So the way they described that is an N percent window.
John:
So and a 3 percent window, meaning there's a rectangle in the middle of the TV that is 3 percent the size of the entire screen.
John:
The new QD OLED gets to 4000 nits.
John:
10% window gets to 2200 and full field, whole screen, 400.
John:
And that may be shocking to you, but that is how LEDs work.
John:
4000 nits at a 3% window, 2000 at a 10% full field, 440.
Marco:
Now, what's the reason for that?
Marco:
Is it heat?
John:
Like, why is that?
John:
Yeah, it's heat and power.
John:
Both heat and power.
John:
because you've got you know it's organic and you've got the the burn-in issues or whatever but it's both heat and power so it's a problem and you like you may be thinking like is i think that it may actually be true of apple screens as well like their laptop screens but they say you can go to 600 nits but i wonder if you make the entire screen white on your macbook pro if it is 600 nits or if it only counts as a percentage but probably does because they're not oleds but anyway um even though these numbers don't sound impressive they're way better than last year right um
John:
Uh, and Samsung put this new panel and it's flagship television, the S 95 F. Uh, they also offer the S 95 F and an 83 inch size, but beware, even though Samsung is being annoying, like Apple, they won't tell you the 83 inch size does not use a QD OLED panel.
John:
They can't make it that big yet.
John:
The biggest one is still 77, but it's the same product.
John:
It's like, you know, if you buy these sizes, you get a QD OLED and if you buy the biggest size, you don't.
John:
And Samsung will not tell you that, but people just put their phones up to the screen and take a picture of it and go, yep, that's not a cutie OLED.
John:
So beware of that.
John:
And also there's a new version of Samsung's anti-reflective coating, which is very controversial because some people really like it because they insist on watching their televisions with giant bright lights on the screen.
John:
And other people hate it because the anti-glare coating...
John:
you know diffuses light and so if you have any light falling on it it sort of makes it hazy and black and makes the blacks not really black hazy and gray rather makes the blacks not true black and it's one of the reasons you're getting an oled so anyway i don't like samsung tvs but it's important to talk about them because they make the qd they're the only manufacturer in the entire world that makes qd oled screens and qd oled screens are the best oled screens for reasons we get into in a second so next up is lg the biggest oled tv maker and
John:
LG had a technology that they called MLA, micro lens array, that we talked about on past episodes where they put literally thousands of lenses on each pixel.
John:
Not on the screen.
John:
On each pixel has thousands of micro... When they say micro lens array, they mean micro lens.
John:
And they did that to try to make their screens have a better viewing angle because one of the advantages that QD OLED have is an amazingly good viewing angle because the color things are really close to you and the polarizer is like behind them, whereas in traditional LEDs, it's reversed.
John:
But the main advantage QD OLED has over non-QD OLED is non-QD OLEDs, like LGs, are WRGB panels.
John:
They have a red, a green, and a blue subpixel, and then a massive white subpixel next to it.
John:
And they use that to achieve good brightness, but they're mixing white with the red, the green, and the blue.
John:
And as you can imagine, it washes out colors.
John:
So QD OLED screens have the best viewing angles, the best color volume they can make the most different colors, and the best color brightness.
John:
They just have RGB.
John:
just plain old rgb and they just make the r the g and the b brighter to make the screen brighter which is how you would think they all work but that's not how any other oled works so qd oled still the king but lg is trying to catch up and they were using the microlens array last year and i think the year before that this year they have dropped the microlens array from their flagship television so how are they going to make it as brighter to try to compete with the qd oleds they did it by using our old friend from the ipad
John:
tandem oled which still i don't have a really great explanation for other than there's a there's an additional light emitting layer in the stack in the oled stack they just add one more thing that emits light and somehow the other thing that emit light shines through anyway multiple layers tandem oled just like on the ipad
John:
i think lg makes the tandem oled for the ipad i forget we've talked about it in past shows and i've already forgotten but anyway keep an eye on tandem oled because they got rid of mla and one of the disadvantages of mla is if light hits the screen at an angle it hits those micro lenses and scatters and again gives like a gray haze across the screen which you don't want it's messing up your black levels so they got rid of mla brought in tandem oled
John:
still wrgb still has a white sub pixel still doesn't have the same color volume as qd's oled but lg is trying to do what they do they don't know how to make qd oled only samsung does uh and by the way samsung gives these sells these screens to sony which is why sony is able to make great tvs but we don't know what they're doing this year
John:
so here are the specs for lg's flagship three percent window is 3700 nits 10 is 2400 nits and full field is 308 so it is not as good as qd oled it's a little bit better than the 10 window these are estimates these are not measurements these are estimates um and then the previous ones were claims from samsung so we'll see when they review the tvs but lg's hanging in there uh it's interesting to see they ditched uh mla
John:
And it's interesting to see the resurgence of tandem OLED.
John:
I don't actually, I think the tandem OLEDs in the iPad are just RGB and not WRGB.
John:
So keep an eye out for...
John:
apple slash mac caliber screens from both of these technologies one of the advances in qd oled this year was they were bragging about is now we can make qd oled smaller which is a thing to brag about because you got to make the subpixel smaller and so they were showing a 4k 27 inch qd oled and
John:
which is not right for us Mac folks.
John:
We want it to be 5K at 27-inch.
John:
But then they had right next to it, coming soon, 5K QD OLED 27-inch.
John:
It's not an announced product, but we're getting close.
John:
That is like...
John:
if you could get a cutie oled 27 inch 5k screen that is something that would be amazing and of course apple will ship it you know 15 years from now whenever the hell they update their monitors but keep an eye on that um and as for the uh the lg panel with the uh uh that dropped the microlens array lg was pulling a samsung and saying we're not we're not talking about we're not going to tell you what we're doing
John:
don't like they didn't stop them from taking their phones and holding it up to the screen and be like take a picture of the sub pixels what can you see right they didn't stop them from doing that but lg refused to say anything panasonic on the other hand said oh totally we'll tell you all about our screen we call it the primary rgb tandem oled panel everyone's got different branding for this but the fact is panasonic buys their screens from lg everybody knows they do and panasonic is branding their lg oled as primary rgb tandem oled which i don't know whatever they all make up their own marketing names but
John:
Samsung was out of the TV game in the US for years.
John:
They came back last year with two new TVs.
John:
Now they have three.
John:
Their top tier one is the Z95B.
John:
It uses this tandem OLED from LG.
John:
Looks really good.
John:
Unfortunately, Panasonic uses the Fire TV software stack that everyone hates.
John:
which is a bummer uh they were one of the things they were advertising on their tv was that it had a improved chimney cooling system takes cool air in from the bottom and sends it up the top again heat power levels they're trying to work on that but it's notable that samsung is going to come back um and second to last on tvs uh predictably everyone's adding more annoying ai stuff to their tvs
John:
To the point where there's, like, Microsoft Copilot, like, integrations, which, okay, I guess.
John:
I mean, it's basically like, you can access the Copilot web app through the TV.
John:
Okay.
John:
LG has an entire AI section on its TVs, including an AI remote.
John:
uh one of the controversial moves is they remove the input button from the remote in place of like some stupid ai thing that you have to like hold down and then it will bring up the input panel i have ai upscaling ai auto hdr ai remastering ai adapters everything everything is ai they will literally let you talk to voice assistants and lms through your television whatever it's just it's just making everyone feels like they need to do it but none of these things make tvs better but just have why that's what everyone's doing this year
John:
and finally uh big tvs are big that's been the trend for the past few years everyone wants to come and say forget about those tvs that look good ours is really big uh and they were just getting bigger and bigger uh even samsung has its uh cheat 83 inch flagship tv that's not even a qd oled uh tcl last year was showing off 115 inch tv now tcl is saying here's our 150 inch tv and it's the mid-range model
John:
and they're not showing you what the, what the top end one is.
John:
So it's probably bigger than 115.
John:
I don't know where people live, but they fit these televisions.
John:
Cause I don't know if you have realized how big 115 inch television is.
John:
It's really big.
John:
And so now that's not even their biggest size.
John:
What's, what is it going to be 130 inch?
John:
Like soon you're not gonna be able to get it in people's doors.
John:
Like they don't roll up.
John:
Uh, but just FYI, they keep making these things bigger, uh, because they can't make them better.
John:
So if you can't make it better, uh,
John:
just make it bigger and you know everyone loves big TVs so yeah that's all the TV talk just to keep update the upshot is QD OLED and LG are still duking it out QD OLED still seems like it's on top I hate Samsung's TVs so I'm waiting to see what Sony does with that QD OLED panel what Panasonic does with it is also going to be good but I don't really like the Fire TV OS so
John:
Not that I'm in the market for new TV.
John:
I'm just, you know, watching as a fan.
John:
But later in the year when Sony announces their new TV with the new QD OLED, that'll be interesting.
John:
And it's also interesting because Sony this last year didn't even get the new version of the QD OLED from last year.
John:
They just kept selling their TV from the year before.
John:
And it was still the best TV you could buy, right?
John:
So they're just like, we're sitting out a year.
John:
We don't need to bother.
John:
I don't know if it's because Samsung wouldn't give.
John:
Samsung wouldn't sell Sony the latest generation of QD OLED, and they were keeping it for themselves.
John:
So I'm not sure how that relationship is shaking out, but I hope Sony is able to give Samsung enough money to get this new QD OLED panel.
John:
I think they will, because Samsung is this giant conglomerate where they...
John:
There's one part of it called Samsung Display that sells their displays.
John:
And there's another part called, I don't remember, Samsung Electronics that makes a TV.
John:
And they're two different things.
John:
Samsung Display wants to sell displays to Sony because their profit and loss is how many displays do we sell?
John:
And Samsung TV totally does not want them to sell displays to Sony, but that's a different part of the company.
John:
So yeah, real healthy over there.
John:
But that's just the way it goes.
Casey:
John, I'm impressed.
Casey:
That took a lot less time than I expected.
Casey:
Well done.
John:
And coming back to computer stuff, LG has announced a computer display.
Casey:
Indeed.
John:
It is called the Ultrafine 6K with Thunderbolt 5 support.
John:
And as is traditional with CES, they won't tell us anything you want to know about it.
Yeah.
Marco:
Does it at least have the right density to be a Pro Display XDR competitor?
Marco:
Is it like 6K at 32 inches?
John:
We're not releasing that information today, Marco.
John:
they literally won't tell you the resolution it's like well what will you tell us so here's the reading from where is this from mac rumors details are scant you don't say but we know that the lg ultra fine monitor and they get the model number features a nano ips black panel delivering a wide color gamut covering 99.5 percent of adobe rgb 98 of dci p3 lg has not revealed the exact resolution another thing is unclear is whether it's 60 hertz or 120 hertz and the price has not been revealed
John:
So what do we know about this?
John:
It is 32-inch.
John:
The 6K is in the name.
John:
The specs of the panel make it seem like not quite as good as the XDR.
John:
Every story about this mentions the monitor that we've talked about in the last year.
John:
which is the Dell UltraSharp 32-inch 6K monitor, which is for sale and has actual specs.
John:
It's $2,500, 32-inch, it's 60 hertz, no HDR.
John:
It is slightly higher res than the XDR, so it's not the same panel.
John:
It's 6144 by 3456 instead of the XDR 6016 by 3384, and it's 99% P3, right?
John:
I'm assuming that the LG uses a panel like that, a 6144 panel, but who knows?
John:
LG's not telling us, but the density is probably...
John:
in that ballpark and it is 32 inches i don't like i don't know why they bother showing something at ces if they're not going to tell you like here's a monitor here's a size let me tell you how much of the color space it covers but resolution no we can't tell no refresh rate no we're not telling you that either they never reveal the price fine you don't maybe they don't even know the price yet because it's not out yet but
John:
This is the thing to keep an eye on.
John:
The LG UltraFine 5K was the ultra fine alternative to Apple's 27-inch monitors.
John:
Maybe the 6K will be as well.
John:
One thing I can tell you about the 6K is it is not as homely as the 5K because they copied Apple more faithfully this time.
John:
It looks like not quite as elegant XDR.
John:
It may be cheap and plasticky.
John:
We'll find out.
John:
But I think it is more attractive.
John:
Indeed.
Casey:
Speaking of copying Apple, it's the end of an era because Dell is no longer making XPS computers.
Casey:
This was the, generally speaking, the good line of Dell computers since forever, basically.
Casey:
Reading from Ars Technica, Dell is killing the XPS branding that has become a mainstay for people seeking a sleek, respectable, well-priced PC.
Casey:
This means that there won't be any more Dell XPS laptops or desktops.
Casey:
Dell is also killing its Latitude, Inspiron, and Precision branding it announced today.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
I mean, I'm not really sure why that was necessary, but surely you've come up with something that's better.
Casey:
Right, Dell?
Casey:
Right?
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Here's Dell's new branding.
Casey:
You can get Dell, Dell Pro, or Dell Pro Max.
Casey:
Folks, that is not a joke.
Casey:
That is not a joke.
Casey:
This is legitimately real.
Marco:
When I first saw this, I thought there's no way that's real.
John:
Has to be a joke.
John:
And by the way, before we move on from this, like, XPS, Latitude, Inspiron, I know those names despite never owning a Dell and never wanting to own a Dell.
John:
So they are throwing away some substantial decades-long brand equity from XPS and Latitude and Inspiron and Precision I hadn't heard about, right?
John:
But, like...
John:
It's not just this is not like, oh, well, you know, they have a new line of things and here are the names.
John:
It's let's throw away the names that did have name recognition.
John:
Maybe they have bad recognition.
John:
It's like when telecom companies change their names because everyone hates them.
John:
But anyway, let's talk about their new branding.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So you can get a Dell, a Dell Pro, or a Dell Pro Max, but because it's Dell and because it's the PC industry, it's not quite that simple.
Casey:
You can get any of the following computers.
Casey:
You can get a Dell Premium, a Dell Plus, a Dell Base, a Dell Pro Premium, a Dell Pro Plus, a Dell Pro Base, or a Dell Pro Max Premium, Dell Pro Plus, or a Dell Pro Base.
Casey:
All of those exist.
Casey:
So Dell was apparently mocked at its own press event for copying Apple's naming convention.
Casey:
This is reading from 9to5Mac.
Casey:
This is so delicious.
Casey:
Oh, my goodness.
Casey:
Reading from 9to5Mac, if Dell hoped nobody would notice the origin of these names, it was disappointed.
Casey:
Quote, I'm wondering why you guys didn't choose something original because you essentially have Apple's branding here, one audience member quipped.
Casey:
Another said, quote, your branding sounds a lot like Apple.
Casey:
Aren't you just following them?
Yeah.
Casey:
And then Engadget...
Casey:
and we'll link them as well, notes that things descend entirely into farce when Dell also throws in size labels for its desktop PCs.
Casey:
And Gadget writes, just try to read the names Dell Pro Max Micro and Dell Pro Max Mini without having your brain self-destruct.
Casey:
And yes, you can expect these machines to have their own plus and premium sub-branding.
Casey:
So yes, there really is going to be a Dell Pro Max Micro Plus.
John:
it's amazing just amazing like i just it's from all the things to copy from apple don't copy their bad ideas like if you're copying apple's naming it's probably a bad idea because apple's not great at naming they get away with it because their products are good and the names become associated with the goodness of the products but you probably can't get away with that and the second thing is you know come up with your own names like you want like they had they had their own brands again maybe they had bad you know maybe people hate xps or latitude or whatever but
Marco:
i really don't i mean people hate inspiran i can tell you that because they were very crappy laptops but yeah xps was fine but i mean i mean is anybody buying dell desktop pcs not alienware which is which i think are good actually alienware actually had some ces news by the way uh apparently people have been angry about alienware for years because they will sell you an alienware computer and it didn't take standard components like you need to get an alienware power supply like it wasn't just like an atx case
John:
Oh, yeah, that's fine.
John:
It was annoying for everybody.
John:
Finally, Alienware is saying their new line of computers will accept standard components.
John:
So good for them.
Marco:
Their branding has always been very separate.
Marco:
Who is buying like a Dell tower and cares what the heck it's called?
Marco:
Like, aren't these mostly bought by companies?
John:
I would imagine, but who even knows?
John:
But yeah, like to copy Apple's naming is bad because the names aren't good.
John:
They're not good when Apple does them.
John:
They're not good when you do them.
John:
And then to somehow find a way to make it worse, not once over, but twice over.
John:
Because adding premium plus and base is terrible.
John:
And then adding sizes to that, like you can't just keep tacking around these meaningless suffixes, right?
John:
It's bad enough that you have...
John:
you know like they they kind of make the mistake of like apple does like the m4 the m4 pro and the m4 max but there's no m4 pro max but the phone had pro and max and it had a pro max right like apple kind of learned from its phone mistake when it did the chips but then once you do max now you've got ultra which is higher than max and they were making extreme like apple has painted itself into a corner with its names they're not great don't copy them and then certainly don't copy them and make them worse so bad show dell
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Casey:
NVIDIA announces next-gen RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 GPUs.
Casey:
Reading from The Verge, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang revealed the RTX 50 series GPUs during a CES keynote, announcing a $2,000 5090, a $1,000 5080, a $750 5070 Ti, and a $550 RTX 5070.
John:
So when we had a question on Ask ATP, I think a few months ago, they were like, oh, the rumors of the big M4 chips with their big GPUs, the ones that aren't out yet, like the M4 Ultra, if they ever make such a thing, their GPU, that GPU could be amazing.
John:
Or even an M4 Extreme, the GPU could compete with a 4090.
John:
How is that possible in such a tiny chip that sips power?
John:
And the answer to the question that I gave was, A, the M4 Ultra is not going to be a tiny chip that sips power.
John:
It's going to be big.
John:
really big and hot and take a lot of power but yeah it'll be relatively you know you know not going to take huge amounts of power but still way more power than like the m4 m4 pro or even m4 max takes and b it doesn't really matter if it competes with the 4090 in terms of bragging rights because by the time that chip is out nvidia will have replaced the 4090 which is already a multiple multiple years old
John:
They'll replace it with their 5 series.
John:
And here we are at CES.
John:
NVIDIA is announcing their new GPUs.
John:
Apple hasn't even released an M4 Ultra or anything higher.
John:
And already NVIDIA has its next generation of GPUs as predicted.
John:
And the next generation is pretty good.
Casey:
NVIDIA says the RTX 5090 will be two times faster than the RTX 4090 thanks to DLSS4 and the Blackwell architecture.
Casey:
John, do you want to take a little pause and explain to me what the hell that means, please?
John:
No, keep going.
John:
We'll pause at the end.
Casey:
All right, fine.
Casey:
But it will come at a cost.
Casey:
The RTX 5090 will have a total graphics power of 575 watts and a recommended PSU requirement of 1,000 watts.
Casey:
That's 125 watts more than the RTX 4090.
Casey:
And let me just tell you, so we had weather come through over the weekend, and it's not worth talking about.
Casey:
But suffice to say, I had charged up that tailgate battery pack that I use that provides full-on AC power.
Casey:
It's a 20-pound battery or whatever.
Casey:
And I charged that up just in case we needed it.
Casey:
And they tell you in the manual you should store it at about half juice, you know, like 50%.
Casey:
And so now that we're through the weather, I decided I'm going to go discharge it back to 50%.
Casey:
The easiest way for me to do that is to hook my UPS up to it just for a few minutes, you know, 10, 20 minutes, whatever.
Casey:
Because my UPS has got three monitors, a MacBook Pro, the Synology, the Eero router, all sorts of stuff hanging off of this, right?
Casey:
All off of my UPS.
Casey:
And I know you're not really supposed to hook a UPS up to a battery pack.
Casey:
I'm just doing it temporarily to discharge a battery pack, right?
Casey:
Well, the battery pack will show you what the usage is, you know, how many watts you're using as you're using it.
Casey:
My entire desk setup, a six-bay Synology, three 5K monitors, two of which are the Ultrafines, which were probably not efficient at all.
Casey:
My MacBook Pro, my CalDigit TS4, I forget what else is on here.
Casey:
All of that together is about 500 watts.
Casey:
And we're saying that these graphics cards are 575.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I mean, this is why, like, you know, when we're talking about when we're comparing Apple's GPUs to NVIDIA desktop GPUs, these are very different types of products.
Marco:
We're literally talking about like a 10x level power difference here.
Marco:
So this is like – NVIDIA is being limited by how much power you can draw from a standard U.S.
Marco:
outlet at some point for these total PCs.
Marco:
Because you can draw about, I think, 1,500 to 1,800 watts sustained for most U.S.
Marco:
circuits.
Marco:
So when your GPU alone uses almost 600 –
Marco:
Not to mention the rest of the PC.
Marco:
You're really pushing boundaries here.
Marco:
At some point, gaming desktops are going to require three-phase power or something.
Marco:
So this is a very different type of product.
Marco:
This is not made for...
Marco:
power-efficient PCs, portable, you know, anything laptop, anything, like, compact desktops.
Marco:
This is, like, what is the highest level of performance we can get from a GPU at any cost, because this is $2,000, at any cost and at any size, and heat and power efficiency be damned.
Marco:
Because there are applications for that.
Marco:
You know, not just games, although games are a big one, but, of course, you know, all the, you know, AI stuff these days.
Marco:
Like, there's lots of applications for, like...
Marco:
I don't care how much power it uses.
Marco:
I just need the highest performance.
Marco:
That's what NVIDIA delivers with these.
Marco:
That is not what Apple delivers with their computers.
Marco:
Now, we can and have had the argument of, like, should the Mac Pro be that?
Marco:
Because the Mac Pro before the Apple Silicon transition was that.
Marco:
The Intel Mac Pro...
Marco:
was actually sized to have a power capacity to fit just under a US outlet's power draw.
John:
Because you could put multiple of these 400-watt GPUs in there.
John:
And by the way, pricing-wise, it's like, oh, $2,000, that's so expensive.
John:
apple has sold many gpus one of which is in my computer right now for way more money than that and they were not nearly as powerful because they're like the mpx modules are like two times the cost of the actual gpu you know they're all amd things in there so yeah uh pricing wise it's shocking to pc people but we're like oh um
John:
You can buy on eBay today a crappy GPU in an MPX module for an Intel Mac Pro that will cost you more than the 5090 and will be like one-fifteenth the speed.
John:
So, yeah, the pricing is all out of whack.
John:
But, yeah, the case, Apple's Mac Pro case has the power supply for it, and it has the cooling for it, importantly.
John:
It has the cooling for it.
John:
One of the things that boggles my mind with the high-end...
John:
nvidia gpus is how they how uh gaming pcs and how the cards design their cooling this card the reference design for this card and all the companies that have their you know the nvidia shows a reference design and then like asus and gigabyte and all these other companies make their cards from you know like they're all selling basically the same gpu but with their own cards and their own coolers on them the the reference design has three giant fans like you know i don't know five inch fans whatever full like three giant fans slapped to the side
John:
of the video card i don't know if they're blowing air into it or sucking air out of it but the point is they're like picture a card slotted into a motherboard and on the card on the video card are three giant fans attached to the card blowing into the card or away from the card right
John:
and you're like well how how does that airflow work in the case then you see in the case the case has like three fans on the ceiling of the case and then two fans on the back of the case and then the three fans on the card are facing down at the floor of the case like is there any rhyme or reason to the airflow it makes it makes apple's design so like cold air in front hot air in back like
John:
There's one direction of the airflow.
John:
There's one set of fans that just... The air goes from the front to the back, and gaming PCs are like, just put in a bunch of fans.
John:
It doesn't matter which direction they're facing.
John:
These ones face up.
John:
These ones face down.
John:
These ones face left.
John:
These ones face right.
John:
Just turn them all up really high.
John:
Everything will be fine.
John:
It's like...
John:
Guys, get together on which direction you want the fans to be facing.
John:
Figure out where the airflow is going to come.
John:
Where does the cold air go in?
John:
Where does the hot air go out?
John:
And come to an agreement.
John:
And they're like, nope.
John:
Because they can't get together on it.
John:
I see these video card fans...
John:
Like they're basically pointing either upwards or downwards in a case that has openings in the front and the back.
John:
And that's why they're so loud.
John:
Anyway, gaming PCs.
John:
And as for the AI thing, Apple or Apple, Nvidia makes dedicated AI cards that cost way more than this and are way more powerful and are totally dedicated to AI.
John:
And that is why Nvidia was briefly the most valuable company in the world.
John:
And still in the running.
John:
But that's not this.
John:
But anyway, yeah, they are making even more powerful cards.
John:
And it's great.
John:
And as Casey just said, they're claiming it's two times faster.
John:
And they're talking about DLSS 4.
John:
This is an upgrade to their DLSS sense for deep learning supersampling technology.
John:
It includes new.
John:
This is reading from their copy of the Verges article about it.
John:
New neural rendering capabilities that, on systems with the new RTX 50 series, can do multi-frame generation, generating up to three additional frames per traditionally rendered frame, working in a similar complex suite of DLSS technologies to multiply frame rates by up to 8x over traditional brute force rendering.
John:
Then they show a bunch of bar graphs from NVIDIA's presentation, showing, look at this, the green graph shows the RTX 5090, and then the gray one shows the 4090.
John:
The 4090 used to be amazing, but look at these green lines.
John:
They're over twice as tall as the gray lines.
John:
Isn't this amazing?
John:
Now, if that just sounds like an alphabet soup, you may be thinking, all right, so NVIDIA came out with a new card, and it's twice as fast as they're old, and that's amazing.
John:
But if you know anything about the alphabet soup that I just read, you're like, okay, wait a second.
John:
What does it mean to have up to three additional frames per traditionally rendered frame?
John:
and up to 8x over a traditional brute force rendering what are they talking about let me tell you what they're talking about so video games uh have to draw a picture on your screen and uh every you know 1 60th of a second or whatever they have to draw a new picture if you want 60 frames per second right so there's a deadline they've drawn a picture they're gonna need that next picture in 1 60th of a second if you want to have 60 of these frames every second
John:
And the old way of having higher frame rates is, can I draw the frame in less time?
John:
Because if I can draw the frame in 1 100th of a second, then I can have 100 of those frames per second.
John:
But if it takes me 1 20th of a second, then I can only have 20 frames per second.
John:
So we want to take less time to draw the frame.
John:
Several years ago, all these companies decided, that's hard to do.
John:
So I've got a better idea.
John:
Instead of asking the video card to draw every frame, how about we have the video card draw frame and then we ask the video card what it thinks the next frame would look like if it could draw it.
John:
based on the frames that had come before it what do you think the next frame is probably going to look like we don't have time to render it but can you just like think about what it probably is going to look like based on the frames that came before it and the answer is yes and that's dlss does this like how does this work so like is this like motion smoothing on a tv like is this do gamers actually want this
John:
Yeah, so this is very much like motion smoothing.
John:
There have been many versions of DLSS.
John:
This is version four, and every company has their own version of this under a different alphabet soup acronym.
John:
And yeah, they would do it based on the frames that had come before it and the pixels that are nearby.
John:
And the whole point is, if you can do this faster than you can actually render a frame, you can...
John:
double your frame rate because you get one quote traditionally rendered frame as an actually rendered frame and then you get one we made this up frame for free essentially while your game is rendering the the next real frame so you could double your frame rates if you had a slower older pc but it supported dlss you could say i can't when i put this game into 4k resolution i get 20 frames per second but i want to play it 4k because it looks real good so i'll turn on dlss and now i get 40 frames per second
John:
And there's a little bit of artifacting and sometimes like a little bit janky and every version of DLS gets a little bit better of being sort of temporarily stable and not having weird artifacts or whatever.
John:
But that's, you know, that's been a trade off the gamers have been able to make.
John:
You can always just do the traditionally rendered frame way, which is like, I'll just buy a more expensive CPU or GPU and increase my frame rate.
John:
But if you have an older CPU or GPU and an older computer and you just want higher resolution, you can use DLSS.
John:
The innovation this year with DLSS 4 is instead of looking at previous frames that the card had rendered and the pixels that are surrounding the pixel you're thinking about for the next frame, DLSS 4, I think it's the first one to do this, but I'm not entirely sure.
John:
But anyway, DLSS 4 uses, can anyone guess?
John:
ai because why would it not of course it uses an ai model that they trained on video games so it's not just guessing what the next frame is going to look like based on like the pixels that came before it that were just rendered on this card there's an ai model that has been trained on millions and millions of frames of video games
John:
So it has a better idea of what the pixel should be in this position in the next frame.
John:
And DLSS 4 will not just make one fake frame.
John:
It can make up to three fake frames.
John:
So you get one, quote, traditionally rendered frame, and then it can make three frames.
John:
Out of that and say, I think I know what the next three frames are going to be.
John:
So that's why you can, you know, triple, quadruple, whatever your frame rate, because you get one regular frame and then we make up three frames.
John:
And by then you got one regular frame again and your frame rates go up.
John:
And it's not just based on like the three or four dozen frames that came before it.
John:
It's based on this AI training model that's been trained on thousands and thousands and millions and billions of frames of video games.
John:
It's actually very clever.
John:
But now I want you to look again at the chart.
John:
Look again at the chart and see those lines where the green lines are much higher than the gray lines and look underneath it in tiny text that says DLSS on them.
John:
Look at the one all the way on the left where it says Far Cry 6, and it says RT, which I think stands for ray tracing, but it doesn't say DLSS.
John:
Suddenly, the green line is not that much higher for the 5090 than it was in the 4090.
John:
It's higher.
John:
It's higher than the 4090, and ray tracing games are often limited in...
John:
Not by the GPU power, but by like the ray tracing components of the GPU.
John:
And so this is not really a fair comparison.
John:
I'm not saying that the 5090 is only like 10% faster than the 4090.
John:
But what I am saying is that NVIDIA's marketing materials are leaning heavily on the fact that the 5090 is really good at making up up to three fabricated frames for you to increase your frame rate.
John:
So...
John:
This is an interesting turn of events where they're not content to brag about the actual increase in frame rendering performance of their GPU.
John:
They're more interested in telling you, we can make up frames that are so convincing, you won't even be able to tell that we made them up.
John:
And they're mostly right.
John:
To be fair, they're mostly right.
John:
A lot of the reviews of this are like,
John:
We are taking great pains to try to... Granted, on YouTube, it's hard because YouTube will only do 60 frames per second, I believe.
John:
So they already have to show it at half speed if it's doing 120 frames per second.
John:
But the 59 will do like 240 frames per second.
John:
There are screens, they were showing at CES and they're already out on the market.
John:
They will do 500 hertz, right?
John:
And how are you going to fill 500 frames per second?
John:
You need to make up frames.
John:
And the LSS4 is pretty amazing.
John:
And regular people probably won't be able to tell it.
John:
It's just like you're getting performance for free.
John:
But just FYI,
John:
they're doing it in a different way than you might expect.
John:
And yes, it is very much, like you said, Marco, like motion smoothing, where the show, this movie is 24 frames per second, but you want to see it at 30 or 60 frames per second.
John:
So we'll just make up the in-between frames, and the TVs do a terrible job of this compared to DLSS4.
John:
Like, TV manufacturers don't care.
John:
That's why everything looks all janky and terrible.
John:
DLSS4 is amazing, but it is a little bit...
John:
it's not shady it's not misleading it's just it's interesting that that's how nvidia is framing their graphics performance i'm not saying they've given up on making the performance better just by like as they say traditional brute force rendering also known as rendering but yeah
John:
but they are like they they should be proud of dlss 4 it is amazing they've been working on dlss for years every other manufacturer has similar technologies but i think dlss 4 is the best they're manufacturing three frames for every one that actually gets rendered but that's their that's their sort of like uh their big selling point that's the thing that's making their graph so high and it is worth noting that this is happening in the graphics world eventually why not just have the the card make up all the frames and not have the game render them at all i guess
Marco:
I mean, look, for whatever it's worth, I think it's very impressive that the GPUs can make up frames faster than they can just render new ones.
Marco:
And when you think about how many milliseconds do they have to make up each frame?
John:
it's not very many well the good thing about doing the making up the frames is i'm pretty sure when they make up the frames they're essentially working in a as a 2d world whereas rendering the frames is this world of polygons and light rays and like just you know what i mean and so like the problem space is massively narrowed it's like you just need to make every pixel in this 4k image and i need you to make three of them
John:
Whereas rendering the flame for real is like, hey, there's 10 million polygons, 50 lights bouncing around and ray casting and like there's so much stuff going on to figure out what those pixels should be.
John:
Whereas if you have an AI model and you just have to make a grid of pixels, like it is amazing that they can, the thing that's amazing is that they can do it in a way that doesn't look horrendous, right?
John:
Like how does it not just become a smeary, blurry, ridiculous mess?
John:
And that is the magic.
John:
But I kind of understand how it could be faster than doing it the real way.
Marco:
Every hand gets five fingers every four frames.
Marco:
Honestly, it is kind of impressive.
Marco:
If they're using any kind of... Who knows what they mean by AI?
Marco:
I don't know the details of DLSS.
John:
Models that they train.
John:
They trained it on video games by showing it frames in video games.
Marco:
But to execute...
Marco:
any kind of reasonably modern AI model, even a small one, to execute it 50 times a second or whatever, maybe more than that, while also being a GPU to render the rest of the game the rest of the time, that is a pretty impressive amount of computing accomplishment right there.
Marco:
That being said, I don't know anything about this, so maybe I shouldn't even be talking about it, but it does seem like...
Marco:
gamers are pushing their monitors well into territory that human vision cannot perceive um and it's very much like when when like high-end audio files are like i run my dac at 192 kilohertz and it's like you can't hear the difference between that and cd quality dude like you're telling yourself you can but like science is telling you that you can't i don't know where that line is with refresh rates for monitors but i'm pretty sure gamers are past it now
John:
No, they're not quite past it yet.
John:
Remember the thing that I had in my blog that shows the responsiveness to drawing on a tablet?
John:
Do you remember that video that I'm always linking to?
John:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John:
There actually is a pretty long way to go when you start.
John:
It's not like, can you see the difference?
John:
Because you're doing input.
John:
Now, granted, you're not drawing on the screen, but when you're moving the mouse or whatever to aim, because your input is influencing what's on the screen, it is much more like the scribbling on your finger demo, in which case,
John:
there's actually a pretty long way to go but the other thing to consider is um you don't always get your peak frame rate like frame rate varies throughout the thing and they just want to make sure like to get to make sure your minimum frame rate is in that good responsive threshold like scribbling your finger on the on the screen right to make sure that's your minimum your maximum is going to be at absurd levels the other thing is that um
John:
traditional lcd displays become smeary messes at these refresh rates and they have to do all sorts of weird tricks to make that not happen that make the screen uglier but oled oled's response rate is insane right as you know from like the stuttery effect that some people don't like with oleds at 24 frames per second the response rate of oled pixels is incredibly fast and so those two things combine to say we've got oled gaming monitors and
John:
And they, like, 240 hertz on an OLED gaming monitor actually works.
John:
Like, it fully 100% works.
John:
It does not become a blurry mess.
John:
You don't have to compromise the image quality.
John:
So those two technologies go hand-in-hand, as does variable refresh rate and all that other stuff.
John:
G-Sync is, NVIDIA's technology for this, so...
John:
I think they're making some good progress.
John:
I think it is still an appreciable improvement in games.
John:
And we've just got so much farther to go in terms of like, what is the game actually rendering and how is the game world modeled?
John:
So as always, gaming will absorb every ounce of money, technology, and power that you have.
John:
And it continues to do so.
Casey:
Speaking of NVIDIA, they announced a $3,000 personal AI supercomputer called Digits.
Casey:
I hate how much I love this name.
Casey:
That's very, very good.
Casey:
Reading from The Verge, NVIDIA announced that it's launching a personal AI supercomputer called Project Digits in May.
Casey:
The heart of Project Digits is the new GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, which packs enough processing power to run sophisticated AI models while being compact enough to fit on a desk and run from a standard power outlet.
Casey:
This kind of processing power used to require much larger, more power-hungry systems.
Casey:
This desktop-sized system can handle AI models with up to 200 billion parameters and has a starting price of $3,000.
Casey:
The product itself looks a lot like a Mac Mini.
Casey:
Each Project Digit system comes equipped with 128 gigs of unified coherent memory and up to 4 terabytes of NVMe storage.
Casey:
for even more demanding applications two project digit systems can be linked together to handle models with up to 405 billion parameters meta's late excuse me best model llama 3.1 has 405 billion parameters the gb10 chip delivers up to one petaflop of ai performance which means it can perform one quadrillion ai calculations per second at fp4 precision
Casey:
which helps make the calculations faster by making approximations.
Casey:
And the system features NVIDIA's latest generation CUDA cores and fifth generation Tensor cores, connected to an NVLink C2C to a Grace CPU containing 20 power-efficient ARM-based cores.
John:
So this is the idea behind this.
John:
So what they're taking is things to note here.
John:
First, to note that they have an ARM-based CPU.
John:
It's like a 20-core ARM CPU.
John:
It's probably pretty good.
John:
But that's not even the important part of this.
John:
Just setting that aside for a second, because we'll get to that in the next item.
John:
NVIDIA making ARM CPUs, like just general-purpose CPUs.
John:
And then they stick with it, one of their big, giant GPUs.
John:
But this one is tuned for...
John:
AI type stuff.
John:
This is letting you have a thing in your house that can run pretty big LLM models.
John:
So again, they measure a number of parameters, 200 billion, you can get two of them to 400 billion.
John:
Instead of going over the network and using one of NVIDIA's real, like $30,000, you know, I forget what they are, the H100 series or whatever.
John:
NVIDIA sells GPUs that cost as much as a car that go in data centers that are running like ChatGPT and everything.
John:
That's where NVIDIA is making all their money.
John:
Those are just so much bigger than these, so much more expensive.
John:
But if you want to have something in your house that can run a reasonable AI model...
John:
nvd is making this little mac mini type thing which i have to say the pricing puts the mac mini to shame considering what you get in this box but what else is new anyway uh i don't know if there's a market for this product maybe people who are like doing experiments with uh with models and they like they think a 200 billion or 400 billion parameter model is something that they could toy with but it is interesting that this type of product like that they're starting to release this type of product saying like
John:
Yeah, it's great that you can have computers in the cloud that do all this stuff.
John:
But usually we charge you money for using that.
John:
If you just want to have it, quote unquote, on prem, but not really because it's literally in your house and not in a data center, you can get your own one of these and stick it on your desk.
John:
And actually, it's not that big.
John:
Actually, it's just like a little Mac mini.
John:
And you can just have it sitting there headless and do your, you know, model development on this thing.
John:
now i think when they say that it can run these models i think they mean that you can do inference on them as in you can put the model on there run it and then ask it questions i don't think they mean that you would use this to train because training costs hundreds of millions of dollars and huge data centers and long periods of time but still worth noting two things one nvidia is continuing to make hardware that's starting to look a little bit more pc like and two
John:
The idea that there's a thing you could have in your house to do what ChatGPT or Google Gemini or Microsoft.
John:
Microsoft was opening.
John:
It was the third one I'm forgetting.
John:
Llama models would do the stuff that's happening.
John:
Claude or whatever is happening over there in a data center.
John:
You can have that happen in your house and it will be closer.
John:
And it will run on hardware you control, could potentially be more private, and you can use it for development.
John:
And the other thing I'll add is that this tiny little Mac Mini is ugly as sin because they've got some weird particle board, salt and pepper notebook, fake granite thing going on.
John:
I think it looks interesting.
John:
I don't know.
Marco:
To me, it's kind of like the Cybertruck.
Marco:
It's like, I don't think that's attractive, but I'm glad people are trying new things.
Marco:
It does not look like it's copying Apple, unlike much of the industry.
Marco:
So, hey, good for them.
John:
I can't tell even what they're going for.
John:
But anyway, yeah.
John:
And so the final item that I think we have time for today, because believe it or not, there is more from CES, but we can't get to it all.
John:
The final item is the next little hmm.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So NVIDIA's Jensen Huang can set plans for its own desktop CPU.
Casey:
Excuse me, CPU.
Casey:
It's long been rumored, reading from The Verge, that NVIDIA is planning to break into the consumer CPU market in 2025, and we may have already had our first look at its new processor.
Casey:
On Monday at CES, the company unveiled Project Digits, a $3,000 personal AI supercomputer powered by a new GB10 Grace Blackwell superchip.
Casey:
Reuters reports that yesterday NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang hinted to investors and analysts that there are bigger plans for the ARM-based CPU within that chip co-developed with MediaTek.
Casey:
Quote, you know, obviously we have plans, Huang said during an investor presentation.
Casey:
referring to the new 20 core desktop cpu but said that he would quote wait to tell you what they are co-developer mediatek has its own ambitions though and huang suggested that it may also bring the cpu to market independent of nvidia now they could this is a quote now they could provide that to us and they could keep that for themselves and serve the market and so it was a great win-win huang said
John:
Yeah, so MediaTek.
John:
MediaTek makes many chips in the industry.
John:
One of the things they're known for is making the chips that power a lot of the TVs.
John:
There's a lot of disappointment with MediaTek over the past several years because...
John:
Their chips that are in the televisions have not had support for the latest HDMI standard on all the ports.
John:
So, for example, my television, it's a Sony television that uses a MediaTek chip for part of its processing to handle the HDMI and stuff.
John:
And it only supports two HDMI 2.1 ports that do 48 gigabits per second.
John:
And then the other two ports are lower bandwidth.
John:
The companies that don't use MediaTek and make their own chips, which includes LG and, I believe, Samsung...
John:
their chips can have four hdmi 2.1 ports and have for many years and every year there's a new mediatek chip that comes out it's like surely this year the mediatek chip will support four hdmi 2.1 connections and finally this weird limitation where you got two good ports and two bad ports that'll be gone and insert tv brand here will be just like lg and samsung and have full four ports and here we are at the advent of hdmi 2.2 and mediatek's
John:
still does not have a tv chip that can support four hdmi 2.1 ports and we're about to have hdmi 2.2 so i'm a little bit angry at media tech but let's set that aside nvidia why would they be interested in making anything on the desktop uh for desktop cpus well we've talked about this before microsoft with its windows on arm and the what was it called the
John:
co-pilot plus pc branding thing where their arm-based windows computers are required to have certain minimum ai capabilities and video has to be looking at this and saying we could do that we're the best at ai we have the best gpus we've we've got this sewn up all we need is a little arm cpu and we've got some of them and we have some partners that help us and arm has
John:
chip design that's like we can do this in our sleep and i have to say of all the different companies that are making chips that are embarrassing intel's sad chips uh you know the arm chips made for windows pcs nvidia would probably be really good at it like there
John:
they're pretty good at making chips they're definitely good at making the ai and gpu parts they're actually pretty good at mobile stuff we don't have time for it today but we'll get to it uh in a future show maybe talking about uh there is a mobile 5090 like marco has got those gaming laptops with mobile nvidia chips in them they do make mobile chips don't you know get them yeah low power is not nvidia's strength strength but you know
John:
that like this little this little mac mini thing that we just talked about the digits thing it's a tiny little computer it doesn't take a huge amount of power and it's surprisingly powerful so this is something to watch like if intel is going to be having its problems that we've discussed on past shows and they're and microsoft is trying to go to arm and as you know i'm rooting for them to go to arm so i can play windows games on my future arm mac uh still probably not happening but anyway um
John:
I would love it if NVIDIA said, you know what?
John:
All right, fine, fine.
John:
If no one else is going to do it, we will become the new Intel in the PC world.
John:
We will make not just the best GPUs in the world, but also we'll make the CPUs too.
John:
We'll put them on a little SoC.
John:
We'll put them in your laptops.
John:
Fine.
John:
Like they could be essentially the Apple version.
John:
of the pc world where they make the best silicon that everyone wants to put in their high-end things or whatever and so far they've just been like why would we do that we're making so much money making these ai uh you know i forget what they call them they're not really called gpus but these these
John:
ai things that cost as much as a car that the people buy by the hundreds and thousands to train their models we're making so much money doing that why would we even bother but i think they're kind of like in their eye and saying if no one else is going to do it maybe we will and so i'm rooting for them i'm not rooting for media tech because i'm still mad at them about the hdmi thing but nvidia should just make its own cpu and they've already got their own gpus and they should just take over the entire pc industry and uh and provide competition for apple
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So, John, it seems like every week we get at least a little bit of an update on your app.
Casey:
Can you give us even just a very quick update as to the state of the world?
John:
So I'm getting to the point where I'm going to start doing test flight beta of my app.
John:
And one of the things that Casey did with his last app.
John:
was open up the test flight to atp members uh by did you do just by putting it on like the member page yep that's right yeah putting the url to get on the test flight on everybody's member page uh so that would be a way instead of sending out like invitation emails to everybody you would just go to your member page and you'd say hey do you want to try the test flight beta of john's app here's the url for it
John:
I'm thinking about doing that.
John:
I'm probably going to do that.
John:
Not 100%, but I'm probably going to do that when I'm ready to do it, which means that when I do actually do that, there is multiple factors.
John:
One, I have to tell everyone the name of the app, which I haven't yet.
John:
You'd find out when the test light came in, right?
John:
Two, probably on a future episode, I will have to give this whole big spiel about what it's going to mean to be on the test flight for this app.
John:
I'll probably do what Casey did, which is like, okay, if you're an ATP member, you get access to the test flight.
John:
If you don't want it, fine, just ignore it.
John:
But if you do want it, you get it.
John:
But...
John:
when the app is finally released all those test flights will expire like it'll be a separate group just for atp members and it will just be for the lead up to the release so it's not a way to get a free copy of the app although unlike casey's app if you got on my test flight and use my app during the test flight period you could use it to find all the duplicate files in your drive and then just never have to buy it and so maybe this is just an incredible money losing proposition for me but anyway
John:
I'm still leaning towards doing it just for multiple reasons.
John:
One, Casey has told me he found the test flight beta giving it to ATB members valuable for his development.
John:
I mean, if you want to expand on that, Casey.
Casey:
Yeah, I mean, we don't need to belabor it, but very briefly, I had a pretty robust test flight crew, if you will, of...
Casey:
I want to say 20 to 40 people that were friends or even somewhat distant friends, but friends that I thought would want to be able to give me some useful feedback.
Casey:
Opening it up to a far more international audience, opening it up to people who are of different abilities and different familiarities with English, for example, and just take different approaches to watching movies and TV shows and things of that nature.
Casey:
It really, really, I think, made the app a lot better.
Casey:
It also showed me that there were some things that even though I feel very strongly about them, I need to cave because pretty much all of my users disagree with me.
Casey:
So a great example of this is I didn't include ratings anywhere in the app when it was starting the test flight cycle.
Casey:
And if it were left up to me, I would still not have them in the app because I find ratings to be silly and useless and I don't like them at all.
Casey:
I think they're a waste of time.
Casey:
However, everyone said to me, where are the ratings?
Casey:
I must have the ratings.
Casey:
So after being browbeat for literally months about it, I eventually added the ratings.
Casey:
And I think even though I don't like them being there, I think for my users, it was the right call.
Casey:
So that's a silly anecdote about why I think opening it up to a much broader audience really helped make the app that much better.
Casey:
Not to mention, you know, bug fixes and things of that nature, which are obvious.
Casey:
So I really enjoyed that process.
Casey:
Obviously, I cut everyone off as soon as the app was released.
Casey:
And I think, you know, for various, several reasons, I think, John, you should do the same.
Casey:
But yeah, I definitely enjoyed it.
Casey:
And I definitely think it was worthwhile.
John:
Yeah, I will definitely need a lot of people to try the app.
John:
This is the app that I described as an incredibly dangerous app on a previous episode, especially in the test flight beta, because it's messing with files on your disk.
John:
And if something's going to hose them, it's probably going to be a beta.
John:
So just FYI, for people who are considering getting on a test flight, really think about it.
John:
um the first several versions of the test slide uh the first many versions of the test slide won't actually like do the final replacement of your file with clones it'll do everything up to that point um but yeah i would just love to get a larger group to try it out and send me all their error reports and again but you know our listeners tend to be tech nerds so i bet they're good at providing good bug reports and you know all that stuff so yeah
John:
Yeah, I'm definitely leaning towards doing it.
John:
The big downside, like I said, is that all I'm basically doing is eliminating all my potential customers because the only people who are ever going to buy this app are people who listen to the show and have to give the app to every one of them for free and they get rid of all their duplicates.
John:
There's no reason for them ever to buy the app.
John:
Unlike Casey's app because they're constantly watching new movies and TV shows and want to know who's in them.
John:
My app, they just fix everything on their disc and they're like, well, I don't need to buy this because it got on the test slide.
John:
But anyway, I'm still probably going to do it.
John:
More news on that in future shows.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thank you to our sponsors this week, Wild Green and Delete Me.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join us at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
One of the perks of membership is ATP Overtime, our weekly bonus segment.
Marco:
This week on Overtime, we're going to be talking about the news that Apple intelligence summaries might be getting warning labels or some other kind of, you know, kind of...
Marco:
hedging features on them or reporting features on them as a result of some bbc news headline drama recently so we're gonna be talking about that in overtime you can join and hear that and all of our other overtimes and all of our previous and future member content atp.fm slash join thanks everyone and we'll talk to you next week
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
Marco:
And if you're into Mastodon, 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-E-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-E-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-E-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-E-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-E-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-E-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-E-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-E-M-A-R-
John:
all right before we get to our proper after show which will be a marco special i wanted to take this time and i've had this i didn't have it on my calendar but i had it in my mind that at least once per year i'm going to do this which is i want to thank the atp patrons
John:
And I don't want to do it constantly, and I don't want to, you know, have it be a thing that's in the show all the time, but once per year seems appropriate to me.
John:
You may be wondering, what the heck is an ATP patron?
John:
Am I an ATP patron?
John:
You would know if you were.
John:
Here's what ATP patrons are.
John:
First of all, you want to find out?
John:
Go to atp.fn slash patron.
John:
ATP patrons are people who choose to become ATP members, but they want to pay more money than we charge for membership.
John:
Yes, you heard that right.
John:
And why does this exist?
John:
Because people asked for it.
John:
They said, hey, I'm an ATP member, but I wish there was a way I could give you more money.
John:
And we'd be like, oh, that's very nice of you.
John:
But eventually, several years in, people kept asking about it.
John:
I'm like, you know what?
John:
They keep asking us for a way to give more money.
John:
I'm going to make it.
John:
And so I did.
John:
I called ATB patron, atb.fm slash patron if you're interested.
John:
Obviously, not a lot of people do this.
John:
I think I tried to explain it well on the FAQ that that URL leads to.
John:
But they're a small number, but they're very special to me for multiple reasons.
John:
First of all, isn't that nice of them?
John:
They want to support the show above and beyond what membership does.
John:
They don't want to keep buying T-shirts and other things like that.
John:
They just want to give more money on a monthly or annual basis.
John:
above and beyond what we charge.
John:
The second reason is, back last year, or yeah, I think it was last year, when we did the annual discount, so it was the decrease the price of annual membership, we were so nervous about that, we did all these surveys about it, because as soon as we do that, if you just multiply the number of your annual memberships by the discount, that's how much money you're losing.
John:
And you hope you're going to make up that gap by more people signing up.
John:
But let me tell you, when we did that annual membership, more people did sign up, but I had this thing that I was running.
John:
I'm like, are we in the black yet?
John:
Is this, you know, because on day zero, it's a money loser, right?
John:
And then you're like, okay, we're getting closer and closer to break even, closer and closer to break even.
John:
It didn't look like we were going to make it.
John:
And you know what put us over the top?
John:
atp patrons there's not a lot of them i could read their names in the show if it wasn't a privacy violation and i won't do that right there's not a lot of them but i look at the list of them all the time and it gives me warm fuzzies and it literally gives me additional dollars and it literally made our annual membership get past break even so i just want to take this time once per year i'm going to do this again next year thank you to every atp patron the small number of i feel like i could meet you all and shake all of your hands and
John:
even the people who choose to pay one more dollar than the list price for membership we appreciate it because that really shows us your you know your ability to pay for it your desire to pay for it you wanted a way to pay more and now you have it so i wanted to thank everybody out there thank you for being an atp patron that's all yes thank you for me as well and i'm sure casey too
Casey:
Oh, very much so.
Casey:
I mean, any member, of course, you have our undying love and gratitude, but the patrons have just that little bit more.
Casey:
So thank you to all of you.
Casey:
All right, so in the show notes, Marco has done what Marco loves to do and has written something deeply vague.
Casey:
In the show notes, our internal show notes, it says, Marco bought something, which honestly is evergreen because I feel like that's every episode.
Casey:
But then it says parenthesis, long parenthesis.
Casey:
So, oh no, what have you done this time?
John:
Well, did he buy something long?
John:
Or is it going to be a long segment about something that he bought?
Casey:
Right, I'm guessing the latter.
Casey:
Probably the latter.
Marco:
I have bought the second worst thing someone can buy.
John:
A boat?
John:
It's not a boat.
John:
That's the first worst thing.
John:
Bingo.
John:
Let me try to guess what it is.
John:
The second worst thing.
John:
A pickup.
John:
An Italian sports car.
Casey:
Oh, if only.
Casey:
I would say some sort of vehicle.
Casey:
I'm not clear what kind, though.
Marco:
Now, I want to first preface this by saying...
Marco:
I'm only sharing this information because I really trust our audience to be good.
Marco:
Please don't make me regret sharing this.
Marco:
Please don't be creepy about this.
Marco:
Please don't make this weird.
John:
Wait, is it golf clubs?
Marco:
No, it's a much worse purchase than that.
Marco:
Okay, all right.
Marco:
Now, this was also never part of my plan, but sometimes life deals you a different hand than you expected, and your plans change.
Marco:
Now, in the context, last winter...
Marco:
We're in the middle of a giant house move and a renovation of the new house.
Marco:
This was a massively stressful and disruptive time for my family, our home life, our logistics.
Marco:
Also, last winter, I'm in the middle of the giant overcast rewrite.
Marco:
This is a massively stressful and disruptive time for my professional life and my app as well.
Marco:
So this is just a massively busy, disruptive, hectic time.
Marco:
And last winter, the owner of my favorite restaurant.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
Oh, my fucking God.
Casey:
You did not buy.
Casey:
I don't want to name it, but you did not buy a restaurant.
Marco:
It's not a zoo.
Marco:
The owner of my favorite restaurant last winter, who is in his late 70s and wants to retire, says, I'm going to sell the restaurant.
Casey:
Marco, no.
Casey:
No, we need you on the show.
Casey:
You don't have time for this.
Casey:
No.
John:
We need you not to drain your fortune into this terrible money-losing business.
Marco:
Now, I went back to TIFF and I was like, oh my god, they're selling.
Marco:
His family has been running it, but his kids don't live nearby, so they're not going to run it after all.
Marco:
I never thought it would be for sale in the public market.
Marco:
And I went to TIFF.
Marco:
I'm like, crap, they're selling.
Marco:
What a shame.
Marco:
It's our favorite restaurant.
Marco:
And TIFF's like, should we buy it?
John:
You're trying to give her the blame for this.
John:
Is this what's happening now?
Casey:
I cannot stand for this.
Casey:
This is not making me happy.
Casey:
I'm getting so stressed out just listening to the story.
Marco:
And I was like, well, can we buy it?
Marco:
What would that look like?
Marco:
We go to this restaurant all the time.
Marco:
Everyone there knows us.
Marco:
We know everyone there.
Marco:
The first thing we wanted to do was we met with the person who would probably manage it if we did it.
Marco:
And we met with her and we're like, hey, how could this work?
Marco:
Could we buy this and could you run it?
Marco:
It went great and she was very, you know, very enthusiastic about the prospects and very supportive.
John:
Did you talk to anyone else who has ever owned a restaurant besides the person who was going to be getting money for you to run this restaurant?
Marco:
And the reason this even seemed plausible –
Marco:
Is that relative to other restaurant situations, this is less difficult.
Marco:
So, you know, it wouldn't be starting a restaurant from scratch.
Marco:
It wouldn't be changing a restaurant.
Marco:
It wouldn't be buying a failing restaurant.
Marco:
Have you seen the bear, by the way?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
At this time, we were watching the bear.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
It made you say, you know what?
Marco:
That's for me.
Marco:
So we went back and we're like thinking about it.
Marco:
We started looking at like if we bought it, how would we pay for it?
Marco:
How would this work?
Marco:
How would that work?
Marco:
And we were waffling over it.
Marco:
And as we were trying to figure out whether we should do it, one night Tiff said to me, could you imagine our life here without this place?
John:
You should have said yes.
Marco:
Because the thing is, if we didn't buy it, I know what would happen.
Marco:
I know all the people at the beach who would have the money and the motivation to buy restaurants.
Marco:
And it would not be the same.
Marco:
And this restaurant is a beloved community restaurant.
Marco:
All the locals go here.
Marco:
Everyone loves this place who goes here.
John:
What would happen to the restaurant if the other people bought it?
John:
Like what's – tell me the nightmare scenario.
John:
Give me the It's a Wonderful Life nightmare scenario.
Marco:
Either rapid changes into mediocrity or a gradual slide into mediocrity.
Marco:
What makes this place – the reason why everyone loves this place is that it's very good.
Marco:
It isn't just good for the beach because the beach, it's a captive audience.
Marco:
It's like living in a baseball stadium.
Marco:
Everyone there is guaranteed a certain number of customers just because they're a captive audience.
Marco:
And so not everything is good or sometimes things are overpriced or whatever.
Marco:
It's not an amazing environment for quality.
Marco:
Like a vacation town, yeah.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
This place is just good in absolute terms.
Marco:
It's better than it needs to be given where it is.
Marco:
And more importantly, it's consistent.
Marco:
It's always been consistent.
Marco:
And that's something that I cannot say about almost any other place there.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
everyone loves this place like the locals are always there the you know people who are like spending all summer they're like it's where you go when you know what's good you go here so when she said what you know could we imagine our life without it i'm like no like because that's that's our place it's it's a bar and a restaurant it's our bar and it's our restaurant it literally is now apparently did you tell her you'd meet her anytime she wants
Marco:
Well done.
Marco:
So we have bought it.
Marco:
We bought a restaurant.
Marco:
We bought a zoo.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
Congratulations.
Casey:
But I cannot believe you've done this.
Casey:
And please don't quit the show.
Casey:
Can you quit Overcast before you quit the show, please?
Marco:
Here's no, I'm not quitting the show or Overcast.
Marco:
Here's why we thought we could do it.
Casey:
You know, you can buy boom boom sauce like from hens.
Casey:
You can bulk order the stuff.
Casey:
You don't need to buy an entire restaurant to get it.
John:
It's the most convenient way to get an unlimited supply of boom boom sauce.
John:
I'm saying.
Marco:
So here's why we – because look, and we were talking to everybody.
Marco:
We were talking like the accountant, the bank, the lawyer, everyone.
Marco:
We would say, you know, we're going to do this.
Marco:
And every single time, everybody would say,
Marco:
Why?
Marco:
Are you sure?
Marco:
And of course, the second question was always, you know, do you have any experience running restaurants?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
I watched The Bear.
Marco:
We both worked in restaurants, but that's not the same thing.
Marco:
No, it's not.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
The reason why is because we know all the people and everyone except the owner's family, everyone else is staying.
Marco:
The chef, the entire kitchen crew, the front of house staff, our manager, the assistant manager, everyone else is staying.
Marco:
And they all support us.
Marco:
I don't know how to run a restaurant, but they do.
Marco:
This is going to be a huge life change and a huge challenge.
Marco:
I know that.
Marco:
I am not so naive to think I'm just going to be able to breeze through this.
Marco:
I mean, I've been working on the acquisition for a year.
Marco:
I already have a liquor license.
Marco:
I've already filed paperwork with the town.
Marco:
We've already done most of the stuff, most of the setup paperwork.
Marco:
That's already behind me.
Marco:
I was doing it while we were renovating our house and while I was rewriting my app.
Yeah.
Marco:
I don't know if you've heard, but there were a few ATP episodes last year as well.
Marco:
So this has all been going on for a year.
Marco:
I think we can do it.
Marco:
And I think we can do it because we care so much.
Marco:
We love the place.
Marco:
And our priorities are maintaining the quality and maintaining the standards and maintaining the really good staff that it has.
Marco:
And I think with that drive as opposed to – the thing is – and this is obviously from a position of privilege here.
Marco:
This will not be our family's only income.
Marco:
And if it makes less money one year or if there's some – like a natural disaster that really impacts the beaks that reduces things to the point where we actually lose money in a year.
Marco:
We'll be OK.
Marco:
We can take that.
John:
That's what I was going to ask.
John:
Does this restaurant make money?
John:
And do you plan on it making money?
John:
Is this just a charitable thing that you're doing and it's just going to be a cost center?
John:
Or do you actually expect it to be a source of income?
John:
And has it been in past years?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So, you know, as part of the deal, they shared their accounting of previous years with us and we had our accountant look at it and, you know, just make sure everything kind of looked on the up and up and there were no like weird tricks or anything.
Marco:
And everything looks good.
Marco:
The fact is, so first of all, it's also a seasonal business.
Marco:
So we are only needing to work on it for like six months a year.
Marco:
And it does make money because, again, the beach, like certain things about operating at the beach are harder or more expensive.
Marco:
But also you do have a lot of customers.
Marco:
There is not that much competition and there can't ever be any more due to local zoning regulations.
Marco:
People want to go to the beach and go to a restaurant and go to a bar.
Marco:
So they make good money consistently.
Marco:
And, you know, we've run the numbers a bunch of different ways.
Marco:
And I think we can keep it making money while also having a general manager do the vast majority of what the owners were previously doing.
Marco:
And I know this is going to be very, very hard.
Marco:
Again, like sometimes life deals you a different hand than you expected.
Marco:
I didn't ever want to own a restaurant or plan to own a restaurant.
Marco:
I never thought this particular restaurant would be for sale.
Marco:
I assumed it would have stayed within the family.
Marco:
This is the kind of place where, you know, in town people would – it's the kind of place you would describe as an institution, you know, like some old steakhouse.
Marco:
Like that's what people think of this place.
Marco:
All summer, like after we decided to buy it and after we were under contract, Tiff and I, you know, they were still open for the season.
Marco:
And we would like, you know, go there all the time, of course.
Marco:
And we'd look around and be like, look at how much everyone loves this place.
Marco:
Like you look around and you see – because it's a small town.
Marco:
We know a lot of people in town.
Marco:
So you look around and you see like, oh, they live here.
Marco:
They live here.
Marco:
We know them.
Marco:
There's our neighbors.
Marco:
There's our friends.
Marco:
Like you see everyone and everyone just goes to this place to enjoy themselves.
Marco:
Again, that's not true of everywhere.
Marco:
Like different places have different clientele, different dynamics.
Marco:
This is like the home base of town.
Marco:
And if this would get worse or go away, that would be a big loss to the community.
Marco:
And so we partly saw it as an act of community service or an act of like historical preservation almost.
Marco:
But also it is also a successful business.
Marco:
Like the only reason that they're selling it is because the owner is old and wants to retire.
Marco:
Like that makes sense.
Marco:
That's fair.
Marco:
He's worked his butt off for a very long time.
Marco:
We kind of felt like it's us giving back to the community.
Marco:
And again, and this is from a place of great privilege that we could buy it because the reality of what would happen if we didn't would be a group of investors would have to buy it probably because prices are high out there because it's New York, it's Fire Island, it's real estate.
Marco:
It includes the building.
Marco:
So that is part of the reason why it's a safer business for us because we own the building too.
Marco:
Again, it's one of the reasons that makes this easier than many restaurant businesses is like when you own your own building, that's a pretty big deal.
Marco:
And we know that anybody else who would have bought it, again, it would have been a group of dissociated investors.
Marco:
And when I see how that works in other places in town, it doesn't lead to quality very reliably.
Marco:
Sometimes it can work.
Marco:
It often doesn't.
Marco:
And we just didn't want to take that risk for a place that was so important to us and the community.
Marco:
And we knew that we can do this with our priorities and with our resources and
Marco:
we think we can do a good job.
Marco:
And if it turns out we can't, we can sell it again down the road.
Marco:
But I don't think that will happen.
Marco:
I think we will be in this for the long haul.
Marco:
I mean, in the CGP Grey Cortex theme parlance, I kind of see this as the year of new challenges.
Marco:
In a lot of other areas of my life, the tech areas,
Marco:
I kind of feel like I beat the game and I'm just walking around now.
Marco:
It isn't that there's no challenges left for me in tech, but I think I have done a lot in tech already and I realize that not everything in my life needs to be tech.
Marco:
What I'm itching to do right now is not launch a bunch more apps.
Marco:
I like the app I run now.
Marco:
It's great.
Marco:
That's not all I want to do with my life is just make another app, then another app, then another app.
Marco:
I like this app and I'm going to keep running it.
Marco:
I like this podcast and I'm going to keep doing it.
Marco:
I also have other things in my life, other things I do.
Marco:
And I think this is going to be a big addition to that.
Marco:
One of the things that I find lacking in tech is in-person connection.
Marco:
We're really good at other kinds of connection in tech.
Marco:
We've built amazing communication platforms and media platforms and networks.
Marco:
But when you're really having a challenging time or you really want to hang out with your friends, nothing beats in person.
Marco:
And one of the places in person happens is at a bar or a restaurant.
Marco:
And the beach is a very special place to me.
Marco:
It always has been.
Marco:
And so for this to be my restaurant, my bar at the beach, it's such a community hub there, which is already a very special town to me.
Marco:
And so it's a place where I've gotten a lot of in-person connection.
Marco:
And also doing this will allow me to broaden my horizons in a bunch of ways.
Marco:
Like, first of all, probably the scariest one, but one that I think I'm ready to tackle.
Marco:
I've never managed people.
Marco:
I've never had a staff, even of one.
Casey:
That was one of the first things I thought about, is that this man who says he would be a terrible boss and never wants to be a boss has now bought himself a staff of 10, 20, 30?
Casey:
30, yep.
Casey:
Oh, gosh.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Marco:
And again, granted, we are delegating most of the operations to the general manager.
Marco:
I'm sure some of it will land on us, but we have a really good staff in place and we have a really good manager.
Marco:
And that will help a lot, like a lot, a lot.
Marco:
We wouldn't have done it without that in place.
Marco:
But, you know, obviously there will be challenges managing a staff.
Marco:
I've never even operated a physical business, even just the basics of like real like business real estate.
Marco:
Like I learned that you that you pay very different rates for power and Internet service when you are a storefront.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
There's all sorts of just realities, like different types of insurance I have to have now, different liabilities, workers' comp.
Marco:
There's so much stuff I've never had to deal with because of the types of businesses that I'd be running.
Marco:
Real-life business things that I've never had to tackle.
Marco:
And yeah, some of them are pains in the butt, but most of them are learning experiences.
Marco:
There's also a lot of tech in a restaurant.
Marco:
A lot.
Marco:
There's all the – which I love the acronym, the POS, the point of sale system.
Marco:
I laugh every time I see POS.
Marco:
Those are all iPads and tablets now.
Marco:
They're networked.
Marco:
One of the complaints of the staff from the previous setup is that the networking wasn't very strong because some wall blocked the signal.
Casey:
Oh!
Marco:
I'm like, hey, I don't know how to run a restaurant, but that part, that I can fix.
Marco:
So there's opportunities like that for me to help out in ways that I know how.
Marco:
Yeah, I can transfer the website to a new domain.
Marco:
No problem.
Marco:
I got our email set up.
John:
Can you make the menu not a PDF?
Marco:
yeah of course like yeah like you know i've made fun of restaurant websites so much over time now everyone can come and make fun of mine um hours yeah the hours and the phone number at the top the top and the phone number yeah and the address oh my god yeah there's like there's there's so much i mean look
Marco:
like today I was trying out Notion and Basecamp.
Marco:
I'm trying to figure out how do I organize tasks between me, Tiff, and the manager?
Marco:
How do we do that?
Marco:
There's just so much stuff that huge areas of tech that I've never had to use.
Marco:
There's things like
Marco:
How do you have a TV signal that broadcasts two TVs in the bar that shows the same thing on both when the source is some kind of internet smart TV-based, like, HDMI encrypted thing?
Marco:
And it's the answer, like, do you strip HDCP somehow?
Marco:
Is that a thing?
Marco:
Like, I'm still working on that one.
Marco:
I don't know how to strip HDCP.
Marco:
If you know, tell me.
John:
They make splitter and repeater boxes.
John:
I know about them because they use them for TV reviews when they want to show the same signal on three different TVs.
Marco:
But does it work with HTCP?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
DRM ruins everything.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Anyway, so we'll do that.
Marco:
But like there's all sorts of – and part of it also like because it's at the beach, there are huge areas of complexity that we don't have to deal with.
Marco:
For instance, at the beach, there is no delivery drivers because there's no drivers because there's no roads and there's no cars.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
so you don't have to do we don't have to deal with like doordash and uber eats and that you know on all there's so much stuff we don't have to deal with there so like there's there's all sorts of opportunities there for me to explore new tech so you know don't worry there's going to be plenty of show content possibilities as i discover like wow pos is kind of suck or you know it's all different hey you know what you can't just play music over the speakers that's not legal um you can't just show pay-per-view you know sports on the tvs that's also not legal um
Marco:
There's all sorts of stuff like that that I can discover that many of our listeners probably might use in their lives that we've never had exposure to before.
Marco:
But also just purely from the angle of personal development and new challenges, I'm very much looking forward to this.
Marco:
It's a brand new type of thing.
Marco:
Some of it I'm going to be good at just because I know tech and I'm good at paperwork.
Marco:
I've had a lot of business.
Marco:
I've done a lot of paperwork.
Marco:
So some of it's just that.
Marco:
A lot of it I'm going to be terrible at.
Marco:
And there's going to be a huge learning curve.
Marco:
And one of the biggest things, I'm going to have to learn to delegate and ask for help, which I am never – I've never been good at those things.
Marco:
But I'm going to have to be.
Marco:
So I think it's going to be really interesting.
Marco:
I know on paper this is a stupid thing to do.
Marco:
That's why the accountants and the bankers are like, why are you doing this?
Marco:
Because on paper this makes no sense.
Marco:
But the people who know the restaurant and who know us, the reaction from them largely has been, thank God we bought it, that someone else didn't.
Marco:
And that makes me feel like we're really doing the right thing.
John:
So having watched now hundreds of hours of people rebuilding boats on YouTube, I have to say that I think the boat would probably be easier.
John:
But I will say this.
John:
After hearing your whole story, two things.
John:
One.
John:
I think this restaurant sounds like it is much more likely to either make money or break even than the boat because boats really are a money pit, whereas this is a business that already makes money.
John:
And worst case scenario, you sell it because you have the real estate.
John:
That is your main asset and that is going to appreciate.
John:
So even if you lose money on the restaurant every single year, you could still come out even or ahead long term on this just by selling the property.
John:
So that's great.
John:
And two.
John:
Everything you're saying about doing this as a community service makes total sense.
John:
Like we all know what happens when in the business world, private equity or in the, you know, the physical world, like investors come and do like they want to buy this thing that makes money.
John:
And the first thing they want to do is.
John:
How can we cut costs so that the profit increases?
John:
And so how can we cut costs?
John:
Let's fire people, make everything cheaper.
John:
Anything we're spending too much money on, can we find a crappier version of that that is still marginally acceptable and you just drain every ounce of value out of the business by cutting costs and squeezing everything and just making it miserable until eventually it goes bust and then you're like, oh, well, we made money during those years and it's just a terrible thing.
John:
And I know you're not saying to the people who are
John:
would have bought it instead of you are that bad, but it's the same type of dynamic, whereas they don't care about the restaurant as an institution.
John:
They see it as a business, which is what I think the bankers and the accountants are saying, as a business move, this makes no sense.
John:
right yeah you have it'd be better if you just took this money and invested it somewhere but as a way to prevent someone who sees it as a business from buying this business and treating it like a business and you know immediately cutting costs and decreasing quality because hey you have a captive audience you're gonna be making money anyway and essentially ruining your favorite restaurant it does make some sense so i think this is a noble thing that you're doing i think it is uh
John:
I'm not going to say foolish.
John:
I'm going to say, let's say brave.
John:
Let's use that.
John:
Let's say it is a brave thing that you're doing.
John:
It sounds like you're doing it for the right reasons.
Casey:
Would you say that Marco has courage?
John:
He's not removing a headphone port from the restaurant.
John:
We'll continue to have headphone ports.
John:
And like I said, I feel like now that you told me that they own the building and you've got the property, that makes me feel so much better about it.
John:
And the fact that the business has been making money up until that point, that worst case scenario...
John:
oh, well, you will be able to sell it.
John:
That real estate, even when the hurricane comes and washes every building off of that island, you will still be able to sell that real estate because it will still be worth money to somebody who wants to rebuild after the hurricane wipes all the structures off, right?
John:
So I wish you luck.
John:
I hope you don't get too distracted from ATP, and I think you are trying to do a very good thing.
John:
Thank you.
Marco:
I mean, look, how have I been the last year?
John:
Well, yeah, I mean, have you ever met anyone who runs a restaurant?
John:
Do they seem relaxed?
Marco:
No, but I appreciate what you're saying.
Marco:
And what you said a minute ago about the pressures of investors who treat it as a business, that's why we didn't want to go to a group of investors.
Marco:
Because, again, even if they have the best of intentions, the reality is, if you're looking at it as an investment, you want to return on your investment.
John:
They want to make money.
John:
How can we reduce costs and increase income?
John:
And that's not what you're trying to do.
John:
You're literally trying to say, how can I make this not become bad?
John:
Right, exactly.
John:
Which is different.
John:
It's a different motivation.
Marco:
Yeah, and what I've told the GM is if you have to make a decision between something that is doing something the best way or the right way or something that might save a little bit of money, do it the best way.
Marco:
I'd rather be the best and make less money than maximize for money.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Whereas we can actually just treat it as a labor of love.
Marco:
That's not to say it's going to lose money.
Marco:
It won't.
Marco:
It may be the first year because we're going to do some upgrades here and there, some kitchen equipment and stuff like that.
Marco:
But for the most part, we intend for this and we think there's a pretty good chance that it will be a profitable business.
Marco:
It's not going to have the margins that software has.
Marco:
because our margins are embarrassingly great.
Marco:
But it will be a business, and we can still make a profit while also making it really great.
Marco:
Do I need to have a backup cell connection on the internet connection so that we can have our TVs and our POS work during a power outage?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Business-wise, that's probably $60 a month we don't need to spend.
Marco:
But I'm going to spend it because I want it to be good.
Marco:
One of the other things, like there's so many opportunities in restaurants.
Marco:
We see it.
Marco:
Again, these are seasonal businesses in a place where it's expensive to get stuff shipped to it.
Marco:
A lot of businesses have to cut costs just to stay afloat on little shortcuts here and there.
Marco:
And one of those things might be like towards the end of the season if they run out of their main kegs.
Marco:
They don't order new kegs if they're going to close in, like, three weeks because, well, a keg is, you know, $100 or whatever, and, you know, we might not make that much on it.
Marco:
I'm going to direct the staff.
Marco:
Whatever is our set that we have, you know, two beers at the end of the season –
Marco:
Just keep them in stock.
Marco:
If you run it, just order another keg.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
I would rather the customers know that they can get what they want until the day we close than to go there and be disappointed.
Marco:
There's all sorts of opportunities like that for like, you know, I am not a good restaurateur yet.
Marco:
Maybe I'll become one someday.
Marco:
Maybe I'll never be one.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
But I know people and I know business stuff like that.
Marco:
From my app business, I know a lot about things like pricing psychology, customer feelings, customer loyalty, customer satisfaction.
Marco:
I know a lot about that stuff.
Marco:
So there are things I can bring to this business, even if it's not anything regarding the actual logistics of running a restaurant yet.
Marco:
So I do think this is going to be very interesting.
Marco:
But I like the...
Marco:
The new challenge of it and I like the diversification of it and I like the community service angle for it.
Marco:
And even though I know I'm going to be totally underwater this summer, hopefully just figuratively, with all sorts of work and just a hectic situation for a little while.
Marco:
I also know I'm not doing it alone.
Marco:
If I try to do it alone, I will definitely fail.
Marco:
But I also know that I can't and am not doing it alone.
Marco:
You know, Tiff and I are both in this together and we have a really good staff.
Marco:
I cannot keep saying that enough.
Marco:
I'm not saying this as a like, you know, Apple support the troops kind of thing.
Marco:
They really are an excellent staff.
Marco:
And that's why we are doing it.
Marco:
That's why we knew we could do it.
Marco:
And I think we will be pretty good at keeping the good people.
Marco:
At getting the best people and keeping the best people.
Marco:
And because we will be good at that, everything else I think will follow.
Marco:
We are good at keeping good people on the beach.
Marco:
So we'll see how it goes.
John:
I think you should do, I don't know if this is helpful for the show, maybe good for after shows, is what I think you should both do is you should all do every job at the restaurant over the course of the summer.
Casey:
Yes.
John:
For some period of time.
John:
Yes.
John:
Yes.
John:
You gotta be a waiter.
John:
You gotta be the hostess.
John:
You gotta wash dishes.
John:
You gotta be a line cook.
John:
Well, maybe not a cook.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Everything that you think you could conceivably do that you would like hire someone for the season to do, you should also do just so you understand that job and so you can have hilarious stories about how bad you are at it.
Casey:
I am so here for this.
Casey:
No, I want to take a moment and echo what John said that while I, as your friend, I am deeply worried that you are biting off so much more than you can chew.
John:
He's such a worrier.
Casey:
I am, and I am naturally a worrier.
Casey:
And I'm also worried that, you know, it's going to have an impact on the show some way, somehow.
Casey:
And I don't mean that to be a turd.
Casey:
I'm just saying, you know, this is going to be an incredible time suck.
Casey:
Hopefully it isn't, but it's likely to be an incredible time suck.
Casey:
So I hope that things are still kosher with, you know, getting everything done in a timely fashion and so on and so forth.
Casey:
But with all that caveating aside...
Casey:
When we joined our local pool, which I've talked about from time to time on the show, this was, I want to say 2022, I might have that wrong, but we joined our local pool and it's a very unremarkable pool.
Casey:
In fact, in a lot of ways, it's kind of a crappy pool.
Casey:
Like the facilities are not great, but that's not the point.
Casey:
The point is it's a place where we can go and swim around in the summertime, or at least that's what we thought we were signing up for.
Casey:
In reality, what we signed up for was a third place.
Casey:
You know, we've talked about this, I think, in the past, but for so many people, there's your home, your work, and a third place.
Casey:
And maybe that's church or something like that.
Casey:
Maybe it's a club or something like that.
Casey:
But our family, the List family, didn't really have a third place for a long, long, long time.
Casey:
And obviously, none of us really did during COVID-19.
Casey:
Coming out of COVID, we decided to join the pool.
Casey:
And even though we wanted it as a place where we could go and have some fun during the summer, you know, just the four of us, it very quickly became our third place.
Casey:
And as someone who did not grow up with any particular organized religion in my life, which...
Casey:
I would argue it's mostly for the best, but that's neither here nor there.
Casey:
I didn't really ever have a solid third place.
Casey:
I had work or school, and that was it in home.
Casey:
I never really had a third place.
Casey:
And the pool was an incredible, incredible, valuable addition to our lives.
Casey:
Not because it's some hoity-toity fancy pool.
Casey:
Again, it was built in like the 70s.
Casey:
It's arguably falling apart as we speak.
Casey:
Like, it's not fancy, but that's not the point.
Casey:
The point was, it was a place where we could gather with friends.
Casey:
And I would pay, maybe not literally, but I would figuratively pay any amount of money to keep that alive because it became incredibly important to our family.
Casey:
And
Casey:
Since you and Tiff are in the position that you can literally pay some money to keep your third place alive, it does make perfect sense.
Casey:
I fear for you, but it makes perfect sense.
Casey:
And I echo what John says, that this is a very bold thing to do.
Casey:
If you're going to have a midlife crisis, this is a fun way to do it.
Casey:
And I hope it remains fun for both of you for a very long time.
Marco:
Way more fun than maintaining a boat, I can guarantee you that.
Marco:
And to be clear, with the show and your worries, I would give up Overcast before I'd give up ATP.
Marco:
I don't think I'd need to give up either one, honestly.
Marco:
This has been quite a year, trying to get the Overcast rewrite, the move, the house move, getting all this stuff done during this year while also...
Marco:
going into contract to do this, financing this, going into contract for this, getting the liquor license, temporary approved, all this stuff that I've been doing, all of that stuff in the other world, in the Overcast world, the huge amount of time Overcast took in 2024, it's not going to take that much time in 2025 in all likelihood.
Marco:
The massive rewrite is pretty much done.
Marco:
The whole app isn't done, but the rate at which I need to be writing code every day has dropped dramatically.
Marco:
And again, like, and in tech, I kind of feel not just that I kind of beat the game, but like the world of tech that is, let's say above us, like, you know, larger things, you know, larger moves, larger trends, larger companies, you know, the big social networks and, you know, the big tech companies, a lot of the fun has drained out of that for the small players like us.
Marco:
And I, look, I'm going to love computers forever.
Marco:
I love Apple products, even as Apple the company is being a little bit turdy in certain areas.
Marco:
I love Apple products.
Marco:
I love computers.
Marco:
I will want to talk about these forever.
Marco:
But all the stuff about metas, social policies, and all this stuff, I am getting so worn out and burnt out with that kind of stuff.
Marco:
And when you look at a lot of these bigger companies...
Marco:
The world of big tech, the nerds left the stage a long time ago.
Marco:
The business people have been running things for quite some time.
Marco:
And the world of big tech looks a lot like the world of any other big mature industry.
Marco:
The higher up you go or the bigger you try to get, the less I'm interested in.
Marco:
I like the small stuff.
Marco:
I mean, besides the fact that Apple's the biggest corporation, whatever, let's set that aside.
Marco:
I love Apple stuff, but I love Apple stuff to do small stuff.
Marco:
I don't want to start the next giant AI startup to replace millions of people's jobs.
Marco:
That's the last thing I want to do.
Marco:
I don't want to run a social network where I'm having to make really difficult moderation decisions and deal with all the problems that result from running a social network.
Marco:
I don't want to have my platform be the one that people are harassing people on or controlling elections or causing world events to shift.
Marco:
I don't want any of that.
Marco:
That sounds incredibly unappealing.
Marco:
I don't even want to be on those platforms, let alone run one.
Marco:
I don't even want to be using those apps, let alone own one.
Marco:
A lot of tech, I feel like the nerds are in our area over here off to the side.
Marco:
And the rest of big tech has gone somewhere else without us.
Marco:
And that's a place often that I don't want to go.
Marco:
But our nerdy world...
Marco:
is still here and will always be here just there's now this other bigger world that doesn't really care about us maybe uses the libraries and stuff that we write but for the most part like they're off on their own doing their money thing and their business thing and us nerds were over here doing our thing and they don't care about us anymore if they ever did and there's less and less overlap between those two worlds i think over time so
Marco:
I am exactly where I want to be in the world of tech.
Marco:
I don't want to expand my tech footprint anymore.
Marco:
And I frankly am not that interested in a lot of new areas of how could I make a startup that expands and gets really – I really don't want that life for myself anymore.
Marco:
um because the world that i used to do that in is not the current world the current world is very different and requires very different things so my passion though for tech stuff is still very real like you know just the other day i was talking about the cool terminal e-ink thing and i still love buying all this apple guess guess what i'm gonna fill the restaurant with apple hardware and ubiquity hardware and like possibly even some low raw equipment because what's gonna go in the walk-in freezer to detect a water leak
Marco:
Probably a Yolink LoRa thing.
Marco:
There's a lot of ways, and I love all that stuff.
Marco:
And so that's the area of tech, the application side of it, the enthusiasm side of the nerdy stuff, the smaller areas.
Marco:
I love all that stuff, and I always will.
Marco:
So I'm happy to continue to embrace that part of tech, but not to be in like, you know, the tech startup scene or even any larger of a role in the tech press scene because that's not really my scene anymore.
Marco:
And so I'm enjoying this as diversification and new challenges, both diversification of my income and diversification of my skill set.
Marco:
I'm going to really enjoy, I think, having a restaurant.
Marco:
And yeah, it's going to be really hard.
Marco:
And I'm not going to enjoy it every day.
Marco:
I'm sure there's going to be days where I'm like, why did I do this?
Marco:
But I think there will be aspects of it that I really enjoy and really feel proud of at the end of the day.
Marco:
And I think it will bring me a lot of satisfaction.
Casey:
Well, congratulations to both of you.
Casey:
Best of luck.
Casey:
When I visited you, it was during the winter almost a year ago now or a year and a half ago or something like that because it was November, wasn't it?
Casey:
And the restaurant at the time was not open and I thought that was a seasonal issue.
Casey:
Maybe it was a time of day issue, but I never got to experience it.
Casey:
And so now, you know, I have yet another excuse to find a way to come up to Fire Island and come visit.
Casey:
It says, I want to try this pizza with boom boom sauce, damn it.
Marco:
That's not my restaurant.
Casey:
Oh, no!
Casey:
Damn!
Casey:
I thought it was.
Casey:
Well, now I feel like an idiot.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Well, that's okay.
Marco:
I mean, we currently don't have anything on our menu that has Boom Boom sauce, but that doesn't mean we can't.
Casey:
Oh, well, see?
Casey:
Change is already being made.
Casey:
Well, now I feel like a real big dummy, but that's okay.
Casey:
But nevertheless, I will look forward to visiting the restaurant at some point and eating whatever it is you are willing to serve me.
Marco:
If you want, the Boom Boom Sauce Pizzeria building is for sale.
Marco:
You can join me in this venture.
Casey:
First of all, I'm sure I don't have that kind of money available.
Casey:
And secondly, no.