Episode Summary
Executive Summary: The episode covers follow-ups on Thailand’s 2011 floods and hard-drive reliability, then dives into backup strategies for Synology/Time Machine/CrashPlan, Apple’s new MacBook battery behavior under load, WWDC ticket lottery frustrations, ATP shirt sales, and a long, detailed review of Photos for OS X—praising its cloud integration and file-preserving import model while criticizing performance, family sharing limitations, and iCloud pricing.
Main Topics: Thailand floods and hard-drive failure context: The hosts correct an earlier mistake about the cause of Seagate drive problems, clarifying it was Thailand’s 2011 floods rather than the 2004 tsunami, and discuss why the flood likely still affected drive quality and supply. Backup and storage strategies for Synology/NAS setups: The hosts compare approaches to spare drives, RAID, Time Machine, network backups, and CrashPlan, emphasizing redundancy and the difference between RAID and true backup. MacBook battery life under load: They discuss AnandTech’s testing of the 12-inch MacBook and broader Apple notebook battery trade-offs, arguing that thinness has become over-prioritized relative to battery capacity and sustained workload endurance. WWDC ticket lottery and payment failures: The lottery system is analyzed as mostly fair but flawed because some winners lost tickets when credit-card fraud systems blocked charges and Apple moved on too quickly. Photos for OS X: workflow, performance, and cloud sync: A deep discussion of Photos covers import behavior, hard-link migration from iPhoto, editing and browsing speed, iCloud Photo Library behavior, and how it compares to iPhoto/Aperture/Lightroom. Photos pricing and cloud competition: Apple’s storage pricing is compared with Dropbox, OneDrive, Amazon Cloud Drive, and Picture Life, with the conclusion that Apple’s integration is strong but its storage pricing is not competitive. Side commentary on ATP shirts and sponsors: The hosts briefly discuss ATP shirt sales, including the underperforming white women’s sport shirt, and integrate sponsor reads for Cards Against Humanity, Squarespace, and JackThreads.
Key Arguments: The Thailand drive issue was caused by the 2011 floods, not the 2004 tsunami, and even if factories were not directly submerged, the flood still likely disrupted manufacturing and quality. RAID is not backup; the more important goal for many users is preserving data and minimizing downtime, not maximizing uptime at all costs. A good backup system should include multiple layers: local copies, Time Machine, network backup, and ideally offsite/cloud backup. Apple’s MacBook and broader notebook lineup increasingly optimize for thinness and weight at the expense of sustained battery life under realistic heavy workloads. The 12-inch MacBook surprisingly had the smallest drop in battery life from light to heavy load among tested Apple laptops, but heavy-use endurance was still only around five hours. WWDC’s lottery system was more equitable than prior years’ multi-entry approach, but Apple’s immediate reallocation of tickets after payment failures made the process feel unfair to some winners. Photos for OS X is a strong replacement for iPhoto for many users because it preserves local files, uses hard links for migration, and offers good cloud integration without forcing cloud-only storage. Photos is still imperfect: it is slower than hoped for large libraries, has weak family-library sharing, and its iCloud pricing is less competitive than some alternatives. For family photo sharing, Apple has not solved the core problem of a shared family library; current tools require manual sharing rather than automatic pooled access. Cloud sync is not the same as backup: deleting data in Photos/iCloud can propagate rapidly across devices and backups if those backups are not versioned.
Data Points: Seagate drive failure rate in Backblaze sample: ~90% dead in four years - Referenced in the discussion of drives bought around the Thailand flood period Thailand flood year: 2011 - Identified as the real disaster behind the hard-drive supply disruption Thailand tsunami year: 2004 - Clarified as a different event in a different part of Thailand MacBook battery-life retention at load: 62.2% - The 12-inch MacBook had the best heavy-vs-light battery retention in AnandTech’s comparison Next-best battery-life retention: 59% - Second-place notebook in the AnandTech comparison Worst battery-life retention: 38.3% - 11-inch 2011 MacBook Air in the AnandTech comparison 12-inch MacBook battery life under heavy load: 5.03 hours - AnandTech’s measured endurance under a heavier workload Retina MacBook battery life under heavy load: Under 5 hours - General statement that Retina machines did poorly under heavier usage Light-use MacBook Air battery life: 12 hours - 13-inch non-Retina MacBook Air light browsing benchmark mentioned in discussion WWDC ticket charge amount: $1,600 - The amount Apple attempted to charge lottery winners for WWDC tickets ATP regular shirt sales: ~600 - Sales count mentioned during shirt campaign update ATP sport shirt sales: 216 - Sales count for the sport shirt campaign ATP edition shirt sales: 108 - Sales count for the edition shirt campaign White women’s ATP sport shirt sales: 3 - The underperforming variant that still reached the print threshold Photos library size: 67,000 photos - John’s library size used for evaluating Photos performance Photos library size in storage: 118 GB - Casey’s library size as reported by Picture Life iPhoto library size: 260–270 GB - John’s existing iPhoto library imported into Photos iCloud storage tiers: 5 GB free; 20 GB $1/month; 200 GB $4/month; 500 GB $10/month; 1 TB $20/month - Apple Photos/iCloud pricing discussed in comparison to competitors Dropbox pricing comparison: 1 TB for $10/month - Used as a direct comparison to Apple’s 500 GB for $10/month Amazon Cloud Drive pricing: Unlimited photos + 5 GB video for $12/year; unlimited photos and video for $60/year - Presented as much cheaper than Apple’s pricing OneDrive pricing comparison: 15 GB free; 100 GB $2/month; 200 GB $4/month; 1 TB $7/month - Used to show Apple’s 1 TB tier is expensive Picture Life pricing comparison: 25 GB $5/month; 100 GB $10/month; unlimited $15/month - Another cheaper unlimited-storage alternative WWDC ticket processing deadline: about 24 hours suggested - Proposed grace period for failed credit-card charges Photo import/upload duration: ~2 days / ~48 hours - John’s Photos upload of 67,000 photos to iCloud Photo picker delay on iOS: 10–15 seconds - Time it took for the picker to appear with a very large library
Pivotal Quotes: "RAID is not a backup strategy." — John: Explaining why his storage setup prioritizes multiple copies and versioned backups over redundancy alone "I would pay double these prices for storage if it had two things: the ability to handle my library with much available performance, and the ability to share photos in my family in the way that I want." — John: Summarizing the main reasons Photos for OS X still falls short for his use case "Cloud sync is not a backup." — John: Warning that deletions can propagate across devices and wipe out data if versioned backups are not also in place
Implications: For users, Photos is promising but not yet a universal photo-management solution; backups and local archives remain essential. For Apple, performance, shared-family workflows, and more competitive storage pricing are the biggest gaps to close.