Suddenly I’m the Marco
Casey:
John, I'm going to be disappointed by your answer, and I know I am.
Casey:
But I was thinking just moments before we started recording, is there any food of any kind that you miss from your couple of years in Atlanta?
John:
Let's see.
John:
You know, I didn't leave the house much when I was in Atlanta because I was working from home.
John:
So there's that.
John:
But we did go out to eat a little bit.
John:
I would probably say Waffle House.
John:
Not that I have super great memories of it because it's cheap and it's whatever.
John:
But in fact, the only particularly vivid memory I have is of the gigantic cockroach walking across our table at one of the Waffle Houses we went to.
John:
But there is a certain charm for, you know, it's a type of fast food restaurant that we just don't have in the north.
John:
Like their menu is not really represented.
Casey:
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Casey:
Slow down, though.
Casey:
I mean, the north had plenty of excellent diners.
John:
It's different, though.
John:
It's not like I'm very familiar with diner food.
John:
And speaking of something I miss, I totally miss Long Island diner food.
John:
And there's lots of imitation versions of that around here that don't really do it justice.
John:
But Waffle House's menu is different.
John:
It just – it's a little bit – you know, they're just everything.
John:
The decor, the style, the attitude, everything about it.
John:
The attitude.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
I mean –
Marco:
I mean, I've gone to Waffle House a lot because they're all over Ohio.
Marco:
So I was able to go to them all throughout high school and summer's home from college before I left.
Marco:
And I missed the idea of my friends and I being out late at night, having nothing else to do except stay up all night and like...
Marco:
hang out we didn't like we didn't even we didn't drink or do drugs or anything like that we just like hung out and like played computer games and occasionally went out to restaurants late at night like that's all we did waffle house was always like it was one of only two that were open 24 hours and the other one was steak and shake which was way better but way more expensive and so waffle house was frequently the choice it was one of those you know ohio highway stops off of interstate 70 areas where
Marco:
So many trucks drive through this area that there's actually a Waffle House on both sides of the street.
Marco:
So that way, when the trucks exit off the highway, they can go right into whichever one is on their side and then keep going, get right back on the highway really easily.
Marco:
So this is really Waffle House country.
Marco:
Yeah, I don't miss it at all.
Marco:
Like I still remember like the smell that you would walk into the Waffle House and you would smell the smell of – I think it was just like old fryer oil is what you were smelling.
Marco:
And when you left, your jacket and everything would smell like that for like the next 12 hours.
Marco:
It was not an appealing thing, but it was fun because you were going –
Marco:
like as like a teenager slash young adult you were going and it was late at night and you could drive there yourself or one of your friends could drive you all there and you could stay out you know late and it was somewhere you could go when you didn't have anything else to do and that's that's a very novel fun thing when you're that age but as a 38 year old i would never in a million years choose to go there unless there was literally no other food in a you know 20 mile radius
John:
I feel like Ohio is too far north.
John:
It's not Waffle House's natural habitat.
John:
Ohio is surprisingly southern for being so far north.
John:
Yeah, I don't know.
John:
Maybe just not the right climate for the cockroaches.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Or palmetto bugs, if that's what we're going to call them.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
Get out of here with that.
John:
Ohio called them water bugs.
John:
Oh, that's even worse.
John:
Totally roaches.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And I suppose like, I mean, a couple of times we went to do like random things and there was like a random barbecue place around somewhere and we would go to it.
John:
And like, it's kind of like you missed the, you know, the average level of random barbecue places.
John:
I'm sure we never went to any quote unquote good ones, but just to know that even if you go to a mediocre one, it's fine.
John:
Whereas if in Boston area, if you try to find the best barbecue, it's not as good as like the random mediocre one you find on the side of the road.
John:
in the Georgia-Midland area.
John:
So that's about it, probably.
Casey:
Is there anything that you miss in Boston other than the obvious?
Casey:
Like, obviously, you miss bagels.
Casey:
Obviously, you miss pizza.
Casey:
But is there anything that you feel, like barbecue, for example, that Boston just does not have covered?
John:
I mean, diners.
John:
Diners were our thing, like Marco was saying.
John:
We were in high school.
John:
The only place that was open late.
John:
Well, it was different.
John:
It was two phases in high school.
John:
In the beginning of high school, the only thing that was open late.
John:
And it wasn't open all night.
John:
Diners weren't 24-7, but it was like...
John:
until 1231 or whatever were diners and we would go to them in general the diners did not want a bunch of high school students in there so they kind of sneered at us but they had cheap food and we ate it and then eventually later in high school Taco Bell innovation started and they were open super late too and they had less of a problem with teenagers
John:
But the food, of course, was disgusting.
John:
I never ate the Taco Bell.
John:
I did get food at the diners.
Casey:
I freaking love Taco Bell.
John:
Yeah, so it's just pizza, bagels, diners, and the ubiquity of passable Italian food restaurants.
Casey:
That makes sense.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I try to think of like, you know, the place I spent the most time in my childhood, because my dad worked for IBM and we moved all the time.
Casey:
And the place I spent the most time in my childhood was, you know, the Northeast was New York and Connecticut.
Casey:
And I miss bagels, although there's a pretty darn good facsimile of them here.
Casey:
And I miss pizza and there's OK facsimiles of that here, but not great.
Casey:
But other than that, I can't think I mean, I do.
Casey:
I do definitely miss diners because that was a part of my childhood or late childhood, if you will, is as well.
Casey:
But as you had said, Marco, like even though I am not above diner food and I love diner food.
Casey:
It's not something that I find myself craving at this phase of my life, even though I crave like Chick-fil-A and Taco Bell and other garbage food.
Casey:
I can't say that I crave diners very often, but I'm also not up till, you know, one or two in the morning just because anymore.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
There was a time – it was – what was Curtis's conference name?
Marco:
Cocoa Love.
Marco:
Cocoa Love.
Marco:
It was at a Cocoa Love in Philly a few years back, and I remember I was hanging out late night with Dave Wiskus, and I love Philly cheesesteaks, and I don't get them usually for multiple reasons, not only availability but also health.
Marco:
But –
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I forget.
Marco:
I mean, I must have been probably, I don't know, 35 ish.
Marco:
I remember I was just up all night with just like heartburn and like upset stomach after having a cheesedek at 10 p.m.
Marco:
I'm like, oh, no, those days are over for me.
Marco:
I can't I can't eat a bunch of rich food late at night anymore.
Marco:
That's just not a thing I can do now.
Marco:
And it was a very fast transition.
Marco:
Like it was literally one year that I went from being able to do that with no effects to, oh, God, I can't do this anymore.
Casey:
Yeah, that is very sad.
Casey:
And I can't think of a specific moment that is equivalent to that.
Casey:
But I've definitely had those moments where like, oh, oh, that was a poor choice.
Casey:
That thing that I did just a year or two back and didn't even blink an eye.
Casey:
Oh, my, I have regrets.
Casey:
And that is man getting old sucks.
Marco:
yeah that's the the adult version of diners is i also did this in my family like after church you'd go for breakfast oh yeah denny's or perkins oh i love denny's at a diner not denny's oh my god well when you're in ohio that's look yeah ohio we did denny's or bob evans which is also up there uh and then college um the the chain serving that area was perkins and both of those i would put significantly above waffle house in my experience but honestly i'd rather go to none of them
John:
Waffle House is not about the food quality, to be clear.
John:
It's like... I don't know what the correct equivalent of it is.
John:
Maybe McDonald's?
John:
Because I feel like McDonald's is the...
Marco:
Not the bottom of the barrel, but like the cheapest fast food.
Marco:
Waffle House is like the diner equivalent of a dive bar.
Marco:
You go there because it's terrible.
John:
Yeah, I was going to bring up dive bar, but I have so little experience with dive bars, I didn't know if that was the right analogy.
John:
No, that's funny.
John:
Yeah, it's very cheap, very straightforward.
John:
The attitude I was talking about is that, in my experience, the waitstaff that work there were very no-nonsense, kind of like diners, but the diner people were a lot meaner.
Marco:
no steak and shake was where it's at though like that's if i could convince everybody to pay a few dollars more for each sandwich i would want to bring everyone to steak and shake because it was so much better and i could get the frisco melt i really even as a child marco was recommending to get the slightly more expensive option
Casey:
James J.T.
Casey:
Troutman writes, the origin of the phrase bigger than a bread box goes back to Steve Allen and the TV game show What's My Line?
Casey:
Steve Allen was one of the early panelists on that program where they had to guess the occupation of a contestant.
Casey:
As the occupation often involved a product, one of Allen's standard queries became is it larger than a bread box?
Casey:
It eventually evolved into a more alliterative form that has since entered the English language.
Casey:
And there's a website we can link to to talk about that.
John:
do you think if somebody ever makes a like clip show of all out of context follow-up for our show do you think that would that would make it in what do you mean out of context we know the context we talked about bigger than a bread box a couple shows ago i know we know it well you know that's you gotta connect the dots it's how history works you gotta look at all the texts and put them in chronological order and see how one leads into the next
Casey:
I see.
Casey:
Oh, my goodness.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Moving right along.
Casey:
The feedback app, if you use it on your phone, runs a cyst diagnose and includes a system report by default.
Casey:
So one of the things that I have lamented in my bug reports, which I will put them yet again in the show notes because it's still happening.
Casey:
So anyways, one of the things that's kind of a pain is the incantation you need to do in order to generate a cyst diagnose.
Casey:
And several people wrote in to say that if you have the feedback app, and I don't know if that's pre-installed or not, but if you have the feedback app on your iOS device, I think it's if you create a new feedback.
Casey:
I'm not sure if there's a mechanism to attach it to an existing one, but one way or another, there is a way to have the feedback app generate a sysdiagnose and attach it to a feedback, which is kind of convenient.
John:
I put this item in here because I filed the bug today, and I filed it on my Mac, and it reminded me that the macOS feedback app, when you file any bug by default, it runs a sysdiagnose whether you want it or not, right?
John:
I was filing a cosmetic bug, which was like another cosmetic bug.
John:
It was the thing I asked about on Twitter today with the why the heck is my clock low contrast?
John:
It was like dark gray text on a black background, the menu bar clock, I mean.
John:
um and i thought it was do not disturb but then i turned do not disturb on and off and it never changed i'm like all right well maybe this is a bug or a feature so i'm going to file it and i file it and i put in the screenshots and i explain the situation and then you know i click the next button and i realize oh yeah it always does assist diagnose as it grinds my computer for 10 minutes right um
John:
I think you can turn that off, or I think it prompts you, like, hey, do you want me to always do a sysdiagnose automatically every time you file a bug, or do you want to do it manually?
John:
And last time it asked me that, I think that's how this is controlled.
John:
I said, eh, just run it.
John:
It's fine, because they're going to ask for it anyway, right?
John:
Little did I know that they'll ask for it anyway anyway.
John:
Like, even though it's attached by default to every single bug I file through this thing, they will still, after three weeks, come back and say, could you do a sysdiagnose?
Casey:
So I have an update.
Casey:
Great.
Casey:
So I opened feedback assistant to get the bug numbers to include in the show notes.
Casey:
I had no idea that both of them have been resolved.
Casey:
They've both been resolved with investigation complete, unable to diagnose with current information.
John:
Maybe you should have sent a cyst diagnose.
John:
Ever think of that?
Casey:
Oh, John, I will fucking cut you.
Casey:
Are you kidding me right now?
Casey:
I cannot believe I didn't get notified.
Casey:
There is no comment from Apple in this.
Casey:
there's just at the top, resolution, investigation complete, unable to diagnose with current information.
Casey:
Are you kidding me, Apple?
Marco:
Are you kidding me?
Marco:
They're not going to notify you of that because the last thing they want is for you to notice and reopen the case.
Marco:
Because that kind of response is a like, oh, thank God, we can boost the metrics by just saying this was invalid rather than actually investigating anything.
John:
They didn't say it was invalid.
John:
I mean, I think the description is probably accurate.
John:
It probably is.
John:
They can't make any further progress without more information.
John:
But rather than ask for more information of a specific type, for example, they just closed the book.
John:
And I don't feel like that solves the problem.
John:
I mean, I would have thought they would have closed it and said, either closed it and said, oh, we fixed that already, didn't you see the release notes, or said, we're closing your bug, but little do you know there are 700 other bugs plus one super master combination bug that we're still working on for this problem writ large, I suppose.
John:
I mean, the way to find out is refile it, make a new bug, do all the things, say, here's the problem I'm experiencing, here's the OSes I'm using, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and see if now they close it as a dupe or something similar.
John:
You know, that's the only way to do it.
Casey:
Let me state for the record that Casey List's personal opinion is never file a radar because it's a waste of your fucking time.
Casey:
Why, Apple?
Casey:
Why?
Casey:
Just can you try?
Casey:
Can you at least pretend?
Casey:
Can you pretend like you care for me, for Casey, for your pal?
Casey:
Just pretend, please.
Marco:
I strongly suggest you take calm Casey's advice here and just stop filing it because the more you file it and keep checking on it, the more aggravation you're going to face.
Marco:
It's, it's clear that like, this is a hard to diagnose thing.
Marco:
You're not going to get anywhere.
Marco:
So just, you know, hopefully wait until it resolves itself in future software updates or until, you know, you restore your phone or until everyone in your family using Android stops trying to communicate with you.
Well,
Casey:
Oh, God, I'm so angry.
Casey:
All right, can you cheer me up, Marco, and tell me about, apparently there's a shocking conclusion to your Thunderbolt Ethernet situation.
Casey:
Cheer me up, please.
Marco:
There is.
Marco:
So I have some follow-up.
Marco:
For the last couple episodes, I've been talking about my various adventures with the Thunderbolt Ethernet docks, or Thunderbolt docks that happen to include Ethernet ports, from CalDigit and from OWC.
Marco:
I was reporting that both of them, their built-in Ethernet ports, would not connect properly at gigabit speed on my port here.
Marco:
And the iMac Pro I had here before connected just fine.
Marco:
The Mac Mini I plugged in to test connected just fine, gigabit, you know.
Marco:
Interestingly, the USB-C Ethernet adapter that Apple sells that actually Belkin makes, that would not connect.
Marco:
But the old Thunderbolt 1 adapter...
Marco:
through a thunderbolt 2 to 3 dongle would connect just fine at gigabit speed so something was weird and i i i'm like i don't know what it is about this these ethernet ports on these thunderbolt docks that won't connect uh at gigabit speed something's up i did a bit more testing i even bought a new switch to test a few other combinations of things and i determined that it is not seemingly the dock's fault
Marco:
It seems to be some kind of wiring problem between the network switch in the closet five feet away, and there's a Cat7 wire that runs from that through the wall to a wall jack under my desk.
Marco:
Somewhere between that, between the Cat7 cable that goes from the switch to the wall jack, somewhere in that chain, something is slightly wrong.
Marco:
In a way that the Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter and desktop Ethernet ports can get around.
Marco:
Whatever it is about it.
Marco:
I don't know if one of the wires is crossed and they're not doing the auto MDIX thing correctly.
Marco:
I don't know if it's a tolerance issue where some wire is very slightly finicky or out of whack and...
Marco:
They transmit at higher voltage or something.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I don't know enough about the physical side of it to know.
Marco:
But whatever it is, my Ubiquiti switch in the closet will not connect at gigabit speed to some things on the other end of this wall jack.
Marco:
And I even tried another Ubiquiti switch plugging into this wall jack as like an uplink switch, and that wouldn't do it either.
Marco:
I tried all different settings on the switch port, like disabling, what's the S tree, STP, disabling that.
Marco:
Like in case that was it, I tried locking the switch port to gigabit, like all sorts of things that people recommend I try.
Marco:
Couldn't get that to work with a switch on this end.
Marco:
Then I thought, I wonder if it's two Ubiquiti devices that can't talk to each other correctly.
Marco:
So I went and got a cheap Netgear switch, that little blue Netgear gigabit switch that probably all of you out there have bought at one time.
Marco:
I think they've been selling the GS105.
Marco:
I'm pretty sure they've been selling the same switch for like 15 years.
Marco:
And so I got one of those to see like, oh, let me eliminate any chance of like Ubiquiti smart stuff, talking to each other, trying to work things out, plug in a dumb switch.
Marco:
that could, that only got a hundred megabit as well.
Marco:
So something's up, but it is not the Thunderbolt doc's fault as far as I can tell because switches can't connect through this, through this port either.
Marco:
So, cause I, I originally thought like, oh, I'll use a switch kind of as like, uh, like a, like kind of a repeater in a way.
Marco:
Like if I can get a switch that can connect through this wire through the wall, then I can plug anything else into that switch and the issue will probably, probably be resolved, but I can't even get a switch to do it.
Marco:
Um, so that's, I don't know why,
Marco:
the thunderbolt ethernet adapter and the desktops can do this just fine and a ubiquity switch can't and seemingly no one else's that i've that i've tried i don't know what it is but but you know i can't get the network person who installed these out here anytime soon so i'm gonna have to come up with some other solution so right now my solution is uh i am using i'm keeping both thunderbolt docks
Marco:
I am using the OWC one.
Marco:
That's the new OWC Thunderbolt Pro dock, I think.
Marco:
It's the one that has the three Thunderbolt 3 out ports in addition to the one input port because the only Ethernet adapter I can get to work at gigabit speed that I can plug into my laptop is that old Thunderbolt 1 adapter.
Marco:
And so I need an extra Thunderbolt port to plug it into, but I'm also running my monitor through the Thunderbolt dock.
Marco:
So my only options, I can either use the count digit and then run the Ethernet adapter through the dongle on the second port on my MacBook Air.
Marco:
But then I have two cables I have to plug and unplug every time.
Marco:
That ruins the whole appeal of Thunderbolt.
Marco:
So I'm keeping instead the OWC one here, which is I can have the monitor and two other Thunderbolt devices plugged in automatically.
Marco:
on the hub and then all that still runs correctly through one cable into the mac so that's the setup i have now um i will talk a little bit about the xdr in a little while but that is the one i'm running the xdr does for the record work through both of these docks just fine the cal digit doesn't really specify i think it says max 5k but it works um cal digit totally works um
John:
all that is to say my ethernet problem is some kind of wire gremlin in the wall and it'll be some time before i can get that fixed so i'm going to deal with hacky workarounds in the meantime delightful how are you testing the netgear thing like so describe the setup you've got you've got a thing coming out of your problematic wall you plug it into the netgear thing and then do you plug from the netgear switch directly into the ethernet port of some other mac you have around or something
Marco:
Yeah, but the Netgear switch has status lights on it that indicate its link speed on the uplink port.
Marco:
Well, none of them are uplink ports.
Marco:
They're all auto-switching.
Marco:
But the one I'm using as an uplink port that's wired into the wall, and it always just lights up with 100 megabit.
John:
i was just wondering if like if it would have changed if you put an actual device like your mac mini or something that has built-in ethernet connected to the switch would that change the uplink board i don't know i mean i also don't know enough networking to know what controls that type of thing but but anyway you you had the the salient point is that you had the uh no thunderbolt docks were in the loop at all they were just sitting elsewhere correct and you still weren't able to get gigabit with various combinations stuff yeah that's weird um we should have someone on the show who knows more about networking
Marco:
I've tried different network cables and everything.
Marco:
It seems to be a problem with the jack or the wire in the wall.
Marco:
And those are going to be hard things to solve.
Marco:
So I'm not going to solve them now.
John:
Do you have continuity testers in your house?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Why would I have that?
Marco:
For a very brief time in...
Marco:
probably the Waffle House days, I did attempt to make my own network cables.
Marco:
I got like one of those crimpers and the tester and this big spool of Cat 5e or Cat 6 cable at the time.
Marco:
I tried making four or five cables and every single one of them wouldn't work.
Marco:
I'd have to like cut the end off, try again, start over, you know, make a new one.
Marco:
And I was just like, you know what, this is not one of my skills.
Marco:
I'm going to outsource this for the rest of time.
Marco:
And now you outsourced it and you have a bum cable in your wall.
Marco:
yeah yeah maybe not not super happy about that whoopsies i'm sorry to hear that but at least you have some sort of a resolution or workaround yeah like right now it is working fine right now through the thunderbolt ethernet adapter and maybe when the new mac mini gets here in forever maybe that port will also work just fine in gigabit in which case i'll be able to you know i guess temporarily punt the issue down the road until i need to plug a switch into this into this jack and then i'll have the problem again but next time you're messing with this by the way
John:
Aside from just looking at the lights on the thing and the link speed reported by the OS, do try to do a transfer test to see what kind of speeds you actually get.
John:
Just just to see if like what I'm interested in is like, say the link says it's gigabit, but then you try to do a transfer and it gets like 600 megabits or something because maybe, you know, some wire is frayed or screwed up or something.
Marco:
I mean, when I do like an internet speed test, I haven't bothered setting up like things on the switch where I could do like a purely local test, but I have gigabit internet service here.
Marco:
And so when I do an internet speed test, it reaches into like the 850s.
Marco:
So I think that's a pretty clear indicator that I'm probably okay.
Marco:
Like when the correct adapters are being used, I do seem to be getting full speed.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
So, of course, you can use this to not only do things like
Marco:
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Marco:
I use VPNs, and specifically I use ExpressVPN.
Marco:
VPNs also have the side effect of making your traffic appear to come from their server, not your IP address.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thank you so much to ExpressVPN for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
Apple Today, what was today, right?
Casey:
God, it's been a long day.
Casey:
Apple Today has launched a major new racial equity and justice initiative, or several new racial equity and justice initiative projects to challenge systemic racism, advance racial equality, and to advance racial equality nationwide.
Casey:
This is what was teased yesterday on some morning talk show with Tim Cook making some sort of recorded appearance, I believe.
Casey:
So, I don't know, John, tell me about this.
Casey:
What is Apple doing, and are we excited?
Casey:
Are we super excited?
Casey:
What's going on?
John:
So this is just a continuation of something that Apple announced a while ago.
John:
And the announcement was three main things that Tim Cook tweeted about.
John:
One was supporting what they call the Propel Center, a global innovation and learning hub for historically black colleges and universities.
John:
The second is our first developer academy in the U.S., which is in Detroit.
John:
And finally, funding to accelerate minority-owned businesses.
John:
Um, this is, this is the quote from, uh, the longer quote from Tim Cook from the press release.
John:
We are all accountable to the urgent work of building a more just and equitable world.
John:
Um, I think that is the correct framing for this because whenever Apple does something about like, why is Apple, why is Apple doing anything about this?
John:
Right.
John:
And the cynical answer is like, well, you know, companies like to do nice things.
John:
So people think nice things about them or whatever.
John:
But the actual reason is that, you
John:
You know, with great power comes great responsibility.
John:
And we collectively are all accountable for doing the work to make a more equitable world.
John:
It doesn't just happen by itself.
John:
And it also just doesn't happen if you're just like not evil yourself.
John:
That doesn't also solve any problems either.
John:
You're not adding new problems.
John:
Great.
John:
Good job.
John:
But you're not solving anything.
John:
He continues.
John:
We're launching, this is such a mouthful, REJI, that's Racial Equity and Justice Initiative.
John:
We're launching REJI's latest initiatives with partners across a broad range of industries, working together to empower communities that have borne the brunt of racism and discrimination for far too long.
John:
We are honored to help bring this vision to bear.
John:
Yeah, yeah.
John:
have had to deal with more than others, and that's why they need, you know, that's why we need to help.
John:
What they're doing to help, if you look at, like, the bottom line, they're throwing $100 million into these efforts.
John:
I think that's $100 million collectively for all three of them, which sounds like a lot, but someone did the math earlier today, and it works out to be, like, eight and a half hours of profit for Apple.
John:
So...
John:
If you want to be, again, the most charitable, no pun intended, interpretation of that is this is an initiative, this racial equality and justice initiative.
John:
This is not just like a one-time thing.
John:
This initiative was announced a while back.
John:
Here's three things they're doing.
John:
You do want to try all sorts of different things, right?
John:
So they've got these, you know, the Propel Center, a developer academy, and funding for businesses, right?
John:
especially if like apple you're kind of new to this whole type of initiative it's good to figure out like what works what works best what's the what provides the most benefit right before you pledge a hundred billion dollars to it so that i feel like is the most charitable interpretation which is a hundred million dollars even though it's not a lot compared to apple's profits it's still plenty of money and a hundred million dollars is a good
John:
Trial balloon in three different directions to see what's going to have the most impact.
John:
The only question I had about this announcement is like in the developer academy.
John:
Again, this is just announced today, so I don't have time to look into this in depth and many other things were going on today as usual in the world of news.
John:
But a developer academy.
John:
especially if you're a company like apple on one hand it's like oh it's great you know apple's a tech company and one of the things they can give is they know tech and so they could have a developer academy but it's like all right but nobody wants apple to pay a bunch of money to make a developer academy that trains people to be developers for apple's platform only
John:
While that's great, and while Apple surely knows a lot about Apple's platforms, it kind of reads like a giant ad, like we're teaching you to become Apple developers because we're Apple.
John:
There's lots of marketable technology skills that have nothing to do with Apple.
John:
is it like if you you know i'm again charitably i'm gonna think this developer academy is just a developer academy broadly speaking for people who want to get into the software world right but if it's just a school where it's like we're going to teach you to make apps for the app store i feel like that's a little bit too self-serving i don't know i don't know how i feel about it uh it's only 100 million dollars so they can take another shot at it to get it right but i could be entirely wrong about but that was my first thought is like it
John:
It seems it doesn't, although it seems appropriate for Apple to allow people to dig into that, like, hey, we're the experts on Apple platforms and we'll teach you how to do it best.
John:
And Apple is a very lucrative platform.
John:
There are other jobs in technology and it would be great if Apple put their money towards that as well.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I mean, but still, it's something to applaud.
Casey:
And I think that we should definitely applaud them for doing anything.
Casey:
I mean, anything is more than nothing.
Casey:
And like you said, $100 million, that's a lot.
Casey:
Maybe not a lot for Apple, but it's a lot in general.
Casey:
So it's pretty cool.
John:
Yeah, I feel like this, again, since this is an initiative, I hope to see in the future, like, you know,
John:
a readout on this how do these things go and then more money and more projects and more money and more projects just like the environment stuff the perfect example is the environment stuff which apple has been on for much longer than they've been on the uh you know the racial justice stuff right uh environmental stuff apple's been doing environmental stuff for years and years and years and there's always announcement oh we're doing this so we're doing that or we're building this thing we're doing that thing and now we had an announcement we passed this goal and we're taking mercury out of the things and we're using solar here and now we're all on renewable like it's just
John:
it never stops, right?
John:
That these are not just like they hire someone to do a thing, they get the good PR and they go away.
John:
These are ongoing initiatives within the company that never end as far as, you know, the environmental stuff.
John:
I don't expect them to say, yeah, we're disbanding our whole environment thing because we're not going to do any of that anymore, right?
John:
And I hope this is the same.
John:
I hope, you know, every year we'll see new announcements in this area on the work that they're doing because they certainly have enough money for it.
Casey:
All right, Marco, that time has come.
Casey:
So now two-thirds of the hosts of ATP have fancy pants monitors, and I am super jealous and have incredible FOMO.
Casey:
Marco, how amazing is your $90,000 monitor?
Marco:
It was not quite that much.
Marco:
Not quite.
Marco:
Slightly less.
Marco:
Yeah, so I have the new XDR.
Marco:
Well, not the new.
Marco:
It's new to me.
Marco:
I have the XDR.
Marco:
I listened back to John's review, Willing to make the show notes, back in episode 360.
Marco:
And I actually have many of the same things to say, so I'm going to try to be a little bit quick.
Marco:
But I do have some slightly different nitpicks and opinions about it.
Marco:
So first of all,
Marco:
I did get the Pro Stand for $1,000 extra.
Marco:
I do not feel good about that.
Marco:
It feels kind of like when you're buying a car and you have to pay an extra $2,500 for the sunroof package.
Marco:
You're like, well, I really like a sunroof.
Marco:
I don't want to pay that much extra for it, but I guess I'll suck it up and do it.
Marco:
It's that kind of thing, right?
Casey:
This happened to me exactly with my Subaru car.
Casey:
It was something like, I don't remember how much it was, but I remember I was buying the Subaru when I was fresh out of college.
Casey:
I really didn't have a lot of money.
Casey:
It was a desperation buy because my car at the time had broken down.
Casey:
Does that sound familiar?
Casey:
So anyways, there was a package that had...
Casey:
It was sunroof, leather, and one other thing.
Casey:
For the life of me, I can't remember what the other thing was.
Casey:
And it was just enough money.
Casey:
Even though I really wanted leather and I really wanted a sunroof, it was just enough money that I was like, no, I just can't swing it.
Casey:
And if I could have piece me older, ad hoc-ed it, I would have probably gotten the sunroof and left the leather behind because I would have preferred the sunroof over the leather.
Casey:
And I remember to this day, I mean, to this day, it still bothers me that it was a package and I couldn't just tick the sunroof tick box.
Casey:
Oh, man, that makes me sad.
Marco:
Well, the reason why it's a package is because of people like me who will then buy the whole package just to get like, I really want the heated seats.
Marco:
I don't need all sorts of crap, but I guess I'll buy it, you know, just to get that.
John:
Keep in mind, we're not talking about a package here.
John:
This is one item.
John:
It just happens to be an important item because without the monitor just lays on your desk.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Well, frustratingly, when you order the Pro Stand and the Pro Display XDR in the same order, they still ship separately.
Marco:
There's still two different boxes and they shipped at different times.
Marco:
And so my XDR arrived on a Friday and I didn't have the stand until Monday.
Marco:
Nice.
Marco:
So I had to wait all weekend just staring at the box like I actually considered like John's small child approach.
Marco:
I want to get this thing going.
John:
I mean, the other thing that I think I talked about on the review or maybe in the WWC episode is I'm pretty sure it will stand on its edge.
Yeah.
Marco:
like it's flat bottom i mean just tell adam not to run into the room i guess i have a very energetic eight-year-old there is no way i'm doing that so anyway so after the long wait of waiting the whole weekend for the stand to come separately um i did get to finally open them up and and i've used it now for uh three days and
Marco:
And first of all, the packaging is really remarkable.
Marco:
Like I know boxes are boring to most people, but it is so hilariously like over packaged.
Marco:
The packaging itself, it has like two different layers of boxes.
Marco:
The inner layer is like the box seems to not actually be made of cardboard.
Marco:
It's made of what looks like a plastic box.
Marco:
but it is like shaped into a corrugated cardboard style shape the packaging and then inside of that is like there's like you know big foam pads that actually pad the item the the stand box empty weighs almost as much as my lg 5k the monitor like like an xdr box is i think weighs more
Marco:
Again, empty.
Marco:
So this is like heavy-duty packaging.
Marco:
It's huge.
Marco:
It's very secure.
Marco:
Give them credit for that.
Marco:
These things are very unlikely to get damaged in shipping.
Marco:
And the Pro Stand is...
Marco:
this very satisfyingly heavy aluminum block it is as john said in his review it is like the foot of it is way thicker and heavier than an imac foot uh it's it's significant so like it it feels very good to you know to to use the pro stand it feels very good to set it up you feel like that your monitor will be very secure and
Marco:
Critically, compared to the LG, it does not wobble when I type at all.
Marco:
Not even a little.
Marco:
It is fantastic.
Marco:
It just stays there.
Marco:
I don't have to get a whole new desk to try to fix the wobble.
Marco:
It just stays there.
Marco:
So I am very happy about that.
Marco:
I still feel like a total fool for having paid $1,000 for the stand.
Casey:
So why didn't you go Visa?
Casey:
Perhaps you've talked about this and I've forgotten, but why not just get a Visa stand and call it a day?
Marco:
Part of that is that I wanted the nice, clean aesthetic.
Marco:
Part of the reason I wanted this monitor is that I didn't want it to look like a generic PC workstation.
Marco:
And part of that is that I've used VesaMent adapters many times in the past.
Marco:
I've used ones from Ergotron.
Marco:
I've used some other various ones.
Marco:
And they're always okay, but I've never found one that I really thought was great.
Marco:
I've never found one that seemed like especially awesome and really stable.
Marco:
And furthermore, the ones that I have found that were even remotely good were all like desk clamp style ones, not with feet.
Marco:
And I actually wanted a foot.
Marco:
It is nice to have the space under the monitor just floating there, but that also does increase the odds that it will kind of rock when you type.
Marco:
And that's the last thing I wanted.
Marco:
If you have a monitor like...
Marco:
Being suspended over a desk by an 8-inch long arm, the physics of that, you're holding it out.
Marco:
So any motion on that arm, it's going to magnify even the slightest motion, and it's going to shake the monitor.
Marco:
So I didn't want the chance of anything like that.
Marco:
And again, I haven't been thrilled with the VESA mounts I've had in the past.
Marco:
Um, so like they're, they're fine.
Marco:
If, if what you need is to hold up, you know, two or three monitors in a special configuration and have them be adjustable in certain ways, that's what they're for.
Marco:
But as merely nice monitor stands, I don't think I've ever seen one that functioned as a nice monitor stand.
Marco:
That's what this pro stand is.
Marco:
And again, I feel like a fool for having bought it, but now that I have it, I'm glad I have it.
Marco:
If that makes sense.
Marco:
Just, I try to block out the, the purchase process from my memory.
John:
i also looked for a visa stand for my for my gaming monitor actually because i hated the lg same thing and i hated the wobble right so i was looking for just not an arm just like a plain old stand stand and you can find tons of them but i look at every one and like oh these are so ugly they really are not that the lg monitor is so beautiful it's just black plastic but i just wanted something simple and nice and sturdy and everything i found was either super sturdy but like ugly brutalist architecture type of thing or equally flimsy or really weird like
John:
This is how Apple gets us.
John:
I mean, that's the reason we're buying this stupid monitor to begin with.
John:
Just something as simple as essentially an L-shaped piece of solid aluminum, presumably machined out of a solid block of aluminum, which is why it's $1,000 or whatever.
John:
That doesn't explain it.
John:
But anyway, part of why it costs so much money.
John:
It's a very simple thing, but nobody makes that very simple thing.
John:
And people think they're making a simple thing, but they end up making something that's slightly ugly, or at least, if not ugly, then doesn't match the Apple aesthetic.
John:
that's how apple got us we just wanted something that matched for me is the whole point of the apple monitor it has to be nice has to be big and it has to match and so then a thousand dollars although i do i should have you know if if tiff uh wanted to save a little money she should have listened to the podcast back then and said look
John:
marco's going to get one of these anyway as as i think i predicted i clip that someone tweeted recently right right now you know when i bought mine they were having a six percent cash back thing for the apple card right so that was the time to buy a pro display xdr and a stand and like hide them somewhere and then not tell marco and then just wait until marco finally says all right fine i'm getting the xdr and says hey i saved you six percent you're welcome
Marco:
Yeah.
Casey:
Oh my goodness.
Marco:
Anyway, so... No, I mean, the matching thing is real.
Marco:
I know people who are often into technology often think very analytically about purchases and look at only the specs and the pricing and the economies.
Marco:
And I get that.
Marco:
I was that way much more in the past.
Marco:
I am still that way on certain things.
Marco:
And I totally get that.
Marco:
And if you look at value and specs and if you look at facts...
Marco:
Not opinions, not delight, not design.
Marco:
Just look at facts.
Marco:
This thing is ridiculous.
Marco:
But sometimes I get ridiculous things because I like them and they make me happy.
Marco:
And most people have some area of life where they are that way.
Marco:
And this is mine.
Casey:
Wait, this is yours?
Casey:
This one thing?
Marco:
I guess I didn't say only.
John:
This is among mine.
John:
This is one of mine.
John:
I think that would be an accurate statement because there are areas I feel like where you just are, you know, don't go for the most expensive item.
John:
Totally.
Casey:
There are many like them and all of them are mine.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
I'm wearing very inexpensive pants right now.
Marco:
Anyway.
Marco:
You save a lot of money on haircuts.
Marco:
I do, actually.
Marco:
So anyway.
Marco:
This, like when John reviewed his, he mentioned that it was his first screen real estate increase in a very long time.
Marco:
Mine was not as long as his or as significant as his, but this is the first time that I have gained more screen real estate since 2011.
Marco:
So it's been almost 10 years, roughly.
Marco:
I don't know when.
Marco:
I think it was March 2011 when I got my 30-inch.
Marco:
So yeah, March 2011, I went from dual 24-inch to a single 30-inch monitor.
Marco:
And 30-inch monitors had the horizontal resolution of 2560.
Marco:
When we went back down to 27 inches as the big standard screen size among Mac people...
Marco:
We kept that same real estate.
Marco:
We just made everything on screen a little bit smaller.
Marco:
But it was the same horizontal real estate since then.
Marco:
Not only have I not had a screen real estate increase since 2011 when I got my 30-inch monitor, but Apple has not had a screen real estate increase since they made their 30-inch monitor, which was in 2004.
Marco:
By the way, I did some quick research earlier this evening.
Marco:
When they launched that 30-inch monitor in 2004, it was priced at $3,300.
Marco:
After inflation today, that would be about $4,500.
Marco:
Came with a stand.
Marco:
That one also required a certain degree of high-end graphics card, the cheapest of which was $500, and most people didn't have that card yet at that time.
Marco:
So if you were buying that 30-inch monitor, you would probably also have to buy a $500 graphics card, and it would only work in a Power Mac, like in the tower, but that could fit such a graphics card.
Marco:
You know, things are...
Marco:
you know more expensive today you know after inflation the cost of that display plus the graphics card is 5200 ish we're in the ballpark of the six thousand dollars you need to have a complete setup with this screen but that was 16 years ago yeah that was 16 years ago but but also it's worth pointing out that uh one of the big benefits we have now is that this giant screen is being able to be driven just fine by apple's lowest end computer that i've plugged into
John:
I mean, that's what you would expect is like the thing that was a big deal back then.
John:
Wow, a one megabyte hard drive.
John:
That's amazing, right?
John:
Becomes commonplace and much cheaper.
John:
Much, much, much cheaper.
John:
So 16 years later, the idea that adjusted for inflation, the monitor of a similar size would be a similar price, shows that the XDR actually is ridiculously expensive because you would expect, you know, take a different size, like a 23-inch.
John:
How much could you get a 23-inch monitor now versus 16 years ago?
Marco:
But I think the comparison is not...
Marco:
large Apple monitors that are in the 30-ish inch range, I think the comparison is like Apple releases a monitor that is above and beyond the specs of what most people have available to them.
Marco:
So it's like it's a new high-end monitor size and resolution that is not widely available in other forms.
Marco:
It's like a brand new thing that is mostly above what other people are using.
Marco:
When the 30-inch came out, there was nothing like that in the LCD consumer market.
Marco:
So, like, it made sense for that to be very expensive.
John:
At CES, they're announcing 8K monitors.
John:
I mean, we've already had 8K monitors, but they're announcing more 8K monitors.
John:
So, you know, resolution-wise, Apple's, you know, and size-wise, Apple's thing are not really...
John:
at the very top end it's just that this is the apple one it's really all we wanted is an apple monitor right so the xdr doesn't i mean the main the main excuses or explanations for the xdr are you know the the things that you don't care about the 1600 nits which is not a factor in your life at all but is actually a very high brightness level for a
John:
And so that's why it ends up being so expensive.
John:
Now, Apple being Apple, and as I think it discussed in the past, you would expect that this monitor will hang around for a while and not go down in price because that's just a thing that Apple does.
John:
So by the end of this monitor's life, it will be even more of a ripoff.
Marco:
Well, and Apple also – I mean I forget how they were marketing the 30-inch at the time.
Marco:
I wasn't as much of a hooked-in Apple news person in 2004 as I am now.
Marco:
But this – they're really marketing as like this color-accurate, video pro, high-definition range kind of stuff.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
or high dynamic range kind of stuff i this they're really pushing on all those technical things um i think in part because it helps them charge a very high price for for what they're presenting as a very high-end product but if you look at the 30 inch back in like what the 30 inch apple cinema display was it was a really big monitor for screen real estate in a nice case
Marco:
You know, color accuracy wise, that was still fairly early days of like LCDs being, you know, particularly good at stuff like color.
Marco:
It wasn't very bright.
Marco:
It had the old CCFL backlights before we had LED backlighting.
Marco:
So it wasn't actually an amazing picture quality on that.
Marco:
At the time, it was considered very good, but like it wasn't.
Marco:
I don't think they sold it as like, you know, this is a pro reference monitor back then.
Marco:
I think they sold it as this is a lot of screen space and it looks nice.
Marco:
And that, I have some issues with the XDR, but it is a lot of screen space and it looks nice.
Marco:
That, I 100% agree with that.
Marco:
All the pro stuff about video colorists and stuff like that,
Marco:
I have no use for that stuff.
Marco:
I don't make videos.
Marco:
I don't care.
Marco:
I don't know how to judge it on that.
Marco:
So I will leave the judgment of that up to people who know what they're talking about in that area.
Marco:
But as a monitor that offers a lot of screen space in an attractive case that works well with Apple products,
Marco:
For that, that's how I'm judging it.
Marco:
And it's a good thing that's how I'm judging it because there actually is a significant visual flaw.
Marco:
But I'll get to that in a minute before I move on from the screen space thing.
Marco:
This is so much bigger than 5K.
Marco:
I did not expect like...
Marco:
I know the math with the area and everything.
Marco:
When you go from 4K to 5K, or back in the day, this is the same move if you went from a 24-inch monitor to a 30-inch monitor, you got almost double the total pixels.
Marco:
And when you go from 5K to 6K, you get about 50% more.
Marco:
So it's not as dramatic of a change as when you first went to 27 or 30.
Marco:
But it's still extremely dramatic.
Marco:
And when I first... The first day or two of using this, I didn't even know what to do with the space.
Marco:
Every window, every size I would make it would look ridiculous.
Marco:
It would either look like a tiny window floating in a pool of wasted space...
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
or laptops you know what i would suggest to you marco a lot of windows more windows yeah of course can you tell why i love this monitor no i didn't i the same thing i didn't obviously resize my windows to you know take up the room what it did it's like it you know it's like getting a bigger house it gives you room for more junk more windows so what do you not like about it then other than the hilariously ridiculous cost the very first day i actually kind of thought i think this is too big like
Marco:
I know it's a ridiculous thing to think, but the very first day I thought like, it's so big.
Marco:
I'm actually having trouble like seeing the edges very well.
Marco:
I have to like, like normally I keep my main terminal windows in the lower left corner.
Marco:
And so anything that's off to those side edges, I feel like I might want to bump the font size up a little bit.
Marco:
like it's it's very it's surprisingly big and now you know in that you know that was that was two days ago now so like i think like yesterday and today it's starting to feel a little more normal and this is like what happened like when john was talking about his like you know you just get used to it that becomes normal and when i first opened it up and took that and you know was first using it i thought oh my god this is so big it'll never feel normal and
Marco:
And yeah, it's feeling normal now.
John:
It's close enough now.
John:
If you want to feel freaked out again, you should rotate it to vertical because that, I feel like physically speaking, not that it feels so big, but that you just have to bend your neck.
John:
And that feels so unnatural to me to have to look up and down.
John:
In a vertical orientation, it is just, at least on my desk, again, like I said on the original show, on my non-standing desk, there's no way this can be anything but ridiculous and vertical because I have to look up at the ceiling to see the menu bar.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I mean, even in regular landscape orientation, I have it on the bottom setting on the stand.
Marco:
This is as low as the stand will go.
Marco:
Because any higher than that, it's above my eyeline.
Marco:
My line of sight right now, with it at its lowest setting, my line of sight is about 25% down from the top.
Marco:
And I wouldn't want it any higher than that.
Marco:
Like, I don't want the monitor to go up any more than that.
Marco:
You don't want to be looking up very far.
Marco:
So, yeah, I don't know how you could use this in portrait.
John:
You could lower your desk, though.
John:
Like, you have adjustable height desk, right?
Marco:
I do, but, like, it's already at, like, the correct – like, if I lower it – I mean, my leg is only one inch below the bottom of the desk.
Marco:
so it's not i couldn't really lower it that much but anyway so and i had to like you know move some stuff around the desk to make room like under the monitor like i used to be able to put more stuff under the monitor and now i can't because it's bigger so it's it's been it's interesting like moving up to a larger size again for the first time in almost a decade for me which is it's the longest i have ever gone in my entire computing life without increasing my screen space like from i started using a computer in 1994
Marco:
and this this nine-year span was the longest i've ever gone without increasing my real estate but anyway it is starting to feel a little bit more normal now it's it's ridiculous and i even you know i i decided to play a little bit and i i set in the um for a little bit in the settings i set it back down to run at 5k resolution to see like how that compared and first of all everything looks comically huge at 5k on this screen um but also like i
Marco:
I thought, oh, no, this isn't enough space.
Marco:
The windows are all crammed together.
Marco:
My word.
Marco:
So anyway, there is one small downside and one big downside.
Marco:
The small downside to me is the webcam situation.
Marco:
The XDR does not have a built-in camera or mic.
Marco:
They made a deal with Logitech to basically have a slightly specialized version of a webcam Logitech already makes that's made for the XDR and sold to the XDR.
Marco:
It basically has a nice little magnetic mount on top, and they put the right magnets in the XDR so that it can mount right on top.
Marco:
Problem is...
Marco:
It's an ugly PC webcam and it breaks up the beautiful look of my nice display that like a big part of the reason I got this display is for its nice Apple look.
Marco:
I don't want a big PC webcam chunking up the top of it.
Marco:
Fortunately, I don't need a webcam on my desktop very often.
Marco:
i i use it maybe twice a year like i i use it much more on laptops for various reasons for on desktops i hardly ever use a webcam so i i have logitech webcam and i put it up there for like a few minutes i'm like nope not that's not staying and so now i'm just dangling it behind the screen nice and whenever i need to use it i'll just reach back there and stick it on top
John:
until then it'll be really waiting there i'm surprised you find it so offensive i mean i think it is i mean it doesn't look like an ugly pc thing it looks almost apple-ish if it was made of solid aluminum i think it would be apple-ish but i find it mostly inoffensive like it what i'm looking at is the black entirely black face of the thing a very low contrast logo and a dark gray foot
John:
Yeah, so I leave it there.
John:
I mean, I don't use my webcam much either, but I like the idea that when I want to, I don't have to go fiddle with anything.
John:
Because it's so hot on the top of the monitor, it's not really in my line of sight anyway.
John:
Yeah, so I just leave it on all the time.
Marco:
Yeah, that's fair.
Marco:
But yeah, I can't abide the look of it, so it'll be dangling back there in shame until I actually need it.
Marco:
The big downside for me, which...
Marco:
I wish it didn't have this big downside, and it's kind of bothersome, but I'm slowly getting used to it, is the really dim edges of the display.
Marco:
This is something that most reviews didn't mention or kind of alluded to in different ways.
Marco:
But there are two significant light fall off problems as you approach the edges.
Marco:
One is that at the very edge, and I measured it earlier, I would say about the rightmost 14 points of screen real estate.
Marco:
And well, not just the right, like around all the edges, 14 points around all the edges.
Marco:
There's significant light fall off.
Marco:
And if you look at their marketing page, you can see why this happens.
Marco:
And they even kind of talk about it.
Marco:
Like the way that it's edge lit by all those little LEDs, there's like these little cells.
Marco:
And the cells can overlap a little bit in the middle, like when there's adjacent LCD or LEDs around them.
Marco:
But the ones on the edge have no adjacent cells on the outer edge.
Marco:
And so there is no like, you know, ability for them to like team light an area along the edge.
Marco:
So the areas along the edge actually are noticeably dimmer.
Marco:
And if you keep a light colored window on the edge, like I, I mentioned a minute ago, I keep my terminal window in the corner and my, I use white terminal windows.
Marco:
I know, I'm sorry.
Marco:
I know that's not cool for nerds, but that's, I, I've, I always like light colored terminal windows.
Marco:
I'm, I'm, I'm a, I'm a light theme kind of person in general.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
You're a monster.
Marco:
I know.
Marco:
It's just so much better contrast.
Marco:
I don't use dark mode for the most part on Macs.
Marco:
I do use it on iOS devices, but not on Macs.
Marco:
Anyway, when you have a light window on the edge, side or bottom or top edge, well, top's the menu bar, but side or bottom, you really notice that last 14 points of screen real shape, which is about one line on the terminal window.
Marco:
It looks like a gradient.
Marco:
It looks like a gradient that goes from white to slightly gray.
Marco:
It's very clear.
Marco:
I'll get used to it, but that is a surprising drawback for something that Apple sells as a really flawless, amazing monitor.
Marco:
The other drawback...
Marco:
is not quite that bad, but certainly noticeable.
Marco:
If you have a large solid color window on either side of the screen, which I frequently do, like Xcode, for instance, I usually align Xcode so it's against the right edge of the screen, taking up about the rightmost two-thirds of the screen, and then I use the left third for simulator windows, stuff like that, documentation, whatever else.
Marco:
Because the screen is so wide,
Marco:
You know how when you look at any LCD screen, if you look at it off axis, so if you move off to the side a little bit, so you're looking at it kind of diagonally instead of straight on, it gets less bright.
Marco:
As you move your head to the side, LCDs get less bright.
Marco:
That's an effect of how they work.
Marco:
This monitor is so wide that just the angle of my head to the edges is enough to cause noticeable brightness loss to about the rightmost.
Marco:
I measured it earlier at about 150 points on left and right.
John:
See, when you mentioned the edge brightness, that's what I was thinking of because I'd noticed the effect, too, but I had chalked it up to off axis viewing because it's such a sharp angle.
John:
But I just did some experiments and you're right.
John:
It's not the very edges.
John:
That's not off axis.
John:
That's just the backlight problem.
John:
But yeah, because the thing is so wide, every time I turn, I haven't noticed the effect you're talking about because I only notice brightness changes at the very, very edges.
John:
I'm like, oh, well, the screen's so wide.
John:
By that point, you're super off axis.
John:
And I realized that the top of the screen, I had been chalking up to the weird translucent gradient menu bar.
John:
right because the menu bar it hasn't been solid white in so long so i was looking up there so left and right i'm thinking uh that's just the off-axis viewing and that's kind of a shame well what are you going to do lcds and the top i was thinking stupid translucent menu bar with the gradient and then the bottom i never see it because i never have anything against the bottom because that's where my dock is
Marco:
oh okay that's why yeah but yeah so yeah i'm a side dock person so anyway same when you have like large brightly colored windows of like solid color areas like if you run xcode on the right side uh you will notice that the right most 150 points or so kind of have a subtle gradient that fades to darker color and it's it is totally viewing like if you move your head over to the side so you're looking straight on the edge and
Marco:
then it gets brighter that i was surprised again like you expect the way apple has sold this monitor you expect it to be like visually flawless and it's not and and those are those are substantial drawbacks and if you notice like none of the marketing material shows this because the marketing material all shows dark backgrounds in everything
Marco:
The apps, the content they're showing, it's all like you're in a pitch black room looking at this monitor showing super bright like tiger in the middle of a black screen.
Marco:
And I think there's a reason for that.
Marco:
I mean, first of all, just that's how they market pro stuff in general.
Marco:
But also like this monitor is actually not as good as they would like to tell probably at showing large light colored UIs, you know, UIs that have large areas of light colored solid areas.
Marco:
If you're going to put one of those near the edge, it's going to look bad.
Marco:
And so I actually like I'm still I'm glad I have it as a beautiful monitor in a nice design that sits nicely on my desk, matches my stuff.
Marco:
The stand is solid.
Marco:
It doesn't wobble.
Marco:
It's a huge amount of screen real estate.
Marco:
And, you know, doing development on the last couple of days has been luxurious as I've had all this screen space and everything.
Marco:
But it does kind of bother me that Apple sells it as a really pro, awesome color, accurate, whatever, but it has noticeable brightness problems in regular use as displaying UIs.
Marco:
And so the way I feel about it is...
Marco:
It feels a lot like that old 30-inch monitor did, which was a stunningly large monitor that had decent visuals.
Marco:
As I mentioned, it had the old CCFL backlighting.
Marco:
It didn't have the best brightness or contrast or anything like that, but it was a big monitor in a nice enclosure that matched your Apple stuff and gave you a ton of screen real estate.
Marco:
That's what this is, to me at least.
Marco:
And if pros have better uses for it and the color accuracy or the XDRity of it helps them do their jobs, that's great.
Marco:
For me, it is a lot of screen space.
Marco:
It has these two visual shortcomings that I think are substantial, but not substantial enough that I am going to have a big problem about them.
Marco:
I wish they weren't there for such an expensive purchase that is sold as something that is so visually perfect.
John:
Well, they're not selling it individually perfectly.
John:
The market they're selling it into has expectations that match what they're getting.
John:
So in the world of reference monitors or, you know, color grading monitors or whatever, there is a parallel market for what are called client reference monitors, which sounds weird.
John:
But the concept is, so you're there, you're working on a movie, right?
John:
And you're looking at it and you're a super accurate monitor and you're doing all this work and you're editing and you're color grading, you're doing whatever you're going to do.
John:
And then you want to show the director.
John:
Hey, what do you think of this?
John:
What do you think how this looks?
John:
You can't show the director and the producer and whoever else is in the room all looking at the reference monitor because reference monitors, as soon as you go off axis, get all wonky, right?
John:
So you need a monitor that four people can look at at the same time, which means they're going to be off axis.
John:
And that's the client reference monitor, which isn't as good as the reference monitor, but has better off axis viewing.
John:
So four people can watch it and the person on the outside won't say, why is this scene so dim?
John:
I mean, that's the market this is being sold into.
John:
So the things you just described would not shock anyone who's like, yeah, I bought a reference monitor for $35,000, and if you're not looking dead on it, it's all weird, right?
John:
I think this is not that bad, but mostly because it's so darn wide and it's an LCD that the edges, you're off axis, especially if you have it close to your face.
John:
If you push it farther away from you, it actually gets better, right?
John:
But if it's as close as you normally keep a monitor and you have to rotate your head now, you're at this fairly extreme angle, and
John:
lcds tend not to do well there the things that help actually is i wonder if i do wonder if the nanotexture would help but also other display technologies like those pva screens or other ones do sorts of do all sorts of distribution to try to make the uh the off-axis angle slightly better um even oled by the way which is self-emissive also has off-axis dimming problems and and it's all basically comes down to the angle right so you can get
John:
a similar angle if you're three inches away than you can if you're 30 feet away it all just depends on you know what i mean like it doesn't depend how close you sit to the thing so i i think the problems you're describing are expected by the customers who want the quote-unquote perfect display because they're used to displays that cost more that have even worse or worse off-axis viewing um but maybe you're not expected by someone who just wants a computer monitor and they expect it to be uniform from edge to edge i would also encourage you not to ever
John:
fill your fancy OLED TV with a giant light gray background and see what the uniformity issues are there too, because it's actually a fairly hard problem.
John:
Forget about off-axis, dead-on axis, just to fill a screen uniformly with a light gray color is actually a very hard problem.
John:
And if you see televisions do those tests, OLEDs tend to do better
John:
But it's something called the dirty screen effect.
John:
Just go through a gradient from white to black, a full screen, and you will see all sorts of splotches and blotchy things or whatever.
John:
And in that respect, the XDR is doing pretty well.
John:
But it can't overcome the inherent display technology.
John:
Like I said, neither can OLED.
John:
OLED also tints blue off-axis and does all sorts of weird stuff.
John:
It's one of the many reasons why I haven't bought a new TV forever.
John:
all these technologies for just making displays, especially high resolution displays, they all have problems, right?
John:
Not that CRTs didn't have problems.
John:
They had problems too, but like you're always waiting for that one next technology.
John:
That's not going to have limitations.
John:
It's not going to have burning.
John:
It's going to have great off access, great response time, great color fidelity, great brightness.
John:
Yeah.
John:
You know, low power, uh,
Marco:
uh it's not here yet we keep trying um final final question for you do you what preset do you have it on i've i spent about one day on each of them so far like on the apple 500 versus the apple 1600 um they don't that doesn't change the you know ui brightness at all as far as i can tell
John:
it saves different brightness settings for each one so i think if you go to the p3 500 nits and crank down the brightness and then go back to p3 600 you're like well this is brighter but it's just because i think it has separate brightness settings for each preset no as far as i can tell the it always maxes out at i believe 500 nits for displaying the ui it's only when you want to show hdr content which i haven't even tried yet yeah but you don't have you don't have it at max brightness on any of the settings right
John:
No, I do.
John:
What?
John:
Max brightness?
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
For most of the time in this house, it's a pretty bright room during the day.
Marco:
And so most of the time I do run at full brightness during the day.
John:
That may actually be emphasizing the...
John:
Because you have such challenging conditions.
John:
What do I have mine at?
John:
Let me see.
John:
I'm not showing 1,600 nits, though.
John:
I know, but 500 nits is stupid.
John:
I'm at less than half.
Marco:
If Apple really wanted to solve the edge dimming problem, there might be some kind of way for them to just slowly ramp up the brightness as you go from the center outward.
John:
Yeah, it's the uniformity thing.
John:
Put a light gray background on the whole screen.
John:
Does it look uniform?
John:
What you're asking for is a giant halo around the outside.
John:
It's really hard to do.
John:
I mean, the actual solution is, you know, then again, TVs at CES.
John:
So this, the XDR has like 575 little individual lights as the backlight or something like that.
John:
Yeah, 577.
John:
Or something like that.
John:
The newer televisions have many, many thousands.
John:
Many thousands, right?
John:
They don't use each individual light as a separate zone, but that's a separate issue.
John:
They have many, many thousands, and I forget when I mentioned this.
John:
Did I mention it last week, or maybe it was in a Slack conversation?
John:
I can't keep track of what's in a podcast, but one of the manufacturers was bragging about the fact that they had made their televisions thinner, and the way they had done it is by...
John:
pressing the backlight, the little, you know, there's a sheet that has a bunch of little white LEDs in it, right?
John:
This is an LCD television.
John:
Pressing that right up against so it touches what they call the diffuser plate because the LEDs are little white LEDs.
John:
They're point lights.
John:
You know, they're tiny little point lights, right?
John:
But you can't have a bunch of little point lights.
John:
You need something to diffuse that light.
John:
And the distance between the light and the diffuser makes the TVs thicker and also adds more shadows because if you can imagine like having 100 flashlights shining at a wall, right?
John:
If you push the wall really close to the flashlights, you get 100 dots on the wall.
John:
But if you push the wall back, you get 100 big fuzzy dots and they overlap, like you were saying with the overlapping lighting, right?
John:
To try to make it uniform.
John:
Trying to make a uniform white screen with 575 point lights is actually very difficult when it comes down to the diffuser, right?
John:
So one solution is put way more lights in there, right?
John:
Put way more tiny lights and pack them closer together.
John:
And the second is if you pack them closer together like that, now you can move the diffuser closer to the thing and make your TV thinner and
John:
there's all sorts of these efficiency things and then the final thing that they did this year on tvs at ces is put essentially it's not it well it's acting like a heat sink but a big aluminum layer or some kind of metal layer behind the uh the backlight to pull off heat so you can drive them brighter right um and this sort of wicks away the heat which is kind of what the xdr is doing in theory with that weird honeycomb in the back
John:
you know letting all the air out and the fans and all that business and by the way you didn't mention whether you heard the fans or not but like nope yeah so there are so this there are lots of advances in how can we do an led backlit lcd that addresses every single one of the problems you're talking about but the possible exception of viewing angle which is still like difficult and inherent in the in the technology but
John:
you know the the next great hope as we've talked about in the past is a micro led where every single pixel has a red led a green led and a blue led and you just turn them on and off individually and that ain't anywhere for i mean you can get that but the problem is they're so big now that i think the smallest size is like uh
John:
i don't think it's measured in inches i think it's like 12 feet or something because the pixels are so big like if you want a 4k tv it's cool they sell them in i think they sell them in like uh i forget how big they are but they're like 40 inch diagonal units and you have to put together like 12 of those units to make a single 4k tv right and so that's how and they've gotten way smaller than they were in the past so we're not we're not there yet but
John:
uh the mini led ones when you hear mini led all they're talking about is put way more little tiny leds in the back and i think that can help with uniformity um and and it's the type of thing you think oh if apple makes a successor to the xdr they'll do that the xdr has 575 backlights why don't they make one that has 20 000 like these new tvs and i would be like that's not the apple way
John:
when it comes to monitors apple makes one and then sells it until it's embarrassingly obsolete and then it goes away forever and then you beg for them to make another monitor at some point i hope that changes i'm willing to be proven wrong please apple prove me wrong by releasing a new xdr that is better than this one but i don't have great hopes so you said you can't hear the fan at all um however i'm pretty sure they will release a new one shortly because i just bought it
Marco:
oh that's the possibility um i would suggest now if you're on this monitor now you should do you have the aerial screensaver installed uh oh the apple tv one yeah uh no i will though i i've been really enjoying the um whatever the new default screensaver is on my macbook air it's like a bunch of like like fingery blue seaweed looking things whatever that is it's really nice
John:
uh i would suggest uh getting it's a it's on github we should find the link for it again um get the aerial screensaver and then just go to the screensaver preference pane and just watch the little preview window because that will be hdr put your monitor on p3 1600 nits
John:
and just watch.
John:
And then you'll have a little... This is what I talked about in the original review.
John:
Then you'll have a little tiny punch-out in your 500-knit window.
John:
There's a little tiny punch-out into the worlds of 1600 nits.
John:
And it looks like... It messes you up because you're like, what is this?
John:
It doesn't look like a hole in your monitor, but it's so clearly different than the rest of your monitor.
John:
It also kind of makes the rest of your monitor look dim and shabby.
John:
So try that.
John:
And the other thing I would suggest trying is...
John:
I can give you either URLs for this or I can send you the files.
John:
But when I got my monitor, I'm like, well, I want to see what this thing can do.
John:
This is before I was able to get Windows to boot on it because that took a long time, as you can see past episodes.
John:
But before I get Windows to boot on it and play HDR games, I wanted to see like, show me full screen HDR, you know, video.
John:
And I just searched for all these TV manufacturer websites for these sample files.
John:
And I finally found, I don't think they're 6K.
John:
I think they're like 5K or 4K, but it's as good as I could get.
John:
And they're just like...
John:
footage of this person and their dog in the italian countryside eating food and you can run it at full screen and it plays and put your monitor on the 1600 nit setting and run it in full screen and all of a sudden you will see you will see what your monitor is actually capable of and maybe appreciate why people who are doing production for movies and other things that require the hdr would find this monitor valuable and then the movie will end and you go back to your dingy 500 nit bunch of windows
Marco:
Well, theoretically, I'm pretty sure I can just shoot some stuff on my iPhone, right?
Marco:
In Dolby Pro Vision, whatever that is?
Marco:
Maybe, but I don't think you can do it at 6K.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, definitely not.
Marco:
I think 4K is the max there.
Marco:
But anyway, yeah, I will attempt that.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, I think the way I see this monitor to me is it's like the monitor equivalent of buying a fast car.
Marco:
I'm not a race car driver.
Marco:
I never take my cars on racetracks.
Marco:
And the cars I buy while they are fast are not actually made to be track cars.
Marco:
You know, you spend more money on them and they might not be flawless at everything, but they're very nice and they make you happy.
Marco:
Like that's how the fast car analogy.
Marco:
That's how I look at this monitor.
Marco:
This is not something I need.
Marco:
This is something that is really nice and it is completely ridiculous and it costs more than I want to talk about.
Marco:
But it makes me happy every time I use it, as long as I don't look too much at the edge.
Marco:
But it makes me happy.
Marco:
I have no justification for needing it.
Marco:
I don't need it, except that it is a massive amount of screen real estate.
Marco:
And it has the right DPI for Mac OS.
Marco:
And it's in a great looking design that makes me happy when I look at it.
Marco:
And it doesn't wobble when I type.
Marco:
And for all of that, I am happy with this purchase.
Casey:
I would hope so because it was not cheap.
Casey:
I don't know if you were aware of that, but not cheap at all.
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
Keep reminding me.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I am jealous, but I just, I can't personally fathom spending that kind of money on a monitor, which I'm not trying to imply that you did anything wrong or that it wasn't right for you or whatever.
Casey:
It's just, I don't think it's right for me, even though I'm sure it is super nice.
John:
I have to hope that it's not like Beetlejuice where you have to say it three times to make them introduce a 5K monitor.
John:
So do all three ATP hosts have to buy this thing for Apple to introduce a 5K monitor at a reasonable price, which is honestly what we all would have purchased?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
So listeners, if you would like for me to buy a Pro Display XDR so that you can buy an affordable monitor, please go to ATP.fm slash join and sign up because that's the only way this is going to happen.
Marco:
There is no amount of members we could get that would make you buy this.
Marco:
No.
Casey:
Well, challenge accepted.
John:
There's not no amount, but the number is so astronomical that it's not sensible.
Marco:
It's more than our free audience.
John:
Yes.
Casey:
I don't know about that.
Casey:
If our entire audience were members, I would absolutely have one of these, no doubt.
Casey:
I'm glad you got it.
Casey:
I'm glad you like it.
Casey:
What are you going to do with the 5K?
Casey:
That's getting demoted to a different position, a different studio.
Casey:
Is that right?
Marco:
Yeah, it is in the iMac carrying bag, ready to go.
Marco:
I wanted to stop looking at it.
Marco:
It was on my office floor for a couple days.
Marco:
I just moved it off the desk, moved this one on.
Marco:
But right before the show, I packed it up into the bag.
Marco:
It's staged to leave this house.
Casey:
You know, it's too bad because if my iMac Pro could drive it and if you were to let me steal it from you in terms of how much it would cost me, I would consider doing like the LG 5K next to the iMac.
Casey:
Not because I need it, but because I think it would be cool.
Casey:
But I can't even drive that thing from the iMac Pro, if I'm not mistaken.
Marco:
No, no, no.
Marco:
The iMac Pro can't drive the XDR, but it can drive a 5K.
Casey:
Oh, you're right.
Casey:
I had my wires crossed.
Casey:
Well, if you want to sell it to me for like 200 bones, let me know.
Marco:
No, I even had a couple people on Twitter ask me if they could buy it.
Marco:
I don't want to sell the LG because it's not good.
Marco:
One thing I kind of glossed over real fast last week when we talked about selling our old gear was
Marco:
you generally don't want to sell something to somebody, you know, if you can avoid it.
Marco:
Uh, because I've seen this go wrong many times with friends and family where like you sell somebody a laptop and then it breaks like a month later.
Marco:
And that's just really awkward.
Marco:
You know, same thing with like cars or any other like large, large purchases.
Marco:
Like you don't want to sell it to somebody, you know, ideally you either sell it to like a company or,
Marco:
that doesn't even care who you are, or you sell it to a stranger, or you give it away to someone you know.
Marco:
But involving a large purchase with money from somebody you know invites a lot of risk of bad things, and it's better avoided.
Marco:
So I'm not going to sell this.
Casey:
Well, no, you'll just give it to me and I'll pay shipping, and then everyone's happy.
Marco:
It probably costs like $150 to ship it.
Marco:
It wouldn't be cheap to ship, but no, I'm going to keep it as a backup secondary monitor or for secondary locations.
Marco:
It's good enough for that.
Marco:
And heck, I even thought maybe I should keep it here because...
Marco:
well part of the reason i'm going this direction now is like what if the xdr breaks and i have to mail it in for service i'll have an extra monitor that i could use with all the wobble but i could use it in the meantime while i wait for this one to be serviced like you know so it is useful to have extras around for for times like that or at least to have an extra around for times like that so we'll see but i also could just you know wait for that time to ever come and it might never come and if it does just order a cheap monitor then to use for two weeks while i get rid of this one
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
Well, congrats.
Casey:
Thanks.
John:
refresh the laptops you're going to buy one of those but you might actually you might avoid the mac pro i'm stunned i mean aside from household stuff which i'm sure there's an unlimited number of pending purchases i think i have one pending purchase for marco uh and that is well it depends on how he feels about oled tvs because lg actually revised their panels this year instead of just wrapping them in a different case and adding different computer stuff on them
John:
And the new panel, the big feature is that it gets brighter.
John:
And I know you have your TV in a bright room.
John:
I don't even know if you have an OLED in the bright room now, but if you didn't get an OLED because you're afraid it couldn't get bright enough, wait to see the testing results on the LG G1 to see just how much brighter it gets.
Marco:
I have not told you the TV we have in that room because you would be sad.
Marco:
I saw the pictures of it.
Marco:
I know what you got there.
Marco:
It is.
Marco:
It makes me sad.
John:
But I mean, it makes Tiff sad.
John:
She can't play Last of Us because it gets washed out.
Marco:
It is not a good TV.
Marco:
It is a pretty TV.
Marco:
It is not a good TV.
Marco:
It's a big TV.
John:
That's the other thing that, well, that doesn't help you here, but LG also announced much bigger OLEDs.
John:
You can get them up to 83 inches now, but the good one only does not come in 83.
John:
The good one only comes in a maximum of 77.
John:
No, this one, it's only 65.
John:
Oh, really?
John:
Only.
John:
All right, no problem.
John:
G1 comes in 65.
Marco:
But it's, I'll just tell you, it's the Samsung frame.
John:
Yeah.
John:
No, I saw, I saw a picture of it.
John:
Like it's just a, it's a thin edge lid, uh, LCD with bad blacks.
John:
I know it's fine.
Marco:
It's, it is surprisingly dim.
Marco:
It looks like one of those old, um, rear projection TVs from our childhood.
Marco:
You know, you walk into some, you know, big eighties house from like the rich friend and it's like, it has like such giant rear projection TV and take up the entire wall.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
It was, it's not, it's not a good TV.
Marco:
Uh,
Marco:
it was it was a a pretty risk we thought this is a pretty oh hold on hops is dreaming it's really cute he's barking hop you gotta you gotta wake up man don't wake him up let him have he's having the chasing dreams here sorry puppy all right anyway yeah it it's not a good tv it's it's very very dim and it's we're even having bugs now where like sometimes the like box of electronics that it wires itself up to will just need to be restarted it's
Marco:
it is a very pretty tv we were putting it in a pretty room and we thought let's try a pretty tv and didn't realize how much worse it would be than our lgo led and it's it turns out is you know at night you don't notice it that much
John:
uh but you can only watch it at night because it's so dim that you can't really watch it during the day well the good thing is that the lgg one is also that style like it doesn't even come with a stand it's a you know hang on the wall you know very thin frame kind of thing i don't know if it has the external electronics box or if they managed to jam it on the back of it but anyway um watch your reviews of that in a couple months and just to see what the stats on it are
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John:
So I don't remember why I was thinking of this because this is not a new rumor.
John:
I think we've discussed them briefly on the show in the past.
John:
The rumors are for the next round of AirPod revisions that the – so right now we have AirPods, AirPods Pro, and then we have AirPods Max, which aren't really AirPods.
John:
Forget about the Max.
John:
I'm just talking about the little turdy white things that go in your ears, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
The plain old AirPods are currently on their second revision.
John:
I have a pair of those.
John:
Whenever they revise them, I forget what they did to them.
John:
They look exactly the same on the outside, but the case had the little induction charging thing, and I think they changed the innards or whatever.
John:
But otherwise, they're pretty much the same as they've ever been.
John:
And then, of course, the AirPod Pros that jam into your hole with the little tips, right?
John:
The rumor is the new round of them, the low-end plain old AirPods without any sort of qualifier suffix at the end,
John:
which will basically be the third revision of those or the airpods 3 the rumor is that those will quote unquote look like the airpod pros there is some debate in the rumor circles of whether that means they will actually be like the airpod pros and have those little soft tips that jam into your ear holes or will they merely look kind of like the airpod pros but still be like the original airpods where they're just a dangly thing inside your ear right and
John:
And then the other rumor, which I'm not interested in here, but just for the completeness sake, is that the new version of the AirPod Pros might be disc-shaped or some crap like that.
John:
Who knows?
John:
That's all even more fuzzy.
John:
I don't care about that, right?
John:
The reason I have anxiety about AirPods is, so on my second, I think this is my second pair, my second pair of these, it's revision number two.
John:
These are the ones I like.
John:
I don't like the ones that go in your ears.
John:
My wife has them.
John:
I just don't like things inside my ear holes.
John:
I suppose I could get used to it if I really, really had to, but I don't like it.
John:
i like the original airpods they fit me really well that whatever shape they are that they first came up with i must have the average ear so they stay in they don't fall out they're super comfortable and i like the fact that they're not in my ear holes they're just kind of in there right and so i've been waiting
John:
for the announcement of the new revision of the airpods because if the new ones are like the new low-end unqualified airpods are in ear i need to scramble as soon as they make that announcement and quickly buy one possibly two knowing me pairs of the original ones before they go out of stock because i don't want them to go inside my ear and the problem with the airpods is no replaceable battery and eventually the batteries get crappy because they're
John:
so tiny and i use my airpods so much every single day i use them i love them so i've spent a lot of time like just idly flicking around on my phone going should i just buy new airpods now they're like no no you don't you don't know that you don't know that they're going to replace the the the bottom end airpods with the other ones maybe they're just going to be like they look like the pros because they have stubbier things but they're still not an ear and
John:
And I spend so much time almost buying new AirPods.
John:
And I like this product.
John:
The ones I have are getting old, but I'm not sure Apple will ever make another iteration of this product in this style.
John:
It's exactly the same situation I was in with my cheese grater.
John:
It's the cheese grater all over again.
Marco:
And to clarify, you're talking about the actual dairy cheese grater, not the Mac Pro, right?
John:
Both interpretations of that sentence are true.
John:
Because remember, I had bought a Tower Mac, and I wanted another Tower Mac, but they weren't making one.
John:
They made the little trash can.
John:
I'm like, I don't know if they're ever going to make another one of these.
John:
So I was stuck with this old version of a product, never knowing if they're going to make another one.
John:
I didn't want to buy another Tower, because it would be the same as an old one.
John:
I wanted a new Tower, but they wouldn't make one.
John:
And yes, same deal with the cheese grater, although they don't even make that cheese grater anymore.
John:
So...
John:
I mean, I was thinking of it mostly in the context of the actual OXO grater of dairy cheese, right?
John:
Because I've bought a whole bunch of those and they're stockpiled in my basement.
John:
I don't want to have to buy a whole bunch of AirPods 2, like the current model of the non-in-ear ones, and stick them in my basement because I don't think they'll age that well.
John:
And I want, unlike a cheese grater, I want the technological advancement that will presumably come
John:
with the h2 and the h3 and whatever who knows whatever they're going to do i can't just pre-buy five pairs of airpods too because i like that design that would be stupid like so i don't know i'm i'm having anxiety about it thus far i have not ordered uh another pair of airpods my current plan is
John:
The second they announce new AirPods, it's like WWDC tickets all over again.
John:
I need to quickly look at them, assess whether they have any models that don't go in your ear anymore, and then quickly make a purchase.
John:
If they have the low-end ones that don't go in your ear but are a different shape, I'm going to have to make two purchases.
John:
Buy one backup pair of the old ones and buy one of the new ones and see if I like them.
John:
But if they're in-ear, maybe I'll immediately buy two pairs of the old ones and just say, this will hold me over until Apple changes its mind about the whole jamming little things into your ear canals.
Marco:
I don't think you have a lot to worry about there.
Marco:
I wouldn't say you definitely don't.
Marco:
You never know.
Marco:
But Apple has been making...
Marco:
earbud style earbuds, and I'm talking about the style of fit that it is where it's just kind of resting in a little curvature of your ear, not actually inserting into the inner ear canal part.
Marco:
They've been making things of that style since the original iPod 20 years ago.
Marco:
they have never stopped making things like making earbud shaped earbuds.
Marco:
That's what you want.
Marco:
They have made those continuously the entire time.
Marco:
They haven't made the same ones the whole time, but they have never stopped making them.
Marco:
It is such an incredibly popular and mass market, you know, widely adopted shape.
Marco:
So many people love it.
Marco:
It has so many advantages and it is the preferred style for so many people.
Marco:
I can't imagine them making only the in-ear kind.
Marco:
Because ever since the AirPod Pros have come out, you know, I've been raving about how good they are for me.
Marco:
I love them.
Marco:
I continue to be very happy with them.
Marco:
The original style, earbud style AirPods don't work for me.
Marco:
Most earbud shaped earbuds don't work for me, which is why I'm so into this.
Marco:
Because I've been on the other side of this.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
It seems to be like not quite a 50-50 split, but it seems like a large percentage of the population of the world prefers only one of these two styles of headphones and not the other.
Marco:
And so it seems like they're pretty much always going to have to address both general fit types if they're going to continue to have widespread market appeal.
Marco:
And for the AirPods, that's what they want to do.
Marco:
They're doing very well at it so far.
Marco:
They're going to keep doing well at it as long as they continue to have broad market appeal of, like, no matter what kind of ears you have, there will be an AirPods model that will be comfortable on you.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
I don't see them going back on that.
Marco:
And so to stop making the style of earbuds that everyone likes, except me, but everyone else likes a lot and has been the primary or only style of earbuds for 20 years, I don't think they're going to stop.
Marco:
If they happen to stop, though...
Marco:
I think you're going to have way more time than you think to buy the old ones.
Marco:
Like you don't have to buy them now.
John:
I hope so.
John:
I don't know what kind I would buy them immediately because I'd be afraid they'd go out of stock.
John:
But yeah, I mean, like the other fear is not just that they stop making it.
John:
But like I said, that they make a new one, but it's a totally different shape because the earbuds have changed shape a lot over the years.
John:
And some of the earbuds of the Apple's made, I found very uncomfortable back in the iPod days.
John:
But the specific shape of the plain old AirPods works with my ears.
John:
And speaking of, of,
John:
AirPods and what Apple thinks about the default AirPods.
John:
There was this... It was like a conference call published on YouTube where Patton Oswalt talked to the stars of Ted Lasso.
John:
And it was like six heads or nine heads or whatever across the screen in little squares.
John:
And Ted Lasso is a show on Apple TV+.
John:
and presumably at like to like on the show which features apple hardware everywhere presumably apple gave every single one of the stars of the show airpod pros to do this this pr thing right so every single one of the actors has airpod pros in their ear and i think i tweeted this last last week or whenever it was that i watched it watching that thing it's delightful and ted lasso is great and the people are great and it's worth watching it's a 45 minute video filled with these actors
John:
fiddling with their ears trying to press the airpod pros into their ears like just constantly messing with them in a way that i'd never seen anybody mess with the earbud style ones because marco's things the earbud style ones he says like oh they are uncomfortable and some people say when i exercise they fall out but these people were sitting still staring at a screen and they could not get these damn airpod pros to stay in their ears for the record that is exactly how regular airpods fit on me even when sitting still i would i would have to constantly fiddle with them
John:
Well, so, I mean, part of the problem is that they were using them as mics too, so every time they fiddled with them, you got like, please don't fiddle with the mic, right?
John:
And one of them fell out of Jason Sudeikis' ear, literally fell out of it, and he had to bend over and pick it up, right?
John:
And this is after just, you know, 30 minutes of him shoving it and making static noises or whatever, so I do really wonder, I mean, obviously it could have been maybe they all had the wrong tips, maybe they didn't do the tip fit test or whatever, you know, I don't know what the problem is, but I feel like
John:
the bud style has a higher success rate at least in in my you know personal experience of seeing people wear them not just the ted lasso thing but in real life and in general maybe it's because having three different size tips is just too complicated people can't deal with it and they make bad choices but maybe it's just because jamming into someone's ear hole is always going to be a harder fit than just kind of rattling around in their ear so
John:
i i hope they don't i hope they don't can them i hope they don't think the pros are the way to go but i'm assuming apple gave everyone the fanciest of everything oh you're stars of our shows you all get the fanciest iphone you know you get the fanciest airpods and those are the pros you know so we'll see uh but i do have a lot of anxiety about it and most of my anxiety is because kind of like my cheese gritter it's not like a minor thing in my life like i use my airpods
John:
probably more than any other single apple thing because i use them when i'm sitting down on my computer sometimes uh because i just have them in my ears all the time you know i use them as microphones to talk at work right when i'm you know doing teleconferences at work and everything i use them to listen to music on my you know thing when i'm going for a dog walk or podcast or whatever
John:
i'm always using them and if you took those away because apple decided they're not into that specific design anymore i would be sad but i mean i'm you know the flip side like i said i'm open to the idea of new earbuds that are like the airpods that are even better like that's the whole reason i'm not buying five pairs of them now because i want something better but i just don't want the thing i have to be taken away
Marco:
I really don't think it's a high risk.
Marco:
What you said about the AirPods Pro not fitting this whole cast of people, I think that illustrates a key thing here.
Marco:
For so long, Apple seemed to be of the product design opinion by their actions that one size fits all.
Marco:
For so long, they only would make one type of earbud at a time and
Marco:
And then AirPods came out.
Marco:
And, you know, like, when we went wireless, there were lots of headphones that were decent.
Marco:
I mean, I had a few that I liked a lot myself.
Marco:
But nothing except AirPods provides the total level of system integration and the level of features with iOS devices and everything that AirPods do.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
Apple, for whatever it was, a year or two, only made one kind of AirPod.
Marco:
And it was a wild success.
Marco:
But they still only made that one.
Marco:
And as somebody who it didn't fit, that kind of sucked for me.
Marco:
And I think we were the minority.
Marco:
I think most people seemed fine with it.
Marco:
And that's why it was such an amazing thing for me when the Pros came out.
Marco:
Not only is the AirPod Pro just a really good product all around, but for the first time, I could wear it comfortably.
Marco:
I could actually join this world of convenience that everyone else had been enjoying for years, and I never had.
Marco:
I'd never had an earbud that fit me like the whole experience of even before that with the wired ones where people would like be able to have their headphones wrapped around their phone in their pocket.
Marco:
I could never do that.
Marco:
They never fit me.
Marco:
I my my headphones never fit in my pocket.
Marco:
until airpods pro and so it was amazing when apple finally left the world of one size fits all and finally made something that happened to fit me really well but when they did it they didn't stop making the other kind i think most people the other kind fits fine that's why they could make you know it is it's kind of one size fits most
Marco:
I don't think they're going to stop making the size that fits most and only make the one that seems to have a pretty high percentage of people saying, this isn't for me.
Marco:
So I think you're fine.
Marco:
I wouldn't expect them to do this.
Marco:
If they do tweak the design, as you said, great.
Marco:
I think they probably will.
Marco:
Based on the current rumors, they are probably going to make the stems shorter.
Marco:
But I don't think that requires them to change the fit style.
Marco:
I think they're perfectly able to make the stems shorter
Marco:
And also still have it be a traditional earbud style kind of resting in that curve fit.
John:
The rumor shape, though, does look like the Pro.
John:
Imagine the Pro shape, but without the tip.
John:
That's kind of what they look like.
John:
Like, it's nothing like the old shape.
John:
It's a different, that little blob, you know.
John:
So I couldn't have been a place where all of a sudden they make a new shape, and the new shape still works for most people, but suddenly I'm the Marco.
John:
And they don't work in my ears, you know.
John:
You never know when it can happen to you, John.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Usually it's about spending a pile of money.
Casey:
In this case, it's about... I did that too.
John:
You did it first.
John:
That's right.
John:
I just waited 10 years to do it.
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Marco:
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Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Ask ATP.
Casey:
This question comes from Peter Yang, but it may as well have come from me.
Casey:
What's it like to switch from the time-tested strategy of a shared Apple ID used by multiple people for iTunes, the App Store, in-app purchases, et cetera, to family sharing?
Casey:
Would it make sense to make that previously shared Apple ID the progenitor account and then have my spouse and I as members with our personal Apple IDs?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Or should I scratch the old Apple ID entirely and use my personal Apple ID as a starter?
Casey:
What happens to main app purchases?
Casey:
I assume the three of you are all enjoying family sharing, so I am not.
Casey:
So the way we've done this, I think I've talked about it in the past, but the way we've done this is the thing that most people used to do is that...
Casey:
Erin uses my Apple ID just for the purposes of the App Store, but she has her own Apple ID for literally everything else.
Casey:
And then my Apple ID is my iMessage, which is my everything, my iCloud ID, and it's also my App Store ID.
Casey:
And it's everything to me, and it's only the App Store to Erin.
Casey:
And I know that I need to move to family sharing.
Casey:
I know I do.
Casey:
I'm not debating it.
Casey:
But I'm so scared to mess with what is mostly working.
Casey:
So please, one of you, educate both Peter and me as to what the right approach is here.
John:
Let me put your mind at ease.
John:
First of all, I guess this is another thing I had forgotten, but it's just like finding out you don't use iCloud Photo Library.
John:
I didn't know you weren't using family sharing.
John:
Nope.
John:
So this scenario you described, Peter Yang is in the exact same situation I was, right?
John:
And what I chose to do was his first suggestion, which is to make the previously shared Apple ID the progenitor account.
John:
So fancy.
John:
And then have my spouse and I as members with it.
John:
Well, not quite the progenitor account.
John:
Like...
John:
it's i don't know what he means by progenitor i thought he meant like make that the the family owner like the apple's family sharing you can have like what is it called the family manager or the family owner or whatever um that's what i did we had a shared apple id that was used by everybody for app store purchases right and i made that the family owner manager thing whatever i started the family right and then you know and that apple id has always been quote unquote my apple id right
John:
and then i added my wife as a member of the family and added all the kids as members in the families and so on and so forth my wife already had her own apple id the kids had their own apple ids like so we didn't change anything we didn't make a new apple id and the suggestion of like scratching you know getting rid of the old apple id uh entirely and just making new ones don't do that because you can't transfer purchases you can't merge apple ids right
John:
I was going to say for better or for worse, but it's 100 percent for worse.
John:
Apple does not let you do things like merge Apple IDs or transfer purchases from one thing to the other in any reasonable way.
John:
Right.
John:
So you've been making purchases for years and years in that one shared Apple ID.
John:
Great.
John:
So is everybody.
John:
That Apple ID needs to be in your family.
John:
And I would suggest not making it an unowned random person Apple ID.
John:
You could do that.
John:
Make up a family member.
John:
I had this whole saga where I made up a family member of my thing for Apple reviews and it took me six months to delete it or whatever.
John:
But don't do that.
John:
Make a person own.
John:
Whoever wants to be the person who owns all those purchases you made over all the years, fine.
John:
Make them the family owner.
John:
Give them that thing.
John:
Make the family and then just shove everyone else in it.
John:
And that's all there is to it.
John:
Like it's only upside by putting people in a family.
John:
As long as you don't try to merge Apple IDs or delete Apple IDs and make all new Apple IDs, which will end in disaster and just keep the Apple IDs you have and put them in a family together.
John:
Now, suddenly all of every single member of that family has access to all the app purchased and
John:
by that shared Apple ID that everybody purchased in, right?
John:
You just have to know how to do it of like go through in the store, go through Apple ID, go through purchasing, get the thing that way.
John:
They can also do individual purchases if they want, or they can continue essentially allowing the one account
John:
to buy everything, and then the family members just get access to it.
John:
It used to be that in-app purchases were excluded from that in various ways, but now Apple at least has the ability for app vendors to make their in-app purchases also shareable through family sharing, and in my experience, a lot of them are doing that because there's not many downsides to doing it.
John:
So I wouldn't be afraid of family sharing.
John:
It was super painless.
John:
And I did it like on day one, you know, when there could have been many more hitches.
John:
And as long as you just take your existing Apple IDs and put them all in a family, you only get benefits and there's basically no downsides.
Casey:
Yeah, there's a Mac Power Users episode 522 from about a year ago that I listened to a long time ago thinking, oh, I'm going to do this now.
Casey:
And then I never actually did it.
Casey:
So, yeah, I need to do this at some point.
Casey:
Marco, I presume you're in a family and everything's hunky-dory.
Marco:
Yeah, we also jumped on family sharing pretty early.
Marco:
We never had the shared ID purchases thing.
Marco:
Tiff and I have always maintained separate Apple IDs, but we don't actually have a lot of
Marco:
overlap in our purchases so like there wasn't a lot of stuff we ever had to like buy twice between us uh it was you know minimal so we always kept separate apple ids it always made sense and then once family sharing was launched we joined it pretty early as well and it's been fine we've never really had any problems with it so i definitely can recommend the family sharing setup to anybody out there it's it works great i just looked up what apple calls it i am the organizer of our family
John:
I'm not sure that's better than manager or whatever, but yeah, I'm the organizer.
Casey:
Better than owner.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
My wife is listed as parent slash guardian, and then the other ones just have their ages listed.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Gennaro Diaz writes, I know Marco has described with detail the headphones and mics that he likes and dislikes, but I was wondering about his speakers and amp for computer sound.
Casey:
I would love to know the sound setup of John and Casey, too.
Marco:
So I have always found throughout my entire computing life, computer speakers are garbage.
Marco:
They are just garbage.
Marco:
I don't know what it is.
Marco:
Even when good speaker companies make computer speakers, they're terrible.
Marco:
I have never found a pair of computer speakers.
Marco:
that was anywhere near as good as even basic entry-level, small, regular speakers that happened to be on your desk.
Marco:
Maybe I'm just missing that part of the market that's good.
Marco:
Never found it.
Marco:
I've tried many at many different price points and prestige levels and different brands.
Marco:
Computer speakers, in my experience, are garbage.
Marco:
So my solution has always been every few years to try to get back in and try to buy some kind of self-powered pair of nice desktop speakers from somebody, realize they're garbage, return them and go back to regular speakers.
Marco:
My approach has always just been
Marco:
put regular speakers on your desk and have something to amplify them.
Marco:
Now, what that's been has changed over time.
Marco:
Like at first back in, um, like in my earliest, my earliest days, I had this little, like one of those little systems that a lot of people had in the nineties that was like, uh,
Marco:
it looked like a stack of components like a cassette deck and a radio and everything but it wasn't actually a stack of separate components it was just like a rectangle with dividers like in the plastic molding that looked like a stack but wasn't you know what i'm talking about yeah i have one of those yeah there's like integrated stereos that anyway speakers but the speakers were separate yes the speakers were separate and you know it's like i still have those speakers and they are holding up my current speakers like jeff foxworthy style
John:
Yeah, like they're literally stands because they're just the right height and just the right footprint, you know, to like just have a black in nondescript rectangle to hold up the speakers that are actually the right and left channel to my television.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So anyway, so, you know, I started out with one of those, you know, this pioneer thing, and it sounded way better than the computer speakers that existed in 1995.
Marco:
And so I started out just wiring one of those.
Marco:
That's when I first discovered the famous, you know, mini jack to left and right RCA connector Y adapter cable.
Marco:
Those have been around for quite some time and I first started using it back then.
John:
Did you have an amp then?
John:
Could you drive speakers that big off of your computer?
Marco:
well no back well back then i would just i ran my computer's output to the line in on my pioneer stereo thing oh so you were actually using that big stack of stereo crap yeah yeah like because it had a line in function so it's not space efficient no no not at all
Marco:
But anyway, so I eventually moved on to different things.
Marco:
For a while, I had this giant pair of... Sony had made a self-powered home theater speaker system that was a self-amplified left and right where the amp was just all shoved into the left speaker, but they were floor-standing speakers.
Marco:
So like a powered floor-standing speaker with a giant woofer on the bottom half of it.
Marco:
and uh i used that for a while like throughout most of college and everything and um eventually you know to downsize back to desk size stuff i i again i mean i tried so many different ones um that have been self-powered desktop speakers and they're all so bad even like i even just this past summer like i was setting up the new the new setup at the beach and i was trying i tried a couple different ones that came very highly recommended on like on amazon reviews and stuff and
Marco:
They were terrible.
Marco:
Like honestly, they were terrible.
Marco:
So what I have used with most success is regular stereo bookshelf speakers.
Marco:
Bookshelf speakers are, you know, they're a size category.
Marco:
They do fit on a desk.
Marco:
They're not made for this use.
Marco:
You can use them this way.
Marco:
They're not made usually to be listened to quite this close up.
Marco:
You can improve things slightly if you want to by tilting them towards you slightly.
Marco:
They call that towing it in, where you have them not pointing straight out, but pointing kind of diagonally into a triangle towards your ears.
Marco:
Certain desktop bookshelf speaker stands will have little angles so that they tilt up slightly, because also having bookshelf speakers on your desk typically makes them too low for ideal listening.
Marco:
So if you can have them point...
Marco:
a little bit more towards your ears, like up and in instead of straight out.
Marco:
That improves the listening physics of using bookshelf speakers this way.
Marco:
But again, using bookshelf speakers this way is I have found by far the best setup.
Marco:
And I have yet to find a pair of self-powered bookshelf speakers available
Marco:
that is worth its price at all.
Marco:
My first favorite pair of bookshelf speakers for this use was the Paradigm Atom series.
Marco:
They're like $300-ish for a pair, and you need an amp.
Marco:
And I'll get to that in a second.
Marco:
So that was my first pair.
Marco:
Paradigm also makes a self-powered one
Marco:
And I tried it.
Marco:
I tried that one first and it sounds way worse than the power one or than the passive one.
Marco:
I don't know why.
Marco:
I don't know if they just use different components or what, like for whatever reason, it sounds way worse.
Marco:
Um, I also have tried, uh, so my, my current favorite for a while, the, the bookshelf speaker world was really obsessed with this, with this entrance from a KEF called the LS 50 and,
Marco:
And I have never seen an LS50 in person.
Marco:
They didn't pass muster visually for my use.
Marco:
And they're also... They're very deep.
Marco:
Be careful if you look in their dimensions.
Marco:
But KEF made a desktop version of something that looks a lot like the LS50.
Marco:
I think it's the LSX, LS10.
Marco:
And I tried those this summer.
Marco:
And they are...
Marco:
Not good, in my opinion.
Marco:
Or at least they weren't good for me.
Marco:
But they also make a version called the Q150 that is very similar in many ways to the LS50, but a little bit more traditional styling and cheaper.
Marco:
And so on my desk right now is a pair of KEF Q150s.
Marco:
For the aforementioned terrible TV upstairs setup, I got the Q350s, which is very similar to the 150s, but a slightly larger driver, basically.
Marco:
And these speakers are incredible.
Marco:
There's a reason why speaker nerds have been talking about the KEF LS50 for so long and so effusively.
Marco:
I've never heard speakers that sound this good in especially the mid-range.
Marco:
I am a self-professed mid-range snob, as you all know.
Marco:
When you put on, like...
Marco:
Apple has this, on Apple Music they have this acoustic singer-songwriter channel or something like that.
Marco:
You put that on, it is incredible to hear a vocalist and a guitar.
Marco:
That's all you need.
Marco:
Put that, or a person singing and playing piano, put that on these speakers and it sounds incredible.
Marco:
This line of speakers, like the KEF, this new line that is based on this new driver technology they have, it has amazing mid-range.
Marco:
And for me, that's fantastic.
Marco:
Even the 350s upstairs, they even have enough bass that I decided not to get a subwoofer.
Marco:
I was allowed to get a subwoofer.
Marco:
I had it allocated in the political landscape of our household and declined to get it because I didn't need it because they even have good enough bass out of the 350s.
Marco:
The 150s that I have on my desk aren't great for bass, and so I actually do have a separate subwoofer.
Marco:
um and i i forget what i let me see i'll have to put in the show notes it's some kind of like white you know amazon you know recommended thing um it's kind of like mid-range smallish subwoofer um and for for the q150s i do recommend that and it also makes good footrest that's my primary goal for when i when i was when i decided to get a subwoofer for my desk my primary goal was let me get one that is a good footrest shape first because i don't care about like the the particular quality of the subwoofer um
Marco:
But anyway, and then that's all driven by... I have this SMSL... Some kind of... I'll put it in the show notes.
Marco:
Some kind of inexpensive SMSL amp.
Marco:
There's this whole category of... They used to be called Class D or Class T amps that are basically like $50 to $100...
Marco:
desktop speaker amps that can usually push about 50 watts per channel, which is plenty for this kind of use.
Marco:
If you're just going to have a pair of bookshelf speakers on a desk, that's the way to go because it's really small.
Marco:
I have mine Velcroed to the bottom of my desk so I don't even see it.
Marco:
I control the volume separately via my headphone amp setup, and that's what drives them.
Marco:
And the combination of a $50-ish class D amp and a pair of regular passive bookshelf speakers sounds so much better than any pair of self-powered computer speakers I've ever found.
Marco:
So that's what I use.
Marco:
Q150s, some kind of subwoofer, I'll put it in the show notes.
Marco:
And this SMSL amp that has, I had to get a slightly higher tier of the SMSL to have a subwoofer output.
Marco:
But I've also used the now famous SA50, I think it's called.
Marco:
They're like entry level model.
Marco:
It's about 50 bucks.
Marco:
I've used that one before.
Marco:
And that's also great.
Marco:
If you're not going to have a subwoofer, that one's totally fine.
Marco:
So that's it.
Marco:
And again, I do not, I really don't have anything good to say about any like active self-powered computer speakers I've ever bought or heard.
Marco:
But bookshelf speakers from regular speaker makers are great.
Marco:
They have lots of good ones.
Marco:
My favorite now is the KEF series.
Marco:
But that's the way to go if you want good sound quality.
Marco:
It's not small.
Marco:
It's not simple.
Marco:
But that's the way to go.
John:
John?
John:
I should have looked up the model number of my crappy computer speakers.
John:
So I'm using computer speakers.
John:
I've always used computer speakers, and most of the time I leave them turned off, which tells you how much audio I ever have coming out of my computer.
John:
It's basically like I have my computer in silent mode because they're plugged in and selected as the output, but they're not on.
John:
So no noise comes out of me.
John:
I mean, again, the AirPods, I stand in front of my computer, I pair them, like that's where I can get sound.
John:
When, and the rare occasions when I want to hear sound, like I'm watching a YouTube video, I turn them on just for that.
John:
And that gives you the level of the, you know, the type of, what kind of audio am I listening to?
John:
I'm watching a YouTube video.
John:
Like I'm not watching movies and not watching anything like that.
John:
I think my speakers are, they're from Creative, the Sound Blaster company.
John:
I think they are the Gigaworks T40 series.
John:
They have, each speaker has three drivers, two, you know, medium-sized ones and one tiny little tweedery thing.
John:
I pick them mostly based on their footprint.
John:
uh they have they're very small for like those speakers you have marco they are huge they're huge in every dimension but yes the depth is massive right so i wanted something that was small uh didn't take up a lot of room on the desk and these have way better sound quality than my previous crappy computer speakers that had single drivers
John:
um and they have controls on the front of them for volume and stuff although i don't use those controls i just use the computer controls right they also have headphone jack on them which at various times depending on where the headphone jack has been on my various tower computers from the g3 to the the first cheese grater to this one it sometimes actually is convenient to plug my headphone directly into the front facing headphone jack on my computer speaker uh if i have a wired headphone but i really don't use it that much
John:
I used to have a subwoofer attached to a different pair of computer speakers.
John:
These things have no bass whatsoever.
John:
My PlayStation speakers, I am a big fan of... I have no idea what it is.
John:
It's like some Logitech setup where they give you these two, again, very small footprint speakers with the power button and the volume button right on them front-facing.
John:
And then a very big subwoofer underneath.
John:
Because for games, I really like the subwoofer for explosions and gunfire.
John:
I'm not listening to music, and it's not accurate or realistic in any way, but the subwoofer right at your feet really gives a good kick.
John:
I don't rest my feet on it.
John:
Um, on the computer, since I rarely use the speakers at all, I don't, I no longer have a subwoofer underneath there at all.
John:
And I don't have an amp.
John:
They just connect directly to the computer.
John:
When I had a subwoofer, the subwoofer itself was doing the amplification and the, you know, and accepting the signal from the computer.
John:
And then it would feed the two speakers.
John:
There's really not a lot of, I'm with Marco in that if you're looking for like a good 2.1 system for your computer, there's really not a lot of good options until you go and get your own amp.
John:
Because any of the self-powered ones,
John:
they're just they're just not very good if you care about audio quality and further like the logitech ones that i have on my playstation the cords are just like it's like a scuzzy cable coming out of the back of the the thing like it's such a tiny little speaker and i swear it's the thickest cord in my entire house there's another reason i love the ones that speakers that i have on my mac pro because they just have a tiny little wire coming from it looks like a speaker wire it's not
John:
because they're they're self-powered and it's actually you know there's a power brick somewhere that's powering these and the power is coming to the speakers through those little cables but they're very small very thin cables that aren't that are easy to route and easy to put wherever i want them to go yeah the logic ones just have i mean if not a scuzzy cable then at least like a monitor cable from a crt it's super thick and hard to manage and
John:
And only to one of them because, you know, the subwoofer goes up to the one speaker that has the power button with the SCSI cable.
John:
And then from the SCSI cable speaker to the other one goes a little skinny cable.
John:
So I do really like those speakers.
John:
I actually bought another set of them for my son's PlayStation.
John:
And I will probably buy another set if I can, if they ever start.
John:
If they stop making them, I'm going to be sad because I love how small they are and they have really good sound.
Casey:
Another thing to stockpile?
John:
Yeah, well, I've already got two of them.
John:
The problem is they have, like the damn cheese grater, they have a fatal flaw, which is that the contacts on the power button and the volume knob get like, I don't know, dirty or gross or like eventually you get to the point where when you turn the volume, you hear that like static sound.
John:
And the power button is a push in and it sticks in and then click again and it comes out like a clicky pen.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Right.
John:
That eventually when you click in and click out, you hear a bunch of static come through the speaker or whatever.
John:
And I've been resuscitating them with electrical contact cleaner, which fixes the problem for like two years, but then it comes back.
John:
So yet another product with a fatal flaw, but that I really like for, for the purposes of playing my, you know, playing destiny on my gaming monitor.
Marco:
See, and this is yet another reason why I hate computer speakers.
Marco:
It's similar to the iMac problem, where you're combining multiple roles into something, and if any of those things break, the whole thing is ruined.
Marco:
Whereas if you have regular passive speakers, you can use whatever cables you want.
Marco:
This is one area where I do make my own cables, because I buy a spool of cheap speaker cable.
Marco:
I think it's Amazon Basics brand.
Marco:
A spool speaker cable costs nothing.
Marco:
That'll last you forever.
Marco:
I have a basic wire cutter thing that can strip the insulation in a nice clean way and everything.
Marco:
So I use one of those.
Marco:
Whenever I rewire my desk and I need a different length of speaker cable, I just cut a new one.
Marco:
and it's great you know you can wiring speaker cables way easier than network cable because it's really hard to screw it up like it's very low low intensity it's very low precision you know you can use lamp cord and it doesn't matter so it's you know you can make whatever you want and
Marco:
A passive speaker, in computer equipment terms, effectively never die.
Marco:
You'd have to really try hard to kill a passive speaker.
Marco:
They basically last forever.
Marco:
Eventually you'll have to replace the surround if it rots out after 30 years, but they effectively last forever.
Marco:
And so the cheap electronics that you might find in an amp or volume control, yeah, those might have problems over time.
Marco:
So you can replace only that after 10 years when it breaks.
Marco:
If my little SMSL amp breaks...
Marco:
Spend another $75, get a new one in 10 years?
Marco:
Fine.
Marco:
Keep my nice speakers.
Marco:
When you have separate components here, you gain so much more durability, flexibility, customizability.
Marco:
The thing also is computer speakers that have built-in amplification and everything...
Marco:
aren't even cheap you're not saving anything really by not having a separate component system you're you might be saving one small box somewhere like that's that's all you're really saving by going at that route it's not worth it for most people it really isn't like if you if you can have a separate setup i highly recommend it because it's just better in every possible way
Casey:
So my answer is extremely complicated.
Casey:
I, for my computer, use the onboard speakers on the iMac Pro.
Casey:
I think they're fine.
Casey:
For the kind of music listening that I'm doing when I'm working, I don't need incredible audio fidelity.
Casey:
And if I really am listening to something and want that fidelity, then I'll plug in.
Casey:
either my bare dynamic headphones or a set of Ultimate Ears canal phones that I have.
Casey:
But that happens almost never.
Casey:
The iMac Pro speakers are surprisingly good.
Casey:
And it's funny because my dad had a set of like small bookshelf speakers that were Bluetooth-powered or Bluetooth, not powered, but Bluetooth-enabled.
Casey:
And he gave them to me because he was just going to throw them away.
Casey:
And I had them connected to my iMac Pro for like a day.
Casey:
And I realized that the iMac Pro actually sounds better.
Casey:
So I just...
Casey:
gave them to my brother-in-law and said, here, you can have these because I don't need them.
Casey:
Obviously, that's not a very useful recommendation in this context.
Casey:
But for me, I've actually been very surprised at how good the iMac Pro sounds, given that it's a computer.
Casey:
I mean, I would not say that it is a good speaker system.
Casey:
But again, for the kinds of listening that I'm doing, it's more than sufficient for me.
Marco:
Honestly, that's not that far off.
Marco:
In one of my adventures last year, I brought the iMac Pro to a beach rental for a weekend.
Marco:
I did a work retreat weekend last fall, and I brought my iMac Pro.
Marco:
I set it up on a coffee table in this rental house.
Marco:
And I used its built-in speakers and played Phish the whole time, the whole weekend.
Marco:
It was me in an empty house playing Phish from my iMac built-in speakers.
Marco:
And I was surprised how decent they were.
Marco:
I wouldn't call them good in absolute terms, but you're right.
Marco:
For built-in speakers on a thin computer, they are quite good for what they are.
Marco:
And for many people, that's fine.
Marco:
Not for me, obviously, but in the context of I'm just going to use the built-in ones for occasional use, the iMac Pro speakers are surprisingly good.
Casey:
Gage Benny writes, what do you all use to track your finances, investments, budgets, and so on?
Casey:
For me, I use a prior sponsor, Banktivity.
Casey:
It works well for my uses.
Casey:
Basically, I only use it as kind of a glorified spreadsheet.
Casey:
I like to keep track of where we're spending what money, and so I have a good view as to how much money we have in a more real-time sense.
Casey:
Obviously, I could use my bank's website to do 80% of this, but I don't know.
Casey:
It's a habit I've had for 20 years, and I'm probably going to keep going with it.
Casey:
But yeah, I like Banktivity, and they have iOS apps, which actually just recently they got revamped and are working even better than before.
Casey:
They have desktop apps.
Casey:
I don't know if they have a PC version, but certainly on all Apple platforms, they're there.
Casey:
I like it a lot.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Marco, what do you use?
Marco:
I don't have a good answer.
Marco:
I have a couple of spreadsheets.
Marco:
I just did my annual profit and loss for my business accounts for my taxes for 2020.
Marco:
I have a PHP script.
Marco:
That I run against like, I like, I export the transactions for the year from my bank website into like QFX format.
Marco:
And I run this, this script I wrote a few years back to automatically classify everything and generate like a PNL that I can give the accountant to do the rest of the taxes.
Marco:
But I have like a monthly spreadsheet for, you know, monthly stuff.
Marco:
But this is, I don't have a good solution.
Marco:
I mean, part of the problem is that I've been self-employed for 10 years and,
Marco:
And that entire time I've had just really spiky income, you know, self-employment.
Marco:
Like when you're, when you have apps in the app store, it's hard to know.
Marco:
It's hard to, it's hard to have like a smooth, predictable income.
Marco:
It goes up and down like crazy.
Marco:
And so it's, it's hard for me to have a very organized system when what's happening is, is disorganized.
Marco:
If that makes sense.
Casey:
John.
John:
Back in the day when I first had finances at all, I used Quicken, which is an abomination on the Mac.
John:
But it was a very common program.
John:
Everybody understood it, and I got to know it.
John:
But since we've been married, my wife has essentially done all the finances.
John:
So I was like, oh, we should use Quicken.
John:
And, you know, I showed her how to use it enough to be able to get by.
John:
But in general, she wanted to be in charge of the thing, but she did not like Quicken.
John:
So for years and years, she would use Quicken but hate it.
John:
I liked it because after she used Quicken to do finances, I could go into Quicken and open it up and learn about what's going on with the money, where it all is and how much it is and profits and loss and all that type of stuff.
John:
Like I had a bunch of saved graphs and charts and it was, you know –
John:
Again, a terrible Mac program, not a good Mac citizen at all, but I knew how to use it and it did all the things, but she hated doing it and she was the one who was doing it.
John:
I offered to take over the finances, but she didn't want that to happen.
John:
So she still does all the finances and eventually she phased out Quicken.
John:
She said, I'm done with Quicken, especially with the whole like...
John:
quick in 2007 was like the latest version for a long time and then quick it wasn't supported and then they have this new web version that didn't do all the same things and quick became an even more of a mess so it's like that's it we're off quick and so we stopped using quick and many years ago and my wife switched to a program that i always call yab nab but that's not actually what it's called oh yes yes yes
John:
The actual, it's actually all caps Y-N-A-B, which I suppose is pronounced YNAB or something like that.
John:
But because it was such a mouthful when you started using it, I'm like, okay, well, you can use YabNab.
John:
It used to be a native Mac app that was actually better than Quicken in terms of being a good Mac citizen.
John:
Eventually, they too phased out their native Mac app and went to this web app.
John:
technology based thing but she likes it and the web thing actually looks much like the native mac one in the spirit of electron apps or whatever lots of the times if your if your ui is sufficiently on mac like you can replace it with web technologies and it doesn't actually seem that different um
John:
um because she loves she loves to have a budget right and i never used any of the budgeting features in quick and i just wanted to know like like how are we doing and what does the income look like and we categorize all the purchases you can see how much are we spending on food and how much you're spending on gas and rent you know like all the stuff that you would do but she wants to have a budget as in here's how much i've allocated for food for utilities for mortgage you know what i mean like
John:
And then she loves making budgets.
John:
Like, oh, here's the vacation budget, and here's how we're going to save money for our Disney vacation, and here's John's computer budget.
John:
Anyway, so she does it all, and she uses YabNab, which is not pronounced YabNab.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Yeah, I know a lot of people who use You Need a Budget, YNAB.
Casey:
I have never tried it, but it seems like pretty much everyone who has swears by it.
Casey:
It's like freaking Peloton or freaking Tesla.
John:
As far as I can tell, it's not a cult.
John:
It's just a program.
John:
I don't particularly like how it handles things, but it does what she wants it to do.
John:
So there you go.
Casey:
My name is T in the chat.
Casey:
It says, much like Casey and Beachbody, YNAB is a good budgeting application, but it also has a cult associated with it, which you can just ignore and get the benefit from the app.
Casey:
There you go.
John:
It's not an MLM, though, is it?
John:
I mean, it's not even a subscription app, I don't think.
John:
I think it's like a one-time purchase.
John:
Let me see.
John:
What is it?
John:
Is it a subscription?
Casey:
If you were doing the finances, you would know.
John:
That's right.
John:
Oh, it is a subscription.
John:
Annual plan.
John:
$84 a year.
Marco:
Does it classify itself as a safe expense in its thing to make you not look at it too much?
John:
I mean, you have to budget for it somewhere.
John:
You need a budget.
John:
We've got like 900 budgets.
John:
We've got too many budgets.
John:
It automatically classifies itself as essentials.
John:
Right.
John:
It's like Quicken in that it's not just like budget or whatever.
John:
You can put everything in there.
John:
You can put your 401ks in there and tracking your investments or whatever.
John:
I don't think it has all the integrations that Quicken did with tracking stock prices and all that crap or whatever, but...
John:
It seems fine.
Casey:
It's a glowing endorsement.
Casey:
It seems fine.
Casey:
John Syracuse.
John:
But it's much more opaque to me because I don't know how to use it.
John:
So I can't dive in there and get all the old reports I used to have in Quicken.
John:
I have no idea how to get them out of YabNap.
John:
So I'm kind of in the dark now.
John:
I'm assuming I'm not broke.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, ExpressVPN, Hover, and Flatfile.
Marco:
And thank you to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join them and become one of them by going to atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
Thanks, everybody, and we'll talk to you next week.
John:
Now the show is over They didn't even mean to begin Cause it was accidental Oh, it was accidental John didn't do any research Marco and Casey wouldn't let him Cause it was accidental Oh, it was accidental And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental, they didn't mean
Marco:
Speaking of display advancements, I finally remembered where I ranted about this.
John:
It must have been on Rectifs, but Rectifs is so delayed from when it comes out that you'll hear that episode in like two weeks.
John:
But anyway, the big thing at CES this year,
John:
for all the televisions aside from the panel stuff is, you know, directly in line with my 2013 blog post, which was entitled CES worst products through software.
John:
Um, this year it's all, I mean, you can practically guess it AI image processing, uh,
John:
Isn't that what you want on your TV?
John:
Every single manufacturer is touting some kind... And they all decided they're going to say AI and not ML, because I guess ML is too much of a tech term.
John:
AI image processing, which is exactly what it sounds like.
John:
They have their stupid processors burning cycles to figure out, are you watching an action movie?
John:
Are you watching sports?
John:
And then they modify the picture on the screen, specific elements in the screen to look better.
John:
And they even modify the sound as well.
John:
So if they can...
John:
find the edges of the buildings in a sky shot, and they've classified your thing as a movie, and you're showing pictures of buildings, and they're going to detect that it's buildings, because they train their stupid machine learning thing to identify buildings, and they're going to sharpen just the edges of the buildings, or they're going to find a human face, and they're going to smooth the face over, and it's like, stop screwing with the picture, that is the last thing I want any television to ever do, is to literally alter the picture, like, based on a bunch of AI rules, not even like on a setting that you can, so...
John:
you know basically it's just if you get one of these new tvs it's just one more thing you have to turn off all that motion stuff you have to turn off turn off all the ai processing turn off all the reality creation or whatever the hell they're gonna call it you gotta turn that crap off but it amazes me that they're willing because i know we have the tech to do this but like
John:
man i mean i guess it's it seems so ridiculous but if i think about it that's what the iphone cameras do they find faces they know what they're looking at they detect what kind of like they are messing with your picture not just as a giant grid of pixels but with an understanding of elements in the picture some understanding of elements in the picture at the very least understandings of human faces which has been around for a while but they're you know their processing takes that stuff into account but to do it in real time on a television set
John:
i don't want that to happen ever the sound thing was driving me nuts is like they can localize sound so it sounds like it's coming from the person's face because their their speakers shake the screens you know the the speakers that are behind the screens and so they can figure out who the speaker is and make the sound come out of where their face is or make if you're watching sports they can give the sound more like stadium reverb it's like please no please stop stop destroying the signal that i'm pumping into the back of you with an hdmi cable would you just show it the way it's coming out of the cable
John:
it's maddening can't stop the signal but you can alter the crap out of it yeah apparently and and you know these systems are not going to work well because these companies are not apple right it's just going to be like i i pity the poor tester it's going to be like is this tv broken or is the stupid ai image processing just you know like a dog with a bone and it thinks that mountain is someone's face and it's softening it because it doesn't want to show wrinkles