Accidental Tech Podcast

By Marco Arment, Casey Liss, John Siracusa

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

· Technology

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FAQs about Accidental Tech Podcast:

How many episodes does Accidental Tech Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 459 episodes available.

Accidental Tech Podcast episodes:

April 04, 201459: The Little Puck That Could
Follow-up on vocabulary and Michael Abrash joining Oculus.
Amazon Fire TV — no fan!
USB-IF's renderings of their proposed new connector
The giant anti-poaching collusion between Google, Apple, and dozens of other companies (Facebook apparently refused)
Google checking with Steve Jobs first before making a hiring decision
After-show: We tried to predict WWDC dates, not knowing that Apple would announce them 12 hours later, then discussed ticket lotteries and how Apple probably wouldn't build one. (Yeah.)
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1h 41min
March 28, 201458: Always On Vacation In California
Follow-up on discussing sexism in technology, Anil's experiment, empathy, ad hominem tu quoque, and cultural rigidity.
Facebook buying Oculus:
Outrage from Oculus' Kickstarter backers, including from Minecraft creator Notch, and the expectations that Kickstarter creates in "backers".
Why did Oculus sell? How far into the future did Oculus' "vision" extend, and what will happen to its vision now?
Why did Facebook buy? Does Mark Zuckerberg have a clear vision for Facebook's future?
Facebook's Hack language extension to PHP:
PHP is poorly designed but very practical.
The risks of using Hack (Marco's two posts).
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Igloo: Igloo is an intranet you'll actually like. (Nobody likes SharePoint.)
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2h 1min
March 21, 201457: Smorgasbord of Pronunciation
Follow-up on the complexity of computer science versus other fields: quotes and videos from MIT's SICP class (9:00–10:45).
The death of the iPad 2, the use of sapphire in Apple devices, sapphire versus Gorilla Glass, and the flexible LG phone.
Haunted Empire, the Jony Ive book, the Jony Ive interview, access to Apple, and hiring hacks for tech stories.
Sony's Project Morpheus VR headset and initial impressions
The Oculus Rift
Michael Abrash's blog posts:
Two Possible Paths into the Future of Wearable Computing Part 1
When it comes to resolution, it's all relative
Latency – the sine qua non of AR and VR
Raster-Scan Displays: More Than Meets the Eye
Game Developers Conference and space-time diagrams
Why virtual isn't real to your brain
Down the VR rabbit hole: Fixing judder
John Carmack and his latency mitigation strategies
Casey's birthday party as a child
Why Oculus hopes Project Morpheus is good
The GitHub hubbub, sexism, and how to get better (such as App Camp for Girls).
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1h 35min
March 14, 201456: The Woodpecker
Follow-up on software complexity: The Mythical Man-Month, No Silver Bullet, the original Agile manifesto, and what Agile has become.
What we found most useful from our computer-science educations.
Marco's impressions of his new Mac Pro.
External disks, PCI-Express SSDs, and cable management.
John buys a home-theater AV receiver. (The newer version he didn't need)
Stereo vs. surround speakers, and integrated vs. external subwoofers. (Marco's tiny, buggy amp and great speakers).
After-show: Pono, ABX tests, mp3ornot.
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2h 6min
March 06, 201455: Dave, Who Stinks!
Follow-up on Final Draft and treating warnings as exceptions in production.
Software methodologies. For real this time.
Why don’t software development methodologies work?
Evidence-based scheduling.
Marco plugs FCModel, Casey plugs his Debug appearance, and John plugs bleeps and boops.
After-show: CarPlay, and £1,600 audiophile Ethernet cables (via Dalton).
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2h 11min
February 28, 201454: goto fail;
Wolfram Language.
The "goto fail" SSL bug and the chances that it was nefariously introduced by an NSA effort, possibly as part of their $250 million annual budget for such operations.
Apple's warrant canary.
Casey's and Marco's hard-to-find bugs and language misfeatures. (Perl protects John from writing bugs.)
Whether language-interpreter warnings should be treated as errors in production.
The Scriptnotes episode with the Final Draft CEO, the follow-up in the next episode, and Kent Tessman's response.
After-show: Google lobbying against Glass bans while driving, and Objective-C exception conventions.
Next week will be the Software Methodologies show. For real this time!
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1h 53min
February 21, 201453: There's Gonna Be Some Flapping
Follow-up on why Flappy Bird was successful.
Kieran Healy's excellent article with science.
John Gruber and Merlin Mann at SXSW '09.
Goofball Jones' anonymous criticism of John's "shtick", and John's defense including many links:
An explanation of John's "schtick"
Some podcasts where John talks about things he likes:
Goodfellas
I Like My Coffee Like My Evil Sith Lords
Death Star University
Darth Vader's Office is Really Weird
Jedi Weekend
Wind is the Enemy
Skywalker's Eleven
Also Known as Endor
Journey: Then We Touched, Then We Sang
Professor Siracusa's Anime 101
Hangin' With the Totes
Masterpiece: Ico
The Incomparable #100: Who Cares What We Think? - Why we do podcasts about what we think of things, good and bad.
An ATP episode about how we deal with criticism
The massive WhatsApp acquistion by Facebook, the huge value of mobile messaging, and the web giants' chilling effect on competition.
The "Copland 2010" argument that Objective-C needs to be replaced:
John's original "Copland 2010" article from 2005
Copland 2010 Revisited (in 2010)
We Need to Replace Objective-C (Ash Furrow)
Replacing Objective-C and Cocoa (Steve Streza)
Objective: Copland 2010 (Guy English)
Separating language shortcomings from API shortcomings.
Casey got us to talk about LINQ briefly.
Long-term evolution of programming languages.
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2h 6min
February 14, 201452: Necessary But Not Sufficient
Facebook Paper's gesture usability, in-app tutorial videos, and the design challenge of gestural interface.
RootMetrics testing real-world wireless speeds.
Despite constant effort to improve usability, what if computers just aren't for everyone? (There's a similar long-standing debate with programming. See 4GL.)
The Flappy Bird saga: Whether it's a good game and why the developer pulled it. (See also: Super Hexagon.)
Is free-with-in-app-purchase ruining the game industry?.
Comcast buying Time Warner and the implications on U.S. broadband competition.
The stupid new top-level domains (TLDs).
iBeacons and Bluetooth LE in stores and .museums.
After-show: Bionic on new TLDs (at 26:50) and whether the TLDs are just a scam by ICANN, Patreon, and yet more on the Mac Pro.
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1h 48min
February 07, 201451: Maybe We're Just Dinosaurs
The FiOS net-neutrality non-story and last summer's YouTube-throttling story.
More FU on iPads going pro, giant-tablet-desk ergonomics, trying to understand John's theory again, and a train analogy from Casey.
New Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Bill Gates' new wildcard role, and Microsoft's likely future direction. (Marco's post, John Gruber's post, Brent Simmons' post)
Paper, Paper, Paper, Fifty Three, and Figure 53.
Responsibly naming things by first searching for trademark conflicts and potentially applying for your own trademark.
Apple's role in App Store name conflicts.
Facebook Paper's opportunity cost to the world.
After-show: More on Microsoft and some Retina MacBook Air speculation.
Sponsored by:
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Ting: Mobile that makes sense. No contracts, and pay only for what you use.
lynda.com: Learn at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials. Free 7-day trial.

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1h 57min
January 31, 201450: Disk Light Observer Effect
Follow-up on why an iPad "Pro" needs to be larger and why iOS is "better for people".
Can iOS add more power-user functionality without harming its simplicity or usability?
Whether Macs should ship with ARM CPUs, how such a transition would be challenging today, and whether Casey should just buy another power adapter.
The 30th anniversary of the Macintosh and the experience of using its power switch (photo from iFixit's awesome teardown).
Disk-ejecting usability.
Using iStat Menus to monitor your performance and assist future hardware decisions. (Or not.)
Lenovo buying Motorola's pillaged carcass from Google, and whether they ruined the IBM ThinkPad.
After-show: What will we reflect on in 20 years as being the obvious sore spot with computers today?
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1h 55min

FAQs about Accidental Tech Podcast:

How many episodes does Accidental Tech Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 459 episodes available.