Accidental Tech Podcast

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**Accidental Tech Podcast**

Three nerds discussing tech, Apple, programming, and loosely related matters.

Latest Episodes:

72: Take Your Co-Host To Work Day Jul 03, 2014

Show notes

Pre-Show:
- Showbot is back, and it has Zarro Boogs.
Follow-up:
- Don Lodsky points us to a sample of Google's new web design for desktop
- A brief meta-discussion about what we cover, how we cover it, and what being an "expert" is
- Feedback on potential wearables from Ben Griffel, biomedical engineer, and Per Östergren, MD
Aperture and iPhoto's brands were sunset
- Zoomed Photos UI screenshot
- Apple tells Ars Technica of "plans for professional-grade features such as image search, editing, effects, and most notably, third-party extensibility."
- We channel our our inner Prompt and discuss photo management techniques
Wonky design choices
- Jim Ray's tweet that started the conversation
- OXO Good Grips
- iFixit teardown of the AirPort Extreme
- A geometry lession regarding the Back of Marco's trash can
- Sharp edges got softer on MacBook Pros over time
After show:
- More Showbot talk (spoiler alert)
  - John complains about Safari
  - John complains about the Showbot
  - Casey self-censors
  - XSS by friend of the bot Jeremy Banks
- Marco circles back and exits the parking ramp regarding Overcast
  - The ghost of Jury
  - Marco's XOXO talk where Overcast was announced... in September 2013
  - Working around UIKit limitations with crazy hacks
  - Whether to wait for iOS 8
- John's Yosemite review status

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71: Security By Guilt Jun 27, 2014

Show notes

Pre-show:
- Million Dollar Homepage (more on Wikipedia)
- Alex Tew's Twitter Account and new venture
Casey's Showbot returns.
- SPOILER ALERT: The Gist Casey mentioned
Casey breaks Marco's brain with consulting terminology
Is "!s" pronounced "bang-S" or "exclamation-point-S"?
Hat colors
Google I/O
- Overview
- Material Design
  - Design Reel video
- Android Auto
- Moto 360 Watch
  - Panerai Watches
- Lock-in by visual affordances
- Gmail API
  - The API doesn't replace IMAP
  - Marco's prediction about IMAP support
- ART Runtime
Are web APIs still necessary?
Post-show:
- "Follow-down" on Swift and openness (Lattner's comment on Mike Ash's Friday Q&A)
- More silly business metaphors
- Casey's Showbot: web sockets, error handling, and developing for work vs. "play".

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70: The Endgame Is Omnipotence Jun 20, 2014

Show notes

Follow-up on app bundles as upgrade pricing.
Whether games are more like apps or movies.
Amazon's Fire Phone
- Who's it for?
- Mayday tech-support feature vs. Apple's retail stores
  - Apple stores vs. U.S. population density
Amazon and Apple doing what they're respectively, exclusively good at.
- Continuity and Handoff in Yosemite and iOS 8
- Only Apple (John Gruber)
John's opinion of iMessage.
Casey's further adventures developing a small web app in a hostile environment.
- OWASP top 10 web vulnerabilities

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69: Welcome to the Web, Casey Jun 13, 2014

Show notes

Follow-up:
- It's OK if you got two T-shirts. Keep them both.
- Marco was wrong about CloudKit limits.
Casey's broken Showbot.
Abusing new App Bundles and Complete This Bundle to achieve upgrade pricing in the App Store.
The WWDC NDA is mostly gone.
- WWDC 2014 videos
Marco's likely filesystem corruption and restore.
Apple's new Metal graphics API.
- Debug
Might the next Apple TV become a game console?
- How Apple TV Might Disrupt Microsoft and Sony (Ben Thompson)
- TV "pucks" for gamers
After-show special: Tiff and John discuss Journey.
- The Incomparable: Journey
- Strange Game

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68: Siracusa Waited Impatiently For This Jun 03, 2014

Show notes

Our initial WWDC reactions.

Recorded live at Macworld's podcast studio. Thanks, Jason Snell!

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67: Tim Said, Man May 28, 2014

Show notes

We'll be guests on the WWDC live episode of The Talk Show: Tuesday, June 3, 6–9 PM. Get tickets here ASAP! John will be taking a plane... for you.
Follow-up:
- Which is faster: installing Showbot or reimplementing it?
  - Casey's open-source Node version
- PHP isn't faster than Javascript, voiding Marco's accidental argument in the last episode.
- Node.js uses CommonJS, not AMD. ECMAScript also adds formal module support, which es6-module-transpiler lets you use today.
- To the great surprise of nobody except John, iPhones come with earbuds, and those earbuds come with clickers.
- To the great surprise of nobody, including John, the Bluetooth-pairing interface in a car was terrible, and both Marco and Casey missed an obscure reference.
- iOS games that support physical game controllers must also work without them.
If the "iPhone 6" comes in two sizes, which do you buy?
- Possibility of resolution scaling modes.
- Would the cameras be different? (Marco on The Talk Show, starting around 01:26:00).
WWDC product-announcement predictions:
- New MacBook Airs or a 12" Retina MacBook Air? (Intel's Broadwell delay)
  - Macworld's slow SSD speeds in the new Airs may just be from different SSD manufacturers.
- New Apple TV hardware or software?
  - The Apple TV 3's CPU was originally a dual-core A5 with one die disabled, but not anymore.
- The iPod Touch still has an A5 LOL.
- There may not be any new hardware announced at WWDC, just like previous WWDCs in 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2011.
- New sensors to be taken advantage of, like Pedometer++ did with the M7 last year.
- Craig Hockenberry on Apple wearables
- Wearables, sensors, and watches in fashion and reality.
- Bringing the new Mac Pro's dark-glossy-aluminum finish to more Pro hardware?
- Retina Thunderbolt Display?
- The Magic Mouse. Yes, we really talked about this.
Drawing conclusions from the "To Be Announced" sessions in the WWDC schedule.
WWDC predictions for Mac OS X 10.10:
- Just a visual refresh, or notable improvements to the core OS as well?
- Apple shuffling engineers around to work on the new hotness while neglecting its established platforms and applications.
- Modernization or replacement of AppKit, possibly by bringing the relevant parts of UIKit to Mac?
- Is there any hope for a new filesystem, possibly by evolving Core Storage?
WWDC predictions for iOS 8:
- Better inter-app communication:
  - A system like Contracts or Intents?
  - Involving remote view controllers?
  - Side-by-side iPad multitasking?
- Springboard enhancements?
- Please kill Newsstand. Please. Just make them normal app icons.
- Could Remote View Controllers and Background Refresh be used for widgets, live tiles, or dynamic icons?
- Customizable default browser, mail app, etc.?
WWDC predictions for new or improved web services:

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66: Boiling A Pretty Big Lake May 22, 2014

Show notes

The modern Apple-store experience
Follow-up:
- Marco reneges on his recent praise of Beats headphones, then receives the saddest real-time follow-up ever
- Headphones mentioned:
  - B&O BeoPlay H6: Great comfort, but not sound.
  - Beyerdynamic DT-770 Pro (32-ohm version; Casey's headphones) for very good sound at a great value (when the price drops to $175).
  - Sennheiser PX 200-II i: Marco's favorite portable set. Great portability, clicker, and value, but poor sound and durability.
  - More picks from Marco
  - Ultimate Ears TripleFi 10 (Casey's earphones)
- Net Neutrality
Nintendo's sad trombone
- Nintendo in Crisis
- PS4 outperforms Xbone
- Game Controller Programming Guide
- Nintendo 64 Accessories
  - Expansion Pak
  - Rumble Pak
- Kinect-free Xbone
Beginnings of WWDC predictions
- Odwalla
- Healthbook
  - VO2
- The Prompt on Carousel, one of their many photo-management-related episodes
- The Infinite Version
- Casey and Marco explore mixed metaphors... politely. Ish.
- _ on the state of the Apple community
- WebObjects
- Fnd.io
- Multipath TCP
After-show:
- iOS 8 split-screen multitasking
- John obliquely discusses some Overcast complaints.
- Wearables. Sorta.
- More on headphones.
- John was wrong about something.

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65: The Year Of Casey May 18, 2014

Show notes

Casey's big news! (Much better than The Year of Luigi.)
Casey and John discuss Monument Valley, the Escher-inspired puzzle game. (Marco didn't do his homework.)
Apple and Google agree to... something
- "Fight the real enemy"
Apple might be buying Beats: why, and what they'd probably do with it.
WebKit optimizes Javascript with LLVM
- Wat
- The Birth & Death of JavaScript
"Full-stack developers" keeping up with the crazy world of Javascript frameworks.
Using third-party code.

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64: It Never Died Because It Never Lived May 08, 2014

Show notes

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Follow-up:
- Who plays video games vs. self-identified "gamers"
- ComiXology
  - Is Apple's 30% cut of in-app purchases the same as net neutrality?
  - Vihart Video
  - Internet2
  - Who should blink, Apple or ComiXology?
- AppLinks
App.net sunsets its employees
- Brianna Wu's Post
- Tent
Chrome experiments with removing URLs from the omnibox
Casey open-sourced his Camel blog engine
After-show:
- Casey's flower boxes
- John's code on CPAN
  - Rose
- Marco's bastardized K&R style wedged into his Objective-C code
- Brent Simmons on Javascript integers

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63: I Hold My Children To A Higher Standard May 02, 2014

Show notes

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Follow-up:
- Average age of gamers (more here and here from the Entertainment Software Association)
- Your favorite game genres going out of fashion
- Apps and games Mentioned:
Facebook App Links
- MacStories
- Rene Ritchie
ComiXology removes in-app purchase
- Back to Work
- Office for iPad/iPhone
After-show:
- Burstly acquired by Apple, which brings TestFlight with it.
- Casey's new website

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