584: Daisy Hates Ticketmaster
23 Apr 2024The Delta emulator, AltStore PAL, M4 Mac rumors, and some promising news about Casey’s favorite company.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Marco’s Sinus Situation & the one month a yellow car makes sense
- The ATP Store is BACK baby! 👕
- Runs until Sunday, 28 April. Don’t wait!
- 🚨 THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING 🚨
- Remember members get 15% off!
- Follow-up:
- Filesystems (🛎), case sensitivity, and APFS volumes
- Handedness & “jumped” vs. “jumps”
- Clarifications on the
xzsabotage (via Mat Gadd) - The Delta game emulator is now available!
- Apple allows using used parts for repairs
- Ceiling fan switches
- Lutron Caséta (smart home switches/dimmers/fan controls)
- Lutron Sunnata (dumb dimmer)
- Waveform lighting
- Ticketmaster finally getting what it deserves?
- M4 Macs are coming this year?
- iPhone 16/16+ to have more RAM?
- Installing audio apps is going to get easier?
- Ask ATP:
- Is the M4 generation worth holding out for?
- Why don’t we have 32-bit emulation? (via Joe Bezdek)
- Will the [presumably HDR] phantom OLED iPad Pro work well as a second display with something SDR?
- Post-show: Marco is going to The Sphere
- Members-only ATP Overtime: AI devices… now with more “Apple”!
Sponsored by:
- Swift Craft: The brand new Swift developers’ conference in the UK, overlooking the sea. Use code ATP when you register for 10% off.
Become a member for ATP Overtime, ad-free episodes, member specials, and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- Morning audio risks
- ATP Store 🖼️
- APFS volumes and case-sensitivity
- Handwriting follow-up
- xz-sabotage follow-up
- Delta & AltStore PAL
- Apple repair updates
- Fan/light follow-up
- Sponsor: Swift Craft (code atp)
- DOJ vs. Ticketmaster 🎉
- M4 Mac rumors
- Ticketmaster vs. App Store?
- iPhone RAM rumors
- Easier Audio Hijack installation
- #askatp: Wait for M4 for AI?
- #askatp: Emulators for 32-bit
- #askatp: OLED as second HDR secreen
- Ending theme
- Goin’ phishin’
Morning audio risks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So this will be a bit of an audio risk for me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey today. Always a great way to start the show. Are we all recording because I only started recording during pre
⏹️ ▶️ Casey flight. So are we all recording?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, that’s okay. We’ll eliminate that category of risk.
⏹️ ▶️ John dog is in the room. So that’s the second risk.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco All right. Well, I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a third risk. I have to so risk number one for me is in case you haven’t heard my in my voice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet. My voice is kind of shot. So it turns out in the spring my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entire head filled with pollen. You and me both. I assume it’s allergies. I think it’s allergies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could be sick, but it feels more like very, very, very severe pollen and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also live in Dust House right now, because not only is my house filled with pollen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s also still being partially constructed. And so there is some construction happening,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually, literally right now. And the funny thing is, this is the morning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they’re working on the room directly behind me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There was no one here yesterday. Um, there’s the room behind me has not been worked on in weeks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, uh, but today is the day they’re working on the room behind me. So. We have from my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco end, the, the risk of me just sounding like this, the whole episode, which is not amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, that’s, that’s a pretty sure thing. We also have behind me grinders, uh, saws,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh, people talking, people, you know, possibly dropping things. Um, so it’s going to be an interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio experiments over here, but I I assure you listeners, this normally is not the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we record and I normally don’t sound this bad. So sorry for this one episode where it’s gonna sound a little rough on my end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and hopefully John’s dog will cover up most of the flaws.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I gotta say you don’t sound bad to me. You sound ever so slightly needy. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco ever the tiniest bit. A little tiny bit stuffy. Oh, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should also disclose that this is also a new audio environment because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m in my new office in the new house and it’s still partially set up but it’s a new desk, new audio wiring,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new audio device and new sound panels behind me that I hung up 12 hours ago. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of an untested situation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nothing like saying screw it, we’ll do it live.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh yeah, yeah. But I will say though that John, you sound better than you did the last time we recorded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at roughly this hour because last time we did this, I don’t recall what episode it was, but last time we did this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it sounded like you had rolled out of bed and then gone immediately in front of the microphone. Now you sound mostly like John
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’ve been up for a few hours. I think I had up for a few hours last time too. Maybe it’s because it was like closer
⏹️ ▶️ John to winter and it was like dark and I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco who knows. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I’ll survive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, also I have another, a new update and a benefit actually. I’ve discovered an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco undocumented benefit to having a pollen colored car. You can’t tell when my car’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco covered in pollen. Now, in pollen season, my car turns yellow? Guess what, it’s already yellow. Like you can’t,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks like nothing. Like people talk about how, oh, you know, you get a black car to hide dirt or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think anyone says that about a black
⏹️ ▶️ Casey car. Yeah, no, it’s quite the opposite about black cars. But I’m with you in principle, though.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, right, right. But most of those things are total BS, because every car shows every kind of dirt.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco However, a pollen-colored car does not show pollen. It’s glorious.
ATP Store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, so this is your last chance. This is your last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chance. I know you’re probably listening to this episode a little earlier in the week than normal. We recorded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it way earlier than normal and I also apparently cannot pronounce words anymore. But nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is the last time we will tell you on the show that the ATP store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is back. Go to ATP.FM slash store. Seriously, we are not going to tell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you on the program again. You will probably see this on Mastodon, you’ll probably see it on threads, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you will not hear it again. This is your last chance. The store closes Sunday,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the 28th of April. I forget what time. It doesn’t matter because you’re not going to order on Sunday
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because you’re going to be careful and you’re going to order right now or at the very least before Sunday
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the 28th. You’ll order on Saturday the 27th at the very latest. And what are you going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey order? You’re going to order all sorts of sweet new merch from ATP.FM.store. We’ve got ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Windows in both color and monochrome. We’ve got ATP Graffiti. We’ve brought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back the ATP Sport or Performance shirt. We’ve got monochrome Pro Max. We’ve got six
⏹️ ▶️ Casey colors. We’ve got the OG. We’ve got a hoodie. We’ve got the polo. We’ve got the hat. We don’t have glasses anymore. We
⏹️ ▶️ Casey finally sold out of glasses, but we got everything else. So, ATP.fm slash store, this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is your last chance. John, please tell them, now is your last chance. This
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the time. What should they buy?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I think you should buy one of the new shirts because people tend to like the new ones. But if you have some old ones that you’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ John wearing and you haven’t looked in a while, check to see if they’re threadbare. You know, like every five
⏹️ ▶️ John years, every five, 10 years, it’s good to replace T-shirts so they don’t get too ratty looking. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, replace the ATP logo shirt that you bought 10 years ago, which I think is
⏹️ ▶️ John a thing that could have happened. And hey, maybe you want a long sleeve this time or a sweatshirt or a
⏹️ ▶️ John tank top. We got lots of varieties. And yeah, this is the last time you’ll hear us talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John it on the show, because by the next time we record, the sale will be over. So this is literally your last
⏹️ ▶️ John chance. Do not wait. Do not forget, as I have done in the past. Just do it
⏹️ ▶️ John now, or at the very least, hold down the power button on your phone and say, Hey, dingus, remind me
⏹️ ▶️ John to buy something from the ATP store tomorrow at 9am or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. Please do. Because I kid you not, every time. Oh no, it was me. I’m the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Don’t be that person.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do it now. ATP.FM. And members, remember, because I know you’re probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey listening to me as you’re ordering right now because you’re good, kind people, but if you’re a member, remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that on the 5th of November, no wait, that’s not right. Remember that you can go to ATP.FM.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And get your bespoke coupon code for 15% off sales, time limited sales like this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one. So ATP.FM. And go check out the merch. This is your last chance.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by Saturday the 27th, even though you can really do it on the 28th. We’re not going to say that, so Saturday the 27th,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s your deadline. deadline. Thank you so much.
APFS volumes and case-sensitivity
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do some follow-up. Max Bucknell writes, I can’t believe John talked about case sensitivity
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and mounting a separate disk image without talking about APFS volumes, which make this so much more straightforward.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree with your takes on Unicode normalization, but the reality is that if you are deploying code to Linux,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your local setup should match that behavior as much as possible. I’ve watched many a junior on my team
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hit this exact issue with a file import, and walked them through the steps to mount their work in a separate volume.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Frustratingly though, our iOS app refuses to build on those volumes because library developers have been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey building on case insensitive file systems for three decades, as you said. P.S. you are going to hear from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of the United Kingdom about your pronunciation of address bar. Address bar?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we didn’t hear from anybody on that, but we did hear from a couple people about this thing. So what he’s
⏹️ ▶️ John talking about is the ability of APFS to very easily create new volumes
⏹️ ▶️ John on the same disk, on the same storage group, whatever the hell they call it. Um, we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John talked about this before, but like, if you haven’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John visited disc utility in ages, if you can get a brand new disc out of the box, like a one terabyte disc, and
⏹️ ▶️ John you can open it in disc utility and you format it as a one terabyte disc. And then you can add a second
⏹️ ▶️ John one terabyte volume and a third one terabyte volume and a fourth one terabyte volume. You can keep adding one terabyte volumes till
⏹️ ▶️ John the cows come home. You’re like, how does that work? The disc is only one terabyte. How can I add multiple one terabyte volumes? Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John they share the space. And so whoever allocates that space and uses it, gets it. And when
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously when the one terabyte of space is gone, then the disk is full But every single one of those volumes
⏹️ ▶️ John thinks it has the full one terabyte and it’s just whoever grabs a space first gets it You can also limit volumes
⏹️ ▶️ John to be a smaller than that. You can say okay. Well, I want a volume I want to create a volume on this one terabyte disk.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s half a terabyte and then I want to create another one That’s a quarter of a terabyte and then when I can create another one, that’s a full terabyte
⏹️ ▶️ John again They’re all sharing space up to whatever the configure limit is So, what Max is saying
⏹️ ▶️ John is, hey, if you want a case-sensitive APFS volume, just create another volume on your existing APFS
⏹️ ▶️ John disk. Don’t worry if your current volume is the size of the disk, like, but I already have a 1TB
⏹️ ▶️ John volume on a 1TB disk, how can I create another volume? Well, like I said, you can create as many volumes as you want and they’ll all just
⏹️ ▶️ John share the space. And that second volume you create can be case-sensitive.
⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, you can have the full space or give it some amount of limited space. Now, the reason I
⏹️ ▶️ John am not as big a fan of this approach, well, there’s two reasons. One is that,
⏹️ ▶️ John call it superstition, but when you create new volumes on APFS, like you’re messing
⏹️ ▶️ John with some essential structures of the partition map and all or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And although it is lightweight and easy to do and fast, if something is going
⏹️ ▶️ John to go terribly wrong with your disk, especially if it’s like your boot disk or whatever, it’s probably gonna happen
⏹️ ▶️ John when you’re in disk utility, like adding and removing volumes. So if you make it a habit of doing this, I feel like you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John tempting fate to, for them to be some weird bug or weird
⏹️ ▶️ John problem with your volume and just screws everything up. Right? That said, if you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like Max was saying, that as part of your work, you’re just always gonna need a case-sensitive volume, yes, by all means do this. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John better than a disk image. I’m not saying like you’re gonna create it, it’s just gonna be there forever. Just make it, make it once, no problem,
⏹️ ▶️ John and just use it, right? But if you’re constantly creating and destroying tiny little case sensitive volumes,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would still suggest maybe disk images are the slightly more conservative approach. Maybe also a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John more annoying, although it depends if you have volumes mounted on your desktop and you’re sick of seeing all these volumes mount all
⏹️ ▶️ John the time and you can mess with at CFS tab to make it so they don’t auto mount and then you’re using
⏹️ ▶️ John a, remounting them like, it depends on what you find annoying. But yeah, it’s good to point out this approach. I
⏹️ ▶️ John am superstitious about it. Maybe I’ve been burned by too many years of HFS and HFS+.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I don’t, every time I go into disk utility and start messing with like the partition map of my drive, I get a little bit scared,
⏹️ ▶️ John so I wouldn’t make a habit of it. But if you want a permanent one, this is a great solution. And like I said, you can limit
⏹️ ▶️ John the space. So you can say, look, case-sensitive APFS, you only get to use 100 gigabytes
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever of my one terabyte disk. And remember, that’s not actually used until
⏹️ ▶️ John something goes on a disk to use that space. So space sharing, it’s why you can never tell how much free space
⏹️ ▶️ John there is in anything in the Finder, because it’s a feature of APFS, not a bug.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is it though? I mean, I know what you’re saying, but is it?
⏹️ ▶️ John the that’s the thing that people complain about. They’re like, there’s no there’s no actual good solution. Like, I mean, you just described
⏹️ ▶️ John like what if you have a terabyte disk and you have five one terabyte volumes on it and they’re all sharing space? That’s a great feature.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now, how do you explain when those disks fill up? Right. Like, how does the finder say something? You would have to have like a paragraph
⏹️ ▶️ John like, look, this disk is full and I know it’s a one terabyte. This volume is full
⏹️ ▶️ John and I know it’s a one terabyte volume and it’s only got 200 megabytes on it. But I want you to know there are a bunch of other volumes
⏹️ ▶️ John on that same one terabyte of hardware disk that are using that space. So that’s why your thing is full, even though it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not anywhere close to the rate of capacity, it’s very confusing.
Handwriting follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AD writes, from the handwriting sample, I wonder whether Casey’s left-handed. If yes, I would love to hear about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the experience of being left-handed. Hardly anyone, I hardly hear anyone talk about it. Uh, I am not. I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey entirely sure why that conclusion was reached. I am completely useless with my left hand in pretty much every measurable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way. Uh, my mom is the weird kind of ambidextrous where she writes left-handed,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but like eats right-handed. I forget how, I think she throws right-handed, but bats left-handed. I don’t know, it’s very unusual.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, but yeah, I am, I’m right-handed. I just have crappy handwriting. handwriting. But we also got some other feedback.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, do you want to handle that?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. When I’m in my handwriting sample, I tried to write like that sentence that has all the letters in the English language in it. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John forgot that it’s a quick brown fox jumps with an S, not the quick brown fox
⏹️ ▶️ John jumped past tense E-D. So I apologize for not including a lowercase S in
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco sample. Somehow you’ll have to survive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my God. That’s what that was about. I saw that feedback and I’m like, what are they talking about? Oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my God. It took me two or three tries before I realized.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yep. That’s amazing. Do you know
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the other couple
⏹️ ▶️ John other sentences? I know there’s a really short one that’s terrible. I don’t remember what that one is. Someone can Google it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the other sentences that use all 26 characters. I do not. You have nothing? You don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have a single one? No. Quick
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Brown Fox jumps over the lazy dog. It’s the only one I can think of.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right. Yeah. No, I think there used to be examples in Mac OS. There’s a web page that comes up high in Google search results
⏹️ ▶️ John that says, here are the sentences that were used in Mac OS for various times I remember. Maybe that’s why I know them, because they in
⏹️ ▶️ John wherever they were in Mac OS. I don’t know if they were in like the font like either thing showing you a sample of a font or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John The one I remember is how razorback razorback jumping frogs can level six peaked gymnasts.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yikes, Waltz bad nymph for quick jigs vex 28 letters baby. Super
⏹️ ▶️ John remember. Yeah, there’s some really tight ones. The six peak the six
⏹️ ▶️ John peaks gymnast is pretty long
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quick zephyrs blow vexing daft gym. These are these These are real bad. Sphinx of black
⏹️ ▶️ Casey courts. Judge my vow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there you go. Sphinx of black courts is a good one. Yeah, this web page says system seven use this phrase to show
⏹️ ▶️ John fonts. Well, it may not be the shortest pangram, but it’s decidedly more interesting than the
⏹️ ▶️ John quick brown fox. They’re talking about the six peak gymnast thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Today I learned this is this is all news to me. Yeah. 35 letters quick brown fox jumps over the lazy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dog. Oh, here you go. Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. That’s my new. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s big Casey energy there. All right, moving along because we can get lost in this. button.
xz-sabotage follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Matt Gad has some clarification with regard to the XZ sabotage. I think we talked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about that week before last. Matt writes, the XZ backdoor wasn’t adding the attacker’s key as an authorized
⏹️ ▶️ Casey key to SSH. Which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I said, because I messed up. Sorry. Well, I was right there with you. By the way, I’m pretty sure this was during overtime.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I think you’re right. It was even more nefarious. The attacker could send encrypted commands as part of the SSH
⏹️ ▶️ Casey handshake, which were then executed as root by SSHD. On the wire, it would appear normal,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which presumably would mean a failed login attempt in the logs, and so less likely to be seen as a threat. Very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clever. Yeah, this just goes to, so, you know, what I had said was like, you know, if this XD backdoor would have actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gone out there, that it would have, you know, added a root key to SSHD that would allow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the attacker to log into any Linux system as root remotely that had this version.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so it turns out, yeah, this is even better than that. It would allow that, but because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of how it was implemented as part of the handshake, it would then also not leave a trace in the logs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now you could say that a mad boxer shot a quick glove jab to the jaw of his dizzy opponent. 54 letters. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think so if I understand this correctly, so I think because it probably wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show up in the logs as a failed log and attempt to to a compromise system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it wouldn’t fail. So is the idea of this that it wouldn’t show up in the logs in other systems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that don’t have this version?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John No, it’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ John As part of the handshake, you could send commands that would be executed. So all you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco would see is an SSH handshake. What happened after the handshake? So you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t even need to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John logged in at all. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t even count as a login. I think you could not even try to log in. You would just do the handshake and it would
⏹️ ▶️ John say, okay, tell me the user. I don’t know, maybe the handshake is part of the attempt to log in. But worst case, it would show as a failed login
⏹️ ▶️ John to whatever. You could put whatever you wanted as the failed login credentials because you don’t care that
⏹️ ▶️ John logged in during the handshake is when you essentially get to issue a command that will be run by root.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now, obviously, one of the commands that you could issue that would be run by root would be to like, you know, put your key in and then allow
⏹️ ▶️ John you to log in like but you’re just essentially, it’s like a remote shell, are you please execute arbitrary
⏹️ ▶️ John arbitrary command on this machine that will be run by root. And once you have that ability, you can do all sorts of things. But
⏹️ ▶️ John that happens as part of the SSH handshake.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John That is incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, like, you know, one of the really scary aspects of the sexy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, infiltration and attack is it just shows like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco level of sophistication and long-term planning. I mean, like, this was years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the making. Like, you know, the bad actor who was trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get right access to the repository started doing commits to their repository something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like three or four years ago or five like it’s been this very long-term,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very sophisticated attack. And so, you know, you got to think like who would have the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco motivation and the resources to do this? And that’s why most people when you have attacks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this scale, most people assume it’s probably like a state-sponsored or a state intelligence agency sponsored
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hack because this is not just like, you know, some dude having fun in his basement. basement. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a much more sophisticated and longer term planned attack and it’s really scary.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it could be some person in their basement because people don’t have hobbies and they decide this is what they want to do, but definitely looks
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, especially, I mean, it could, it could actually just be a single person, but that’s quite
⏹️ ▶️ John an amount of dedication. And the reason like the hacks, the hack is clever, but on the other hand, it’s going in easy
⏹️ ▶️ John mode because if I tell you you’re allowed to write code that runs inside SSHD boy, it’s really like
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have to find a clever exploiter where you just just literally write the code that you’re in, you’re in the binders
⏹️ ▶️ John I was trying to get it in the overtime like you don’t have to find the next point you don’t have to overflow buffer you don’t have to do anything it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John just write your code here you’re literally inside the sshd process running as root. Have fun!
Delta & AltStore PAL
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we have some semi-breaking news. I believe it was yesterday as we record
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Riley Tested’s Delta Game Emulator is available as AltStore PAL
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or as part of AltStore PAL in the European Union.
⏹️ ▶️ John Which is his alternative marketplace.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, what an amazing name that is. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John really is. Because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like PAL versus NTSC video standard. That’s the European video standard. Oh my God, it’s so good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s incredibly good. And so the AltStore Pal requires,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it costs money of some sort, isn’t it? It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John doesn’t it? It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John two euros a year or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and that’s in theory just to offset the core technology fee, which I mean, makes sense. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, it very much is. And I also have great news that Delta is also available in the regular app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey store. And as we record right now, it is the number one free app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the regular global app store. So how do you like them apples?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, of course, though the Delta in alt store is supported
⏹️ ▶️ John by patreon and that is not a business model that the app store allows So if you’re wondering like
⏹️ ▶️ John why did he bother putting it in alt star? Well one I think he wants to do the alternative marketplace thing period
⏹️ ▶️ John for this and other potentially other apps, but two you can’t like Send
⏹️ ▶️ John people to patreon to pay for your app or whatever like that’s not supported by the app store, but on the app store Delta
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah. So why not put it globally? Like, I mean, I have some theories, but why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not just put it in the app store everywhere?
⏹️ ▶️ John Isn’t it in the app store
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey everywhere? I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t think so. I might have that wrong, but I didn’t think so.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, we can’t test this. We’re not in the EU. Like, I don’t know if there’s a good way for end users to like fake their location
⏹️ ▶️ John or change their region to EU or whatever. And I certainly wouldn’t want to try it with any of my real Apple IDs, given how friendly
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple ID system is to changes like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This must be really glorious for all the EU people who for years have had to manage US IDs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff, streaming services and various Apple stuff. And they have to have fake US
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple IDs and stuff like that. Now finally, we have to go the other direction to try to figure out how do you make an EU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple ID? Where can we use EU VPNs? We’re finally doing it in the opposite direction.
⏹️ ▶️ John ZM Knox in the chat room says, Delta is not in the app store in Europe. I mean, again, we have no way to
⏹️ ▶️ John test this. And I didn’t see anything in there. Oh, maybe it’s like, doesn’t Apple have the rules that if you choose the-
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s right. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John right. If you decide
⏹️ ▶️ John you want the different business terms or whatever, then you can’t be in the app store. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I think that’s correct. And apparently it’s a euro 50 per year for AltStore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But no, I think you’re right. I think that probably is it. And honestly, like if I were Riley and I wanted to try to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey encourage people to get on AltStore, irrespective of anything else,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why not put Delta behind it? because you know you’re going to get a bunch of installs, because it’s making tremendous news
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now that it’s available globally. And if I was in the EU, you bet your bottom I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would go and download AltStore PAL in order to give this a shot. And I did download,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by the way, I did download Delta yesterday. I’d had it already thanks to TestFlight
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from Riley, because we know each other a little bit. But man, getting it in the App Store and then playing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like a Nintendo 64 or Game Boy game on it, it’s something, it is really freaking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cool. and it’s so well done and so good. It’s, it’s not shovelware like everything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey else we’ve seen so far has been. It’s really, really good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m not entirely sure why Riley made it free, but I am thankful that it is and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey supported by Patreon.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it’s free in the alt store as well. And by the way, we have a bunch of EU and UK residents who are looking for Delta in the app
⏹️ ▶️ John store and the UK and the EU and they say it’s not there. So there’s, There’s the real-time answer
⏹️ ▶️ John from our listeners overseas. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John so I think the idea is like you get it for free and then if you pay for the Patreon, you get early access to betas or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But either way, like in the Altstar, in Delta, you could say whatever he wants and
⏹️ ▶️ John put whatever screen up he wants and describe the Patreon business model and provide links to Patreon and do all sorts of things that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. Yeah, so we’ll put a link in the show notes to the blog post announcing Altstar Pal and Riley
⏹️ ▶️ Casey calls out some other things that are apparently also in the Alt Store, including UTM,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is a full-featured virtual machine for iOS and iPadOS. So you can literally run Windows on your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad, apparently. There’s also Katoba by our friend Will Haines, which is just the built-in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iOS dictionary as a standalone app, which isn’t allowed in the App Store because, waves hands,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reasons. And so there’s a bunch of other stuff in there, in Alt Store Pal that looks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey interesting. So you should check it out if you’re in the EU. And again, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey regulation works at least, or it sure seems to, because here we are with Delta in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the US as well, and I’m really excited
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it. And can we clarify, is Apple out of business in the EU? Oh, wait, nothing happened.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it doesn’t seem so. That’s right, there’s no downside whatsoever. Not yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John For people who are newer iPhone users, I’ll give my advice. Anytime
⏹️ ▶️ John you see a emulator, especially a game emulator on the app store, even if you think you have
⏹️ ▶️ John no interest in it, download it. Because these things get pulled from the app store so frequently, but if you’ve previously
⏹️ ▶️ John purchased or downloaded it, you still have it on your phone and it will still run and Apple doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John like yank it off your phone. So that’s why I have so many like Nintendo emulators that were on the app store
⏹️ ▶️ John for like, you know, five hours or 24 hours or whatever. If you download it before they pull it,
⏹️ ▶️ John you get to keep it as long as you manage to bring it from one phone to the other. It might be more difficult now with iCloud restores
⏹️ ▶️ John and not doing iTunes backups and stuff like that, but I have had NES emulators on my phone
⏹️ ▶️ John since before I had a phone, since I had an iPod Touch, I think, because Apple and AppReview are
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes slow in removing things when they accidentally allow them to go through. And then another, speaking of emulation, another thing
⏹️ ▶️ John someone brought up, I didn’t grab it for the notes in time, but what about emulating,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a question about this on Ask ATP if we get to it, what about emulating old iPhones? iPhone OS, iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John OS, or whatever. That’s another emulation frontier that obviously is not, well, I say obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna assume it’s not allowed on the App Store. But in AltStore, if someone comes up with
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially like an iOS emulator so you can run like iOS 4 and run like your old games in 32-bit
⏹️ ▶️ John mode somehow, that would be a cool thing. I don’t know if such a thing exists, but when you mentioned UTM.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I have some news. So first of all, real-time follow-up, I misspoke earlier. UTM and Katoba
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are not currently on AltStore. These are examples of things that could be. So I misspoke before. I apologize for the error.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The offending party has been sacked. However, one of the things that is in this blog post in the same section of things that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could be on Alt Store, I will read from the blog post, or take old OS,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a beautifully made recreation of iOS 4 built entirely in Swift UI. I know that’s not exactly what you’re talking about,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, but the spirit is the same. Clearly a labor of love that does no one any harm, but is not allowed in the App Store because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it quote, appears confusingly, confusingly, John, similar to an existing Apple product interface
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m kind of surprised Switch Glass was allowed on the Mac App Store.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It’s like the dock.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t tempt them. Don’t tempt them at all. Anyway, I’m so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excited for Riley. I mean, Riley’s been doing, working on this, depending on your definition, for like literally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a decade. It’s been forever. Riley just wants to do the stuff he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wants to do. And it doesn’t seem to be hurting anyone, as far as I can tell.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, let’s see what Nintendo thinks about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I mean, he’s not offering ROMs, but I hear what, I do take your point. Yeah, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no. I mean, I think Nintendo’s massive overreaction to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Switch emulator and the Zelda ROMs, that was a direct attack on their current system.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yes, we can say, yes, it’s very old, but it is still their current system. And it was a current,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new, hot game release. So that really slapped them in the face in a way that people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trading around old ROMs for the NES and Game Boy, like nobody really cares that much about those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco today. I mean, Nintendo does sell all those things. They do, but I don’t think that’s a massive source
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of money directly for them. And they also tend to usually roll those into their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco monthly service more recently. And so I don’t know how much incremental extra
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money they’re making from having Mario 1 on the Switch. I’m sure it’s some, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s probably insignificant. They care a lot, though, if you pirate the new Zelda game for Switch. Like, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very, very different beast. So, their reaction to the Switch emulator and to that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think was more warranted. Emulators have existed for a very long time though, and until
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, they seemed to not really care. People who work at Nintendo and who’d make these kind of decisions, they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stupid, and they’re not living in a box, like, they knew about emulators beforehand. This was not how they learned about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. So, I wouldn’t expect major crackdowns on other emulators by Nintendo.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they just care a lot about the current ones that, you know, things to emulate their current system that still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has a lot of commercial value.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll see. I mean this thing is in the news a lot. And by the way, I think some of our chat room folks were a victim
⏹️ ▶️ John to the leisurely, let’s say, CDN propagation of App Store things because someone said
⏹️ ▶️ John that Delta was not in the App Store in the UK. And then someone in the UK said, no, it
⏹️ ▶️ John is in the App Store in the UK. So anyway, UK is not in the EU and that would make sense. So apparently Delta
⏹️ ▶️ John is in the App Store in the UK but not in the EU. far as we can tell based on CDN propagation
⏹️ ▶️ John as of this morning.
Apple repair updates
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Apple will allow the reuse of iPhone parts for repairs with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a notable catch. Reading from Ars Technica, Apple has always had a strong preference that only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey its own parts be used in repairs, but only if they’re brand new. Now, soon after Oregon passed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a repair bill forbidding devices from rejecting parts with software locks or quote-unquote parts pairing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple says it will allow for used Apple parts in future iPhone repairs. Again, regulations don’t work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Gentlemen, they don’t work. They enforce no change. They compel no change that doesn’t work. Similarly, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should never run to the press. That doesn’t work either. Stephen Hackett over at 512 Pixels writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple lobbied against the Oregon law, but in its press release, John Ternus, Apple’s Senior Vice President
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Hardware Engineering says, for the last two years, teams across Apple have been innovating on product
⏹️ ▶️ Casey design and manufacturing to support repairs with used Apple parts that won’t compromise user safety, security,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or privacy. With this latest expansion to our repair program, we’re excited to be adding even more choice and convenience
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for our customers while helping to extend the life of our products and their parts.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is a fun dynamic where there’s a proposed law that will make Apple change something about how they
⏹️ ▶️ John do business. Apple lobbies against the law and tries to stop it from happening, but once it happens, they’re so excited to comply
⏹️ ▶️ John with it. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Right, sure. I mean, again, they could have just complied in Oregon or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they’re complying globally. So I don’t, you know, there is, Apple is okay with these
⏹️ ▶️ John laws as long as they don’t make Apple do the things that it really doesn’t want to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they already have that whole repair program thing that they’ve been expanding. So I think actually probably
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s lobbying was sufficient to make this law not as bad as Apple thought it would be. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re rolling out this change globally instead of just doing it in Oregon, which is nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey PIRG, the Federation of State Public Interest Research Groups, pointed to not only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Oregon repair bill, but also a similar bill in Colorado. iFixit CEO Kyle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Weems also pinned Apple’s announcement to the Colorado bill, Wiens, who authored a blog post shortly after
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple’s announcement, describes Apple’s new policy as, quote, a strategy of half promises and unnecessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey complicated hedges, quote, designed to deflect more laws that would ban pairing entirely.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Another quote, aftermarket parts are key to the repair ecosystem, and Apple seems keen on continuing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to ban those, Wiens wrote to Ars Technica.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so this is all about, oh, Apple used to require you use Apple parts, and also that
⏹️ ▶️ John they be brand new. And I was like, OK, you can use Apple parts, but they don’t have to be brand new. And yeah, the
⏹️ ▶️ John people who are totally against parts pairing are like, that’s great and all, but what we really want is to
⏹️ ▶️ John outlaw the practice of forbidding parts or preventing parts from working based on software lockouts,
⏹️ ▶️ John yada, yada, yada. And Apple’s argument is very often that they really need to know that a part is authentic
⏹️ ▶️ John and cryptographically paired with the server validation for important stuff like touch ID
⏹️ ▶️ John and face ID so you can’t make like compromised phones. And there’s also an angle, Apple has a lot of angles in this
⏹️ ▶️ John where they say this bad thing will happen if you make us do this. And one of them is like, well, now people will be buying phones
⏹️ ▶️ John and harvesting the parts and selling them. And I mean, I feel like there’s still it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not like there’s not already a lucrative market for stealing people’s iPhones. And so I don’t think this would change much of anything there. But
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, they’re trying to strike a balance between and we talked about this when we talked about the security stuff, like a trusted platform module or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Security does have benefits to the user in terms of being able to
⏹️ ▶️ John and be more certain that the software that your phone is running is the software that isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John intended to run and has not been hacked or rootkitted or whatever. And parts pairing for things like
⏹️ ▶️ John face ID and touch ID sensors, or even cameras or whatever, are actually part of that
⏹️ ▶️ John chain of trust. But on the other hand, it’s ridiculous when it becomes too
⏹️ ▶️ John difficult to repair phones unless you go through Apple. It’s like kind of a way to say, well, you got to go through us because we’re the only ones who have the keys
⏹️ ▶️ John to the kingdoms of part pairing or whatever. or you can’t buy a third party part, or if you have two, for example, if you have two phones and you
⏹️ ▶️ John own both of them and the camera’s good in one and bad in the other, nope, sorry, you can’t swap that at a third party thing because of
⏹️ ▶️ John part sparing. And yeah, I think we are getting closer to a reasonable compromise.
⏹️ ▶️ John The old solution was Apple makes all the rules and they make the rules for their own convenience and tough luck. And now we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John moving away from that and towards a little bit more sanity, but obviously the people who want part sparing
⏹️ ▶️ John go away entirely are not satisfied.
Fan/light follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alright possibly the most important follow-up that we’ve ever had on the show. I will read from our internal show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey notes It’s it reads as follows Marco has important ceiling fan switch follow-up. I am here for this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So in last episodes after show I was discussing my I know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was in ask ATP, sorry, I was discussing my Tribulations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with animation smart remotes and how you know I only had two wire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wiring going going from the switch to the fan the ceiling but the ceiling fans tend to frequently have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lights in them so if you only have two wire wiring and you have a fan with a light you can’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a wall switch that controls speed of the fan and the and the light separately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was lamenting this and saying I had to use their dumb remote and their weird switches well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I realized you know we we just had these fans installed like two weeks ago. We still have the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boxes for them and everything. Like everything is still like, you know, happening in the house. I realized, wait a minute.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Those light kits are optional. Oh, what happened? What kind of fan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do you have if you don’t buy the light kit? And it turns out since they’re sold separately,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh, the fan by default comes with a little like plug that covers the end that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco goes like in the middle of it, if you don’t use light on it. Well, I never use the lights on these fans.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re terrible. So I just, I went to everyone here, I’m like, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we still have those plugs. Like, can we maybe return the light kits and just not use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them? And so now the fan only has one wired
⏹️ ▶️ Marco function, the fan. So I can now use good Caseta
⏹️ ▶️ Marco light switches for the fans. So finally, I have the best of both worlds. I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Caseta fan switches at the wall. so the wall switch works like a wall switch and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can have a little mini Pico remote on my desk to control it separately without getting up during the show and it turns
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out Those dumb awful LED lights that are on the bottom of these fans are totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco optional and it works even better without them as long As you have other sources of light in the room, but you should because those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lights are terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean I know we’ve brought it up several times especially in the last couple episodes And they did sponsor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one or two episodes in the past, but I am so in the bag for Lutron Caseta. It’s not even funny, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so incredibly in the bag for them. It’s up there with like Sonos and probably Apple. Actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m probably more in the bag for Sonos and Caseta, Lutron Caseta than I am for Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. I don’t think you’re too close to switching to Windows or anything. Fair.
⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of three-way switches, one small bit of follow-up on that. we were talking about our various
⏹️ ▶️ John habits about the you know setting the three-way switches and obviously the Lutron switch that
⏹️ ▶️ John mark was talking about solves that because it’s stateless, but we were saying Oh, well, you need some smarts to do it obviously because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s sending a signal to you know, whatever There is a non smart stateless switch solution
⏹️ ▶️ John Which is switches essentially have relays in them and when you activate the switch it just flips the relay from one position to another
⏹️ ▶️ John So the physical switch is sometimes it’s just a push button or it could also be a rocker or whatever But inside it is like a relay
⏹️ ▶️ John so even if you don’t want to do any of the smart home stuff you can apparently find switches for
⏹️ ▶️ John your you know confusing three-way setups that just essentially work like push push buttons
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s just like every time you push it it just toggles it from what it is and that way You won’t have to worry about what state any of the switches
⏹️ ▶️ John in because all the switches are the same They’re just push buttons.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, and it’s just one button that you push, and that’s it. Yeah, okay
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean you can imagine you could do a rocker like that too if you wanted But it wouldn’t matter because anyway you’re right. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s literally just a relay And it’s like, you are essentially turning the switch on and off, but it’s done through a relay. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just one push button. Sometimes they’re big panels. Sometimes they’re like a little doorbell button. There’s a whole bunch of different kinds.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I got a message from a friend of the show, Ryan Jones, with a link to some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Leviton, which is the other brand that is really good that’s not Lutron, but sounds like Lutron.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyways, some Leviton switches. No, I’m sorry, it is a Lutron switch, my mistake.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I try, these are switches that do this sort of thing with a dimmer. And what I want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a non-dimming version because the particular lamp that I, or well, ceiling fixture
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I have, it doesn’t need to dim. I don’t want it to dim, and I don’t know if it supports dimming. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyways, trying to find a non-dimming version of this is both exorbitantly expensive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and very, very difficult, which is very weird. It’s pretty cheap to do a dimming version
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or to find a dimming version, but for whatever reason, a non-dimming version is very, very expensive. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I might see if maybe this fixture does support dimming and the bulbs that are in it support dimming and maybe I’ll just,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, never use the dimming functionality, but it’s literally like three or four times the cost to get a non-dimming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one, which makes zero sense to me. Maybe there’s some justification I’m not aware of.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, they make fewer of them. I mean, that’s-
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that’s true, yeah, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or maybe it’s not made at all anymore. That’s the HomeKit feature, by the way. Among the million
⏹️ ▶️ John features that HomeKit doesn’t have that it should have is the ability to take a smart switch that is
⏹️ ▶️ John dimmable and for you to say in setting somewhere, you know what, I know it’s dimmable, but just make it a toggle
⏹️ ▶️ John because both my two lights in my living room, they’re on Lutron switches that happen to be dimmable and the lights are dimmable, but I
⏹️ ▶️ John never want to dim them. So I’m, you know, cause I want to go into like, what like control center on my phone
⏹️ ▶️ John to turn it to manually turn a light on if I’m not doing like a scene or whatever, I have to like drag the
⏹️ ▶️ John little dimmer bar up to the top instead of it just being a toggle. And it’d be so easy in software
⏹️ ▶️ John to just say, You know, make this not dim. I mean, I know that’s like, oh, but what if someone actually
⏹️ ▶️ John sets it that way and now they’re confused why they can’t dim things? Like, I know, software’s hard, but I know there’s a software solution
⏹️ ▶️ John to this. And every time I have to drag my thumb up a little progress bar to turn the light on and off, that I just always want
⏹️ ▶️ John to be completely on or completely off, it annoys me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, don’t blame me. By the way, and actually I did that at the beach because the bulbs I use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in that office are non-dimmable bulbs. And I feel like I have to shout these out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Somehow, I forget, I think it was an ATP listener who told me about these by email
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at some point, but I love these bulbs from this company called Waveform Lighting, not a sponsor,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, they’re just really good LED bulbs. Like the wide CRI,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the flicker-free, all the stuff that you actually want out of LED bulbs, theirs do it all, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many of their bulbs are non-dimmable. And so I actually, I had this exact requirement
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the Beaks just for like a regular light switch circuit. And I can strongly recommend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these light bulbs. If you are a lighting nerd, which given our audience, I’m sure there are many of you out there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re very good bulbs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s the thing about LED light bulbs that has always annoyed me. I mean, you mentioned last time like, oh, you buy these lights
⏹️ ▶️ John with the fan and it’s a custom component and they say it’s gonna last forever, but it doesn’t. The thing, like lights
⏹️ ▶️ John have become like electronics where the part that will wear out or will annoy
⏹️ ▶️ John you because it’s crappy is the electronics, not the part that produces the light. I know they’re intimately connected because
⏹️ ▶️ John of the way LED lights work, but that electronic part, that’s the little board that’s gonna burn out. That’s the part
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not gonna have, you know, a good circuit to handle dimming without flickering. And like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s, they’re, not that they’re little computers, but they’re essentially consumer electronics devices in a
⏹️ ▶️ John way that the like tungsten filament bulbs from my childhood were not. They were just like a wire
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey element and a curly
⏹️ ▶️ John little thing and you sent electricity through it. And now, yeah, well, it happens to all the lights in my house is like, LED light bulb
⏹️ ▶️ John will last you for 20 years. Like no way, the electronics, if you buy it cheap on the electronics are gonna burn out in four
⏹️ ▶️ John years. Yep, it’s terrible.
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DOJ vs. Ticketmaster 🎉
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I gotta tell you, I have mixed feelings about what the DOJ has been up to recently, but right now they’re doing the Lord’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work because Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift ticketing fiasco might just have led to a lawsuit from the DOJ.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If there’s a bigger group of assholes that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John deserve to be sued, I cannot find them because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey holy God, I haven’t bought anything from Ticketmaster, well, for myself in a while. I bought for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some dear friends of ours. It’s complicated but like I think Verizon was doing a pre-sale and they’re like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey T-Mobile people or whatever and so they had me buy them two tickets to a Justin Timberlake concert
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in North Carolina I believe. Granted a lot of this was the cost of the ticket but it was something to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the order of $750 for two tickets and I am still dumbfounded by this and I think I bought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these two months ago and a lot of that, easily $100 plus was bulls**t fees
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Ticketmaster charges because they can. So apparently, as per The Verge, the Department
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Justice is preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, according to a report from The Wall Street
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Journal. The lawsuit could reportedly come as early as next month and will target the company’s alleged monopoly in the live
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ticketing industry. Live Nation drew antitrust scrutiny when it merged with Ticketmaster in 2010, but those
⏹️ ▶️ Casey concerns boiled over in November 2022 when a Ticketmaster crash blocked thousands of Taylor Swift fans from purchasing tickets
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the heiress tour due to, quote, unprecedented demand, quote. As if they couldn’t see that coming.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My God. opened an investigation into Live Nation shortly after, the New York Times reported. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I cannot find a better group to befall the DOJ’s ire. Like, I am so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here for this. Please, just slag them. Just absolutely destroy them. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it’ll be easy to prove
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey monopoly power for like, this is
⏹️ ▶️ John just such a slam dunk.
⏹️ ▶️ John Ticketmaster, people don’t know, is a company in the United States that essentially has a stranglehold
⏹️ ▶️ John on buying tickets to live music events. events. They have deals with all the
⏹️ ▶️ John people who run all the stadiums and all the clubs. And it’s just like it’s like a cartel. Like, if you read the history of like
⏹️ ▶️ John Ticketmaster and the fact that they merge with their largest competitor, like they’re just they’re all powerful.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, if you want to go all the way back to the 90s, you can see like Pearl Jam protesting. The program was way ahead of its time, basically saying
⏹️ ▶️ John we are sick of dealing with Ticketmaster. It’s bad for us. It’s bad for our hands. We hate them. So now we’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John going to use Ticketmaster and Ticketmaster is like, well, now you’re never going to have any place to play. And there was this whole
⏹️ ▶️ John drama surrounding that. So go back in the 90s history and look that up yet. Ticketmaster is
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey pure evil as you can imagine.
⏹️ ▶️ John And my dog is here. Some other dog’s barking.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco So as prophecy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I think really it’s that Daisy realizes that Ticketmaster is just awful. Like, look, that just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shows everybody hates Ticketmaster, even dogs. Right. That’s the thing. You will not find
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many causes in the US that will get more people behind you than trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kick Ticketmaster in the crotch. like everyone hates Ticketmaster. Everyone who has ever worked with them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on from any side of it, everyone who’s ever bought a ticket to anything from them, which is if you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically if you’ve attended a concert in the US from any major band at any major venue in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the last 20 years, you’ve probably bought a ticket from Ticketmaster. And when you see those fees
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on those tickets, it’s like it makes the App Store look positively generous by comparison.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s true. And it
⏹️ ▶️ John has gone up and up. And if you’re asking yourself, if If everybody hates Ticketmaster, then why does everybody still use
⏹️ ▶️ John them? That’s the nature of monopoly. That’s what the DOJ will be saying about Apple, and that’s what is so easy to say about
⏹️ ▶️ John Ticketmaster. Everyone hates you, and yet they still have to do business with you. That’s because you have monopoly power, because there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John other choice, and that’s exactly where the DOJ should step in.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I commend the DOJ for finally doing this. I don’t know what took so long, but I’m glad they’re doing it now. Thank God.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wish them all the best of luck in succeeding in this case.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, seriously. I mean, just drag them. Whatever you need to do, I’m here for it, because it’s so,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so bad. And I mean, their website is trash. The entire experience, everything about it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is trash. Their fees are absolutely astronomical. It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out of control. And I cannot begin to overstate how much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hate that company. Like, it’s just so, so bad. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know, I was trying to find if I could figure out what the fees were for this. So maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll interrupt with some real-time follow-up.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they’ve just been increasing the fees slowly because they can. Like that’s again an example of Monopoly power. Everyone hates
⏹️ ▶️ John you and you can keep raising prices.
⏹️ ▶️ John who’s gonna stop them?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, okay, here we go, I got it. Two tickets, $315 per ticket. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nothing that has nothing to do with Tickmaster. That’s all them so far. So that’s, what is that, $630? Then $4.62 for an order processing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fee, a $5 facility charge times two, a $3.10 tax times
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two, but here’s the kicker, a $42.70 service fee per ticket.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey $42.70 a ticket. Why, why, what have they done?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used to call it a convenience charge. They
⏹️ ▶️ John fee, service fee, and like, just let people, this is a thing that sells
⏹️ ▶️ John you tickets over the web. Like, it’s not rocket science. It is not, it
⏹️ ▶️ John is like an e-commerce site from like web 1.0 with similar quality in many cases.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apparently, they were surprised that there was a lot of traffic for Taylor Swift tickets. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it’s not an insurmountable problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not rocket science. They’re just selling tickets over the internet. and they’re bad at it.
M4 Mac rumors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m so mad now. All right, let’s calm me down and talk about something that makes me happy I am for max
⏹️ ▶️ Casey might be coming later this year Well that makes me mildly happy because I have an m3 Mac, you know what I’m saying? According
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Mac rumors all Macs will have an m4 by the end of next year knows and there’s apparently going to be no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey skipping Like the iMac Mac Mini, etc So here’s the launch order according to Mark Gurman Around the end
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of 2024 a low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro with the m4 a 24-inch iMac with the m4 Between the end of 24 and early 25,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new 14 and 16 inch high-end MacBook Pros with M4 Pro and Macs, a Mac Mini with an M4 and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M4 Pro. Spring of 2025, new 13 inch and 15 inch MacBook Airs,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Mac Studio with a high-end M4 chip, whatever that means. Then the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey second half of 2025, a Mac Pro with an M4 Ultra, allegedly. And then Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is apparently considering allowing its highest end Mac desktops to support as much as a half terabyte of memory.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey current Mac Studio Mac Pro top out at 192 gigs. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John so this is the rumors about the M4 and that, you know, there’s this whole AI angle, like, oh, the M4 is gonna be AI optimized
⏹️ ▶️ John as if the M3 and M2 and M1 don’t have neural engines to do AI stuff, but whatever. Part of it’s marketing, part of
⏹️ ▶️ John it is, yes, the neural engine keeps getting bigger and it will continue to do so. But the interesting part of this rumor
⏹️ ▶️ John is like the, like you said at the start, that every single Mac will have an M4
⏹️ ▶️ John by the end of next year, which the current situation is kind of like a Motley collection of
⏹️ ▶️ John M3s and things that still have M2s, including the high-end ones. So like, you know, skipping, obviously the iMac did
⏹️ ▶️ John skip. The iMac never had an M2, right? So we know that skipped. The Mac mini hasn’t skipped yet
⏹️ ▶️ John technically, because it had the M1 and it had the M2. It could still have the M3 and not skip.
⏹️ ▶️ John We don’t know about the Studio and Mac Pro. Are they ever going to get an M3 class chip or are they going to wait for their
⏹️ ▶️ John M4 variants? And so that, that kind of, like when we imagine Apple taking over control of its
⏹️ ▶️ John chips, it’s like, well now Apple doesn’t have to wait for Intel for things and they can get exactly the chips they want or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But a series, as we discussed in the past, a series of things have made that difficult. Like the, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the global pandemic has really hurt everything having to do with parts and supplies and everybody’s plans
⏹️ ▶️ John about everything. So in the middle there, there was definitely some time when Apple’s plans
⏹️ ▶️ John were surely messed up by that. But what we would like to see happen, like what is what happens
⏹️ ▶️ John with the iPhone, which is obviously the iPhone is the more important product, but like every year the iPhone gets a new chip. And sometimes the chip
⏹️ ▶️ John is not as new as we thought it would be like we didn’t get the new GPU like last year or whatever when we thought we would
⏹️ ▶️ John because it wasn’t ready yet and there’s always the difficulties of TSMC and whether their process is ready
⏹️ ▶️ John and M3B and all that stuff right but you would think it’s like okay Apple has chips they have a letter and a
⏹️ ▶️ John number that goes up in them and they produce new ones every year it’d be nice if every year oh this is the year of the M4
⏹️ ▶️ John Macs the next year is the M5 Macs the next year is the M6 Macs but instead it’s like well these
⏹️ ▶️ John you know these products that Apple cares less about like say the iPad and the Mac, they just kind of come staggering
⏹️ ▶️ John at an apple with a with whatever chips are available at the time. And every time we try to find a pattern, it’s like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John they do the low end chips and the high end ones. So maybe they do the middle end ones and then save the low
⏹️ ▶️ John end ones for like, I don’t know what the rhyme or reason is, but it is surely very complicated. It is obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John not a premeditated strategy about how to roll out chips. It’s like, what chips can we make? How many
⏹️ ▶️ John can we make for what price at what time. And the the
⏹️ ▶️ John end result is confusion in Apple’s product line. Not so much about which chip is better than which because
⏹️ ▶️ John the number going up is a clear sign. But it’s like, well, you know, people keep asking us, should I buy computer
⏹️ ▶️ John x now? Or should I wait until the next CPU is going to get mad to say like, we don’t even know if the Mac Studio
⏹️ ▶️ John is going to get an M three if it’s not going to get anything until like next year when it gets an M four at the end
⏹️ ▶️ John of next year or something. The Yeah, by all means get it. But if an M3 Mac Studio is going to be released at WWDC,
⏹️ ▶️ John you should wait. And we just don’t know. There’s not enough precedent. There’s not enough of a pattern, right? So I like
⏹️ ▶️ John that. One of my favorite thing about this rumor is with the M4, no more of that. Every Mac will
⏹️ ▶️ John get an M4. Like there’s no exceptions. Nobody’s skipping a generation. There’s going to be one for
⏹️ ▶️ John every computer. Maybe it’ll even be one worthy of the Mac Pro. We’ll see. But that’s so much more
⏹️ ▶️ John easy to explain to people that like that all the max of M4s, they’re all safe to buy. And next year,
⏹️ ▶️ John all the max will have M5s or whatever it is 1.5 years, whatever the cadence they want to do. It’ll be so
⏹️ ▶️ John refreshing if this was true. And even this like the rollout is a slow rollout for getting but at least at one point,
⏹️ ▶️ John there will be a point in time I will say now all the max have a chip with an M4 in them.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that will be refreshing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, I’m excited to see Apple untethered,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for lack of better way of putting it, you know, like you had said, without having to be beholden to Intel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or, you know, IBM and Motorola in days of yore. I’m, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happy for it. I wish we had a more concrete set of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey examples so we could extrapolate easier, but I’m not complaining. It’s just, it’s, it’s fun
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually to kind of be surprised and see, oh, we didn’t expect this to happen right now. Like the, like the very MacBook Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m talking to you through right now. I didn’t expect to have this in this past fall, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here it is. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John great. Yeah, and this rumored order is kind of back to the old thing where it’s like you release the low end chip first. So you get the,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the plain M4 in the iMac and the low end MacBook Pros. And then next you get the
⏹️ ▶️ John M4 Pro and Macs in the MacBook Pros and the Mac Mini. And then finally
⏹️ ▶️ John you get the high end chip. And of course the MacBook Air is being shoved next to the high end chip one in spring of 2025.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just a slight oddity, but that is a more understandable cadence. But on the other hand, I did
⏹️ ▶️ John like it when, Like you said, they rolled out the M3 chip and it was like, not just the M3, but also the M3 Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John and the M3 Max all at the same time. I’m sure we’ll see the M3 Ultra soon after and we sit here waiting.
Ticketmaster vs. App Store?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a pretty interesting point, I think, from user MyNameIsTee in the chat regarding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our previous topic, the Ticketmaster thing. So MyNameIsTee says, I’m no Ticketmaster fan either, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what Casey just demonstrated with the convenience charges was the Ticketmaster charges a smaller percentage for selling tickets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than Apple charges for selling apps. They just allow customers to see the itemized price
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where Apple doesn’t. Imagine if the app store showed the convenience fee. Oh, that’s so good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What’s interesting about this is like, you know, part of what makes the Ticketmaster situation so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco abusive and horrible and such a slap in the face is similar to the way hotels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and some other things in the US are priced, even just sales tax, that the advertised price to customers does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not include pretty substantial fees. And then you see them at checkout. So we have that with sales tax.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We have that with hotel taxes. And there’s a few other things in various
⏹️ ▶️ Marco US dysfunctions that have this. But I think it’s interesting, what if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps were structured that way where the price that would show on the IAP was the post-commission
⏹️ ▶️ Marco price that the developer actually received, and then on the checkout screen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it showed Apple commutance fee. That’s the kind of thing. Of course, Apple would never do that unless forced.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But wouldn’t it be cool if they were
⏹️ ▶️ John forced? I mean, I don’t think it would be cool. I think the price should just be the price.
⏹️ ▶️ John In the EU, I believe they even have sales tax put into prices to let people know what the bottom line is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most civilized places don’t have the crazy, you know, rip off, all of a sudden at the end fees that we have here.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re right. But like, in general, like, you don’t, it’s, I think it’s unreasonable to ask to essentially see people’s
⏹️ ▶️ John business model exposed. Like when you buy a box of cereal, do you get to see what portion of that goes to the manufacturer versus which portion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the problem. That’s why, like, in practice, this would never happen. And it probably shouldn’t happen, but wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it be cool if it did? Yeah, I mean, the other
⏹️ ▶️ John problem is that if you took a survey and asked how many people think that when you buy an app, you’re buying it from Apple? Like
⏹️ ▶️ John that they think every app is made by Apple?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everyone thinks this, everyone. Every regular person who’s not a tech podcast listener thinks that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, or even if they understand that developers make the apps that they essentially think the developers
⏹️ ▶️ John work for Apple. And as I, I forgot, I probably tweeted it or whatever, but like one of the most profound
⏹️ ▶️ John moments that I can remember, like the tectonic shift in the landscape of the tech world that I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John in was when Apple announced the App Store and have
⏹️ ▶️ John like a, you know, look how much money we paid for developers. Or even for, it was like, essentially developers who had previously
⏹️ ▶️ John been selling their applications to customers would receive money from customers. And as soon
⏹️ ▶️ John as Apple announced the App Store and it became popular and Apple started bragging about it, it was so clear that the
⏹️ ▶️ John world has changed. Developers, previously, you would receive money from your customers. Now you will
⏹️ ▶️ John never receive money from your customers. Your checks will be signed by Apple. So even though we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John actually work for Apple as developers or whatever, the bottom line is, hey, when you get money, where does it
⏹️ ▶️ John come from? Who signs those checks? The answer is Apple. Apple gives you your money. They’re not your customers. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple customers. Apple gives you the money, right? You don’t. And I know it’s just like, well, you know, Cheerios, General
⏹️ ▶️ John Mills gets money from like, you know, the supermarket or whatever. But like, still, it’s just such a profound
⏹️ ▶️ John difference where, you know, there’s a new middle party that came in there that
⏹️ ▶️ John they deal with the customer, they keep the customer, they have total control, and they give you whatever money they feel like giving you.
⏹️ ▶️ John And again, that might just seem like not profound. That’s just the way that retail works. But it was such a fundamental
⏹️ ▶️ John shift in the particularly Mac developer community to no longer be getting money from your customers.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I feel like the Ticketmaster thing, like obviously, yes, they want to advertise the lower price as a come on or whatever. But the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing to understand about Ticketmaster is their monopoly power grew over time. So in the beginning,
⏹️ ▶️ John it was just Ticketmaster would take whatever their cut is. And that was built into the price, right? But then So then they started doing things online,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then you could tack on that little online convenience fee because online is special somehow. And then Ticketmaster,
⏹️ ▶️ John as it amassed power, slowly just turned the dial on those fees to the point where they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John so significant, they’re like, well, why is that not included? Because we see it’s a convenience fee of like $1.50. We all
⏹️ ▶️ John hate it, and it’s stupid, but we’re like, whatever. But when it’s $40, when the percentage starts going up, it’s like, how did this
⏹️ ▶️ John happen? How did this cancerous tumor of fees grow? It’s like, well, it used to be small.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s why they would tack it on at the end, but now it’s a significant portion of the price because they just keep increasing it. And
⏹️ ▶️ John what are you going to do? You can’t buy tickets anywhere else and everyone has to deal with Ticketmaster. So yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it is interesting though, like why, why aren’t ticket prices just advertised with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this fee built in and like, why do customers even have to see this?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I mean, I guess it’s to give, probably to give Ticketmaster flexibility. Like there’s probably laws about advertised price
⏹️ ▶️ John versus whatever and itemization. I mean, there’s another law going through Congress. I forget if it passed or whatever about
⏹️ ▶️ John like broadband and how broadband does a similar thing where they advertise you pay this
⏹️ ▶️ John number of dollars a month for this speed or whatever, then they tack on fees at the end. And the new law is essentially, what are they calling
⏹️ ▶️ John it? Like stupid analogies that our legislature loves, the nutrition labels for broadband.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’ll be essentially requirements where you have to show what all the fees will be up front. And so you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John advertise a $50 thing. And then when the people get their first bill, they see 20, you know, fees stuck onto the end that double
⏹️ ▶️ John the price. You can still have those fees and they can still be as big as you want, but you at least need to show the
⏹️ ▶️ John customer what all those fees are going to be. And so I think that law just passed or is winding
⏹️ ▶️ John its way through. So that’s progress at least. Like I think it’s fine to
⏹️ ▶️ John have all these fees as long as there is transparency about it. All you need is actual competition in the market
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey because that will-
⏹️ ▶️ John Imagine. Because then Ticketmaster’s ability to add $40 to your ticket price would
⏹️ ▶️ John be impaired if there was another company that would also sell you tickets online that only added $30. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey yeah, yeah, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hate taking a hyster so much. Mikaela, who’s six, has been in a kick of,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hate this, I hate that. And she’s normally a very happy, agreeable child. But she’s really emphatic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when she doesn’t like something. I’ve been trying to break her of, I hate. I don’t love phrasing things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that way. It’s not very tasteful, and it’s a bit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco dramatic. Wouldn’t you say you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hate it? You wouldn’t be the first parent in the world to try to get your kid not to say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hate. Hate’s a strong word.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John exactly gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John have her say a t double hockey
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stick, but why will tell you right now? I think hate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ticket master. God, do I hate them so much
⏹️ ▶️ John setting a good example for your children?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, do you think is there is there any like like what what companies in America do you think are more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hated than ticket like maybe like Monsanto like what it like it takes a lot like the tobacco companies,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe like how haliburton used
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe a Comcast. Comcast at various
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco times. Oh, that’s a good one.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Although I feel like Comcast has gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better. Oh, excuse me. It’s Xfinity now, so it’s totally different.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I know. You know when a company has to change its name because people hate it so much that it’s a bad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Intellectual Ventures.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there are more hated companies that are obscure. Like, Intellectual Ventures is probably more hated, but nobody knows they exist, right? So,
⏹️ ▶️ John for big companies like Ticketmaster and Comcast. And if you don’t see live music, you don’t probably think about Ticketmaster
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ay, ay, ay. Ah, makes me so mad. All right, moving on.
iPhone RAM rumors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It looks like the iPhone 16, we are definitely getting into rumor season. iPhone 16, 16
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Plus rumored to feature increased eight gigabytes of RAM. This is coming from Mac rumors from actually a few months
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago now. The iPhone 15, the 15 that is available today has six
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gigs, 15 Plus six gigs, 15 Pro and Pro Max eight gigs. The rumored
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone 16 will have eight gigs across the board, 16, 16 Plus, 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max. So that’s a difference from 15
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and 15 plus to 16 and 16 plus of six to eight gigs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t have too much to say about this. I think John, you wanted to say something about it, but I will note very quickly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’ve noticed, particularly on my 15 Pro Max, and the fact that it’s a Max is irrelevant in this context.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I see evictions due to memory almost never. What I mean by that is I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will go back to an app that I haven’t run in possibly 48 hours, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it comes up so fast, like either, maybe it’s been, what’s the word I’m looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for, where it’s like been charged up in the background, not charged up, you know what I’m, hydrated, hydrated, that’s what I’m looking for.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s been hydrated in the background. And so maybe that’s what I’m seeing, and I’m attributing this to an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey overabundance of RAM, and really it’s just iOS being good at pre-hydrating and getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things ready in the background. Or what it feels like anyway, is just that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really have a ton of RAM in this phone, And I don’t personally ever hit a scenario where evictions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are happening, where the phone is saying, oh, well, you haven’t run, you know, Ivory, which of course I’m running
⏹️ ▶️ Casey constantly, but for the sake of discussion, you haven’t run Ivory in, you know, 16 hours. We’re just gonna punt that from memory because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we need that memory for something else. I feel like I’m seeing that very rarely these days.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so the reason I put this in here way back in January, I was a bit lurking and I hoisted it up, is simply
⏹️ ▶️ John to note that we are at the moment where every current
⏹️ ▶️ John model iPhone, the iPhone 16 or whatever, will come with as much base RAM as the low-end Macs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, that’s so bad. How soon before every new iPhone you can buy
⏹️ ▶️ John has more base RAM than say a MacBook Air? Oh my God.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Because apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple will increase the RAM inside its iPhones, but they will not increase the
⏹️ ▶️ John RAM inside the Macs. And like you mentioned about taking an app that
⏹️ ▶️ John it hasn’t been running in two days and seeing that it’s basically still in RAM or still able to come back online real
⏹️ ▶️ John fast. The thing is, the phones, because of the way they’re designed
⏹️ ▶️ John and the size of the screen, we don’t ask them to do as
⏹️ ▶️ John much as we ask a Mac, simply because on the Mac, when you have multiple apps
⏹️ ▶️ John running at the same time, they can all be on the screen at the same time. You can have five apps on
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen at the same time, at which you expect to update their display or whatever, like the display
⏹️ ▶️ John is bigger, the windowing system lets you do that. And if these two things if Apple thinks
⏹️ ▶️ John eight gigs of RAM is appropriate for the lowest end iPhone 16, which you can only see
⏹️ ▶️ John one or two or maybe three apps on the screen at the same time, depending on the dynamic island and picture and picture and so on and
⏹️ ▶️ John so forth. Whereas a MacBook Air with a much bigger screen where you could see
⏹️ ▶️ John five apps on screen six apps, eight apps, like depending on what portion of windows are visible, like
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac should have more RAM, not because it’s physically bigger or but but
⏹️ ▶️ John because you can do more things at the same time with it like it’s multitasking model is
⏹️ ▶️ John different than the phone. And I think it should be different the phone I wouldn’t to be clear, I don’t want the Mac to go to the phones
⏹️ ▶️ John multitasking model where it kills apps in the background and restores them and transparently and all that our Apple has tried
⏹️ ▶️ John to do a bunch of technologies that help the Mac be more like that. All I’m gonna is
⏹️ ▶️ John eight gigs of RAM. It’s time for Apple to bump that. Do they need to bump it to 16? Of course, I would
⏹️ ▶️ John love that, but something more than eight. Apparently, the phone is going onesie twosie going from six to eight.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe they’ll go to 10 next year or the year after, right? But it’s time like this.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s that graph that I think we talked about on past shows that somebody said it was like how much RAM
⏹️ ▶️ John is in the base Apple laptop over time and it’s like the slope that goes up and as soon as Tim Cook’s home
⏹️ ▶️ John become CEO with flatline. And it’s not just like, Oh, well, he made the ram stop or whatever. Like there are you and
⏹️ ▶️ John so you made like there’s a point of diminishing returns. Tim Cook stopped the ram.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re able to do more in the eight gigs of ram or eight gigs was sufficient for the things that most people do with their laptops and nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John new has come along to force the change in that like local AI or something that hasn’t really right. Like I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John expect the slope to continue at the same angle forever. But I also don’t expect it to be flat
⏹️ ▶️ John for 15 years or whatever. Like this, the phone certainly haven’t been right. The phones
⏹️ ▶️ John have been creeping up in the amount of RAM. And those are portable mobile devices that generally
⏹️ ▶️ John cost less than the MacBooks that people buy as well. By the way, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple needs to increase the RAM and the max I don’t know when it’s gonna happen. But yeah, this is we’re at a we’re at a possible
⏹️ ▶️ John inflection point here where the phones will have more RAM than the base Model Max.
Easier Audio Hijack installation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, but you know, there’s good news. Installing Rogamiba apps is now a lot easier.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is wildly unrelated, of course, but we use the wonderful Audio Hijack
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to record our audio. We were using Piezo, or I was using Piezo many, many years ago. I use Fission
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for some things from every now and again. And one of the only crummy things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about using Audio Hijack, which generally gets my highest recommendation, we are friends with several Rogamiba people,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but truly, it’s incredible. It is an amazing app, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up until very recently, the dance you had to go through, particularly on Apple Silicon, but it was true
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of even Intel models, the dance you had to go through in order to install their audio capture engine, which is the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing that lets you capture audio, it was bananas. You had to reboot not once,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not twice, but I think thrice in order to do it. It was absolutely out of control. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as of very, very recently, in fact, sometime this month, reading from their own blog,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Audio Audio Hijack has now been updated to provide our new installer-free setup on macOS 14.4 and up. Just as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we showed off last month with our recent Piezo update, you can now get started using Audio Hijack nearly instantly. There’s no need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to restart your Mac, use recovery mode, or even enter a password. I have to assume that Apple provided some new APIs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something, or maybe gave them some sort of entitlement or something like that, but this is excellent because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was onerous and just user hostile. And it wasn’t Rogamiba’s fault, as far as anyone could tell. It was Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, they were doing the best they could with what the system threw at them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, so I’m very happy for this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you can see the explanation they put on their website, but it’s not just like, oh, you only have to do one restart, or
⏹️ ▶️ John you just have to do, you go into accessibility or permissions and system settings or whatever. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you don’t have to do anything. It has gone from the most complicated install that you can imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John that was scary and technical and require you to change security settings and reboot seven times or whatever, to,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, there’s just none of that anymore. Just load the app. And I think that’s great, because surely,
⏹️ ▶️ John that required some cooperation from Apple. Because if Rokumi could have done it before, or was using some weird hack
⏹️ ▶️ John that like, you know, exploited a security flaw in the operating system, we would hear about it and it would be closed by now. So
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever has gone on here, it is such a change from like the worst install experience to like
⏹️ ▶️ John the same experience as text edit. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John an amazing update. And it gives me some faith that if you wait long
⏹️ ▶️ John enough, like five to 10 years, that maybe Apple will actually give you APIs that you need.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we’ve talked about this about iOS and iPad forever. What Audio Hijack does,
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of be able to be like a switching station slash recorder for audio
⏹️ ▶️ John that happens on the system, is such a useful function and so essential for people who work
⏹️ ▶️ John with audio on their devices like we do, that it makes the Mac so much
⏹️ ▶️ John more powerful than the other device. And we’re like, why aren’t there APIs like this on iOS and iPad OS? And it was
⏹️ ▶️ John difficult to have optimism because back when it’s like, well, you can do it on a Mac, but man,
⏹️ ▶️ John look at what Roku Miba has to do. Do you make that happen on the Mac? It used to be easy to do on the Mac because it was less
⏹️ ▶️ John secure and it was more open to things like this and you run kernel extensions and yada, yada, yada. But it just got harder
⏹️ ▶️ John and harder. Like this is going in the wrong direction. We want these APIs to be on iPad and iOS, but
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac where we have them, it’s getting harder and harder for them to even exist there. And this is a welcome turn in the other
⏹️ ▶️ John direction, which is like, you know, Now it is way easier to do on the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John and also more secure than it was in the past, thanks to presumably cooperation from Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this gives me some more hope that maybe they’ll realize that some of the other operating systems they have, like say
⏹️ ▶️ John an iPad that’s gonna ship with an M4 in it, maybe that should be able to do similar
⏹️ ▶️ John things. It would be great to see that functionality up here on non-Mac platforms.
#askatp: Wait for M4 for AI?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do some Ask ATP and let’s start with Scott McCauley, who writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as someone who is about to buy an M3 MacBook Air to replace a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey noticed the latest German leak about the AI-enabled M4. That’s kind of tangential to what we were just talking about.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know new tech is always around the corner and I usually don’t worry so much about future-proofing, but in this case, I’m wondering if there’s possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something more qualitatively meaningful about this next-gen release that should cause me to hold off another year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My two cents, especially if you’re coming from Intel, hell no, you upgrade and you upgrade now. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey best I could do is meet you in the middle and say, wait for WWDC just in case something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happens, but I doubt it will. If it were me, I would upgrade immediately. Marco, what do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, when we hear things like, this will be made for AI or this will support AI, or this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will be a big upgrade for AI, that kind of thing doesn’t usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen within the same product line in one year. It’s generally speaking that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco marketing focus. When you look at what does it mean for a computer to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco support AI or to be good at AI, I mean, these days it mostly means it has a web browser
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because most important AI developments are happening now remotely on servers. And so any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop with a web browser can access things like chat GPT and all the fun models like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you’re talking about running models locally, what you’re generally talking about is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having custom acceleration hardware that is good at running models. That can be the neural
⏹️ ▶️ Marco engine, that can be the GPUs, in some cases it can be both. It depends on the model, depends
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the AI, but what we’re probably looking at here, what, if somebody says,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the focus on the M4 is gonna be more AI capability, what that probably means is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more cores in the neural engine or more advancements in the GPU. But when you’re looking at like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M3 versus M4, you’re still talking about the same, probably the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco same process size in terms of manufacturing, or at least a very similar process to manufacture it. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still talking about probably the same like rough physical chip size. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s not really a ton of room on the chip to make massively more GPU cores, massively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more neural engine space and neural engine cores. This is the best time for all this pounding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be happening behind me. This is the most I’ve said the whole show this is when they’re pounding stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought I heard you’re like Mike Stan Josling, so I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco glad you acknowledged it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so M3 to M4, you’re talking about the same process, roughly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if not exactly the same. You’re talking about the same approximate size and power usage of the chip. So you’re not gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have massive differences that like the M3 just can’t do something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really important that the M4 can do. Or you know, the M4 is not gonna be three times as fast for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AI or for like, it’s not going to be that level of difference. The M4 will probably have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more of everything, more, you know, more CPU power, more GPU power, more neural engine capacity. Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’ll have all those things and they will, I’m sure, market it as a big AI thing. And it will be good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at running local AI models relative to like PC hardware in the same, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco performance and, and, and, you know, wattage class, I’m sure. But relative, you know, between the M3
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the M4, this is not a like, you must wait for this kind of boundary probably.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s much more likely to be a nice incremental boundary like we’ve had on the other M chips, going from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M1 to M2 to M3. Each one of those had like a 15%-ish, you know, kind of, you know, roughly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, this is better, but it’s not like you don’t have to hold off your entire life to get it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There will always be the next M chip coming out next year. next year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like that will always be the case. So buy the laptop when you need it. It’ll be a,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even the M3 today is a massive upgrade over your 2019 Intel MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro. And so enjoy it. And just, you know, buy it if you need it now, buy it now and have it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the next year. And when the M4 comes out, if I am totally wrong and somehow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve defeated physics and they’ve managed to make the M4 be amazing at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of AI thing that the M3 cannot then you will hear me do some follow-up and I’ll leap my words and you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can be right. But I’m pretty sure I’m gonna be right on this. So in the meantime, just buy the stupid M3 MacBook Air.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s an amazing computer, you’re gonna love it, and it’ll be able to do everything you need it to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, because this person’s coming from Intel, it’s a no-brainer. If they had an M2 and were asking, it would be a different conversation.
⏹️ ▶️ John But coming from Intel, buy now. Especially since the rumor is that the M4 MacBook Air is towards the end of next year, so forget it,
⏹️ ▶️ John buy now. But that said, I think it is entirely plausible for the M4 to be
⏹️ ▶️ John three to four times as fast some AI task as the M three, not because they’ve suddenly found more room in the
⏹️ ▶️ John die or whatever, but for typical apple reasons, which is basically, uh, you know, the, the, the M four will have
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever silicon, uh, is slightly more advantageous to do like modern,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, local on, on device AI stuff than the M three, but then also that has library
⏹️ ▶️ John support where apple will, you know, have optimized versions of whatever algorithms that it’s using for whatever AI features
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s going to roll out at WWDC. and those libraries will take advantage of the
⏹️ ▶️ John different neural engine or whatever they’re gonna end up rebranding as if they do inside the
⏹️ ▶️ John M4. And the M3 and M2 and M1 and maybe even Intel will still be able to do all
⏹️ ▶️ John this stuff, although maybe not Intel, but still be able to do all this stuff. But will
⏹️ ▶️ John the library for that be optimized as much as the one that’s for the
⏹️ ▶️ John new silicon? That’s the way these things tend to happen where Apple says, you know, And on the M4,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s four times as fast as the M3 at this task. Yeah, because they optimized it in their library
⏹️ ▶️ John for the specific neural engine that’s in the M4. And the M3 just gets like the old code path that they had before
⏹️ ▶️ John that is, you know, it was what it was before, right? It doesn’t mean that the M4 has like four times
⏹️ ▶️ John more space on the die dedicated to it. It simply means that Apple is going to optimize for whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John new thing they’re rolling out in Silicon, assuming these rumors are true, right? In a similar way to when Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John rolled out the neural engine, The first chips that had the neural engine on the Mac was like, look how much faster it is than
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever Intel thing that doesn’t have a neural engine. It’s not because the Intel thing couldn’t potentially do that, it’s just that Apple didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John spend time optimizing it for, you know, or spend any new time optimizing it for the Intel chips.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the neural engine was specifically designed by Apple to run whatever exact library that they
⏹️ ▶️ John built, like it’s the hardware and software built together, whereas Intel, they just had to take what, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple had to take what Intel had available to them and then make a library that works with it, right? So that’s always going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be the case when new Silicon comes out. But Apple’s not going to have a big AI splash W3C and
⏹️ ▶️ John say, and this is only for M4 Max, which none of you own yet. Of course it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey going to run on the M3 Max
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’ll run on the M2 Max and it’ll run the M1 Max, maybe not at Intel. But it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John just be slower, a little bit slower. And what you should be really asking yourself is, in the
⏹️ ▶️ John coming year, how much do I care that whatever AI features that I don’t even know about yet
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple’s going to roll out will run slightly slower on my Mac? you probably don’t care that much. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John no matter how great the features are, if they run at all, which they will on your M3 Mac, it’ll be fine,
⏹️ ▶️ John is it like, oh, I took to throw this Mac into the ocean because this new feature
⏹️ ▶️ John that I didn’t even have before, but now that I have it, it’s the only thing I care about.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s not gonna happen. Like the first wave of AI features that Apple has, as amazing as they are,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like you’re gonna buy your entire machine focused around them, because we’re not at that state in this technology,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So you’ll be fine. You’ll wait for the M5. The M5 will be even faster than the M4 on these
⏹️ ▶️ John tasks, and it’ll be fine.
#askatp: Emulators for 32-bit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And moving on, Joe Bezdek writes, the recent discussion about 64-bit versus 128-bit registers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reminds me of something I’d long wondered about, given the power of the M-series chips and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the impressive performance of emulators like Rosetta 2. Why aren’t there emulators that allow 32-bit software to run on 64-bit chips?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is it technically impossible? I have some old Mac games that I’d love to play again. What do you think, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John So, here’s the thing about running your old 32-bit games, your old 32-bit software. It’s like, oh, can’t they just
⏹️ ▶️ John emulate that? Can’t they just translate the instructions from 64 bit instructions to from 32 bit instructions to 64 bit instructions.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’m pretty sure they can do that. But here’s the thing. You
⏹️ ▶️ John need all the 32 bit libraries that came with a 32 bit version of the operating system that that 32
⏹️ ▶️ John bit game ran on. Apple doesn’t ship those anymore in their operating system. So now you’re like, OK,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not just emulating a thing. I need essentially a VM that’s going to run an old version of Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John OS inside of the M where I can run my 32 bit game. I’m not sure if that
⏹️ ▶️ John is exists anywhere or as possible. It’s conceivable that something about aren’t the arm 64
⏹️ ▶️ John chips Apple uses makes it more difficult to do this or
⏹️ ▶️ John puts a barrier in the way which would explain why even like VMs don’t do whatever. But it’s not going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be as simple as like Rosetta where you just have an Intel app and you double click it and it runs. That only works
⏹️ ▶️ John because that’s also a 64 bit Intel app and you know they have the 64 bit libraries or whatever. I think you
⏹️ ▶️ John need the whole stack because Apple just sort of excise 32-bit from their entire thing. So
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a bunch of files that aren’t part of that application that you need to run that 32-bit game. That said,
⏹️ ▶️ John I really wish, I mean, we just talked about, you know, Rogamiba and Apple actually, you know, doing
⏹️ ▶️ John the right thing and making APIs that make a useful apps even better and safer for everybody.
⏹️ ▶️ John After years of dealing with that, it would be great if Apple continued down the path
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s kind of like tiptoeing on to try to
⏹️ ▶️ John make it so that virtualization of Apple OSs on Apple hardware is more of a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Used to be Apple was just totally out of the game. They’re like run VMware, run Parallels, we’re not in the thing. And now they have the hypervisor framework,
⏹️ ▶️ John which makes it way easier to make those type of emulators, you know, such that like individual developers
⏹️ ▶️ John can do it by just saying, I’m just gonna use Apple’s hypervisor framework and build a GUI around it, right? What
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac developers want is kind of like what iOS has with simulators, where you can just pick a device, pick an
⏹️ ▶️ John OS version and run your thing in Xcode in a simulator, yada yada. On the Mac, that’s if you’re doing a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John development, that’s so much harder. You got to use VMs, you got to use old Macs, VMs can’t log into your Apple IDs,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? If Apple truly embraced virtualization of Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John OS and how virtualization of all its platforms, that would be a huge developer boon.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they would have like fully support it like so you can run old versions of Mac OS into VM. But like Like I said,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t log into your Apple ID in those VMs for like weird security reasons. Only Apple can really
⏹️ ▶️ John fix that due to the whole security chain there. That would be so great if they
⏹️ ▶️ John enabled that. As a side effect, maybe it would allow you to run your 32-bit games, right? But I
⏹️ ▶️ John just think it’s the thing Apple should do to make their platform more flexible and to, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John to make lives for developers easier. And preserving your
⏹️ ▶️ John past legacy like Nintendo does by selling you the original Super Mario Brothers and all
⏹️ ▶️ John those NES games and SNES games and all that stuff. I know Apple doesn’t like to
⏹️ ▶️ John do that, but maybe you could appeal to Tim Cook’s desire to sell the same iPad for 17 years. Look,
⏹️ ▶️ John if people are willing to buy like classic 32-bit iOS games,
⏹️ ▶️ John and maybe not an iOS because running virtualization on your phone might be too resource intensive, although they have as much RAM as low end Macs now.
⏹️ ▶️ John But like there may eventually be a market for running old Mac software
⏹️ ▶️ John on Macs for running old iOS software on phones. And if
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple already has the infrastructure to do that from because it’s good for developers, it would be easy
⏹️ ▶️ John to roll out a consumer facing version of that. So I don’t know if there’s a solution to this today. I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John there are any technical barriers to it, but it is. You’re going to need more files than just your
#askatp: OLED as second HDR secreen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anonymous writes, once John has gotten the upcoming OLED iPad Pro, I’d like to ask, does it work well as a secondary
⏹️ ▶️ Casey HDR screen for a Mac if the primary screen is an SDR screen? This is bold to ask
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what the state is of something that hasn’t been released, but let’s go with it. Contemplating upgrading from an 11-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad Pro second gen so that in addition to normal iPad use, I could see HDR photos in HDR
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Lightroom Classic when my primary screen is a studio display. Yes, I know that the Pro Display XDR is the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey proper solution, but I bought the studio display for 2,200 pounds in, or excuse me, not pounds,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey euros in September before I knew that HDR support Lightroom Classic would launch in October. And 8,000
⏹️ ▶️ Casey euros for the XDR with stand and nano grooves is a lot, even knowing that I have a hobby
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, there’s a lot easier way to get a smallish HDR screen that works with macOS and does not
⏹️ ▶️ John buy in the 8,000 euro XDR. All the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Pros come with pretty amazing HDR capable screens. You get a whole computer with them too.
⏹️ ▶️ John And some of them might cost as much as a high-end iPad. So having iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John as a secondary screen, like there are HDR iPads you can buy now, like the mini LED 12.9 inch, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John I use my iPad as a secondary screen when I’m doing multi-screen development work
⏹️ ▶️ John on Switch Glass. That is my second screen. This is another example of Mac. Mac OS’s support for iPads as
⏹️ ▶️ John a second screen is good enough for me to use that as a way for
⏹️ ▶️ John me to test multi-screen scenarios. like the operating system just sees it as a screen. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing particularly weird about it. It works as expected. And so that has given me a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John time to use an iPad as a second screen. And granted my main screen also has HDR. But I think if you
⏹️ ▶️ John had an iPad, especially like a 12.9 inch iPad with the big screen, the mini LED back right and HDR,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you could use that as a way to see what the pictures will look like in HDR. Because the problem if you have an SDR screen
⏹️ ▶️ John is you just like, it’ll display them okay, but you just like, if you want to know, what does this look like in HDR?
⏹️ ▶️ John and there’s just no way to know without an HDR screen. So if you already have an iPad and you
⏹️ ▶️ John just wanna see what a photo looks like in HDR, yeah, I think it works fine. Bring the photo over there, full
⏹️ ▶️ John screen it on the iPad screen. There’s not gonna be as many pixels if it’s a high megapixel image and you have a small
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad, like it’s a compromise or whatever, but there’s that. If you don’t already have
⏹️ ▶️ John an iPad Pro, but you wanna just have a second screen or you want, basically you want an HDR screen for
⏹️ ▶️ John photo previewing, consider buying a MacBook Pro as your next computer. use the desktop
⏹️ ▶️ John laptop lifestyle that Marco uses only actually open the lid on your computer. Because the MacBook Pro screens
⏹️ ▶️ John are really good. Like every time someone asks, should I buy a MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro? The main reason
⏹️ ▶️ John I tell people to buy a MacBook Pro is not for the CPU performance, not for the GPU performance, it’s for that screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s gonna kill me how long we’re gonna have to wait for the MacBook Air to have an HDR screen long after like, every iPhone already
⏹️ ▶️ John has an HDR screen. They’re gonna be everywhere. It’s gonna be like, but the MacBook Air, just
⏹️ ▶️ John like I couldn’t get retina for like a decade and a half. He’s not gonna be allowed to get HDR, which is stupid because
⏹️ ▶️ John HDR should just be table stakes given that all of our devices take HDR photos. But anyway, yeah, think about
⏹️ ▶️ John a MacBook Pro as potentially your next computer and you can hook up your same external monitor to
⏹️ ▶️ John it and just use the MacBook Pro’s internal display as your HDR preview display.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our sponsor this week, Swiftcraft. And thank you to our members who support us directly. You can join us at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco atp.fm slash join. In this week’s ATP Overtime, our member exclusive bonus segment,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ll be discussing the HumanePin Rabbit R1, but with more Apple influence,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because Johnny Ive and Sam Altman are apparently seeking funding for a personal AI
⏹️ ▶️ Marco device. And then also, Apple’s apparently teaching an AI system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use apps, maybe as part of advanced Siri, kind of like the Rabbit R1 is doing its large
⏹️ ▶️ Marco action model. So we’ll be covering that in ATP Overtime as well. Join as a member to listen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, atb.fm.com. Thank you very much and we’ll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental, oh it was accidental. John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him,
⏹️ ▶️ John Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. And you can find the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into mastodon, you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, check the podcast so long
Goin’ phishin’
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we were talking about Ticketmaster earlier and I am going to Las Vegas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to see the fish shows at the Sphere to see the last two of them. I’m leaving tomorrow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that I had to buy those tickets secondhand on the various constellation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of things like you know StubHub and like all those other like you know and even I think Ticketmaster even has their own secondhand market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco built in Ticketmaster now. Of course they do. Of course. Talk about ripoffs like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you You know, so when you buy the tickets up front, you know, the directly, you know, you pay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever it is, the 40 bucks in your convenience charge and whatever that stuff is. When you buy tickets from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a reseller service like the, like the StubHub and these other things, it’s amazing. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have both bought and sold tickets on these platforms before. They charge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both ends and they charge a lot. So when, when you buy it, suppose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you go to like StubHub or I, I don’t have the percentages in front of me, so forgive me. But when you go to StubHub,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you buy a ticket, you on the buyer side, you pay something like a 30 or 40%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surcharge. Well, the seller, out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the fee that is the base price for the buyer, the seller also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pays a large surcharge on that order. So the vast majority of the money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is being taken by the platform. It’s kind of amazing. amount of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ripping off happening here on all sides. Oh, it’s it’s so gross.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s another thing a ticket master is says that it tries to Prevent
⏹️ ▶️ John but probably is making half-hearted efforts is the whole idea of like stopping Scalpers essentially from buying up all the
⏹️ ▶️ John tickets and just reselling them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, no, they just want to be the
⏹️ ▶️ John scalper themselves Yeah, right exactly Well, they you know ticket master is somewhat motivated to do that mistake the messes like we want
⏹️ ▶️ John to make those exorbitant profits We don’t want a bunch of scalpers buying it. So the ticket master does make some efforts to to
⏹️ ▶️ John limit who can buy or whatever. But I mean, people just hire people to be humans to buy the tickets like it’s it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of, you know, it’s a cat and mouse game there. But yeah, uh, ticket masters motivations are not pure. And also, as noted before,
⏹️ ▶️ John ticket master is bad at their jobs. So what happens with Taylor Swift concerts? The site crashes
⏹️ ▶️ John because they’re bad at their job. Uh, huge amounts of tickets are sold by scalpers because they’re bad at their job.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And then those tickets go
⏹️ ▶️ John on those scalping sites for more huge profits for more middle parties. I mean, the secondary market is
⏹️ ▶️ John always going to be a rip off like, but At least that is actually somewhat competitive, because there’s not just StubHub. There’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I forget what the other ones are. I used to know what all the names are, because I was trying to get Taylor Swift tickets. At least there’s some competition
⏹️ ▶️ John in that area. But the main problem is like, why are, you know, how are these scalpers all getting
⏹️ ▶️ John tickets? And like I said, the ultimate hack is, well, you just pay people a small amount of money to
⏹️ ▶️ John buy the tickets for you. You use human power, right? Kind of like the Amazon Just Walk Out store, where they had humans
⏹️ ▶️ John monitoring on cameras to make up for the errors that the supposed, you know, computer
⏹️ ▶️ John vision things we’re making. So for the sphere thing in Vegas, like it doesn’t seem
⏹️ ▶️ John like a fish friendly venue to me. Like I would expect, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, like sort of outdoors, more sprawling, not so much about the laser light show, like is fish.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s the world’s biggest hot box. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco perfect for fish. Yeah, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, you’re worried about the smoke
⏹️ ▶️ John collecting at the top. I know, I get that, but it’s like, I just feel like it’s more sort of hippie dippy. And also like fish, like they’re up there
⏹️ ▶️ John and they play their instruments. They’re not about big productions, right? Like, but the sphere is all about
⏹️ ▶️ John the biggest production, like the biggest screens you’ve ever seen. Wait, so what are you saying about U2 then? Oh, U2 is all
⏹️ ▶️ John about the big production. You’re kidding? Ever since after the Joshua Tree tour, the whole Zoo-ropa tour and the pop tour,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s just spectacle on spectacle on spectacle. It’s a perfect U2 venue. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, that’s part of why I fought so hard to get myself in to see this, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, I don’t really know what to expect. Like, I’ve been to something like five Fish shows so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far, something like that. And they have a certain formula, they have a certain format,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so I kind of know what to expect at most FISH shows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This, I think, is going to be really weird and really interesting. And so that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why I wanna see it. Like, it’s actually going to be different from what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they almost always have done. I know Trina Stacey gave an interview
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I watched earlier basically saying, you know, like that they’ve had to, you know, re-architect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entire things about how they do, you know, like, cause you know, the sphere doesn’t seem to really have like a traditional lighting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rig even. And so you have these, these giant, you know, this like spherical projection
⏹️ ▶️ Marco video screen to put something on. And there’s, there’s little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to no traditional lighting, it seems. And then they have on the stage,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like he was saying that, you know, when you look at like how you two had to stage it, there was almost nothing on the stage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The stage is, it actually looks fairly small like if you look at pictures and video. You’d be blocking the screen. Right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and normally Phish has tons of stuff on the stage like there’s all sorts of you know obviously instruments and drums
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you know the various like amps and monitor speakers and different like you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plugins and pedals and all this other stuff they use and and you know so I’m just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really curious to see like how do they stage it? How, what’s in the background. Normally they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this guy Chris Corota, he’s a famous lighting designer and he does live lighting cues with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the band. Because one thing, most big touring bands,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for each tour they basically develop a show and then play that show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over and over again in every state they go to. That’s not how Phish tours. With Phish, everything is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of riffed off the cuff. There’s some advanced planning, but not a ton of advanced planning for each show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and every show is different. That’s part of why people like me like it so much. This actually breaks that format in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sense that I assume that they have to kind of pre-set a lot of what they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing with the visuals and things like that. But I don’t know how it’s going to work and that’s why it’s interesting. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it might be awesome, it might suck. That’s part of the excitement of going. I kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of want to see it because whatever it is, they’re probably not going to do it very often. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might be a one-off. these are four shows they’re doing, they might never do any other shows at this venue. Or maybe they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come back every year and do it, I don’t know. But I think it’s gonna be interesting and risky and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you really do need to, it’s kind of like making a music video because it’s a screen, right? And you can do essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John lighting with the screen, but there’s all sorts of, and it’s not just a screen, but it’s like, it’s so environmental, that
⏹️ ▶️ John like normally what you might put up on the screen behind a band is different than what you put in the sphere.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you give an example of U2 stuff, like there’s a lot of like sort of mood and environmental stuff that you put up
⏹️ ▶️ John there for like a slower song or whatever, instead of having the equivalent of,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, let’s see closeups of the people in the band or let’s see some flashy graphics or whatever. It’s more like,
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s just put something on the screen to be atmospheric, to change the mood in the entire
⏹️ ▶️ John sphere. And that’s the thing you can do when you’ve got a screen that’s so huge and wraps around the audience like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so I think it really is a an entirely separate skill from like traditional lighting or even like what you choose
⏹️ ▶️ John done in the past by having giant screens in their concert venues. And I saw
⏹️ ▶️ John some parts of the you to one it seemed fine. Like it is definitely a different vibe than a show. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like it’s much like a rock show traditional lighting and yes, even like, you know, 80s metal
⏹️ ▶️ John hairband like the little sparker things, you know those things like little explosions and sparks
⏹️ ▶️ John that go out and smoke and colored lights and flashing lights that is kind of part of the
⏹️ ▶️ John genre, but you’re not going to get that in the sphere, not the least of which because it’s indoors, but also because yeah, you’d be
⏹️ ▶️ John blocking the screen. It’s all about what’s on the screen. So I think it’ll definitely be a different vibe than
⏹️ ▶️ John watching them on the beach.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh yeah, totally. And again, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why I think it’ll be interesting to see and and I and I honestly, I think I’d be surprised if they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did it again, but we’ll see what it ends up being. But that’s kind of why like again, like I think this might be a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one off, which is why it’s interesting to go see it now. They’re gonna have a residency. Yeah, right. Well, that’s they can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do a residency because they play different show every night. Like, you know, most things in Vegas, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one show that that the act performs every single night for months or years until you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it goes off and they move on. That’s not how fish perform. So that’s why
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s they could still do it the same way. They always do it like so residencies don’t have to be every single. I don’t know what the deal is with the
⏹️ ▶️ John sphere or whatever, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I was thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John of the Billy Joel one. Billy Joel’s had a residency in Madison Square Garden, but he does one show a month.
⏹️ ▶️ John He just did his 100th. I’ll say if I find a link to the show not so I don’t know Casey had confined a good link for us
⏹️ ▶️ John somewhere. It was the 100th Billy Joel Madison Square Garden residency. And I think I
⏹️ ▶️ John have to find that link that I think we put in before of the story in the New Yorker or the Atlantic or
⏹️ ▶️ John wherever it was. Billy Joel lives in Long Island and he takes a helicopter to Madison Square Garden
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey because he doesn’t want to fight the traffic.
⏹️ ▶️ John So once a month he leaves his mansion on the beach, gets in a helicopter, flies to Madison Square
⏹️ ▶️ John Garden, plays one show, gets paid multiple millions of dollars for that one show and then flies back. That’s amazing. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think he’s earned that. For sure. That’s what I’m saying. Like a fish residency doesn’t have to be like other people’s residencies.
⏹️ ▶️ John It could be they do one show a month and every single one of those shows are different. Yeah, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could be. But yeah, we’ll see. I’m very excited. I think it’s going to be really cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to see. I think the band will be a little bit outside of their own comfort zone to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually like something interesting to see and I’m kind of curious to see how they handle that. I think they’ll handle it well, but it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be fun to see. And then like I had just no clue what they’re going to do for the visuals.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I assume it’s going to be kind of like an iTunes visualizer from the early 2000s.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I assume whatever it is, I think it’s going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco designed for a class of drugs that I don’t use, but that many of the people there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will be using. And so that will also have an interesting thing to experience.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apparently, Billy Joel is not taking a helicopter anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was going to say, yeah, I love classic rock.com is a good article about this. Blah, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I got a little freaked out, confessed Joel, admitting the occasional turbulence put him off the chopper rides. Now he’s traded the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sky for the rails. The train lets you get get up right there. So he takes the Long Island Railroad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or it continues. But the helicopter and train weren’t the only modes of transport. Joel tried. He even admitted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to taking a Greyhound bus on what John the Hudson River line. Very good.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s certainly not going to be driving himself. He’s too
⏹️ ▶️ John old and too rich to be sitting in traffic like that.