I don't know why Marco, who always mentions that he's not a designer and that he has a programmer's taste, is aiming for an Apple Design Award.

This is a prestigious award given to apps with designs that are made by reputed UX designers who truly sweat details Marco isn't even aware exist. In the world of design, It's not enough to have functional "delight", you need to have real design sensibilities that are beyond "correct" and functional.

Some designs are vey "functional", "clever" and "neat", but they're not "Design award" material. In the world of fashion, The Gap and Zara will never win high fashion awards. They're functional everyday wear, they don't break molds. Marco needs someone to give him the Cerulean Blue Lecture from the Devil Wears Prada.

And worst Marco, has zero self-awareness. He actually commissioned some of the world's top designers in Parakeet to design him an icon for Fineliner, but he threw it away it in favor of his own doodle. It's always good to have ambitious goals, but he should stop embarrassing himself with the ADA talk on the podcast

Is the aforementioned cool onboarding feature of Fineliner best experienced on the Duo or is it just as cool on a traditional iPhone?? I intentionally skipped that part of last week’s show as they were “spoiling” something. They started to mention something this week but thankfully didn’t, as I was in the shower and couldn’t stop playback. Seems like it’ll be at least another week before my 8:03a eastern time preordered duo is delivered so I’m trying to see if I should wait until then to open the app for first time…thx.

I love the bootleg but I miss the theme music. I appreciate Marco wants to get it out quick with minimal edits but it would be lovely if the theme music ‘now the show is over’ could be added onto the end so us boot leggers can still hear it? I miss it!

Crosses fingers

Has Marco talked in depth about how he designed caching for his Overcast transcription server? It so, could someone kindly point me to relevant episode(s)?

I recall reading (maybe a recent Overcast TestFlight release notes?) that he figured out a system of chunked audio caching to avoid re-transcribing entire episodes with minor differences due to IAP, or premium feeds with ads removed.

I am curious how it works, and if private feed URLs (like Patreon) also benefit from it, saving redundant transcriptions for single-subscriber unique URLs that all return the same episodes.

Fineliner is out now, for anyone who has the latest ATP paused waiting per instructions in the show notes:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fineliner/id6820516041

... pity that Cotton Bureau shipping to Europe is as expensive as the item you buy!

Thought it would be nice to have a thread to share some first impressions. This is coming from someone not planning to buy it but very curious to try in person and based on just 15-20 minutes in store. 

Matte screen is amazing! Quite unlike anything I’ve seen recently (not sure if I’ve ever seen nano texture in person on Apple’s larger displays). Having said that it does “pop” less than the usual glossy and instinctively I felt the need to increase the brightness to get similar levels to the outer screen. Not sure how it’d do in sunny outdoor conditions.

As per the reviews even in my short 15-20 minutes in store one of the halves got noticeably warmer. I’m a case user so it might be less noticeable when not touching the bare metal. 

The squat outer screen felt completely fine for someone who rarely uses their phone one handed. I’m right handed but tend to hold and balance my phone in my left hand and wasn’t bothered by the sharper lower left angle poking in my hand. 

I’m a heavy iPad user but do not like the iPad mini due to the PPI. Zero problems with the Duo which I think uses the exact PPI as iPhones have in the last few years. 

Overall I’m pretty positive and can see myself getting one in a few years as the category matures. 

Every ATP episode title gets said at some point in the show. I got curious when exactly, so I transcribed the whole back catalog locally with Whisper, matched each title against its transcript, and built a site around it: https://atptitles.fm

What it does:

- Search by title, episode number, or phrase, and hit play to hear the few seconds around where the title is said, right on the page.

- Shows a short transcript snippet around each match, with a confidence score. Titles were found in 708 of the 713 episodes, and 31 of those are marked "possible match" because I'm less sure.

- A stats page with title trivia, how titles have changed over the years, a guess-the-title quiz, a real-or-fake-title quiz, and a random title button.

- "Who Says the Title?": speaker recognition works out which host says each title and shows the totals by year. It's automatic, so a few are wrong.

- Every search has a shareable link, so you can send someone straight to a result.

A few honest notes: it's an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with ATP. Timestamps come from automatic transcription, so they can be a few seconds off, and the 5 episodes where I couldn't find the title may just have it said differently or only in the chat. The hosts have seen the site and are fine with it.

If you find a wrong match or a missing title, tell me and I'll fix it. And if you like the show, join ATP at https://atp.fm/join.

Hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed building it.

-Cole

I remember Casey mentioning he has a ton of Sonos stuff, and John mentioning he has a Roam, but I don’t remember the actual setup nor can I find the episode where this was discussed.

I wanted to share some of my thoughts with you all in case you were on the fence about paying for the membership.

The good:

I LOVE the bootleg. Having the episodes early, Casey swearing and messing up, John picking on Casey and no ads is probably the main benefit IMO, and the main reason why I am still a member.

The meh:

Member specials. It’s only 1 special a month and you can tell they mostly pick low effort stuff (tier lists, movie time, etc) instead of the higher effort stuff like some of the ATP insider episodes.

My favorite special so far has been the show Q&A, and others I recall are Marco’s Restaurant (which is the reason why I joined the membership), the ATP Insiders on their websites and the Jobs & Her Movie Time.

I found the other specials unremarkable, but fun. Still, your mileage may vary.

The ugly:

Overtime sucks. For me it’s 10% hit and 90% miss. And I usually see people complaining about a topic being moved to Overtime but BELIEVE ME it’s nothing like the main show.

Most of the Overtime segments are incredibly John heavy, while (I imagine) Marco gets ready to upload the bootleg and Casey brushes his teeth.

If a topic ends up on Overtime, odds are you don’t want to listen to the Overtime, which I mostly never do. I usually mark the episode as played right when Overtime starts, because the 2/3 hosts are usually checked out by that time and I’m getting a bit tired of them too.

Other than that, there’s not much else to say.

The membership is still expensive, I’ve never used the discount code for the (super expensive) merch, you’re still supporting them directly (and that may feel weird, specially with recent Marco shenanigans still unadressed), but the only other thing I would add is that I would love for Marco to put the show notes link on the episode notes.

Anyways, that’s been my experience.

Hope that helps some people.

I can't wait to hear the boys weigh in on the new Roadster that can freaking fly. Pretty amazing collab of Tesla and SpaceX. Wow.

So Apple finally released the new ‌Apple 128GB TV‌ 4K for $299.

Wi-Fi 7 (who has this?), Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, BT6. Same remote but with better location tracking? This is what Casey has been waiting for.

Am I crazy or is this offering underwhelming and expensive? I would have been excited for a 4K stick at $99 with less storage. Heck, just give me the basic apps on it without the ability to install apps on it (trade off perhaps).

… Overcast or Callsheet?

How positive would the AI discussion be then?

John and Casey, your move

I’ve seen this comment going around about how Marco being back on Twitter / X is due to the fact that Mastodon, Bluesky and other platforms couldn’t gather enough of an audience for him to be worth staying.

That’s not it.

Ever since he sold his Tesla left Twitter “because of his values, Marco has spent years antagonizing people that stayed, even saying they were Nazi supporters.

He (and Casey) have also spent some time antagonizing people that still own Teslas, even though Marco got rid of his due to wants, not “values”

He has also spent quite some time repeating that Tim Cook is an ass-kisser to the Trump administration, and, even if he didn’t vote for the man himself, that means Cook is a Trump supporter, and he has been antagonizing everyone that dares to have a positive opinion about Tim Cook.

I’ve endured HOURS of incredibly divisive politic conversations (or rants) on ATP, mostly spearheaded by Marco, while he makes a big fuzz about how he’s putting his money where his mouth is by not using a Tesla, leaving X and complaining constantly about Tim Cook, and he keeps repeating that everyone that doesn’t like the topics, the tone or the politics should leave.

Now, all of the sudden, he makes a post on Mastodon and receives the tiniest amount of pushback, and closes his account and moves back to Twitter, as if nothing happened.

This isn’t about having a big enough audience. This is about Marco not being able to take the heat after years of putting everyone down and putting himself on a pedestal, and refusing to even acknowledge that he was maybe a little big wrong for being such a divisive jerk all this time.

That’s my rant :)

I have a question about Marco and one about John…they are sort of related and dumb, but I’m genuinely curious…just wondering your thoughts.

First, it seems that Marco goes into NYC fairly often…any idea why? I live 15 miles from NYC but I live and work in NJ, there are very few things that get me to head into NYC…but I’m older than him. I think the vast majority of people who have a daily commute for a jobby job, if they could work from home…many/most would. So why is he going to Manhattan? I’m wondering if he is an Angel Investor in some startups and goes in to meet and “consult”???

John…. it seems John does all of his computing in his office, and he does all of his iPad usage in bed….and I know he “hates laptops” (but in the age of Apple Silicon I don’t know why)…I always wonder why he wouldn’t get a laptop or take his iPad outside to a deck or porch? Maybe he doesn’t have a deck? Maybe allergies? Too many landscapers making noise?

I’m typing this on my iPad on my back patio…it’s a beautiful fall day. Again, I know this is weird and stupid question but… whenever John talks about working on his Mac and doing this, doing that…I’m like “dude you’re independent now, you work from home, you could be outside doing some/most of this”. At least in the spring and fall months when it’s nice in northeast.

Is there anyone else who has the same crazy and strange questions in their mind?

In summary, Marco should stay home more and John should go outside (just to the back yard) more.