One of My Lesser TiVos
Marco:
Well, I sound like this now.
Casey:
That's a thing.
Marco:
Got COVID again.
Marco:
Yay, that's fun.
Marco:
You know, and I thought I had managed to escape it.
Marco:
So the rest of my family got it a few weeks ago.
Marco:
I'm like super boosted.
Marco:
I've had four vaccinations total.
Marco:
Last one was in May, so pretty recent.
Marco:
But of course, you know, the new variants are not as well protected by the vaccines as the
Marco:
As the original variants were.
Marco:
So anyway, my whole family got it.
Marco:
And I thought I had escaped.
Marco:
Like as soon as they as soon as they got it, we all started like, you know, staying far apart from each other.
Marco:
We would like eat, you know, and our house here is very breezy.
Marco:
So we keep all the windows open, eat all the meals outside with like opposite ends of the long table, like Dr. Evil's lair, you know, like Superman.
Marco:
super long you know and like we you know we were sleeping in separate rooms like everything just just to hope that you know like like adam had it for like an hour tiff had it for like you know three or four days and i was we're like all right maybe i i think i dodged it and sure enough i did dodge it from them you know if you look at the timing there's pretty much no way i got it from that um but
Marco:
whatever it's it's going around the island and there were a lot of like big community events all of which were outdoors in the last weekend but you know at some point i got unlucky and here we are so i dodged it when it was in my house but was not able to dodge it for the following weeks afterwards
John:
I blame the test drives.
Marco:
No, even that was too long ago.
John:
No, it's like a three-day incubation.
John:
How long ago were the test drives?
Marco:
No, it would have had to be this past weekend.
Marco:
You know, over the last couple of days, I had a bit of a scratchy throat.
Marco:
And I thought, oh, no.
Marco:
But I had no other symptoms.
Marco:
It is, there's like a lot of flowers, you know, blowing around outside.
Marco:
But I thought maybe, maybe it's allergies.
Marco:
And I kept taking tests every morning because I was scared I might have it.
Marco:
and negative negative negative so i thought great okay well hey this is weird uh but oh well let's let's keep hoping that it's just allergies and a weird august timeline which never happens um but okay you know denial is very powerful uh and so sure enough uh this morning i take one more test because my throat's still scratchy and my voice is going and it turned positive
Marco:
So I would say I reiterate my statement that if anybody out there is getting a weird sniffly cold this summer, you know, summer is not typically cold season.
Marco:
And if you have a weird sniffly cold this summer or a scratchy throat, you know, odds are it's probably this.
Marco:
Even if you test negative once or twice, like it's probably this.
Casey:
So we'll all see whether or not the, what is it, speak or say, what's the command line thing to have the computer talk.
Casey:
We'll see if we end up going back to that like we did a few years ago.
Casey:
Hopefully not, but we shall see.
Casey:
But if the episode is a little bit shorter, it's because we have sympathy for Marco's destroyed vocal cords.
Casey:
And that would be why.
Marco:
I mean, you guys could just talk about like, you know, TVs and, you know, synologies and stuff.
Marco:
And I don't have much to say there.
Casey:
Spoiler alert.
Casey:
We're getting there.
Casey:
We're getting there.
Casey:
Hey, John, where do you boogie board and surf and whatnot if you're down under in Australia?
John:
It's kind of weird that, you know, we mentioned stuff about the lifeguards and the flags they put on the beach and where you're allowed to swim and where you're allowed to use boogie boards in the context of my Long Island vacation.
John:
And like 90 something percent of the feedback was from Australians.
John:
I don't know why.
John:
I mean, they have beaches everywhere.
John:
We don't have a particularly big listenership in Australia, but everybody from Australia wanted us to know how it works down there.
John:
So here's Ross Poulton with one bit of follow-up on that.
John:
He says, I used to be a lifeguard here in Australia.
John:
Boards are not permitted, quote-unquote, between the flags, i.e.
John:
in the safe swimming area, as they're often dangerous to other swimmers.
John:
You wouldn't believe how many people lose control of them.
John:
So that was the predominant
John:
suggestion from the Australians, is basically people get hit with boards, right?
John:
So you don't let surfers be where the swimmers are, you don't let boogie bars be where the swimmers are, because both of those things can bonk people in the head, and that's dangerous.
John:
Some of the Australians said that boogie boards are allowed, like if you just use them like little kids in the surf, you know, just after the waves have crashed, just little kids tooling around on them on Long Island, it's no boogie boards anywhere, period.
John:
They don't have this nuance of like, oh, it's okay if you're just in the edge of the surf, but not bad when you're out farther.
Marco:
I mean, Long Islanders are not known for their appreciation of nuance.
Marco:
They're very blunt people.
John:
Lifeguards would have to be making a judgment call of like, is that boogie board too far out or too far?
John:
And it would just be constant whistling and yelling at people to bring their boogie boards in.
John:
So it can make some sense.
John:
The other thing is the Australians were telling us that the flag placement, that what they would do is they would, the lifeguards in Australia would put the flags where the safest area to swim was.
John:
Even this follow-up says the safe swimming area.
John:
And, you know, like the,
John:
lifeguards would understand the various rip currents and everything and know like, oh, today, this is the safe place to swim.
John:
And today, right now, this is the safe place to swim.
John:
In my experience on Long Island, both in my childhood and in my adult life going on vacation, that's not, mostly not how it works on Long Island beaches I go to.
John:
The flags are basically placed like where, you know, the entrance to the beach, the flags are centered on the entrance to the beach.
John:
They will close it and say you can't swim if there's a riptide.
John:
Or, you know, or I'll advise against you depending on the conditions.
John:
They, you know, so the lifeguards are performing that function, but it's not as if they will take the flags and move 300 yards, move the flags 300 yards down the beach because of the rip current.
John:
No, they won't because the, the lifeguard chairs, they, again, they could pick up and move them, but in practice they don't because there's the big pile of sand in front of them that they would have to re-dig and they don't want to carry the things.
John:
It's different on different beaches.
John:
Like some, some beaches have multiple fields.
John:
They have their own parking lots, their own sets of chairs.
John:
And I think that's probably different.
John:
But for the smaller south shore of beaches that I'm going to on the east end of Long Island, they don't move the flags.
John:
They just close and keep it open.
John:
I'm not sure the way it is on where you are, Marco.
John:
Do they ever move the flags or do they just the flags are just fixed and it's yes, no, you can go in the water?
Marco:
They move the flags daily, but they always are the same center point.
Marco:
So the width of the space between the flags changes with conditions.
Marco:
So if it's a green flag day where the water is calm, they'll have them pretty far spaced out.
Marco:
If it's a yellow or red flag day, they'll scoot them in and make a narrower area.
Marco:
So I think it's less about where in particular the riptide might be, if they can tell that somehow, and more about just how wide of an area do we want to be covering.
Marco:
And that's based on conditions.
John:
It's based on staffing as well.
John:
So there's usually multiple lifeguard stands, but sometimes they don't have the staff for all of them.
John:
So the ones that aren't occupied will be pushed over or just unoccupied.
John:
And they will narrow the flags based on staffing because if they don't have enough lifeguards to populate all the little lifeguard chairs, they can't watch those parts.
John:
And so they will definitely move the flags in and out like that.
John:
But they'll never do like, oh, there's the rip current over here.
John:
We're going to go half a mile down the beach where there's no rip current.
John:
I've never seen that done, at least on the smaller beaches that I'm going to.
John:
So there you go.
John:
All you want to know about beaches and boogie boards and rip currents and flags.
Casey:
So the follow-up I've been waiting for is, have you tried channels, and is this the moment in which you tell me how right I am?
John:
So I listened back to last week's episode, and it's still not entirely clear to me what your pitch is.
John:
So could you just briefly re-summarize what your pitch to me is on this topic?
Casey:
So I think if you're looking to get rid of your TiVo, which I know you're actually not, but in this hypothetical world, which I know is your favorite thing,
Casey:
If you're looking to get rid of the TiVo, I would argue that Channels is a, maybe not, I was going to say better, that's probably a bit dramatic or a bit over the top, given how much I know you're obsessed with your TiVo, but it is, quote unquote, a better TiVo than TiVo, insofar as it can have effectively infinite storage, because you can just have it store things onto your Synology.
Casey:
It's very responsive, because it's running on a proper computer, hypothetically, unless you put it on something really underpowered.
Casey:
And you can watch your stuff anywhere.
Casey:
Now, maybe that's true of TiVo, I'm not sure, but certainly it's true of channels.
Casey:
So you can be somewhere else and you can watch live TV, you can watch your recordings, whatever you want to do.
Casey:
And what's nice about channels is it's really, you are better set up for channels even than I am because I don't have a cable card in the house.
Casey:
You do connect it to your TiVo.
Casey:
And I know that it would be a big ask to take your beloved TiVo and neuter it for a little while.
Casey:
But it is possible for you to just get a new box, which is still being produced,
Casey:
Whether or not it's because they found chips, who knows.
Casey:
But there are boxes still being made or at least still available for sale.
Casey:
And you could buy one of those $150 boxes.
Casey:
You could stick it on your network, put your cable card in it, connect it to coax.
Casey:
And you can have what is arguably the best possible setup for channels, which is to say you're pulling in almost every Fios TV channel that you have access to.
Casey:
I think some of them are DRM encumbered and channels can't get to them, but almost all of them are not.
Casey:
So you can pull in all of your Fios TV and you can pull in, I think you can pull in Hulu.
Casey:
I know you can pull in TV everywhere, which among other things, YouTube TV supports, Fios supports it as well.
Casey:
And you can get all these things.
Casey:
You can aggregate them all into one spot.
Casey:
Plus if you want to, if you have a robust TV library, you can do fun things like make a, you know, 24 seven letter candy channel or a 24 seven, I don't know, studio Ghibli channel or whatever the case you might want.
Casey:
And so one way, sorry, I've never seen any of them.
Casey:
So what do I know?
Marco:
So anyways, I watched the first 15 minutes of all of them.
Casey:
All right, Merlin.
Marco:
You're both giving me ideas here.
Marco:
No spoilers.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
I know we are.
Casey:
I know we are.
Casey:
So anyway, so I think it could fit your needs pretty well.
Casey:
And the only downside to it as compared to TiVo is that it, like TiVo, is largely reliant on a dead technology in order to work insofar as it relies on cable card.
Casey:
Now, we could get into an argument whether or not the cable card box, the HD Home Run thing, was HD Home Run Prime.
Casey:
We can make an argument or get into an argument whether or not the HD Home Run has any shelf life or longevity.
Casey:
But we can all agree that cable card does not.
Casey:
So there will come a time that cable card is just not supported.
Casey:
But that'll kill your TiVo just as much as it'll kill channels.
Casey:
I just think it's one of those things where I feel like it's really something I would like you to try, especially because the guide and the user interface is really, really well done.
Casey:
And what's nice about channels is it does pretty well in ways that Swift aims to but does not with progressive disclosure.
Casey:
So it can be fairly straightforward.
Casey:
It's still fiddly, you know, for sure.
Casey:
It's a lot more fiddly than a TiVo.
Casey:
But at first glance, it can be fairly straightforward.
Casey:
And then as you wish, you can dig deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper and just tweak it to your heart's content.
Casey:
Now, you may not have interest in that, which is totally fine, but that's something you could do.
Casey:
So I just it feels like something I want you to try.
Casey:
And if you told me, hey, I gave it an honest shake and it's not for me.
Casey:
That's fine.
Casey:
Like Marco did with the Wrangler.
Casey:
Like, that's fine.
Casey:
But I feel like it's something you should give it at least give it a shot.
John:
You were much more emphatic last week that you needed me to get rid of my TiVos because they were bad.
John:
It's not just hypothetical if you were getting rid of your TiVos.
John:
It was more like you have to get rid of your TiVos because they're bad.
Casey:
Well, because they're dead.
Casey:
They're dead technology walking.
Casey:
They are absolutely dead technology walking.
Casey:
I can't believe anything works in those TiVos.
John:
But are they more dead than the HD Home Run Prime that they just found their chips for?
Casey:
Well, and that's a fair question.
Casey:
And
John:
I feel like they are.
John:
And that's what I kept saying last week.
John:
You can buy a brand new TiVo right now.
John:
They sell multiple models.
Casey:
I personally think that they are more dead because I just don't see how TiVo has any longevity.
Casey:
I really don't.
Casey:
Whereas you always find nerds that are interested in doing nerdy things, which I guess maybe that applies to TiVo too now that I say that out loud.
Casey:
But
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I personally think that it is silly for you to continue to harp on TiVo as the one true savior of television when I think there are other options that may work better.
Casey:
But I'll be the first to tell you there are some caveats.
Casey:
So as an example, one of the caveats to channels is that TV Everywhere, which is what channels uses to kind of, I don't know if scrape is the right word, record, I guess, but to get access to traditional terrestrial television, that is limited at 720p.
Casey:
And that's not channels as well.
Casey:
No, it's not.
Casey:
No, it's not.
John:
oh wait is it not i thought it was it is not it's not 11 to 720 all right so let me let me tell you uh well let's let me start by saying that your pitch is remains unconvincing because i already own divos and i'm not looking to get rid of them well that's fair that's fair and but i think you're also losing sight of and i realized i didn't uh like you'd have to rewind two episodes to figure this out like what is my goal in messing with stuff like why am i even looking at this do you remember the origin of like why i'm looking at this stuff at all
John:
It's because I got a fancy new TV and my fancy new TV is 4K and HDR.
John:
That's why I started down the road of saying, let me reconsider all the things that are giving input to my television to make sure I'm getting the highest quality because, you know, now my television can display better.
John:
So now when I just see, you know, standard definition 1080, which used to be the limit of my previous television, now I feel like, oh, if I can get that content...
John:
better in a better format in 4k and hdr and both uh that would be good right and television is a big source of a lot of the stuff that i get so i was that's why i was looking into for example youtube tv because people had told me before i got my new television that hey youtube tv has some like regular channels that are in 4k or hdr or both so check that out and that's why i looked into that and the guide was crappy and i was like oh this is bad and that's kind of how we got into channels because the people said oh well yeah the youtube tv is
John:
Interface and apps aren't great, but if you use channels, you can use the channels UI to get a YouTube TV And you know as you described through the TV everywhere interface, so that's why I started going into channels, right but Everything you just said about channels is it that's like what I said last week.
John:
It's like TiVo But instead of it being an all-in-one box, it's distributed into pieces and
John:
And that's more fiddly, but it's also more flexible because then you can decide for this piece, I'm going to use this.
John:
For that piece, I'm going to use that.
John:
It's componentized, right?
John:
And to answer your question about watching TiVo stuff elsewhere, yes, you can.
John:
You can watch TiVo stuff.
John:
They've had that feature for years, right?
John:
So that's not, you know, so channels is really just a different TiVo with a different set of trade-offs.
John:
It doesn't, unfortunately, help me at all with my question of how do I get better content into my television?
John:
Because although TV Everywhere isn't limited to 720, you're still limited by what kind of content will be on TV Everywhere for your particular channel.
John:
So let me tell you what I've done in this regard since last week.
John:
So first off, anonymous listener Ben, no last name, or listener Ben, last name with help, sent me an HD Home Run Prime.
John:
Oh, man.
John:
Good for Ben.
John:
Great.
John:
And that arrived pretty quickly.
John:
And by the way, speaking of dead technologies and TiVo feeling old or whatever, the HD Home Run Prime as a product is two years older than my oldest TiVo.
John:
Just FYI.
Damn.
John:
And yes, they are still making and selling them because they found chips, but they canceled the 6-Tuner one.
John:
There was supposed to be a 6-Tuner HD Home Run Prime, the HD Home Run Prime 6, and they canceled that project back in like 2020 or whenever the FCC said, yeah, cable card's not going to be a thing anymore.
John:
So this whole product line seems super dead because they had planned to make a 6-Tuner one, which I would probably buy, by the way.
John:
They just canceled that whole thing.
John:
They say they are going to make another cable car product, but I can't find anything concrete on that.
John:
And they had stopped making the HD Home Run Prime for a long time, but then they found new chips and are making them again.
John:
But anyway, either way, this is not irrelevant to me because I got one.
John:
The listener sent it to me.
John:
Thank you very much, listener Ben.
John:
Very nice of you, right?
John:
So I took a cable card out of one of my lesser TiVos and shoved it into the HD Home Run Prime and hooked it up.
John:
So here's where I learned the limits of this stuff based on what I'm trying to do.
John:
And again, to reiterate, what I'm trying to do is to get...
John:
better quality versions of, like, the television shows that I pay for, right?
John:
So Fios is good.
John:
Fios, especially in Massachusetts, is good in that they don't flip whatever bit that you flip to make it so, like, the channels are DRM protected.
John:
They don't flip that anywhere except on the channels that force them to do it.
John:
So I think it's only, like, HBO or maybe one or two other ones.
John:
that force Fios to say you, you have to put on the, the DRM bit.
John:
When you put that bit on, it means that, uh, channels can't get those channels through the HD home run prime, right?
John:
They're just like, it doesn't even see them, right?
John:
My TiVo can get them.
John:
So another notch in the column for TiVo, right?
John:
No, that's totally fair.
John:
Totally.
John:
But it's just like one channel who cares.
John:
And I have HBO screen.
John:
So I would, that would not stop me, but just FYI, lots of other cable providers don't, aren't as nice as Verizon.
John:
They, they like checking on every single channel and then it makes the thing useless, which is really crappy.
John:
Um,
John:
But then the next limitation is when Fios sends its television channels to my house.
John:
Forget about the equipment that's in my house.
John:
Just as they come into my house, even if you have like the Fios first party equipment, if you have a cable card, if you have any other stuff, almost all the channels are not 4K.
John:
Fios in Massachusetts has like 4K.
John:
four or five 4K channels and they're just like holding bin channels where there's nothing on them except when there's special events.
John:
So for example, apparently the Olympics the past whatever, one or two times, they would put 4K versions of the Olympics into one or two of those channels.
John:
There's one for like Red Sox games or other sports events, special events.
John:
But most of the day, if you go to those channels, there's nothing on them except for like a standby or off air or just like a static graphic.
John:
That's the extent of 4K content as traditional television channels coming into your house from Fios.
John:
There is apparently a Fios TV streaming thing that you can do where there's like a Fios TV app for Apple TV.
John:
And just like, you know, we'll use the internet to get you the television that you pay for.
John:
But, you know, take cable companies or whatever, typically being annoying.
John:
I can't even use that app unless I have in my home some of their first party cable box things and also use their stupid first party router thing.
John:
So I'm never doing that because I don't allow any cable company equipment in my house if I can help it, except for the cable cards, right?
John:
Now the cable cards, the other channels that are not 4K, some of them are 1080.
John:
Most of them are not, but some of them are.
John:
I was going through the channels and using the little info thing on channels to see, and you will find 1080 ones.
John:
But that's like, that's exactly the same that is on my TiVo if I go through the thing.
John:
channels is more flexible in this manner.
John:
TiVo, I think, will just run at whatever resolution that you set it to, and then it just upscales everything.
John:
Channels, you can set it to, like, match content, which is kind of annoying because then it, like, blacks out the TV when it goes between channels, but you can go between a 1080 channel and a 720 channel, and it'll, like...
John:
change modes and everything so anyway there are 1080 channels there are 720 channels but you're not getting any increase in quality all you're doing with channels is the same thing you could do on TiVo minus the VRM predicted channels but with the addition of the ability to match content which I don't think you would ever do especially on my setup the delay of like you know switching modes from like 720 to 1080 is not worth it it's better to just keep it in especially for live TV maybe for recorded things it's fine
John:
And channels lets you change that on like a per source basis, which is convenient.
John:
In terms of the channel setup, I'm running it on my wife's computer, which she strongly objected to.
John:
In fact, just before we started recording, she told me to reiterate to you in particular, Casey, that she does not want this running on her computer.
John:
The only reason I was allowed to do it is because, you know, it's for the show.
John:
I told her it was temporary.
John:
Wait, but is Plex still running on that computer?
John:
It is, but as I said on the last show, there's no contradiction in this.
John:
It is exactly the explanation I gave, which is nobody cares about Plex.
John:
If Plex is down, nobody cares.
John:
I'm the only person who uses it, and I can manage dealing with the thing being up or down.
John:
It is not an essential part.
Casey:
That's a different issue, though.
Casey:
What is her gripe with channels?
John:
She doesn't want things running on her computer that affect her television.
John:
That's exactly what I said last week.
John:
My ideal matches her ideal, which is things related to watching television should have no connection to the computers that are in her office.
John:
They can have connection to things that are in the basement that no one ever touches, but not to the stuff that's in their offices.
Casey:
I mean, if that's the way she feels, who am I to tell her that she's wrong?
Casey:
But she's wrong.
Casey:
Like, I don't understand what difference it makes where within the house this device, this mythical device is connected to the network.
John:
Because, like, she wants the flexibility to be able to restart her computer or do anything with it, put it to sleep or shut it down or whatever without worrying that she's messing up something really to tell her.
John:
In particular, doing things like, you know, if you're using it as DVR, maybe it's recording shows while you sleep, you know.
John:
Like, it just is – it's something – it's not –
John:
She doesn't want that entanglement.
John:
And I don't blame her.
John:
I don't want that entanglement either.
John:
So even if it wasn't her opinion, it would also be my opinion.
John:
So we are unified as a family in this.
John:
And there is no contradiction in Plex running on it.
John:
Because like I said, if you really are desperate to run Plex, it's also on this analogy.
John:
And that's always up because it's in the basement.
Casey:
I mean, I guess, again, I can't, as much as I joke, I can't tell you that either of you are wrong.
Casey:
But that whole line of reasoning does not compute to me.
John:
Either way, the point is, channels can run almost anywhere.
John:
It's very flexible.
John:
The whole point of this being flexible is I could run it on my Synology.
John:
I could buy a little computer to run it.
John:
If I was serious about the setup, I would, in fact, get another little computer to run.
John:
It's not difficult.
John:
This is not a dig against channels.
John:
Channels is very flexible.
John:
In fact, that's the reason you'd want to use channels, because of its flexibility.
John:
Um, so when I, but anyway, I'm just doing this temporarily.
John:
Same thing with, with the, with the cable cart that's going back into the TiVo.
John:
I, you know, I got her permission to take it out of her TiVo.
John:
Um, and when I took it out, like what I was trying to do is like, okay, I need to, I need to exercise it to get it to do things.
John:
So what I did was I looked at her season pass list, um,
John:
on her TiVo that I was taking out of and I said let me try to reproduce these season passes in channels just A to build up shows and B just to see what the experience is like channels copies a lot of the TiVo interface in terms of the terminology and the way things are mostly just terminology the way things are arranged is a little bit different um
John:
So I went and tried to add the season passes and found the first limitation of channels as compared to TiVo if you're just used to the TiVo way of doing things, which is on TiVo, if you set up a season pass and you go like search for it or whatever,
John:
You can find the show even if it's not currently airing.
John:
One example is Survivor.
John:
Survivor comes in seasons and like each season is basically treated as an independent show.
John:
It's like Survivor colon some subtitle or whatever.
John:
Even though Survivor is not on right now, you can find it and set up a season pass for it.
John:
Same thing for, you know, so the first thing I did was one of her shows was something she watches on, I forget what channels it is.
John:
Anyway, I did a search for it, and it doesn't come up in channels because it's not currently airing at all.
John:
So I can't add the season pass.
John:
And just to confirm, it's like, well, maybe that's not fair.
John:
Maybe it's not visible on TiVo either.
John:
I did a search on TiVo, like on my other TiVo, the downstairs one, where that show doesn't have season pass, and TiVo does find it, so...
John:
TiVo's depth of understanding which shows may be airing in the future is vastly better than channels.
John:
I think it's mostly because channels gets its guide info from like 14 days worth of guide info from the cable thing.
John:
You can tell me, Casey, is there some other way to tell channels, hey, get additional info about television shows from this other source so you know about shows that might be airing in six months?
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
There is.
Casey:
Now, I am talking way outside my comfort zone, so I might be telling you some lies by accident.
Casey:
But my limited understanding is you absolutely can tell it to go and get more guide data.
Casey:
And additionally, I believe that there are some...
Casey:
like guide data providers that explicitly give you considerably more guide data.
Casey:
As an example, a friend of mine, Justin Williams, is really into professional wrestling that, you know, hey, you like what you like.
Casey:
But I guess that he subscribes, I believe he subscribes to a particular service that gives
Casey:
What is EPG or something like that?
Casey:
I forget the acronym, but it's something like that that gives guide data that is hyper accurate for professional wrestling shows.
Casey:
Because, you know, what little I know of professional wrestling is you have different fights or bouts or what have you.
Casey:
And so, you know, maybe the the the regular guide data says WWE Raw and that's all it says.
Casey:
Whereas this, you know, Phantom, whatever thing that he subscribes to and pays money for says WWE Raw, it's, you know, The Rock versus so-and-so and this versus that and this versus that and, you know, featuring the death match of Doom or whatever they do in professional wrestling.
Casey:
And so I think there is a way not only to pay for that data, but I am 99% sure he is doing, he's using channels to suck in that data as well.
Casey:
Off the top of my head, I'm not specifically sure where to do that, but I am pretty sure that it is possible.
John:
So that's another example of things that TiVo rolls in for the fee that you pay for TiVo and you can pay TiVo monthly, I think annually, but also what I tend to do is because I'm such a long-term TV user, you buy the lifetime thing where you just pay one amount and that's it.
John:
Forever.
John:
And TiVo, of course, gives you, wherever TiVo gets its guide data from, probably from one of these services or something, that's all bundled with the service.
John:
Another thing that I noticed about TiVo versus channels, I mean, well, it depends on what mode you're doing things.
John:
So I did try the TV Everywhere without the cable card first, because before I had this cable card, I was using channels.
John:
Even last week, I was using channels by itself.
John:
And TV Everywhere, it's a web API.
John:
It's not really web scraping.
John:
It's an officially supported API.
John:
And if your services support it,
John:
uh you can view the stuff with it and as far as i can tell it's the same quality as you as i'm getting with the cable card so i compared like let me look at discovery on tv everywhere let me look at discovery through my hd home run prime right i think it's exactly the same at least in my case i think it varies by channel and maybe varies by by you know service that you're sucking this stuff from but it's not it may be lesser quality but in my case it didn't look like it was it was 1080 in both places and i don't think there's 4k available in any of these things anyway right um so that it
John:
You know, that's reasonable.
John:
But when you're using TV everywhere, because it's a web thing, it starts slower.
John:
It starts slower than tuning to something on the tuner, one of the three tuners that's in the HD Home Run Prime.
John:
Part of that is buffering.
John:
You can set a configurable buffer size of how much you want to buffer.
John:
But like, and I played with that a little bit, but you're going to wait a little bit longer when quote unquote changing channels with the TV everywhere.
John:
You might see a spinner before it spools up and there might be one or two hitches.
John:
Hitches like that never happen with TiVo.
John:
Like, never.
John:
Like, it's just like cable.
John:
That's one of the advantages of TiVo.
John:
And the HD Home Run Prime also, no hitches.
John:
Because it's just, it's like a tuner.
John:
Like, the video is just there and ready as instantly as you can...
John:
know switch between tuners um or switch one tuner to a different channel right so that is a big advantage of cable card over the tv everywhere and again i feel like i'm in an ideal scenario everything is on gigabit ethernet i have symmetric gigabit up and down i don't think there's anything more i could do it's just the nature of the beast um you know the the coaxial cable that's sending the quote unquote television to my house is just blasting everything all the time right
John:
It is a shame that there's only three tuners.
John:
I did exhaust the three tuners pretty quickly with recording shows.
John:
And then when the three tuners are used up, you can't even go watch another show because it says all tuners are in use.
John:
So if you want to watch another show, you have to stop one of the recordings and go to it.
John:
So again, I think for my purposes, three is probably a little low.
John:
Six is probably overkill, but six is certainly nice.
John:
And I have two TiVos with six tuners each, so I can do 12 at once.
John:
We've never run out of tuners on the TiVo.
John:
It is possible to pretty easily run out of them on three, which is why I wish there was an HD Home Run Prime 6, but they canceled that.
John:
But again, they say that Silicon Dust says they are going to make another cable car product, and I wonder what that will be.
Casey:
Well, but you could.
Casey:
One of the things to speak about flexibility, as you had said earlier, one of the things you could do,
Casey:
is you could get a second HD Home Run box and put a second cable card in it.
Casey:
Now you have six tuners.
Casey:
You're not going to do that because A, you're giving up on it, and B, I'm going to make you ship me that one that Ben shipped to you, but that's neither here nor there.
Casey:
But it is something that you could... I'm not shipping it to you.
John:
I might still use it, but here's the problem.
John:
If you...
John:
I mean, that's a problem with cable card, right?
John:
If you get another one, chances are good, and it's definitely true in the case of Verizon Fios, that you will have to pay per month per cable card.
John:
I do.
John:
Each cable card I have in my house, they make you pay for.
John:
Because I'm not paying them for any of their cable box crap because they don't have any of that.
John:
I don't use their router.
John:
I don't use any of that.
John:
But for each cable card, it's like five bucks a month or something like that.
John:
So I'd have to pay an additional five bucks a month just to get the cable card.
John:
The hardware itself is cheap.
John:
I think the HD Horn Prime, again, this is a product introduced in 2011.
John:
It's like 100 and something bucks.
Casey:
It's 150 bucks, I believe.
John:
Yeah.
John:
If you can find one new and used it, probably even less than that.
John:
But it's a very simple device.
John:
To understand what this device is, in fact, it's a little bit too simple.
John:
It's a plastic box that you plug a coaxial cable into, a cable card into, Ethernet, and power.
John:
And it doesn't do anything.
John:
It doesn't decode any video.
John:
It doesn't like it just accepts what's coming in on the coax, uses the cable card to tune to one of three possible channels.
John:
It supports three tuners and makes that content available through Ethernet.
John:
And then, you know, it has power thing.
John:
And it's so light and Corazio cables are so thick that it's hard to make it lay like on a flat surface because it always like tilts up because the cables, that was another problem.
John:
I had to go buy a cable splitter.
John:
When's the last time anyone's done that?
John:
I had to buy a two-way cable splitter because I realized when I was going to hook it up, the back of my television area,
John:
just has one coax that goes to the TiVo.
John:
I don't have another one, so I had to buy a splitter and two very short cables to split that into one going to my TiVo and one going to the HD Home Run Prime.
John:
It is small box, but it doesn't really lay flat.
John:
And dealing with cable cards, if you've never dealt with them before, is a pain.
John:
Not because of anything having to do with HD Home Run Prime, but just having to do with cable cards being a pain.
John:
Like, I don't endorse cable cards, but it'll be sad when they go away, because this same cable card works with a 6-tuner,
John:
tiwo i don't know what the limit is but the number of tuners is not in the card it's a multi-stream card it's like inherent in the box itself so that's kind of a shame um so yeah like using the interface the my main complaint is that it's less information dense than tiwo tiwo was an older interface where it's you know it's kind of like gmail where you can go to the compact view which is the view i use where you just have like line items whereas channels is more modern it looks more like plex like
John:
They want to show you large poster images of the things that you're watching, right?
John:
But when you record the amount of content I do, having the list of things that you've recorded be more information-dense and just like a list view instead of an icon view really helps.
John:
And there is a list view in channels, but even the list view is tall because they show the thumbnail images and a bunch of other stuff about it.
John:
There's other things where it's like trickier to get it to the feature that you want from the screen that you're on, so you have to go back or whatever.
John:
But mostly it's just...
John:
what you're used to.
John:
I'm definitely used to TiVo, and I have both TiVo interfaces, both the old one, which in my opinion was better, but of course looks old, and the new one, which is worse but looks more modern.
John:
Both of those interfaces, I think, are a little bit better, especially in the recording list, than Channels.
John:
Channels has an enhanced library view that lets you sort things if you have lots of content, but that's more for like if you...
John:
if you point it to your plex library which is the thing you can do as well you can just say hey by the way channels this is the advantage of channels not only do i have an hdl1 prime but also you can get these channels in my over the air thing and also i have a bunch of crap in my in a you know synology over here and it will just merge it into one giant thing and just eat it all up right and if you have that much content things like the enhanced library view and virtual channels and everything help you organize things but
John:
Like I said in the beginning, my goal is to get better quality television content and channels is not helping with that because Fios only gives me a certain quality.
John:
It seems like the result of all my experimentation here is almost nobody gives you any of those channels in better than 1080 content.
John:
My quote unquote cable provider does not, like except for those few 4K channels.
John:
YouTube TV is the only thing that does.
John:
And even YouTube TV does not have a lot of 4K channels.
John:
Like I found one or two of them and they were like HGTV or Discovery or something like stuff that I mostly don't watch.
John:
I was just looking at them to see the 4K content, but I would have to go through every single channel on YouTube TV and see like what, you know, what fraction of a percent actually provide 4K content.
John:
And I think if I did TV everywhere to YouTube TV, if I had subscribed to it, it would not be 4K.
John:
Now, I say I think because I foolishly used up my like free trial of YouTube TV last time when I tried it because it said, oh, you know, sign up for a free trial.
John:
And I did and I played with it and I didn't like the interface and whatever I talked about on the show.
John:
And I canceled the free trial because it's really expensive.
John:
It was like $84, you know, because it's like 60 bucks plus.
John:
you know, 11 bucks for the 4K thing or whatever.
John:
Like it would have been 80 something dollars if I had paid for even just one month of it.
John:
And that's too much for an experiment.
John:
So I canceled it, right?
John:
But now it won't let me or apparently anyone in my household sign up for the free trial.
John:
I can do the free for 20 minutes thing.
John:
Like you can always do the free for 20 minutes thing.
John:
If you go into the web UI, it says try it free for 20 minutes.
John:
But that just lets you use the web UI.
John:
To use it with channels, you have to have a login that works.
John:
And by the way, no limitation of channels.
John:
If you have two factor,
John:
You can't use TV everywhere with YouTube TV.
John:
So the suggestion is to make a family group and then make a new account in the family group that doesn't have two-factor turn down and use that to authenticate them.
John:
But anyway, I couldn't do any of that because I just can't sign up for YouTube TV unless I pay 80-something bucks.
John:
Or I can't sign up for YouTube TV with 4K.
John:
Unless I pay 80 something bucks and I wasn't willing to do that.
John:
But from everything that I've heard, even though YouTube TV does have channels in 4K, it doesn't have a lot of those channels and channels can't get those channels in 4K through the TV ever interface due to the limitations of what is vended by YouTube TV.
John:
Um, so I still have it hooked up to my TV.
John:
I'm still did a couple of season passes with it.
John:
Oh, the reason I still have hooked up is because one of the advantages that channels has over TiVo is it has a commercial auto skip.
John:
TiVo still makes you hit a button, a single button granted, but a button to skip over all the channels.
John:
And I think TiVo has like,
John:
I don't know what they have doing this.
John:
They have something server-side on their end, marking the beginning and the end of the channels.
John:
But with channels, I keep... I should call it get channels, because that's all my Googling.
John:
I always have Google for get channels, otherwise you don't find anything, because getchannels.com is a website.
John:
Anyway, with channels, the service...
John:
The TV, the commercial skipping happens because they run a little command line thing on your server to find the channels for you.
John:
It's called com skip and I ran it from the command line a few times to see what it's like.
Casey:
You keep conflating channels and commercials.
Casey:
You keep saying it to skip the channels for you.
John:
Yeah, to skip the commercials.
John:
Sorry.
John:
Yes.
John:
Com skip for skipping commercials.
John:
And that's handy because you're not then dependent on, you know, TiVo to find the commercials for you.
John:
Now, TiVo does a really good job of finding the commercials, but if they didn't do a good job or if you're watching some really obscure thing that they didn't mark the channels in, or the commercials in, you're out of luck.
John:
Whereas, again, the flexibility of channels, it just runs that command on everything.
John:
And if it doesn't find the commercials for you, you can tweak the parameters, tweak the any file to find the commercials or whatever.
John:
And then when you're watching, you can configure it to auto-skip the commercials for you instead of having you hit a button.
John:
You can also configure it to hit a button or whatever.
John:
So anyway, I threw some season passes into channels for some shows that I would normally watch on my TiVo.
John:
And it is kind of annoying to have to remember to skip the channels with the remote.
John:
It's nicer to just sit there and have it skip over them.
John:
So I'm going to leave it connected for a while and try that out.
John:
I've already paid for one month of channels, which is like $8 or something.
John:
So it's not a big commitment.
John:
You can get a savings if you pay for the annual thing, but I didn't.
John:
That's what I'm doing so far.
John:
I'm going to play with channels for as long as I can until my wife demands that her cable card goes back into her TiVo or demand that I get the server off of her device.
John:
But my quest continues for superior quality content for my television.
John:
I'm assuming that what will happen as all these cable card things slowly fade away is that someday I will be able to stop paying for cable television
John:
Which may not lower my bill as much as you would think because I get one of those big packages that does telephone, television, and my internet.
John:
And I love my internet.
John:
I'm never going to stop paying for that.
John:
But they really want you to buy the other stuff from them as well.
John:
So maybe someday it will no longer be worth it to me to buy the big television package.
John:
But it's going to be a while, I think, because...
John:
If I downgraded my TV service to like the minimum or discontinued it entirely and then individually paid for Showtime, AMC, HBO, like all that stuff with their individual service plans, I think it would still end up being more expensive than the current bundle that I pay for due to all of the bundling discounts.
John:
But we'll see.
John:
But anyway, when that happens...
John:
presumably the streaming services will start sending 4k content to me uh and then in terms of dvr solutions i don't know because channels reliant on that tv everywhere thing it just seems like an api kind of like cable card that these people these these companies don't want to keep supporting if they don't have to so i'm not sure what the future of dvring stuff is uh in the streaming only world if it's streaming you don't need to dvr most of the time but
John:
I don't know, maybe for live content or local channels that will, you know, anyway, as always, TV is a big giant mess.
John:
But now I have one more potential tool in my arsenal if and when my TiVos ever die.
John:
Oh, and as part of this whole experience, I was looking again, taking a harder look at the current crop of TiVos.
John:
And they're still my ancient TiVo is still
John:
Still holds more stuff in it.
John:
And I kind of still like the fact that it's running the old UI instead of the new one, because I don't like the new UI as much.
John:
I would like it if TiVo continued to survive.
John:
And I would like it if they introduced a new TiVo device that is better than the one I have.
John:
But so far, if I was to buy the brand new one now, it has one terabyte less storage, which is annoying to expand.
John:
You can expand it, but it's annoying to expand internally and externally.
John:
It's big and clunky to expand.
John:
And they use 2.5-inch drives, whereas my current one uses a 3.5-inch, which sounds old and clunky to you, but reliability-wise, the 3.5-inches are, in my experience, have been better than the 2.5.
John:
I have a TiVo Bolt with a 2.5.
John:
The drive already died once.
John:
I've never lost a 3.5-inch drive in any of my TiVos, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do there.
John:
But anyway, it was a fun experiment.
John:
The experiment is still running.
John:
I will update you on how things go, but I continue to be slightly disappointed that I can't find...
John:
that not only that i can't find but that basically it doesn't exist higher quality versions of most of the regular television channels oh and i'll add that the 720 and 1080 ones are just always so massively compressed and gross looking that's another reason people recommend a youtube tv they said even if you're just looking at stuff in 720 or 1080 it's less compressed than it is on fios because in files they have to jam all the channels into these little slivers of their bandwidth to your house
Marco:
God, I am just so happy that I don't care nearly as much as you do about TV and the fidelity of the TV shows that you're watching on TV.
Marco:
Because to me, this entire setup, it sounds like I want to read a lot of articles.
Marco:
So what I do is I have every magazine ever published mailed to my house.
Marco:
And then I have an array of six scanners.
Marco:
Oh, wait, you want me to go down to three scanners?
Marco:
That's not going to be enough.
Marco:
I need six scanners running in parallel to scan all these magazines coming into my house all the time so I can digitize them to put them on my computer so I can read them where I want to read them and how I want to read them.
Marco:
But I can't just go to their websites because it's slightly different in some way.
John:
Well, I mean, that's the nature of broadcast.
John:
But yeah, it is annoying.
John:
Like I said, if we go all streaming, everything is available on demand and at higher quality whenever you want.
John:
That's ideal.
John:
Very often, like when I watch HBO, we usually just go to the app on Apple TV rather than the TiVo, which may have also recorded the show just because it's more convenient, faster and often seems like it's in higher quality than what you I don't know if it is, but it seems like it is whether it's bit rate or if it's 4K or HDR.
John:
I would prefer to use the app over that, but not everything has an app.
John:
And, you know, especially for local things, and this is not relevant to me, but especially for things like local sports and stuff.
John:
We'll get there eventually, but again, I think this is another potential advantage for channels if they can ever cross this divide, which is
John:
it will take input from anywhere that it can get it in the best quality that it can get it.
John:
The question is, the last part, in the best quality that it can get it, will channels and other third-party things be able to get content in good quality or will we be forced to use, you know,
John:
uh you know this giant constellation of streaming apps to get stuff i mean it was i was a christina warren had a good tweet where she was quoting uh jim barksdale i think the the guy from netscape or maybe son uh saying that there are only two business models uh bundling and unbundling and we are current and currently in the the process of going out of unbundling and back into bundling when we had when we paid for cable and it was like oh i got to pay for the stupid bundle of channels i don't care about espn but it adds 15 to a monthly fee or whatever uh
John:
Uh, that was a giant bundle.
John:
It's like, it's great if I could just pick and choose the services that I wanted.
John:
I think we had that discussion on this very show many years ago.
John:
Now I can just pay for what I want.
John:
Well, I want HBO and I want Showtime.
John:
That was the unbundling, right?
John:
You'd get, you'd pay for a streaming service.
John:
You just pay for HBO now or HBO go or whatever the hell one it is.
John:
And you can pay for Showtime anywhere or whatever the hell that thing is called.
John:
Uh, and so you didn't have to pay for the big package.
Uh,
John:
But the individual bundles ended up being really expensive.
John:
And now those individual bundle companies are consolidating.
John:
So it was like Warner Brothers, HBO, Discovery are combining into one app and you got Paramount Plus or whatever.
John:
So now it seems like we're going towards unbundling where we're going to end up with a series of larger packages that
John:
And so instead of paying for a bunch of individual quote unquote channels, you'll pay for Disney Plus, Apple TV Plus, Discovery slash HBO Plus, Paramount Plus.
John:
And each one of those things will have tons of content, not equivalent to just one channel in it.
John:
Will they ever go into a super bundle where Fios will sell you a package where you pay a monthly fee to Verizon and then you get access to the HBO app, the Showtime app, the Discovery app or whatever?
John:
Who knows?
John:
But it seems like that's what Phaser is.
John:
Eventually, when we get over that hump, then we can use the power of the Internet to get 4K versions of all this stuff.
John:
And no one will ever need to quote unquote DVR anything because everything will be available on demand with a smattering of live streams, maybe over the air in 4K.
I don't know.
John:
That's another thing I didn't try.
John:
I didn't try over the air.
John:
I think over the air content does have more 4K stuff, but I really don't want to deal with antennas and I mostly don't care about live sports or anything like that.
Casey:
Dealing with antennas is not bad.
Casey:
You just get a different HD Home Run box, which this would be irrelevant for you because you've got the cable card one.
Casey:
I'm saying if...
Casey:
If this was something you or a listener wants to explore, this is what I have done, actually, is I have a HD Home Run box that is not with a cable card.
Casey:
It just has coax, ethernet, and power.
Casey:
And by the way, you couldn't hear me because I was muted, but I was laughing when you said it is impossible to get this thing to sit flush because mine is also tilted at like a 45-degree angle for the exact same reasons.
John:
Very lightweight box.
Casey:
Yes, but anyways, the over-the-air antennas are really inexpensive.
Casey:
They're well under $100 unless you want to get one that's super fancy.
Casey:
And I don't remember how much I paid for this HD Home Run box, but I think it was also like $100 or less.
Casey:
And then that would give you over-the-air stuff.
John:
Again, in your situation, John, I don't think that's useful at all because— Well, I think the over-the-air might be higher quality than those same channels that I'm getting through Fios, though.
John:
Like, that is a possibility.
Casey:
Oh.
Casey:
It's possible.
John:
I mean, I don't actually care about those channels, so it's not really relevant to me because I don't watch those channels, but I think over the air might actually be higher quality than the sliver of the coax that they give those channels on Fios.
Casey:
Yeah, that's fair.
Casey:
Also, I would love it if you could try, or maybe you mentioned this and I just blacked out for a second, but I would love it if you could try to record...
John:
any of the 4k files channels using the cable card and the hd i would have tried but there's nothing airing on them no i hear you but is there even a 4k sized uh not right now screen you know what i mean because you could see if what channel saves yeah i could try that i think yeah i think one of the i think the one with the little red sox logo first of all it had a day and a time that the red sox game was going to be on but i don't remember what day that was but i could wait for that and second i think that might be 4k i'll double check on it to see like what it produces
Casey:
Yeah, I would love to know if channels would successfully record in 4K.
Casey:
I genuinely have no idea if it would or not.
Casey:
But I think it's a fun experiment that you should definitely try.
John:
I mean, I think it should.
John:
Like, it doesn't care about it.
John:
They're just files and streams.
Casey:
Agreed.
Casey:
And what this, I think, more boils down to is HD Home Run more than it does channels.
Casey:
I would assume the HD Home Run is just basically using the cable card, and again, I'm outside my comfort zone now, using the cable card to decrypt, decode, whatever, the stuff that's coming in over coax, and then just basically dump those bits right to the network.
John:
Yeah, it has no idea what the content is.
John:
So I think that is true.
John:
And I believe my cable card, from the research, the cable card itself is capable of handling 4K content.
John:
I think that's how the Verizon channels work.
John:
It's just a question of...
John:
what downstream of that can handle it.
John:
So for example, my TiVo can't handle 4K content.
John:
It's just too old.
John:
It predates 4K.
John:
So even though my cable card could put that out, the TiVo is just going to show you 1080 no matter what.
John:
If you've got one of the newer TiVos, the newer TiVos say they are 4K capable.
John:
But I'm pretty sure what they mean is we support streaming apps.
John:
If your streaming service supports 4K, our apps can show it.
John:
So you could use the Netflix app on the TiVo to show 4K content and it would work.
John:
I don't think it means that we can show 4K content on your cable car, but I'm not going to buy one of those to find out.
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John:
one final thing on televisions another tv setup thing that i was doing recently is audio sync and audio delay maybe i did this on my past tv but i don't remember it being quite as painful right so to get an idea what i'm talking about
John:
Have you ever watched something on television and it seems like the person's lips are not in sync with what they're saying?
John:
And no, not because it's dubbed into a different length.
John:
Mm hmm.
John:
That's the situation I was feeling when I was watching television on something.
John:
So I'm like, oh, I should set the audio sync up because I'm using a receiver.
John:
Pretty much every receiver has a setting where you can adjust the audio delay to match the video.
John:
And I don't remember how I did this last time.
John:
Maybe last time I just did it by eyeball.
John:
But I find it incredibly difficult to use a setting to go to increase and decrease the delay to get the audio to match someone's lips.
John:
It's way harder than you think it is.
John:
So I'm going to give some tips for what I am doing.
John:
So my first tip is use a documentary.
John:
You cannot use a movie or a television show to do this because there's so much ADR, additional dialogue recording or whatever.
John:
So much of the time, the audio you hear coming out of someone's mouth is not what the actor said in that moment that they are being recorded on video.
John:
It is later they came in and re-recorded the audio.
John:
So use a documentary because they tend not to do ADR in documentaries.
John:
At least I really hope they don't.
John:
Have the people come in later and try to match what they said earlier, right?
John:
So what I was using was the...
John:
what is it called light magic the ilm documentaries on disney plus uh has lots of interviews with talking heads and people sitting there and i figured that's got to be like live audio because it's all just you know interviewing people right but then i tried to do it by eye i just i just can't do it i i sometimes i can't even tell which direction should i be going and should i be going negative delay or positive delay
John:
I can tell when it looks wrong, but I can't convince myself that it looks right.
John:
So I needed a better tool for this.
John:
I was hoping there'd be some automated tool that would do it, but I didn't find any, right?
John:
So if you Google for this, you will find various applications that will, not applications, videos that will help you with this.
John:
So here's the one I use.
John:
I will put this link in the show notes.
John:
Maybe Marco can make it the chapter art.
John:
This is a video available on YouTube.
John:
There is a bunch of ones like this.
John:
And it just shows an animation with like a bar across the screen with a little highlight that goes from left to right.
John:
Left and right.
John:
And when the little highlight hits exactly in the middle, there's a beep.
John:
And it's got a bunch of things.
John:
It's got four circles that appear on the lower left.
John:
It's got a bar graph that hits the top.
John:
But the main important thing is the little white highlight and the bar that hits the zero point when the beep goes, right?
John:
And it's got little millisecond markings, right?
John:
And what you're supposed to do
John:
is just play this looping video.
John:
I mean, they think they want you to eyeball it.
John:
They say, you should hear the beep when the highlight is in the middle.
John:
Even this, I found so hard to do because it goes by so fast and I'm staring at it and I'm like, is it beeping when it's in the middle?
John:
You can convince yourself.
John:
that it is beeping when it's in the middle.
John:
But then when I did it, I was like, okay, I think it's in the middle.
John:
But then I would look at a bar that's like five bars to the left, and I can convince myself that it's beeping when it hits the fifth bar to the left.
John:
And I can also convince myself that it's beeping when it hits the fifth bar to the right.
John:
It's just too fast for my eyeballs to handle.
John:
Maybe we need a young person or a Jedi, I don't know.
John:
I could not do it.
John:
So this screenshot that I just put in the chat and then we'll put in the show notes, here's what I actually did.
John:
I use the 240 frames per second slow-mo video recording on my iPhone to record a video of the video playing on my TV.
John:
And then I brought it into iMovie so I could see the waveform of the audio.
John:
And if you see in the screenshot, what I would do is I would say, like, I'm not going to trust my ears to tell me when the beep is going.
John:
I want the highlight to be on zero.
John:
when the beep is playing.
John:
And then I had to make a judgment call because if you see a beep in an audio waveform, it's not just a single spike, especially at 240 frames per second.
John:
It's like a plateau.
John:
So if you look at the waveform, it's like it has an attack and then like a, what is it called?
John:
Decay.
John:
Decay.
John:
I had to decide at what point do I want to align to zero.
John:
i could have aligned the zero the first time the like the waveform comes off silence like like the second the beep begins but i'm like that's probably not how this video is done they probably have the beep time to trigger at zero for it to peak at zero maybe so i kind of split the difference so if you if you look at the screenshot this is what i decided to do i said i want you know i want the highlight to be on zero when the sound has
John:
it sort of just began and is near its peak before it starts to decay and you would think it wouldn't make that much of a difference but you can if you adjust the delay by a tiny amount you can target the beginning of the waveform the middle of the waveform the end of the waveform again this is massively stretched out because it's 240 frames per second but i got it as close as i could and also in this screenshot you'll see the interface i was talking about last time where it blacks out the screen and shows this like ugly text that's my receiver's sound delay input thing and of course you have to configure this per input
John:
because it varies the good thing is that every single thing in my stack has a youtube app so i can play this youtube video on all of them what i'm hoping is that the youtube app has the same delay as anything else which i think it probably does because in the end the receiver doesn't know what app you're running the receiver is just receiving audio and the thing is just showing video so i did individual delays for all of my things and
John:
They all had slightly different delays.
John:
And I did it graphically by taking lots and lots of high resolution videos and high speed videos and lining them up.
John:
And then I would go back and adjust the delay and then pull the stuff into iMovie and look at it again, adjust the delay and go on and on and on.
John:
And eventually I got them all lined up to my satisfaction.
John:
And then I watched, you know, documentary again.
John:
And you can get so inside your head about this.
John:
You can be like, are their lips matching?
John:
How do people's lips move when they talk?
John:
Some people's lips move differently than others when saying the same words.
John:
Some people don't move their lips a lot when they talk.
John:
Some people do.
John:
So I'd look for plosives because you'd know when they would, you know, lips would come together and then pop out with a P sound.
John:
Anyway, I think I've got it dialed in to be as close as humanly possible using all the tools available to me.
John:
But boy, would I love it if there wasn't a tool that would do this for you.
John:
If you have wireless speakers, Apple TV has a speech that says, I will do audio sync for your wireless speakers.
John:
And they want you to hold your phone up and do whatever, but it only does it for wireless speakers as far as I can tell.
John:
And the other advice I'll give to anyone who is going down this road is sound travels not that fast.
John:
If you try to do this calibration right next to your television, it will be wrong on your couch.
John:
If your couch like mine is 10 feet away.
John:
Because like every foot is like, I didn't do the math on this, but every foot is like a millisecond or something.
John:
I think it's about every meter.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Or anyway, if your couch is 10, you know, 10 feet away from your television like mine, sit on the couch when you do it because you get different numbers than if you were like an inch from the television.
John:
Right.
John:
And I found that out the hard way because I did the first one really close to it and then did the second one back.
John:
I'm like, wait a second.
John:
These numbers are all different.
John:
And so I had to read them all from the couch position.
Yeah.
John:
you know i again i don't remember going through all this pain with my television earlier but that was so many years ago maybe i did maybe i'm just more sensitive to it because i was you know watching documentaries where the lip sync should have been perfect but now as far as i can tell it is perfect and hopefully it won't drift over time
Marco:
This is one reason why I'm so happy that I work with audio and not video.
Marco:
There's just so many more things that can break you in video or things you have to worry about.
Marco:
Oh, just audio only is so nice.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I wish the television or the receiver had a way to do this visually because expecting humans, people should play this game on like on your own.
John:
If you don't have receiver, you probably won't be able to play it.
Casey:
No, no, people should not play this.
Casey:
Ignorance is bliss.
Casey:
No, no.
John:
But if you don't have a receiver, everything should be in sync anyway.
John:
Because remember, the delay I'm adjusting is on the receiver itself.
John:
Oh, yeah, one other thing.
John:
HDMI 2.1 supposedly has auto latency adjustment built into the protocol.
John:
And there is a setting on my receiver that says, do you want me to adjust the latency automatically?
John:
But it's on.
John:
It's on by default, right?
John:
So it thinks it's doing that.
John:
And I had to decide, should I leave that setting on?
John:
and also do the audio delay?
John:
Or should I turn it off and do the audio delay?
John:
In the end, I left it on and did the audio delay.
John:
But I can tell you with that feature on, that doesn't fix the delay.
John:
Maybe it's getting closer or maybe it's screwing it up.
John:
Either way, I left it on and dialed in the audio delay on top of that.
John:
So I don't know what the deal with that feature is.
John:
Maybe it varies by receiver, but just be aware that that is a thing.
John:
And in theory, maybe it's not necessary in your setup.
John:
But even if you just have something as simple as a soundbar or any kind of receiver that is sort of decoding signals or doing anything like that,
John:
You could experience this.
John:
And all of my delays were positive.
John:
So I think that's basically adding a delay to say, yes, receiver, you got the audio and you're ready to play it right now, but just hold back 120 milliseconds and then play that audio because then you'll be in sync with the television.
John:
And it also may be related to the delays in the television.
John:
So if you're doing lots of processing on the television and it's slow, that may be inducing a delay.
John:
So dial in your TV settings before you do this.
John:
Make sure it's configured the way you want with whatever features you're going to use on your television and then do the audio delay with whatever those video processing things are.
John:
And wait, it's 120 milliseconds.
John:
That's a lot.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I mean, I don't again, I couldn't even tell whether it was positive or negative doing it by hand, but doing it graphically, there's no lying about the waveforms like there it is.
John:
240 frames per second.
John:
They were all positive.
John:
They were positive somewhere around the low 100 milliseconds.
Wow.
Marco:
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All right.
Casey:
One more piece of follow-up.
Casey:
This has been fascinating, but it's gone on longer than I expected.
Casey:
This has been going around a little while.
Casey:
You're welcome, Marco.
Casey:
This Twitter thread has been going around for a little while.
Casey:
This is by Nikki Tonski, and it starts with, Okay, thread of weird stuff found in the redesigned macOS Ventura System Settings app.
Casey:
And it's a series of images and videos and screen captures and whatnot about how freaking broken the system setting app is in Ventura.
Casey:
And it's rough, y'all.
Casey:
It's not good.
Marco:
Yeah, I was going to, I wanted to see if this actually changed in beta.
Marco:
I think it was beta 5 that was just released.
Marco:
So I updated my MacBook Air to that earlier today.
Marco:
And I was poking around settings and I had that little thing that says you have 27 days left or whatever to add AppleCare.
Marco:
And so I clicked on that and took a very long time to load.
Marco:
It loaded a different screen in the meantime.
Marco:
Then it eventually popped in.
Marco:
And I clicked the like, remind me later button.
Marco:
And that has now frozen the system settings app in such a way that I cannot quit it.
Marco:
The whole thing is dimmed.
Marco:
And it's dimmed as if it's showing a modal, but it's no longer showing a modal.
Marco:
and it's dimmed, and I'm stuck on the Wi-Fi pane forever, and I can't quit it.
Marco:
So that's the state we're in.
Marco:
I mean, this is just one of so many tiny ways this is broken.
Marco:
This app, I mean, look, this is the one that, you know, people are complaining a lot about the design, which is, I think, a very valid complaint to make.
Marco:
It is all based on SwiftUI, and people are blaming SwiftUI, and I think that is...
Marco:
partly responsible but not entirely responsible um you know i think it is very possible to make great designs and great apps with swift ui this is just not one of them um and but ultimately this app it is it feels really sloppy it feels half baked and and incomplete and buggy and the layouts are oftentimes very difficult to understand they oftentimes are very unattractive they look unpolished
Marco:
This is not what you expect from Apple.
Marco:
This is something that you expect from Windows.
Marco:
Or worse, Windows has actually gotten better than this recently.
Marco:
Like, this is... This is not to Apple's standards.
Marco:
And quite frankly...
Marco:
This in beta 5 might be acceptable if it was beta 1, but it's not.
Marco:
We're too far along now.
Marco:
I really don't think this is salvageable.
Marco:
And I think the only way Apple should go forward with this is to, for this release for Ventura, revert back to the old settings app and work on this for the next year or two and then ship it when it's ready.
Marco:
This is not ready yet.
John:
Yeah, it's unclear what they're going to do about this, because by the time we get a beta inside Apple, it's gone much farther forward.
John:
But like you said, it's like, this is beta 5, it's not beta 1.
John:
People always complain, like, stop, what are you talking about?
John:
It's a beta, of course things are broken or whatever.
John:
Like, there is a cadence to betas.
John:
Things are most broken in the first beta, and then they're supposed to get better over time.
John:
And there's a time horizon.
John:
You can't leave something in a super-duper broken state, and then it'll be all fixed in the very last beta.
John:
Maybe it's some minor thing or whatever, but this is...
John:
You know, there's a lot of things having to do with opinion and usability and stuff, but there are things that are just not opinion-based.
John:
Like, for example, the confirmation button on a screen being cut off so you can't read the text and there's no way you can change that.
John:
That's not an opinion-based thing.
John:
And that's just not finished software.
John:
And if that's in beta 1, fine.
John:
But if five betas go by and it still looks like that, it's like, what's the holdup on making the confirmation button visible on this screen?
John:
Have they just not gotten to it yet?
John:
Yeah.
John:
I think it's salvageable in that you can look at this and say, okay, setting aside the usability thing, setting aside appearance, aesthetics, setting all that aside, can we just fix the things where things are just plain broken or you can't click or see a button where a label overlaps with another thing?
John:
That's not opinion.
John:
That is just something you need to fix.
John:
All of those are fixable.
John:
You can look at them and say, I'm gonna make a punch list.
John:
Here are all the things we need to do.
John:
Can't see this button, this label overlaps this thing, this window is too short, this window is too tall.
John:
Just fix them, right?
John:
Those are all fixable.
John:
But you start to ask questions on the outside.
John:
Why haven't they been fixed in five betas?
John:
Are they saving all that for the end because it's just so easy for them to fix that?
John:
Oh, we'll just go through in the end to make sure all the buttons are visible, right?
John:
Why would they save it, right?
John:
Or is there something about the framework they're using or something that makes it difficult to change that?
John:
They're trying to fix it, but they haven't come up with a good way to do it.
John:
Or maybe it's like it's not our fix to make.
John:
We're doing the right thing.
John:
But, you know, this with UI widget, the team needs to fix it.
John:
And we're waiting for them to ship us to fix.
John:
So we here on the system setting teams, nothing we can do.
John:
We just got to sit around and wait.
John:
And when, you know, the Swift UI team gets around to fixing that control or fixing their metrics on this particular thing, our stuff will just magically work.
John:
And that will come in the final beta and fix everything.
John:
Right.
John:
So we can't know from the outside which of those things is true.
John:
But what we can know from the outside is this is unshippable.
John:
And plenty of betas are unshippable.
John:
That's why you don't ship the beta.
John:
They're by definition unshippable.
John:
But this is unshippable for reasons like not like, oh, this is buggy or slow or is ugly or something like they literally can't ship this because people won't be able to read the text on the button that they have to click to dismiss a window.
John:
Right.
John:
You just can't ship that.
John:
So.
John:
If they don't fix that before the release version, they have to decide what to do.
John:
They could discovery do this and say, well, we couldn't fix it in time.
John:
We don't know why they couldn't fix it.
John:
We couldn't fix it because, again, maybe the framework is broken or whatever.
John:
We don't have time.
John:
So we're just going to revert.
John:
But if they revert, are there any new preferences in Ventura that they would then have to reimplement in the old version?
John:
Because this shares no UI with the old one.
John:
So I feel kind of like how they shipped DiscoveryD.
John:
This may not be that easy to revert.
John:
If they added any new preferences, I don't think they're going to spend any time adding those new preferences back to the old preference panes.
John:
It could be that there are no new preferences, so this is an issue.
John:
But I think, I mean, to give one example, someone was, I think it was Jason Snell wrote up something about this.
John:
Network locations are gone in Ventura, and someone filed the bug against it, and the bug was closed as works correctly.
John:
Now, in theory, you could see that and say, oh, well, that means Apple is telling me that they're not going to support network locations anymore.
John:
But I don't trust the close reason for bugs long enough to say that definitively.
John:
But based on the information that we have, it seems like Apple is saying network locations are not a thing in Ventura.
John:
But if you revert to the old system settings app, it'll have network locations again.
John:
So will that UI not work because it's not connected to anything or will it just work because they didn't actually remove the functionality?
John:
They're just removing the UI.
John:
Too many questions.
John:
But, you know, for it to be this far along and still have these kind of fundamental errors is not reassuring.
John:
Now, granted, it's only August.
John:
This thing is going to ship in the fall, maybe in October or November.
John:
So there's still calendar wise lots of time for them to fix this.
John:
But from the outside, it's starting to look a little bit concerning that really, really basic functional stuff is not working.
John:
And I would encourage everyone who thinks we're overreacting to look at the thread.
John:
They're not hard to fix.
John:
Oh, just make the window bigger.
John:
Just move the button up.
John:
Just move the label.
John:
They seem like they're not hard to fix.
John:
And if you're having that reaction, you're like, why is there an overreaction?
John:
These are all easy to fix.
John:
Ask yourself why they're not fixed yet then.
John:
That's what we don't understand on the outside.
John:
Again, there's lots of plausible reasons for it, but Apple's not going to tell us what the real reasons are.
John:
So...
John:
We're just out here waiting patiently, hoping one day a beta will come.
John:
All these layout issues will be fixed.
John:
And then we'll be back to our earlier complaints, which is even though everything works, we still don't like it for reasons X, Y, and Z that are more opinion based and less your UI is truncated based.
Marco:
Yeah, but see, it seems using this feels like this has been a failure of the process somewhere along the way.
Marco:
When you see what the Settings app is and how it works, it feels like an early demo that you might have brought to a design meeting inside Apple and said, hey, we should do something like this for the next version of macOS.
Marco:
And then the team would have evaluated it, scheduled it, and we would have seen it after it was done and polished.
Marco:
And Beta 1 would have had very few issues.
Marco:
That's how Apple usually does most of their features.
Marco:
Beta 1 of almost anything is never as broken as this app is, let alone Beta 5.
Marco:
And so it seems like somehow this design, which is pretty rough, got approved or shoved through.
Marco:
And then the implementation, which is also really rough, got scheduled for a release that it can't make.
Marco:
Look, we know how this is going to go.
Marco:
We know that Apple's current design team does not take feedback well.
Marco:
And look, Apple as a company culture is extremely thin skinned.
Marco:
They cannot take criticism and they think they are right all of the time.
John:
They did roll back the Safari changes, though.
John:
Let's be fair.
John:
That's very recent history.
Marco:
That was kind of at the last minute, and I think that was kind of reluctantly.
John:
I mean, that gets back to the question of how easy is it to roll back.
John:
Apparently, Safari was pretty easy to roll back.
John:
How easy is this to roll back?
Marco:
Well, and also, the Safari changes mostly happened on the iPhone.
Marco:
where there's a large outcry among iPhone beta users, even non-developers, because a lot of people use the iPhone betas.
Marco:
On the Mac, they seem to take feedback even less so and even slower and even worse.
Marco:
I mean, look.
Marco:
Look at how bad notifications have been messed up since Big Sur, and they're still that messed up.
Marco:
They haven't fixed them or tweaked them at all, as far as we can tell.
Marco:
And it's a very broken design.
John:
Yeah.
John:
OK, notifications is a good example because there's both kinds of feedback.
John:
Oh, I don't like it because it's harder to get it features or there's less information available or things only appear in mouse over.
John:
That's, you know, that's sort of more design based.
John:
Right.
John:
But there are also things like I think we posted a video a while back.
John:
functional features where when you go to click the button it disappears from under your cursor that's not opinion based that's just that's just plain a bug it's just not supposed to work that way it's you know now granted there's a workaround in that case whereas in some some of these cases in systems saying there's no workaround but if i can't mouse over the button that i'm supposed to click and click it that there's no opinion about that that's just plain broken and there are features like that in notifications that haven't gotten fixed but
John:
They didn't roll back the notification design because I think they like the design.
John:
To your point, Marco, they think the design is better.
John:
They disagree with us about that.
John:
But also the bugs, which are not opinion based, they still haven't fixed.
John:
Maybe that's a framework thing.
John:
I'm pretty sure the notification is a Swift UI too.
John:
Maybe that's a framework thing as well.
John:
And the notification team can't fix that because it's not their bug.
John:
It's a Swift UI bug.
John:
But either way, lots of things are falling down in macOS these days.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And it seems like the feedback loop is broken in some way.
Marco:
Like these things should not be getting out here in the state that they are in.
Marco:
And what will probably happen here, we've seen what happens with Mac efforts recently.
Marco:
The hardware is amazing.
Marco:
The software is kind of half-assed.
Marco:
And when things are a little bit buggy, a little bit broken, they basically never get fixed.
Marco:
Like when this ships, and this will ship, when this ships in October, November, whenever...
Marco:
Whatever problems and shortcomings it has, it's probably going to have for a long time because Apple does not give themselves enough time or bandwidth or priority to fix macOS bugs very often.
Marco:
macOS bugs tend to stick around and macOS design shortcomings stick around even longer.
Marco:
So that's why this is so disheartening to see because I know they're going to just half-ass this out there and then just never touch it again.
John:
I think if they can't get the basic layout features fixed in time for their target ship date in the fall, they will roll this back.
John:
Because they literally can't ship a thing where you bring up a screen and you can't click the button.
John:
They will not ship that.
John:
They will not ship a thing where you'd have to know that there's a button that you can't see and you have to hit return to activate it or something.
John:
They're just not going to ship that period.
John:
So if they can't get just that one screen on that one thing, like there's a tweet for...
John:
one of those things where it's just the, you know, the button, the confirm button is not visible.
John:
They won't ship that.
John:
They just won't.
John:
Right.
John:
And so if they can't, that one screen could hold up the entire design because it's not like they can revert one preference pane to the old one.
John:
As far as I know, I think it's like all or nothing.
John:
So if they get to October and this one screen, just to give one example, they can't find a way to fix it.
John:
They literally can't do it.
John:
They have to roll the whole thing back.
John:
And I'm not entirely convinced that they won't be faced with that decision.
John:
Now, granted, it's only August.
John:
October is a long way away.
John:
We don't need to be paranoid about it or whatever.
John:
But as the months wear on, watch these things.
John:
See how they go.
John:
because it only takes one of them to make it unshippable, right?
John:
Because some people want, whatever this screen is, some people want to use it.
John:
And if you can't dismiss the window because the button isn't anywhere visible for you to click on, you can't ship that.
John:
Like, what do you do?
John:
Just quit the app at that point?
John:
Like, well, there's a modal dialogue up that I can't dismiss because I can't see the buttons.
John:
So game over.
John:
So I'll, you know, I will continue to watch the betas.
John:
I hope there will be a future beta where the basic layout bugs are all fixed.
John:
And then we can go back to complaining about the more nuanced things.
Marco:
I hope you're right, but frankly, I don't trust them to make that call.
Marco:
If you look at the clear and persistent quality problems that Apple allows to ship in macOS, I don't trust them to make that call the way you say they will.
John:
I hope we get an email from Apple saying, you know, as I said, the inside Apple, we were using a build from like a month ago, right?
John:
Maybe all this is fixed already inside Apple.
John:
And so Apple people who are working on system settings or know about it, please send us an email and say, oh, don't worry.
John:
That stuff that you're looking at, that was fixed three weeks ago and it's all going to be good in the next bit.
John:
I would love for that to be true.
Marco:
Here's what I think might happen instead.
Marco:
So macOS is going to be holding back the release of some hardware.
Marco:
Whatever Macs are going to be released at that October or November or whatever event, those are going to require the newest version of macOS.
Marco:
And so they're going to declare the ship date of macOS to coincide with that hardware launch.
Marco:
And so whatever they have at this point...
Marco:
they're going to ship it then.
Marco:
Like, that's it.
Marco:
And I think they will tolerate a lot of bugs to hit that hardware ship date, and then they'll say, oh, we'll fix it in point one.
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
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Casey:
If you'll permit me to change subject ever so slightly, can we talk about feedback with Apple?
Marco:
Oh, God.
Marco:
I'm so mad right now.
Casey:
I'm grumpy, fellas.
Casey:
I'm grumpy again.
Casey:
I'm grumpy.
Casey:
So I did what third-party developers are told to do, and I filed bugs.
Casey:
Let me rephrase that.
Casey:
I wasted my time.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Casey:
No, I'm being too cruel.
Casey:
I filed bugs, and I filed a few bugs against various SwiftUI things, both old and new, mostly new.
Casey:
And those bugs went into slash dev slash null, as they always do.
Casey:
But because I'm a turd and because I know people on the inside, I asked a friend on the inside, hey, for this feedback number, can you tell me what the hell's going on?
Casey:
And this friend said, oh, you filed that really late, didn't you?
Casey:
I'm sorry, what now?
Casey:
I filed this like a month or two ago.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Casey:
That's way too late.
Casey:
What?
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Casey:
What now?
Casey:
I thought, and we were always told, and I'm not sure what the genesis of this really was, but we were always told as third-party developers, you got to file these bugs early when the new betas come out so we have time to fix them.
Casey:
Okay, that's a little bit crummy that our world has to stop in order to serve as your external QA, but fine.
Casey:
Okay, fine, fine.
Casey:
That's what I'll do.
Casey:
Again, maybe this is my misunderstanding.
Casey:
I don't want to say that this is like fact, Casey List reports, you know, or anything like that.
Casey:
I'm just telling you a casual conversation I had.
Casey:
But apparently filing things in July, mid-July, or even early August is not really leaving enough time.
Casey:
And that's just not cool to begin with.
Casey:
But leaving that aside for a minute, I said, okay, well, is there any action on this, on a couple of these?
Casey:
We said, oh, yeah, this one's been duped to such and such.
Casey:
It won't land for a while.
Casey:
This one's been duped to that, and that won't land for a while.
Casey:
And they said, oh, but there's a workaround for this one.
Casey:
Sorry, what?
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a workaround.
Casey:
And this individual pasted the text that was clearly written for me to see.
Casey:
It was absolutely clear that it was written for me to see.
Casey:
And said, yeah, this is what it says at the bottom of that feedback.
Casey:
Huh.
Casey:
So I open up Feedback Assistant, and I'll give you one guess.
Casey:
What is not at the bottom of my feedback?
Casey:
Any of that f***ing text, because it just never made it to me.
Casey:
So let's play this back.
Casey:
What Apple wants is for me to spend a not insignificant amount of my time generating a sample project for all of these bugs that I'm calling to their attention.
Casey:
Then I need to include them in a bug report that's clear and succinct, explaining exactly what I expected and what actually happened.
Casey:
Then I need to throw it across the wall.
Casey:
I need to do this really, really, really soon after WWDC if I want to have even a prayer of getting a fix in.
Casey:
And then what I need to do is talk to somebody on the inside to get the feedback on my feedback.
Casey:
How f***ing broken is this?
Casey:
How broken is this?
Casey:
This is not okay.
Casey:
Well, you know what?
Casey:
Actually, I take that back.
Casey:
It's okay because documentation is flawless and tells me everything I need to know about all of these different pieces and bits and bobs.
Casey:
This is not okay.
Casey:
It makes me so angry.
Casey:
It is not okay that this is what Apple expects third-party developers to deal with.
Casey:
This is broken, and it's broken from top to bottom.
Casey:
I am so friggin' angry about this.
Casey:
It is not okay, Apple.
Casey:
I know that nobody is going to listen to this because apparently providing feedback to Apple never works if you do it in audio form.
Casey:
So I'm probably going to have to write a friggin' blog post about this, which I also
Marco:
don't want to have to do.
Marco:
No, you got to make a YouTube video.
Casey:
Oh, you're right, actually.
Casey:
That is what I should do.
Casey:
You know what?
Casey:
I should just set up in my backyard and just rant about this because then it may actually work.
Casey:
It makes me so angry that I have put in all of this work
Casey:
I have put in a not insignificant amount of time putting this together.
Casey:
Let's say, I don't even know what an hourly rate is for an iOS developer these days, but several years ago, it was like 150, 200 bucks an hour.
Casey:
So let's charitably call it 150 bucks an hour.
Casey:
I'm going to send a bill to Apple for the like 300, 500, $600,000 of time that I've spent doing their QA only for them to give me nothing.
Casey:
nothing in return.
Casey:
I am so angry about this, and I need to chill out, and maybe I need to go downstairs and grab myself a Tito's, but it's just not fair.
Casey:
It's not fair to us, and maybe that's whiny, and maybe I'm just a big baby, but I don't think that's the case.
Casey:
It's not fair that I put in all this work to try to tell them exactly what's wrong, how it's wrong, why I think it's wrong, and
Casey:
Here's a sample project that demonstrates how it's wrong.
Casey:
And I get crickets in response.
Casey:
Their own feedback.
Casey:
They didn't even, the feedback they put in, which by the way, actually was helpful, didn't even make it to me.
Casey:
It didn't even get here.
Casey:
It's so broken and I hate it.
Casey:
And I hate it from top to bottom and it makes me so mad.
John:
I wonder if that feedback is going to appear like two weeks from now, because I would imagine, you know, whatever weird system of indirection, like they added this indirection recently where we do feedbacks and those become radars and we used to be able to submit radars directly.
John:
But now there's this, you know, this second stage and.
John:
this workflow i wonder if that feedback is slowly winding its way to you and then like a week and a half after uh you know ios uh 16 is released that feedback will appear and you'll get a notification that says oh you have some additional you know reply to your feedback and then you'll see the workaround
Casey:
Yeah, maybe it could be.
Casey:
But even if, okay, let's charitably assume that's the case.
Casey:
That isn't helpful to me today.
Casey:
It isn't helpful to me.
Casey:
So like as an example, a specific example, Masquerade is currently broken in iOS 16.
Casey:
The reason is, and maybe to some degree, maybe this is a Casey problem.
Casey:
I'm not saying that I am not at fault at all.
Casey:
But let me tell you the facts of the situation.
Casey:
In iOS 15, the way Masquerade works is there's a parent view.
Casey:
It's almost exclusively SwiftUI.
Casey:
There's a parent view that will either show one of two different sub views depending on where you are in the app, whether you've loaded an image or not.
Casey:
If you haven't loaded an image, you get the quick help and all that jazz.
Casey:
There is no bottom toolbar at that juncture.
Casey:
Once you load an image, the same parent view is throwing away the landing view and putting in the standard editing view, which has a bottom toolbar.
Casey:
That doesn't work in iOS 16.
Casey:
So I've had a handful of people say to me, dude, what the hell happened to Masquerade?
Casey:
It's broken.
Casey:
I'm like, what?
Casey:
I can't share anything.
Casey:
What?
Casey:
It turns out there's no bottom toolbar because apparently subbing a view that didn't have a toolbar and replacing it with one that does have a toolbar, that does not work in iOS 16.
Casey:
That is, to my eyes, a regression.
Casey:
There's no reason that that shouldn't work as far as I'm aware.
Casey:
And that is a regression.
Casey:
Now, what does that mean?
Casey:
I have to figure out a way to fix this before iOS 16 comes out or just not give a crap that my app doesn't work.
Casey:
So again, maybe I'm just being a baby.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Now I'm feeling bad that I got angry.
Casey:
But how is this fair to me that I have gotten zero feedback as to what to do about this, whether they've seen it, whether they care, whether it'll get fixed, if it'll get fixed, when will it get fixed?
Casey:
Like telling me at release time, like you're saying, John, that very well may be what's about to happen, but that doesn't help me because I've got to get it fixed by the time iOS 16 is released.
Casey:
This is not good.
Casey:
This is not good.
Casey:
And it's not fair.
Casey:
It's not fair to me.
Casey:
It's not fair to my users.
Casey:
It's not fair.
Casey:
I would say my customers, but let's be honest, they're Apple's customers, aren't they?
Casey:
It's not fair.
Casey:
And I hate it.
Marco:
Well, first of all, you should never feel bad about your feelings, Casey.
Right.
Casey:
Thank you.
Marco:
Feel your feelings.
Marco:
Second of all, after our wonderfully brief discussion about TV processing, this probably woke everybody up.
Marco:
So thank you for that.
Marco:
But no, like this, I mean, look, if it makes you feel any better, I did get a response to the main bug I've been tracking for the last few weeks.
Marco:
And I think I was happier before I got the response.
Yeah.
John:
I think your response is kind of an example of what I was going to say about Casey's thing.
John:
For the second one where, Casey, you had one behavior in 15 and it changes in 16, it's kind of like the situation, well, not as bad as the situation you're in, Marco, but this is part of doing app development on any platform, especially a platform with not great documentation and especially a platform with not great documentation where you can't even see the source code.
John:
Making a complicated application
John:
you're sometimes you're not sure whether your app works uh because of a bug or you're using a framework correctly and so when you're in a situation like this where hey my thing breaks on the new os you always have the question maybe i was doing it wrong before and the new os corrects a bug that breaks my app and you would think if you're not a programmer you're like oh that seems like a weird situation but apps are complicated and frameworks are complicated and
John:
There is no non-trivial application where there isn't some part of the code that is just accidentally working because of a misunderstanding about an API is supposed to use.
John:
This happens all the time.
John:
And that's frustrating, but that's also just part of being an app developer.
John:
Ideally, a good platform would clarify and say, oh, yeah, this used to work this way, but that was a bug.
John:
We didn't intend it to work that way, and that way has problems.
John:
Therefore, on the new OS, it works this way.
John:
And from that, you can figure out how to work around your issue or whatever.
John:
And not knowing also happens because sometimes there's just not enough people to track on all these little things in everyone's little app because every single person's app could be relying on a different piece of weird undocumented interaction, right?
John:
Apple can't chase all those down, figure out in all those cases what all those things are doing, right?
John:
It needs to do a better job than it is doing, obviously, but there's always going to be a situation where something in your app that used to work is now broken and it's radio silence about what you can do about it.
John:
and I think it's unfair to expect Apple to help every single developer with personal attention like that because they just can't do it.
John:
There's just too many developers, right?
John:
Marco's situation, which you can look at his Twitter thread for details, but Marco's situation is kind of a little bit worse in that he did get a response and the response was,
John:
The thing you want to do, that's not what the feature you're using is meant to do.
John:
You should use this feature instead.
John:
But that's where Marco started.
John:
He was using the other feature, but the other feature is deprecated.
Marco:
Yeah, it's literally worse than that.
Marco:
So literally, I didn't post Apple's response to Twitter because I didn't want to set them on fire, but...
Marco:
Literally, so my issue is I have I have in my app, you can change the tint color and I have features where you can have different tint color for dark mode versus light mode.
Marco:
And so I need to be able to change the tint color, which is like, you know, the main accent color for the whole app for like controls and stuff.
Marco:
change the tint color programmatically.
Marco:
And this is very easy in UIKit.
Marco:
In SwiftUI, it has a modifier called .accentcolor that was used before, and you can set that at the root of your view hierarchy so it can propagate through everything.
Marco:
This is one of the features of SwiftUI, of the power you get by being able to set certain appearance modifiers at a root level of something, and it automatically goes to everything underneath it.
Marco:
That's one of the greatest advantages of SwiftUI.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
Anyway, so this accent color modifier worked.
Marco:
It does this perfectly fine.
Marco:
Well, the new API they have, the new navigation split view for iOS 16, it wouldn't react to changes in this property if it changed during runtime for the buttons that are kind of internally managed by that.
Marco:
Things like the back button in the navigation bar wouldn't respond to changes in that tint color with the new API that they've replaced that with, which is called .tint.
Marco:
They deprecated the old one, .accentColor, that worked.
Marco:
And if you use .accentColor, it'll give you a warning in the editor, and it will say, this is deprecated, use .tint instead, which suggests to me that those are equivalent.
Marco:
But if you use .tint, it doesn't work.
Marco:
It won't change the colors.
Marco:
And their response was literally like, this isn't really intended to change the color of entire stacks.
Marco:
Don't use it at the root of your whole UI.
Marco:
Use it on one control.
Marco:
And that's not what the documentation says.
Marco:
That's not anywhere in the editor.
Marco:
If this function doesn't work or can't be trusted to work at the root of a view hierarchy, then if I use it at the root of a view hierarchy, it should produce some kind of error or warning.
Marco:
Ideally at the compiler, but at least at runtime.
Marco:
But no, that isn't how it works.
Marco:
It just fails in weird ways.
Marco:
And their recommended workaround is for me to go use the deprecated function.
Marco:
Cool.
Marco:
And so I filed a bug, and I was just like you, Casey.
Marco:
I was very dutiful.
Marco:
I had a sample project, and every time a new beta came out, I would rerun my sample project, and I would update the bug saying...
Marco:
FYI, this is still broken in developer beta 3, developer beta 4, developer beta 5.
Marco:
I would keep updating it every time to re-update.
Marco:
Hey, I checked this again.
Marco:
It's still broken.
Marco:
And so to get that response was basically blaming me for something that's clearly their bug and basically saying it's my fault for expecting it to work and that, you know, too bad.
Marco:
And that is infuriating.
John:
I don't think they blamed you.
John:
And yes, it is infuriating, but I think this is also... Oh, they absolutely blamed me.
John:
They said it's not meant to be used this way.
John:
But that's not blamed.
John:
So here's the thing.
John:
So they had bad documentation because they didn't explain this.
John:
They have no documentation.
John:
Right.
John:
Well, bad or no documentation, right?
John:
The Xcode suggestion of saying this is deprecated, use this instead.
John:
You can imagine how that would come to be because...
John:
Although they are not equivalent when set in an entire view hierarchy, they are equivalent when set on a leaf node.
John:
And when set on a leaf node, they are equivalent and do work.
John:
What they were missing was communicating the fact that tint color is not, or whatever, tint is not meant to be set on view hierarchies, whereas accent color is, right?
John:
And I think the situation they're in is, it's an annoying situation, but it is a situation that probably happens all the time, certainly happens in lots of other platforms besides iOS, where
John:
There is new functionality that is different than the old functionality that is not a drop-in replacement for it.
John:
And the old functionality is deprecated without any direct replacement for it.
John:
So the old functionality is I can set accent color an entire hierarchy.
John:
There is no non-deprecated way to do that.
John:
That is an annoying situation to be in, but it happens all the time.
John:
I would say that you got a good experience because you got this explained to you.
John:
You didn't have to just wonder as your app goes out, like, why is it that accent color and tint color don't do the same thing?
John:
You actually got an answer.
John:
Granted, that answer wasn't written in the documentation where everyone can benefit from it.
John:
It was sent to you individually and then you posted it to Twitter.
John:
So the system still sucks, but this is another annoying situation when dealing with any kind of platform.
John:
Sometimes the functionality you want is deprecated and there will never be a replacement.
John:
I mean, in this case, I think there probably will be a replacement eventually.
Marco:
No, I mean, in this case, my replacement was I just dropped out into UIKit and do it there because it works perfectly fine there.
Marco:
But that sucks.
Marco:
And also, let's also be very clear here.
Marco:
We all know the reason I finally got an answer was because I was tweeting about it.
John:
Yeah, well, running to the press never helps.
John:
Right, right.
John:
Yeah, and the system is broken in that way, but I'm saying, like, the underlying situation where the API you wanted to use is deprecated and the replacement doesn't do the same thing happens all the time, and it's just some crappy thing that you have to deal with sometimes.
John:
And you should file a bug against that to say a feature request for all the good that does.
John:
It says, look, I think there should be a non-deprecated way to set the accent color for entire view hierarchies, right?
John:
But things are deprecated for a long time.
John:
Like even in my dinky apps, they're full of warnings for deprecation, which I wish I could silence.
John:
I'm like, I know what I'm doing is deprecated.
John:
I've tried the new way, but it's different and worse in certain ways.
John:
So I'm just going to ride that deprecated thing until I yank it from the OS.
John:
And then I'll deal with it then.
John:
I know they're there, but there is no current non-deprecated equivalent that does what I want it to do.
John:
So I'll just keep using the deprecated one.
John:
And I feel like that is a possible solution.
John:
Because how long is it going to be deprecated?
John:
For one release?
John:
For five?
John:
For ten?
John:
Sometimes things say deprecated for a long time.
John:
There's probably some blanket policy for Apple.
John:
That's such a code smell, though.
John:
It's such a code smell.
John:
It's crappy, but you don't control the platform.
John:
Like, you're writing against this platform and... This platform is writing against us at this point.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I think things being deprecated for a long time is actually an advantage sometimes because they're like, well, if the old way keeps working, then I'll just keep using that.
John:
Same thing with UIKit workarounds.
John:
That'll probably work for a long time.
John:
That workaround that you did with using UIKit, I don't think that's going to go away anytime soon.
John:
There's too many apps written in UIKit.
John:
But the real request is, hey, I think there should be a way to do this.
John:
You made a new way.
John:
Xcode suggests it because it's equivalent when talking about a leaf node, but it's not equivalent when setting it on a whole
John:
view hierarchy xcode doesn't know that documentation doesn't know that so these are all symptoms of apple's crappy system of not you know missing documentation incorrect documentation uh the the time it takes to communicate the fact that you have to be a high profile person and complain on twitter to get an answer i i feel these frustrations but you know some of them some of them are in the end frustrating situations that are going to be frustrating no matter what exacerbated by all the things that we think apple should be doing better in terms of communication and documentation
Casey:
That's the thing is that if documentation was flawless, which it is getting a little bit better.
Casey:
And I was told by a friend of the show, Serendi Caldwell, that you can actually file a bug against documentation explicitly and say, oh, this documentation is broken, missing, et cetera.
Casey:
It's getting better, but it's still garbage.
Casey:
It is absolute garbage.
Casey:
I found a workaround for an issue on Reddit once that should be in the documentation.
Casey:
It's such garbage.
Casey:
And if the documentation was kind of perfect or near perfect,
Casey:
And the feedback system was broken, that sucks, but okay.
Casey:
If the feedback system was perfect or near perfect, but the documentation was broken, no, that sucks in a different way, but okay.
Casey:
But the fact that both are so fundamentally screwed is what makes it just so demeaning and so awful.
Casey:
And it's just...
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Sometimes it's just really not fun to work on Apple platforms.
Casey:
And that's, that's a real crappy place to be.
Casey:
And I don't know if that's, again, maybe it's me, maybe the issue is me.
Casey:
And I've just, I've been on this platform for so long, even though I haven't done near as much work as like Marco, for example, it's still something I've been working against for a long, long time.
Casey:
Maybe I'm just bored of it.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I mean, but it's just, it's, it's hostile.
Casey:
It's hostile to us in ways that I don't think it has to be.
Casey:
And yeah,
Casey:
it stinks that the only way for me to find out information on the status of my bugs is to ask friends on the inside the only way for marco to do it is to either do that or whine about it on twitter and like it is not fun for me or marco to whine about it on twitter it is not fun for me to go for go to friends on the inside with a pile of feedback numbers and say hey uh please please can you tell me if anything's happened with this please thank you like looking like puss in boots or something like
Casey:
That's not fair to my friends.
Casey:
Like, that's not fair to them.
Casey:
They shouldn't have to be the voice of feedback because their entire feedback system is screwed.
Casey:
But I was looking at it, you know, and I have filed one, two, three, four, five, six, seven different feedbacks this summer.
Casey:
I will put the feedback numbers in the show notes if you happen to be an Apple employee.
Casey:
I have received literally no feedback on any of them.
Casey:
None.
Casey:
None.
Casey:
And I get it.
Casey:
Like, they have more people writing more feedbacks than I can wrap my head around.
Casey:
I get it.
Casey:
But that isn't my, well, what's your phrase, Marco?
Casey:
It's not my fault, but it is my problem.
Casey:
But it shouldn't be my problem.
Casey:
Like, there should be, if this system is as broken as it seems to be, then guess what?
Casey:
Maybe we should find a different system.
Casey:
And I don't know what that is exactly, but every time I rant about this, either on ATP or on Twitter or what have you, I always get people from like every other platform, Android, Microsoft, anything.
Casey:
And they're like, oh, wow, that really sucks.
Casey:
I can't imagine having to work like that.
Casey:
Here's what we do.
Casey:
Oh, the bug tracker's all in the open and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
Like Swifts, for example.
Casey:
It's just...
Casey:
This is all fundamentally broken, and it's just not fair, I don't think, and that's, I guess, opinion, but also, maybe also opinion, but to me, it's just not fun.
Casey:
It's just not fun to be fighting against the frameworks constantly.
Casey:
And if you're not fighting against the frameworks, you're fighting against feedback.
Casey:
If you're not fighting against feedback, you're fighting against documentation.
Marco:
Don't forget app review.
Casey:
And don't forget app review.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
And if you're not fighting against those, you're fighting against app review.
Casey:
It's just, can we get a break on one of these pillars, please?
Casey:
Can any one of these pillars not be made of sand?
Casey:
Because that would be amazing.
John:
Don't make you feel any better.
John:
I think part of my, you know, my 20 mumble years of being a web developer has conditioned me for this because if the experience for doing web development, let's say you're, you know, you're midway through your career and you're doing an important feature for a website.
John:
Of course, for your website, you don't control what web browsers people use and you run into a book.
John:
This version of this browser has this book.
John:
And you're in the same situation we just described.
John:
Is this intended behavior?
John:
This changed since the last version.
John:
Is it supposed to work the new way or the old way?
John:
Should I do a workaround?
John:
Is there a workaround?
John:
What should I do?
John:
If you think it's difficult to get any kind of answer out of Apple about the intended behavior or framework, try getting an answer out of Microsoft as an individual web developer on a dinky little website somewhere that's trying to write some JavaScript that just broke in the latest version of Internet Explorer that is rolling out to all your customers right now.
John:
See if you can get them to tell you
John:
is this intended behavior?
John:
Is there a workaround?
John:
Can you look at my sample project?
John:
You have no way to get any response from them, so much so that it's completely hopeless.
John:
You don't even entertain the idea that you're going to somehow file a bug against Internet Explorer and get the answer in time for your release this Friday.
John:
I'm not saying this is a good system.
John:
It's bad.
John:
But writing on top of any platform is always going to have frustrations like this.
John:
And yes, it is the job of companies like Apple that
John:
You know, in theory, pride themselves on being more responsive than, you know, Microsoft would be to an individual developer at a 10 person company writing them an email in 2005.
John:
Right.
John:
And I think they are slightly more responsive for that, but not much in case of your comparison to equivalent platforms is really where Apple should be looking.
John:
How much more frustrating is it to be an Apple developer than to be an Android developer for writing phone apps?
John:
That is a pretty direct comparison.
John:
Apple should measure itself against that.
John:
But more importantly, Apple should measure it against its ideals.
John:
And its ideals, I think, are that it should be much better than it is in all these areas.
Casey:
Yeah, it's just, I'm sorry for getting angry, but it's just so freaking frustrating.
Casey:
It's so frustrating.
Casey:
All right, let's do some Ask ATP, and let's start this week with Christopher Anderson, who writes, Do you have any recommendations on domain name and IP address management for home network devices?
Casey:
I've been adding more hardware to my home network, such as a Synology, Homebridge, Rastery 5...
Casey:
Networked AV receiver, et cetera.
Casey:
Connecting these devices using an IP address always feels janky.
Casey:
It's tough to remember the IP.
Casey:
You can get certificate warnings, et cetera.
Casey:
Using a hostname and a .local suffix is hit or miss as well.
Casey:
Any suggestions on a cleaner way of addressing devices on a home LAN?
Casey:
So I have a few thoughts on this.
Casey:
First of all, if you run my beloved piehole, hey, Marco, if you have a piehole, then you can set up local DNS in that.
Casey:
The only problem, though, is that if you are running any other DNS servers concurrently with the piehole, I've learned recently that...
Casey:
No matter what order DNS servers are in, that doesn't mean anything.
Casey:
Mac OS and I think iOS considers any of the DNS servers in your DNS server list to be an appropriate server for any of your requests.
Casey:
So it doesn't go from the top and then work its way down.
Casey:
It just kind of splurts across all of them, which is news to me.
Casey:
So that may or may not be useful because if you run other like backup DNS server, then you wouldn't, the high hole may or may not get the query to the host name you want.
Casey:
So tread carefully.
Casey:
There is a future sponsor, Tailscale, which I have a lot of thoughts about in there.
Casey:
Very, very cool.
Casey:
They have not sponsored yet, but they are on the books to sponsor in the future.
Casey:
So take this with a grain of salt.
Casey:
But I have been dabbling with Tailscale and really, really like it.
Casey:
I really honestly do.
Casey:
And one of the nice things about Tailscale is everyone, or at least I thought it was a VPN, and it kind of...
Casey:
Kind of is, but that's not exactly what it's for.
Casey:
What Tailscale is really good at is saying, no matter where your devices are, no matter what network or networks they're on, anything that is connected to Tailscale, you will always be able to connect to anything else connected to Tailscale.
Casey:
So I could be at home connecting to other home servers.
Casey:
I could be at a, not a park bench, mind you, John, but a picnic table connected to Tailscale and connect to my servers at home.
Casey:
I can be anywhere.
Casey:
And as long as I'm on Tailscale and my other devices are on Tailscale,
Casey:
then I can connect to them, and that allows host names as well.
Casey:
So that is what I would recommend for host names.
Casey:
With regard to certificate management, I've got nothing.
Casey:
Channels does it all automatically for you, which is kind of cool, but I don't have any good answers with regard to that.
Casey:
Marco, since you're probably near death with regard to your voice, do you have any thoughts on any of this?
Marco:
I actually don't really have these problems because I don't really need to refer to my local network devices that often.
Marco:
Part of that's because I don't have as many network devices as you guys do.
Marco:
I use a Synology, but I hardly ever need to access it via host name or IP address.
Marco:
I have a file share on it, and it just shows up in my Finder list on the sidebar there, and I just click it there.
Marco:
If I occasionally have to log in to the Synology,
Marco:
I actually am not even sure how to do that right now because I just use that QuickConnect.2 thing that it sets up.
Marco:
Yeah, yeah.
Marco:
I just use that, which works every time.
Marco:
And other than that, the only thing I ever need to maybe log into is my Ubiquiti Unify network.
Marco:
And that's just 192.168.11.
Marco:
So I don't need to know a host name for that.
Marco:
So I don't really have this problem.
Marco:
So I actually don't have a solution for it.
Marco:
My solution is don't have your problem, which is kind of that this is how I should respond to their bug report saying, look, you're you know, you're doing it wrong.
Marco:
And in fact, it's your fault that this is broken.
Marco:
And really, this this is all you.
Marco:
But and I won't document that anywhere.
Marco:
Yeah, too soon.
Casey:
Also, I should mention, it didn't even occur to me until just now, but you could also use a host file to do this.
Casey:
So a host file, and I'm probably going to butcher the description, but it's a file in, what is it, slash etc slash host.
Casey:
And basically what you do is you write a line item for an IP address and what host name you would like to use to refer to that IP address.
Casey:
And any reasonable operating system will parse the host file and try that before it tries any external DNS servers.
Casey:
So that won't work for iOS very well or iPadOS, but it would work for your Mac or PC or what have you.
John:
What is the quick connect thing?
John:
I think I used it when I first set up my Synology, but not since then.
John:
What is the actual mechanism to do that?
Casey:
So you set it up in the Synology's control panel, and what it does is it basically heartbeats to Synology's servers and says, oh, I'm at IP address 192.168.1.1, except it's your external IP.
Casey:
That was a terrible example.
John:
Yeah, right.
Casey:
It's whatever your external IP is.
Casey:
And so then what that does, and I believe it'll do the like proxying thing where even if you don't expose ports on your router, if you go to Synology's QuickConnect.2, you know, whatever your particular QuickConnect account is.
John:
When you say that, like go to, what is that?
John:
You type into one into the address bar of your browser.
John:
you type quick connect dot two and then whatever you specified as your dot dot t o yes dot quick connect period t o and oh a t o is the top level domain name correct yeah and then your particular slash your your synology name and then it figures out what ip you're coming from and does the lookup yeah it's like a dns relay kind of thing okay all right okay
John:
I don't even know about that, except I think I probably did it in 2013 when I first set up my Synology.
John:
I don't think it was available then.
Marco:
And now, when I set mine up, whatever it was last year or earlier this year, whenever that was, when I set mine up, it defaults to bringing you through that and setting that up for you.
Marco:
I used to do the regular setup wizard, and that was part of it.
John:
All right.
John:
So what I do for that is, for my Synology in particular, Synology also has a free service where they will give you a domain name for your Synology.
John:
And so it's like whatever name I picked dot Synology dot me.
John:
And that will do dynamic DNS with, you know, the Synology will occasionally chime in and say, here's what IP address I'm at or whatever.
John:
So that's one convenient way to do it.
John:
I do have in my host file from back in the day, the name of my Synology dot local.
John:
for the, you know, .local things.
John:
.local is used for like a Bonjour, Rendezvous, whatever DNS domain in macOS.
John:
But you can also just define .local ones, right?
John:
I also, also, I know this doesn't help you with naming, but this is one of the things I do.
John:
From back in the day with my Airport Extreme, I assign static IP addresses to my internal things.
John:
Your 10.0.1.5, your 10.0.1.6 based on the MAC address of the Ethernet interface, right?
John:
So my Synology is always 10.0.1.whatever, my second Synology.
John:
And I memorize those numbers because there's not that many of them.
John:
This is not a solution to naming.
John:
I'm just saying this is the thing I do.
John:
It is surprisingly convenient.
John:
Some things, like the HD Home Run that I just got, I didn't do anything for this, but if I go to HDHomerun.local, that's my HD Home Run.
John:
So it advertises itself as that.
John:
I don't know what would happen if I had two of them.
John:
Maybe it would put a number after or whatever, but I didn't have to do a thing for that.
John:
It just does the rendezvous advertisement.
John:
Super convenient.
John:
If I didn't do that, I could just go to, if you go to your channel server, it will tell you the IP address of the HD home run and you can go do it that way or whatever.
John:
I have never gotten to the point where I'm going to run my own DNS.
John:
That is the correct solution to doing custom naming for things, but I've always had some simpler, jankier way to do it.
John:
Memorize the IP, put something in Etsy hosts, use a service that comes for free with your NAS to come up with a domain name or whatever.
John:
I've always done, I even have a free dynamic domain name for like
John:
you know like a dynamic dns service for one of the other things that i signed up for ages ago you know i just i just keep doing it that way and it's fine and even though i have more devices than marco there's not that many and everything i just described all those weird workarounds covers it all um but if you really want to solve this problem once in all you could run your own dns but running your own dns is it's not a formula for sadness but it's close because now you're running your own dns and
John:
Now you've got to be careful about things.
John:
Now you've got to make sure everything is resolving.
John:
Oh, is my streaming slow because I'm connecting to the wrong thing?
John:
Even something as simple as changing your DNS server to 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4 or those things, whatever, can mess you up.
John:
So once you enter the realm of DNS, then you may find yourself in the situation where you start to be able to understand and relate to the technology meme that you will see on Twitter very often, which is it's always DNS.
John:
What's the problem?
John:
Why did the service go down?
John:
Why is S3 down?
John:
Why did this thing get hacked?
John:
Why did this happen?
John:
No, it's always DNS.
John:
It's not always DNS, but sometimes it feels that way.
John:
So I would caution against that.
John:
And I would say, try using the other methods.
John:
Again, like in the case of HD Home Run, I didn't have to do anything.
John:
And there's a name that I can look it up with.
John:
And I didn't have to memorize any IPs.
John:
just take that victory and go with it and just type hdlroom.local for other things try a host file if you want it to be accessible everywhere i mean even even something like tail scale may be easier than setting up and running your own dns if you're doing it already for pihole then you've already bitten that off and so have fun but i have not decided to undertake that task i just get by with my sort of molly collection of techniques
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
Carlos Quintela writes, my wife is due in October.
Casey:
Congratulations with her first child.
Casey:
And we also had fertility challenges.
Casey:
So thanks for speaking about those cases.
Casey:
You are welcome.
Casey:
I'm glad to hear that that has worked out.
Casey:
I am starting to get a little overwhelmed, writes Carlos.
Casey:
Any words of advice, things you wish you had done, arranged or thought about earlier, both tech and non-tech related?
Casey:
This could go on for approximately 35 years, but I will try to be brief about it.
Casey:
um i think there's a lot that could be said and can be done but ultimately no matter how much you prepare it really is true and it's so frustrating to hear it but no matter how much you prepare there is nothing that will prepare you for your first child there's nothing you can do like this is going to completely destroy your world in all the best and worst ways and that's okay that's that's fine
Casey:
But some specific things that I would advocate, when you are on your way to the hospital, if either of you is even the slightest bit hungry, eat something.
Casey:
Eat something right then.
Casey:
Because if you are going the route of having an epidural, or if your spouse is going the route of having an epidural, then they can't eat once the epidural is in.
Casey:
You probably won't have the time, inclination, or ability to eat once you're at the hospital.
Casey:
Eat on the way.
Casey:
Once you're in the hospital, particularly after the baby is born, take advantage of the nurses.
Casey:
That baby doesn't need to sleep with you that night.
Casey:
That's just my two cents, but they don't need to sleep with you that night.
Casey:
They'll be fine in the nursery.
Casey:
You need to get a little bit of sleep while you can because there ain't none coming for the next, oh, six to...
Casey:
50 weeks?
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
So take advantage of the nurses in the hospital.
Casey:
They'll do what you want them to do.
Casey:
If you want to bring the baby in when it's time to feed, they'll bring the baby in.
Casey:
But one way or another, take advantage of the nurses.
Casey:
Ask them questions.
Casey:
They have heard everything.
Casey:
They have heard all the dumb questions, all the smart questions.
Casey:
Ask them questions.
Casey:
Be present.
Casey:
Be there.
Casey:
It's something I work on every day.
Casey:
I'm not great about it, but I need to be better about it.
Casey:
I'm trying every single day.
Casey:
Something Aaron and I found was that early on I would wake like in solidarity with her because we breastfed or she breastfed Declan and did with Michaela as long as she could before Michaela had some allergy issues.
Casey:
I at first would wake up and just kind of be awake with her just to show like, hey, I'm doing this with you.
Casey:
I'm here.
Casey:
And we quickly realized that was really stupid.
Casey:
Like if anyone can sleep, if anyone can sleep, sleep.
Casey:
That's the best recommendation I have.
Casey:
If anyone is capable of sleeping, I don't care who it is, sleep.
Casey:
um if you have any inclination to get a good camera and to find good however you want now is the time to do it i am so incredibly glad that i bought uh the micro four thirds camera that i bought uh before declin was born i am i i don't use it that often anymore and i actually find that it's only i i personally think it's only better than the iphone in natural light so i don't ever reach for it when i'm inside a building and
Casey:
But that being said, if you want a good camera, now's the time to do it.
Casey:
And I would expect that Marco and John's fancy cameras would probably do much better inside than mine does.
Casey:
And then something that was useful for me, and I think it's because Aaron and I are both super type A and may or may not be useful for you, is getting some sort of an app that tracks what the baby is doing.
Casey:
Especially early on, you kind of have to know how often they're peeing, how often they're pooping, etc.
Casey:
I used or we used Baby Connect, which is hideously ugly, just hilariously ugly, but extremely powerful and is really good at being quick and easy to track things.
Casey:
I also like this for when I went back to work with Declan in particular, because, you know, Aaron would say, oh, the baby would mark in the app, oh, the baby went down and then would mark when the baby woke up.
Casey:
And that would be a really good indication as to how just completely frazzled Aaron will be when I get home from work.
Casey:
Because if Declan has only slept for 20 minutes, which was not unusual for him, then she's going to be in need of assistance.
Casey:
Whereas if he somehow powered out, dropped an hour and a half nap, which was very rare for him, if ever, then she'll be okay when I come home.
Casey:
And so that was useful for us.
Casey:
May not be useful for you, and that's totally fine.
Casey:
Oh, and finally, lean on the people around you.
Casey:
Your natural inclination, or at least if you're anything like me and Aaron, was to circle the wagons and just the two of you will take care of this.
Casey:
No one get near us.
Casey:
We will handle this.
Casey:
Granted, we're about to keel over from exhaustion, but we'll take care of it.
Casey:
Everyone leave us alone.
Casey:
Don't do that.
Casey:
Don't do that.
Casey:
If somebody wants to bring you food, let them bring you food.
Casey:
Somebody wants to come over and do laundry, let them do your laundry.
Casey:
I don't care how embarrassing it is.
Casey:
Let them do your laundry.
Casey:
If they want to do anything, if they want to take the baby from you while you go upstairs and do anything but baby stuff, let them do it.
Casey:
Rely on people.
Casey:
Take people at what they offer.
Casey:
Whenever somebody offers anything, the correct answer is yes, please.
Casey:
I'd love that.
Casey:
That's all I've got.
Marco:
That was great.
Marco:
Did you write that down first?
Casey:
No, I didn't.
Casey:
I mean, I had a couple of bullets in the show notes, but that was most of it.
Marco:
That's amazing.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So Casey covered pretty much all the big highlights that you're going to deal with.
Marco:
I mean, raising a kid in general over the next 18 years and plus more, hopefully, there's lots of things to address there and you'll pick it up as you go.
Marco:
And we can cover that in larger questions down the road.
Marco:
But for the initial needs of a baby is coming, yeah, I think Casey covered it well.
Marco:
It's going to put a lot of stress on you physically and mentally and on the baby's mother, your wife.
Marco:
And so this is going to be a hard time for you, for your relationship, for...
Marco:
for your household, for your family.
Marco:
And there's lots of upsides.
Marco:
And so just be prepared for those downsides and try to do whatever you can to support each other, to believe in each other, to give each other the benefit of the doubt, to recognize that
Marco:
There's going to be a lot of times coming up where one or both of you is going to be really grumpy because you're not going to be getting a lot of sleep and you're going to be really tired and really frustrated.
Marco:
And it's going to push all of your buttons that exist.
Marco:
Especially what infants do is...
Marco:
They are biologically designed to push all of your buttons so that you keep giving them everything they need.
Marco:
And so it's a strain.
Marco:
It is a big strain.
Marco:
And go into it knowing that's going to be the case and supporting each other as best as you possibly can.
Marco:
And whatever that means for the two of you.
Marco:
And that could be a lot of things.
Marco:
That could be things like you take over – like you as the father –
Marco:
for a while you can't really feed the baby, but you can, you can do other supporting roles.
Marco:
So anything you need to support the mother for the things that you can't do, you can, you can support her and those things and everything that you can do, just do it.
Marco:
You can be the diaper parent.
Marco:
You change every single freaking diaper, like whatever it is, like, you know,
Marco:
Whatever it is, you do what you can to support her and to support the baby.
Marco:
If either or both of you might want to consider therapy afterwards, that also can be very beneficial and oftentimes very necessary.
Marco:
Leave all of these options on the table because, again, it's a big strain on everybody in this time period.
Marco:
And so just do your best to support each other and realize that
Marco:
you're in this together and you, you know, you're building this family together.
Marco:
And so all the hard parts are worth it in the end.
Marco:
So you got to just get through the hard parts and be there for each other.
Marco:
And again, give each other the benefit of the doubt as much as possible and support each other.
Casey:
Yep, well put.
Casey:
And another one that I just thought of, my brother-in-law and his wife actually just had their first.
Casey:
And something that occurred to me is, and I am really in no position to talk about this, but everything I've ever understood from almost any mother I've ever spoken to is that nobody really tells you that breastfeeding...
Casey:
is not easy.
Casey:
It is not easy and it's painful from what I understand.
Casey:
So it is completely normal and maybe not healthy, but like normal for the child and the mom to just not get the whole breastfeeding thing squared away for like the first few days, if not week or two.
Casey:
That is totally normal.
Casey:
The mom is, well, if she's anything like Aaron and almost any woman I've ever spoken to about this will immediately blame themselves and be like, oh, I'm not doing this right.
Casey:
It must be something I'm doing wrong.
Casey:
It's just, it's horrible.
Casey:
hard and nobody ever tells you how hard it is.
Casey:
It's frigging hard.
Casey:
And from what Aaron has told me and other moms have spoken to frigging hurts, especially in the beginning.
Casey:
So that is completely normal and complete.
Casey:
Well, again, I shouldn't say it's okay, but for lack of a better way to say it, it's okay.
Marco:
So anyway, sorry, John, wait, I, I, one more thing too.
Marco:
Like I, I often, you know, when, you know, when our kid is upset about something, uh,
Marco:
And he'll often, you know, as many people do, he might say something, you know, kind of hastily, like, I'm never going back there again, you know, because something bad happened somewhere, you know.
Marco:
And I always repeat to him, like, look, we don't make decisions or proclamations about the future when you're upset.
Marco:
You know, so so, you know, when you when you're like, oh, I'm never going back there again.
Marco:
Well, you know, you literally just had a bad experience somewhere.
Marco:
This is not the time to say in the future, I'm never going to do this thing again.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
You're going to be like in a very fragile state for a lot of that time just because of things like lack of sleep and, you know, a lot of stress and stuff like that.
Marco:
And, you know, and your wife is going to be, you know, her body has to recover.
Marco:
Her mind has to go through a lot of this stuff.
Marco:
And it's this is this is heavy stuff.
Marco:
So, again, as part of the giving each other the benefit of the doubt constantly and supporting each other thing, also keep in mind that all of that stress and challenges of the body and mind are temporary, and you'll have different challenges down the road as the kid gets older, but the infant stuff, that's a temporary thing, and that's like an extreme version of the challenges.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
keep in mind that whatever whatever you're feeling during this time it's temporary you're right in the middle of it and after and like and don't make any you know major proclamations or decisions uh when you're in that time because you're going to be very sleep deprived and just you know very like drained for a lot of that time and and so just get through it support each other as best you can and uh and you know see on the other side yeah john
John:
As you said, there's nothing you can do to prepare for it.
John:
In many ways, that is very true because it's kind of one of those things where no matter how much you read about it until you experience it, you don't really know what you're in for.
John:
But one of the important things you could do in terms of preparation is kind of –
John:
Like get okay with the concept that, uh, that things, well, all right.
John:
So there's, there's, there's societal pressure for, uh, surrounding parenthood, right?
John:
And you are, in case you've touched on this with the breastfeeding thing, both of you are going to feel ways that you think you quote unquote shouldn't feel, right?
John:
Right.
John:
You're going it's various points.
John:
You're going to say, I hate this baby.
John:
And then you're going to feel guilty.
John:
You're going to feel guilty because I'm not supposed to hate my baby.
John:
What kind of good parent hates their baby?
John:
Right.
John:
This is what you should prepare for.
John:
The cognitive dissonance of feelings that you absolutely will have that you also at the same time think are bad or wrong.
John:
Right.
John:
Because that can eat you up, right?
John:
That can make everything so much worse.
John:
You can spend a lot of time beating yourself up about the fact that I don't love my baby.
John:
I shouldn't be hating this.
John:
Like you're beating yourself up about feelings that you're having, right?
John:
Now, the flip side of this is
John:
This doesn't mean ignore all the bad things you're having.
John:
So to give one example, if breastfeeding is painful, talk to a lactation consultant.
John:
Do not say, well, it's just supposed to be painful.
John:
There will be fine.
John:
It shouldn't in the ideal case be painful, but it can be.
John:
And if it is, there are things you can do to try to help it.
John:
And it could be that you may just have to not breastfeed, but don't make that decision.
John:
To Marco's point, don't make that rash decision on your own based on your guilt about not doing it and the fact that it is painful.
John:
find help there is an actual job called lactation consultant that they do this and if you can't find one or can't afford one find someone who has breastfed or whatever and in terms of the like preparing for you feeling bad and part of that is having somebody in your life who you can talk to about your bad feelings so right there that's a pretty high bar who do you want to tell that you hate your baby you probably aren't going to feel comfortable telling you
John:
Telling your mom that you hate your baby, right?
John:
Same thing with like, oh, breastfeeding is painful.
John:
I don't know who to turn to.
John:
I don't know where lactation consultant is.
John:
I can't afford one on my brain space.
John:
Who should I talk to about it?
John:
You may think I'll talk to my mom.
John:
She breastfed.
John:
She'll give advice to me.
John:
It depends on your mom.
John:
Maybe your mom will be awesome and give you great advice and walk you through it.
John:
Or maybe your mom will be like, I don't remember, but I think it was fine for me and it should be fine for you and you have a weird relationship with your mom and it just makes you feel worse.
John:
So you have to have someone sane who isn't sleep deprived, so probably not your spouse, to sanity check what you're doing.
John:
Because you're going to feel awful and it's going to feel terrible
John:
But then also you have to know, yeah, but is that just like the heart of being an infant or is there something wrong, right?
John:
Or is there something I can do about this?
John:
And it's so hard to know when you're in the middle of it, especially when you add in the guilt.
John:
Is this a bad thing that I should just power through or is this a bad thing that needs to be addressed?
John:
You will not be able to make that call on your own because your brain will be so scrambled and you've never heard a kid before and you don't know.
John:
And that's why it's so important to have someone somewhere in your life who is not the Google search box.
John:
that you feel comfortable talking to about these things and will give you an honest answer.
John:
And very often, unfortunately, that is not our parents for a variety of reasons that are too complicated to go into.
John:
Also, the fact they had kids a long time ago.
John:
There are people who do this for a living.
John:
There are friends who may be closer to your age who have done this more recently.
John:
Find someone that you trust to talk about this.
John:
Because what you don't want to do is say, I heard on a podcast it's going to be really hard.
John:
Therefore, anything that bad happens, I'll just shut my mouth about it and say, well, it's just supposed to be hard to deal with it.
John:
And like I know this is not really good advice.
John:
I'm telling you like it's going to be hard, but if it's too hard, something might be wrong.
John:
So find out.
John:
But it's that's what makes it hard.
John:
Right.
John:
So you can do that ahead of time.
John:
You can think about while you're not sleep deprived, you and your spouse, who will we be able to talk to that we can trust?
John:
Should we find a lactation consultant now while the baby is safely ensconced in someone inside of another human being?
John:
It's so much easier to deal with that baby inside there.
John:
Despite all the terrible things that having to do with pregnancy that your wife will be able to fill you in on if you're interested in, it's worse when the baby comes out, right?
John:
And the final thing that I'll say is,
John:
If part of managing the guilty feelings about the feel, you know, like feeling bad about your feelings, part of managing that is so that you will find yourself able to enjoy the good moments because there will be good moments, even with the worst infant when it smiles at you and makes a funny burp when you're when it's comfortably napping on your chest and you're watching TV, you will have these moments.
John:
And if you are spending all that time feeling bad about how you don't love your baby the right way, you will miss them.
John:
Don't miss them.
John:
So the preparation is like set up those supports.
John:
Think about them when you have a sane brain.
John:
Be prepared for the fact that you're going to feel things that you think you shouldn't feel and practice sort of getting past that so you can successfully be in the moment to enjoy the good parts because there are good parts to having an infant, right?
John:
And they get even better as the kid gets older and everything.
John:
And you want to be able to enjoy them.
John:
And that will really help you get through all of this.
John:
And finally, like Marco said, postpartum depression is a thing.
John:
And it can be difficult even to just be a father in this situation.
John:
Do not be afraid to ask for supports.
John:
There are people, again, mental health professionals or whoever, who can help you while you are having a baby.
John:
It is not a failure of you as a parent.
John:
It is not a failure of your child.
John:
That's something that you should have sort of lined up.
John:
You may not need it, but if you do, don't feel guilty about needing it.
John:
There's no guilt about it.
John:
It can be helpful and you should definitely seek it out.
John:
If you spend all your time feeling bad about it and then feeling even worse that you're considering having this thing, I shouldn't need therapy.
John:
My parents didn't need therapy to raise me.
John:
What am I even doing?
John:
Don't have that attitude.
John:
I know this sounds all grim and terrifying.
John:
And if you've never had a kid, you're like, why would anyone have a kid?
John:
This sounds awful.
John:
Just I just feel like it's the thing that no one prepared me for, because everything that I heard and read from people is like, oh, you're having a kid that's so wonderful.
John:
It's going to be so great because that's what we're all conditioned to do.
John:
But I feel like as engineers have all having gone through this.
John:
We're telling you the things that other people won't tell you about it.
John:
I mean, I guess if you all listen to parenting podcasts, you probably hear it all the time.
John:
But on a tech podcast, you probably say, oh, it's great.
John:
You're having a baby.
John:
It'll be so fun for you.
John:
There are hard parts, too.
John:
And the more you can...
John:
The more you can get yourself right with how it's going to be hard, again, in a balanced way, do not ignore problems that might actually be problems, but also don't expect everything to be wonderful.
John:
I don't know if we're being helpful or just scaring people away from having babies, but it seems like people keep having them no matter what.
John:
So I think somehow the system might work.
Marco:
Well, I would also say, like, on the therapy front, like, as you mentioned, John, like, on the therapy front, you know, there's common wisdom out there that if you get in a car accident, like, suppose you're rear-ended or something, a lot of people say, you know what, you should go to the hospital just to get your, like, neck and shoulders and stuff checked out just in case, like...
Marco:
You probably have something there that could be worked on or at least monitored.
Marco:
And certainly if you actually do have any kind of injuries, you should get them looked at and work on them.
Marco:
Work on them somehow.
Marco:
Address them.
Marco:
No one says that about mental stuff.
Marco:
When you're going through this massive change in your life that can be very emotional and very stressful, no one says, hey, you know what?
Marco:
Even if you don't think you need therapy,
Marco:
Why don't you go get checked out?
Marco:
Go have a few sessions just to talk through some stuff and just see, even if you don't think you need it.
Marco:
No one ever says that.
Marco:
We probably should.
Marco:
There's a lot going on here when you go through major life events, whether they are things like having a child or maybe losses like somebody passes away or getting divorced or whatever.
Marco:
There's so many instances in life where this is a major shift that's going to put a lot of stress on you.
Marco:
It's a very emotional, challenging time in certain ways.
Marco:
Go to therapy.
Marco:
Why not?
Marco:
Go for a couple of sessions if you don't think you need to.
Marco:
Just go for a couple of sessions just to see.
Marco:
Even that can be helpful in some way.
Marco:
Get checked out.
Marco:
We don't do that as a society, but I think we really should.
John:
That's an example of having a person who will be able to tell you the sanity check.
John:
Because again, when you're in it, you're not going to be able to tell, is what I'm feeling within parameters that should be expected or is there something wrong?
John:
It's so difficult to tell that about yourself.
John:
So a therapist is an example of one person who will hopefully be able to give you the perspective that you aren't able to have.
John:
And again, I would stress that your friends and family may not be able to give you that perspective because there is there is societal pressure for your friends and family to be relentlessly positive and say, oh, I'm sure you'll be fine.
John:
Oh, you'll get over it.
John:
Oh, we can help out.
John:
Are you feeling better?
John:
Like not that they're doing anything bad about that, but they're not like it's not their job.
John:
Right.
John:
That's a therapist's job.
John:
And in terms of preparation, it is.
John:
I've heard from so many people, trying to find a therapist is like the hardest part of therapy.
John:
Like, forget about the decision to do it.
John:
And sometimes that's also hard to get over that hump.
John:
Okay, I've decided I want a therapist.
John:
Who?
John:
I don't know.
John:
I can search.
John:
Oh, boy, there's a lot of them.
John:
How do I pick one?
John:
Or like...
John:
do that before the baby comes out of someone's body because you are more able to think about your if you're in this terrible situation and you think there might be something wrong but you can't tell that's not the time you want to say oh and now i have to figure out how to pick a therapist you can do that ahead of time you can call them up you can make your first appointment for the for the first week after the baby's due date or like do it while you do it while you don't have baby brain do it now
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And just to end on a slightly more positive note, I have known Erin, I think the least of all that each of us have known our spouses, but I've known Erin 17 years, 17 and a half at this point.
Casey:
The single most impressive and amazing thing I get to see her do is be a mom.
Casey:
But the single most impressive thing I think I've ever seen her do is to have our two kids like watching your wife do that is, is something that is unbelievable.
Casey:
And I don't have the vocabulary to put into words what that's like.
Casey:
And I don't think Aaron's unique in this.
Casey:
I think, you know, Tina and I think Tiff are exactly the same.
Casey:
And I,
Casey:
watching your wife, I'm going to say go through that, but again, that implies negativeness, but to watch your wife bring another person into the world, and that includes pregnancy, but particularly birth, like it's just, it's unreal.
Casey:
And for my money, so to speak, it's the most impressive thing I've seen Erin do.
Casey:
And that's something really special that, you know, no matter how good or bad a parent she is or was or will be,
Casey:
I will never take that away from her.
Casey:
And that's just a super cool thing to share with your spouse.
Marco:
I almost missed it because I was taking a dump.
Casey:
Oh my.
Casey:
Well, yeah.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
So eat a sandwich in the car.
Marco:
Being a father during birth is a little bit easier.
Marco:
I would recommend not complaining that your feet hurt.
Casey:
Also a good idea.
Casey:
Eat a sandwich on the way to the hospital and then immediately take a dump.
Casey:
That's our collective advice.
Casey:
Nick Serrano writes, I was just wondering if you guys could talk about alone or focus time when you're in app development mode and how you balance the time you need for that and the needs of interpersonal relationships like with your partner and kids.
Casey:
Does your partner respect that as a legitimate need or has it ever caused tension?
Casey:
For me, and I think all three of us will probably have different answers for this, for me I think
Casey:
The only tension it's caused is that Aaron is almost too good about it and that I feel like she more jealously guards my work time than I do, which is probably a sign that I should guard it more jealously, but that's neither here nor there.
Casey:
But there are times, especially over the summer, where I'll be like, oh, I want to go with you three to do that thing.
Casey:
She's like, well, are you sure?
Casey:
Don't you have work you need to be doing?
Casey:
And she's not saying that to be a turd.
Casey:
It's not like your mom saying, are you sure you don't need to clean up your room?
Casey:
It's not that sort of thing.
Casey:
No, genuinely, do you need me to take the kids away so that you can concentrate and get work done?
Casey:
And that's been kind of funny this summer.
Casey:
But generally speaking...
Casey:
We reached an agreement that these are my kind of core working hours, which is really business speak, but that's basically what it boils down to.
Casey:
And generally speaking, she tries to leave me alone and the kids try to leave me alone when I'm in the office during those times.
Casey:
And once or twice a week, I will go somewhere else, like not a park bench, mind you, but a picnic table or maybe a library or maybe the exterior of a grocery store cafeteria or what have you.
Casey:
Um, and that'll give me some focus time as well.
Casey:
Uh, but generally speaking, it's, we basically talked about it before I went independent and, and came to an agreement that this is the time that I should and will be working.
Casey:
And this is the time that I won't be working and we're going to be okay with that.
Casey:
And obviously it flexes from time to time, but you know, it's pretty consistent for the most part.
Casey:
And that's worked out pretty well for us.
Casey:
Uh, John, or actually Marco, I probably should have started with you since you've been at home the longest of the three of us.
Casey:
How do you and Tiff and Adam work this out?
Marco:
I am terrible at this.
Marco:
And I always have been like, I am just terrible at time management in general.
Marco:
And when it comes to like balancing, you know, working at home with getting stuff done, I am terrible at that too.
Marco:
And I have been terrible at that for the entire time of working at home full time, which began 12 years ago.
Marco:
So I don't really have good answers here.
Marco:
I mean, so to some degree, you know, I'm served well by the fact that I have always been a slacker with really inconsistent productivity.
Marco:
I, you know, we talked about this a little bit before, like I will work my butt off for like a four hour stint in a day.
Marco:
And that'll be like most of the work I get done that week.
Marco:
It'll just be like in those chunks where I'll have these massively productive chunks of time.
Marco:
And then I will have days afterwards where I don't have anything like that.
Marco:
And most of that is not on the family.
Marco:
It's on me.
Marco:
I'm the one who is usually being distracted by other things.
Marco:
And part of that's also that I do different things.
Marco:
I have been juggling...
Marco:
this podcast and other podcasts along with app development.
Marco:
And there is very little overlap in those two, you know, in terms of, like, you know, what kind of mental mode you have to be in to do it.
Marco:
And so, like, and I do a lot of other things, too.
Marco:
You know, I have other, you know, hobbies and other projects that I work on and stuff like that.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
I've never been that good at managing all this stuff.
Marco:
I kind of just do work whenever I'm motivated to do it, but that is not a predictable or consistent thing.
Marco:
Otherwise, like, you know, when it comes to things like kids and partners, like, you know, like, Tiff has been always very respectful of my time, and whenever I need time, she lets me take it, and that's always... And she takes... You know, she works, too, and she'll...
Marco:
I give her time, and we'll be together for the morning and the evening and lunch, and then in between, we'll both be working on stuff.
Marco:
When there's a kid in the house that's a little bit different, obviously, at least one of us needs to usually be
Marco:
especially when the kid is young.
Marco:
At least one of us usually is playing with the kid or managing the kid in some way.
Marco:
And that's challenging if you both have work to do.
Marco:
And that's something you kind of have to work out with your spouse and figure out a good balance there.
Marco:
And also, if the kid is home and you are home,
Marco:
they're gonna run into your office sometimes and show you stuff yeah that's just how kids work and you can't really expect them not to do that because they're just kids and so you kind of have to be prepared for that and try to find ways and obviously like school makes this much much easier try to find ways uh where you can get work done when the kid isn't home um and yeah school is a godsend for this like that's when i get this is why
Marco:
In the summertime, I get way less work done than during the school year.
Marco:
And there's a few reasons for that.
Marco:
But that's probably the biggest reason is that like in the school year, we are forced to wake up early every weekday.
Marco:
And then after an hour of rushed craziness, we then have alone time in the house.
Marco:
And then we can get all of our work done until mid-afternoon when then other stuff can then happen once the kid is home.
Marco:
So school is awesome for this.
Marco:
Otherwise, I have no useful tips.
Casey:
John, this is most pertinent for you because this is newest for you.
Casey:
So what have you guys been doing?
John:
It's not really new for me because my very first job out of college was a telecommuting job.
Casey:
Oh, that's true.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
And you've been working from home for a while.
John:
I'm working from home for all of my jobs that I've ever had in various amounts, ranging from 100% to
John:
probably not less than 50% for most of them.
John:
So I think when you think about this question, alone focus time for working on app development or whatever and relationships, you would think that this is a task of like, oh, I have to talk to my spouse or family and just come to an arrangement, an agreement.
John:
And there is that.
John:
Communication is important and talking about it with the other people in your house is important.
John:
But I think one of the important things that's easy to miss is
John:
Self-knowledge, knowing what kind of person you are, how are you most productive, how do you like to work, how much time does it take you to ramp up to whatever tasks that you're doing?
John:
Does it literally take you an hour before you get into the zone when programming?
John:
How quickly can you task switch?
John:
If you get interrupted, how much of a loop does that throw you for?
John:
All the way down to the type of thing of having the self-knowledge to know
John:
whether you are more productive or less productive when people aren't in the house.
John:
Some people are way more productive as people leave the house.
John:
Some people get antsy when no one's in the house, right?
John:
Like it depends on your personality trait.
John:
And I'm not saying they're bothering you, just literally like are they in the house, right?
John:
You have to know sort of what...
John:
how you work right and it's sometimes it's difficult to know that until you've tried you maybe think i would love it when no one's in the house and it's nice and quiet and then everyone leaves the house you're like finally i can get the program done you find you cannot concentrate that may be teaching you that you're not the type of person who becomes more productive when everybody leaves or you may not have realized you're that type of person until suddenly the school year starts and your kids aren't there and your wife's out of the house for the morning you're like wow i was so productive what changed about this morning knowing how you work and
John:
will let you figure out how you have to arrange things.
John:
If you are the type of person who needs that long ramp up time, you should arrange your life.
John:
So you have these large blocks where you can do that and don't even attempt to time slice in a 20 minute development thing between tasks, but you have to know that about yourself, right?
John:
Um,
John:
Are you the type of person who works well, you know, going out to sit in front of the Walmart or on a park bench or whatever?
John:
Like maybe you don't know.
John:
You've never tried it.
John:
Try it and find out.
John:
And don't commit to a plan ahead of time and then beat yourself up because like, oh, I said I was going to do this from these hours to these hours and it's not working.
John:
I can't figure out why.
John:
Try a bunch of different things and...
John:
you know, introspection, look into yourself, figure out what works for you and what works and what doesn't, and then figure out your schedule around that.
John:
And the final thing that I'm saying is, uh, this is a trait that is common to many programmers and it's probably true of, uh, of Nick.
John:
Uh, when we get into the zone and we're working on a problem and we're, we almost have it fixed.
John:
Of course you want to finish it.
John:
Of course you want to make the commit.
John:
Of course you want to push the commit.
John:
Of course you want to like just get over the finish line.
Um,
John:
This is where you run into trouble because no programmer wants to stop in the middle of a thing that they just figured out the solution to and they're almost about to solve.
John:
But that's where you have to be firm with yourself and say like whatever boundary we set with the agreement, like five o'clock, it's family time or whatever.
John:
Sometimes you just have to stop in the middle.
John:
Now, figure out some version control stuff, you know, put it in, put it in a stash, like make, make a commit and then like amend it later or whatever, like whatever you have to do from a technical perspective, but be okay with the idea that you're not always going to be able to.
John:
get satisfaction right and it's so hard when you're like you especially if you've just cracked the problem and now it's just a you know simple matter of programming to bang it out or whatever oh but it's dinner time just give me 20 more minutes and 20 more minutes turns into 45 minutes that is not a formula for a happy household that is not a formula for a happy you so
John:
Prepare ahead of time to, you know, regardless of how you are as a person, we're all, we all want to finish the problem.
John:
Condition yourself to figure out how you can be okay with stopping in the middle when it goes against every fiber of your being, because that is an important, it's an important part of setting boundaries for yourself and respecting things.
John:
your agreement with your family about how you will confine yourself doesn't mean you can't ever go over it doesn't mean like oh today this is actually important i have to ship a thing out i'm going to miss dinner or whatever but be careful with making that a habit so and the best way to do that is to be okay do some practice runs and be okay of stopping in the middle and i know it messes with your productivity and i know it's going to take you a long time to ramp back up to it tomorrow but it's a skill you need to develop so practice that
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Linode, and Collide.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join at atp.fm slash join, and we will talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Casey:
It's accidental, they didn't mean.
Casey:
Accidental Tech Podcast So long
Casey:
John, you recently traveled and you rented a car.
John:
It's so hard to rent cars because you can rent a thing, but can you rent a car?
John:
Well, you can rent an SUV so easy.
John:
That's all they have.
John:
But like when they have like the categories of what kind of it used to be like I'm sold enough.
John:
I remember I was like, what kind of car would you like to rent?
John:
You can rent a compact car, midsize car or full size.
Marco:
and what they meant is compact mid-size and full-size sedan like that's all you could rent that's how old i am right now if you want a sedan you have to like say what category has non-sues in it it's so hard to find anyway no but even then you can't because like when you i've this run into me i've run into this a few times where like you know if i'm going like on a trip and i want to rent a car i'll usually pick whatever is like the premium sedan option because i want to get like let me get like a nice car
John:
You know, Cadillac Escalade is what you're going to get.
Marco:
And so what those categories say on the website is, yeah, you'll get like, you know, like maybe like, you know, you know, a Nissan Maxima or something like that.
Marco:
What they actually mean is price category.
Marco:
That's what they mean.
Marco:
And so what they mean is.
Marco:
cheap car less cheap car more expensive car and so and they consider it totally routine and normal to substitute other cars of the same price category with whatever you ordered and they act like they're doing you a favor so when I book the car
Marco:
what I actually get oftentimes is, hey, we upgraded you to this SUV.
Marco:
And if I'm like, well, can I not do that?
Marco:
Oh, this is all we have.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
So you're stuck with it.
Marco:
Like, okay, well, I mean, thanks, but that's not what I wanted.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I mean, if you search hard enough or you specify, you can usually get a same.
John:
But anyway, that's what I wanted on my trip was I wanted a same.
John:
I wanted as close as I could get to my Honda Accord as I can.
John:
Surprise, surprise.
John:
Of course, you can't get a Honda Accord, but just kind of dumb because I don't know why rental car fleets don't have Accords.
John:
It's not like they're not plentiful, but I don't often see them.
John:
I'm sure somebody has them.
John:
anyway i got a camry which is like a plus plus exactly what you wanted like that is the equivalent of an accord it is a mid-size full-size type sedan it is not an suv it is so rare to find i mean obviously it's not stick shit but let's be realistic here um so i was pretty happy i'm like we're you know and you never know what you're gonna get until you get there it's like oh here you go it's a camry i'm like hey pretty good uh that is you know that's as close as you can get without going over to getting an accord basically maximum would have been fine as well
John:
Um, and the car was for the most part fine.
John:
I mean, my wife drove it, uh, because we were in her hometown area.
John:
She knows where everything is.
John:
I drove it a little bit too, but she mostly drove it.
John:
Uh, she immediately hated it.
John:
Uh, you know, like we're very similar in this way.
John:
She seems often, uh, to have even more visceral hatred, visceral hatred of automatic transmissions.
John:
Again, neither of us, uh, in our married life together has ever owned a car that is not stick shift.
John:
Um,
John:
I keep telling her that it is possible to have a good automatic, but the Camry doesn't have a particularly good automatic.
John:
So she was like, boy, I can't wait to get back to my car and I don't like this car.
John:
But, you know, it's a Camry.
John:
It's a big, mushy, whatever.
John:
And it wasn't particularly fun to drive or anything like that, but it got the job done.
John:
But most of my complaints about the Camry when riding it, it had to do with the infotainment because that's, you know, she's driving.
John:
That's my job to wrangle the infotainment.
John:
And this is the first car that I've ever like used, used as in not just been in for two seconds that has CarPlay.
John:
So I was excited to try CarPlay, not wireless CarPlay as far as I can do, just wired CarPlay.
John:
And as Marco and Casey know, because I was talking about it in our neutral Slack channel with the other car enthusiasts, for this whole week-long vacation, I was trying to figure out one problem having to do with CarPlay that never did get solved despite all the suggestions.
John:
And I thought I would throw it out on the podcast in case someone can tell me what the deal is, right?
John:
Plug in your phone, throws up the map, does the CarPlay thing.
John:
We were just using Apple Maps for directions and stuff.
John:
And Apple Maps, the friendly person in Apple Maps would say, you know, take exit 25 in one mile or whatever with the voice prompts.
John:
But that voice was so loud, like ear-splittingly loud, like so loud that the kids were like, stop, make it stop, turn off the directions.
John:
It was so loud.
John:
You'd think this would be an easy problem to solve, but me being a CarPlay novice, I'm like, maybe there's just something I don't understand about CarPlay.
John:
So we tried all the things that you can imagine.
John:
I tried the volume knob on the dashboard, because that was just a plain old volume knob on the Camry.
John:
Didn't do anything.
John:
I tried the volume on the phone, didn't do anything.
John:
I tried looking for settings in the car, couldn't find it.
John:
I tried looking for settings on the phone, couldn't find anything relevant.
John:
Casey's suggestion and many other people's suggestion was you have to adjust the volume while the audio is playing because otherwise it thinks you're adjusting the volume of like the music that you might be playing, but you want to adjust the volume of the voice.
John:
So do the volume adjustment when the voice is speaking.
John:
Nope, didn't make any difference.
John:
Try all the volumes things on the phone, any kind of settings, the knobs, when the thing is playing.
John:
It had no effect whatsoever.
John:
The only thing we found that relieved this agony was using Google Maps, because the Google Maps voice was slightly more quiet.
John:
It was not as ear-splitting.
John:
Still couldn't adjust the volume in any way, and it was still loud, but not as loud.
John:
And this can't be the way the world works, right?
John:
Like this can't, like if you have a Camry, this was a 2022 Camry, right?
John:
This cannot be the status quo on the 2022 camera that, sorry, there is literally no way to control the volume of the voice that reads you directions when you're navigating through an app on your phone.
John:
Just could not figure that out, and it boggled my mind, and it really made me dislike this car a lot.
John:
Aside from the driving things.
John:
Oh, and the other weird thing.
John:
I mean, this is just personal preference or whatever.
John:
The seats felt like Venus flytraps that were eating me.
What?
John:
I was in the passenger seat, which usually doesn't have the same number of adjustments as the driver's seat on these cheaper cars.
John:
And, you know, so it was all manual, and maybe it was lacking some adjustments.
John:
But, like, the main thing I wanted was the thing that tilts the seat bottom.
John:
Right.
John:
So it's either, you know, like either a flat, like a parallel with the ground would be completely flat.
John:
And then usually you can tilt the seat bottom up.
John:
So it tilts.
John:
These seats were tilted so far up.
John:
And as far as I could tell, I had no way to adjust it down that I felt like I was like sliding backwards into a terrible pit.
John:
So uncomfortable.
Marco:
That's awful for your lower back.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I mean, you could adjust the seat back angle.
John:
Like you could do that to try to make it better.
John:
But in order for me to feel comfortable, I have to be laid back so far that I've been looking through the rear window.
John:
Like it's just it was, you know, that's that's maybe the seats feel comfortable with other people.
John:
And I think the driver's seat did have more adjustment.
John:
But it was weird.
John:
But anyway, the CarPlay thing I couldn't figure out.
John:
So if someone knows the secret solution to adjusting the volume of the voice on a 2022 camera using wired CarPlay and the latest version of iOS with Apple Maps, I would love to hear it.
Casey:
So real-time follow-up, John, can you click the link I put in both the Slack and in the chat room?
Casey:
This is a 20-second YouTube video.
Casey:
Is this what you were working with?
Casey:
Because I don't know what the inside of a modern Camry looks like.
John:
I mean, that's not, that doesn't look like it.
John:
I recognize the software, but the dashboard surround, that's not the 2022 Camry that we were in.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Well, so in there, if you look at about 10 seconds in, in the menu, you can go to setup and then there's a voice section in voice volume and there's an adjuster in there.
John:
No, that was, I mean, I looked through the settings a lot and this was not there.
John:
I would love for it to have been there, but this menu item was not there.
John:
Maybe it needed a software update.
John:
That could also be possible because it is a rental car or whatever.
John:
But I think we did have the audio item because I remember clicking on audio a lot thinking surely it's got to be here, but there was no voice item.
John:
Well, remember, this is in voice, not audio.
John:
I know, but there was no voice item.
John:
I would have gone into voice for sure if it was there.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
I mean, I did a quick Google just to see if I could, you know, somehow shame you with an answer, but unfortunately not.
Casey:
No, but for the record, on both my car and Aaron's, you know, on my Volkswagen and Aaron's Volvo, I am 99.9% sure that if you twist the volume knob as the announcement is happening, it will adjust the announcement volume.
Casey:
I am almost certain of it.
John:
Yeah, I mean, it probably does work that in other cars, just not in this one.
John:
I'll make this anonymous.
John:
But for an anonymous person who works for a car company said this, the iPhone sends navigation prompts as nominal, unattenuated audio.
John:
The car system should allow for volume control.
John:
So just in terms of the responsibility, the phone sends the audio and is really up to the car's infotainment system to adjust that audio.
John:
So I guess that focuses your efforts on don't bother trying to do it on the phone.
John:
That's probably not going to work.
John:
it's gotta be somewhere in the car infotainment system.
John:
And, you know, and I'm willing, totally willing to believe this is a, you know, user error, maybe something about how I set up the phone with CarPlay was wrong.
John:
Cause there was this, you know, when you plug in the phone, it puts up this prompt or whatever.
John:
And who knows what I tapped when we were in the airport parking lot.
Marco:
But isn't it just two questions?
Marco:
It's like, do you want to use for CarPlay?
Marco:
Yes or no?
Marco:
And like, do you want to sync your contacts oftentimes?
Marco:
Like that's the,
John:
Maybe those are the questions.
John:
I mean, I don't remember.
Casey:
I believe one of them is whether or not you allow CarPlay use while the phone is locked, because I believe one of the things you can do is say it will not connect to CarPlay until you have actively unlocked the phone.
Casey:
That is a thing that you could turn on.
John:
yeah this voice volume thing has got to be the solution in this video uh it just we didn't have that menu item on the left hand menu we had a similar version of software it looks kind of the same and i recognize like this those horizontal buttons home audio map apps like uh
John:
it just i mean this is not the car we were in because you know our screen was above the vents and you know it was totally different volume knobs right so maybe this is changed in later versions or earlier versions or maybe the firmware needed to be updated or something but i'm glad to know that there apparently is a way to do it it just was not in the thing that we had it was very frustrating
Casey:
So what did you think of CarPlay other than the excessively loud announcements?
John:
I mean, that really super did ruin it because the main thing you're using it for is, you know, I mean, we had the overcast icon in there.
John:
We weren't exactly listening to podcasts.
John:
I mean, it's great.
John:
Like, I would love it on my next car.
John:
Like, it's, you know, I'm not against CarPlay.
John:
I'm for it.
John:
It's just, it was very weird.
John:
Oh, and then one more thing.
John:
Let me find a...
Casey:
While you're looking, I'm surprised that both of you wanted audio announcements because I almost never use audio announcements.
Casey:
And this is actually even better for Apple Watch users.
Casey:
Oh, I almost never.
John:
Why wouldn't you?
John:
Because you can keep your eyes on the road.
John:
A friendly voice tells you when to turn.
Casey:
Well, so a couple of things.
Casey:
First of all, generally speaking, if I'm traveling somewhere unknown, it's typically with Aaron.
Casey:
And typically, whoever's not driving will also have a much keener eye on
John:
You get live performances of the announcements?
Casey:
Well, actually, yeah, I guess that's a good point.
Casey:
I guess I ultimately am getting the announcements, just not from CarPlay.
Casey:
I didn't think of it that way.
Casey:
But no, even if I'm by myself, generally speaking, I'll glance down at the map from time to time.
Casey:
Also, if you're an Apple Watch user, which last I heard, I thought Tina was, then it will tap you incessantly and repeatedly when you're coming up to a turn.
Casey:
That's a bit overdramatic.
John:
Yeah, that's only with Apple Maps, though.
Casey:
Ah, that's a good point.
Casey:
That is a good point.
Casey:
That is only with Apple Maps.
John:
I mean, we're using Apple Maps.
John:
Maybe, I mean, she was wearing her watch.
John:
Maybe it was buzzing.
John:
I just didn't, you know, it's not on my wrist, so I didn't feel it.
Casey:
Well, it would only be buzzing if you were using her phone for CarPlay.
John:
Maybe that's it, too, because I think probably half the time I probably had my phone plugged in just because I'm managing the infotainment.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John:
Another thing, this is another weird one.
John:
Like this dashboard, it had a lot of glossy black plastic, which is kind of out of fashion because it collects fingerprints.
John:
But there's this like lag time for for car manufacturers to figure out that people don't want piano black plastic everywhere anymore.
John:
So it was a fashion trend for many years.
John:
Hopefully it's fading now.
John:
But anyway, there was a lot of this plastic and what they decided to dedicate dashboard space for.
John:
So they have the big screen in the middle and events and stuff like this.
John:
But I'm going to look at this picture in the chat here.
John:
look at the size of these items here i should have put something in it for scale but like to the left is the screen right that's like several inches long that passenger airbag light maybe there are other warning lights on that thing but that's a big that's a big control to have to the right of the screen on the dashboard
John:
You can see the seatbelt lights below it or whatever.
John:
And the thing that baffled me about this is it was the opposite of, and granted, I only get Honda, so I don't know what other cars like, but it's the opposite of any car I've ever owned where, um, for people to know, uh, there is a safety feature of modern cars where if there is a child in the passenger seat, the car will disable the passenger airbag.
John:
So it doesn't kill the child because passenger airbags have to be sized to save an unbelted adult because we live in a stupid country.
John:
where people don't wear their seatbelts.
John:
So the explosion is very powerful and it can kill a child, right?
John:
So if there is weight on the passenger seat, but that weight is not as heavy as a, you know, a full size expected adult human, the passenger airbag will be disabled.
John:
And normally there's a light somewhere in your dashboard that will tell you, hey, just so you know, the passenger airbag is currently disabled.
John:
They don't tell you why, but you just have to know that it's disabled because it thinks there's a kid there.
John:
So if you put a bag of groceries in the seat very often, you'll start the car.
John:
You'll see a little passenger airbag disabled.
John:
Well, look at this picture I just posted.
John:
What is this trying to tell me?
Casey:
Oh, that is really crummy UI or user experience, information architecture.
Casey:
I think it's saying that there is not a car seat there.
Casey:
And so the passenger airbag is indeed on, I think.
John:
I can tell you as a spoiler, I'm sitting as a full-size adult in the passenger seat when this thing is on, right?
Yeah.
John:
The entire time on the entire trip, that light is on.
John:
So it's the everything okay siren, right?
John:
I think what it's telling me is, hey, just so you know, the passenger airbag is enabled because we have determined you're a big fat adult and it's okay to blow up this explosion in your face, right?
John:
But it never goes off.
John:
It's a big light and it's bright and it is prominent on the dashboard.
John:
And so it's like basically saying everything's OK.
John:
The passenger airbag is on.
John:
You are an adult.
John:
Everything is OK.
John:
And it never goes off.
John:
And I'm like, who designed this?
John:
Because like I said, every other car I've been in, you see a light persistently when it's off.
John:
But in the normal situation, either nobody in the seat or an adult sized person in the seat, there's no light.
John:
right and so i don't know what the toyota designers were maybe every toyota is like this i don't know what they were thinking with the prominence of the display i don't know what they were thinking with the infographics and i don't know what they were thinking with the decision to have the light on all the time as opposed to the reverse super weird so i mean not that i was in ever in the market for a camry anyway but this is some weird decisions it's almost a shame you didn't get the uh the forerunner which by the way i'm seeing tons of forerunners everywhere now that i know what they look like they're just so gross in person um i wonder if it has the same thing
Casey:
Almost all modern Toyotas and Lexuses Lexi are hideous.
Casey:
Like not BMW hideous, but hideous.
John:
There's some nice looking Lexus models.
John:
I don't know about that.
Casey:
I haven't seen them.
John:
There's the Toyota.
John:
What is it?
John:
It used to be the FR-S, but now it's the G86.
John:
Oh, that's true.
Casey:
That's true.
John:
That one's pretty good.
John:
Not the Supra, though.
John:
That's gross.
Casey:
I don't think the Supra is that bad.
John:
It's so bad.
John:
It's like a melted snailfish.
John:
I don't like it.
John:
It's just so aggressively ugly.