In his Siracusian-length iOS 9 review, Federico Viticci shares a neat tip:

The other addition to Reminders in iOS 9 is the ability to create reminders for when you’re getting in or out of your car. These reminders use a Bluetooth connection in your car to determine when your device has entered or left the vehicle, which can be useful to remember to do something before driving or immediately after stopping.

I use reminders often to remind me to do things when I get home, or when I get to work. Now I can use reminders when I get in or get out of my car. You can set these reminders using Siri, or by specifying your car as a location:

I tried this with my 2011 BMW, which has no aftermarket modifications to the stereo, and it worked no problem. Very cool.

In combination, my experience and the image above seem to answer Federico’s follow-on question:

To this day, Apple hasn’t clarified whether car reminders in iOS 9 require CarPlay or can work with generic car Bluetooth and third-party accessories.

Sure does work with non-CarPlay cars. Moreover, if you happen to have your phone paired to more than one car, the verbiage on the image above seems to indicate that these reminders will fire when getting into or out of any car your phone knows about.

I’ve told this story before, but only on that show no one listened to.

It’s the fall of 1998. I was nearly 17 years old, and have recently achieved freedom — I’d had my driver’s license for about two weeks. I was out hanging at a friend’s house into the early evening.

My parents’ house had a very steep driveway leading up to a flat section where the house was. At the bottom of the drive was something that… didn’t belong. It was a Ferrari. Even at night, I could tell it was Ferrari red, of course.

I drove up the drive, and it immediately occurred to me why there was a quarter million dollar car at the bottom of the driveway. The Galantes must be here.

I grew up all over the US, but my family spent 20 years in New Fairfield, Connecticut. A very small town around an hour from Manhattan on a good day, it was a nice place to grow up. I moved there when I was in eighth grade. My youngest brother, eight years my junior, spent his entire childhood there. Just a year ago my parents retired, left New Fairfield, and settled outside Charlottesville, Virginia.

My parents had a group of friends of various backgrounds. Many of whom they met through my mom’s participation in the Community Service Club. One of those was Mrs. Galante. Her husband, Jimmy, was somewhat of a local celebrity. Though there were many wealthy families in New Fairfield, the Galantes were unequivocally one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest.

Mr. Galante owned several local garbage companies, including the local company Automated Waste Disposal. Everyone raised an eyebrow at a man with a clearly Italian-sounding surname owning a garbage company so near to New York, but no one ever said anything.

Furthermore, Mr. Galante donated oodles of money to the community, including single-handedly bankrolling a complete rebuild of my high school’s football field, track, and a nearby playground.

To me, he was just a family friend, who tended to get along well with the kids. He was Mr. Galante.

I pulled up our driveway, and got out of my 1994 Saturn SL2. (I loved that car, up until the time a wheel fell off while I was driving it.) Getting out, and walking in the house, I knew I had to go poke my head in where my parents and their friends were.

Walking in, after saying hi to everyone, I immediately looked at Mr. Galante.

“Nice car.”

“Thanks! Want to go for a ride?”

“😳 … Um, sure!”

My parents lived a couple of streets away from a road that was around 1.5 miles (2.5 km) long and nearly straight as an arrow. We took off down the road, with Mr. Galante driving reasonably conservatively. At the end of that road, we hit a T. We could make a long loop back to Mom and Dad’s, but we didn’t.

Briefly heartbroken to know that my ride was ending after only a couple more minutes, I bit my tongue and just reminded myself I was riding in a Ferrari. These sorts of things don’t exactly happen every day.

Mr. Galante completed his U-turn, but then he stopped dead. The road had barely any shoulder, so we were blocking travel in one direction. Luckily, New Fairfield is a small town, and we were only stopped for a moment. Not knowing what was going on, I was very confused. This confusion escalated when Mr. Galante got out of the car, calling something over his shoulder as he did so.

I had to mentally rewind what he said two or three times before I put it together.

“Your turn.”

The next thing I knew, I was buckled in, behind the wheel of a Ferrari. I place my feet on the pedals, and immediately realize all three of them were on top of each other.

I immediately gave thanks for not only learning to drive on that Saturn — itself a 5-speed — but for taking my driving test on it. If I can handle that, I can handle this, right? This… Ferrari?

Despite the pedals that were seemingly on top of each other, I was able to take off, and to do so without stalling. So far so good. I didn’t beat on the car any, since it wasn’t mine, I barely knew how to drive in the first place, and it was worth as much as a house.

After a minute or so, which felt like one glorious hour, Mr. Galante very calmly looked over at me and asked me,

“How fast do you think we’re going?”

The road had a 45 MPH (70 KPH) speed limit. I felt like I was crawling; I really didn’t want to mess up this Ferrari. I looked down to the speedomoeter, so I could answer Mr. Galante’s question. I stumbled for a second, because there, in the center of the speedometer, was a prancing horse. Awesome.

Finally getting control of myself again, I concentrated on finding the answer to his question. I figured I was going around 35 or 40. Though not an experienced driver, it doesn’t take long to get a rough feel for how fast you’re going. As it turns out, I was doing about 80. Oops.

I adjusted my speed, and continued the drive home. We got to the bottom of the driveway, I turned off the car, and I thanked Mr. Galante for letting me drive his Ferrari.

Looking at it objectively, it was probably the most boring drive I’d ever made in my short time as a licensed driver. Reflecting on it, it was one of the most exciting.

To this day, I can’t recollect what Ferrari it was, and I’m ashamed for it. I think it was a F355. I’m still not sure. It doesn’t matter. I know it was a Ferrari.

You can hear me tell this story in my own voice by listening to Neutral #8. The relevant portion starts at 25:07.

Fast forward a few years, and Mr. Galante ended up making national news. He had gotten it in his head to create a minor league hockey team in Danbury, the “big” city next door to New Fairfield. This team, the Danbury Trashers, seemed unremarkable at first. They made national news, however, because of their President and General Manager: Mr. Galante’s son, a high school senior.

Fast forward a few more years, and Mr. Galante had a couple run-ins with the law. He was eventually sent to jail for it, after an investigation that involved the FBI. He went to jail for the same reasons that we all raised eyebrows to many years before.

But to me, he’ll always be the family friend who let a 16 year old drive his Ferrari.

I bring all this up because I recently stumbled upon this video^[1] (some not safe for work language) from Sports Illustrated, chronicling the Trashers. It’s only 15 minutes, and I’m biased, but I found it to be absolutely fascinating. The Trashers formed once I was away at school, so I didn’t see any of this first hand. But I certainly did live it through my parents and younger brothers.

It’s truly wild to me that the same man, a family friend, who let me drive his Ferrari, is the same man a Sports Illustrated video is about. Small world.

A quick public service announcement.

Every year, around Halloween, Hershey’s does a special run of their Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. This run is special because you can buy a batch that are sent directly from the factory to your doorstep. Quite obviously, these Reese’s are considerably more fresh than what you would buy in a store. To ensure ultimate freshness, you can even spring for the Coolship option:

We carefully pack your order into an insulated container with a reusable non-toxic liquid ice pack, which maintains optimal temperature during transit. Orders sent via COOLSHIP are shipped Monday through Wednesday, via 2nd Day Delivery, ensuring uninterrupted transport.

Though Reese’s cups are not my favorite candy (that would probably be Kit Kat or a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk bar), I do quite like them. Even as a non-connoisseur, I can assure you that the fresh from the factory Reese’s taste noticeably better. The chocolate is obviously fresher, the peanut butter better. No chocolate is wasted when you peel them away from the wrapper. Wonderful.

So, if you have a Reese’s fan in your life, act now and preorder.

Honda, who made some waves a few years ago with their absolutely phenomenal Rube Goldberg-based ad, Cog, has done it again. Still practical effects, but this time, paper is the medium.

You can watch the ad:

Perhaps even more interesting, however, is the video shot behind the scenes:

Today I joined Georgia Dow, Guy English, and Rene Ritchie on this week’s Vector (Overcast link).

This week we talked a lot about Apple TV gaming, improving the App Store, more kvetching about 16 GB iPhones, as well as some of the general goings-on from Apple’s special event last week.

iOS 9 was released a couple days ago, and it has many unsung heroes. My favorite of these is “Wi-Fi Assist”.

Several versions of iOS ago — specifically in a iOS 6 beta, the option for “Wi-Fi Plus Cellular” was briefly trialed. It disappeared by the time iOS 6 came out, and was conspicuously absent from iOS 7 and iOS 8.

In iOS 9, “Wi-Fi Plus Cellular” rose from the ashes, as “Wi-Fi Assist”.

Wi-Fi Assist allows for your phone to more aggressively fall back to using its onboard cellular connection in case the Wi-Fi it is connected to doesn’t respond in a timely fashion. While dangerous for some with small data plans, for those with some breathing room, this is a fantastic addition.

To disable it (it’s on by default), go to Settings > Cellular > Wi-Fi Assist. It’s way at the bottom of the Cellular settings screen, almost hiding. Unfortunately, this setting doesn’t appear in the new-for-iOS-9 search within the Settings app.

As someone with a grandfathered unlimited data plan, I find Wi-Fi Assist hugely useful. I noticed its utility the first day I had iOS 9 installed.

Every day, when I leave work, I send my wife a text with my ETA. I do so using the wonderful Workflow app. However, I do so as I’m walking downstairs from my third floor office. During that walk, my phone hasn’t yet realized that it can’t reach my office’s Wi-Fi anymore. In iOS 8, I would have to use Control Center to toggle Wi-Fi off in order for Workflow to get a response from Apple Maps with the driving time to home.

Now, with iOS 9 and Wi-Fi Assist, my phone is able to figure things out all on its own.

A small win, for sure, but a welcome one.

My buddy Marco has released a content blocker extension for iOS 9. It’s called Peace (iTunes link), and it’s $3. Peace does what it says on the tin — it brings peace to your browsing experience.

As has been discussed a lot lately, scummy advertising is overruning the modern web. It is making pages load slower, using our batteries to process scripts we shouldn’t need to process, and costing us money by forcing us to download things we don’t need to.

A couple months ago, I started using Ghostery on my Mac to cut down on all of that cruft. Today, with iOS 9 and Marco’s Peace app, I can do it on my iOS devices as well. I mean that in every way — Peace actually uses Ghostery’s database of things to block.

There are plenty of content blockers out there, and Peace may not be the right one for you. But I’ve been testing it for a couple weeks now, and I quite like it.

If you’d like to read more about the motivations and background of Peace, check out Marco’s post. Or just save yourself the time and go buy it. It won’t take long before you find yourself at peace.

Way back during the Hypercritical days, my ATP co-host John Siracusa got to talking about, of all things, toaster ovens.

The toaster oven discussion started back in 2011 with a brief teaser in Hypercitical #12 (Overcast link). John says:

I need to put that on the topic list — why I hate all toasters.

A few episodes later, in Hypercritical #18, John lamented the state of toaster ovens of the day. This continued through the next two episodes.

John, being silly, dropped an implicit challenge during that episode (Overcast link):

If I come out of this podcast with a better toaster, I will consider it a rousing success.

An Aside

Back in 2011, I was an iPhone 3GS user, and aspiring iOS app developer. I decided to go to Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference for the first time. I only knew a couple of people, one was my good friend Marco. One day, Marco wanted to meet up with a friend for lunch and leave the conference, rather than eat in Moscone.

It ended up I knew who his friend was: it was Merlin Mann. Merlin had a tagalong as well; turns out™ this tagalong was also from Richmond, and Eric is now a great friend of mine.

The Purchase

The four of us went to lunch at the food court at the Westfield Mall right around the corner from the Moscone Center. (Protip: listen to Merlin when he suggests food in San Francisco, even in a mall. Buckhorn’s tri-tip was as delicious as he promised it would be.) During the lunch, Marco, Merlin, Eric, and myself discussed our love for John Siracusa. The next thing I knew, the four of us were in Nordstrom. Marco and Merlin found the toaster that John had his eye on, and purchased it.

The four of us marched back to Moscone, and Marco insisted John leave the session he was in to meet us in the lobby. There, Merlin and Marco presented John with his new toy. (Merlin, ever the gentleman, took the toaster back to Nordstrom to be shipped to John’s home.)

The Idea

Fast forward four years. John, Marco, and myself are now hosting ATP. When Cards Against Humanity decided to sponsor our show, they decided as usual to eschew a normal ad read. Instead, they had a brilliant idea: CAH would send John a toaster to review.

We’ve been asked more than once to have a compendium of all of these reviews. This is it.

The CAH campaign is going to last through the year; I’ll update this post as the remaining episodes are released.

My thanks to Cards Against Humanity for not only buying the ad spots, but also for coming up with such a clever idea, and letting us run with it.

The Episodes

UPDATED 23 September 2015 4:15 PM: Cards Against Humanity has taken it upon themselves to cut the relevant snippets from all of these episodes. They can be found on the Cards Against Humanity site.

UPDATED 13 November 2015 2:15 PM: As pointed out by Ry Amidon, and brought to my attention by John, the discussion started in Hypercritical 12. The above has been updated to reflect this.

UPDATED 11 May 2020 9:45 AM: Thanks to Fredrik Mellström, I realized I missed John’s rules/criteria for toasters, which is in the ATP #103 after-show. It has been added as a second timestamp link in the table.

UPDATED 29 July 2020 10:15 AM: I was reminded by Ben Higgins that I never added the WWDC 2019 toaster.

UPDATED 1 September 2020 9:30AM: Some slight copy changes.

UPDATED 7 December 2021 10:45AM: Removed the now-missing Cards Against Humanity link.

From this month’s Roundel, the BMW Car Club of America monthly periodical:

I’ve spoken previously about my undying love of manual transmissions. I’ve owned four cars (it’s not about color), and every one of them had a manual transmission.

I know that the manual is not long for this world, but that doesn’t mean I’ve accepted it.

I’m an extremely lucky man. I have a wife I love dearly, and loves me back. I have finally been blessed with a beautiful baby boy, who is adorable even in his worst moments.

I have a good job where I sit in a climate-controlled office and work with exceptionally smart and nice people. I have two podcasts, both of which are co-hosted by dear friends of mine, that are at least slightly successful. Furthermore, they are able to provide a not-inconsequential side income for a family that just lost one.

With the good, however, comes the bad.

A few weeks ago, we received this e-mail via ATP’s then-anonymous feedback form, which I’ve lightly censored:

Listening to Marco and Casey droll on and on about their sh**** defective kids is the worst thing to have happen to you on a long commute where you can’t play with your phone to change the track. Worst 30 minutes of my life.

Nobody cares about your stupid kids. Not even thanks to the fact that Casey has defective reproductive issues and had to bother all of us for years with his sob stories about getting pregnant. No one cares.

Shortly after receiving this e-mail, we removed the feedback form. A week or two ago, we brought back the feedback, this time, simply offering an e-mail address instead. We naïvely thought that would discourage drive-bys.

This morning, I woke up to the following. I should note this was spoofed in such a way that it was sent from “Marco Arment”:

Listening to Casey Liss talk about his sh**** backpack review is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.

Every time I think that Casey has reached the ultimate peak of lameness and stupidity, he tops himself.

I love your show because I laugh my a** off for two hours at how stupid and lame Casey is and how arrogant and smug Siracusa is.

John, Casey and Marco: you can all eat a huge f****** d***!

F*** off d******s.

Unfortunate, and hurtful, but it was not alone. Also this morning, we received this, via an e-mail anonymizer; I’ve left the spelling issues alone:

Casey Liss’s aversion to desktop computers and the need to whine and complain about his first world problems how he doesnt want an expensive iMac cause he doesn’t like “big computers” he only like laptos…

That is reason # 1254 that Casey Liss is a f****** idiot.

Also, the fact that Casey Liss does personal stuff on his work computer is

REASON # 2498 that CASEY LISS IS A F****** IDIOT!

I’m not sure what we’re going to do about the ATP feedback form. On one side, we do not owe it to anyone to expose ourselves to this kind of vitriol. On the other hand, we (generally) have an amazing group of listeners, who typically provide some of the most thoughtful and helpful feedback I’ve ever encountered. Why let three bad apples ruin it for everyone?

In the end of the day, I suppose this is just the “cost of doing business”.

But why?

It’s old news that people are bastard coated bastards with bastard filling. It’s old news that this is how the internet works. It doesn’t have to be that way though. We’re better than this.

A year ago — hell, even a month or two ago — these emails would have really ruined my day, if not my whole week. Today? I’m writing this post, and then moving on with my day, saying extra thanks to all of those wonderful people in my life. That includes you, a reader of my site. At this point, I’ve become numb to these sorts of attacks.

That, if I’m honest, is the truly disappointing realization.