Accidental Tech Podcast

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**Accidental Tech Podcast**

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

Latest Episodes:

42: The Ultimate Vanity Search Dec 06, 2013

Show notes

FU on PrimeSense.
Apple's acquisition of Topsy and speculation on why.
Apple's possible difficulty in getting and keeping enough engineering talent, and how they might make bigger strides in web services.
Which group wears the pants in a company?
Marco's embarrassing FiOS support calls.
How Apple's release and marketing schedule affects their web services.
Methodologies and vocabularies.
USB spec group will add a reversible connector, the history of terrible USB connectors (see also: Hypercritical #5 from around 45 minutes, Hypercritical #6 from around 9 minutes, and the entire rest of the series, too), Lightning epitomizing Apple.
Dell renews hope for desktop Retina with the new Mac Pro, single big monitors vs. dual smaller ones, and higher-than-native resolution scaling on the Retina MacBook Pro (see also: Eye-Friendly).
Waiting for a new technology to fully mature before switching, or adopting it earlier with tradeoffs and hacks.
Texas.

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41: Penny Wise, Pound Foolish Nov 29, 2013

Show notes

David Chartier's clarification on Photo Stream limits.
Space Monkey, Transporter, Box, and Xdrive.
Results of John's Disk Utility repair survey. (John on Debug)
Xbox One launch sales.
Apple buys PrimeSense.
Apple's potential expansion into the TV business.
Penny Arcade's job posting, Marco's reaction, and the outgoing employee's description.
Extended after-show: how we deal with criticism, trolls, and our own flaws when facing our audience.

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40: The Compliance Shark Nov 22, 2013

Show notes

Follow-up on Cisco VPNs on Mavericks and [photo backups] to SkyDrive on Windows Mobile Phone Series Metro Not-Metro Phone Windows.
Why enterprise software is so hard, and the barriers to entry for small companies targeting the enterprise market.
Game-console sales by generation, Nintendo In Crisis, and AnandTech's Xbox One and PS4 mini-review.
Casey's new Retina iPad Mini, Marco's accidentally popular image-retention test, DisplayMate quality analysis, free data with a T-Mobile SIM, and choosing between the iPad Air and Retina Mini.
A7 thermal throttling in iPhone 5S, iPad Air, and Retina iPad Mini, and deeper analysis of the A7.
John's disk-corruption adventure and why you should "repair" your HFS disks. Take John's disk-repair results survey!
Ending Theme Song 2.0 by Jonathan Mann. (We still like the old one, so we'll keep it but rotate this in sometimes.)
After-show: Fraser Speirs producing his podcast on an iPad, Back to Work 146 with Dan possibly going iPad-only, SimCity 2000 on SNES, Lex's Logitech Ultrathin Mini keyboard review, Apple refurb discounts, and the Casio B.O.S.S., which can even exchange data with a PC!

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39: Desperation Mode Nov 15, 2013

Show notes

John's new Museum of Mediocre Reading Devices.
The confusing Photo Stream limits, and all of these links in the show notes.
Stephen Elop's If-I-Were-CEO Plan.
A story about enterprise software.
The four big assumptions about using enterprise software, why it's usually so terrible, and why big companies buy it.

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38: Auto-Update My Parents Nov 08, 2013

Show notes

Thanks to Jim Pierce for extending John's dog. (Also mentioned: AntiCrop, Glide)
Everpix's failure and impending shutdown:
- The Verge's profile of the failure
- Shutdown FAQ
- Staff tweet about compression and average usage
- Staff tweet about "3x userbase" needed
- Somewhat similar services: Loom, Picturelife, Adobe Revel
Everpix's critical strategic error, and how tech business and funding strategies should resemble Puerto Rico game strategies).
Revisiting the challenges of online photo storage and why Apple isn't offering something like Everpix with iCloud.
Answers to the last listener questions about John's Mavericks review.

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37: A 3,000-Word Digression Nov 01, 2013

Show notes

Some light Mac Pro waffling and the red one.
iOS 7.0.3's new crossfade animations in "Reduce Motion" mode.
Little tidbits and windows into the life of John Siracusa buried in his OS X Mavericks review.
Noodling John with random questions.
Dragon Drop and Cocoapods don't suck.
The big potential section of the Mavericks review that John omitted.
Choosing high-level and low-level details to include in the review.
Tags and the filesystem.
Publishing the review ebooks, and relative sales between iBooks and Kindle.
Marco's postmortem on his past Kindle efforts. (Museum of Mediocre Reading Devices, CueCat)
Mavericks' theme and the Mac's constant battle between power users and ease of use.
Will John keep doing OS X reviews?

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36: A Weird One Oct 24, 2013

Show notes

The John Siracusa Mavericks review is up!
Apple's event, the presenters' pacing and enthusiasm, Casey's bag of hearts, and yet another showing of the dots video.
The Retina MacBook Pro update.
The Mac Pro base price, CPU options, and speculation on SSD pricing.
The iPad Air, Retina iPad Mini, iPad 2 (LOL), and iPod Classic.
Apple's prod of free software.
John's high-level summary of Mavericks and recommendation on upgrading.
Listener homework: Read the review before next week's episode.

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35: Sea-Level Executives Oct 18, 2013

Show notes

Ebook-publishing woes and trying to coordinate a specific release date.
Apple hiring the CEO of Burberry to head their retail division, and the Louis Vuitton logo.
The challenges of retail leadership.
Touch ID impressions after a weekend of heavy use, and whether you should keep your phone secure for other people's benefit.
How Touch ID could be used in Macs, and whether ARM MacBooks would be worth the transition costs.
Speculation on next week's product announcements.
Where a potential 12" Retina MacBook Pro could fit in the lineup.

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34: Made The Dot Smaller Oct 10, 2013

Show notes

Siri expectations and unreliability in popular culture.
Can Apple ever dramatically improve their web services, and how much pressure do they feel to do so?
The sorry state of online payment processing before Stripe, and improving the current sorry state of money transfers (especially in the U.S.) with services such as Dwolla and Square Cash.
The Mavericks GM.
Drawbacks of a Readability-like model for paying podcast producers in Overcast, and Instacast's 2012 rejection for Flattr integration.
Different priorities for podcast playback and management.

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33: A 30-Minute Skip Button Oct 04, 2013

Show notes

When we expected the Mavericks GM (recorded two hours before this).
Apparent new E5-1680 Mac Pro in Geekbench and what CPU tradeoffs to expect in the new Mac Pro.
Speculating on the new Mac Pro's fan noise, rotating cable management, and intended desk location.
FU on John's podcast-scrubber idea. (Spoiler: he knows about the vertical speed-scaling that's been in Apple's scrubber for years, and it's not what he wants.)
Experimenting with new UI controls and behaviors: some end up being cool and useful in practice, but many don't.
Marco's brief adventure in designing a custom binary sync protocol.
The potential conflict of interest of avoiding automatic ad-skipping features in Overcast since Marco gets income from ads on this podcast, and the ethics of publishing all podcasts' subscriber stats on the site.
iPhone 5S cases.
Laptop battery health and potential automatic battery conditioning.

Sponsored by:

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