Dance Compatible
Marco:
So I might sound slightly hoarse tonight because I came from a not a very loud bar, not a big party, but a elementary school children's dance.
Marco:
Oh, elementary school dance.
Marco:
Is that a thing?
Marco:
The earliest I can recall having a dance was sixth grade.
Marco:
Yeah, same.
Marco:
But yeah, so that's apparently a thing here.
Marco:
And I can say that I am exactly as comfortable here as I was in sixth grade at my sixth grade dance.
Marco:
Whatever that is in a person that makes them maybe incompatible with that kind of social situation –
Marco:
that does not change when you are 40 uh whatever you were when you were how old are you in sixth grade like 11 12 whatever whatever whatever age you were then it's the same when you're 40 that that does not leave a person what about your kid uh did adam inherit your uh your dance incompatibility
Marco:
fortunately he seems to have taken after his mother in that way which is which is you know of huge benefit i it's like i couldn't wait to get home and it's funny like you know it doesn't feel this way because we're all staring at computers and like our offices and our houses and no one's around but in a way we are talking to 80 000 people and so it's weird to think like i'd rather talk about
Marco:
you know computers to a football stadium full of strangers mostly uh which most people would consider a terribly scary thing but i'd rather do that than try to dance in front of 40 children and their parents you know at an elementary school wait a second wait a second
Marco:
why are you doing any dancing at this i thought you were just like the the vibe is awkward and it felt like a place that you didn't want to hang out but isn't it the kids supposed to be dancing aren't you just like a chaperone like aren't you just standing against the wall basically except that there's some parents who were like the fun parents and they're like dancing a little bit oh that's not that's not fun yeah well tell me but yeah there is i'm saying it's not fun for the kids who wants their parents to
Marco:
well the good news is this is an elementary school you know the the the oldest anyone is here is fifth grade and so no one is actually old enough to really be like awkward about you know girls and boys and cooties and stuff so the good thing is that there wasn't any of that really so the kids are just like running around you know like lunatics like they're just running and throwing balloons at each other did adam enjoy it yes yes and that's what mattered and did tiff just not go no no she was there too oh she like it
Marco:
She is dance compatible, and so she has a much easier time.
Marco:
Right, right, right.
Casey:
Yeah, I am also not dance compatible.
Casey:
That is not my thing.
Casey:
Perhaps with the appropriate amount of social lubricant, maybe a teeny bit, but no, not generally speaking, that is not for me.
Casey:
However, I don't think being the cool parent is always bad.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
that will get in there and roughhouse with all the kids and whatnot.
Casey:
And even though sometimes my back looked like it had been attacked by a bunch of feral kittens, because that's effectively what was going on, generally speaking, I thought being the fun, cool pool dad was enjoyable.
Casey:
But that doesn't require any sort of coordination at all, unlike being the fun, cool dance dad, which requires coordination and rhythm, two things I have none of.
Marco:
See, that's the thing.
Marco:
I'm very coordinated and I have really good rhythm and yet I still cannot dance to save my life because I think it's more, you know, it's more of a mindset.
Marco:
It's more mental, I think.
Marco:
And I whatever the mindset is that requires a person to be able to like let go of their inhibitions and just, you know, dance their hearts out.
Marco:
And like I don't I don't have that.
Marco:
necessarily, or I have trouble shifting my brain to that mode.
Marco:
And no matter how much social lubricant one has, which of course at an elementary school dance is none, but even if that were there, in situations where that is available, that doesn't help me.
Marco:
I still cannot become a dancer for whatever reason.
Marco:
So it's...
Marco:
It's just, you know, I can do a lot of things.
Marco:
That's just not on the list.
Marco:
And I've learned to live with it.
Marco:
I've learned to cope with this lack of my personality that I have here.
Marco:
And I try to make up for it in other ways as best as I can.
John:
Well, the good news is I don't think you're going to be going to too many more dances as your kid gets older.
Marco:
That's true.
Marco:
I sure hope not.
Marco:
The good thing is I was able to be – I was able to use my skills in a much better way.
Marco:
Last night, my kid brought home – he had a school project.
Marco:
They're working on – they're making public service announcements as part of their unit on making persuasive essays.
Marco:
So he like wrote a script basically and it had to be a 90-second recording.
Marco:
And I'm like, oh, man, dude, I got this.
Marco:
Like, I got your back on this.
Marco:
Like, so, you know, everyone else is going to show up with like their voice memos thing.
Marco:
I had him use my good mic because he wanted to.
Marco:
And I was like, of course you can.
Marco:
And then he recorded, you know, 90 seconds max.
Marco:
And like the take, he was really happy with the take, but it was like 15 seconds over.
Marco:
And I was like, well, look, I'm like, look, I record three two-minute segments a week for this show.
Marco:
I know what you're doing.
Marco:
And trust me, the easiest thing to do is just rerecord it and just go a little faster, maybe cut a sentence out here or there if you can.
Marco:
Why don't you use SmartSpeed?
Marco:
I thought about that.
Marco:
But I kind of did.
Marco:
And so he said, can't you just edit it to be shorter?
Marco:
and i was like well i was like let's try what the heck let's try it and so we like shortened the silences and you know took out like one repeated word that was in the middle there and i get to go 1.1 times yeah i took out a couple of like breaths here and there that didn't necessarily need to be there to sound natural and i showed him like oh if it cut here it doesn't sound natural if you cut over here and 90 second limit the the time clock at the end said 129.996 and we're like done
Marco:
and of course it sounds amazing because he's like you know on my podcast mic so i'm like that i can't dance to save my life but that that i can i can really i can really help you out son i don't think it's going to be great on audio quality though
Casey:
Let's do some follow-up because we have a lot of audio quality things to talk about, coincidentally.
Casey:
And we have some HomePod 2 follow-up and teaser, spoiler even.
Casey:
Marco has his HomePod 2 review coming later in the episode after follow-up.
Casey:
But before we get there, we have HomePod 2 follow-up.
Marco:
This is like when you're watching TV growing up and it's like, this story you all came here for, news at 11.
Marco:
And then eventually you get to 11 o'clock and they don't get to it until like the last 10 seconds of the half-hour segment.
Marco:
It's after the next commercial.
Marco:
After the next commercial, you'll see...
Casey:
when we come back you'll you'll hear all about this crazy thing you wanted to hear about yeah fortunately i have way more to say about it than those old new shows and we won't make you wait until 11 29 hopefully not anyway all right so home pod 2 series speed test done on video by steven robles who is also known as the bearded teacher um first of all kudos to this unbelievably handsome gentleman for wearing a
Casey:
Gorgeous shirt during the recording of this video.
Casey:
I am deeply impressed with his choice of wardrobe.
Casey:
But even with that said, the video is legitimately really good.
Casey:
And so Stephen talks through somehow he has like 17 different Sonos setups, including the setup that I have in my living room.
Casey:
with the exception of no rears, or he didn't mention those anyway.
Casey:
But he tests that against the HomePod 2 stereo pair and makes some very interesting but reasonable conclusions about what would he advise one to buy, depending on what you're looking at.
Casey:
If you're really more of a TV person, then you might want to go this route.
Casey:
If you're more of a music person, you might want to go this other route.
Casey:
It was a really good video.
Casey:
I think it was like 50.
John:
14 minutes 38 seconds and it's worth it you should definitely check it out the reason i put this in here is because last week i complained uh that uh people the youtube all the youtube reviews i'd watch nobody actually tested how the new system on a chip affected the response speed of siri which seems like a pretty important part of a product that mostly hasn't changed but one thing that did change in it was the soc and that and the old one was slow so you should test that
John:
And then that's how I got sent this video.
John:
I said, you know, somebody did test the speed of Siri on the new HomePods.
John:
And you know who did it?
John:
Somebody wearing, as Casey was alluding to before, an ATP M1 Ultra shirt.
John:
Because he knows what's up.
Casey:
Definitely knows what's up.
Casey:
Do we want to cover this related Ask ATP that we were originally going to cover next week?
Casey:
But I think it kind of slides nicely right in here.
Casey:
Is that allowed, John, or do I need to wait until next week for this?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I think I put that there.
Casey:
No, I did.
Casey:
All right.
John:
Well, anyway, yes, that was a fine time.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So Justin Saucier wrote, would a stereo pair of HomePods be a better TV setup than a soundbar?
Casey:
I know John will scream true surround sound in case he loves the Sonos, but purely comparing between a soundbar, Vizio to be specific.
Casey:
So as you expected, I cannot state enough how much I adore my Sonos setup, but I will be the first to tell you it is heinously expensive.
Casey:
It is incredible.
Casey:
But it's very expensive.
John:
Was it more than $600 for the HomePods?
John:
Oh, yes.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
I guess I haven't priced it out so I didn't realize.
Marco:
Sonos doesn't sell a lot of products for less than $600.
Marco:
I don't know.
John:
I mean, you're counting it because you got the sub with it too, right?
Casey:
That's correct.
John:
And the back surrounds too or no?
Casey:
That is also correct.
Casey:
Yes, but that's actually in some ways a perfect segue because what I was going to recommend, and I'm going to try to vamp a little bit while I'm looking up the price, is Sonos sells a set of the Sonos Arc, which as we record is their most high-end soundbar, which is what I got.
Casey:
And a Sonos sub.
Casey:
And there's two different subs.
Casey:
I got the larger of the two subs, the subgen 3.
Casey:
And actually, as we record, coincidentally, it is $200 off.
Casey:
It is generally listed for $1,648.
Casey:
It is currently on sale for $1,448.
Casey:
Now, this sounds phenomenal.
Casey:
And I don't personally have any experience with HomePod, so I can't make any sort of claims it sounds better or worse than HomePods.
Casey:
But it sounds incredible.
Casey:
But it's also what, like two and a half times the cost, two times the cost, right?
Casey:
It's two times the cost of two HomePods.
Casey:
So it's not cheap.
Casey:
I think there's something to be said for if you're doing a lot of home theater viewing, you might be better off with some sort of, you know, soundbar with sub.
Casey:
But, and I'm kind of spoiling Stephen's video now, really, if you just want to get in the door at a semi-cheap price and get easily 80% of the way there, even for home theater stuff, even I can concede that a stereo pair HomePod 2s might be the better answer.
Casey:
John, correct me on this.
John:
Yeah, so here's the thing.
John:
The problem with soundbars is most of them are bar-shaped, so they're not...
John:
They're not that big.
John:
Like the fancier ones have like – why there's a factor is because that means you can't have like speaker cones that are that big.
John:
And it's very difficult to get any decent bass out of like a two-inch speaker cone.
John:
Like depending how short your sound bar is, that may be a limiting factor.
John:
as you get fancier and fancier soundbars, a lot of them put the big cones facing up or down, and they're actually fairly deep if they're not that tall.
John:
The very, very fancy soundbars are not small anymore.
John:
They're just really big, and so you're like, oh, you can fit big drivers in there, and they do, and they have a whole bunch of them, and they're all over the place, right?
John:
But for television viewing, with that aside, the main thing that I feel like you would want in a television viewing system...
John:
It has less to do with sound quality, which you can decide how much money you want to spend to get whatever sound quality you want, and more to do with you want all the channels represented.
John:
So if I was spending my money and I was doing a television, I don't think I could ever give up the center channel, which means you can't just have a stereo pair, right?
John:
You have to have a left and a right and a center.
John:
And then you should probably also have a subwoofer.
John:
And then you can consider whether you want the back surrounds or not, right?
John:
And that is something that HomePods can't give you.
John:
Because you just got the two of them.
John:
And the two of them does not even give you a center channel, right?
John:
And they have plenty of bass or whatever.
John:
Now, the thing is, if you have a cruddy soundbar, two home odds will probably sound better.
John:
Even despite the fact that the cruddy soundbar has a quote-unquote center channel, soundbars are usually about the width of your TV.
John:
So you're not going to get that much stereo separation because how far can the right and left be from each other?
John:
Not much farther than the width of the soundbar.
John:
And when they do have a center channel, a very cheap soundbar will have a center channel made of these tiny little speakers that are just...
John:
Right.
John:
And so in that case, you would say, oh, two HomePods does sound better than this cheap soundbar.
John:
But the cheap soundbar probably costs less than two HomePods.
John:
So it's a little bit of a complicated question.
John:
But in general, what I would say is if you care about television and movies, don't get a two channel setup.
John:
Everything now has more channels than that.
John:
You want center, left and right.
John:
And...
John:
You know, preferably some kind of surround if you can manage it.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And of course, as we know, you know, like anything that was that was shot to be 3D capable, you should also be viewing on a 3D TV because just because that capability is there, you need to have that.
Marco:
It's always better.
John:
Right.
John:
tv is terrible but surround sound is good oh really why is that that's interesting why why why is that because it's good because it sounds good because it's it's it's what you have in movie theaters people like it it sounds good it is not annoying it makes the movies and the television shows better and everything about a movie theater experience is better so for instance you have to make your home smell like stale step on popcorn that's not all we're talking about this anyway
John:
and so even just even just for things that you don't care about like forget about the word surround like i don't want to hear things behind me forget about that just right in front of you sound having a center right and left is better than just having right and left because the shows are mixed for center right and left and it you know they're mixed to be put out that way so all the sound is coming from the front of you no weird bouncing off anything but even just in that scenario that's how the the shows are mixed they usually mix with also backs around stuff too anyway
John:
So the reason I give all those caveats about cruddy soundbars is it's not universal.
John:
It's not like you should always get any soundbar over any pair of homes because you shouldn't because cheap soundbars do not sound good.
John:
They won't have bass and the HomePods do have bass.
John:
You know, a cheap soundbar will barely have any separation because the bar is not very long.
John:
And, you know, maybe the center channel is probably really credit quality because those usually aren't upwards or downwards facing, so they're coming right at you, right?
John:
So it's not a universal, but in general, look for discrete channels.
John:
Now, the obvious, you know, if you're wanting to actually spend a little bit more money, Casey's setup is good if you don't want to spend money on a receiver or if, like, Casey, you have an ancient receiver that can't handle this because you don't need a receiver in that Sonos setup.
John:
It does all this stuff for you, right?
John:
But kind of like when you go to sort of the top end of...
John:
used to be max but these days pcs a modular system where you buy a receiver and then you buy speakers and then that's all modular and you can mix and match i can pick a receiver based on capabilities i can pick speakers of sizes and shapes and costs to fit my setup i can change those speakers over time i can swap out the receiver and keep the speakers the same a modular system is going to cost more but it gives you the ultimate flexibility of deciding exactly how much money you want to spend for how big a speaker for which role and
John:
Any modern receiver has more channels than, you know, it's enough channels to fill your entire room depending on where you can put speakers or where you can't.
John:
So that's how I feel about home mods is TV speakers.
John:
They're probably better than your cheap soundbar.
John:
They're way better than what's built into your television.
John:
But if it's possible for you to get discrete channels for your sound, that's what I would suggest.
Marco:
I agree with you, but for slightly different reasons, of course.
Marco:
The functionality of sending the audio back to the Apple TV via eARC and then that wirelessly sending it to the HomePods over some kind of protocol, that's going to introduce, obviously, a few problems.
Marco:
Number one is going to be there's going to be some latency.
Marco:
And I have not tried this setup yet, but I've heard the latency is okay, but...
Marco:
that's it's it's always going to be there it's always going to be like you know a little bit worse than other speakers and that might be okay for like movies and tv because you can adjust you know delays here and there it's not going to be okay for anything that you need to be low latency in real time like for instance games like if you have a game system connected to your tv you're not going to want any additional latency added by the audio um and and so that that's going to be a problem number two it's just going to be more complicated and and potentially buggier you know this is a the ability to be used as tv speakers is
Marco:
is not the main role and selling point and focus of the HomePod as a product.
Marco:
And so maybe you can do it, but if that's really what you're shopping for, you should probably go a different direction to something that's actually made more for that purpose, because your life will probably be simpler and better and more reliable in the long run.
Marco:
Like, for instance, if you wanted to buy a computer to primarily play video games on,
Marco:
That can be a Mac.
Marco:
You can buy a Mac and Macs can run games like that.
Marco:
That's a thing that can happen.
Marco:
But you're better off buying a gaming PC, you know, like so John.
Marco:
So like you can do it with the Mac, but that's not really what it's made for.
Marco:
The HomePod is never that's never going to be like a main priority for them.
Marco:
It's never going to get all the testing in the world.
Marco:
It's never going to have all the capability in the world.
Marco:
Down the road, a software update might break it in weird ways, and maybe your TV speakers will be broken for a month while they fixed it.
Marco:
You don't want to be in that world.
Marco:
If you're buying specifically to be used as TV speakers, get regular TV speakers.
Marco:
Now, whether that's a soundbar, which I still hate that entire product category and term and everything...
Marco:
you see soundbars the same way that like when when steve jobs was first talking about apps in the app store and he kind of talked about them almost almost like diminutively like oh they're just apps just snack on these apps you know it was like he the way he was speaking about them didn't show a lot of respect for them and it or you know reverence to them it was more just like here's these little things that kind of don't matter here snack on them good luck with that you know
Marco:
that's what soundbars are to the entire world of home theater audio.
Marco:
It's like, oh, we'll just give you a little soundbar.
Marco:
Yeah, here, have a soundbar.
John:
There are high-end soundbars now, believe it or not.
Marco:
Yes.
John:
They are very expensive, and they are actually pretty good.
John:
Like I said, they are actually pretty good because they're really, really wide, so you actually get stereo separation, and they're big.
John:
So they have large speaker drivers in them.
John:
So what they are essentially is speakers, enough of the guts of a receiver to make them work, all shoved in one thing.
John:
So it's not...
John:
Most of them, I agree, most of them are not great, but there are actual ones if you spend a ton of money and you have limited space that are fairly impressive.
Marco:
Soundbars are the point-and-shoot camera of the home theater audio world.
Marco:
So you have the built-in speakers on the TV that you get for free with no space, and they do kind of remarkable things considering the limited space and front-facing grills and stuff that they tend to be lacking.
Marco:
So you have the built-in speakers on the TV.
Marco:
then you have this huge quality gap, and then you have a nice speaker system, whether it's 2-channel, 3-channel, 5-channel, 19-channel, whatever it is, there's that big gap in size, complexity, cost between TV speakers and then a full-blown separated speaker system with a receiver.
Marco:
Soundbars try to be in the middle of that, but they have a very hard time... Most soundbars are not that much better than the built-in speakers of your TV, and...
Marco:
and also are way, way worse than a big system.
Marco:
And so, if you can do the big system, and it doesn't have to be a high-end big system, it just gets bigger.
Marco:
You have to have, generally, some kind of receiver or amp, and then you have to have, you have to buy separate speakers, you know, and
Marco:
Even though I'm a two-channel or 2.1 person, I love having a subwoofer and the two speakers.
Marco:
That's a great system for me.
Marco:
I know John espouses at least having a center channel, and I can see the reasons for that.
Marco:
It's kind of a preference thing, and so I see that both ways.
Marco:
John was right, with HomePods, you can't expand that system, whereas with anything else you can.
Marco:
But what everybody will tell you, all the people who are soundbar apologists, they'll tell you, oh yeah, get the soundbar, it's okay, but if you really want the best setup, also get front, left, and right separate speakers and rears and a subwoofer.
Marco:
Well, if you're doing that, then all the soundbar is is an extraordinarily expensive crappy center channel with an amp in it.
Marco:
And you're better off separating out those rules.
Marco:
I don't think they'll tell you to get right and left with a soundbar.
Casey:
Yeah, no, I think you've jumped off the ship at this point.
Casey:
I mean, I understand the point you're making.
Casey:
And I agree wholeheartedly, by the way, that your average soundbar from everything I've experienced sounds like garbage.
Casey:
I completely agree with that.
John:
Although I still think it sounds way better than most TV speakers.
John:
Like there is a jump between TV speakers and even the worst soundbar.
Yeah.
Casey:
That's true, but that's a very, very low bar.
Marco:
Honestly, not for many people.
Marco:
Look, obviously, everyone is picky about different things, but for most people's needs, a soundbar isn't that much better than the built-in speakers on most decent TVs.
Marco:
Now,
Marco:
That's a lot of most.
Marco:
There's a lot of qualifying words there.
Marco:
I know that.
Marco:
But for the most part, soundbars usually do not pull off what they purport to pull off.
Marco:
What they purport is this is going to be a relatively small-ish, relatively simple-ish thing that's going to be way better.
Marco:
And of course, they play all the same tricks as HomePod.
Marco:
It's like, oh, you can just have this one thing in the middle and we'll bounce sound off the walls.
Marco:
And none of that really works very well.
Marco:
You can always tell, oh, this is all coming from the middle.
Marco:
It's not fooling anybody.
Marco:
You can't beat physics.
Marco:
But what people think they are good at, they're not that good at.
Casey:
I think it's one of those things where if you are willing to spend the money for, like John has been saying, a properly good soundbar –
Casey:
then it can be done well.
Casey:
Although I will say even the Arc, which is the most fancy soundbar that Sonos makes, it is pretty tinny without an attachment.
John:
And it is not, that is not an example of a high-end soundbar, by the way.
Casey:
Okay.
John:
Well, then what would you... Like the fancy ones are substantially more expensive than the Sonos Arc and substantially larger and usually do come with a subwoofer.
John:
I mean, they're not cheating.
John:
They just have tons of speaker drivers widely separated with high quality and the built-in guts to amplify them and make them sound good.
John:
And they have some smarts to make the aiming them around the room.
John:
Like the bouncing is never going to make it sound like it's coming from behind you, behind you.
John:
But the very best ones sound like they're on the side of you, which is much better than only being in the front.
Marco:
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Thank you so much to Drafts for just being an amazing app and for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
Vortec writes with a recommendation for what happens when you accidentally tap a HomePod near an outlet.
Casey:
Well, it turns out accessibility is for everyone, as we know but often forget.
Casey:
You can go into touch accommodations and then have a hold duration.
Casey:
I presume this is specific to the HomePod.
Casey:
I don't have a HomePod, so I can't try this out myself.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
But anyways, you can set a hold duration for a very small amount of time.
Casey:
In this screenshot, Vortec had set it for 0.2 seconds, and that will presumably stop an accidental touch, and you can always make it longer if need be.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, this is better than nothing, but if only there was some way, if we had designed some kind of input device... No, it's impossible, Cam.
Marco:
can't be done where you could you could maybe brush against it or dust it without actuating an action but if you wanted to create the action there wouldn't be any kind of weird gesture or delay you could just maybe like push it i don't know if there's how about we add a camera to look at your eyeballs to tell if you're looking at the at the button and then only if you're if you have like your eye is focused on the button then it will activate the button because that's the only thing i can think of
John:
Same with car interior designers.
John:
We need to have buttons on the steering wheel.
John:
It's not like people's hands are going to be near that area frequently, right?
John:
So we can just make those touch buttons.
John:
I'm sure that'll be fine.
Marco:
Yeah, I just like, you know, this makes the HomePod a little bit less annoying to use.
Marco:
But the fact is, like, I actually do use the top tap input as a quick gesture to play pause or to go next track, you know, double tap.
Marco:
Like, I actually do that on a regular basis.
Marco:
So I don't want to make the interaction with it worse or slower or more annoying.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I just want it to ignore accidental input.
Marco:
They'll add force touch sensors to it.
John:
It's still not a real button, but it has force touch.
John:
You have to press real hard.
Marco:
Yeah, it's like they're putting all this effort into things like, you know, this would be so much better if it was just a button.
Marco:
You're just making a button.
Marco:
An actual button that moves up and down.
Marco:
It's even cheaper.
John:
Like, I don't, it's just, it's like, it's what they have now is worse in every way.
John:
And it's not, it's not like it's going to wear, it's not like it's going to wear out like a mouse button from hundreds of thousands of clicks either.
John:
It's not like you're sitting there hammering the top of the HomePod all day long.
John:
I know.
John:
It doesn't even have to be a good button.
Casey:
Just put a button on it.
Casey:
Jeez.
Casey:
You know, my Sonos speakers, they have buttons that you can press.
John:
I know!
John:
Just saying.
John:
All the touch sensors on the top of the Apple devices, you've got to go for this variation of the frequent internet meme.
John:
Did a cat design this?
Casey:
All right, moving along.
Casey:
Sevrier Bjorkvinsson, I'm sorry if that's wrong.
Casey:
I'm doing my best here, points out and reminds us that the Foo Fighters did perform at an Apple event.
Casey:
It was the iPhone 5 launch event and even provided a YouTube link that we will put in the show notes.
Casey:
Good.
Casey:
I'm glad we're all excited about that.
Casey:
Hey, so Twitter is still a mess, as it turns out.
Casey:
So on February 2nd, Twitter dev, which is the Twitter account that represents, I guess, the developer relations in so much as such a thing exists.
Casey:
Anyways, they tweeted on February 2nd, starting February 9th, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both V2 and V1.1.
Casey:
A paid basic tier will be available instead.
Casey:
Over the years, hundreds of millions of people have sent over a trillion tweets with billions more every week.
Casey:
Twitter data are among the world's most powerful data sets.
Casey:
We're committed to enabling fast and comprehensive access so you can continue to build with us.
Casey:
We'll be back with more details on what you can expect next week.
Casey:
Well, those details still haven't arrived as we record, which is super fun.
Casey:
However, two days later, the chief idiot in chief wrote, responding to feedback, Twitter will enable a light write-only API for bots providing good content that is free.
Casey:
Well, thank you.
Casey:
That really clarifies things.
Casey:
Good content.
Casey:
Dare I ask, what is good content, King?
Casey:
I don't know.
Marco:
I can't.
Marco:
I feel like this is one of those things where people focus a lot on his individual words or the individual details of the policy.
Marco:
But what you need to do is take a step back here and look at the big picture.
Marco:
This is an unreliable platform run by unreliable erratic leaders.
Marco:
And so this is not a place to build anything.
Marco:
And if you already built something there, this is like, you know, one of many recent warning signs that you should probably look to move whatever it is you need that for to move that role somewhere else.
Marco:
Because this is just an unreliable platform.
Marco:
You cannot build on this platform anymore.
Marco:
And if you've...
John:
you've already built there it's just a matter of time before anything you built there or invested in there is arbitrarily and capriciously set on fire yeah and it's not like charging for api access is a bad idea it's a perfectly good idea it's all about the way it's been done and sort of the lack of understanding of the sort of value ecosystem that the api has provided for twitter it's
John:
existed for so long a lot of the value on twitter is done by people having fun bots that you know make little accounts that you can follow or post the weather or show pictures of cats or i follow one that does a a calendar accurate uh retelling of snippets of lord of the rings so like when october happens in the book you know there'll be a tweet on that day in october saying where the characters are in the story or whatever that's all like
John:
extremely low volume silly frivolous stuff that's getting by on the free api right uh and then of course there are there are bots that abuse it and do bad things and then there are things that are actually you know using the api thoroughly and the and it's like any it's not this is not the first site to have an api like this is a known thing that's been around for ages and twitter has history behind it you want to monetize the api you monetize the big ones that you know can pay you allow the lord of the rings bot to continue to exist
John:
then you have a free tier with low limits for everybody else to do.
John:
And you come out with that plan, you know, with ample warning, with a clear explanation of what it's going to be and the pricing structure and everything like that.
John:
And, of course, they didn't do any of that.
John:
And so it's not the fact that they're charging for an API.
John:
It's not the fact that they're killing the whole free API.
John:
It's the fact that they just have no idea what they're doing.
John:
They're just blundering through like a bull in a china shop.
John:
Just unknowingly destroying value, scaring people away, frightening developers into saying, well, I don't even want to deal with that, so I'm just taking Twitter support out of my app.
John:
All the people who had bots are like, well, you know, I was already kind of sketchy on this place, but now it's just like, whatever, I'm just going to give up.
John:
And if I want to have my fun thing, I'll go somewhere else.
John:
It's just...
John:
You know, typical Elon Musk Twitter behavior, which is even if you are kind of sort of on the right track for something that might possibly be a good idea, do it in the worst way possible to get any benefit you might have.
John:
And by the way, this still does not solve the giant money problem they have because charging for the API, no matter how much they charge, there's just not enough money at this point to ring out of Twitter in the next year to be able to service their debt or whatever.
John:
So typical comedy of errors going on over there.
Casey:
He's an incredible businessman, though.
Casey:
Let's not forget.
Casey:
Move to Don was killed for unspecified rule violations.
Casey:
Surprise, surprise.
Casey:
Tibor Martini writes, and this is the creator, According to Twitter, the app has violated Twitter rules and policies.
Casey:
I can't tell much more at the moment since the email they mentioned never arrived in my inbox.
Casey:
I try to get more information from Twitter, but they already mentioned that it may take a few days to get back to me.
John:
It'll take a few days to get back to them.
John:
By the time they get back to them, the free API will be turned off anyway.
John:
It's like your app is dead no matter what.
John:
That's what people were saying.
John:
Move to Don is that thing that lets you find your followers.
John:
People you follow on Twitter, if they put a Mastodon address in their bio or in their name somewhere, it will find it and then it will let you follow them using your Mastodon account.
John:
There's a bunch of tools that are like that.
John:
This was one of the better ones.
John:
We talked about it in the past in the show.
John:
um i think but at some point where these things they weren't banned no they were they were doing the thing where they weren't letting you put mass on addresses in your in your address it's hard to keep track of all their weird rules but anyway um it you know one of the people like oh they killed the api so they could kill these migration services i'm sure they enjoy the fact that these migration services won't be able to exist on the free api anymore but these people could in theory just pay for the api if they wanted to continue this like
John:
It's ascribing to them some, like, master plan.
John:
Like, they're there going, ha-ha, we're going to do this thing.
John:
Same thing with the bots.
John:
This is to get rid of the bots.
John:
Like, are you kidding?
John:
If there's anything in the world that is going to do, like, HTML scraping of your website to get around API limits, it's spammers, right?
John:
Like, don't worry.
John:
Spammers will be fine.
John:
They don't need your API.
John:
And they'll just find a way to pay for your API with stolen credit cards anyway.
John:
You'll have fun chasing them around, yeah.
John:
Solving spam is easy.
John:
Just, you know, end the free API.
John:
You'll never have spam again.
John:
I'm sure that'll work great.
John:
But yeah, this thing got suspended.
John:
Who knows why?
John:
You're not, like Mark was saying, you're not dealing with, you know, I know it's not an individual, but if you were to personify Twitter, you're not dealing with an adult here.
John:
You're not dealing with a professional adult.
John:
Things are going to happen, and there's not going to be any explanation, and there's nothing you can do about it.
John:
It's just like a completely unreliable, flaky other party.
John:
that is going to ban you and not tell you why and tell you they're going to tell you and not ever send you that email.
John:
They're just going to flake out on you.
John:
Like, the whole company is like that.
John:
So it doesn't take much of interaction like that to make people think, yeah, screw this.
John:
Like, I don't need to deal with this.
John:
I was trying to make a fun Twitter account that posts pictures of kittens every day, and I don't need to deal with my thing getting banned and them telling me they're going to tell me what I did, but they never tell me, and I try to get back to them, but they don't have a communications department, and it's just, whatever.
John:
It just...
John:
It makes people not want to deal with it.
Casey:
For what it's worth, Mastodon Flock, which is similar to Move to Dawn, is still working.
Casey:
Also, breaking news via Smythe in the chat.
Casey:
Paul Haddad of TapBots just tooted that sometime in the last couple hours.
Casey:
Twitter dev finally announced some more details.
Casey:
This is breaking news.
Casey:
Delay the new rules for four days.
Casey:
Free bot level of up to 1,500 tweets a month for a single authenticated user.
Casey:
And Paul surmises that probably means no read access.
Casey:
You can only post.
Casey:
$100 a month for low level of API usage tier.
Casey:
So $100 a month if you want to post is what we're assuming.
Casey:
That's not factual, but that's what we're assuming.
Casey:
And then the premium API, which is the expensive one that had prices listed, goes away in favor of the enterprise API, which is the even more expensive one that didn't even have prices listed.
Casey:
And Paul continues, before anyone asks, this does not mean third-party clients are coming back.
Casey:
If anything, it is the exact opposite.
John:
yeah having no read access kind of kills the well it doesn't entirely kill the the i don't know the the move to dawn type scraping things kind of need read access in addition to well i guess they don't need write access but the write only ones is like oh you can contribute content to this black hole but you can't actually read from it but like for example our ask atp birdhouse would be okay our ask atp scraper that was looking for the ask atp hashtag and putting it into google sheet that just uses read it doesn't use right at all and that thing would still be screwed not that we would ever pay for access to that anyway but
John:
yeah whatever and this this set of rules or whatever imagine if you had like an adult come up with a plan for the api before you started announcing things before you started canceling the api and had like an actual plan and put it together and rolled it out smoothly with warning ahead of time and a pr push and marketing you know like a real grown-up company but that's not the way any of this works imagine
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Pushcut, a powerful iOS and iPadOS automation utility for shortcuts and home kit designed for automation power users like many of you.
Marco:
Pushcut allows you to send custom actionable notifications to any of your devices, create custom widgets, run background automations, and even use a dedicated device to run shortcuts at any time.
Marco:
This is so powerful.
Marco:
So, for instance, you can send yourself custom notifications triggered by shortcuts, HomeKit, or IFTTT.
Marco:
You can target specific devices among your fleet, so you can, like, you know, skip your iPad if you like.
Marco:
You can run an action in response to these notifications, including shortcuts.
Marco:
For example, you can do things like keep track of the progress in your 3D printer with images and turn off the power when the job is done.
Marco:
And you can create custom widgets with PushCut.
Marco:
So you can create custom UI from scratch or use one of the many examples that they give you.
Marco:
And this is home screen or lock screen widgets.
Marco:
They can include content from your calendar or anything else in your device with shortcuts, photos, data from the web.
Marco:
And you can update the widget in response to shortcut automations or Zapier or anything else, notifications, whatever you want to do.
Marco:
You can customize your home screen.
Marco:
So you can have, say, a widget that tells you whether your front door is unlocked or your blinds are closed.
Marco:
You can get information on the next F1 race.
Marco:
You can count down until your next vacation and have that be on your lock screen every time you look at your phone.
Marco:
And the automation server function allows you to use a dedicated iOS device to run shortcuts whenever you like without confirmation prompts.
Marco:
This is very, very powerful.
Marco:
You can trigger these at certain intervals, specific dates and times, or in response to a web hook or response to HomeKit.
Marco:
It's amazing what you can do with PushCut.
Marco:
They also have background triggers.
Marco:
So you can do things like use location and custom notifications to prompt you to run a shortcut or choose a home kit scene or open a link.
Marco:
So you can do things like start a workout 10 minutes after getting to the gym.
Marco:
Or remember to check your shopping list when you pass the store and it's during its opening hours.
Marco:
Thank you so much to PushCut for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
Marco, you've bought one to seven HomePod 2s.
Casey:
Please tell me.
John:
I bought two HomePod 2s.
Casey:
Please tell me, are they worth the money?
Casey:
Are they good?
Casey:
Are they bad?
Casey:
Are they better than the ones?
Casey:
Have they solved all your problems?
Casey:
What's the situation?
John:
Actually, before Marco starts, I have a comment on the picture that I'm assuming he will make the chapter art for this little section here.
John:
you posted a bunch of pictures of your little home pod testing area that slowly gained more and more pods they kept multiplying yes see the little baby ones after next to the two parents now obviously this is not he doesn't have an anechoic chamber in his house this is not super scientific testing blah blah blah even down to the point of like some people saying well you know audio devices take a while to break in and if you just got them today like you need a week to break in and it's like whatever
John:
But this is not we're not we're not going super scientific here.
John:
But I will say that even from the very first picture, when I saw that you had arranged the right and left old and new home pods and little stereo pairs next to each other.
John:
I mean, I guess you can tell me, but like they're pretty close to each other.
John:
And my recollection is the HomePod 1s at least did something where they like sprayed out sound and then saw how it bounced back to figure out how they're supposed to adjust to their environment, right?
John:
But the environment is weird when you've got...
John:
HomePod, the two right ones right next to each other and the two left ones right next to each other because it's not an apples-to-apples comparison because the environment for both of them is different.
John:
One of the right ones has something to its left and one of the right ones has something to its right.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
The reason I arranged them this way – and you're right on a bunch of things that I'll get to – but the reason I arranged them this way is so that each –
Marco:
pair would have the same amount of space between it because otherwise i figured like you know if i had like you know the new ones on the inside and the old ones on the outside then it would be unfair no no i get it you want the stereo distance to be the same yes but but like the distance to its neighbor and here's the problem like you can't like
John:
Just, well, why don't you just have two of them and then swap them out?
John:
You want to be able to do like A-B testing like immediately.
John:
You're not like, oh, let me just lug a bunch of bricks, right?
John:
So it's not ideal.
John:
The second thing is, and this is an accurate test for Marco's environment for sure, but I always think about this when I see HomePod set up.
John:
You've got them on a counter with like a backsplash.
John:
right that's not an ideal audio environment a speaker that is like inches away from not at all you know a stone backsplash or whatever um but that's how they're going to be used in a lot of places so it is represented it is a representative test for marco's environment but again it is not an anechoic chamber where you have this beautiful isolated speaker um so it is let's say this is a challenging scenario for all the little felt color covered orbs involved
John:
and i think also a challenging listening scenario because you can never know how much of what you're hearing is a result of the devices versus a result of the devices either not adjusting for their environment or badly adjusting for their environment and finally how much of what you're hearing is just a result of like look sound is going to be bouncing off marble that's two inches behind it and it's not in marble it's quartz we have we have a marble table like the little like circular and it's like the biggest pain in the butt oh my god never get marble anything quartz is so much better
Marco:
anyway so and you're right so and and i think a huge disclaimer here that all of these i think except the home pod minis but all the so i i have in this i have in this test two old home pods two new home pods two home pod minis and a fourth gen amazon echo i only have one because the second one died after like two seconds because they're garbage so
Marco:
They're the worst built Amazon thing I've ever had.
Marco:
Anyway, and I tested them in stereo pairs and in single configurations, except for the Echo where I only have one, so I couldn't test a stereo pair of that.
Marco:
A huge disclaimer here that, again, besides the HomePod Mini, which I think doesn't do this, all of the other ones, maybe the Echo...
Marco:
do some kind of sound processing based on whatever surroundings they sense.
Marco:
Like the HomePod, for instance, has a microphone inside of it that tweaks the bass response, I think.
Marco:
And it also does measure reflections and everything.
Marco:
If you shake a HomePod while it's playing...
Marco:
It has accelerometers to detect that it's been moved and it will kind of like reset itself and like readapt the sound briefly.
Marco:
It sounds really weird.
Marco:
Try it.
Marco:
Anyway, with all that said, these are all speakers that use a lot of software processing.
Marco:
What I try to do when I'm judging like does, you know, does this sound better than that or whatever and how does it sound better?
Marco:
I also have to consider the fact that not only are people's environments different, but the state of the software is going to vary over time.
Marco:
And so it might be adjusting for something in my room that somebody else wouldn't have.
Marco:
And it even might be like that maybe in a software update, they'll tweak the mix slightly over time as well.
Marco:
So that's a huge disclaimer.
Marco:
So what I'm really judging here is to some degree how they sound now, but also you can tell when you're judging a speaker or a headphone, you can tell, or a microphone even,
Marco:
you can tell like what you can fix in eq versus what you can't if you look at a frequency response graph this you'll see these in reviews sometimes where it'll have like you know like 30 hertz on one side and like you know 16 000 or 20 000 hertz on the other side it'll show a logarithmic graph you'll see a little wavy line it's usually you know it's supposed to be somewhat flat um in practice usually you see like
Marco:
A slow hump up on the bass side on the left side, and then all the way on the right when the high treble frequency goes zigzag, zigzag, zigzag, and fall off at the end.
Marco:
A frequency response graph is the kind of thing where you can use EQ to tweak things about that that you don't like a little bit to some extent.
Marco:
But where EQ doesn't help you and processing doesn't help you is in other areas of sound design.
Marco:
And you'll have to forgive me.
Marco:
I'm not a speaker or headphone designer.
Marco:
So I know a little bit about this stuff because this is like a world that I'm a big enthusiast about.
Marco:
But a lot of the science I don't know.
Marco:
So with that disclaimer in mind, and I'm sure we'll hear from people who design speakers in our audience.
Marco:
So with that being said, so other factors, for instance, are things like distortion characteristics.
Marco:
Or like weird, you know, phase interference issues you can get with certain designs of like certain physical designs of the enclosure the speakers are in, the drivers, how they're arranged.
Marco:
There's all these different other factors.
Marco:
And a lot of those can't be corrected in EQ.
Marco:
So what I'm judging here, this is a huge preamble.
Marco:
I know this is almost John level of preamble.
Marco:
What I'm judging here, I'm trying to listen to like, what is the speaker capable of?
Marco:
And then what is it doing now as a kind of two separate things?
Marco:
Because what it's doing now could be adjusted with software over time.
Marco:
What it's capable of, for the most part, can't.
John:
And speaking of these frequency response curves and phase stuff or whatever, one of the things that that Dirac Live software that I've talked about in the past, like an app that you run on your Mac or PC that talks to your receiver, that measures your speakers with stereo, with a microphone that you put where your head would be,
John:
It takes these frequency response curves and it will level them out with very detailed EQ and everything.
John:
And it will also tell you these speakers are out of phase.
John:
There's destructive interference over here.
John:
Like that's that's what those applications do, because you can't really do it by ear.
John:
You need sort of equipment to do it.
John:
um and and like if you have your if you have your speakers wired the wrong way if you have your subwoofer phase switched the wrong way if your crossover is in the wrong spot the software will tell you because you might not know what you're supposed to i certainly don't what i'm supposed to be listening for or i hear this i know this wrong but the software will literally tell you until you get your thing sounding as good as it possibly can with your equipment which is actually fairly challenging
John:
presumably home pods are doing something similar internally but all they can do is change the sound that comes out of them i don't think they ever demand that you move them like hey nobody puts home pod in a corner what am i doing i'm in a corner and and a picture frame is blocking me but my home pod is by the way behind a bunch of fracture pictures of my dog because i don't care what it sounds like and i bet it hates that because it's like the worst environment like it's in a corner it's got glass pictures in front of it blocked by glass oh god i'm
John:
I'm listening to podcasts on you, HomePod, and most of the time you do nothing, and usually you can't even turn off my lights, so shut up and take it.
John:
But anyway, the DRock software does help with stuff like that, and it is fun to kind of tweak manually, but the HomePod is like, I'll do that all for you, and presumably it does a passable job.
Marco:
One other quick thing.
Marco:
John just mentioned the alleged phenomenon of break-in periods for headphones or speakers.
Marco:
This has been pretty widely discredited as a thing that's real.
Marco:
What is real is that your perception of the sound adjusts.
Marco:
It's not that the speakers are being broken in.
Marco:
It's that your ears are being broken in, like your brain's being broken in.
Marco:
that's what's actually happening and so if there is something about a particular transducer that is different from what you are used to before that over time you get used to that you stop hearing it as like oh that's weirdly harsh or different that just becomes what you think of as normal it's almost like the way you know like your eyes perform automatic white balancing you know it's the same thing for sound your brain's being broken and then finally how i was a b testing them
Marco:
What you want to do if you're comparing speakers like this, you want to be able to play the same thing on all of them and to be able to switch between them as quickly as possible.
Marco:
If you have to unplug stuff, start something, it becomes much harder.
Marco:
If the difference between them is more than a couple of seconds, it becomes much harder to remember how that sounded and try to compare.
Marco:
You can't rely on memory for much here.
Marco:
It has to be quick, being able to transition between them quickly.
Marco:
That's how you can really tell the differences.
Marco:
And when you can do that, the differences become very apparent.
Marco:
So the way I do this, I use AirPlay and I play to all of them at the same time as a group in the AirPlay selector.
Marco:
And then you drop down the AirPlay selector so you get individual volume sliders for each speaker.
Marco:
And I just would drag to zero the ones I wasn't listening to and drag up the one that I was testing and then quickly swap that.
Marco:
Drag that one down, drag this one up.
John:
Did you do the thing where you drag all the sliders down except for one pair and then shake that pair and then drag all the sliders down except for another pair and then shake that pair?
John:
Because what you want them to do is to adjust to their acoustic environment when other speakers aren't playing in their face.
John:
You know what I mean?
Marco:
I did not do that.
Marco:
I probably should have done that, but I didn't.
Marco:
But again, I think, again, I want to not lean too heavily on the specifics of whatever the adaptive EQ processing is doing at that moment.
Marco:
Because, again, that can change.
Marco:
That changes a lot with environment.
John:
But that's going to change the sound of the speakers, too.
Marco:
Trust me, it doesn't change sound like this.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So first, let me cover the non-sound aspects first.
Marco:
Aesthetics, physical design.
Marco:
The new HomePod compared to the old one is very similar overall looking.
Marco:
You would only notice the differences if you saw them side by side for the most part because it still looks like approximately the same size cylinder.
Marco:
It has the same material on the outside, at least the white ones.
Marco:
I don't have the black ones to compare.
John:
Is it skinnier or is that just an optical illusion because the top disc is bigger?
Marco:
If you look at the measurements, they're very similar.
Marco:
It's slightly shorter.
Marco:
It might be a little bit fatter, but it looks like the same kind of object.
Marco:
You could change them out, and the less observant or less caring members of your household wouldn't notice until you touch the top.
Marco:
The biggest difference you'll notice is that the top screen, the quote screen, the top LED color visualizer thing now goes all the way to the edge and is bigger.
Marco:
It's inset instead of being convex.
Marco:
That honestly doesn't matter in practice.
Marco:
Maybe it'll collect dust a little bit differently, but otherwise, as you tap it to dust it off, you'll blast your Foo Fighters at night again.
Marco:
But anyway, with the previous one, when it was totally not playing anything, like just sitting there idle or off, you wouldn't see the plus and minus that indicated the volume buttons.
Marco:
They were themselves individually lit little white LED things that would turn off, so it would just look like a flat white surface.
Marco:
The new one, the plus and minus are permanently etched in there.
Marco:
So they're just like, you know, they're drawn on the top so you can always see the plus and minus.
Marco:
Some people saw this as a downgrade.
Marco:
I see this as a positive thing because if you nudge your HomePod on the counter as you're working on your kitchen counter accidentally and you want to reset it and make sure it's aligned correctly, you can just look at the plus and minus.
Marco:
It's always there and you can say, oh, now it's straight.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
So that to me is an improvement.
Marco:
The wider color panel of the LEDs on top, I don't think it's an improvement.
Marco:
When it's just playing, it does the same thing as a HomePod mini.
Marco:
If you have a HomePod mini, it's that same pattern.
Marco:
So when it's just playing, it's showing this kind of like soft white glow from the middle.
Marco:
And that's fine.
Marco:
when Siri is processing, it's attempted to do that kind of Siri, like multicolor pulsing logo thing.
Marco:
And it does it across the whole service.
Marco:
And this is now a pretty big service.
Marco:
And so it kind of looks garish.
Marco:
And I don't think this panel needed to, I don't think the LEDs needed to go all the way to the edge the way they do now.
Marco:
And if they were looking to cut costs somewhere, I don't know why they didn't cut costs there.
Marco:
Because that seems to serve no real purpose except looking garish during Siri requests and showing this weird rainbow light show at a scale that I don't think it was designed for.
Marco:
It looks better on the smaller ones, but it doesn't look good on the big size.
John:
It's interesting that this is like a thing that Apple hasn't done in ages and didn't really do that much before, which is have lights on their devices, try to imbue some kind of personality.
John:
We've talked about the breathing sleep light way back when on the laptops or the glowing Apple logo on the back of the old laptop screens.
John:
uh in general if apple wants to do something to to imbue a device with dynamic personality they use a screen and still on all the home pods no screens and i can't recall last time i saw them say okay we're not going to have a screen but what we want to do what they want to do is like if you hold down like the power button on your phone you see that siri colored blob thing this is like well
John:
if we could we'd show the siri colored blob things that's our branding for siri when you're interacting with it whatever that colored blob thing that waves around it's a cool little animation why don't we show that well we can't we don't have a screen well can we show like a really blurry version of that with just a bunch of rgb leds under like a translucent frosted surface it's like we could but it's but i feel like that doesn't accomplish the branding because it's like it's it reminds you of the branding
John:
But it's like the branding is trapped underneath cloudy glass and you can't really see it.
John:
And the second thing is, what value does that add?
John:
Does it look good?
John:
Does it put on a laser light show?
John:
Does it indicate something to you from a distance any more than just a single LED would or something like that?
John:
It's a strange gesture to spend that much time and space on a thing that isn't a screen.
John:
And I'm not particularly against it.
John:
I mean, I don't mind it on mine or whatever.
John:
It just reminds me of an older Apple that...
John:
wanted to put these type of sort of i don't know like a appearance personality dynamic appearance personality into their hardware that is not a screen and i you know we keep waiting for a home home pod like device with a screen on it but it's not this one to some extent i actually don't mind it not being a screen just because in most contexts where you'd put these things you don't really have a lot of visibility onto that top surface anyway like it's not like you can't see it from across the room having a screen face the ceiling is not great yeah right
Marco:
So anyway, so that's the physical stuff aside.
Marco:
I did replace the power cords with nice shorter ones now.
Marco:
They came in today and I'm super happy about that.
Marco:
That's nice.
Marco:
But anyway, so on to the sound.
Marco:
This is this is what everybody wants to know.
Marco:
Does it sound but and frankly, the all the reviews that are like, yeah, it sounds pretty much the same.
Marco:
It doesn't.
Marco:
It does not sound pretty much the same.
Marco:
It sounds surprisingly different.
Marco:
Much more different than I thought it would.
Marco:
I'm going to start easily.
Marco:
The bass.
Marco:
It is lighter.
Marco:
The bass is lighter.
Marco:
However, there are asterisks on this.
Marco:
In general, the new ones have less bass at medium to high volume, and they have actually a lower maximum volume.
Marco:
The old ones go louder.
Marco:
Now, this is all relative.
Marco:
These are still really impressive for their size.
Marco:
And anything else that's anywhere near their size, when you compare them to other multi-hundred-dollar premium smart speakers or self-powered speakers, usually what people compare these to are much larger than them because the things that cost $300 are usually much larger than them.
Marco:
But in this size class,
Marco:
they do shockingly well at bass and volume.
Marco:
If you have a large room, again, going back to the home theater thing, it might not be enough.
Marco:
That being said, for their size, still great, still plenty of bass, but it is definitely a reduction in bass strength from before.
Marco:
That's at medium to high volumes.
Marco:
Now,
Marco:
At lower volumes, it seems like there's plenty of bass there.
Marco:
And what I think they are doing, a lot of people don't realize this, but in any kind of speaker that has some kind of processing going on, that isn't just like an amp connected to some wired speakers that you turn the knob and it gets louder.
Marco:
In most other modern powered speakers that have their own kind of DSP stuff built in,
Marco:
Many of them will actually dynamically ramp the bass down as the volume goes up.
Marco:
And there are multiple reasons for this, but the two key ones are, number one, it sounds really nice to have relatively strong bass when it's turned down lower.
Marco:
It sounds like a more premium, nice, rich experience.
Marco:
But if you take that exact same amount of bass that's down low, and you'll see this in Bose products, this is a common thing, or any of the fancy power speaker brands, B&O, B&W, Sonos might even do this in some of their power stuff.
Marco:
I'm not positive on that.
Marco:
But anything that does processing on the sound...
Marco:
At low volumes, the bass will be proportionally much more strong than if you turn it up a lot, it would sound ridiculous if the bass was that strong at the high volume.
Marco:
So they actually ramp it down.
Marco:
Part of that is because, again, it sounds better that way, makes it sound better at lower volumes without having the negatives of very loud bass of like when you turn it up, you wouldn't want it to like, you know, be really boomy and like vibrate things in your house or, you know, angry your neighbors or whatever else.
Marco:
I think it's doing that to a pretty strong degree.
Marco:
I haven't measured that.
Marco:
I didn't have time or equipment, frankly, to measure that.
Marco:
But it sounds like it's doing dynamic bass roll off as the volume goes up.
Marco:
And I think for a product of this category, that's the right choice.
Marco:
The other reason somebody might not want to have bass that strong at high volumes is it takes a very powerful amp to deliver high volume bass.
Marco:
I think in a lot of these products, the amp just is not specced for that much power.
Marco:
The old HomePod had a custom-designed main woofer amp.
Marco:
I tried to look at the specs for it.
Marco:
Nobody really has them because it's a custom-designed chip from this company.
Marco:
As far as I could tell, no one has figured out yet what the chip is in the new HomePod.
Marco:
So I couldn't find any information to compare.
Marco:
Does the base amp actually have less wattage or less power potential in the new one?
Marco:
I would speculate that it probably does.
John:
and by the way this is why if you have a individual component set up and you have a receiver that puts out however many watts per channel the subwoofer that you buy will plug into the wall because it has its own amplifier yes powered subwoofer is the way to go yeah right because it doesn't like all the two things in receivers one no matter how much power per channel they say in the receivers like whatever 150 watts per channel still it's a hangover of historical things that number you see like 150 watts that's for two channels
John:
If you put seven speakers, you don't get 150 watts on all seven of the speakers.
John:
The math doesn't add up real fast.
John:
But for historical reasons, because stereo receivers used to just be like that, that is still the standard.
John:
And not only that, but the manufacturer won't even tell you how many watts you get if you hook up seven speakers.
John:
And then, yes, the 0.1 for the subwoofer, that's a powered subwoofer that plugs into a different outlet and a wall.
John:
It's got its own amplifier.
Marco:
The other thing to consider, by saying it has less bass, that even could be, again, this could be software.
Marco:
It has an internal microphone to measure the bass response and any kind of resonances and stuff.
Marco:
It might just be throttling its own bass to prevent vibration and stuff.
Marco:
So there's all sorts of things that go into this.
Marco:
So in short...
Marco:
It sounds, compared to the old one, it sounds like there's less bass at high volume.
Marco:
But at low volume, it sounds about the same and might even have more.
Marco:
It sounds very pleasant on the bass at moderate to low volume.
Marco:
I'll tell you that for sure.
Marco:
So anyway, that's the bass.
Marco:
The mid-range and the treble.
Marco:
This is now, we're moving into the tweeters.
Marco:
And by the way, this is one of the biggest reasons why the HomePod Mini...
Marco:
which only has one speaker cone in there.
Marco:
It uses a, quote, passive radiator design for the bass.
Marco:
I'm not entirely sure what those do, but the Mini effectively is one speaker cone in there, like one driver.
Marco:
And the HomePod, as we know, has the one big four-inch woofer that faces, I think, up from the middle, and then it has formerly seven, now five tweeters around the bottom.
Marco:
And the whole reason for this is...
Marco:
To separate these out, if you want something to be able to produce bass, you need a pretty large speaker cone that moves in big waves forward and back.
Marco:
That's how you make good bass.
Marco:
But a very large speaker cone has a lot of mass to move.
Marco:
And if you want to make something that produces very good high-frequency sounds, like in the treble range, you actually want as little mass moving as possible because you want it to be vibrating really small really fast.
Marco:
And so it's kind of impossible to physically design the same speaker cone, like one speaker cone that does really good bass and really good treble.
Marco:
That's why when you have nicer speakers, they tend to have more drivers and they cover different size classes.
Marco:
Basically, you might have a few woofers or one big woofer.
Marco:
And usually you have like.
Marco:
Maybe a mid-range driver, maybe a little tiny tweeter, or you'll have just a woofer and a tweeter.
Marco:
But that's why it's separated.
Marco:
And so you might think that when you go from the old HomePod with the seven tweeters to the new HomePod with five, you might think this would hurt its treble performance in some meaningful way.
Marco:
And I can tell you that the treble and the mid-range sound way better on the new one.
Marco:
It is the opposite of what you think it would be.
Marco:
The new one, treble and mid-range sound awesome.
Marco:
I am a huge snob for these things.
Marco:
I don't care that much about bass.
Marco:
I care a lot about mid-range and a little bit about treble.
Marco:
I care about vocals sounding smooth, guitars sounding smooth, and having them be present, having them be right there hitting you in the face in the middle of the mix.
Marco:
Oftentimes what cheap crappy speakers and headphones will do is they'll have kind of a weak response in that kind of mid-range vocals and guitars and pianos kind of area where
Marco:
it almost gets pushed back in the mix so you don't hear it too much.
Marco:
They'll crank up the response for the bass and treble so that it kind of masks the crappy, distorted, harsh mid-range they have in the middle there.
Marco:
And I don't like that.
Marco:
I want to hear really clear, crisp vocals and really strong, smooth guitars.
Marco:
That's what I want in my music.
Marco:
That's my favorite part of the music.
Marco:
Very, very few speakers or headphones are able to deliver that very well.
Marco:
The whole reason I love my KEF or KEF, I don't know what it is, that series of the Q150, the Q350, they have the best midrange I've ever heard in a speaker.
Marco:
The whole reason I love my ridiculously old, super high needs, Hi-Fi Man HE6 headphones is because they have the best mid-range I've ever heard in headphones.
Marco:
These new full-size HomePods have really great mid-range smoothness, detail, lack of harshness, lack of distortion in the mid-range.
Marco:
It's amazing in these new HomePods.
Marco:
And so this makes vocals sound better.
Marco:
Pianos, guitars, like, the kind of, you know, the main, like, middle of the frequency range, those all sound really great.
Marco:
What I'm trying to get away from, like, when I talk about mid-range distortion, what this kind of sounds like is, you know those bands came out, like, in the early 2000s where it sounds kind of like they're talking through a phone as they're singing, like...
Marco:
I can't even do it.
Marco:
It's like the Strokes, the Killers, whatever.
Marco:
Those kind of bands.
Marco:
And they did it intentionally.
Marco:
That was part of their style.
Marco:
But it sounds like kind of a crunchy filter on the vocals.
Marco:
Or it's kind of like you're talking through an old telephone.
Marco:
That kind of sound effect.
Marco:
crappy mid-range on speakers and headphones makes all vocals sound a little bit like that.
Marco:
It's like a little bit of distortion in the mid-range that does not sound good.
Marco:
And the opposite of that is when things sound clear.
Marco:
It just sounds like someone's there singing in the room with you.
Marco:
In audio terms, people talk about – they use the word transparency.
Marco:
And what you want – and unfortunately, this is kind of a – it's a tricky term because everyone's definition of transparent is different in audio.
Marco:
But the idea of transparency is you don't notice the speaker.
Marco:
You don't notice the headphone.
Marco:
It just sounds like the music is there in the room.
Marco:
It isn't imparting a bunch of filters or effects or noticeable artifacts on the music.
Marco:
It is just – it sounds natural.
Marco:
That's how these sound in the mid-range and the treble way more than the old ones.
Marco:
And the old ones sounded great overall.
Marco:
But when you do a side-by-side comparison, it's no contest.
Marco:
Mid-range and treble are way, way nicer and clearer and better on the new ones.
Marco:
Frankly, I'm blown away.
Marco:
I'm so happy with how good these are in that area.
Marco:
Again, if you compare these, put on whatever track you like, but if you really want to hear the kind of differences, put on a track that has a singer with a piano or something, or a singer with a guitar.
Marco:
There's not a ton going on.
Marco:
You can just hear that, and you will hear there's a pretty substantial difference between the two.
Marco:
And so whatever they did to reduce from seven tweeters to five, I can tell you not only is not a downgrade, it's a massive upgrade.
Marco:
Overall, the new HomePod in those ranges and even, frankly, in the base, it just sounds way better overall.
John:
What they might have done is bought five slightly more expensive tweeters instead of seven slightly less expensive tweeters.
Marco:
You know what I mean?
John:
Spend a similar amount of money but get a higher quality...
John:
thing uh and speaking of the uh what you're just describing about the sort of the transparency of the mid-range and stuff i watched your review recently they were they were reviewing receivers believe it or not like you know they had a set of speakers that was the same through all the tests but they were saying with a given set of speakers that we think are these fancy high-end speakers whatever that the receivers were imparting a some receivers would impart a personality on things like vocals in the mid-range or whatever and they described it like by brand that these some particular brands like i think it was like
John:
marantz and one some other uh fancy expensive one had a more rounded sound and they said like nad was 100 neutral right in the middle and didn't impart any personality on the sound whatsoever and then they had the other end was like like sony yamaha that was more of a more of a sharp or sparkly sound if you had to i know these words are so bad because if you watch i would caution that there is a lot of placebo effect and a lot of those kind of judgments
John:
Well, but I know what they're talking about.
John:
As someone who's not an audiophile, I think everyone has heard something where the, well, you talked about it even with podcasting, with sibilance, where the treble is too sharp, right?
John:
That is just too kind of spiky in your ears.
John:
And then the more rounded one, like Casey would like on vinyl, where all the edges are cut off of everything and it sounds like someone's singing through a sock, but people like it.
Casey:
Oh, right off.
John:
Because it smooths off all the sharp edges, right?
Yeah.
John:
you are the worst it smooths off all the sharp edges and then and then neutral i you know lots of people have bad things to say about audio devices that are like sign you know like you if you use something to measure it like i'm gonna objectively measure the frequency response wow look at this frequency response it's just it's exactly almost exactly level it's extremely neutral it doesn't impart anything like it's just like perfectly clean and you hear things through that and people go
John:
Yeah, I don't like how much that sounds.
John:
It sounds better on one of the ones that is less neutral, that does more to the sound instead of just having a completely flat frequency response, but instead accentuates whatever part of the sound that they like.
John:
In your case, you like the mids and the highs.
John:
Some people might like it accentuated in the bass.
John:
That's not a neutral profile, whether it's done with EQ or done with processing or done as part of just the nature of the set of drivers they have.
John:
The difficulty with audio equipment is that
John:
you know it's not something that you can measure scientifically and say this one this one has the flattest frequent response therefore it's the best or it has least distortion flattest frequency response like it's all scientifically accurate and then you'll put it next to something that just has way more bass than is in the original recording and people like that better if they like bass and or in your case i feel like if if you get the the mids and the treble accentuated more than some person some people might like it that's exactly what you want out of it
John:
So that's why audio reviews are so difficult, and that's why they come up with all these different words for it.
John:
And even in the receiver review, they weren't saying that one of those – that spectrum was worse or better.
John:
They're saying it depends on what you want.
John:
And the example they gave was the NAD one, which is a super expensive, extremely neutral thing or whatever.
John:
They said some people hate that.
John:
Some people think it sounds, quote-unquote, dead, and they'd rather have one of the other brands that imparts more, quote-unquote, personality on the sound.
John:
depending on what personality they want in the sound, depending on what part of the sound is important for them to hear.
John:
And honestly, for people our age and older, depending on what frequencies they can still hear in their decrepit old age.
John:
That's why very often young children have very different ideas about what sounds good and what doesn't when it comes to music.
Marco:
And setting aside whether amps really make that big of a noticeable difference on the sound quality, which I question, honestly, in my experience, they really don't.
John:
But it's not the receivers aren't acting as amplifiers here.
John:
It's because the receivers are doing processing.
John:
Oh, OK.
John:
Everything is doing processing.
John:
So it's not that's what they're saying, that the processing that these things are put.
John:
It's not just straight up like it's not like an analog amplifier where they're measuring it that way.
Marco:
Right, right.
Marco:
And it's funny.
Marco:
A long time ago, decades ago, I think, the Harman Audio Company developed this thing called the Harman Curve.
Marco:
And this is through some kind of scientific or survey-based method, whatever it was, they'd advise what people actually want
Marco:
out of out of an ideal frequency response is not flat it's not like perfectly even reproducing of all frequencies it's a certain curve that people find most desirable and they they publish this as the harman curve and then and over the last you know many decades the manufacturers of audio gear have been slowly trying to make their stuff more closely match the harman curve and this kills me because i don't like the harman curve i don't
Marco:
Like I find it sounds really boring.
John:
And it's not that the Harman curve is arbitrary, but it is subjective, right?
John:
It's not completely arbitrary because I'm sure they did ask people what they thought sounded better.
John:
But people are different.
John:
First of all, people's physical hearing is different.
John:
But second of all, people's taste is different.
John:
So targeting a matching of any particular curve exactly is –
John:
Unless you know what your curve is and your name is Mr. Harmon or Mrs. Harmon, you don't know.
John:
That's why you have to sort of adjust the thing to your liking and listen to things against each other to decide which one actually sounds better to you.
John:
But there is some scientific base, like the things you mentioned.
John:
distortion or like that for example if you look at a curve and it just drops off before you even get close to the low frequencies you know that's not going to have any bass or if it goes off a cliff before it gets to the highs that's going to suck too so there is a room for a scientific assessment of the sounds that can and can't be reproduced by a sound system or sounds that can and can't be reproduced by a sound system without massive distortion that destroys it but once you start getting into the details of okay now i'm making a decision
John:
Do I want the Harman curve?
John:
Do I want something different than the Harman curve?
John:
But what you want is whatever, whatever, you know, frequency responses is desirable for you.
John:
You want to be able to hear that without distortion at the volumes you want to listen.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
And frankly, I have looked at so many frequency response graphs trying to figure out like before I want to buy like a pair of headphones, like trying to figure like, is this what I want?
Marco:
Is this going to sound good to me?
Marco:
And it's so rare that my expectations from the frequency response graph have matched how happy I am with the actual thing when I get it.
Marco:
All these other factors are at play, so you really need to try this stuff out yourself.
Marco:
It's really hard to get much out of a frequency response graph that could tell you, am I going to like this or not, or is this good or not?
John:
Did you look at the frequency response graph from the Dave2D YouTube video, which we'll put in the show notes?
John:
I did.
John:
It's hard to see in that when we put it in the show notes.
John:
But if you look at the actual video and you just look at HomePod 1 versus 2.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
And I see that.
Marco:
And it's funny.
Marco:
So his conclusion – I like Dave2D.
Marco:
He's good.
Marco:
But his conclusion here was kind of like, oh, yeah, they sound about the same.
Marco:
But if you look at this frequency response graph –
John:
there are gaps of like five eight decibels like between some of like that's those are big gaps like like look look right in the middle look look right in the mid-range the the home pod is an orange and there's a huge dip in in the mid-range there and then a little bit past the mid-range past one kHz there's a huge spike on the new home pod that to me is a big difference because that's kind of the area you're talking about isn't it kind of the mid-range the middle of that graph and
Marco:
and the home pod one has a big divot cut out of it and the home pod two is level and then has a big spike at the higher frequencies and that is obviously the marco spike that's that's the part that you like and then and as you get into the treble range like above the 10k you start seeing there's like there's like a 10 decibel gap like in frequency ranges that are still audible so like you can see what i'm talking about in this graph like they you know it's it's not going to tell you exactly how the thing sounds you got to hear it for yourself but
Marco:
Apple, in recent years, especially with the AirPods, and in my case, I don't have any real experience with the regular AirPods because they wouldn't really fit me, but the AirPods Pros in particular, and also even the AirPods Max, which I wish those were comfortable on me because they sound really good, but Apple has really mastered...
Marco:
a certain frequency mix that sounds really, really good, but yet not offensive to pretty much anybody.
Marco:
It's a great kind of all-arounder.
Marco:
It's not the Harman curve, but it probably isn't too far from it, if I had to guess.
Marco:
I don't have it in front of me.
Marco:
Apple's recent high-end speaker designs, again, AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, HomePod,
Marco:
They all – they sound really good.
Marco:
Even, like, their built-in speakers on a lot of their computers now, like, you know, the built-in speakers on the studio display or on, like, some of the laptops, like, you know, obviously within the realm of what you can do in those size, you know, classifications and, you know, the space you have in the enclosures and stuff and the budget –
Marco:
they do surprisingly well like apple's really good at making stuff that sounds pretty good to pretty much everybody and and this is not this is not beats you know beats had a much more much more personality in in their sound that was you know much more bass heavy they would frequent frequently withdraw the mid-range you could hear boom boom you know and sometimes i wish they would add eqs to some of their products but
Marco:
But in this case, with the exception of how much bass you want, and there is a setting that you can say reduce bass, which as far as I can tell, I tried it out.
Marco:
As far as I can tell, it seems to just be like a high-pass filter.
Marco:
It just lets the running frequency above maybe like 100 hertz or something like that.
Marco:
It cuts out all of the bass below that.
Marco:
So you really don't want that unless you're in a situation like maybe if you're in an apartment with thin walls or the sound travels through the floor and you want to be able to watch movies with it.
Marco:
That's a different story.
Marco:
But for most listening, I wouldn't recommend using that setting if you can help it.
Marco:
But that's the only setting they have to control the audio of this product.
Marco:
And I wish there was maybe a little more control over the bass because I would ask for a little bit more out of it sometimes.
Marco:
Some people would ask for a little bit less.
Marco:
And that seems to be the main holdup.
Marco:
But again, for the most part, they've made a product here that sounds really great and really great to pretty much everybody, I think.
Marco:
Now, a few more details on the sound before I move on.
Marco:
What I would describe it most as is transparent.
Marco:
You really don't notice the speaker.
Marco:
Music just sounds good.
Marco:
You do get in a stereo pair, you do get the larger sound stage.
Marco:
And what that, that's a, you know, a term of art in the audio world basically means like, how big does the sound source sound like it is?
Marco:
Like, does it sound like you're, you're, you're hearing music from a huge wide area or does it sound like it's all coming out of like one little point, you know?
Marco:
And when you have a stereo pair, physics are helping you a lot.
Marco:
This is why soundbars suck.
Marco:
This is why individual speakers are not as good as stereo pairs.
Marco:
what the hell siri my watch keeps i don't know why is my watch oh because i'm moving my hand while talking because i'm italian all right anyway the sound stage on these like how big the sound space sounds even on just one even when comparing single speakers
Marco:
The new HomePod soundstage is much wider, much larger than the old one.
Marco:
And when you hear the stereo pair, again, it's not as big of a difference as when comparing individuals because stereo, again, it's helping with physics there.
Marco:
But you get a larger soundstage.
Marco:
It sounds airier.
Marco:
It sounds like it's coming from a larger space.
Marco:
That's a very good thing.
Marco:
I did one comparison because people have often asked if they already have a HomePod mini or if they have two HomePod minis because they're so inexpensive.
Marco:
And then people have often asked, what's better, a single large HomePod or a stereo pair of HomePod minis?
Marco:
I did that test.
Marco:
The single large HomePod I would still prefer in most cases because the soundstage is actually not that much worse than two HomePod minis.
Marco:
And the rest of the audio just sounds so much better.
Marco:
The vocals, you know, the midrings, the treble, it just sounds so much better on the big one.
Marco:
So I would say compared to two minis, a single large HomePod is better for most people's uses.
Marco:
When compared to the HomePod Mini in a stereo pair, stereo pair versus stereo pair.
Marco:
Again, you know, the HomePod Mini, it's a very small speaker.
Marco:
It's very, very small.
Marco:
And again, there's only one driver in there.
Marco:
And it's a third the price, you know, about a third to a quarter the size.
Marco:
So this is not a fair comparison, and it shows.
Marco:
The HomePod mini is a great product for its price and size, but the large HomePod totally destroys it in audio quality.
Marco:
And that's, again, that's just the nature of this difference here.
Marco:
That's a big difference in physicality there.
Marco:
The big HomePods have
Marco:
much larger soundstage, much better treble response, much better bass response, much smoother and better mid-range.
Marco:
You know, the HomePod Mini has the problem I was talking about before, where the vocals and guitars are kind of withdrawn.
Marco:
They're kind of pushed back in the mix.
Marco:
It just isn't doing a good job of reproducing those.
Marco:
So the full-size HomePods are a large step above the Minis.
Marco:
People often ask about how the HomePods compare to
Marco:
just speakers, regular bookshelf-sized speakers or countertop or desktop monitors, whatever size speakers you think are similar to HomePods, which, by the way, HomePods are way smaller than most bookshelf speakers.
Marco:
But anyway, that's beside the point.
Marco:
How they compare to bookshelf speakers, and I would say...
Marco:
I have heard better bookshelf speakers than the HomePods.
Marco:
I just said my KEF Q150s are better sounding in most ways.
Marco:
They also have way less bass.
Marco:
I need a subwoofer with them.
Marco:
I don't need a subwoofer with the HomePods for the most part.
Marco:
And they're way bigger, like way bigger.
Marco:
Comparing it to bookshelf speakers is not super useful because they're just so much smaller.
Marco:
and don't need to be amplified and everything else but then also where the home pods really shine is a situation like where i have them where they're on my kitchen counter well i'm oftentimes not working in front of them i'm often working next to them off to the side the full the home pod minis do an okay job of kind of off-axis listening when you're not right in front of them when you're off to one side but the full-size home pods do a really great job of it
Marco:
They sound really good even when you aren't directly in front of them.
Marco:
So if you're in a situation like this where you have them somewhere where you will often not be right in front of them, if you'll be off to one side, the HomePods, the full-size ones, are I think possibly the best products I've ever heard in this category.
Marco:
They are amazing for that.
Marco:
And they destroy almost all of the competition people usually would compare them to.
Marco:
They destroy them in off-axis listening.
Marco:
They're so much better for that.
Marco:
It doesn't sound like you're listening to a crappy treble reduced side version of the sound.
Marco:
You just hear the music and it's not as good as standing in front of them, but it's still really good.
John:
They're radially symmetrical.
John:
That's why.
John:
Like they are not directional.
John:
Like regular speakers have their speaker cones facing a single direction.
John:
That's not true of the HomePods.
John:
There is no sort of front, or despite Marco wanting his to be aligned or whatever, there is no front or back.
John:
The base one is pointing either directly up or directly down.
John:
I forget which.
John:
And then the five that are surrounded, they're equally spaced in a circle.
John:
like that's the whole point of this device that's why these devices are well that's why the home pod anyway is round there is no wrong place to put it and so it should be exactly the same no matter where you are plus or minus the fact that you have it up against the backsplash or there's a there's a mixer in the way or you know whatever like obviously physical obstructions are going to cause it but that's why these speakers are like look just put it wherever you're in your house
John:
And that whole thing of like it's saying, oh, I'm going to play sound and figure out how to adjust myself.
John:
Half of that is figuring out which one of my tweeters is blocked by a wall.
John:
And I should maybe not send super amount of sound into that one tweeter because it's pointless.
John:
It's going to be bouncing all over the place.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So, you know, when you compare HomePods to...
Marco:
Again, anything else.
Marco:
Say the Sonos 1, which is a common comparison, which I find massively overrated.
Marco:
The Sonos 1 is a totally fine, small, cheap speaker.
Marco:
It sounds closer to the HomePod Mini than the full-size HomePod.
Marco:
Price-wise, it's kind of right in the middle.
Marco:
And so I respect that.
Marco:
It isn't $300.
Marco:
It's about $200.
Marco:
So that's fine.
Marco:
But it's also as big as a HomePod.
Marco:
And I think if you're going to have that amount, that size on a countertop with the Sonos One, I think unless you want the Sonos ecosystem for other reasons, I think the full-size HomePod for $100 more, you get a lot more than $100 worth of additional sound quality.
Marco:
And again, the Sonos One is highly directional.
Marco:
um the home pod mini is mostly directional um it's it's kind of the home pod mini is kind of a kind of mushes the sound like it's not there's not a lot of definition there the what tends to be very directional is the higher frequencies the treble frequencies and the home pod mini has such poor treble response that you don't really notice as much so it's less important isn't the home pod mini also radially symmetrical internally
Marco:
No, it's just one driver.
Marco:
It's one speaker.
Marco:
Right, but isn't it pointing straight down?
Marco:
Oh, I think you might be right.
Marco:
I forget.
Marco:
I think you're right.
John:
I forgot about that.
John:
I mean, obviously, that's not ideal direction for a speaker to be facing.
John:
Just ask any person with a television with down-firing speakers, which is very common these days.
John:
It's not great.
John:
But I think the HomePod Mini, if it's directional, it's just because it has no control over the bounce.
John:
Unlike the big HomePod, which can decide how much power to put in any of its five or seven tweeters.
John:
Right, right, right.
Marco:
pointing in different directions what the hell can the mini do it's like well i have one speaker and it's facing the direction it's facing and that direction is down or up i don't know if it's up or down i'll have to look at it i think it's i think it faces down anyway you're right yeah i forgot about anyway so again this is an area where the home pods really excel and so when you're looking at like you know what should you buy what should you have for your area again if you're setting up things like a tv speaker system
Marco:
you'll probably be better off with regular bookshelf or other speakers because you're not going to be watching TV from 90 degrees off axis.
John:
I have an LCD TV.
Marco:
Yeah, you're going to be watching the front of it pretty much from the front.
Marco:
uh and from from enough distance that minor variations and being you know a few degrees off access here and they aren't going to matter whereas if it's on a kitchen counter or you know in the smallest rooms of your house or wherever at least you might use a home pod or if you only have room for one of them because you know or various you know maybe only a budget for one of them it's just a much more versatile speaker for many more different spaces than you can fit bookshelf speakers or other systems like that um so anyway i'll try to be quick here with the rest of these things um let's see
Marco:
Compared to the Echo, the Amazon Echo 4th generation, when I was talking earlier about being able to EQ away certain flaws or not, one of the common strategies that cheap electronic designers will use to make up for the fact that their speakers suck, again, they'll use some kind of EQ, especially in treble.
Marco:
It's commonly done in treble where you know the sound in the 80s and 90s or whatever when you had the treble knob on your boombox and you would turn it all the way up.
Marco:
and everything would sound kind of really crisp and everything, but it would sound a little aggressively crisp, and even that crispness would be a little distorted.
Marco:
It was not smooth or natural sounding.
Marco:
It just sounded artificially boosted too much.
Marco:
That's how the Amazon Echo sounds.
Marco:
It sounds like they took a very cheap speaker and used EQ to really crank up something it really was not able to do very well, and it just sounds like a very over-processed, harsh...
Marco:
sharp sound.
Marco:
It just sounds awful to me.
Marco:
The Amazon Echo, the original cylinder shape one from a million years ago, that was a totally fine product for its time.
Marco:
There are many better products now.
Marco:
And the modern Echo is not one of them.
Marco:
I mean, it's better than the old cylinder, but it's not... It isn't as much better as you would think.
Marco:
So, I did also compare Siri versus Alexa.
Marco:
And, you know, this is, again, so much variation here.
Marco:
In general...
Marco:
And this will kind of speak to the Siri performance in the new HomePods.
Marco:
Like, Siri has gotten way faster with the new SoC.
Marco:
It is just noticeable.
Marco:
It's like, I measured, you know, we're saving like five or six seconds in certain responses, depending on what you're asking.
Marco:
Siri is now almost as fast as Alexa with most common things.
Marco:
There's a couple of exceptions, which we'll get to in a second.
Marco:
But for the most part, like, so I would do things like I would say, you know, hey, dingus, stop, and measure how long after, from when I stopped saying the word stop until it actually stopped.
Marco:
How long did it take with each voice system?
Marco:
I did a whole bunch of tests to make sure it wasn't some kind of weird fluke.
Marco:
I did it in different noise levels, whether the music was playing loudly or not, how close I was, how far I was.
Marco:
both the Echo and the new HomePod and the old HomePod and the HomePod Mini all have really great microphones.
Marco:
And they were all able to hear me ridiculously well, even from, like, I would, like, walk to the other side of the floor and kind of just say at regular volume, like, hey, things, stop.
Marco:
And just kind of see, like, while music was playing and see, like, if they could hear me.
Marco:
And they did.
Marco:
Like, it...
Marco:
It was remarkable.
Marco:
The microphones on all of these are extremely good and can pick up you speaking at normal volume, even with music playing, even from far away.
Marco:
If you're concerned about privacy, that should terrify you.
Marco:
And that should maybe sway you more in the Apple direction, I would say, compared to the Amazon system for the police.
Marco:
So anyway, overall performance, Alexa is still faster.
Marco:
It's and it's more consistent and it's faster to do things like set timers.
Marco:
It's faster to return knowledge.
Marco:
It's faster to to begin music playback.
Marco:
Music playback is an area that I had problems with with Siri because I would I would do things like, hey, hey, thing, you know, play so and so.
Marco:
And it would say, okay, playing from Apple Music.
Marco:
And so the speed that it would recognize what I wanted and would give me a response playing so-and-so from Apple Music, that speed matched Alexa in almost every case.
Marco:
Alexa was a little bit faster sometimes, but it usually matched it.
Marco:
But then Apple Music would take like 20 seconds to actually start playing the track.
Marco:
So it would say, okay, you know, playing Weezer or whatever...
Marco:
And then 20 seconds of silence, and then it would start playing.
Marco:
And this is just one example of many... That isn't typical, but what is typical is random weird failures of Apple Music.
Marco:
And so, I don't know if that's Siri, I don't know if that's Apple Music, probably some of both if I had to guess, but...
Marco:
The actual Siri performance of giving me responses, you know, listening, basic things like stop and pause and stuff.
Marco:
Siri was almost as fast or as fast as Alexa most of the time.
Marco:
And that is very impressive.
Marco:
That is not how it always was.
Marco:
The old HomePods were way slower and those delays would be even longer.
Marco:
So that's good.
Marco:
The Alexa device was also extremely chatty with trying to upsell me things constantly.
Yeah.
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
Everything you'd say, all right, here's the timer.
Marco:
You said, by the way, shut up.
Marco:
I don't care what else you can do.
John:
It's time for you to reorder that weirdly shaped pasta again.
Marco:
Yeah, right.
Marco:
Do you want me to add it to your cart?
John:
No.
Marco:
By the way, did you know you couldn't ask me to do so and so?
Marco:
I don't want to be handheld through all of your new promotions, Alexa.
Marco:
Thank you, though.
Marco:
So, yeah, overall, Siri is now fast enough.
Marco:
Whether it can stay consistently fast, that's the question.
Marco:
And, you know, HomePods even... I even had bugs with the stereo pairing still.
Marco:
HomePods have been around now for a long time.
Marco:
They've had stereo pairing since, I believe, like the third week they were out or something.
Marco:
It was very fast.
Marco:
So, like...
Marco:
They've had stereo pairing for a number of years now.
Marco:
It should be fine.
Marco:
It's not.
Marco:
It's not rock solid.
Marco:
Even now with the new ones, the stereo pairing is not rock solid.
Marco:
Now, it's way better than the old ones so far.
Marco:
Am I limited time with them so far?
Marco:
But that could change over time.
Marco:
We'll see.
Marco:
I'll tell you how that goes.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I would still have bugs like one of them would occasionally just drop out of the pair and rejoin it a few seconds later.
Marco:
So one of them would be silent and then rejoin a few seconds later.
Marco:
Or when the song would change between tracks, only one of them would start playing the next song and then the other one would jump in five or six seconds in.
Marco:
This is a brand new product based on a five-year-old, four-and-a-half-year-old product.
Marco:
These products sound so good in stereo pairs.
Marco:
I wish they would fix these ridiculous software bugs that they still have with them.
Marco:
The performance papers over a lot of this.
Marco:
It's it is still now.
Marco:
Now it recovers faster from those bugs than the old ones did.
Marco:
But the fact that they still have those bugs is really disheartening because this is such a great product and you have them in stereo pairs and it should work better.
Marco:
What what year is this?
John:
Well, the reason it's so difficult for them to get it to work is kind of the same reason this happens with your AirPods.
John:
These are two independent little computers that have no idea.
John:
Like they're manufactured separately.
John:
You buy them.
John:
They have no idea about each other until you introduce them to each other.
John:
And you have to say...
John:
Hey, there's another one over there.
John:
You two coordinate with this third party source of audio or maybe just with each other to make sure that you are both playing and are both in sync.
John:
And we've all heard the AirPods where you put them in your ear and one starts playing the music before the other one's AirPods are also tiny little computers that coordinate with each other to figure to get in sync.
John:
So they're going to play the audio.
John:
It's kind of a little miracle that they work at all.
Marco:
They're also buggy as hell, by the way.
Marco:
My AirPods Pro also incredibly buggy in that way.
John:
Right.
John:
But because it's a hard part, it's a split brain scenario to use like the server side thing.
John:
So you have two separate little brains that have to coordinate.
John:
This is a problem that is avoided if you have a central brain that then sends sound to the speakers that reproduce it like in a traditional receiver with passive speaker setups.
John:
Now, I don't think you want HomePods to be passive speakers.
John:
And for people, we've always been asking people, why don't they just put audio inputs on them?
John:
I think it's not quite that simple because of the processing that goes on in the home pods that in the end, even if you had a central brain still with the processing, if the brain was in the individual speakers, you'd have to move the brains into the central thing as well.
John:
But it's like inherent in their design that you can just have one of these and it's got all the brains and all the amplification or whatever that when you get two of them,
John:
It is really trying to get two things to be synchronized down to seconds.
Casey:
I mean, this is arguably the— Well, hold on, though, because I can plug a turntable into my Sonos setup.
Casey:
I was about to say Sonos.
Casey:
And it will play perfectly synchronized no matter where I put the speaker in my hand, the speakers in the porch, the speakers in the living room.
Casey:
It does not compute to me how they can be so perfectly synchronized.
John:
Well, that's kind of arguably what the entire Sonos company... Why does Sonos exist as a company?
John:
It's because they were dedicated to solving this very specific problem and they solved it way before other people did, which is how do I make the audio come out of all the speakers at the same time, even when those speakers are independent little computers?
John:
There is a little... I mean, I'm sure what they do structurally and architecturally is probably wildly different than what Apple does, if only because Sonos was created so long ago.
John:
And I do think they have...
John:
more of a central the ability at least to have a central brain thing going on but what i'm getting is with the apple thing is i'm not excusing their bugs i'm just saying apple has chosen to try to solve a harder problem because of the way they have architected this product if they were more fully dedicated to the idea that we want to provide
John:
a premium audio experience with more than one speaker, they would choose to do something different architecturally, whether that's having the Apple TV contain all the brains and making the speakers more passive, or selling an Apple receiver, or even selling an Apple soundbar, where at least the soundbar is never going to miscoordinate between its right and its left speakers.
John:
So I feel for the people trying to solve this problem, but they've kind of brought it on themselves.
John:
And I have to say, with the AirPods, it's more acceptable for me for one AirPods to take a half a second to the other one.
John:
But for a set of expensive speakers that I want to be a stereo pair, I find that much less acceptable.
John:
They should never do that.
John:
They should never, never.
John:
It's like, I almost wish they had a mode where it said, look, nobody gets to make any sound until you're sure the other one is in lockstep with you.
John:
Just wait.
John:
And that would just make them even slower, which then you'd complain about that, right?
John:
But...
John:
Anyway, I feel like this is a big Sonos advantage, and it is a big advantage for dumbass speaker wire going to dumbass speakers from a central receiver where you will never have this problem.
Marco:
Yeah, and that's entirely right.
Marco:
You would think for these devices that are...
Marco:
you know hardwired to power they always have power they're stationary and they're usually not very far from each other like you you would think that this would be better you know airpods are a much harder problem because they have this they have your head in the way in the middle between the two of them and your head's full of water and it blocks rf and you're taking them out of the case and before they were like off
Marco:
Yeah, like the AirPods are in a much more high-needs, demanding situation for this kind of coordination.
Marco:
Whereas the HomePods are just sitting on a counter, plugged in, always connected to Wi-Fi.
Marco:
What's changing about this environment?
Marco:
They have to somehow drop out sometimes.
Marco:
Anyway, so the area of stereo pairing is still buggy and still needs work.
Marco:
But with that exception...
Marco:
Everything else about this is an improvement.
Marco:
Even that is improved.
Marco:
It's just not correct yet, but it's still improved.
Marco:
Everything about this new HomePod is better.
Marco:
I am so happy they not only didn't screw it up, but actually made it even better.
Marco:
It sounds so much better, and I thought the old one sounded pretty good.
Marco:
So this is, again, a really great product, not for every role.
Marco:
As I, you know, as mentioned earlier, like this is probably not your best home theater choice, but for the size that it is and how simple and clean the setup is and for all the all the different advantages it has in terms of, you know, things like not only the privacy angles mentioned earlier with your Amazon police cylinders or your Google creepy cylinders, you know, you have this as a good option there.
Marco:
And to things like off-axis listening, where it truly is way better than everything else in its category, if you want something that is good-looking enough to put in your kitchen counter and maybe needs to be partner-compatible for aesthetics, but also you want these different capabilities that it has –
Marco:
There is no other option on the market, or the other options are worse.
Marco:
So this is a great product.
Marco:
I am extremely happy with it so far.
Marco:
It's only been a couple of days with that disclaimer.
Marco:
But I expect that this is going to be pretty good for a pretty long time, I think, I hope.
John:
I'm excited to receive my shipment of your old HomePods.
John:
What are you going to do with all them?
John:
You've got a lot of those old ones.
John:
I mean, granted, some of them don't work anymore.
Marco:
Yeah, I have four, two of which work okay, two of which work less okay.
Marco:
So I was thinking maybe I might upgrade one of the small rooms in my house to a full-size HomePod, or maybe I'll set up the two old ones as TV speakers to our downstairs kind of secondary TV speakers.
John:
um although that's usually used for video games that would probably be bad but you should do that so you can tell us how good the speaking of stereo pairing and flakiness how how what is the reliability like on that setup yeah i mean yeah we don't use that tv that often so but and when it is used it's almost always for gaming so this is like not what these are good at yeah no you're just yeah someone was saying there was a latency related bug that they supposedly fixed in 16.3 or something but
John:
but yeah i think that for things that are really latency sensitive you really kind of need it helps to have like the thing that i went through for all for all the struggles i went through to get my sync up i had i had a central box that was controlling it all including the video and so you know you've got the input lag of your tv which you're at the mercy of and there's not much you can do there except for going to game mode uh but if you want something to align the uh the
Marco:
you know the audio latency to match the video it helps to have sort of one traffic cop in the middle there and you don't have that with these two home pods just hanging off the end of your tv yeah and and as mentioned earlier like for gaming you really want dumb ass wires going on dumb ass speakers like that's that's what you want when you want to minimize latency you want wires simple as that so anyway thumbs up on the home pod too um and and i'm really happy it's here
Casey:
So is there anything that you feel is worse or degraded as compared to the last one?
Casey:
Because this sounds like it was a freaking home run.
Marco:
With the exception of there being less bass at high volume.
Marco:
That's the one thing that seemed like a regression.
Marco:
But again, at low to medium volumes, it's fine.
Marco:
And all the other aspects of the sound are significantly improved.
Marco:
So I'm willing to take that loss.
Casey:
That's awesome.
Casey:
I'm super impressed.
Marco:
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Thank you so much to Collide for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
Gavin Whitaker writes, do you think large enterprises will ever set up Mastodon instances, and would there be business opportunities in doing so?
Casey:
Or would it be too much hassle to manage, like you have previously discussed?
Casey:
I noticed recently that a couple of our mutual friends, this is Jason Snell, Stephen Hackett, Mike Hurley, have all been setting up their own bespoke Mastodon instances, I think using, what is it, masto.host, if I'm not mistaken?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Um, which is something it's less than 10 bucks a month if you want to do a very, very small instance, not a sponsor, maybe should be.
Casey:
Uh, but anyways, uh, they've been doing that and that I think makes some amount of sense perhaps for organizations.
Casey:
But I don't think most organizations are going to care about Mastodon enough to have a presence, to be honest with you.
Casey:
I would be very surprised if most corporations are going to care.
Casey:
And if they did, I presume there would be some particular instance that would try to cater to those sorts of clients.
Casey:
But I don't see this happening.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I think if Mastodon ever gets enough critical mass that companies care that it exists, which, you know, is not implausible, but hasn't yet happened.
John:
I think that the Washington Post is like verifying their reporters profiles, at least on Mastodon.
John:
So they get the green checkmark, you know, right?
John:
So there's some kind of awareness.
John:
But anyway, if Mastodon ever grows to the point where big companies want to be on it.
John:
I think the big companies will run their own instances just because the lesson they will have learned by this whole thing of like, oh, we got to deal with this again.
John:
Why can't we just be on Twitter?
John:
Oh, like, again, if Mastodon gains some kind of critical mass, it means things continue to go crappily over at Twitter.
John:
And they're going to feel burned by that.
John:
And if they feel burned by that, someone in the company will say, you know, the only silver lining to this hassle that we now have to deal with is...
John:
Yeah.
John:
But big corporations like to control stuff.
John:
That's why big corporations will like to control their own IT, maybe their own, you know, email thing.
John:
That's why Microsoft makes money.
John:
Let people run exchange in-house instead of outsourcing it to Google's business thing because they're like, oh, we've got to control it all ourselves.
John:
So I think if Mastodon becomes popular, big companies will run their own Mastodon instances and they'll like it.
John:
Like they will want to run it because they're like, we controlled it just for our stuff.
John:
No one can ever kick us off.
John:
No one can ever, you know, like they could be defederated if they just do something super terrible.
John:
But in general, I think they will want to run their instances not to be at the mercy of people like Elon Musk.
Casey:
Nathan Roberts writes, I am always hearing how iOS developers have to re-download Xcode when Apple announces new features.
Casey:
Who would like to handle this?
Casey:
So this is an instance where Apple could provide incremental updates to Xcode, but they do not.
John:
right so mac os has and has for most of its history the ability to do incremental updates you don't have to redownload the entire os at various times you'd need to redownload way more than you thought you should for the update size that they give you but in general over the years there's been various systems to send less than the entire operating system every single time and mac os is way more complicated than xcode right
John:
so they could do that is it modern xcode is pretty complicated no but the os is the os is way bigger right uh but they don't do that uh why don't they do it this is not important enough to do it like the number of developers versus the number of mac users is a small fraction uh the download size used to be reasonable although now it's like eight gigs or whatever but still it's like whatever it's just easier to make one uh
John:
One artifact, as they say, one thing that's the same for everybody.
John:
You don't have to worry about your update or going weird or whatever.
John:
They even got to the point where, you know, everything is packaged in the thing.
John:
And the first time you launch it, it says, do you want to install these SDKs?
John:
And then it does all the stuff where it does, you know, whatever it needs to do, like one thing that's one chunk.
John:
So the answer is yes, they could do incremental updates.
John:
It would be less download time, but Apple doesn't because it's simpler and more straightforward.
John:
And honestly, of all the things that are annoying about Apple's development, having to download Xcode and waiting for it to unzip takes a long time.
John:
Maybe that encourages developers to buy faster Macs.
John:
I don't know.
John:
But in the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal, right?
John:
Just don't do it through the Mac App Store because you'll be sad.
Marco:
yeah that's the thing the mac app store does do delta updates but xcode is such a large app with so many files in it like it's does it does it do delta updates i mean the mac app store i think it does in general but because xcode is so big it just it doesn't matter like it's it ends up being slower than it would be to just download the whole thing and it's
John:
it's not because of the it's not because of the the size because eight gigs is big it's because the number of files like just go you know do a find command on the xcode.app and see how many files are in there it's ridiculous oh my god so it's like it like whenever you have to like empty your recycle bin or your trash excuse me
Marco:
I forgot what platform I was on there for a second.
Marco:
Whenever you have to empty your trash and there's a version of Xcode in there, it takes forever because there's so many files in that bundle.
John:
I'm counting the files right now.
John:
That's how long it's taking on an SSD here.
John:
I'm just watching the command.
John:
I'm waiting.
John:
I'll chime in when it tells you.
Yeah.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And Darren Kelkov writes, I'm fairly new to iOS and macOS development.
Casey:
One thing I've struggled with is when I want to search the web for how to do a certain something in code for an app, then I'm not sure exactly the best way to tweak my search terms to get hits relevant to a developer rather than iOS or Mac user.
Casey:
For example...
Casey:
If I wanted to add code to an iOS app to automatically run an iOS shortcut, if I search for, quote, iOS launch a shortcut, quote, the results are all about how to run shortcuts as an end user.
Casey:
The best strategy I've used to date has been to add the term Swift to my search terms.
Casey:
But I was wondering if you guys had any recommendations or successful experiences to share.
Casey:
That's my trick, is add Swift.
Casey:
But Marco, as the old hat of the three of us, what's the right answer?
John:
Okay, before he goes, I've got the number of files.
John:
Without cheating, you want to do Price is Right rules.
John:
What are your two guesses?
John:
I'll say a million.
Casey:
Oh, come on now.
Casey:
$1!
Casey:
$1!
Casey:
All kidding aside, if I were to do Price is Right rules, I would guess one file.
Casey:
But I think it's something to the order of 5,000 to 7,000 files.
Casey:
So we're in that neck of the woods.
John:
So your guess is 5,000 to 7,000.
John:
Marcos is 1,000,000.
John:
Do you want to converse with each other to figure out why you're this far apart and maybe think about which one of you is closer to right?
Casey:
I'm closer to right.
Marco:
Marco's bananas.
Marco:
It includes all the headers and all the SDK files.
Marco:
That's where I think so many of the files are.
Marco:
All the different device support.
Marco:
There's so much.
Marco:
We're talking multiple OSs, multiple versions of those OSs oftentimes being bundled.
Marco:
It's a massive, massive thing.
John:
So I feel like if we weren't playing by Price is Right rules, I feel like Marco should win because at least he understands the scale of the problem.
John:
5,000 files, Casey.
John:
I think Switchglass has more than nothing.
Casey:
No way.
John:
Are you kidding?
John:
5,000 files?
Casey:
No, shoot.
Casey:
I'm thinking, no, because what I was thinking of is when I empty the trash, and no, it is in the tens of thousands, isn't it?
Casey:
I don't think it's anywhere near a million, though.
John:
So anyway, the answer from the current version of Xcode, this is on an Intel Mac in case it's different, is 398,311.
John:
Oh, that was way more than I thought.
John:
It was not that ridiculous.
John:
It's 400,000 and Marco pretty much doubled it, which is, you know, in the ballpark.
Marco:
I was fewer orders of magnitude away than Casey was.
Casey:
No, that's fair.
Casey:
That's fair.
Casey:
I got to pay attention next time I empty the trash because that's what I was thinking of is when I empty the trash after an Xcode update, you know, how many files does it say it has to delete?
Casey:
And I think I think it well, maybe I'm wrong.
Casey:
I must be wrong if it's really hundreds of thousands.
Casey:
But I thought it was somewhere between like 10 and 30,000 files when I empty the trash.
Casey:
But I'll try to pay attention.
John:
I just count them.
John:
And by the way, Switchglass has 23 files.
John:
So sorry, Switchglass for saying bad things, bitch.
Casey:
I was going to say, how did you get that?
Casey:
There's no NPM in there.
Marco:
And keep in mind also, the whole developer, library developer folder, there's different places that it puts files once you actually use it to do anything.
Marco:
So it isn't just the files in the bundle that it's also dealing with.
Marco:
There's also then all the device support and all that crap that gets spewed all over your disk.
John:
Is it a few Simlinks these days?
John:
I never watched what it's actually doing these days.
John:
It used to be way more complicated, but now it's all in the bundle and then it does some, the quote unquote installation stuff.
John:
I thought it might have just been a bunch of Simlinks that it sets up, but maybe it does spray files too.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Anyway, so to answer Darren's question about how to search for things, I would, so there's two tricks here.
Marco:
Number one is if it's more like generic words you have to search for,
Marco:
you can always go to Stack Overflow, site-stackoverflow.com.
Marco:
That's where most of the good answers for stuff like that are anyway, with the exception of there's also sites like Hacking with Swift that have really good Swift tutorials and certain examples.
Marco:
There is some stuff out in the general web that's good.
Marco:
But if you're really having trouble finding things and you're kind of name colliding with common words, oftentimes restriction of the search for stackoverflow.com is oftentimes better.
Marco:
The other thing is if you search for an API name in particular, usually you're good.
Marco:
And so oftentimes to find that API name, that might take a little bit of searching.
Marco:
But one thing I would try to do is search the Apple developer app or the documentation, of course, the Apple documentation.
Marco:
Because then you'll at least hit upon a WBDC talk or a code example or a documentation example.
Marco:
You'll at least hit upon something that will tell you the name of the API.
Marco:
And then you can search for the name of the API specifically on the web, and that will cut out almost all of that other stuff.
Marco:
So that's the real answer.
John:
Oh, that'll cut out all the other stuff if you're lucky.
John:
Back in the old days with name prefixes, you'd have NS in front of things or you'd have CF or something like that.
John:
But now with Swift where the thing is called view and stuff like that, then you have to add whatever proper nouns you can find.
John:
So add SwiftUI, no space after the T and before the U. SwiftUI all on word instead of just adding Swift.
John:
I found that sometimes you can also throw in Xcode.
John:
What you're trying to look for is words that you think will come up in close proximity to that, like conceptually, that someone might mention Xcode in their question, especially if they're a novice and don't know the name of a thing or whatever.
John:
If you're lucky enough to come up with an NS or UI, you know, UI table view, you know, NS string, NS, like that will definitely get you... What you want to do is you want to weed out the non-dev answers because the problem is you end up with all these people putting...
John:
Questions that have nothing to do with development have to do with using your Mac and you don't want to see those and if you have a word overlap with them It's very difficult But if you throw in the word Xcode no one's going to mention that in their question about iOS shortcuts unless you know, they're actually developing now the problem is most developers experienced developers are not going to mention Xcode in their question probably so yeah, it's a bit of a challenge but Domain specific searches and even just doing stuff like Apple has dev forums, right?
John:
If you if you're on that thing where you're like, I don't even know what word to search for yet
John:
If you limit your search to the dev forums, either by using a Google site colon search or by using the dev forum's own search, I don't know if it has one, but I assume it does somewhere, then that will let you find the proper nouns, and then you go back to the bigger Google and throw in the proper nouns.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Draft, Pushcut, and Collide.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
And we will talk to you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
John:
They didn't even mean to begin.
John:
Because it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
John:
Cause it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter.
Marco:
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss.
Marco:
M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T.
Marco:
Marco Arment.
Marco:
S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
So did your family listen to the cavalcade of fuzzy cylinders as well?
John:
Or were they just like ignoring you while you were there playing mad scientist and making the house noisy?
Marco:
They were not a fan of this test.
Marco:
And so I did it while Tiff was working in the basement and Adam was at school.
John:
Because I was wondering if they had opinions about old versus new or did none of them really care and they just want you to get this over with and get it back to just having a normal kitchen where you can play music.
Marco:
Definitely the latter.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
I will occasionally ask, like, you know, TIFF is usually pretty amenable to like, hey, try these headphones.
Marco:
What do you think?
Marco:
You know, something like that.
Marco:
But this was a larger scale thing that, you know...
Marco:
Nobody in the house cares as much as I do.
Marco:
They just want things to work and be good and fast.
John:
She took your AirPods Max though, right?
John:
Aren't they like her favorite headphones now?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
She wears them much of the day when she's working up here because they're very comfortable on her and that's great.
Marco:
I mean, I even went, I figured like the AirPods Max have been out for what, almost two years now?
Marco:
And so I figured surely somebody has made a wide array of third party magnetically attaching ear pads that can go on them instead of the stock ones.
John:
That was the part that was uncomfortable to you because I tried them on.
John:
I tried them on whenever I'm an outdoor artist hanging out and I find the headband to be the thing that's objectionable to me.
Marco:
So it isn't that the headband was pressing against my head.
Marco:
It was the AirPods Max, as we discussed at great length when we when they came out and I kind of reviewed them on the show, you know, whenever that was two years ago.
Marco:
Their main problems are weight.
Marco:
They're very heavy, and that makes it hard to make it comfortable for headphones.
Marco:
It's not impossible, but it is harder.
Marco:
And that their earpads, like the contact area that the earpads touched your head was almost too narrow of a rim.
Marco:
And so it wasn't spreading that weight across a very wide area.
Marco:
So it was like digging in almost to your head.
Marco:
And I find them to be okay for a few minutes.
Marco:
But then if I wear them for like, you know, say a whole morning,
Marco:
I'll take them off and be like, I'll have a headache and my head will hurt the rest of the day.
Marco:
It's like you don't realize how uncomfortable they are until you take them off after a while.
Marco:
Then you're like, oh, no, I feel terrible.
Marco:
And Tiff doesn't have that problem when she wears them?
Marco:
No, many people don't have that problem.
Marco:
But it's just, yeah, whatever it is, they're not comfortable on me.
Marco:
And apparently you for different reasons.
John:
Yeah, because I was wearing them for 30 seconds in the Apple store.
John:
And I was like, hell no on this headband.
Marco:
Cannot handle it.
Marco:
I know.
Marco:
And it's a shame because they sound amazing.
Marco:
But I even tried like I bought I found finally there was like one company I found on all the Internet, one company on Amazon that I found that had like third party ear pads for them.
Marco:
And they are softer, but they look like they're made to look almost the same.
Marco:
So they aren't wider.
Marco:
There's so many great aftermarket third-party earpads for most regular headphones.
Marco:
Brainwaves is a popular brand of them.
Marco:
There's these companies that make aftermarket earpads, and they're big and plush, and they're really nice.
Marco:
And if you have a pair of headphones that isn't very comfortable, I suggest you try one of these earpad things.
Marco:
You can get them on Amazon for $25, $30.
Marco:
They're oftentimes much more comfortable and much more plush and everything like that.
Marco:
and for airpods max that just seemed not to exist and so i did find this one company that made this one and it was a little more comfortable but it wasn't enough to make a difference like it was still it was more comfortable but it was still very uncomfortable after a long time so it's a shame i wish those i wish those fit me but they just don't
John:
And speaking of third party things for Apple products, when you got the shorter power cords, did you find ones that are like color matched and like nice and pliable?
John:
Like I would like to see the setup of your like when you again get everything off your counters again and just set it up the way you want.
John:
Did you find a nice cord that just is long enough to reach your outlets and isn't like stiff and weird and or the wrong color?
Marco:
I found basic white, like, you know, lamp cord-looking kind of ones.
Marco:
So, you know, the basic, you know, like, two-conductor, you know, standard, you know, white plug that comes straight out.
Marco:
Like, I was hoping to get a right-angle plug, at least, so I could make it a little more flush against the wall.
Marco:
But, you know, I just did a quick Amazon search during the last episode and just, you know, ordered it after the show.
Marco:
But, you know, they're fine.
Marco:
You know, it was $10 on Amazon for a two-pack.
Marco:
You know, it's fine.
Marco:
I have one-foot cables now.
Marco:
You can see from the picture, they're right next to the outlets.
Marco:
I don't need a whole bunch of extra cable.
Marco:
And it was totally fine to just pop out the stock cables, pop these in.
Marco:
It doesn't look as nice because they aren't braided and they have the regular cheap lamp plug ends.
Marco:
Are they kinked from how they were wrapped when they were packaged?
Marco:
No, they're only one foot cables.
Marco:
They're too short to have those problems.
Marco:
And they're flexible and it's fine.
Marco:
It isn't like pushing them out from the wall or anything.
Marco:
So it's fine.
John:
Speaking of that, I went down this little rabbit hole briefly and never actually ordered anything.
John:
I should revisit it.
John:
All of my speakers are connected with just plain old speaker wire.
John:
That's all you need.
John:
Well, there's lots of different ways that you can connect speaker wire to a speaker.
John:
uh and the way i have done it is the laziest way which is you just strip off a little bit of the insulation and then you you know twist the wire so it's a little stiff little thing and then you uh i figure what it's called there's a name for it someone in the chat room will say in two seconds but there's like a post with a hole through it and you shove the the wire through the hole then you screw down a binding post yeah and then you screw down the little thing and then it's interesting it's fine it works fine
John:
But the problem is it is like, you know, put the wire through a hole and you screw a thing.
John:
It's in there, right?
John:
It's, you know, you're pressing the conductor against the little metal thing with the screw thing, right?
John:
And that sounds fine except for the fact the back of my receiver has lots of those things plugged into it because you've got all the speakers going there and each of them have two conductors and they all go to the back of the receiver and all of them are screwed into these little posts and those wires are all routed all around the room and then behind the TV and into the thing.
John:
and it's such a pain in the butt to like i don't have enough slack to like pull the whole receiver out of the entertainment center but you have to pull it out enough to be able to get to the wires and god forbid you have to like turn the thing around and it's just so another solution that would solve this is that's supported by lots of different receivers and speakers including my receiver and my speakers is what they call banana plug which is an actual plug that plugs into and out of that thing that you screw down
John:
I don't know if banana plugs are considered to be worse or better or whatever.
John:
All I know is that I don't have them and I wish I did.
John:
But then I started looking into that.
John:
You can easily convert them.
John:
Yeah, no, you totally can.
John:
These are banana plug ready.
John:
All I'd have to do is buy some little banana plug-ins.
John:
You just buy these things.
John:
They're pretty cheap.
John:
And, you know, you...
John:
you take your speaker wires out you probably cut them and strip them again yeah or whatever and then you put them into screw them in yep and then you're all set but there's like 17 different ways to do that and there's lots of very strong opinions about which ones are and aren't good and which ones are going to corrode and which ones are going to do this because this audio i'm like which how much of this is real and how much of this is people
Marco:
I can tell you, I've used these before.
Marco:
None of that matters at all.
Marco:
Because the great thing about speaker wire, you know, there's all the audio files, you know, the high end audio shops and blogs and magazines, they will tell you how much cabling matters.
Marco:
And it really, really doesn't.
Marco:
You could like you could like unbend a coat hanger and run it to power your speakers and it would sound just as good as the like, you know, five thousand dollar a foot, you know, gold infused, you know, never seen air.
Marco:
It's just there's so much ridiculousness in speaker cables.
John:
I'm not worried about like the electrical conductivity.
John:
I'm worried about physically speaking because it's stranded wire.
John:
My speaker wire is stranded.
John:
It's not a coating or a solid conductor.
John:
I'm worried about like that stranded wire being crimped in some weird thing and then eventually just cracking off and just my speaker wire going bink and then no longer being connected because I put it into the banana plug and screwed it down too hard or something.
John:
So anyway, I haven't gotten around to it.
Marco:
It's way easier than you think it is.
Marco:
It's really not a problem.
Marco:
It's very idiot-proof.
Marco:
Lots of idiots do it, and they're fine.
Marco:
Keep in mind with speaker wire, typically speakers are stationary.
Marco:
And so any crazy way you might hook up the wire...
Marco:
It's not going to be under a lot of stress because it's not moving and flexing.
John:
But it's not the speaker end that I'm worried about.
John:
It's the receiver end.
John:
I wouldn't put banana plugs on the speakers because who cares?
John:
They're fine.
John:
I can see them.
John:
I can get to the back of the speakers real easily, right?
John:
It's the stupid receiver.
John:
And part of the thing that's keeping me from doing it is like, oh, if I get banana plugs, now I have to get to the back of the receiver again.
John:
And this time when I initially do it, there's no banana plugs on it now.
John:
So I got to do the whole thing of like finding a way to pull the stuff through and rotating the thing sideways on my stupid glass shelves that are on.
John:
like when you try to rotate the receiver the glass shelves go off the little nubbins that it's supposed to be on and it crashes down it's just it's it annoys me so much like every time i see someone who has an av setup or they can just walk behind their equipment i'm like oh my god how much i would love to have that can you imagine just walking behind your equipment and being able to get access to all the back panels i do not have that luxury it's
John:
jammed into a corner that's really hard to get to and it's just it's such a mess so then every time i think about the banana plugs i just look at my setup i'm like well it's working now just don't touch it but yeah if i ever have to go back there again i'm going to order a mess of banana plugs probably and just get back and the reason the banana plugs will help is then i can just yank the freaking receiver out and the banana plugs will pop
Marco:
pop out who cares oh pop them back in when it goes back in no that's not they don't work the way you think so there's two things easy to get out number one banana plugs are huge so they actually might not like they're way bigger than you think from pictures i have plenty of room behind it they're not going to hit into okay and then number two they hold on really tightly in the sockets because they have like little like springy ends that kind of get compressed and so they're oh yeah no that's the banana banana part of it
Marco:
Yeah, so they don't pop out easily.
Marco:
You got to give them a good yank.
Marco:
And so I don't think this is going to do what you think it is.
Marco:
And I don't think it's going to save as much.
John:
Well, I mean, maybe I just reach behind there and pop them out.
John:
Because here's the thing.
John:
If you don't have enough slack to get them in or out, that means you have to thread... You know what I just said?
John:
It's threading it through a hole in a post and then screwing a plastic thing down.
John:
If you ever look at the back of the receiver, there's like a dozen of those right next to each other.
John:
So imagine trying to...
John:
like lay on the ground and shove your body into the av cabinet and crane your head around with a light on your forehead so that you can shove in the middle wire of the center channel speaker between 17 other ones like with very little slack shove it through a hole in the little post that's in the middle of that and then screw the thing down and it's so hard to do it is just like you need to i need like like a
John:
what do you call the endoscopy equipment like the surgeons use with like a fiber optic cable and a little thing because it's just it is not fit for humans and and i guess the solution would be just put seven feet of slack on all your speaker wires but that ship has sailed because i made a mistake when i laid all the speaker wire and i do not have enough slack at the uh at the receiver end
John:
And I don't want to run all the wire again.
Marco:
I'd forgotten that you have a billion speakers, and I only have two.
Marco:
So it's different.
Marco:
You're dealing with a different degree of complexity here.
Marco:
So yeah, I'd say, yeah, go ahead and get them.
Marco:
And they're very easy.
Marco:
The great thing about speaker wire, again, speaker wire is so dumb, and it is so tolerant of...
Marco:
mistakes or sloppy work.
Marco:
Literally, as long as the positive and negative wires aren't touching each other and you're not shorting it out, you're fine.
Marco:
Anything else you do, it's fine.
Marco:
You can use regular lamp cord.
Marco:
You don't have to get fancy cable.
Marco:
If a few little strands break off on one of your ends and you don't have the full number of strands to shove into the hole, it's fine.
Marco:
It doesn't matter.
Marco:
It's so easy.
Marco:
You can do pretty much whatever you want and be as sloppy as you need to be.
Marco:
Again, as long as you're not shorting it out, it's fine.
John:
Were we doing ATP when the mouse chewed through my speaker cable?
John:
Do you remember that?
John:
Might have been before we started the show.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I don't remember that.
John:
I don't think so.
John:
Shortly after I had first set up speaker wire in my house, maybe it was after I just moved in, we had a mouse problem, chewed right through the speaker wire.
John:
Oh, I'd be so mad.
John:
That's bad.
John:
i don't know it chewed it chewed through one of the conductors of the speaker where it was like a clean surgical cut like you saw a speaker wire with the two little conductors and all of a sudden one of the conductors just stopped and it was like a like a three inch gap where there was none of that wire and then it started again i was like well how would explain why the speaker and speaking of the the different things but we just had recently the thing where my tweeter stopped working on my standard channel and i was couldn't figure out what was going wrong and i eventually figured it out it's real important to have all those different cone sizes because if you're missing one you notice