564: Always Get the Biggest Pizza

44:59I think in this case, you should try it. I think it's more for like when you're on your way home. So they know, or if you're, if a kid is going somewhere, you want to know whether they got there or whatever, but it is, but I think that would have been a perfectly valid use. And now I kind of regret that we didn't think to use it, but it would have been a perfectly valid use case here. But yeah, that's, that's my, that's, that's my complaint for the day. So please. And thank you. Breaking news a day or two ago, just a couple of days ago, beeper mini, which I had heard of beeper before. and I think it's been under several names, several different flavors of Beeper, Beeper this, Beeper that.

45:30But Beeper Mini brings iMessage to Android. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure it does. We've heard this many times before. And many times before we've seen what that means is there's some sort of like VM that's running Mac OS that you're supposed to send your credentials to and then it sits in messages and it forwards all your stuff back and forth and so on and so forth. And it's gross. It's gross. It's a huge threat to your security. Everything about it top to bottom is disgusting. Except that's not what this is doing. What this is doing is apparently it is legitimately talking to Apple servers and having you present your phone number as an iPhone, and it will allow you to register for honest-to-gosh first-party iMessages, and it will communicate with Apple's APNS servers directly.

46:18There is a proof of concept written in Python by a high schooler that is still on GitHub, last I looked. And I have not played with the code myself, but a friend of the show, Quinn Nelson over at Snazzy Labs, he put together a really, really great 10-minute video on it, wherein he has a Linux laptop. This is not an Apple laptop running Linux. It's an honest-to-goodness system 76, I forgot what it was called, Linux laptop. wait people actually have and use linux laptops well apparently youtubers do but it's a laptop with linux on it i don't know is system 76 uh specifically dedicated to linux laptops i think that's correct maybe i'm wrong but i believe that to be correct i mean otherwise nothing would work on it right no wi-fi no sound great yeah exactly exactly uh well done well done gentlemen uh but anyways i'm right in i know linux has gotten better yeah has it has it though uh but anyway so yeah, so this legitimately seems to work.

47:13I don't know what specifically Apple could do in order to shut this all down, but I am stunned that this has lasted more than five minutes. And I do think as an engineering exercise, this is extremely cool. I don't know how I feel about it more broadly than that, but as an engineering exercise, I cannot believe anyone was able to do this, much less a high schooler operating on his own. Incredibly cool. I believe it because I think Quinn had the exact right analogy in his video. It's like Hackintoshes. It's almost exactly like that, right? Because so here's the thing. If Apple's running the iMessage service, right?

47:51The problem for Apple is how do I know that the thing using the iMessage service isn't a real Apple device, an iPhone, a Mac, whatever, right? That's actually a pretty hard problem. And Hackintosh has had the same problem. You saw you want to run macOS on this computer. macOS is like, wait a second, how do I know this computer is a Mac and not like a PC that you're tricking me? It's really difficult to do that. There's only so much you can do with the hardware to make it appear authentic. And most of that stuff, it's kind of like DRM, right? the information about the authenticity of the hardware has to be sent to apple like you have to leave the machine and go to apple and say i am legitimate uh and there's stuff you can do with secure enclaves and things like that but for the most part what apple has done and the reason hackintoshes exist is they do lots of stuff with like oh you need a legitimate serial number i need to be able to look it up on my apple database and that's that's a lot of how hackintosh stuff works and that's that's how this works right so high school student doing it that's really cool and everything but it's the same as the people who figure out how to get mac os on pc hardware you just have to convince whatever apple things that you are a legitimate piece of hardware that you're supposed to be installing on uh and the push notification servers apparently can be convinced not with not too much difficulty right you just need to know have some fake essentially fake credentials that you can send uh and you know the the thing quinn says in the video is well why doesn't apple just block the fake credentials because in the github repo there's one set of fake credentials that like makes it masquerade as a serial number of like a legitimate phone or why don't they just block that problem solved right uh but then you just get another one right as he was showing a hackintosh tool where you can essentially randomly generate like mac serial numbers for hackintoshes until you find one that's a real one because apple has services that you can you know look up your serial number with or whatever right it's actually kind of annoying for Apple to deal with this.

49:50There are possible solutions to get increasingly draconian involving again, the secure enclave and cryptographically secure stuff. But like, like all security stuff, the other side of the security coin is convenience. And the more difficult Apple it makes this for Hackintosh people and for this messaging things, the more spillover there is in possible inconvenience for their legitimate customers. And practically speaking, it seems like there's probably not going to be a ton of these customers what's apple's best tool to get rid of this it's not technical it's always legal lots of things may be technically possible but apple has a lot of lawyers and lots of things you can technically do apple may not want you to do and can stop you doing legally we'll see if it raises to that level of concern there are also technical things they can do but why do the cat and mouse game with technical why does apple do the cat and mouse game with hack and auditors they do it but in a kind of a half-hearted way like hackintoshes are still possible they're harder than they used to be but there's not that many people making hackintoshes apple's not super duper concerned those people probably weren't going to buy max anyway so they do do things to thwart hackintoshes year after year after year but they're not dedicating billions of dollars to it right it's not that important we'll see what happens with this i feel like with this thing like i have to imagine that when you use any legitimate apple product there's some screen that none of us reads that says you agree that you only use official Apple devices to talk to, let's say our iMessage servers.

51:13You know what I mean? That's gotta be in there somewhere. So they're probably already in violation of some agreement where like, because they're using Apple servers. They're sending messages. Beeper also has servers, by the way, because the Beeper servers, like when your phone is off, the Beeper servers are listening to Apple servers. But anyway, bottom line is they're using Apple servers. They're sending data to them. They're receiving data from them. That's not free, right? And that's a service that Apple provides to augment its products and almost guarantee there's something and some agreement that you have to agree to when you get an apple id for instance or do anything that says hey you're only allowed to use apple servers if you you know have a legitimate apple device or whatever so this is way better than the thing where you run a mac mini at a data center and sign into it and give strangers access to all your data uh and it may survive a lot longer than those uh especially if it stays kind of like obscure that only tech nerds know about it and not many people use this app but considering beeper is charging two dollars a month for this service and they probably want to grow their business i'm not sure how obscure it's going to stay so i think this is interesting but i would not bet a lot of money that it's going to uh take over the world and continue to be a real thing that people rely on in a year or two yeah like whenever you're dealing with any kind of hack like this you know i'd say the same thing about hackintosh as you said you know it's a good example it's a fun thing to experiment with but I wouldn't buy new hardware for it that you wouldn't otherwise buy.

52:40I wouldn't make long-term plans about, you know, assumptions that it will work in the future and I sure as heck wouldn't build a business on it. That's for sure. It is a wonderful technical feat that people figure out ways around this stuff. That's great and I kind of love the whole, you know, hacker mindset that makes people want to do this kind of thing. That's great. but i think what makes it even riskier than a hackintosh is a hackintosh might work just fine for you on your desk you know indefinitely as long as you don't do you know software updates that might break it or whatever but iMessage is a service that can break at any time and yeah you know what john said was right like it would probably be a pain in the butt for apple to kind of play cat and mouse and try to intentionally keep breaking this thing but the reality is like when you're talking to a service that is that is out of your control apple can do a lot of things on its end that can break you at any time and you know unlike a hackintosh like you know you can control when your hackintosh turn you know does its offer updates you can turn off auto update and you can you know be careful with what you do and everything and maybe you can get it to run for a while um but with this you don't control when your thing keeps running or breaking it is out of your hands so i would strongly recommend if you want to experiment with this like cool have fun with it but like i wouldn't for instance you know buy dedicated hardware for this that you can't afford to lose or the or make any assumptions that you can't afford to to have broken for you unexpectedly and honestly the reward is you get to use iMessage which is probably not the best of all the cross-platform messaging services so uh yeah i mean i guess if you're in high school and all your friends have iphones and you feel left out by all means install it on your android phone and run it for it probably lasts through junior year or whatever but but you know for regular people like i don't i'm not sure there's an appetite that everyone's like oh finally i can get i message on my android phone like people have android phones who are not caught up in the status of blue bubbles which i have to imagine is most people with android phones because a lot of people have android phones are already using whatever the most popular cross-platform messaging app is in their whatsapp line we chat whatever all that stuff and you know and for my own kids i can see my own kids it's not like they're dedicated to one messaging platform they use like for some people they have to use whatsapp for some people i don't know if they anything use line they use all sorts of things they use imessage for something some people it's sms through imessage green bubbles blue bubbles whatsapp it's it's not like anyone lives a life of such purity that you can somehow choose a single messaging service and only use that unless you're one of those people who refuses to talk to anyone unless they're using signal or whatever but that's not the way most people work some people in your life some things that you have to do you have to use messaging app whatever you know someday maybe your kids will be in school and you'll have to go to a facebook page it happens to everybody we are brought to you this week by collide if you work in security or IT and your company has Okta, this message is for you.

55:45Have you noticed that for the past few years, the majority of data breaches and hacks that you read about have something in common? It's employees. Hackers absolutely love exploiting vulnerable employee devices and credentials, but it doesn't have to be this way. Imagine a world where only secure devices can access your cloud apps. In this world, phished credentials are useless to hackers, and you Manage every OS, even Linux, from a single dashboard. Best of all, you can get employees to fix their own device security issues without creating more work for IT. The good news is you don't have to imagine that world.

56:20You can just start using Collide. Collide is a device trust solution for companies with Okta, and it ensures that if a device isn't trusted and secure, it can't log into your cloud apps. Visit collide.com slash ATP to watch a demo and see how it works. That's Collide with a K, so it's spelled K-O-L-I-D-E dot com slash ATP. That's Collide with a K, Collide dot com slash ATP. Thank you so much to Collide for sponsoring our show.

56:55All right, so a couple months ago now, John did something unheard of. You blocked. For like the third time this year or something like that. I don't know what to make of this. are you feeling okay yeah i'm doing average last year i did i'm let's see four months out of the year i blog some of it this year i'll end up doing four again um you know it's just it's average i i promise uh at least uh one post a year on average across multiple years and i'm holding up that end of the bargain fair enough all right so let's talk about this what is apple's blue ocean this is something i had in mind for a while and i you know i've i kept thinking about writing this and it was just too uh nebulous so i tried to focus it um the blue ocean ocean thing is something we've talked about on the show before i i it's not a very long article so you can read it but i summarized it in the article blue ocean is a thing that i first heard about uh related to the nintendo wii uh so i'm getting it already secondhand i believe it was like a uh a business book or some business paper or something big thing in the business world that business people are now mad that everyone else is uh you know getting a more pop culture reading on it but mine is the pop culture reading on it and the reason it came up in the context of the wii is the wii was nintendo's console with had the big remote control thing that you wave around to play games uh but the whole thing about the wii is that was the generation of console when all of the other console competitors were growing high definition instead of standard definition television with hd tv and nintendo did not which seems like a terrible decision everyone else is going high def every other console generation before it had been all about you know nintendo's 64 64 is bigger than 32 we have more bits we've got blast processing we've got 3d like everything is about graphics power and technology that's how you sell game consoles and then nintendo says we're not even going to do high definition everybody else is doing it but we're not uh that that was their example of the blue ocean strategy because the red ocean is over there where all the sharks are just eating the fish and blood is filling the water oh we're trying to kill each other to get all these fish right that's saying we gotta we gotta have better and better graphics better and better technology faster cpus faster gpus more memory bigger hard drives more you know more more more that's the red ocean of game consoles that existed for pretty much the entire history of home game console starting with the atari it was a red ocean based on competition over who can make the most powerful console that still is a reasonable price that people would buy right uh blue ocean was while all those sharks are over there filling the water with blood and eating everything in sight we're gonna go way over here where there's nobody and believe me there was nobody over in the let's make a game console the standard definition with a weird remote control tv remote control that you wave around that was a blue ocean now the blue ocean purists who say that's not what blue ocean is blue ocean is actually about making new markets and we did not make a new market it was the game console market or whatever but that's what i meant when i say the pop culture definition of blue ocean is like let's go compete along an axis that our competitors aren't interested in microsoft and sony were not interested in making a standard definition game console that costs a lot less money that was the size of three dvd cases on top of each other that had a motion control there was nobody over there it was a blue ocean no blood in the water nintendo's all by itself now obviously doing something that none of your competitors want to do is really easy uh often they don't want to do it because it's a dumb idea right we turned out not to be a dumb idea so that's the trick of the blue ocean strategies to go to a place where your competitors are not and also have it be a good idea so in the context of apple what i've been thinking about is uh what is apple's blue ocean because apple has done a lot of blue ocean e kind of moves no they haven't made entirely new markets so arguably they've come close with things like the iphone and hey maybe the vision pro we'll see um but they've done a lot of things that their competitors were not interested in doing that ended up being successful uh like you know even something making a candy colored computer with no floppy drive their competitors were not interested in doing that they had plenty of opportunity to do it there's no technical innovation in the imac that anyone else couldn't have done you can make a a pc with no legacy ports that's all in one that's teal and shiny and plastic in fact everybody did do that after the iMac came out but that was an example of Apple going where other people aren't and there's other things they've done like that.

1:01:21I think the examples of giving the articles making a smartphone without a physical keyboard. Other people actually had done that. They just did a crappy job of it. The iPod, something that was probably technically possible for any company to do. It's not like there was any special Apple sauce in there, especially since Apple at that point was not very good at making tiny little consumer electronics like that. But Apple did do it. The competitors were much larger and bulkier and competed along different axes. anyway the reason i've been thinking about this is one specific thing that i keep thinking that apple could do that would be blue ocean e that i think uh would work pretty well and i think the window of time this is not something we're in the article but the window of time for them to do it is finite so this article you know we'll look back on this article at 2030 when we have our 6g modems in our max and we'll say oh they didn't age well right there's for any of these things there's a time limit based on the technology and i'll explain that in a second so the thing i'm suggesting is that apple start selling products with removable batteries which sounds ridiculous one ever happening arguably one of apple's blue ocean moves was getting rid of the replaceable batteries everybody had replaceable batteries in their cell phones right and in their laptop computers and in both those cases apple said you know what we're not going to do that we're going to sell you a laptop the battery's sealed in you can't even remove it and and there was nothing stopping anybody else from doing that it's not a technological innovation where no one could figure out how to seal a battery inside a case but apple chose to do it and stuck to their guns and that ended up being a good move and a lot of pc laptops do that these days as well same thing with cell phones used to be able to take the batteries out of them now you can't um so why would they ever go back on that what would be the point because the advantage of the sealed in battery where he talked about it when whatever the powerbook 17 came out 17 inch came out the first one to seal the batteries and i think um obvious advantages it makes your devices smaller more reliable you can fit more battery inside them they're lighter like just you know up and down disadvantages have also always been obvious and pretty much everyone has decided yeah but the advantages outweigh the disadvantages so don't worry about it and the disadvantages are you know the battery dies it's harder for you to replace you have to bring it in to get service to get a new battery you can't take extra batteries with you and just swap them in so we have all these battery packs that we connect with usb or mag safe all right we've come up with all these solutions no one thinks about this no one thinks it's a big problem right but there is a window of time with current battery technology where Apple could be out in a new part of the ocean where there are no competitors selling its products based on a feature that no one else has because it's too hard to do you know what's a new to do you know what's a new to do you know what's a new to do you know what's new advantage that is increasingly important to apple has to do with their environmental initiatives lots of electronic stuff gets thrown out because the battery is no longer good and it's too annoying or expensive or both to replace you can replace a battery in an iphone you can replace a battery in a laptop can't really do it in airpods that's a bummer but like people don't do it because like oh it doesn't seem worth it because it's taken in to get serviced and how much is it going to cost and apple doesn't let third parties do it because then you get like a thing that complains it's not legitimate batteries you have to pay apple's prices and how much does it cost to replace a battery in an ipad it costs how much and people don't do it and they just end up recycling it right if you're lucky they recycle it if you're unlucky they gets thrown in a garbage somewhere or whatever you can make a device that lasts longer as in has a longer useful life if it's easy to swap out that battery and that is related to battery technology because the rechargeable batteries we have now they wear out in a not too long period of time we have all had devices that we say well this would still be good as like a kid ipad or a phone that i would give to my youngest child or something but the battery's dead and it costs me 80 plus an annoying trip to somewhere plus a trip to get it back to get it replaced so i'm not going to bother and i'll just find something else right at the high end if we could sell you a an iphone that you say like my iphone is fine it's not slow i got a top of the line one but three years into using it all day the battery is going and now i have to wear a battery case or bring a battery pack with me and it's just you know same thing with the apple watch well that's a harder sell because it's a lot harder to get a battery to that but we'll talk about that in a second if you can make a device last longer that's better for the environment and people are more satisfied with their product and this is a a business model like we're talking about the keycap things that fits well with premium brands uh you know nordstrom taking the exchange of your snow tires buying something for an expensive luggage company or buying these stupid expensive chairs that we're all sitting on that have like 12 year warranties like if anything breaks in those 12 years you paid so much money for this chair don't worry about it we'll fix it for free for 12 years which is unheard of that's why the chairs cost so much money right but people are satisfied with that you're selling a premium product this should be a premium experience i just heard the uh very scottish ceo of volvo on the decoder podcast doing an interview essentially saying what they're trying to sell rather than subscriptions to heated seats are services that make the ownership experience of a volvo better like hey we'll come and it was like in sweden or whatever uh it's mandatory that you change the snow tires in the winter so since everybody has to do it don't worry nintendo knows that you have nintendo i'm reading wow volvo knows that you have to switch the snow tires they will for a price come to your house swap your snow tires take your summer tires store them for you and bring them back later That's awesome.

1:07:04And then you don't have to worry about making an appointment to get them swapped. And can you get it in? And, you know, like, or figuring out what you like. Volvo will do it for you, right? You know, for what it's worth, in the States, it started during COVID. And as far as I know, it's still a thing. They do something called, they were calling Volvo Valet. And they would come to your house, pick up your car, bring it to the service center, service it, bring the car back, and have you sign something and, you know, do whatever payment you need to do. And then they take off and that's that. So you have not really interacted or you've never left your house.

1:07:36You've interacted with somebody once or twice, I guess, for like five minutes each. And that's it. And we haven't done it in a long time because the car only goes in once a year. And even then we've brought it in the last couple of times. But we did do this once or maybe twice. And it was amazing. And it was, to the best of my knowledge at the time anyway, completely free. Now, granted, the servicing of European cars is a fortune. but there was no obvious added cost and no line item for the for the valet service well that's the thing if you can provide additional value you can charge more money right if you know like and i mentioned this in the article it's like all these these these benefits of replaceable batteries environmental benefits the satisfaction with your product to getting a longer life out of it uh all those things go against one of the one of the goals of apple which is their financial you know their financial goals which is like if you don't buy a new iphone we don't make money so doesn't apple want you to keep buying iphones that's the balance that all these premium bands have to make if apple makes a product that that lasts longer that is better for the environment they can charge more money for it if people are more satisfied with the product that's that whole chasing the the you know up the price ladder which apple loves to do those services the volvo provides whether they're free or not evolve also wants to provide like insurance and everything like they don't worry volvo's getting their money somehow these services like you said the service itself at the dealership is expensive the cars themselves have higher margins right uh there's a way to get that money as long as you're delivering the value now the reason i can't bring up replaceable batteries as a possibility is because like it's hard to do it's hard to do that well there are lots of obvious problems with replaceable batteries what about waterproofing what about starting fires what about when the battery starts to swell what about taking the battery out and the thing turns off like you know and you have to have a battery inside it to keep it going while the battery is removed from it how ugly it is everything gets bigger everything gets heavier lint gets caught inside there you have crease like tons of problems and that's why this is why the possibility for apple to do if they can figure out how to do replaceable batteries well and deliver the benefits with fewer of the drawbacks they will be the only one out there doing that and it will be harder for people to follow them a lot of the innovations that apple has done have been quickly followed by their competitors unlike nintendo who has had more durable benefits like no one was chasing them to do standard def consoles people didn't really chase them into motion controls right and it's really hard to chase them let's just make a game as good as legend of zelda that's hard to copy right i think a good replaceable battery would also be difficult to copy um so like this is this is my suggestion to apple it's like i'm not it's not a prediction as i said in the article it's not a prediction it's a suggestion and there's a time limit on it Because if and when battery technology improves and batteries wearing out after three years is no longer a thing, you miss the window for this, right?

1:10:26This is only relevant now because so many products that we have end their life prematurely because of the battery going bad. And, you know, again, with the 2030 thing and the carbon impact of all their products or whatever, having products with a longer, useful life is valuable. It's valuable to Apple and it's valuable to customers. and i feel like there has to way be a way for them to handshake on that value and come up with something that is beneficial to both and then apple can brag about it like crazy our computers last three years longer than average because we have these replaceable but and you know they can pick a product just do it on the phone just do it on the ipad just do it on the watch just do it on the mac it's like you need to do it across all of them but figure it out find out a way to do it make it a big selling point how they kind of sort of already have replaceable batteries for the headset so maybe they're going in that direction because there is no battery in the thing the one battery you have is easily replaceable so you could just swap it for another one uh of course the whole thing turns off when you unplug it so they'll have to work on that but uh yeah that's my thoughts about this and i know i know it flies in the face of what everyone thinks because especially in the apple world like when apple does something they get rid of the floppy drive they get rid of the optical drive like you know they make these moves and eventually uh apple fans say well that's just the way it has to be we we complained about in the beginning but it was obviously the right thing to do and we're never going backwards why would we ever go back to that we're not going to re-add optical drives we're not going to put floppy drives back on but replaceable batteries i think are different especially because the environment of the environmental because the benefits of them never went away and batteries still have the problem where they wear out and so many of our things are battery powered and we use them so so much that so many of us experience essentially battery death as the end of the life of our products i can think of pretty much every one of my iphones like my only dissatisfaction with it when i got a new one and i'm on a two-year cycle was that the old phone's battery is kind of wonky and yeah i should have just got the battery replaced instead of getting a new phone but i've got a tech podcast so i gotta get a new phone every two years um but i'm so sorry yeah i know it's it's a hard life but yeah but but yeah that's like i i feel like this is a common experience of batteries going bad that's why i feel like this is not just like some weird tech nerd thing replaceable batteries who cares everybody has experienced the pain of batteries going bad in a device that's otherwise good and i think most people alive today remember what replaceable batteries and things were like just because so many things still have replaceable batteries our phones don't but other things in lives do have replaceable batteries replaceable batteries are good apple could make a really good version of replaceable batteries give it a stupid branded name that we would make fun of but make it really really cool and i'm here for it do you you know obviously one of the big naysayer arguments against something like this.

1:13:15Assuming even if Apple could do a really good job designing a battery door, a battery module, whatever it would be that would make this easier and better and effectively give replaceable batteries, even if they could do a good job of that, I think the cynical take here that's most obvious is they make a lot of money from sales of new devices that maybe wouldn't have been sales of new devices yeah no i covered that yeah but of course of course that's against the financial interest but it's the same thing with everybody who sells anything that lasts longer like our stupid chairs that we're sitting on you figure out how to make the math work how much do i have to charge for the stupid chair to provide 12-year warranty right to to make the math work out and the only way you can charge more is to deliver additional value so you have to put something in the product that people are willing to pay more for and then you charge more for it and it all works out like the expensive luggage that if anything breaks on it they'll replace the zipper for 50 years or whatever like it's not easy but it's a thing that lots of products do including current apple products i would argue i mean one argument against you know having having any kind of you know replaceable battery thing um one of the biggest arguments that was given throughout you know the history of this transition of going to permanent batteries is basically we're able to make the product better this way in the sense that like it's better in ways people will care about and therefore buy more so for instance one kind of argument would basically go something like well if we made this laptop have have replaceable battery then it would be a little bit bigger and a little bit thicker and therefore nobody would want that and i think that is probably true at some point to some degree well it would be bigger and thicker but the nobody would want it is difficult because they i mean they did just make the laptops bigger and thicker and nobody cared like because that's that's the amount we're talking about a few millimeters like that your laptop that you have now is thicker than they were back when johnny ive had designed the case nobody cares it's important for for apple to not assume that whatever lesson they think they might have learned 10 years ago would still apply today or in the future you know because what happens is over time people's priorities change device and tech and consumer product fashion changes and so you know as we as we go forward in time i i think more and more people are getting environmentally conscious more and more people are are kind of having a backlash against you know the most extreme consumerism and and you know rampant waste yeah yeah and especially people who are who don't have tech podcasts who aren't tech enthusiasts they don't want to buy a new phone every three years because the battery ran bad they're happy with their phone as it is they don't want the hassle of replacing it they don't want to pay for it to replace and they don't want to buy a new phone they just want their battery to be like it used to right they're not interested in getting a new phone constantly right and that's that's from the tech enthusiasts like well i'm gonna buy a new device anyway what do i care but people regular people aren't like that they're if you're not into tech you just want a phone that works and if it continues to work like it's less disruption of your life to just keep using your phone but again like the hard part is like how do you get apple to be willing to to take a risk like that when it would most likely result in fewer unit sales down the road yeah now that's they have to they have to figure out like because obviously the value delivered by removable batteries is not equal across their product line they have to figure out where is it the most valuable right it's probably not the most valuable in the watch maybe because it's so tiny who'd want to even mess with that little tiny battery or whatever although i'll tell you what though the watch is where where you need it pretty well Well, I know that's the problem with current battery technology.

1:16:54It's where you need it the most, but also nobody wants to be fiddling with like, can you imagine trying to make a replaceable battery in the watch? That is probably the hardest problem. And you'd lose them. Like the kids would swallow them. Right. And see also AirPods too. I would say the watch and AirPods are probably where this is needed the most because they have the smallest batteries that I think last the shortest time before it becomes hard to use the product. We talked about when the AirPods first came out, the idea of like having the stems be screw on and unscrewable and have that essentially be the battery part of it but that's not how they've i think in the new airpods the battery isn't even in the stem anymore so it doesn't even matter um and there are there are definitely like you know some some like you know legal or regulatory challenges here too like you know so so for the you know the batteries if they are removable if they are consumer replaceable what you just said like you know a kid might swallow it they have to think about that like there there are certain regulations air tags are the example because they use standard button batteries but the they're they're not like the watch because the air tag batteries last a long time unlike the watch but yes i mean that's the reason they did replace little batteries on the air tags is like it's untenable to make a product that price was sealed in batteries and it's way it would be wasteful right uh so you know most of the mass of that product is the battery and it's a standard battery they didn't even make their own they didn't even come with the great solution i don't even particularly like how they do the battery on the air tags we have to twist that thing and never feels quite right to me uh but they did it so i mean that's that's one end of the spectrum i'm something you know for the more expensive products but i don't i don't know where to deliver the most value obviously people have their individual needs like i wish i had this on my phone or i wish it had on my laptop ipad would be really weird i talked about this in the article like if you make the battery on the ipad replaceable the structural integrity of the product disappears like where you take a battery out of an ipad it's like okay so now it's just like a two millimeter thick screen or something there are hard problems here for sure but i you know that's that's why i'm asking alex uh apple not my son i'm asking apple to rise to rise to the challenge you know and i would be excited by how they would brand it like if they came up with a good solution and gave it some you know dorky name and some weird kind of like mag safe you know not that you know connecting things with magnets was an amazing innovation but they branded it works really well people loved it so much that when they took it away we complained until they brought it back uh and as you said like the there is an ebb and flow to technology market and that's that's the that's the beauty of the strategy everyone else is like well sealed in batteries are at whenever we're going back to the other way and apple could be like you know what let's not close the door on that let's look you know until and unless we get solid state batteries last for years and don't die after three years this is the time for us to potentially find a little section of blue ocean where nobody else is even trying this and see if it's a good idea and you know if it's not a good idea like try it on a low profile product and retreat and they did it with touch bar right i hear what you're saying and my first knee-jerk reaction is no freaking way because i just i can't fathom a way to do this that isn't trash and yes i know that that's like the whole point right you know is that apple waves its magic wand over this problem and suddenly it's How do you feel about the AirTags, though, speaking of the way to do it that's not trash?

1:20:09Because I think it's kind of trash on the AirTags. Oh, I actually think the AirTag approach is fine. Like, it's not terribly Apple-y. It's a very... But does it feel... How many of those batteries have you replaced? Does it feel good to replace them? I can never tell if it's like... They last about a year, I would say. Yeah, but I can never tell if I've got the new battery in securely because you have to press it in and, like, twist and... I will say, I recently had to, like, restore an AirTag to, like, its unpaired status so I could pair it to a different account. Have you ever had to do that?

1:20:35you know what the process is is there a pinhole somewhere no you you basically just pop the battery cover on and off five times in a row so like you basically boot it up you know five times in a row and then it plays a different sound effect and then you compare it then it shows up i don't know if i could accomplish that it's so hard to twist that little thing it's a slippery it's like smooth metal or whatever yeah i to answer your question like i don't think it's a premium feel but it doesn't actively like bother me or anything like that i think it's fine i mean I feel like that's the bottom of the barrel.

1:21:05What I'm envisioning is the premium experience, like not magnets, but imagine the battery equivalent of MagSafe. I mean, the best comparison is probably power tools. You know, they all have some standardized crappy battery that they have for like your, you know, DeWalt power tool, your Makita power. They all sell their own bespoke. You can only buy this type of battery because it fits into these. That's like the Fisher price kind of like big tough toy thing. Imagine that, but an Apple techie version. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I, again, I think I'm struggling getting past the vision of how, how does this, what does this look like?

1:21:39And something where there is no extra space anywhere, but let's assume, let's assume it's possible to make it work, even though I'm very skeptical about that. The thing that the, the Trump card that you have, I really got to stop saying that, but anyway, the, the ace in the hole that you have. He ruined so many things like red hats. Really? You're still sore about the hats. I am still sore about the hats. still sore. But nevertheless, I think the ace in the hole that you have, though, is that Apple really cares about the Earth's blue oceans. See what I did there? And I really think that the environmental impact is the way in which this starts to make a lot more sense.

1:22:20And everything else I can think of, I'm not sure I'm with you on this, John, but the environmental side, i get it and yes i actually that's not fair i do agree with you that if they could make it work you know if we could wave our magic wand and make it work and make it work nicely that is a competitive advantage and that is something that would bring people to the to their products and their platforms but i just find that hard to believe and they could sell apple branded batteries and prevent third parties from selling yeah of course got a lot of apple synergies in there yeah but i think you're right though casey like the the climate angle is you know if you look at apple as a company like what what's important to them and you know number one seems to be you know well between money and making good products you know they're really good at making money and they are you know when when when they have to choose between being stingy to make more money or giving away a little too much, they're stingy to make more money every time.

1:23:20They always choose very consistently on that point. And so it's hard for us to look at something like this and say, how could they possibly ever make a choice that would result in possible lower sales? But I think the environmental initiative is one of those areas that actually is powerful enough that it might actually push them to sway in that direction sometimes. And they're not going to sway in that direction all the time. Of course, they're a big company. They're really good at making a lot of money. But that is one area that they also care very much about. It's like up to the highest levels of the company.

1:23:56And therefore, like, you know, if you're going to get through Tim Cook's spreadsheets to make it make less profit, what can do that? Health and environmental stuff. Like those can do that. Well, I bet environmental stuff, though, I don't think you have to go through his spreadsheets because I think they believe that I think they're right. that environmental stuff is good for the the spreadsheets in the long run and i would make the same argument about this it's like look this is not we're not doing this as a charity project even though in the short term you're going to see like you're going to take some losses and there's going to be r &d and so on and so forth the whole idea is that you're going to be out there in the blue ocean in the same way that the wii was the best-selling console in that generation it was standard definition it had a remote control on it the idea is you're going to make more money like that's the whole point of the blue ocean there are no competitors you're the only one out there no one else thought this was even an idea worth entertaining so of course when you come out with the thing everyone's laughing at she was like what a dumb idea and then it sells a whole jillion of them right again you got to pick the right one it's easy to do something none of your competitors are doing and flop on your face but i'm what i'm saying is i think this is potentially one of the right ones so if you're going to sell it to the same cook you don't have to say well because you care about the environment so much you should do this but it'll make you less money no it will also make you more money like that's i think that's part of the reason they do this environmental stuff like in the end apple converting itself to use all renewable energy and all of its data centers and all of its you know headquarters and all of its factories like that's good for apple financially in the long run because everyone's going to eventually do that and if you're ahead and you've done it first you reap the benefits before everybody else setting aside all the pr angles they're going to be a more modern company that pays less money to run itself that stupid donut that they made with it being like how much should it cost to heat and cool that the way they did it which cost them bazillions of dollars up front over the years that's going to make its money back because the old dumb buildings that are heated and cooled the dumb way cost so much more money per square foot or per person right that's the pitch you it's not you don't go to tim cook and say lose a little money to be good for the environment you say be good for the environment and also make more money and i think that's how most of these things were not that you know that all they care about is money but it's like it's win-win if you do it the right way and the real kicker for the environmental stuff is all the things they can do with the environmental stuff recycling using renewable energy carbon offsets all that in the end as many people point out and as apple itself knows the only real way to make a dent in this stuff is to do things like use less packaging like oh we're using recycled cardboard no just use less whatever you're using use less of it make the box smaller take boats and not planes right and so how do you make a dent in the big picture keep products for longer like don't throw them away don't recycle them don't don't don't initiate that churn in the whole machinery of like now we have to re-harvest the cobalt from those batteries and send it through a factory and like slow that down make the products last longer in the customer's hands that makes apple less money then you got to figure out a way to charge more like that's that's the pitch the pitch is like you're never going to make a dent in the environment by just like using a better plastic for your cables right but having everyone keep their iphones for one extra year would make such a huge impact on the environment that it would just like if they have some environmental goals that they want to get to that's the only way you really move the needle like making the boxes smaller and selling fewer of them for more money let's do the jerry mcguire code uh casey do you know this one jerry mcguire please i can't ask marco he doesn't know i i've seen it once a long time ago but show me the money john no that's the part everyone remembers but the part i remember of him it is remember he writes a a memo to the company and sends it to the whole company it's not a memo he says it's a mission statement do you remember that i don't know anyway his his pitch he worked he's a sports agent marco you've heard this kind of his tom crew is playing the lead he's a sports agent and you know this company is like they get all that they sign all the big name athletes and take a percentage of their money or whatever it's sport agents right his memo here's the pitch in his memo fewer clients less money i may be misquoting it but as you can imagine that pitch does not go over well in hq what i'm saying to tim cook is fewer products but more money oh my word thank you to our sponsors this week trade coffee green chef and collide and thanks to our members who support us directly.

1:28:19You can join us at atp.fm slash join, and we will talk to you next week. Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin, because it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental. John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, because it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental. And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM. And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S. So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O, A-R-M, Antimarko Armin, S-I-R-A-C, USA Syracuse. It's accidental. Accidental. They didn't mean to. Accidental. Accidental. Tech Podcast. So long. We have a lot to talk about.

1:29:29We need to do a trip recap. And none of what we're talking about will have to do with the lab. But everything else we can talk about. Indeed. About, I don't know, it was like a month, month and a half ago, I realized that there are Vision Pro labs in New York, which we cannot talk about. Wait, I think I can say I'm very happy that Apple brought these to New York so I didn't have to fly to California. I was dreading, like, when they announced the labs in, I believe, early fall, they announced, you know, the locations. and or late summer no i think it was still in the summer it was it was early um they they had labs in like a few places around the world but the closest places to the east coast were either california or i think london was like not that much further and that was it like there was nothing anywhere on the east coast so then they they later in the fall uh added new york city uh labs and i'm very very thankful for that because i would all fall like you know i had this all this stuff going on in my life with the move and everything and i'm like the last thing i need is to have to fly to california this winter like it's for some few day span here and there to get you know an unknown amount of unknown experience with this unknown device like you know it was that was a big i was dreading having to do that and i was i was afraid um you know of that eventuality and by moving by having options in New York, that made everything dramatically easier for those of us on the East Coast.

1:30:59So thank you, Apple, for that. Yep, indeed. And so we both registered for labs on the same day. This was, I think, Thursday the 30th or something like that, somewhere around then. And sure enough, we both got selected, so we got to go to the lab. I got there by doing the most un-American thing that I have done in a long time. I took a train. And did you know? Did you I should have. Excuse me, sir. It's football. Thank you very much. But no, I did not watch any soccer on the way. But did you know that trains are actually freaking great? Who knew? Why didn't the Europeans say something about this?

1:31:33We should have been told. We should have been told. Well, their trains are great. I don't know how great ours are. Well, it's funny you say that because I dedicated an entire day to traveling up and then an entire day to traveling back. And I got on the train here in Richmond and I got off the train in Penn station and then, you know, reverse the trip two days later. Um, and I got to tell you, it was pretty freaking great. Like when I travel via plane, I am a ball of stress charitably from the moment I leave the house, but realistically from the moment I opened my eyes in the morning, I am just a walking stress ball.

1:32:11And when I took the train, I left the house. I got a ride from a friend cause Aaron was dropping the kids off at the school at the time. And I walked into the train station, waited a few minutes, and I walked on the train. And then I walked around the train when I wanted to walk around the train. I went to the cafe car when I wanted to go to the cafe car. And then eventually, I got to New York. Now, admittedly, I did get there like 90 minutes late. But nevertheless, I got to New York, and it was pretty freaking great. I know that, you know, a lot of the reason that we can't have good trains here is because we are not, say, compared to, you know, Great Britain, we are not a wee island nation.

1:32:45But nevertheless, in the areas where there are trains, they're pretty great. And that's pretty awesome. So Marco and I, we arrive in Manhattan. And Marco, what is the one obvious thing that you and I should do if we're in Manhattan around dinnertime? Well, I mean, I think it's only fair that I have to figure out, I have to try this amazing, life-changing, wonderful pizza that you are constantly raving about is the best pizza in New York and it changed your life. You already tried it. We already tried it. I mean, it's a little bit frozen but you know yeah so non-members might not know that we for we we did actually try casey's pizza frozen on a member special uh shipped to us via gold belly uh and you can listen to the member special at if you did that i'm slash join uh to hear how that went um but but i will spoil it slightly and say i don't think it went super well for a casey's pizza yeah i think that's fair to say uh it honestly even even myself and my family who had had like Aaron's had Johnson bleaker many times and, uh, and I, the kids have had once they had had mail order, uh, pizza that a friend had gifted me, which was very kind.

1:33:55Um, but even we said, you know what? The ones that were sent, uh, for the member special were okay. Like they were still good in our opinion, but they were not stellar. And so, uh, what did we do? We went the two of us to Johnson bleaker and I, I genuinely don't know, although I have a theory, I don't know if Marco just put on the happy face when he was there or if he legitimately thought it was good but I think it's the latter I think you and I'm going to give you a chance in a second I feel like you legitimately thought it was good but one way or another we had Johnson Bleeker there was a brief question as to whether we should get the larger of the available sizes or the smaller there was no question well there really wasn't I thought there was a question and you immediately said get the larger one you had a question I had an answer Exactly right.

1:34:44You always get the biggest pizza. That's it. Exactly right. No one ever says, I wish you ordered less pizza. Right. Always get the biggest pizza. So that's what we did. And it was a critical decision on Marco's part because between the two of us, we ate the entire pizza. And for me, and I promise I'm going to give you a chance here. For me, it was just perfect. I mean, it is the same restaurant it's always been. And I mean, I think they, strictly speaking, changed the entrance a little bit or added an entrance, if you will, because we went in not the normal entrance that I'm used to from literally a decade ago.

1:35:19But in spirit, it is effectively the same restaurant. The pizza was the same. I remembered it. It was so, so good. And I am so glad that whatever you thought on the spectrum, I'm so glad that at least you got to experience it the real way, the proper way. So to Marco's credit at the time, you know, of course I interrogated him about it and he very much put on the happy face to the point that it seemed legitimate to me that you genuinely enjoyed it. Now that I am no longer within arm's reach, so I can't punch you in the face if you say you don't like it, what did you actually think? I liked it, but.

1:35:56Oh, come on. I think the environment, like the actual restaurant, you know, it's this classic old East Village restaurant. It has like there's stuff all over the walls. Like it's like, you know, there's pictures of all the celebrities who have been there. Everyone's like carved their initials into the wooden benches and everything. So there's like there's a lot of personality in the actual restaurant. Call that ambiance. Yeah. And, you know, when you see something like this, that's always fun. No matter where you find the kind of personality in any kind of restaurant, that's always fun when you find that when it's genuine, when it isn't just like, you know, some Chili's has there has, you know, created this across the across America artificially.

1:36:33Like it's not that it's the real thing. You could tell this place had real history. I like that it's a Manhattan small restaurant, crammed full of tables. I like that it was crammed so full of tables that our neighboring table to us was actually just a foot away. So we could totally hear everything they were saying. They could totally hear everything we were saying. We actually talked to them for part of the meal. I like that kind of thing where you're kind of forced to be communal with the people around you because it's just that crammed in. See also the Hofbrauhaus that we went to in Munich.

1:37:04I really enjoyed it for that reason, too. that's true actually um yeah yeah yeah but anyway so i i really enjoyed the the place and the the atmosphere i the experience of it it's it is an experience the pizza was good but first of all it is different from what most new york style pizza tends to be these days mainly it is it does not have the same crust style yeah we noticed that when it was frozen the crust was not like the usually expected to be flat flat pizza and then like a rounded crust that's traditional new york style yeah yeah yeah and we could tell that it was flatter than that because it's more of a what they call like coal-fired type of pizza where it's got the leopard spotting on the bottom yeah it's it's like a it's like a like a wood oven like you know that like the yeah it's that that kind of pizza it's almost like a large personal pizza you know um and even their biggest pie was by most pizza places in new york i would call it a medium or yeah that's probably fair and by the way uh what do you call it frank pepe's is also like this if you ever had their pizza it is also not new york style obviously it's not new york style it's not new york pizza but like it it has the same crust profile i realized that because we get we have a local uh instance of and i get pizza from there occasionally i'm like you know what this this reminds me of the not the taste doesn't taste like john's obliger but the shape of the crust is like it yeah but anyway it was better than the frozen version by by a decent margin like i would hope so yeah um but you know it was it was not perfect.

1:38:31They did burn part of the crust. I noticed that. Some people like that. Yeah, it's a choice, you know. But I just, I enjoyed the atmosphere. This is a place that you go for the atmosphere and the history first and the food second. But that doesn't, that isn't meant to be an insult. The food was good, but not super memorable. But the atmosphere and that everything around the experience was very memorable. So that was really great. I really appreciated that. It was very fun. I would totally go back. I even, we are our current time-wasting TV show is Friends. In some of the B-roll in Friends, it showed the East Village and it showed the old John's Oblicker sign.

1:39:13I'm like, oh, I know where that is now. Oh, that's awesome. Anyway, so it was a great experience. I would absolutely go back there. But the pizza itself, it was good but if you're in New York, you can get good pizza every 15 feet. And so it wasn't better than everyone else's pizza. It was just good New York pizza in a really great experience. And I appreciate that. And I think that that's a fair characterization. It was good pizza in New York, but it wasn't, as you pointed out, it wasn't like stereotypical New York pizza. That's part of the good thing. I feel like that's a change in my lifetime is that there is more non-New York pizza in New York City.

1:39:52You know what I mean? like different kinds of pizza, more sort of like, again, the sort of, you know, coal fired, artisanal leopard spotted bottom. That was that's not traditional New York pizza. And there's way more of that now than there used to be. That's true. Yeah, I'll give you that too. That you know, if if what you're picturing is New York pizza, this is not the style of pizza you're picturing. It's it's close, but it's not the same thing. And like, you know, what you're picturing by New York pizza, usually with those words is what slice places serve, you know, the big puffy crust, the pretty large slice with the very even cheese.

1:40:26That's what you're picturing. That's not what they serve there. But what they serve there is good. But for me, I would go there for the experience first, not that I have to have that particular pizza. I think that's fair. But I'm genuinely glad that you got to go. I'm glad that you don't associate John's Oblicker with the admittedly subpar frozen meal experience that costs so much money. Um, so I'm glad that, that, you know, your, your opinion has changed for the better. Um, but yeah, so after that, you know, we went back and, uh, had a drink at the hotel bar, which was weird, but fun. Uh, and then, uh, we, you know, we went to the lab, which we cannot speak of.

1:41:05And then Marco had had the idea a few days or I guess a week or two before, uh, hey, we're going to be so close. Why don't we stay at the beach house after the lab? And so that's what we did. And we took the subway up to Grand Central, which, by the way, I had yet to experience express transit. And that was super cool. The last time I had been in Manhattan, I needed to go and buy myself a Metro card. Then you had to do the arithmetic to figure out whether or not you wanted like an unlimited card or a single fare or what have you. And I just swiped my phone and it was great. Yeah, it was awesome because now all of the entire New York subway system now has like just regular phone Apple Pay kind of support.

1:41:45And that express transit thing where you don't even have to like activate it first. it was so nice to have that because it took them a while to build it out to all the stations and that was a very nice change yeah it was really great so then uh we went to grand central then we got on long island railroad and then we arrived at the car which i know this isn't unique to an electric car but it is pretty delightful and aaron's car can do this uh john's cars can't my car can't because you can't do this with a stick but uh it is pretty delightful getting into a car that is already heated on a cold day like i cannot do that in my car and john you can't either because they would roll away if you started them remotely because you leave them in gear.

1:42:21But it is pretty nice. And that was quite delightful. So where do you go if you find yourself on Long Island for, in my case, the first time in 20-ish years? Well, obviously, you go to Emilio's. That's what you do. Which should be, for listeners, that's John Syracuse's favorite pizza place. Indeed. We went to Emilio's, which is John's beloved pizza place from his youth. One of two, one of two beloved pizza places. Okay, fair enough. And so we went to Emilio's. It looked to me as though this place had been freshened up sometime in the last 60 years, but it did not appear to me that it had been meaningfully changed in the last 60 years.

1:43:01It has been changed multiple times when I lived there and multiple times since I've gone. So yes, physically the place has changed a lot. Well, either way, we went in and we got some slices, which is the thing you cannot do at John's. And we got a corner piece, a Sicilian corner piece. We got, what else did we get? Shoot. We got some garlic knots, which I am very grumpy, by the way, Marco, I didn't tell you this. Very grumpy that I didn't either steal those and take them home or at least have one in the morning. And you had gotten them out for me, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I got them out for breakfast.

1:43:33And then I completely forgot about it. And I'm very grumpy that I didn't have any more of them, but that's my fault, not yours. So we got garlic knots. We got the Sicilian slice. I should just pull up the picture. We got a slice that Tina was very enthusiastic about us trying. The Crostini? Crostini? Yeah, something like that. Crispino. That's it. She's a big fan of the Crispino. You found out the dangers of the Crispino by buying it. Yeah, it's basically like fresh sliced tomato, fresh mozzarella dollop, and some sweet red peppers. On a crust that's supposed to be crispy, but you just put a lot of watery stuff on it.

1:44:03Yes. Exactly. So it quickly fell apart. Yeah, and then a couple of slices of traditional triangular pizza. I don't even remember what specifically it was, but it was all... Like a margarita style, but with some basil in it. I think I came to this the way Marco came to John's, which isn't a bad thing. But I don't have 20, 30 years of nostalgia powering me in this experience. It was unquestionably very, very good. The Crespino or whatever, it was a little soggy, like you had said, both of you gentlemen have said. It was trying a little too hard to keep away all of that moisture, and it just lost the fight.

1:44:39And especially if you're getting crispy, if you're buying it by the slice that's been sitting there for a while. So what you really want, it needs to be fresh, honestly, to get pulled off. That's fair. Yeah. But it was very, very good. I mean, I'll take John's any day of the week and twice on Sunday, but you're also fighting. And I would have said, speaking of the garlic knots, if you can get one of those Sicilian slices, don't even eat it. Just bring it home, wrap it in foil, and then reheat it in your toaster oven the next day. So good. So good. I don't have to. I can just go there every day if I want to.

1:45:07It's like lasagna in that way. I feel like it is better reheated at home. Oh, there's not a lot like that and I'd buy it. I would definitely buy that. This is one of those things. It was very, very good. I would take John's, but you're fighting 20 years of nostalgia. There's no way, or 30 years of nostalgia. There's no way you're going to beat that, but it was unquestionably extremely good. It was very fast. People, they were very nice. I would absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, go back. If I find myself going to Fire Island again, anytime soon, I will probably ask Marco to facilitate either, you know, a takeout order or have us eat in at a Emelius.

1:45:37Cause it was really good. they do have a restaurant there as well like so the restaurant i so the restaurant had a couple of interesting dishes that i remember vaguely fondly from my youth but the restaurant is weird like that's it so the the other thing so there's amelio's and there's branchinelli's and this is weird family history between them but the bottom line is the pizza at least the sicilian pizza is the same in both of them which is super weird but not that far from each other and again there's there's a family relation or there's some kind of falling out about ownership anyway the restaurants branchinelli's has a sit-down restaurant and emilio's has a sit-down restaurant and those restaurants are nothing like each other and the branchinelli's restaurant i could mostly endorse for straight up the middle very you know bog standard old style italian restaurant and emilio's always wanted to be a little fancier as you can probably tell from the decor they just felt like they've been a little bit fancier they put some sun-dried tomatoes in your pasta in 1994 oh big deal sun-dried tomato who heard of you know that's what emilio's is there's still some good stuff in that menu i think but it's definitely different so if you're going to sit down if you want to go to a sit down italian place go to branch and ellie's across my old high school and try that but the pizza is pretty much the same both places no crispino at branch and ellie's though it probably fell apart on the way there but no it was it was good it was definitely good um definitely glad we we did it um and it was it was a lot of fun you make me so hungry with all this pizza talk you're killing me i know i know you could have had some as i said to tina speaking of something that would probably keep freeze that sicilian and ship it to me gold belly where are you i said i said to tina who i enlisted numerous times to try to convince your sorry pain in pain in my butt to come and visit us gonna happen uh you're the worst but i i said to her the following day i think the day i got home you know john could have been having leftover emelios right now he could have but he chose not to and that's on you john that's on you i'll be down there this summer so anyway so we go to bed that night uh we actually i don't think we have time to talk about it now, but Marco did something truly terrible, and a good friend would not have done this.

1:47:33But I asked him to play for me Sonos Era 100s and eventually Sonos Era 300s, and we don't have time to belabor it right now. But my God, I regret having listened to both of those, because holy crap, they sound so good. And you are a terrible human for having indulged me in that. So thank you, but no thank you, sir. You're welcome. But nevertheless, they're really phenomenal speakers. I'm really stunned by them. And I I know Sonos pretty well at this point. I'm still stunned. But the next day we wake up and, you know, I was treated to a very beautiful sunrise, which was lovely. And, you know, Marco and I chatted and we had breakfast.

1:48:07I made myself some scrambled eggs. And then Marco insisted that I put some boom boom sauce on it. And I got to tell you, it's pretty tasty on the scrambled eggs. Wait a second. You skipped over. When you went to his house, he drove you across the sand, right? Wasn't that fun? It was, but it was dark. That's even more fun to see the deer jumping out in front of you. Right. Exactly. Um, but yeah, I mean, it was enjoyable and it was not as terrible as I expected. Actually, I should say it is when, when you had talked Marco about driving on the sand, I think I said this to you that night. Uh, what I envisioned was the sand of a summer beach where it is flat and there's like maybe one set of tracks from like the quad or whatever vehicle is used to collect trash.

1:48:50But this is not a summer beach, Marco. This is a winter beach and the winter beach is nothing but ruts as far as the eye can see. And that I did not expect. Again, once you think about it for even a flash, it's quite obvious that's what's going to happen. But I did not expect that. And it was funny watching Marco try to navigate it. Or I shouldn't say try to navigate it. That implies you're bad at it. But, you know, to say, oh, well, it would be a little easier over here, but there's a small chance you get sucked into the ocean, so you probably don't want to do that. And so it was fun, and it was informative and interesting.

1:49:20But because it was so damn dark, There wasn't but so much I could really do other than bounce my way, you know, across the sand. So we get up the next morning. We decide we're going to do a biking tour of the town. And, you know, Marco has his bike. And he said, hey, you know, would you be cool with using Tiff's bike? I was like, yeah, of course. You know, and it's approximately the correct height. And I only need it for, what, 15 minutes? So, yeah, absolutely. So Marco starts taking me on this tour. Everything is going well. and we are, from my recollection anyway, at basically the extreme end of the tour at approximately the time in which we would turn around.

1:49:57And Marco had gotten slightly ahead of me because I haven't ridden a bike in years for more than three feet. So I was giving the bike a little bit extra chutzpah in order to catch up. And all of a sudden I realized, well, that doesn't feel right. This particular bike is belt driven, but you could think of it as chain driven. It's the same basic principle. And it appears that somehow I have popped the belt off of the rear sprocket. So here it is. I have borrowed Tiff's bike and I've now broken her bike. And so we pull over. I mean, we were on a, like a deck or a walking path or something like that.

1:50:29We pull over, we quickly ascertain that, yes, this is presumably repairable, but nevertheless, it is broken. And I'm thinking to myself, well, this is undesirable because I do need to, at some point, get to a train station. And although I thought we had more than enough time to walk the bikes back to his house. We are, after all, at the extreme end of the journey, and that's going to take a lot more time than I think either of us had allotted for this particular extravaganza. But that's okay. So Marco and I fiddle with the belt a little bit, and we were able to get it on enough for me to, you know, basically limp at home.

1:51:03That works out just fine. We get to Marco's beach house. We make a, I was going to say a half-hearted attempt. It was a full-hearted attempt, but over extremely short amount of time to repair the bike. And we were not successful, unfortunately so uh the bike is as per our discussion before we got on the show still in a state of disrepair and it is still my fault and i still i mean feel really bad about it to be clear i said it was no big deal this bike is it's you know it's a very old belt driven uh priority coast bike it's probably a 10 minute fix yeah i think i don't yet have the time to give it those 10 minutes um but and it isn't that pressing but literally the belt just fell off the rear thing like i we couldn't put it back on like by fingers because i have to probably move the rear thing to let the belt get back onto it but that's fine it like it'll take me like 10 minutes yeah but i still i feel bad i felt bad i feel that's it look for look i don't i don't talk about you know bikes much but i tell you what the the priority bikes and bikes with belts in general are amazing and i can strongly recommend unless you have a reason you need a chain and there are there are some some instances where change are still better unless you have a reason you need a chain go belt next time you have to buy a bike it's so nice and i can strongly recommend priority bikes in general they've we have a whole bunch of them and they've been wonderful yep so apologies again public apologies this time to tiff for at least temporarily breaking her bicycle that was certainly not my intention i don't think it was from negligence or anything like that it was just a crummy set of circumstances, but here we are, and I do feel bad about it.

1:52:42It's fine. And to Marco's credit, he has been super chill from the moment it happened until this very moment. Super chill about the whole thing. It's not his bike. It's not his bike, right, right. Well, about that. So, ostensibly, it was not the point for me, but I think a lot of the point for Marco, for us going back, all the way back from Manhattan to the beach, only for me to return the following day, like 12 hours later, was for me to have an opportunity to drive his truck on the beach. And so now it is daytime. We have left behind a lightly broken bicycle, but nevertheless, we set off. Marco says to me in a very kind way, I think it's for the best if I drive us from the house to the sand.

1:53:26I think I would have lasted five feet if I was in the driver's seat before I said, No, actually, I'm good. You take care of this because the clearances for a freaking Rivian are not great driving around your wee little beach town. It gave me all the shivers watching you very deftly, but nevertheless, it gave me all the shivers watching you navigate out to the beach. but nevertheless we get to the beach we switch drivers and next thing you know i am heading to the beach and we i guess there's several different places that you can hop from like the kind of more inland area onto the beach and marco please interrupt me when you're ready um and we had aimed for one and we didn't we didn't look closely at the tides or the calendar or anything like that and as we rose or go crested over the hill to eventually go down the dune onto the beach Marco says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

1:54:19And I was not looking more than like 10 feet in front of the car, so I didn't really understand what the issue was. But Marco says, hold on, hold on. And I look out and I realize, oh, there's not much beach there as it turns out because it was high tide. And as much as I would have loved to, you know, bombing up the water and down the beach and so on and so forth, that did not seem like a good way to start my first beach driving experience. And so, you know, we reversed our way back. we went through the inland area a little bit further, and then eventually we wound up on the beach proper. We get to the beach proper.

1:54:50The Rivian is laughing at everything, as am I actually, is laughing at everything that is being put in front of it. Everything is going swimmingly. I am behaving. I have not at this point started trying to do drifts or anything like that. I haven't tried to, you know, fishtail on purpose or anything of that nature. At this point, I'm just trying to get us up the beach because it is not challenging, but it is certainly more challenging than one would expect. You have a lot less control than you think you would. Yep. Yeah. It's, I guess the best analogy I can give is imagine if you were driving in quite deep snow, but thicker or perhaps heavier or just more resistive anyway, like sand, then snow, like sand, if you will, then snow typically is.

1:55:39Right. And so, uh, yeah, that's kind of what it was like. And once you end up in a rut, which, you know, that's not a bad thing if you're, if you're following somebody else's tracks from earlier, but once you end up there, it takes a surprising amount of torque and energy and strength, if you will, to get the car out of that rut. And you could arguably, I guess that's actually the closest this car will be to truly self-driving is because you could have taken your hands off the wheel and not even thought about it at that point. But anyway, so we're like two-thirds of the way down the beach, which I don't know, how many miles would you say that is, Marco?

1:56:12Like three or four or five? It's about three. So let's call it two miles down the beach. I'm getting to the point that I'm trying to eyeball a place that's maybe a little less ruddy and a little flatter so I can start doing a little bit of fishtailing and burning out and so on and so forth. I haven't started yet, but I'm eyeballing it. And I noticed at a glance, there's some sort of dialogue. And I quickly read it aloud, and I don't remember the exact words it said, but it said something along the lines of... Or network changed. Or network changed. That's it. How did you know? So it says something along the lines of, you know, there is a fault, reduced power.

1:56:53I'm sorry, what? And so I said, well, I said to Marco, oh, I just read this. And then sure enough, somewhere on the dash, it says, you know, reduced power, top speed, I think it was 19 miles an hour. It probably deactivated some of the cylinders. Yeah, that's what happened. It's at least two of the eight cylinders, right? um so yeah so next thing i know the car is now in as i later found out uh from from a friend who works at rivian actually uh that's colloquially referred to as turtle mode and so i'm now in turtle mode and limited to 19 miles an hour now on the sand 19 miles an hour is sufficient like i didn't really need to go i wasn't really going more yeah that's about as fast as i go most of the time right exactly so so far no big deal however at some point we need to leave the sand and as i said getting out of a rut requires a surprising amount of torque which means a surprising amount of depth if you will to the accelerator pedal i don't know what's going on marco doesn't know what's going on i said to him at the time well later i said to him and i will say again now publicly i am so thankful that it was marco's car in marco in marco in the passenger seat for this because had the roles been reversed i would not have been chill like marco was because marco was extremely chill.

1:58:06You're going to shatter that windshield in a second with your phone. Marco was extremely chill. Extraordinarily chill. And I, first of all, I'm already dying. And second of all, if this was my car, I don't know if I would have been better or worse. It would have been terrible. So thankfully, Marco had the presence of mind to just chill because I was probably enough stressed for both of us. Did you just reboot in safe mode? hold down the shift key on the steering wheel? Would you slow down? This is my story, John. And you're ruining it because that's exactly what we did as soon as we got off the sand.

1:58:42Tech skills come in handy again. Right? So we pull off into the area where I guess, Marco, you had told me at the time that people will reinflate their tires or what have you. So we figure out how to reboot the thing. We reboot the thing. And at this point, I am dying because this is Marco's effectively brand new car that I have now broken. Not to mention the fucking bike that I just broke half an hour ago. So this is not a good, this is not a good morning for your guy. I am not happy. Uh, this is something like I have had such a wonderful time with one of my best and oldest friends for the last 48 hours.

1:59:16And this is how I'm leaving him is well, Marco, enjoy your broken bike and broken car. Also, not only that, also you're going to miss your train. Right. That's exactly what I was going to say. Not only that we have to go on what I would call an interstate. I think Marco would call it a highway. You weirdo Californians called it a freeway we have to go on one of those things where you're supposed to be doing like 65 70 miles an hour yeah that that was my biggest worry because like at the time like all right you know it was saying like you know contact rivian service and i'm like okay well if my car can only ever go 20 miles an hour until i go get it serviced somehow like first of all you have to get it serviced off the beach like the rivian mobile service vans can't come onto the beach they don't have a permit so like so they i would have to keep getting on the get off the beach anyway but to get it off the beach requires going over a couple of bridges and highways and so like i'm like okay first i have to get through that at 20 miles an hour you know probably very much angering everybody around me and possibly being a safety hazard and then second of all like well then where do i go what else i'm like like i really hope i don't have to bring this to a service center and it would be you know a logistical challenge to do that but then second of all we had timed this all out for you to make this train at a train station that is you know 10 minutes away at 60 miles an hour.

2:00:30But, you know, how are we going to get there now in some kind of reasonably safe way at 20 miles an hour? Right. This is why you needed me here. You're planning trips without enough, you know, safety margin for you to get a flat tire or whatever. Well, and normally I do have that kind of margin, but this was a hyper compressed trip. And so I was doing my best to try to do everything and yet, you know, have enough time for almost nothing. I also should mention I skipped a step. as we're, as Marco and I are discussing how to proceed with, you know, turtle mode, Marco says to me very sternly, very politely, but very sternly, please don't stop because if you stop, then there's a very good likelihood we're going to need a tow and that ain't going to happen anytime soon.

2:01:13Like you were saying a moment ago, you know, you're not exactly going to find a tow truck that is going to want to, or perhaps even be capable of getting onto the beach. So, uh, That was advice that I took to heart quite seriously and quite immediately and very much made sure that no matter what happened, I was always making forward progress. Yeah, that was really weird. I'm like, you know, whatever error code the car is throwing or whatever subsystem is failing, if you stop, it might not let you start again. Right. So, again, Mark, it was extremely chill, and I'm so very thankful that you were because I was, and to some degree, to a large degree, remain a walking ball of stress about all this.

2:01:48But anyway, we do the reboot, we take off, and it's clear immediately things are still not right. And I am really starting to want to crawl in a hole and die. And we had made it, I don't know, a few hundred feet, I don't know, maybe a quarter mile at most. I feel like all of a sudden it felt like you had pressed the accelerator harder. Yes. And I knew that you didn't. And about that same time that I was like, oh, then you looked down or looked at me or whatever and said, oh oh oh we're back next thing you know we're back and better than ever baby and uh and we were able to make it to babylon train station no problem and life was good outside of the fact that i murdered tiff's bike and i almost murdered marco's brand new car i had a very enjoyable trip and i'm really glad that i went but oh my word that morning was something it was something else it was not your day it's not the ribbons either what's what was the problem with the car i i don't know i so i actually called rivian because when when we when i when i did the reboot and when it showed that message a brief message appeared on screen that says something like captured diagnostic yeah i figured the car took a cyst diagnose right so put it on the feedback yeah so so i figured you know okay well that probably means it's being uploaded somewhere maybe because it's a very connected car so i i gave it like you know a few days and i called them like hey by the way uh this thing happened on this day at this time it said it captured diagnostic can you tell me anything more about like what actually the problem was so maybe i can like avoid some something in the future like you know maybe did the motors overheat did the suspension over like you know what what could have what could this have been i mean that's that's related to casey you know like blaming himself and say well casey but you were just you're just driving the car right it's an off-road vehicle and you were off-road and you were driving it in a straight line yeah and i think and and by And like in between, like since he, since this happened, I have driven across the sand on the same route probably seven or eight times and it's been fine.

2:03:52And I'm not like babying the car more than necessary. I'm, I'm doing everything exactly the same that I always do it. And it's been a hundred percent fine. So I don't know what happened. Yeah, it was, it was something. But anyway, I called Rivian and, and they, they basically said they can't really look at it remotely. Like they don't have access. like i feel like i have to like bring it to a service center to you know figure out what actually happened uh so i'm not going to do that but if it happens again obviously then i will because other than other than that one little weird thing that happened when casey was driving it's been an amazing sand vehicle it has been a ridiculously good off-roader for this context like and like the the land river defender was a very very good off-road vehicle this for the sand i I can't speak to other off-road needs, but for the sand, the Rivian's even better by a significant margin.

2:04:44That's saying a lot because the Defender was really good, but the Rivian as a sand vehicle is awesome. It is so good. It has so much power, so much traction. It is just a ridiculously good sand vehicle. That's why I want to know what happened. because if whatever happened was like, oh, I made the motors too hot, it shows you the motor temperature on the off-road extra gauge cluster thing. So I can watch that. I have been watching that since then. I've been watching to see like, all right, if I drive it kind of harder in the sand, this temperature goes up to like 190 degrees. Is that too much? I don't know.

2:05:23I haven't seen the error case happen again. So I can't tell you, you know, but who knows? I don't know. i wish i knew what happened um but nothing bad has happened since then so okay i guess right right yeah it's it i wish i knew i don't know if maybe like a chunk of sand lodged itself somewhere the other interesting piece which probably was unrelated but the only other thing i saw or that we saw the auto hold feature where you come to a stop and the car holds the brakes for you. You can take your foot off the brake, but you don't move. It explicitly said that that was disabled, which made me wonder, A, it could be like the air suspension or something like that, like Marco had said a minute ago, or perhaps is there something with the brakes that got upset and it just didn't want to get this 900 ,000 pound vehicle going more than 20 miles an hour?

2:06:14I don't know. Nothing about the brakes felt wrong to me when I was driving it, but I mean, I wasn't really getting on the brakes much because I didn't want to freaking stop. Yeah, generally on the sand, you don't want to use a lot of braking. It makes you dig in and get stuck. Right, right, right. So it seemed fine to me. I don't know. As it turns out, it appears that everything worked out. You know, Tiff's bike, at least at the moment, notwithstanding. But it was not my morning, y 'all. Not my morning. Well, thanks for visiting. I'm glad. Thanks for hosting. I'm very glad I did. But yeah, it was really lovely to spend time in New York, which I hadn't done in quite some time.

2:06:52it was lovely to spend time with Marco which I haven't I mean we hadn't been together since 2019 which is criminal I tell you but nevertheless it was great to see the beach house it was great to get the tour of the beach town and I'm so glad that even though I went up on a Wednesday came down on a Friday and probably should have figured out a way to spend more time both with you and up north in general nevertheless I'm really glad it worked out and I'm really glad that we were able to make it happen for both of us and And hopefully sometime in less than four freaking years, I can get back there.

2:07:25And we ate a lot of pizza. And we ate way too much pizza, and I have no regrets. Yep, there is no such thing as too much pizza. The system works.