636: Nose-Biting Territory
23 Apr 2025Spending Casey’s money.
Episode Description:
- 🗣️ ATP WWDC 2025 STORE IS UP!! 🗣️
- Follow-up:
- Casey’s bug-reporting experience with Slack
- Third-party SSDs (via J. Mullins)
- AirPods Pro case swaps (via Steven Merrill)
- USB-C MagSafe Charging Case ($100‼️)
- Cursor IDE support hallucinates policy causing user uprising
(This is a Hacker News link to Reddit, so, uh, tread lightly.) - 🫏🕳️ leaders are not good
- John continues to try to spend Marco’s money
- Apple’s self-service repair program (via Sky Velleity)
- iPadOS 19 rumors
- Footguns and Synology
- Post-show: Marco’s first batch of restaurant-tech MVPs
- Members-only ATP Overtime: Apple’s AI doctor
Sponsored by:
- Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code atp.
- DeleteMe: Making it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online.
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Chapters
- White undershirts
- Ubiquiti envy
- ATP Store
- A good bug-filing experience
- Third-party Mac Mini storage
- AirPods case correction
- Cursor AI snafu
- Jerk leadership doesn’t work
- Sponsor: Notion
- “Marco’s new TV”?
- Apple’s self-service repair
- iPadOS 19 productivity rumor
- Sponsor: DeleteMe (code ATP)
- The case against Synology
- Sponsor: Squarespace
- The case for Synology?
- Ending theme
- ATP Store (reprise)
- Restaurant-tech MVPs
White undershirts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Was wearing my beloved ATP pixels shirt, so I’m a real I’ve I didn’t hear you. Yes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m wearing a white undershirt because that’s just I’m an old man. That’s what I do. And then I was wearing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Don’t slack on white undershirts or yourself that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco undershirts are usually the correct undershirt color Like occasionally you got to go with a gray, but usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco white is like a great overall all-arounder
⏹️ ▶️ John Gray undershirts, you’re just you’re just complicating your laundry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You get gray undershirts if in the context that you’re wearing it, it might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slightly become visible at the collar and that would look weird against what you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John wearing. All my undershirts are visible through the collar, I don’t care anymore. You don’t get like the nice deep v-necks? Like, come on. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t like v-neck first of all, and second of all, it’s not the v-neck that’s the problem. Even, even the v-necks have a non-v around
⏹️ ▶️ John the back of your neck and that’s where it’s visible. Are you wearing your shirts backwards? I’m wearing them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know I should be in V-necks, but I don’t care for them. And I’m sure I could get over it, but I don’t currently care
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for them. And I’m wearing, what is this, crew neck or whatever it’s called? I forget what the other
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, just the circle, circle hole.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, circle hole. And that’s what I prefer. And yeah, I know that’s not very trendy, but that’s okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it’s fine. I will tell you though, if you ever want to switch to V-necks, like I switched to V-necks for my basic T-shirts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and my undershirts a few years ago. It was like, I lost a bunch of weight with keto and I’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco working out and I felt really good. I’m like, I’m gonna look sexy with my V-neck shirt. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wore one, and Tip was like, ooh, you look good. I’m like, okay, now I’m encouraged.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was initially very irritated by the feeling of where the V meets, the bottom of the V, but the way that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco touches my chest. And I got over it in a day. It was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a brief irritation. After that, now I am a shirt universalist. After that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one brief period of friction and noticing the V bottom, Now I can wear any shaped collar,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I actually prefer the V most of the time. And for regular t-shirts, I think maybe it’s a wash either
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way, but for undershirts, it’s a clear winner because you are so much less likely to see the undershirt under
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever you’re wearing, unless you are John and wear a giant neck for some reason. I
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like it’s just a, for me, it would just be a chest hair display mechanism. I’m just like, I’m just gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John get a little bit, a little extra chest hair, just have the V go down long enough for it to poke out and say, hello.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I guess I’m not particularly her suit, so maybe it’s less of an
⏹️ ▶️ John Different bodies, different choices.
Ubiquiti envy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was in Memphis last week. Uh, we were, uh, myself and a few other people,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, and friends were in Memphis, uh, to go to St. Jude and that’s why we recorded early last week.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, anyways, I made a terrible, terrible mistake and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I let Steven Hackett show me the ubiquity management interface for his whole
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ubiquity setup. I must have this in my life. I don’t need it. I must
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have this in my life. life and this is going to cause so many problems for me. I know it will.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know it will, but I needs it. And so I made a terrible mistake letting Steven show this to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And Marco, this is a gift for future Marco as I inevitably spend way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey too much money on ubiquity stuff that I don’t need and then somehow find a way to have some sort of problem with it and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you get to laugh and watch as I fight through all these problems. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, honestly, so I’m going to talk a little bit more about ubiquity later, but honestly, I don’t expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you to have any problems whatsoever. You’ll just have envy every time they release some awesome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new switch with fun lighting and like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John oh, I want that switch. It’s just there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, once you go ubiquity, you don’t tend to go back. I’ll get I’ll get I’ll get into more ubiquity stuff later,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s just good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, it’s so like watching Steven like blow through his network topology. So you can see that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this switch is connected to this switch is connected to this thing. And that’s where the iPad is. Now I guess that wouldn’t be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a switch. You know what I’m saying? Like, you know, you can walk down the actual topography of the of the network.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my god It was so cool. You can see what the where the traffic is flowing. Oh my god This is as someone who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has display panels all over his house. This is my
⏹️ ▶️ John You can put the whole thing in your menu
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my god. It would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be so good Yeah, you’re gonna rip off your shirt and solve V neck. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Genuinely don’t want to talk about any more right now, and I know we’re gonna talk about ubiquity broadly later But over the next
⏹️ ▶️ Casey few months, I suspect that I will start poking and prodding Marco and getting some suggestions on what I should buy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because Stephen has opinions, which I trust and I agree with, but I’d be curious to hear your two cents as well. So not today.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is not for today. This is another day down the road. I’d like to talk to you about it. So those are my problems. I’m going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be real hangry, potentially tired, and I’ve seen the promised land that is ubiquity, and now I can’t go
ATP Store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But you know what isn’t a problem is I am going to remember to place
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an order in the ATP store, which is back, but not for long. It is going to end. Is it the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey evening of Monday, April 28, John? Is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I’m just saying it ends on the 28th and I leave it ambiguous so people feel nervous and they have to
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco last minute. So just
⏹️ ▶️ John pretend it ends at midnight on the 27th. I don’t actually know. I can look it up in the source code to see
⏹️ ▶️ John the actual date and time, but but don’t like honestly, don’t wait until that amount of time is
⏹️ ▶️ John remaining. If you’ve waited and there’s less than 24 hours left with time zones and everything and what day is it where I am
⏹️ ▶️ John versus what day is it where where the ATP store is like that’s why I removed that last day. It just
⏹️ ▶️ John removes all ambiguity about time zones and worrying about the date line and stuff and just yeah, sale ends
⏹️ ▶️ John on the 28th order before then before the 28th. If you look at the calendar and it says a
⏹️ ▶️ John number lower than 28 order.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is where I make my speech that, Oh, every year, every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sale, it’s more than once a year, every sale, there’s somebody in the audience who says, Oh, I’m not going to be that person.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s no way I’m going to forget. And then, and then a week
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I get the toot or the tweet or the skeet or whatever we’re calling it. And they say, Oh no,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh no. I didn’t think I could be that person on that person. I’ve done it. I’ve missed the sale. Can you bring it back? Nope.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What about nope? Are you sure? What about nope? I’m sorry. That’s the deal. So please go to ATP dot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey FM slash store do so post haste because you are running out of time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is the last time you’re gonna be here going to be hearing about it on the show I will very quickly start running down
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the merch until John interrupts me We have m3 ultra the m3 ultra interposer Which I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am definitely gonna be getting one of the Mac Pro believe shirt is coming back in regular in dark forms
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ve got the Pro Max that’s come back in light in dark forms. We’ve got my beloved
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean that ATP performance shirt. This is sort of it’s I don’t think it’s literally under armor, but it’s sort of in that direction.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is my favorite workout shirt. I love these things. I’m definitely going to be getting one or two of those to re-up. We’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got ATP 6 colors in a variety of different colors. We’ve got the classic ATP, the zip
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hoodie, the polo, another one of my personal favorites. The mug is still still there, although
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’re running low. I think John is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I wish I wish we were running
⏹️ ▶️ Casey low. Never mind. No, John, we messed, you and me both messed up. Let’s try this again. John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’re running low, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, Casey. We are running so low that if you don’t order right now, you may not get one. That’s what you were looking to say, John. I heard
⏹️ ▶️ John are, in fact, limited.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then finally, we do have the ATP hat. So please, atp.fm slash store. This is your one and final chance.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, what if you wanted to get a little bit of money off the store? How do you do that?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, don’t forget, if you are already an ATP member, you get 15% off. Go to your member page and get the code
⏹️ ▶️ John there and then paste it in the checkout process. If you are logged into atp.fm, And when you go to the store page at atp.fm store,
⏹️ ▶️ John it should be added for you automatically. But if you don’t see that automatically, don’t click the purchase button, go back to your member page, copy and paste
⏹️ ▶️ John it, it’ll work. If you wanna become a member to get the discount, it’s probably worthwhile
⏹️ ▶️ John if you buy any significant amount of stuff because it’s a good discount and one month of membership is not that expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we’ll go to atp.fm join to become a member, get the discount, and then you can buy whatever you want
⏹️ ▶️ John at 15% off. And it will add the surprise hit of the sale is actually the Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John Max Triumph shirt in black. Yeah, it’s a very popular shirt and we haven’t sold it for a while. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think it’s really good because like I said, it just looks like a nice design with nice colors on it from a distance.
⏹️ ▶️ John It does say Accidental Tech Podcast, so everyone doesn’t have to ask you what your shirt’s about because if they actually cared, they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John look at it and reading, oh, it’s a podcast shirt, whatever. And it’s just an attractive shirt. And if people look closer
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re actual nerds, they’ll see that those little shapes and colors aren’t just shapes and colors, but are in fact the silhouettes of powerful
⏹️ ▶️ John Macs over time. So, yep, that’s a big hit. And I’m glad people are buying the Beliefs shirt still. So
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll see what we can do by manifesting that. And then as I noted last time, we don’t sell the
⏹️ ▶️ John M shirts for the chips forever. We usually just sell them in the sale after when they’re introduced.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you ever want an M3 Ultra shirt, you probably don’t want the chip, but maybe you want the shirt.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you ever want
⏹️ ▶️ John shirt, normal or joke version, now’s the time to get it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. So htp.fm slash store. And let me remind you, if you do sign up at atp.fm slash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey join, then you can go ahead and binge all the bootlegs if you wanted. You can binge the member specials.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We actually need to, or I think we just did schedule one, didn’t we, for this month. So there’s plenty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to listen to. We’ve got, I don’t know, 10, 20, 30 hours worth of member specials at this point. So there’s a lot there. Way more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than that. Oh, look at that. So go to atp.fm slash store or slash join to
A good bug-filing experience
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, I wanted to briefly talk about a absolutely delightful bug
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reporting experience that I recently had. And I should tell you that it was not with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple, which is why it was delightful. On the 5th of February,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I finally got sick and tired of a ever so slightly esoteric bug that I found in the Slack
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad app. So I use my iPad Pro, what year was it? It was like 22 or 23. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was before it got super duper thin. And I use it with the original smart keyboard or magic keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever it’s called, the cantilevered one. And that’s typically how I use my iPad. And I noticed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that if I was writing a multi-line message in Slack,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so, you know, it’s three or four lines long or something like that. If I use the arrow keys on the smart keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to perhaps go back a line or something like that, instead of arrowing within
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that text field, what it would do, it would select the prior message
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as though I was not in the midst of editing anything. That’s a little difficult to describe verbally, but if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m trying to arrow around within the message, instead of treating it as an editing operation, it’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s treated as a selection operation and it’s going up and down the stack of prior messages.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I reported this on the 5th of February. I don’t have the bug report in front of me, but it was like two or three lines long and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably a little snarky because I was so fed up with this. Did you report it from within the app? Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe so. I think I did like help or something like that within the app. This was the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John 5th of February. Yeah, because I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John done it before. My recollection is, like, I was looking at, oh, how do you report a bug in Slack? And somewhere in the actual Slack app itself,
⏹️ ▶️ John probably on the Mac where I was doing it, there’s a way you find, like, oh, help support something. And it just leads you through the process from
⏹️ ▶️ John within the app to complain about the app itself. So it’s not like you have to go to a website and find a way to
⏹️ ▶️ John find their hidden support page or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, that’s correct. So again, that was the 5th of February. I reported it. It was the bare minimum amount of information to understand what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was saying. That was the 5th of February. I want to say it was afternoon or maybe even evening, Eastern
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time, but less than two hours later, let me repeat that for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Less than two hours later, I got an acknowledgement of my bug report
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they said, you’re right, we’ve reproduced it less than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey later. I got receipt and reproduction acknowledgement. Amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then they disappeared. Perfectly reasonable. I don’t expect this to be fixed yesterday. It’s not really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. No worries. So 5th of February, there’s a tiny bit of back and forth, as they confirmed,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and so on and so forth. 21st of April, yesterday as I record this, they sent me a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey message that said, hey, it’s fixed. Would you mind trying it out? And guess what? It was fixed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I tried it out, and it was fixed. And it was great. Two months, two and a half months, done.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Imagine that. Imagine that. How cool. Well done, Slack. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John just wanted to share.
⏹️ ▶️ John One of the other major points here is that this was not a crash or data loss bug. No, no, not like a P1
⏹️ ▶️ John destroying my data. The app doesn’t work. I can’t run it. It’s like the lowest possible
⏹️ ▶️ John priority of a bug in my feature that is very obscure that it’s that you have a workaround for this
⏹️ ▶️ John just kind of annoying and still it got acknowledged and miraculously also fixed
⏹️ ▶️ John and this gets back to our long discussion about ratios of like how many users just slack have
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, how many support people do they hire? How many of all the users of slack actually report bugs?
⏹️ ▶️ John many of those bugs are actually real. And whatever the ratios are, Slack has
⏹️ ▶️ John arranged their money and time such that they can, and this is my experience too, I’ve reported bugs to Slack, they can
⏹️ ▶️ John acknowledge the bugs and give you an idea of whether or not they’re thinking of fixing them and
⏹️ ▶️ John then actually fix them. I didn’t keep this kind of meticulous track of the various bugs that I reported, but in general
⏹️ ▶️ John they have been either fixed or if they were like design bugs, they would say we have a feature in upcoming release that
⏹️ ▶️ John will address your concern in some way or whatever. So good communication, good finding
⏹️ ▶️ John and fixing of bugs, and kudos to them for not throwing everything except for P1
⏹️ ▶️ John bugs into a giant black hole.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, couldn’t agree more.
Third-party Mac Mini storage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jay Mullins writes with regard to third-party storage, I swapped out an M4 Mac Mini’s 512 gigabyte SSD
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a two terabyte third-party SSD, and I haven’t had any issues. Read and write is the same.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would have bought my Mac Mini with a 256 gig SSD had I known at the time that a two terabyte third-party
⏹️ ▶️ Casey upgrade was a real thing. So then apparently, John, you had asked which particular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey specimen Jay Mullins had gotten, and Jay wrote back, I ended up rolling the dice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with AliExpress and provided a link, which we will put in the show notes. As I load it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right now, it was it is one hundred and thirty dollars for. I can’t tell what size this is. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a half terabyte SSD. One terabyte is one hundred and sixty two terabyte
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is two hundred and eighty and so on and so forth. Pretty,
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty good. Significantly cheaper than the Apple. So that’s, you know, this is getting back to all of our things about like the French company
⏹️ ▶️ John that redid the the circuit boards and that IBOF company you talked about last time. And AliExpress is a whole
⏹️ ▶️ John bunch of these. I agree that it’s kind of rolling the dice because you’re like, Oh, you know, this is going to work. Is
⏹️ ▶️ John this company reputable or whatever? But I’m happy to hear someone have a success
⏹️ ▶️ John story because you just save so much money. And again, I don’t know what their return policy is or whatever. So it may just
⏹️ ▶️ John be rolling the dice. But there are an increasing number of options for storage. And this is really making
⏹️ ▶️ John me, like I said, consider this for whatever my next Mac may be. Some of
⏹️ ▶️ John these companies are still still haven’t rolled out their Mac Studio products, but they’re all promising them. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, options seem to exist. I’m again, you can’t vouch for their reliability
⏹️ ▶️ John and how well they’re going to work over the long term or whether they work at all or what their return policy is. But I love it when I hear somebody save hundreds
⏹️ ▶️ John and hundreds of dollars by buying third-party storage. Couldn’t agree more.
AirPods case correction
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steven Merrill writes, I’m not sure why Marco said that the USB-C charging case for AirPods Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wouldn’t work with AirPods Pro Mark 1, or in my case, Mark 2. I’ve been using
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one with mine for more than a year now. And Steven provided a link to MagSafe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey charging case USB-C for AirPods Pro second gen, which is $100,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is not cheap, but nevertheless, apparently it should work. Yep, my bad.
Cursor AI snafu
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, then I should put in a disclaimer. We’re going to be talking about a Hacker
⏹️ ▶️ Casey News link to Reddit, so this is going to be grumps all the way down, but nevertheless—
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here on the Accidental Positivity podcast, we would never complain about anything.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Touche, touche. Cursor, the IDE, their support apparently has hallucinated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some things and it caused a whole bunch of people to get upset. So, Scared Pelican on Hacker News writes, summarizing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Reddit post, Cursor, the magical AI-powered IDE, started kicking users off when they logged in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from multiple machines. Naturally, people thought this was a new policy, so they asked support. Support told everyone that this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was quote-unquote expected behavior under their new login policy. One problem, there was no support
⏹️ ▶️ Casey team. It was an AI designed to mimic human responses. That answer, totally made up by the bot, spread like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wildfire. Users assumed it was real, because why wouldn’t they? It’s their own support system. And within hours, the community
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was in revolt. Dozens of users publicly canceled their subscriptions, myself included. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of the most surreal product screw-ups I’ve ever seen, not because they made a mistake, but because the AI support system
⏹️ ▶️ Casey invented a lie and nobody caught it until the user base imploded. Whoopsie-dipsies.
⏹️ ▶️ John So Cursor is one of these vibe coding. I don’t know if they consider themselves a vibe coding product, but
⏹️ ▶️ John their name is always in the conversation when we discuss vibe coding, especially with the people who are essentially non-coders or
⏹️ ▶️ John have limited coding experience, but want to do something complicated. You can use AI to help you. These IDEs
⏹️ ▶️ John integrate it so you’re not copying and pasting, but you’re still just like talking to the LLM while your code is in an ID
⏹️ ▶️ John like environment and cursor is one of those companies and companies like this you would imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John are big on LLMs and say hey we’re a new company we’re a small company we’ve got this LLM based product what else
⏹️ ▶️ John can we use LLMs for maybe we can use them to answer easy support questions maybe they’ll be at the other end of our support
⏹️ ▶️ John email so we don’t have to answer them and it just provide answers for us this being hacker news
⏹️ ▶️ John and reddit there is the conspiracy theory that actually there’s no LLM involved and this was an actual
⏹️ ▶️ John policy change and then they thought better of it when everybody canceled. Now they’re blaming
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it on the LLM, which would be fun.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like throw the core technology of their entire business under the bus to save face when
⏹️ ▶️ John you make a bad policy decision. So we’re not sure what the situation really is, but I just want to say
⏹️ ▶️ John that like this does. Bring to mind the
⏹️ ▶️ John exact attitude I see in lots of companies that are very enthusiastic
⏹️ ▶️ John about LLM. I feel like their enthusiasm rapidly has outrun
⏹️ ▶️ John the capabilities of LMS. And so they will say, oh, why would we ever hire a support
⏹️ ▶️ John person? The LMS can handle that. We’ll train them on our knowledge base of our products and
⏹️ ▶️ John then we’ll just have them answer the emails and they can do a great job of that. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not how it works. I mean, you know, not to bash on Siri, but lots
⏹️ ▶️ John of people in the sport of on Siri or asking it questions and leveraging Apple’s supposed
⏹️ ▶️ John product knowledge. Like Gruber’s done a couple of these where it’s like, you know, Apple touted the
⏹️ ▶️ John fact that they have trained Siri on their products. And so you can ask it, how do I do this with my iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever? Yeah, you can ask it and it’ll just mix up stuff and tells you the wrong thing sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes it gets it right, but you know, other times it’s just like, do this, do that, go here, do that, and like that doesn’t exist and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John wrong. And so I really question the value of something like this. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it’s valuable not to have to answer every support email, but how do you calculate the net value
⏹️ ▶️ John of giving wrong answers to people? It could be small, in which case they just write back and maybe they get
⏹️ ▶️ John through to a human and they’re just slightly annoyed. Or it can be big in that the LM gives wrong answers. And,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, and says that they are the right answers to something that causes a whole bunch of people to cancel
⏹️ ▶️ John their subscriptions to your service. So I would say maybe this was a poor choice of where
⏹️ ▶️ John and how to deploy LM’s. We need some kind of a better framework for
⏹️ ▶️ John this. But basically, if you know, as discussed with programming, if it’s if it’s deployed in a scenario
⏹️ ▶️ John where you were going to check its work anyway, and you have an easy way to check its work, that’s probably good. And you can tolerate mistakes.
⏹️ ▶️ John If it’s deployed in a place where you’re not going to be paying attention to what is doing it, it could be lying to your customers. Not
⏹️ ▶️ John so good. And if you think we’ll we’ll just get a better LLM that doesn’t make mistakes. We’ll let you know when someone makes
⏹️ ▶️ John one of those but so far it does not exist.
Jerk leadership doesn’t work
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Then the New York Times had a post with regard to Elon Musk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and leadership. In this post is titled, America is learning the wrong lesson from Elon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Musk’s success. This is by Adam Grant, who is an organizational psychologist at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey UPenn, reading a few quotes from the article. The evidence is clear. Leadership by intimidation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and insult is a bad strategy. Belittling people doesn’t boost their productivity, but diminishes it. In a study of nearly 700
⏹️ ▶️ Casey NBA players, those who had an abusive coach perform worse for the rest of their careers, even after they left
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the team. Disrespect doesn’t just demotivate, it also disrupts focus, causing costly mistakes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In a medical simulation, professionals in neonatal intensive care teams had to diagnose a potentially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey life-threatening condition and then respond rapidly with the correct procedures. Right beforehand, some of them were randomly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey assigned to hear a visiting expert disparage their work. Briefly insulting physicians and nurses was enough to reduce the accuracy of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey their diagnoses by nearly 17% and the effectiveness of their procedures by 15%.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you heard it here first be nice to your doctors Take it from her review of over 400 studies across 36
⏹️ ▶️ Casey countries with nearly 150,000 people in the face of workplace aggression People are less productive less collaborative
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and more inclined to shirk their responsibilities abusive bosses break confidence and breed resentment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and ruthless Haphazard downsizing can cause the highest performers the ones who have the most and best opportunities
⏹️ ▶️ Casey elsewhere to jump ship Denigrating people is not a path to accomplishing meaningful goals. It reflects a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lack of self-control and a shortage of emotional intelligence here here.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is related to our recent discussions about leadership styles and yelling at the Siri team and Steve Jobs
⏹️ ▶️ John and, you know, mobile me and yelling at that team and, you know, again, taking the wrong lessons
⏹️ ▶️ John from people who are successful and thinking everything they do is something that should be imitated
⏹️ ▶️ John and whether or not they succeed despite their things. This whole topic is very much on
⏹️ ▶️ John both sides. In fact, very much tempting. It causes people to
⏹️ ▶️ John view it based on how they feel about it. So on the yelling at people side,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you are a customer and you’re using a product and it’s bad, you feel like, boy, I wish someone would yell at the people who made
⏹️ ▶️ John this. Like the satisfaction of feeling like I’m annoyed by this product. How can I
⏹️ ▶️ John find the people responsible and make them feel bad? It’s just, you know, revenge or like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, why hoping that someone is held accountable or however you want to phrase it. It emotionally
⏹️ ▶️ John feels good to think that this thing that is annoying you or doing a bad thing or has deleted your data or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever your problem is, you feel like those people need to be punished. That desire to punish wrongdoing,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? That’s an innate personal thing. If you are in fact a manager of people,
⏹️ ▶️ John very often you feel like people aren’t doing a good job and they’re not listening to me. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John I should yell at them to let them know that I’m serious, to make them
⏹️ ▶️ John tough, to toughen them up all sorts of, you know, sort of authoritarian
⏹️ ▶️ John instincts that we have when dealing with other people, especially if you’re in charge of them or fancy yourself
⏹️ ▶️ John as being in charge of them. That’s a form of leadership. So leaders feel like they should do it because especially men leaders, we
⏹️ ▶️ John have to be tough and macho and there’s all sorts of cultural and emotional
⏹️ ▶️ John things that lead to that. And then on the other side of it, the people say, Oh, you should be nice to people because being nice to
⏹️ ▶️ John people is nice. And I feel like when I I see people
⏹️ ▶️ John getting yelled at, I feel empathy for them. And I say, please don’t yell at those people. That’s not nice. It’s making them feel bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s how people view this issue on all sides. Whatever your opinion is, there is some
⏹️ ▶️ John emotionally fulfilling, deeply rooted lizard brain motivation to support
⏹️ ▶️ John your opinion. And that’s why you need, you know, it’s like, how do you tell? All right, so
⏹️ ▶️ John we have all these conflicting opinions and different emotions. How do we tell which one is true?
⏹️ ▶️ John Science. That’s how we try to tell whether things are true or not. And obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John science is conducted by humans who have biases and emotions. But it’s the best tool that we have, because
⏹️ ▶️ John if they make mistakes, future people can come up and show that they made mistakes and so on and so forth. Anyway, studies,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you you know, rather than picking the answer that you think is
⏹️ ▶️ John the one that makes you feel better, whether you’re predominantly an empathetic person who thinks people shouldn’t be yelled
⏹️ ▶️ John at or you’re predominantly an authoritarian person who thinks people who do bad things should get yelled at. we can study
⏹️ ▶️ John it and find out. And it’s not close. Like it’s not a sort of a hairline thing. Different realms,
⏹️ ▶️ John places where people would, even the people who are strongly in favor of empathy would never have guessed things like
⏹️ ▶️ John that. If you’re an NBA player and you had an abusive coach at any point in your career, it screws your
⏹️ ▶️ John whole career for years afterwards. Like that is a surprising result.
⏹️ ▶️ John Doctors, like who cares if a visiting expert says something bad? Why would you get so
⏹️ ▶️ John measurably worse at your job? because someone just said something mildly bad about like, just,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s really, it’s really fairly conclusive. And it’s not to say that you should, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John never hold people accountable or say whatever they do is fine or whatever. That’s again, that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John other side of the lizard blame saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John what you’re saying, I shouldn’t yell at people and people should do whatever they want, right? All it’s saying is that being abusive to people, although
⏹️ ▶️ John it might feel good in the moment or might seem cathartic from the outside, does not actually produce results. So do
⏹️ ▶️ John you care about the actual performance of results So you just care about feeling good about the situation.
⏹️ ▶️ John And again, that goes on the flip side, too. Do you care about just feeling good about being nice about people to people, or do you care about results?
⏹️ ▶️ John It could be argued that if these studies went the other way, people who are empathetic would still say, okay, well, it gets better results, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not worth destroying people for, which is the point we’ve made on many past episodes, that like the
⏹️ ▶️ John end all be all is not the productivity of your employees and success of your company. Human lives actually
⏹️ ▶️ John matter, and you shouldn’t grind up humans as a process of doing that. But anyway, the good thing is,
⏹️ ▶️ John in this case, don’t have to make that hard choice. Not being a jerk to your employees actually makes them perform better.
Sponsor: Notion
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“Marco’s new TV”?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In the show notes, in our internal show notes, there’s a line item labeled Marco’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new TV, but I have a real strong suspicion that this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John living vicariously through Marco and still trying to tell him what to buy. So Marco, did you buy a new TV?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco course not. My restaurant opened this weekend. How am I going to buy a new TV?
⏹️ ▶️ John know. There’s plenty of time to do this. We talked about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John We covered it pretty well last week with a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco couple of follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, in all fairness, you’re right. There is time to buy a new TV. So yes, I could have placed an order
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Amazon, but if I had done that, which I have not for this reason, it would just be sitting in a box for like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a month. Like, what am I gonna do?
⏹️ ▶️ John Plus you’re waiting for everyone to test the Bravia 2.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Anyway. Yes, that was it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was considering the Bravia 2 2. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, it hasn’t actually shipped to people so they can’t test it yet. So in the last episode, I referenced the Arting’s new glare testing
⏹️ ▶️ John in this episode, I just want to put in the show notes the link to that video if you want to watch it to show that
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s so much more to deciding whether an anti-glare coating actually works or what it actually
⏹️ ▶️ John does or whether you benefit from it at all. And then the next one is a point I was trying to make last
⏹️ ▶️ John time but didn’t do a very good job at so I have a timestamp link to a video here. It’s talking about brightness.
⏹️ ▶️ John And whenever we talk about this, you know, the upshot is always MiniLED can get brighter than OLED and Marco’s concerned about that
⏹️ ▶️ John because he’s got a bright room. And this is the point I was trying to make last time about
⏹️ ▶️ John brightness. When we say many LED TVs are brighter than OLED TVs,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s because OLED TVs cannot maintain the same brightness across the entire screen. So
⏹️ ▶️ John when they measure them during testing, they’ll say, we’ll make a little rectangle in the middle of the screen that is only 10% the
⏹️ ▶️ John size of the entire screen. They call that a 10% window. And they measure the brightness there. And sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe an OLED can get up to like 4000 nits, which is like really high. It’s like the highest, you know, that’s plenty,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But then when they take that 10% window, it’s just a white rectangle that’s 10% of the screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they make it 100% of the screen, the brightness doesn’t go from like 4,000 down to 3,000. It goes from like 4,000 down to 300.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a big, big drop because of power and heat concerns. That’s a limitation
⏹️ ▶️ John of the OLED technology. But unless you’re watching that one scene in The Matrix or Neo’s there in the big white
⏹️ ▶️ John empty room where you’re watching a Johnny Ive video, I guess, most of the time your screen is not 100% white.
⏹️ ▶️ John and so that usually doesn’t come up in actual viewing. On the flip side of that, mini LEDs,
⏹️ ▶️ John TVs, because they have different backlight regions, when they have a scene that has a bunch of different things in it, but with
⏹️ ▶️ John like some bright highlights, even though mini LED TVs can get super, super bright, like if you do just a big
⏹️ ▶️ John white square over the whole screen, they can just blow your eyeballs out. If you have
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of highlights below an otherwise normal looking image, mini LED TVs
⏹️ ▶️ John generally don’t crank up those highlights to the same brightness as they can at the full screen. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John because if they did, you would get blooming halos around them because the highlight may be some shiny
⏹️ ▶️ John thing on the edge of someone’s shoulder or something, but the backlight behind it is like a one and a half inch by
⏹️ ▶️ John one and a half inch square. So if you crank up that tiny highlight to be 4,000 nits, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna see this giant bloom behind it because the LCD panel cannot stop that incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ John bright backlight from bleeding through. And all of these mini LED TVs have computers controlling them and
⏹️ ▶️ John sensing, how high can I safely turn up this backlight to make the highlight highlighty but
⏹️ ▶️ John without causing blooming and Modern mini LED TVs are good at that and that they don’t have a lot of blooming
⏹️ ▶️ John but they sacrifice overall brightness so this timestamp link to this video showing the LG G5
⏹️ ▶️ John shows a situation in which a normal-looking image is actually brighter on the
⏹️ ▶️ John OLED G5 than it is on a mini LED TV because the G5 is only being
⏹️ ▶️ John asked to crank up the brightness on a few high-lighty areas and it can do that because it has per pixel
⏹️ ▶️ John lighting control whereas the Mini LED TV showing the exact same image has to tone
⏹️ ▶️ John down its backlight because otherwise it will have blooming and hails and stuff. It’s not to say
⏹️ ▶️ John every scene is gonna be like that again that scene in the Matrix where all the guns come flying and that’s gonna be brighter on a Mini
⏹️ ▶️ John LED TV but all this is say is that the LG G5 which is
⏹️ ▶️ John out now and if Marco had to buy a TV right now, now, now, I would say that’s the one he should get
⏹️ ▶️ John because he’s had LG OLEDs and he’s like them and the Sony one isn’t. You can’t actually buy it yet. So there you go.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s very bright for an OLED and in some situations a very bright OLED is actually
⏹️ ▶️ John brighter than a very bright male ID TV because it doesn’t have to worry about blooming. So that’s that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the point I would add. So Mark, if you’re going to panic by something which doesn’t sound like you are, get an LG G5. If you can
⏹️ ▶️ John hold out, please hold out until people test the LGD five versus the Sony of Bravia
⏹️ ▶️ John eight Roman numeral two. And once they do that test, then you’ll know which one to get. If you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John set an old, it just seems like you are.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because like, and to be clear, like there’s I there’s two different TVs that are,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, on the on the approval list to be replaced in the following, you know, year. One of them is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the beach where reflection and performance in a bright room is incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco important. The other one is, you know, back at home where that’s almost not important at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all. So there are actually different criteria for the two, the two TVs, both of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want to be OLEDs around the 65 inch range. Um, but you know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the most part, the reflectivity is like the number one thing at the beach, um, because that really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does control a lot of when we can use that TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. The Samsung, uh, S 95 F is kind of still in the mix. I hate that TV because the lack
⏹️ ▶️ John of Dolby Vision and their bad processing, but it is the only one of the high end TVs that even attempts to
⏹️ ▶️ John have a really fancy anti glare coating. I personally am very against it, but depending on return
⏹️ ▶️ John policy, you could give that a try. I feel like it’s just going to make it worse, not better. And I feel like getting the maximum brightness is
⏹️ ▶️ John really your go to. So that’s why I would pick for the for the beach TV, whatever has the
⏹️ ▶️ John maximum brightness, which is why I’m leaning towards the G5. But anyway, it’s a tricky situation, but we’ll find out
⏹️ ▶️ John if and when you ever get your head above water to consider stuff like that, maybe in the fall.
Apple’s self-service repair
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right with regard to Apple self-serve self-service repair program sky the ladies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rights I had an m1 MacBook Pro with water damage been there rather than paying $300
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AppleCare accidental damage fee I paid thirteen dollars and twenty cents plus sales tax with free shipping
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have a replacement lid angle sensor sent to me With a potential for five dollars and seventy two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cents of credit After returning the defective lid angle sensor the total cost to me was eight dollars and fifty six
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cents with a maximum of fourteen dollars and twenty eight cents ever leaving my bank account. I was not required
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to pay a one thousand dollar deposit for a bulky Pelican case, which I then had to return to a post office. I was not required to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey purchase any screws, tools, or accessories. The only packaging I received contained the lid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey angle sensor. I used my wife’s iFixit toolkit to perform the entirety of the repair. I didn’t need to go to an Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey store or have my SSD erased. Total time to disassemble, reassemble, and run the system configuration tool was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey twenty five minutes. I would like to dispel the myth that the self-service repair program is user hostile. This is a fantastic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey program, literally the gold standard for ordering spare parts. And I don’t believe Apple has gotten anywhere near the amount
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of praise they deserve for it.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is another example where the Mac has many advantages. Part of the reason they give you those giant Pelican
⏹️ ▶️ John cases and everything for the iPhone is because you can’t just open an iPhone with a screwdriver. You need lots
⏹️ ▶️ John of tools. And if you want to do it without breaking the case or shattering the glass in the back, and then you have to reassemble it
⏹️ ▶️ John and put the adhesives in and you know, yada yada. MacBooks, much to our chagrin,
⏹️ ▶️ John not waterproof and so it’s easier to open and close them. If you have successfully diagnosed
⏹️ ▶️ John it and the lid angle sensor is the only thing you need, yeah, you can do a quick repair, provide you’re comfortable opening the thing and closing it,
⏹️ ▶️ John and provided the part you need to replace doesn’t require disassembling the entire thing, which can be the case depending on where the part
⏹️ ▶️ John is. In the case of water damage, I do question whether that is the only part that needs to be replaced
⏹️ ▶️ John and how far the water has traveled and what other parts might be corroding in there, but you know, that’s true when you send it
⏹️ ▶️ John out for repair as well.
iPadOS 19 productivity rumor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s talk topics. And over the last week or so, maybe it was a little more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than a week ago, there was a Mark Gurman report that, well, let me just read it. I’m told that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPadOS 19 will focus on productivity, multitasking, and app window management with an eye on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey device operating more like a Mac. It’s been a long time coming with iPad power users pleading with Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to make the tablet more powerful. Okay, I mean, that sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey great on the surface, but what does that really mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so this this passage here is like, well, was there more to it? Was there more detail? You would think so based on the like
⏹️ ▶️ John multi page length articles that this two sentence description has spawned in the week since it came out.
⏹️ ▶️ John Every site’s like going, you know, they’re just back on their B.S. as they say about,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve had, you know, what’s their problems? They’re going to fix it. This is going to be the year like there. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John more discussion in the German post about this, but it’s mostly just him talking
⏹️ ▶️ John about the history of people being dissatisfied. to where like there’s not a lot of information here, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John enough to get people’s juices flowing kind of like, oh, iPadOS, yes, it annoys
⏹️ ▶️ John me and it should be better and it should be more like the Mac and multitasking and window management and there’s no details. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so everyone is just mapping their hopes and dreams onto it. But here’s the thing, like we know,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, we know, we have heard the rumors that have been reiterated from multiple
⏹️ ▶️ John sources about the big OS redesign that we’ve just discussed on past shows. So it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John if OS is going to change in some significant way, maybe it’s not just I mean, that’s what the reports are saying.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ve been talking about the glass appearance or anything, but it’s not just about, oh, it works exactly the same, but everything looks different.
⏹️ ▶️ John Every one of the rumor reports has been like, and also there’s some rethinking of how the UI works, not
⏹️ ▶️ John just how it looks. And so this fits right in with it. Is this the year
⏹️ ▶️ John that everyone’s hopes and dreams for iPad OS, you know, are fulfilled? Or is
⏹️ ▶️ John this just the, what, seventh time that there have been rumors that iPadOS is finally
⏹️ ▶️ John going to fix all the things that annoy people about it? And what we’ll get instead will be like whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the, you know, something equivalent to Stage Manager where it’s like, good effort, I see what you’re trying to do. But in the end,
⏹️ ▶️ John the people who are dissatisfied with it continue to be dissatisfied.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What we have seen from iPadOS over the years is seemingly just a profound
⏹️ ▶️ Marco identity crisis. iPadOS tries to serve a bunch of different markets,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has never really been able to break well out of its like kind of single tasking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco casual user market, and has tried a bunch of things to, you know, to try to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it more productive. And none of them have ever really had, you know, any kind of like follow through, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, much refinement happening. It’ll get a burst of attention in some, you know, some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big update that will rethink multitasking or window management or file management. and then it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco won’t be touched for like three years and then the next thing will be tried. The next method,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh, well that was all wrong, now we’re gonna do this. You know, we had, you know, slide over, then we had split screen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, then we, now we have, you know, stage manager and we have all these different things that keep getting tried
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make window management good or useful or usable on the iPad and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every single time the same thing happens. It confuses the crap out of casual users and they ask
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to turn it off if, you know, If you have anybody in your life where you’re their tech person and they have an iPad as their main computer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually you will hear, I got it into this weird state, how do I turn this off? I personally, I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco run into problems where I will accidentally have dragged a Safari tab on the iPad in the wrong way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and now I have two Safari windows and I have no idea how to close, there’s all these different accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Marco multitasking problems. Then the power users are super into it for about 30
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seconds, then they hit all the friction with it that that prevents it from being power useful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way they want. They’re not super satisfied with it, but they’re like, well, at least it’s better than what we had before, but it’s a little bit different,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit better in some ways, a little bit worse in other ways. And then, you know, a few years later, they’re like, well, I’m going back to the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, like we’ve seen this pattern over and over again, and we have no reason to believe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this will be any different. We’ll see. Maybe it will, but it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple has always wanted the iPad software-wise to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as capable as it is hardware-wise. And it just seems like they’re not…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know if they’re not willing to make the kind of changes and open up things in the kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ways that would actually be necessary to achieve that, or if they’re not able to in the sense
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, like, you know, maybe they’ve tried a lot of more advanced features and it has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just been too confusing for casual users on the iPad because iPads aren’t laptops.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They don’t work the way PCs and Macs do. They don’t have the same input mechanisms. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t have the same input precision. People use them differently and expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them to work differently. Maybe there just isn’t a good way, you know, in the same way that like, as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we talked about before, like, there really is no amazing text input mechanism on a tablet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like you can kind of hack it with keyboards or on-screen things, or handwriting recognition, or all these different ways to do it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like tablets, fundamentally, they don’t have amazing text input and text manipulation capabilities compared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to laptops. It’s kind of a hindrance of the form factor, and they’re a lot better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at other things. You know, they’re much better at like pen input and touch input and things like that, but like text input’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of rough on tablets and it always has been. Maybe multitasking is the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way. Like maybe productivity and multitasking are just better in the PC form factor, and maybe trying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make a tablet more into a laptop or a Mac, maybe that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just really can’t be done very well. So far, all the evidence we’ve seen so far is that not only has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple not ever done it, no one else has either. That just might be the reality of tablets, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if Apple’s taking another crack at it, all right, cool, let’s see what happens. Let’s see if it’s good,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it doesn’t confuse casual users, if it gives power users what they need, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they actually have any kind of follow through to refine it over time. So far,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all three of those have failed every single time they tried to do this on the iPad. But just because they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never done it before doesn’t mean they can’t do it. I just think it’s much more likely they won’t do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s so tough, right? Because as we’ve said so many times over the years, and it’s probably never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been more true than now, the iPad hardware is phenomenal. I mean, it’s basically the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guts as a MacBook Air, if you just look at it broadly. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey obviously capable of so much more than the software allows for. And on the one side, I would love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have better control over windowing and window management and so on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey while using the iPad. And I would love to be able to do something that looks more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like proper multitasking. You know, I would love to be able to run a Daemon for some reason. I don’t even know specifically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why or what in particular I would like, but. How about a clipboard manager? Actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s a great example. Thank you. That’s a great example, a clipboard manager. So it’s got to be running always to sniff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out what you put on your clipboard. But I would like to be able to opt into that. And iOS doesn’t really have,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or excuse me, iPadOS doesn’t really have an affordance for that right now, but it could. Maybe it will in June.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And another example, I think it was on Upgrade that I heard either Jason or Mike talking about how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you run Final Cut Pro or whatever it’s called on iPad and do an export, you have to leave it foregrounded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because eventually it’ll get killed as you’re doing the export if you don’t, which is kind of bananas, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I would love for these things to be improved. I would love to have terminal access
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my iPad, not even necessarily to mess with the iPads like file system or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but just to have that tool set available to me. And yes, I’m aware of ISH and I can remote into other machines,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it’d still be nice if there was a first party solution for all that. And again, like window management would be great, particularly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I’m using the iPad with a mouse and keyboard, which is how I tend to typically use it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. I don’t really see a lot of the things that I want, which is really just make it more like the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t see a lot of those things that I want really happening. And I think that’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the best, even if selfishly it’s a bummer, because then it’s not really an iPad anymore. It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a tablet version of macOS, which again, selfishly sounds amazing. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it sounds like what you want, which I think I admit I also want, is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make the Mac a little bit more hardware like the iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco leave it as Mac OS, but maybe add a pen input mechanism, maybe add
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cellular, like maybe make like a smaller than 13 inch model.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think what a lot of power users are asking for really is it might be easier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make the Mac closer to what they want iPad wise than to make the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more like the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, we agree and we’re saying the same thing here. But I mean, in principle, like you said a moment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago, heck yeah, let’s see what they have to offer. I mean, it can’t hurt, but how many times have we been burned by this?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I’m not expecting much, but hey, if we could finally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey finally have iPadOS really flexing its muscles and really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey operating on the hardware that it’s been blessed with, like that would be incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I don’t know, I don’t expect it to happen. And in the flip side of this is to argue with myself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and argue against what I want. One of the things that is great about iPadOS is its
⏹️ ▶️ Casey simplicity. And while that stinks for power user or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey someone who has power user dreams, cause I’m not even sure that I am an iPad power user. I just have dreams of being able to accomplish
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some things on it that I can’t currently, it, that would make it that much worse for,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for people who are not super duper tech savvy. So is that, is that juice worth the squeeze? I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think that’s part of what we’ve seen Apple struggle with like that. They haven’t been willing to
⏹️ ▶️ John sacrifice The simplicity of iPad OS or the iPad product and service of power user needs
⏹️ ▶️ John Which is why that I think they keep coming up with solutions for doing more than one thing at the same time
⏹️ ▶️ John on the iPad That are actually Way more complicated than they are on the Mac like, you know, even Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John getting into a situation where it’s like How do I get out of this situation? I didn’t mean to do this. It’s not immediately obvious I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John mean to split Safari into two things now. I have two of them How do I get one? Oh, it’s the worst. That’s why people ask to have those features turned
⏹️ ▶️ John off. Why is that a problem? It’s a problem because Apple has thus far been
⏹️ ▶️ John unwilling to make the basic interface
⏹️ ▶️ John less simple. Part of, like, even something as simple as like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John I made this situation. How do I undo it? There’s not closed boxes on the top of
⏹️ ▶️ John every window. There is no like window ornamentation like that, like there is on the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is a simplification that people who just do one thing at a time appreciate because it doesn’t look
⏹️ ▶️ John like a computer with like a window zoom to full screen. There is no
⏹️ ▶️ John window borders. There’s no window controls. There’s no resizing handles that they like. It just it is
⏹️ ▶️ John very simplified. That’s one of the reasons people like phones, because it makes more sense there. It’s a very small screen, but in tablets,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a simplified interface. But as soon as you want to do anything like more, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, have more than one thing running at the same time or whatever, Apple’s like, can we come up with a way to let people do
⏹️ ▶️ John that? But without dirtying up the interface with stuff that people who want a simple interface
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t care about. And they keep trying, but they always refuse. They won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do the obvious thing so far, which is fricking window controls on it. Because then when Marco makes two of those things,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if he doesn’t know how he did it, he can just hit the little red, know, close box on the one that he wants to close
⏹️ ▶️ John and it will go away or just like any kind of like standard language like we have on
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac or any other windowing interface where people know how to close windows. They
⏹️ ▶️ John know how to move them. They know how to resize them. They know what it means to close a window versus minimizing a window versus hiding
⏹️ ▶️ John a window like that vocabulary we have on the Mac. It’s consistent across the whole thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Closing window is not the same as hiding one. Hiding one is not the same as minimizing it. Resizing window you can
⏹️ ▶️ John do from all the edges and like in scrolling, like once you learn that, every everything on the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John opens up to you. Now it’s like, OK, well, it’s fancier things. You can have these keyboard commands to rearrange windows for you so you don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John to do them manually and you can have keyboard commands to close all the windows with command option W or just
⏹️ ▶️ John even learning command. But the whole point is that’s just like advanced ways to speak in the
⏹️ ▶️ John vocabulary that you’ve already learned. And it is a more complicated vocabulary than a simple non multitasking
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad. it. And thus far, Apple has not been willing to bring that set of
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of complimentary comprehensive operations to the iPad, because the only
⏹️ ▶️ John way you can bring them in a way that works as well as the Mac is to dedicate interface
⏹️ ▶️ John to them. And I bet anytime anyone brings it up to like you really want window controls on
⏹️ ▶️ John the top of every single rectangle on your iPad. It’s not an iPad anymore. Now why don’t we just do Mac OS, which is the point you two are getting
⏹️ ▶️ John at, right? And so they’ve just been holding the line. But still, they’ve been like, but power users want to do stuff. And it’s like, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John now it’s just, it’s like mystery meat gesture navigation. There’s nothing visible on the screen telling me this,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe there’s a three dot menu, but you’re not sure what’s going to be under there until you look at it. There’s the little there’s the doc, there’s the little
⏹️ ▶️ John floating thumbnails, there’s the split, there’s slide over. And it’s just, it’s a fairly extensive vocabulary, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not comprehensive. And it is not obvious. And learning it is difficult. And even once you learn it,
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t give you essentially, it’s not composable. It doesn’t say now that I’ve learned this basic vocabulary, the iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can do anything. Nope, you can’t. There’s limits on everything. How many things
⏹️ ▶️ John apps can you have open? How many things can you do at once? Which apps can run in the background? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s another point. I don’t want to drag that much longer, but another point that I think usually gets
⏹️ ▶️ John lost in this, although YouTube both touched on it as well is it’s not just about how can
⏹️ ▶️ John I arrange things on the screen to be doing stuff? It’s like setting all that aside. Pretend it’s still there’s no no quote unquote multitasking.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just one thing on the screen at the same time. What about the capabilities? What about, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John audio routing or like you said, clipboard managers or file management, simple
⏹️ ▶️ John capabilities? What kind of apps are even possible to have? What kind of apps can be on the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad to enhance the experience of the iPad? Setting aside the interface, setting aside
⏹️ ▶️ John multiple multiple windows or rearranging things or doing power user stuff, because I would argue
⏹️ ▶️ John that like, even though clipboard manager seems like a power user feature, once it is standard across every platform,
⏹️ ▶️ John which I hope it will be be sometime in my lifetime, it will no longer be viewed as a power user feature. I mean, I guess it used to
⏹️ ▶️ John be that copy and paste was a power user feature on the phone because it didn’t exist. Now people don’t need copy and paste. That’s a that’s an advanced
⏹️ ▶️ John feature. No one’s going to want to copy and paste on their phone. They totally will. They did. They do clipboard managers are similar,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like we’ll never get to that point if iPad OS is constrained
⏹️ ▶️ John by not being allowed to do things like do a Final Cut export in the background because it doesn’t have enough RAM or whatever the limitation
⏹️ ▶️ John is, or let even the most trivial, completely sandbox, completely constrained,
⏹️ ▶️ John cannot connect to the network, cannot talk to the file system, cannot export. Like you can make a clipboard manager
⏹️ ▶️ John that is totally fenced in and absolutely secure because it only has to do a very simple
⏹️ ▶️ John job. You could end to end encrypt the contents of the clipboard so the app can’t even see it.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could build it into the OS, but that’s not what we’re really asking for. Anyway, yeah, I,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I’m the one with the Mac Pro shirt, so hope springs eternal. I’m not dying
⏹️ ▶️ John for advanced spins and iPad iOS because I’m not an iPad OS power user, but a lot of other people are and I
⏹️ ▶️ John see Apple struggle. They can’t bring themselves to sacrifice simplicity and to Casey’s point,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe they’re right not to sacrifice that simplicity, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just it’s painting itself into a narrower and narrower corner as a, you know, a 1500
⏹️ ▶️ John dollar device for artists. I’m sure it’s amazing because it’s extremely powerful, a great screen, has great pen input,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that’s not a huge market. As a thing that is as powerful as a Mac in hardware,
⏹️ ▶️ John but is 1 18th as powerful in software, is unsatisfying.
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The case against Synology
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Earlier this week, a couple of days ago I wrote a post called foot guns and what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of started this post was some news about Synology, which we’ll talk about in a minute. But it occurred
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me that a lot of the things that I really enjoy, like the technology things that I really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enjoy in my life, I have been a vocal advocate for evangelist
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of, And then sometimes it’s taken a turn. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the, the examples I went into in, in this post, uh, are Iro, which is a former sponsor,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as far as I know, they’re not a future sponsor. I am still, as we sit right now, I am talking to you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey via an Iro, you know, home network. It, I still use it. I still pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much like it actually quite a bit, but over the years, um, it’s been getting,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, junkified or, uh, I will try not to use this word. So Marco doesn’t have to bleep it every three seconds, but it’s been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in shitified, which if you’re not familiar, there’s a link we’ll put in the, in the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where, uh, this is a term coined by Corey Doctorow, uh, which is basically everything gets crappier
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over time, usually for reasons that are not good for users. And that’s kind of what it boils down to. So Eero, they’ve decided
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they would really like this thing. Let me know if you two have heard of this before services revenue
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they really want that. And so they’ve been pushing their Eero plus, which is a subscription service that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do think is good, but it’s, it, it solves problems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I don’t personally have. It has like ad blocking and one password and things that I take care of on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my own. Right. And actually I didn’t talk about one password in my blog post, former sponsor. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could not have been a bigger one password fan. And then it seemed like they decided they wanted to concentrate more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on enterprise users and less on home users like myself. And I’m still running one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey password seven because the last time I tried one which admittedly was like a year ago now, it was a mess.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, it went to be an electron app, which it doesn’t immediately disqualify it as good, but close.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, and last I’d used it, it was a disaster. I bet it’s better now, but it was a mess. Also I’m seeing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one password on, I forget who it is, but on somebody’s F1 car. And I feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like if the software I’m using is also featured on a Formula One race car, then maybe our, our,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, our needs and wants are not aligned as they once were. once were. But nevertheless, going back to my blog
⏹️ ▶️ Casey post, Sonos is another great example. We’ve talked about that on and off over the last couple of years. I could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not be a bigger fan of Sonos in April of 2024. And in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey same way as with Eero, where I’ll say, well, somebody will ask me, Oh, what’s wifi router should I get? Eero,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but you need to know that they’re going to try to upsell you a lot. Well, what speakers should I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get? Sonos, but You need to be aware that their app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has been a little up and down over the last, that’s probably putting it, putting mildly, but a little up and down over the last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey year. And generally speaking, my Sonos stuff does work great. And I cannot, I know I’ve said it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey six times on the show. I said it in my blog post, I’ll say it again, taking a portable speaker in your hand and walking from one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey corner of my house to the other, all the way outside where that portable speaker is perfectly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in sync with the three other speakers that it comes in contact with during that, you know, 32nd journey.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s incredible. I don’t know how they do it. I really don’t get it. But the thing is, Eero, Sonos,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they used to be the recommendation. What wifi router should I get? Eero, next question.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What speakers should I get? Unless you’re John. Sonos, next question. Uh, and, and it just,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not that case. It’s not the case anymore. It’s well Eero, but it was Sonos
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and, and then what really set me off was my beloved Synology.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And if you recall In 2013, Synology was kind enough to send each of us a DS1813+, which is basically an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 8-bay network-attached storage. They filled
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mine. I’m pretty sure they filled your guys’ as well with like 3-terabyte hard drives. Somehow, I think John’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are all still working. Is that still true, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. They’re spinning right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 12 years on, I still cannot believe that you
⏹️ ▶️ John it. 12-year-old hard drives have never been turned off on all the time, and a UPS in my basement is still going strong.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I cannot believe. I mean, I do believe you, but I cannot believe that. But anyway, I’m just saying. If you’re the kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey person that needs or wants network-attached storage in your life, which admittedly is a very small
⏹️ ▶️ Casey subset of people, it used to be, in my personal opinion, what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey network-attached storage should I get? Synology, next question. Well, this week, they decided to make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a change. And we had been hearing rumblings about this for like a year or two, but they decided to make a change. So, I’m going to read
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from Ars Technica.
⏹️ ▶️ John Actually, we discussed it on the show probably more than a year ago. And it wasn’t just that they were thinking of doing
⏹️ ▶️ John it. They had done it, but it’s cut there. As you’ve described what they did in a second.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is this has been a program that they’ve been rolling out in pieces like I think they did it in a limited
⏹️ ▶️ John capacity, then they’re doing more of it. So it’s not actually a news story, but it’s coming up again,
⏹️ ▶️ John because they are expanding the scope of this decision. And at the time we discussed that we discussed it as
⏹️ ▶️ John a bad decision that we didn’t like. But it was like, well, but it only affects x, y, and z. And,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, maybe it won’t be that bad. Or maybe they’ll a change in mind. But here we are, I think, at least over a year later, and they
⏹️ ▶️ John are continuing to move in that direction.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. So reading from Ars Technica, Synology has confirmed and slightly clarified a policy that appeared
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on its German website earlier this week. Its Plus tier devices, starting with the 2025
⏹️ ▶️ Casey series, will require, require Synology branded hard drives for full compatibility,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at least at first. Quote, Synology branded drives will be needed for use in the newly announced Plus
⏹️ ▶️ Casey series with plans to update the product compatibility list as additional drives can be thoroughly vetted in Synology systems,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Synology representative told ours by email. Again, quoting extensive internal testing has shown that drives
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that follow a rigorous validation process when paired with Synology systems are less at risk of drive failure and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ongoing compatibility issues. Quote, I have some thoughts on this. Let me keep plowing through though. Without a Synology
⏹️ ▶️ Casey branded or approved drive in a device that requires it, NAS devices could fail or or to create
⏹️ ▶️ Casey storage pools and lose volume wide deduplication and lifespan analysis. Synology’s German press release
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stated, similar drive restrictions are already in place for the XS Plus and rack-mounted Synology models, though workarounds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exist. Synology also says it will later add a quote, carefully curated drive compatibility framework quote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for third-party drives that users can submit drives for testing and documentation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Drives that meet Synology’s stringent standards may be validated for use, offering flexibility while maintaining system integrity, they said.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Synology Plus models purchased prior to the 2025 series will continue to support third-party drives at their current level.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the J and value series are also not affected. Third-party drives, using systems prior to the 2025 models can be migrated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into newer models without restrictions. All right. That really pisses me off. I’ll come back to that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, what they’re saying is that, Hey, Synology drives,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey branded Synology drives work best. Okay. Fair, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everything else could be crap and we’re going to, and we’re going to neuter it because of it. All right, let’s pump the brakes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here. Like that’s, I don’t get that at all. And then the best part of all is, let me read that last sentence again.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Third party drives using systems prior to the 2025 models can be migrated into newer models without restrictions.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So which one is it then? Is it that they don’t work or that they do work? This
⏹️ ▶️ Casey smells to me, and maybe I’m misunderstanding. It could be a misunderstanding, but this smells
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me like we would like more revenue, please. And then they pull the lever and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is their right. They are a business. They are a group of people that are together to make money.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I get that, but here it is. They’re taking something that I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not as you three or you two, excuse me, I’m the third, as you two well know, as all three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of us know, uh, I would not and do not shut up about how much I love my Synology because it’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And yet now, hand on heart, I have already started thinking about,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all right, when my year old Synology, maybe it’s two years old, one or two year old Synology eventually dies, hopefully
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in 10 plus years, what am I going to do to replace it? And it occurred to me that I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the only thing that would really stink for me is trying to replace Synology Drive, which we’ve talked about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over the last couple of months, or excuse me, couple of weeks as a replacement sort of kind of for Dropbox.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But everything else, I can just get, let’s say, I don’t know, Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ubiquiti, what is it, UNAP, I forget the name of their network attached storage, but I can get one of those and that would be just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fine. I could move my Docker containers to some other device somewhere. That would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be just fine. The only thing I’d miss is Synology Drive and I’m sure I could find a workaround. So sitting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here today, me, the most enthusiastic Synology person that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, I’m telling you that the one I bought a year or two ago is likely to be my last.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that just feels crappy. And I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey their search for more revenue, and I don’t know if I really made this point as eloquently as I should have on the blog post, but that’s neither
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here nor there. This company that had other devout
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fans, not unlike myself, has shot themselves in the foot because they just want to eke out a little bit more revenue.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And what are these bespoke Synology drives from everything that I’ve been able to dig up and I haven’t looked too
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hard. They’re like Western Digital or whatever drives that have been relabeled and may
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have custom firmware that Synology writes, but they’re basically the same as everything else. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just, I don’t get it. And it’s so frustrating because all of these things are companies I loved so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much. Dropbox is another great example. I gave up on Dropbox forever ago. But they used to be the darling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of nerds like us. And then they just got crappier and crappier and crappier. And don’t make me bring up the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey E-word. I’ll do it. Evernote. Everyone loved Evernote for a solid 10 minutes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then it got awful. It got so bad. And it’s just foot guns upon foot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guns upon foot guns. It’s insh-ification on insh-ification on insh-ification. It’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad and it doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be this way and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it makes me so mad.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure if you’re applying Corey Darkjus’ term accurately here, but it’s clear that you’re upset about what
⏹️ ▶️ John they did. But like it reads to me as someone who’s spent a lot of my
⏹️ ▶️ John career dealing with enterprise stuff is that they’ve essentially decided that the mark the Casey
⏹️ ▶️ John market home nerds who want to do cool things with its analogies is not where they want to
⏹️ ▶️ John concentrate instead I want to concentrate on the enterprise market. And I can tell you in the enterprise market, what they’re doing is so
⏹️ ▶️ John incredibly mild. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey yeah, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John who’s in the enterprise market would say they’re doing it wrong. It’s like, why are you letting people use any drives? Why
⏹️ ▶️ John is this like a multi year rollout strategy? Why are you like allowing existing products to keep using their?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, why are you doing that? Like, just go. If you want to be in the enterprise market, you just have to make them buy the
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff from you. And in the enterprise world, it’s exactly like you said. Oh, if you buy our storage solution, you have to
⏹️ ▶️ John buy the storage from us. Obviously, it’s not just like a plug and play where you find the cheapest price for your, you know, solid
⏹️ ▶️ John state storage or your spinning discs and you plug them into our things. Companies that do that do exist to try to have
⏹️ ▶️ John a competitive advantage. But the enterprise companies like this is small potatoes for an enterprise.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And if you buy
⏹️ ▶️ John from us, we guarantee it. And it’s part of our $50,000 a year support contract and yada yada.
⏹️ ▶️ John And yeah, Synology does not manufacture hard drives. This is some other company that manufactures hard drives that they
⏹️ ▶️ John buy, put a big sticker on. And like you said, maybe do some firmware tweaking or whatever, or have a validation
⏹️ ▶️ John procedure. And technology has been trying to walk that line of like, okay, but we’ll, we’ll also certify
⏹️ ▶️ John third party drives, and we’ll have a compatibility list. I think last time we talked about this, we pulled up the compatibility list web page.
⏹️ ▶️ John And depending on which technology sort of, you know, machine that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John talking about, its compatibility list may contain lots of third party drives, or no third party drives,
⏹️ ▶️ John or some um, having a validation procedure and sort of drives that are,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, uh, certified to work or whatever, all of that is good. The problem
⏹️ ▶️ John comes down when you say, okay, but also the other drives we’re going to like not let you use and
⏹️ ▶️ John how are we going to not let you use them? We’re going to remove features. If feature X in our product senses that you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have a certified drive, we’re not going to enable that feature. And it’s like, if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna like, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John an uncomfortable middle ground. enterprise and there’s no such thing as third party storage. Or you say,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, here are certified drives. But then if you’re a hobbyist, you know, go nuts, do whatever you want.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you’re on your own. That’s what you know, hobbyists would probably say fine, let me do that because it’s been the case in
⏹️ ▶️ John the past and I’ve been fine with it. Like, so just let me you know, enable all the features right? If
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re if it’s if they’re able to work at all, which they probably are like the duplication doesn’t depend on the hard drive
⏹️ ▶️ John mechanism. Just let me use them don’t try to coerce me into buying your drives. And of course,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, on the revenue front, why do enterprise companies act like that? You can make a lot more money
⏹️ ▶️ John from enterprises than from individuals because enterprises are less sensitive to the massive markup
⏹️ ▶️ John that they put on their quote, Synology branded drives. If you peel off that sticker and see what drive it
⏹️ ▶️ John is and go buy that drive from another retailer, it’s way cheaper. And
⏹️ ▶️ John of course, that’s a place to get higher margins. We see that in all our businesses. Why does Apple charge so much for the SSDs?
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, they’re soldered into the computer and you have no choice to buy it from them so they can put huge markups on them and
⏹️ ▶️ John so Synology is trying to make it so you have no choice or little choice than to buy Synology branded
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff from them. And your other your other choices are actually it’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of similar in that like your needs and tastes as a hobbyist have
⏹️ ▶️ John diverged from the products for different reasons. So
⏹️ ▶️ John is interesting case where you noted that the services they’re offering with EuroPlus, you do yourselves
⏹️ ▶️ John with other, you know, things that other things that you do as a hobby.
⏹️ ▶️ John Most people, even home users, which I feel like are Euro’s target market, aren’t going to run a pie
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, no, definitely.
⏹️ ▶️ John And and if and the reason we recommend Euro is like you recommend Euro. And, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the come ons are annoying, but like you can just ignore them. I can tell you as a very happy Euro customer, I had forgotten
⏹️ ▶️ John this program exists until you complained about it, because I’d never have to see it. Why would I ever see it? I’d see it in my launch the
⏹️ ▶️ John era. Do I ever launch the era? No. Casey’s launching the era because he wants to see the ubiquity app that shows him all the diagrams
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco stuff. But I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not doing that. I don’t care about that. All I care is does the what does the Wi Fi work? And is it fast?
⏹️ ▶️ John And so the plus program actually, I feel like is a plus ha for
⏹️ ▶️ John me recommending era because I’ll recommend an era I would never recommend the plus thing, but at the sometime they say,
⏹️ ▶️ John I keep getting ads and it’s annoying. Is there some, I’m running an ad blocker on my Mac, but it doesn’t exist on my iPad. Is there a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever? And it’s like, you
⏹️ ▶️ John if you like, if you’re paying for an ad blocker for your Mac and you’re paying for an ad blocker on your phone or iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then people in the house have PCs and you don’t know what to do about ad blocking there or whatever, you could just buy an Euro Plus
⏹️ ▶️ John subscription and ad block for your whole house. Here’s how much it costs. Does that appeal to you? And if they say yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so easy for them to do, but it’s just like, boop. Now, you know, it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey lot easier than
⏹️ ▶️ John setting up a pie hole and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey dealing with all those problems, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And if they don’t wanna deal with it, do you think normal people are launching the Aero app to look at it like ever? No.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s fair, that’s fair. Once wifi works, it’s fine. And Sonos is
⏹️ ▶️ John a similar situation where if you had, if you had just bought your very first Sonos when they screwed up the app,
⏹️ ▶️ John would you have noticed that they screwed up the app? Maybe, because it was really screwed up. But like a lot of the time when
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, oh, they haven’t restored the features that used to exist. If you don’t know what features used to exist, you just think
⏹️ ▶️ John this is what Sonos is. And maybe you didn’t notice that the app had lost 50%
⏹️ ▶️ John of the features because you’re just happy that the speakers sound good and they play audio when you play through them and you’re done.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the difficulty with running any kind of company and having customers, especially if you spend a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John your history trying to satisfy a certain class of customers and then you decide to move on to a different class of customers because
⏹️ ▶️ John it can make you more money. for whatever reason, like again, just Eero moving
⏹️ ▶️ John more towards the sort of, you know, I don’t know, there’ll be more towards but like, very concentrated
⏹️ ▶️ John on the non tech nerd audience, you don’t want to deal with this stuff, we’ll do it for you. I think in that
⏹️ ▶️ John sense, it makes sense for them to come out with a service of like, well, what if people want to do like whole house ad blocking and security
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff? Yeah, you don’t need to do that through Eero, there’s a million other ways you can do that. But no one is going to figure that
⏹️ ▶️ John out. It’s better to have one thing that does it all. If Apple made a Wi Fi router, I would want
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple to have an equivalent of Euro plus as part of like their services thing, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John as part of Apple one or as I call it, because that’s exactly why you want a company to do this. Like you don’t want to say, OK, we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John set up this device and connect it to this and set up that. And then when you have a problem with this, then you run your own DNS server. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, like, just do it all for me and make the parts that I don’t need optional.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the best we can hope for. But that’s not the same market as people who want to see the traffic flow
⏹️ ▶️ John through their network and, you know, potentially run fiber in their house one day or whatever. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems like from, you know, Marco will talk about this later, that ubiquity is actually moving in the other direction where it used to be,
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, you need to be super tech nerd to set this up. I think they see a market opportunity to say, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, we’re our tech and our products are so good now that if we just put the right interface
⏹️ ▶️ John on them, we can start grabbing customers from Europe because actually, it’s not that much
⏹️ ▶️ John more complicated to set up our stuff. So maybe a little bit more and even just knowing what to buy is more complicated or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But like, I also say is that you you listed this as like foot
⏹️ ▶️ John guns as in these companies are shooting themselves in the foot. I think they’re shooting your foot.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure if they’re shooting themselves in the foot because I look at this and I see this is competition.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is people moving where the money is, where the market is. And when one company
⏹️ ▶️ John makes one move like you’re running out the plus thing that’s annoying the tech nerds, ubiquity is there to
⏹️ ▶️ John say This is actually a competitive market. There are other choices. Can we steal some of those customers by
⏹️ ▶️ John shoring up some of our weaknesses to get Casey to come over to our side? Because he’s close. He doesn’t want to deal with all the ubiquity
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff, but like, but now Eero’s annoying him and doesn’t give him enough things and doesn’t want to pay for Plus. Can we get Casey over here?
⏹️ ▶️ John And I feel like in the NAS, I mean, get ready for the email. In the NAS market, as Synology tries to move
⏹️ ▶️ John our enterprise and says, you got to buy our storage at a massive markup. Believe me, there are other NAS companies out there
⏹️ ▶️ John like, aha, these people who were stuck on Synology for so long. We’re like, you didn’t want to buy us before because we were
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit too nerdy, but now we sense weakness. And
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco betraying people like
⏹️ ▶️ John we get him? And Ubiquity again, you know, they had a NAS type product. If it can do
⏹️ ▶️ John what Synology did for Casey, they can steal him away. And so even though this is a story of frustration
⏹️ ▶️ John and annoyance and feelings of betrayal, I think it’s also a story of
⏹️ ▶️ John the good things about having markets that are actually competitive. And most of these are competitive markets.
⏹️ ▶️ John NAS, Wi-Fi routers, in-home speakers, maybe less
⏹️ ▶️ John so there. But none of these have like a giant gatekeeper that is controlling everything about them.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so as you know, there’s turmoil and we are getting our hearts broken by
⏹️ ▶️ John companies that we love. But I feel like it’s an opportunity for other companies to become the new companies that we love. And also
⏹️ ▶️ John to remember, like I said, like I love Eero. I don’t think I’m ever going to get Ubiquiti unless Eero
⏹️ ▶️ John does something really terrible. Just because a product isn’t for you doesn’t mean it’s not for
Sponsor: Squarespace
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The case for Synology?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you don’t mind me possibly angering you,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s not that big of a deal that Synology is requiring their own drives now and and here’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why. So first of all I did some some quick research to try to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco figure out okay well how much more expensive are the Synology drives or what you know what different options are there like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how bad is this really if you’re buying new if you’re if you’re or getting a new Synology and you need to figure out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you’re gonna put into it. What are we talking about here? Basically thinking like, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for you, since you are so in love with everything else about Synology,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe the solution is to spend the extra 30 bucks on the drives or whatever. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you love everything else. Is it really worth, maybe this is a foot gun of your own. Maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it really worth biting off your nose to spite your face, whatever that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is it really worth giving up everything else you like about Synology to avoid spending
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a small amount more per drive when you replace them? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John depending on how much it is. Although, to your point, I forgot to make this point earlier, this has not dissuaded
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco buying Synology as my next NAS.
⏹️ ▶️ John If my everyone ever dies, I’m almost certainly going to pay for the stupid
⏹️ ▶️ John proprietary Synology drives, which are really just remaster drives. Because from
⏹️ ▶️ John my perspective, it does everything that I wanted to do already. And I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m an Apple customer. I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco buy their computers despite the fact that everything
⏹️ ▶️ John in them is marked up so high. I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco mean, again, looking at their price,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So like, it really just depends on, you know, where you are in relation
⏹️ ▶️ John to where they are. And I don’t like the fact that they’re requiring these drives, but honestly, it does actually
⏹️ ▶️ John save me a step, which is, oh, now I gotta research drives and figure out what the best price performance
⏹️ ▶️ John and reliability is for the storage that I want on my new Synology. And
⏹️ ▶️ John again, I don’t endorse the move, but it has not dissuaded me from getting a Synology
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the thing is like, when you look at the pricing, so I just did some quick Amazon searches, like, you know, what are Synology charging?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then, you know, what are equivalent, like, you know, WD Red Pros or, you know, whatever. And it’s hard to figure out, like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what exact drive are they using?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s the problem. You have to find out the actual mechanism they’re using, because even though you say, I get the same storage, sure, and it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John that much more expensive, but they might be using worse drives under that sticker.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but whatever it is, like, when you look, when you compare, like, So I can’t find a good comparison
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for their higher end enterprise series, but their plus series, like they’re kind of like mid range
⏹️ ▶️ Marco price drives. They look a lot like WD Red Pros, but maybe it’s something else. But the pricing, when you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at WD Red Pro, it’s almost the same. It’s maybe like 10 or 20 bucks more in some cases. Some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them are exactly the same. And it’s funny,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just bought a Ubiquiti storage device, the big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco camera NVR, the recorder for the security cameras, which is basically a four bay enclosure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where they run some software. And Ubiquiti has their own drives too. Oh really? I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to use them, but I did buy their drives, because when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you look at the prices, compare them to again, WD Red Pros, or whatever your brand of choice is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for NAS drives, it was about the same price, or it was like 10 or 20 bucks more. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it saves you a research step. Now you don’t have to worry you’re getting their own drives.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and so I see from their perspective, like from the company’s perspective,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually see why they would do this. Because it is probably a headache when you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a customer who’s like, you know, they buy your thing, and then they buy a whole bunch of like crappy consumer grade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drives, and then maybe some of them die, or they don’t perform quite right, or they don’t, or maybe the vibrations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the enclosure are like, kind of tweak them or whatever. You can kind of see why from a company’s perspective, like supporting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all that actually is messier, and actually is more expensive. And if you look at the price of these drives,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think they’re making that much on them. Like they might be making a little bit, maybe the higher end ones, again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wasn’t able to find a direct comparison for like their Enterprise series, which do look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like they might have fatter margins. But their regular Plus series looks about the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pricing as consumer drives from, you know, directly from the brands. So I don’t think it’s necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all about revenue here. It might just be about support and control and controlling that surface area.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cause like, I think most people who are gonna buy a brand new Synology are not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to bring in a whole bunch of old four terabyte drives to work with it. They’re probably looking also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to buy drives at the same time. So for them to offer this, I definitely think they should offer it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But then to have them make it the only choice, I don’t think is as destructive as you might think. And,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cause the reality is like hard drives, like Synology has lasted a long time as we know. By the time you’re ready to replace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your Synology, it’s probably no longer worth occupying bays with some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old four or eight terabyte drive and you can get 24 terabyte drives today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re better off buying a smaller Synology and just putting two new 24 terabyte drives in it if you wanted to, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get a bigger one, leave some empty bays and just get the big drives that are available today. And most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco customers who are buying them are probably buying storage at the same time. So if you see like, well, the Synology
⏹️ ▶️ Marco official drive only 10 or 20 bucks more than a WD Red or whatever. Like, it’s like, okay, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not that bad of a situation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you’re convincing me. And just very quickly, when I did get the new Synology, which again was, I think, a year or two ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s a 1621 plus, I believe. So it’s two fewer bays. And that’s exactly what I did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was I bought bigger drives and fewer of them. And I actually have one or maybe even two bays open right now. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exactly what you said. No, you’re both convincing me that maybe the sky isn’t falling as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad as I thought it was. still disheartening and I stand by that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I do take both of your points that maybe this isn’t, this is not a hundred percent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad and maybe there’s some upside to it. And I wanted to briefly come back to my blog post cause I got myself sidetracked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and didn’t mention that I feel like the opposite of this, the opposite of the, well, you know, Sonos
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eh, but Eero eh, the opposite of that is the M4 MacBook Air.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It used to be, well, what Mac should I, or what even, what computer should I buy? I strongly recommend it back,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but depending on what you’re doing with it, well, you might want to get the MacBook Air, the M3 MacBook Air, whatever it was, M2,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forget, it doesn’t matter. You might want to get the MacBook Air, but well, if you really want a better screen,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and now, unless you have some really weird needs or use cases,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what computer do I get, Casey? The $1,000 M4 MacBook Air. And if you have a little extra money, get a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more RAM. If you have even more extra money, get a little bigger SSD. But honestly, the $1,000 MacBook Air is the answer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that, that to me is the opposite of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all these other foot guns, even though I do take your points that maybe they’re not so foot gunny after all. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is the opposite, right? I don’t know what the opposite of foot gun is,
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s fit for market because when we’re recommending people, we’re like, oh, you are a person who doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have computers as a hobby. You just need a computer to do basic things. And we like to have a product that is a good
⏹️ ▶️ John fit for that market. Because that’s the question we mostly get asked because most customers are not, you know, computer enthusiasts. They just
⏹️ ▶️ John need a computer to do stuff with. It’s so great to have one that we feel like is a good fit for that market. And
⏹️ ▶️ John we can unequivocally recommend, although I would quibble, I would say it’s more important to get more SSD space than more
⏹️ ▶️ John RAM because I think 16 is plenty. But anyway, we’ve talked about that over the years, like when Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John has had products that are a good fit for the mass market that we can recommend as tech nerds,
⏹️ ▶️ John that we can recommend, people ask us, you know about computers, what computer should I get? We love to be able to have a
⏹️ ▶️ John product that exists that is a good fit. And your whole post is about a bunch of products that are
⏹️ ▶️ John no longer as good a fit for you as they
⏹️ ▶️ John be. And sometimes it’s in crappy ways, right? You know, like I think you put in
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing about, you know, a sentence about them being greedy and everything. As people who sell products,
⏹️ ▶️ John we have all heard all of our products be condemned because we are greedy for asking for
⏹️ ▶️ John too much money for them. It’s impossible to sell something without having people yell at you
⏹️ ▶️ John and say that you’re greedy. As you noted, they’re just trying to be a business and be successful, but it does not feel good
⏹️ ▶️ John when a business, you know, drifts away from you. And this analogy has such a long history of that. And like the price differences,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not just the price thing. Like if you’re a hobbyist, part of your hobby is the excitement of
⏹️ ▶️ John carefully researching hard drive mechanisms to find the best bang for the buck based on what your specific
⏹️ ▶️ John needs are. Are you running a video recorder that’s going to constantly be writing huge amounts of data or are these disks
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly idle and it’s got lots of tiny files? Is there a sale on a particular drive? Is there some
⏹️ ▶️ John mechanism that is, you know, in the world of hard drives? If you go to storage review dot com, it’s like, is there some hard
⏹️ ▶️ John drive spinning hard to a mechanism that is like, wow, this is the sweet spot. It’s an amazing performer. The price
⏹️ ▶️ John is low. The reliability has been great. This is like, you know, a drive for all time. It’ll be
⏹️ ▶️ John on the leaderboard for a while. And we’ll remember those days like that’s part of the hobby is finding that drive, which will
⏹️ ▶️ John be significantly better performing or significantly cheaper or both than what Synology offers.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if that’s not your hobby, it saves you a decision. Like Marco wasn’t didn’t really have the time or
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t want to research exactly which drives would be best for his ubiquity video recording station. Just just get
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever ubiquity says, because presumably it will work, you know, and you just you
⏹️ ▶️ John offload that decision to them in exchange for money. People do that with Macs all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ John We do that with Macs sometimes grudgingly because we know that we could get cheaper storage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we were allowed to. Oh, there’s no sometimes about it. Yeah, every time I have to upgrade a spec
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Apple’s website, on a on a computer I’m buying, it’s grudgingly every time it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John with a heavy heart. Well, I mean, sometimes it’s like, well, well, the SOC, it’s like, well, it’s not like I can buy that anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ John company that makes this SOC and it’s amazing SOC. Like if you were trying to do local models and you need 96
⏹️ ▶️ John gigs of unified memory and Apple’s prices are insane, it’s like, well, what are your alternatives? There’s that Nvidia thing or whatever. But yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John because we are tech nerds, we we know that there are better options, sometimes obvious better
⏹️ ▶️ John options. But from the perspective of a non tech nerd, they’re like, thank goodness I don’t have to think about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Thank goodness this decision has been made for me, presumably in a way that the company vouches for.
⏹️ ▶️ John And, you know, it’ll support all the features or whatever. But like but if you are a hobbyist, they’re taking away part
⏹️ ▶️ John of your hobby by saying you don’t get to do that activity where you get to save money, feel smart, have fun
⏹️ ▶️ John and have a better product in the end because we’re requiring you to use our drives if you want all the features. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what they’re taking away from hobbyists. So I don’t think it’s exactly the same as and pupification, which is a nice way of saying
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And pupification is more like Let’s just make it worse for everybody so we can extract all the money from the world. I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like this is just more of a changing what your target market is, maybe changing to a target market that is more
⏹️ ▶️ John lucrative and, you know, that we generally frown upon because we say like it’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you’re fleecing big companies for lots of money. But there are some OK reasons
⏹️ ▶️ John for why that market is like that, because what companies mostly care about is, you know, cynically
⏹️ ▶️ John having someone to blame when something goes wrong. But really, the reason they pay, you know, $100,000 a year for the support contracts
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever is because the business is not about storage. And so you have to pay
⏹️ ▶️ John ridiculous, you know, money to EMC to deal with your storage things that you’re running on prime. But I would
⏹️ ▶️ John say just don’t do that anymore and pass to do it, which will cost you even more. But anyway, it’s worth
⏹️ ▶️ John it for the company to throw money at that problem because they don’t care about the minutia
⏹️ ▶️ John of storage. They just want it to work. And when it doesn’t work, they want someone they can call 24 hours a day to fix it. And if they have
⏹️ ▶️ John to pay ten times as much as about that, storage is quote unquote really worth if you were to assemble it yourself
⏹️ ▶️ John and had a team of people like the math works for them. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you’ll have to decide Casey when the time if and when the time comes, which again, I don’t think should be anytime soon to just bought a new Synology.
⏹️ ▶️ John Does the math work for you at that time? This kind of like a situation you’re going to be in with ubiquity.
⏹️ ▶️ John You seem attracted to it because it’s cool. And that is a big plus in the plus column. And so when it comes time,
⏹️ ▶️ John like do you when it comes time to change, you need to change your network at all? No, but I want to because this is
⏹️ ▶️ John cool and it’s your hobby. And so suddenly ubiquity is looking good, even though your existing system is nothing technically
⏹️ ▶️ John wrong with it. And it’s not like Eero is punching you in the face about the plus thing, but every time you launch that app, there’s the come
⏹️ ▶️ John on. And it’s like, well, if you’re launching the app at all, maybe ubiquity is for you. So I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a great post because it really just does outline the path we all travel as
⏹️ ▶️ John tech enthusiasts, trying to find the product that is the right fit for us.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s an emotional rollercoaster, I think you’ve demonstrated that you could be so enthusiastic
⏹️ ▶️ John and so excited, whether it’s a great product for you or whether it’s a great product for all the people who ask you
⏹️ ▶️ John about it. And when that changes, it feels like betrayal. But like I said, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John heartened by the fact that a lot of these products have competitors and I relish them competing with each other
⏹️ ▶️ John to try to, you know, wherever there’s a hole left in the market, someone should swoop in and
⏹️ ▶️ John try to fill that hole and take that money that some other company doesn’t want to take.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but I think it’s important though to try to make sure that when you are,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, not biting off your nose, just bite your face, whatever that… So I know I’m getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey it wrong. I think it’s cutting off.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There you go. But I feel like it’s… When you’re making these kind of decisions, it can be so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easy to get wrapped up in something that you just can’t bear. It’s like, oh, I just can’t bear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to spend Apple storage prices or whatever. And for everything we buy, there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are potential risks for that kind of feeling and resistance.
⏹️ ▶️ John Some people reach that point with the things that appear in settings on their phone that are come-ons for Apple TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John They just can’t bear that, and they switch to Android. Everyone has their own line.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know what I mean? Right. And no company is immune to giving us those kind of things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a whole bunch about being an Apple fan, for instance. There’s a whole bunch that you have to suck
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up. with Sonos, Sonos stuff, even before the app debacle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything, Sonos stuff was great, but God, is it expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to get over that. And there are certain features or priorities, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who were like true audiophiles mostly don’t go for Sonos. Yeah, they turn their nose up at it because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have a whole different hobby. And they have different priorities and different needs and different things that they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like just can’t stomach, or I just can’t get past X, Y, Z. And so every one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these things that we’re a fan of and that we use has that kind of list. And I think it’s, as tech people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we do ourselves a disservice the more of those things we can’t bear. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of times that can prevent us from actually accepting the product that’s best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for us. And that would give us a better day-to-day ownership. Like, if you think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about, for instance, like if you really hated Apple storage prices,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one solution you could do when buying a new MacBook is you can just get an external drive and velcro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to the back of the thing and just plug it in and leave it there all the time. You can do that, we have done that. We had a laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in our house that was like that for a long time. And one of the reasons you can do that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you literally can’t afford Apple’s pricing. And that’s understandable. If you’re in that situation, I totally get it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But another reason you might do that is you could afford it, you just don’t wanna pay because it’s like ideologically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know that’s too much to pay for X terabytes of storage or whatever to have it built in.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s some nose-biting territory.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and again, that’s when you, because it’s like, well, okay, if you did just pay Apple for the terabyte or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever, that is brief pain, but if you can otherwise afford it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a month after you buy it, you’re not going to think about that anymore, but you would always have that hard drive velcroed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to your laptop lid. So like, when you, if you, if it comes time for you to buy a new Synology,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you got to pay an extra 20 bucks for the hard drives in it, okay, you’re going to grumble, and you’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hate that for one day. And then the entire next 10 years that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Synology runs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you will not think about that. But if you instead bid off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Synology to replace it with something that was different, a different product that would take your hard drives or that would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco save you $40, that product might be worse for you in most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other ways in its lifetime, but you would have forgotten about the hard drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco purchase is like a month in, whereas that product will be worse forever. And so you have to, ideally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a tech person, you have to be able to look at things as objectively as you can and be like, look, is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it really going to be worth me having a worse experience for the next X years of owning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this product in exchange for swallowing some pride or some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grumbling about something being too expensive or too proprietary or too locked in up front?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And for many people, you know, they might make a different choice. But if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s something that like you use every day and it otherwise fits your needs very well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of times it can be worth it to just say, you know what, I’m just going to suck it up. And I’m just going to pay the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stupid Apple price or I’m just going to buy the stupid Synology drive because the overall product experience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is better having done that for my actual, for my ongoing needs and preferences.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You told a story on the show a long time ago, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was about you RVing with friends.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, when I rented the RV and depleted the resources on my planet in like two seconds.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, there’s that, but no, that’s not exactly where I’m going with this. You recounted an exchange.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t recall if you had the exchange privately with Gray, and maybe that’s why I didn’t remember it or it didn’t register
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with me until you told the story, but when you told the story, it blew my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mind. And what you said was, I think you were talking privately with Gray, but one way or another, and jump in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you want to interrupt, that’s totally fine. But you were talking to Gray about how, oh, it’s going to be like $50 or $100 for them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to clean the wastewater tank or empty the wastewater tank when you’re done with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the RV. Yeah, it’s like you can clean, you can empty it yourself, and if you don’t, there’s like a $100
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And Gray said to you, is it something along the lines of, is that really a fine or is that just what it costs?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, he’s like, a fine is just a price. Right. That blew your mind, or at least it did at the time,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that blew my mind. And I think about that more often
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than I should probably publicly admit, because that really does change your perspective.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think one of you, I don’t recall which one of you it was, it might have been Marco, a few minutes ago, basically said the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing about the Synology drives, that ultimately it’s just that the price
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a little bit more expensive than it was. Stop thinking of it as a punishment. You know, I’m talking to myself now. thinking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of it as a punishment, stop thinking of it as a regression and just understand that you’re going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be buying new drives anyway, like you did say Marco, and those drives are just going to be a touch more expensive than they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were. And that’s just the fee for getting the thing you like. And I got myself wrapped around the axle.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I mean, I stand by the blog post, although I certainly did think of it very differently now after talking to the two of you than I did a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of days ago. But ultimately I need to reframe my perspective such
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it’s, if I, if and when I do choose to replace this analogy, which presumably won’t be for a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And, you know, maybe I will go go ahead and get one anyway. I need to reframe the perspective, my perspective, not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as, oh, I’m being punished, but rather this is just this is the fee now. That’s just the way it is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. This is just the price you can think. I mean, I think it is proper to frame it as either a punishment
⏹️ ▶️ John or a regression. What you should not think of it as is a betrayal, because that makes it seem like personal. You know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John And it feels like a betrayal. Like I like it’s not. That’s what it feels like. I’m not saying it doesn’t feel like it absolutely does.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that’s a way to frame it, kind of like the thing before about should I yell at my employees or not, like basing
⏹️ ▶️ John it on on your feelings versus, you know, let’s say some more
⏹️ ▶️ John concrete, measurable things besides just how you feel about it feels like a betrayal. And it is a regression
⏹️ ▶️ John in in the things that you care about. And it and it can also feel like a punishment. It is kind of like a punishment,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s it just it isn’t actually a betrayal. There was actually the relationship that you imagined
⏹️ ▶️ John between you and the company’s technology did not actually exist. And it was just a matter of you being a fit for their market at a certain point.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the whole thing, like a fine is a price. It’s kind of like the this reminds you of the
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like the rich dude equivalent of self care, which is a, you know, which is a
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, a useful, positive thing of like learning how to take care of yourself and not just like, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, putting your nose to the grindstone and never taking a second thought about how am I doing? Am I getting
⏹️ ▶️ John enough sleep? Is it OK for me to occasionally do something nice for myself or whatever? And like anything,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially things that are trends on social media or whatever, you can take that to the extreme and you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John self-care can become a way of life where all you ever do is buy little treats for yourself and give yourself vacations
⏹️ ▶️ John and breaks and always tell yourself that whatever you’re doing is perfect. The correct
⏹️ ▶️ John strategy is probably somewhere in the middle. You don’t want to constantly be beating yourself up and never rewarding
⏹️ ▶️ John yourself and never taking a moment to care for yourself. On the other hand, you don’t want to excuse everything you ever
⏹️ ▶️ John do and just spend your entire life doing little treats. And it’s the same thing with like a fine is a price.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you follow that to its logical conclusion and you’re not fabulously wealthy, you will run out of money. So don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do that. Like actually do be smart about buying things. Oh, well, you know, the Porsche’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, a little black badge on the back cost $15,000 extra, but you know, I’ll treat myself. You really
⏹️ ▶️ John have to, you know, it’s both of those sides have pulls to
⏹️ ▶️ John them that can pull you in either of those directions. And finding the right balance is tricky. Right. And so maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey, we’re trying to pull you more in the direction of like like Marco said, momentary pain that hopefully you can
⏹️ ▶️ John afford 10 years from now
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey when you replace your
⏹️ ▶️ John technology in exchange for a lifetime of ownership that you find more satisfying
⏹️ ▶️ John against your feeling of betrayal and your need to retaliate and say, well, that’s you know, you you
⏹️ ▶️ John put an ad for Apple TV Plus in settings. I’m never using an iPhone again.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not a line I would draw, even though that ad annoys me. just like it annoys everybody else.
⏹️ ▶️ John You do have to kind of take that measurement and the same thing of like, well, it costs a little bit more, but treat yourself. I
⏹️ ▶️ John just bought a MacBook Air with 32 gigs of RAM, right? Like that’s, I’m prone to it
⏹️ ▶️ John as well. But you know, when it comes time to spec up my next replacement for my computer,
⏹️ ▶️ John like I kind of did that with my Mac Pro, but I didn’t go whole hog with it. I didn’t get the super
⏹️ ▶️ John expensive video card cause I just, you know, but I had my old computer for 10 years. So it’s always that push and
⏹️ ▶️ John pull, but I’m sure people hear this like, oh, treat yourself. That’s a great attitude to have for people who have tons of money.
⏹️ ▶️ John Doesn’t matter how much money you have, you should always keep that impulse under some kind of control and make a
⏹️ ▶️ John decision that makes sense for you because, you know, like I always say, any amount you don’t spend on your extra Synology
⏹️ ▶️ John drives that are taking you away from your hobby you enjoy, you can put into something else, like replacing your error with a ubiquity
⏹️ ▶️ John system because it makes you happy. So hopefully Casey will come to conclusions, come
⏹️ ▶️ John to decisions that make him happy, not just in the short term, but also in the long term. And thankfully, I think he has many
⏹️ ▶️ John options here. I do not envy the amount of NAS based email we’re about to get, but you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey, you asked for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. And also, before we move on from the fee being the price kind of thinking,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is also worth disclaiming that kind of thinking is not always the entire picture.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like if you’re putting mercury into a river, don’t have that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco answer, please.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. As you were saying, when rich people start thinking, it’s like, OK, well, parking in a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco handicapped spot, you’re going to be fined for that. Like, there’s other reasons you shouldn’t. You’re also doing a terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. Right. Like, sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s other. Factoring, like, getting a Synology brand that drives is not as bad as parking in
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco a handicap spot.
⏹️ ▶️ John Let’s not throw away all value judgments and think everything is just an exchange of value and price. But paying someone
⏹️ ▶️ John else to clean the tank from your RV, like, I don’t even understand why that’s a fine. I feel like it
⏹️ ▶️ John should just be an option of, like, do you want to pay us to clean it yourself? It’s $100. I’m like, yes, please. $100. Clean the tank out. Yeah, or like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, if you return a rental car and you don’t fill it up with gas.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’ll just charge you for ten times the price of the gas.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, they’ll charge you. And yeah, and it’s not the best value in the world. They usually will charge you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much more than it would cost you to do it yourself. And if you’re in a rush, you’re like, okay, well, look, now if my alternative
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is possibly missing this flight, okay, I’ll pay the 25 bucks or whatever. So there are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of situations in life where, like, obviously sometimes a fine is, you know, because you’re doing something terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that has external…
⏹️ ▶️ John the fine should probably be higher for putting mercury in the river.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Right, like if you have like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco external factors that are awful that like, you know, you’re parking in a handicap spot or you’re polluting the world,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like yes, that needs to be more of a deterrent, not just rich people being able to buy their way out of problems.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if it’s a situation of you just need to pay too much money for an extra
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terabyte in your laptop, okay, that’s just a price at that point, it’s okay, well now you can decide like that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might be worth it to me or not. Yep. Thank you to our sponsors this week, Squarespace,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Delete.me, and Notion. And thanks to our members who support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm.com.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of the perks of membership is our weekly bonus topic called ATP Overtime. Every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week we do even more content that members are exclusively hearing. If you want to hear it too, join
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us at atp.fm.com. This week on overtime, we are talking about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the rumors that Apple is working on some kind of AI doctor or AI health coach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco based feature for some future release. We’re gonna talk about that in overtime today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So once again, atv.fm slash join if you want to become a member and get all sorts of perks, the merchandise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco discount, the exclusive content, member specials, all sorts of fun stuff. Thank you so much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we’ll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental John didn’t do any research, Margo
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t let him Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Mastodon, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s K-C-L-I-S-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean to Accidental Tech Podcasts,
ATP Store (reprise)
⏹️ ▶️ John Before we get to the after show, if you’re still here, I just want to make one last plea. This is the last show
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re going to hear about the store. You made it through the whole episode. You heard us talk about all this stuff. You made it all the way to the
⏹️ ▶️ John after show. You might be the kind of person who might be interested in buying something from the store, but maybe you didn’t get around to
⏹️ ▶️ John it. This is the last time for the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco store. We’re recording
⏹️ ▶️ John on a weird day. So maybe like this, you know, you might not think this, but this is it. After this,
⏹️ ▶️ John no more store. So please, atp.fm.org.
Restaurant-tech MVPs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, speaking of stores, Marco, this was opening weekend for the restaurant. Is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was indeed full service, full food, kitchen staff, everyone back, a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco full two days of regular operation. Including Easter? Uh, no, Friday and Saturday.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ah, okay. I gotcha. Uh, well, how did it go? What, what, what are your results from opening weekend?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was like, I was able to really enjoy it and it went
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great. I had to move like two cables. like one of the kitchen guys is like, this printer is kind of bad in this spot. We need to move
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it over to this spot. Okay, you know, so we came in like, you know, between the two days and moved it and re-zip tied all the cables
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything. But it was great, like nothing really went wrong. It was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just a very smooth operation. And that again, speaks to the amazing staff knowing what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do and us kind of just being, you know, enablers, like just getting out of the way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like making sure the staff is happy and is getting what they need. And we enable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them to do their jobs and we trust them to do their jobs. And it just worked great.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not to derail you, but I actually have a question about this, like in the category of, so you
⏹️ ▶️ John did a bunch of quote unquote improvements. We all know that when you make technology-based improvements,
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes people don’t see them as improvements. How is that going? For example, not having a bunch of receipts wrapped up in rubber bands,
⏹️ ▶️ John but instead using a ScanSnap seems like a great win to us. Does everyone else agree?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, that’s actually on my list of things to recommend is a ScanSnap.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Like the people who
⏹️ ▶️ John actually have to do this, they’re like, Oh, this is great. I love it. It’s so much better than the rubber band or they’re just like a weird technology.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In almost every case, the improvements that we’ve made have been seen as improvements or have been not noticed, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think is fine. You know, like things like when you, when you like one of the things I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did was I changed all of the fluorescent tube lights
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the kitchen to all be first of all modern led
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fluorescent replacements from Wave Form Lighting, my favorite LED company. So they are now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flicker-free, all of them are the same brightness, and all of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are the same color temperature, which was not the case before. Before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a third of them had just burned out and never been replaced, they were two different color temperatures, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as fluorescent lights age, they tend to shift more into pink or other colors,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so fluorescent lights really don’t stay color stable over their lifetimes. So now they’re all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco LED replacements. So we’re saving energy, we’re saving money. All of the light is uniform.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s all bright and it’s all the same color. And this is something that almost no one noticed,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I did and one of the cooks did. I was like, great, that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I made it. I also using waveform lighting. This is part of my promo here for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. It’s I just I love them so much. They’re a little pricey, but they are very, very good quality light.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s high CRI, it’s very high quality LED light. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s great is that the same company offers a bunch of different lighting form factors.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they have things, in the kitchen I have fluorescent tube replacements,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have regular kind of bulb shaped bulbs in a few areas, like over the fryer there’s like a bulb.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I installed some new strip lighting under the pass in the kitchen, like the shelves that they put the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plates on when they’re going out. so everybody can see better. And what’s great about this company, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same company offers all these different products, they’re also all the same exact color
⏹️ ▶️ Marco temperature. So when you say like, all the ones in the kitchen I did 4,000K for the color temperature, everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fluorescent replacements, the incandescent replacements, and the strip lights, the colors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are all exactly the same, which is nice. So you’re just kind of, you’re able to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make everything look cleaner, more professional, more uniform, easier to see things, you know, less,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, less like annoying variance between like, oh, well, the light over the fryer is warm white, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the light over the stove is daylight and then the light on the ceiling is cool. It’s like, no, it’s all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just the same. And that’s one of the very many nice things I’ve, I’ve, uh, I’ve done that most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people don’t notice, but occasionally someone does. And that, that matters to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So what’s good. What have you been using that you feel like is a full on win?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. I wanted to kind of do this probably ongoing segment here and there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for my restaurant tech MVPs, the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the best that I have found while doing the restaurant that might be relevant to other people.
⏹️ ▶️ John What does MVP stand for, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Most valuable player? Product?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I’m going to go with product.
⏹️ ▶️ John You got it. I just wanted to check. I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know you’re not a sports guy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Restaurant tech MVPs. So, number one has got to be Ubiquiti.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you know, we’ll talk about Ubiquiti a lot. We already have. I’m not going to say too, too much about it now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but over the course of modernizing and setting up the restaurant, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first started out doing all the networking stuff. That’s all Ubiquiti. I later
⏹️ ▶️ Marco went on to replace the phone system. That’s now all Ubiquiti. I went on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to replace the security cameras. are all Ubiquiti.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And people in our business often say, we wish Apple would get back into the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco network router or Wi-Fi router game. After using all this Ubiquiti stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t. Oh, hot take. I actually hope Apple doesn’t get back into the game
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because Apple would do a far worse job than Ubiquiti is doing for two reasons. Number one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would be kind of a side gig for Apple. It would be a hobby
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way they sometimes describe things. We know how Apple treats their hobbies. They’re half-assed. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco treat them, you know, they might release one or two things here and there, like, you know, look at the HomePod or the Apple TV,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, like, it’s like, you can release a product here and there and then it’s kind of, it’s maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good for when it’s released, maybe, but it’s limited and then it never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gets updates and it gets neglected and the competition passes it by. Like, we know how Apple would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be if they did networking equipment. That’s how they would be. And Ubiquiti, this is all they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do. It’s like how we were talking about it back, Sonos versus HomePods.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As many problems as Sonos has, they at least, that’s all they do,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so they tend to focus a lot on it. To them, if they mess up their speakers, this is existential
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to them. If Apple messes up the HomePod, which they have constantly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t affect the rest of the company at all. They don’t really care. So Ubiquiti
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is all about their core, the products, their networking products. They also now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, honestly, I think they do very well in the security camera market as well. I think the phone system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is probably more of a side gig, but it’s still very good even despite that. And we have very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco low needs for it. So we don’t need some other professional phone system. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ubiquiti products are so good that not only is it good because it’s their focus,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But also, I don’t think Apple would do a better job than Ubiquiti
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is already doing. Once you see Ubiquiti gear, and once you try it, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once you set it up, and once you have to like change a setting, or change some gear around,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, it’s so easy. It’s so well integrated. It already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is extremely Apple-like, but it combines that with incredible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco performance, Huge market coverage, like whatever your needs are, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably cover them somehow with one or more of their products. Aggressive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco updates, like there’s constantly new products that are even better than what came before them. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so good and it’s so easy now. Like before,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco five, 10 years ago, Ubiquiti was still great then, but their stuff was way nerdier, way harder to set
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up. Now, even their like high-end stuff is really easy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to deal with. It’s surprisingly consumer-friendly. It is surprisingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple-like in many, many ways. Like, you know, the way you like, you know, when you get a new pair of AirPods,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, the little thing pops up and says, you wanna pair your AirPods to your phone? That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happens with Ubiquiti networking gear. When you plug in a new switch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a new camera to your Ubiquiti network, you open up that app And one of those things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slides up, one of those white ovals, round rocks, slides up and says, you wanna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco add this switch to your system?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re not helping me, Marco, you’re not helping. It’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple-like. In many ways, it’s better than Apple-like. So I cannot say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough good things about Ubiquiti and their modern stuff being just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so incredibly good, so capable, so friendly to set up. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s still networking gear, So you still need to be a little bit of a nerd, but for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the nerds, it’s so much faster and easier than you think it’ll be. It’s so simple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s so nice. Like the feeling you get when you are configuring and setting up Ubiquiti stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s just nice. Everything is solid. It’s well-built, it’s reliable. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco UI for it is all super nice. It’s well-designed. Like I’m telling you, Casey, you’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see this. Apple couldn’t do a better job than what Ubiquiti is already doing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have a homework assignment for you here, Mark, because there actually was a question, probably still in Ask ATP of someone saying, hey, I’m looking
⏹️ ▶️ John into ubiquity stuff, but I can’t figure out which products to buy. And I feel like this is a
⏹️ ▶️ John current area of improvement, let’s say, for ubiquity because they have so many products and because they’re improving them all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ John You land on the ubiquity site and you’re like, I have, you know, I want Wi-Fi for my house.
⏹️ ▶️ John What should I buy? So that is an Ask ATP question that’s been lurking in there. So maybe in some future show, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John for the purposes of Casey, maybe for the purposes of Ask ATP, you should come and say, for like,
⏹️ ▶️ John say you are a person who lives in a house and you currently have Euro and you want to replace with ubiquity stuff, what should
⏹️ ▶️ John you get as of XYZ date? You know, I’m talking about that now, but for the future, that is your homework
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, no, I definitely want to know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, I’ll tell you right now. It’s very, very simple. Go to UI.com. Just know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that cloud gateways is their term for routers. That’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You just need routers. That’s it. You can click on cloud gateways and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go look at what they have. They have some fancier rack mount ones, they have some little compact ones, they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Wi-Fi integrated ones. So you just need a router and you need one or more Wi-Fi
⏹️ ▶️ Marco access points. Some of the routers have a built-in Wi-Fi access point like most consumer routers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would. Most of them don’t and so you get a router and then you plug in an access point.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only other thing you have to know is that most of the Ubiquiti products including every access point
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is powered via PoE power over Ethernet. So you either have to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a PoE adapter on each one that basically takes power in Ethernet in PoE
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out or you have to have like your switch they’re all plugging into has to be a PoE switch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that provides power to each port. That’s it. It’s all you need to know like so you need to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a router which they call Cloud Gateway one or more Wi-Fi access points which may or may
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not be built into your router and some kind of way to power the access points.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In the best case that’s a PoE switch. That’s it. So yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ubiquiti, I cannot say enough good things about them. Every part of what I’ve used from them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the networking stuff mostly but also you know the Protect stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is their security camera thing and and talk protocol, which is their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco office phone system. It’s all been so nice. And when you compare it to everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else in those categories, night and day difference in how nice it is to administer, to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco set up and to use. Like their graphic design and usability stuff is top
⏹️ ▶️ Marco notch. It doesn’t have to be this good. This is enterprise stuff. Most enterprise stuff, you go to the web
⏹️ ▶️ Marco control panel and it’s garbage and it’s terrible. We’ve all seen those panels. this is Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quality UI design being applied to pro networking gear and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff. Like, it’s so cool, it’s so good, it’s so easy. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just, I cannot say enough good things about how awesome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco UI stuff is, Unify stuff. It’s just, it’s so, so good. So, sorry, Casey,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re gonna spend some money here. And you’re gonna love every minute of it. And you are like, similar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to our hard drive session earlier, like you’re gonna wanna like, yes, you can save some money if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like keep some of your existing switches, you won’t want to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey You’re gonna want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every switch in your house to be a unified switch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey You’re gonna-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the good thing is like, you know, most of their like, if you, like their low end stuff for like, you know, if you just wanna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco switch like below your TV cabinet where a few things will plug in, that switch is like 30 bucks. Like it’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that isn’t expensive. You will probably be spending $400 on your main switch for your network.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just prepare for that ahead of time. Cause you’re gonna want the ones with the cool lighting and stuff. I’ll tell you right now, you’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want the Pro Max 16, or the Pro Max 16 POE rather, the POE version, which is 400 bucks. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, I think their current best kind of like medium sized main switch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you know, over time their lineup changes. Like they’re about to release a whole bunch of new 10 gig switches. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, there’s all sorts of stuff being added all the time as technology improves and as they improve. Cannot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say enough good things about Ubiquiti. if I had to pick one MVP for my restaurant stuff that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve done, it is not even a question. It’s definitely ubiquity.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s also kind of fun and interesting because I know you’re listening to a tech podcast, but like it’s a restaurant.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why? Why is this? Why is networking part of the discussion
⏹️ ▶️ John of you serve people food and you charge them money for it? What the heck does it have to do with networking? I think this just goes
⏹️ ▶️ John to show it’s just the march of technology. Like saying, saying, what does a restaurant have to do with telephone
⏹️ ▶️ John service, you know, decades ago? There is a baseline level of technology you need to run
⏹️ ▶️ John any kind of business. You accept money in exchange for goods. How do you accept that money? Computers
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco answer. Like it used to be a cash
⏹️ ▶️ John register. And then it was a trunk machine for credit cards. And like, what does networking
⏹️ ▶️ John have to do with the restaurant? What does networking have to do with literally any business? I can’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John of any in-person business where you like, people come in, you have customers. all running computer systems
⏹️ ▶️ John and networks. And we don’t think about it because we just walk up to the register and there’s a person and we boop our phone
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. But like, how do you think that all happens? Like there is some sort of mechanism for the back office and
⏹️ ▶️ John then setting aside, like what about security cameras? Computers, like that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John answer. And how did the computers get the information that they look at? How does the video get somewhere?
⏹️ ▶️ John Computers and networking. Like there is no escaping computers and networking. And it is an advantage
⏹️ ▶️ John you have as a business that you don’t have to pay some massively overpriced consultant to mark
⏹️ ▶️ John up all of like random Cisco gear and slap it to get like it would cost you so much more money to
⏹️ ▶️ John pay someone to do what you have done. And you’d end up with a worse solution, with worse equipment
⏹️ ▶️ John and probably worse reliability. But you would have someone to blame on other than yourself when it breaks. So this
⏹️ ▶️ John is the strange advantages the tech nerds have in literally any business. They may not know anything
⏹️ ▶️ John about running a restaurant, but they’ll save you money on the networking. And if you think your restaurant doesn’t need networking, you’re wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, everything needs networking. And I know because a lot of what, as I was rewiring,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of what I was replacing was older systems that either didn’t use networking or use very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basic networking. The previous point of sale system, this is like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tablets that run the cash registers and the order entry things, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all tablets. Like the previous one, the outgoing one was iPads in special custom mounts, this company called
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bread crumb that later became up serve. I think and who knows what it is now. And by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way, if anybody has any ideas for how I can use, I think five
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old 2017 iPads, let me know. Like I took them all out of that system when we were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco throwing it away. So I harvested the old iPads out of it. We still work totally fine. You
⏹️ ▶️ John put them on the table like you get crowns to the kids menu. You could draw and just have all the iPads locked into some
⏹️ ▶️ John game for eating kids mode.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not a bad idea. Yeah, because like I don’t know what else to do with them. They run up to… See if they last more than a week.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I know. They run up to iOS 16, which is pretty recent. And they’re like, they’re the 2017, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, they have like, they have the home button with touch ID on the home button, you know, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco style iPad. So anyway, I got to figure something to do with them, or if I can find somewhere to donate them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple will recycle them for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m sure they will. But that seems so wasteful, because they, again, they work totally fine. Like I booted them all up. They work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine. I’m sure the battery life is hell, but you know, they work fine for, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John something. Give them
⏹️ ▶️ John away to some kind of a charity or something that will take old computer equipment that works.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I figured it was a school or thrift store or something. I don’t know. Anyway, so all these POS systems,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s all that was all old iPads running on crappy Wi-Fi through some kind of old Cisco thing that had terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reception. You know, now it’s all hardwired Ethernet directly to the new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco toast terminals. We have the walk around handhelds for if you want to have if you want to pay with Apple pay you can we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can bring that to the table and you can beep it in and pay with Apple pay at your table all the cameras those were all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coax like the entire old system there were 16 cameras around the around the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco premises and each one had a thick coaxial cable coming out of it that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that did a home run all the way back to the office so out of the office and stretching across the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entire back of the restaurant was this huge bundle of 16 coax cables
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like running through everything, snaking through everything. And with networking, that can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be in my case, now it’s three cables because they go three different places throughout, you know, I like my main switch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I have those trunk cables that go to like the three sub switches and what used to be 16
⏹️ ▶️ Marco camera cables plus four network cables plus three phone cables is now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco total of three network cables. The phone system now also like that runs over networking. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we just have like you know switches and you can have one cable that now carries all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of those video feeds and the phone line and the networking all to where it has to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be in the restaurant you can use switching and IP it’s amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now that all of those things run over the internet where we can also do things like get a backup internet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco connection so that now when the Verizon service goes out at the restaurant which happens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least a few times every summer I can have one backup internet provider and plug
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it into the second port on the router whether that’s cellular or whatever and everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then falls over to that. So the phone system doesn’t go out either. We can still get phone calls, we can still charge credit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cards, our cameras are still working, we can still watch TV. All of that is then going on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the backup connection. So there’s all sorts of advantages to moving all this to networking and again my one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco top top MVP for this entire project is Ubiquiti. My god
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they made everything so easy and so great. It’s awesome. I’m so, so happy. So that’ll be all for this time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll save all the other MVP stuff for future segments because I just had so much to say about Ubiquiti. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my God, what an amazing set of products this company makes. I cannot say enough good things about them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you have never checked them out or if you haven’t checked them out recently, give them a look. If you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any needs for any networking, anything, it’s so, so good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re not helping me at all. I’m glad it’s working out, but you’re not helping me at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Be prepared. You’re going to want to spend like a thousand bucks, because you’re going to want to get all the good stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just be prepared going into it. That’s what’s going to happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’ve started. So Stephen Hackett has been threatening, I think seriously, to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey come up sometime in the fall and wire the house with me, which we’ll see if that actually ends up happening or not. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looking at it, I had already picked out the, under his tutelage, I should add, I’d picked out the Pro Max 16
⏹️ ▶️ Casey PoE, as you had said.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey using the Cloud Gateway Fiber for reasons that we’re not going to get into right now. So between the two of those, that’s $700 already.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s no switches. That’s no cameras because I’d like to add a couple of cameras
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because we don’t really have any at the moment. I feel like it’s appropriate.
⏹️ ▶️ John tell if your garage door is open with image recognition.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yes, you can. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But no, I think this is going to be expensive. And I haven’t exactly run this through the family CFO yet, so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’ll see what happens. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco telling you budget for a thousand bucks that you’re going to be all in.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, it’ll be more than that. Still cheaper than buying a new car you don’t need.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true. That’s very true.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can use that to try to sell it in the family.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not buying the Porsche I shouldn’t be
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not looking at electric Porsches anymore. Seems cheap now, doesn’t it?