583: I've Spent a Lot of Time in the Address Bar
16 Apr 2024EU app stores, retro emulators, what computer usage does to your handwriting, and important family light-switch policies.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Power problems
- The ATP Store is BACK baby! 👕
- Runs until Sunday, 28 April. Don’t wait!
- Remember members get 15% off!
- New member special: ATP Insider: Computing Origin Stories
- Follow-up:
- How little kids write
4s - Three-step car buying process (via Paul Chernoff)
- Rivian software update helps avoid trash EV chargers
- Joe Lion on reticle limits
- High-NA EUV
- ATP #562: Do You Have a Dragon?
- Johny Srouji interview (Timestamp link to 34m28s)
- Belkin phone holders
- How little kids write
- A first look at 🇪🇺’s alternative app stores
- Apple opens App Store to “retro” game emulators
- Ask ATP:
- How does John manage new Safari windows? (via Jan Wedekind)
- Do we use case-sensitive file systems on our Macs? (via Pedro Fernandes)
- What kind of fan did Marco buy? (via Matt McCurdy)
- Post-show:
- Lutron Diva smart switch
- Lutron Claro accessory switch for Diva dimmers on multi-way circuits
- Members-only ATP Overtime: Visiting with old friends
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Chapters
- Casey’s huge equipment
- ATP Store 🖼️
- Special: Computing Origin Stories 🖼️
- How to write “4”s
- Neutral follow-up
- M-chip size limits
- DockKit phone robots
- Sponsor: Fastmail
- First look: EU app stores
- Retro emulators now allowed
- Sponsor: Squarespace
- #askatp: Safari tab spawning
- #askatp: Case-sensitive filesystems
- #askatp: Best ceiling fans
- Ending theme
- Lutron Diva smart switches
Casey’s huge equipment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I gotta tell you, there’s a, uh, thunderstorm that just ripped through the area, and I think we’re in the clear,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but if we interrupt the show, uh, because I need to go, you know, start a generator or something,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, then my apologies. But it should be fine. I think we’re through with the thick of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That sounds really hardcore. I’m gonna go start my generator, everybody.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, the thing of it is, is that, I think I’ve told this story somewhere, but, uh, my parents live only 45
⏹️ ▶️ Casey minutes west of me, but their area loses power regularly, and they got this like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey obscenely expensive, ridiculous Honda inverter generator that weighs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 85,000 pounds and well, then they ended up getting a Generac or whatever, whole home generator and they were like, here, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey borrow this forever. So I’ve had, or we have had this ridiculously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nice Honda generator in our garage for probably five-ish years now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I believe I’ve used it once for about 30, 35 minutes and that’s it. Because around the time that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they not bequeathed but bequeathed us the generator, that’s when the power company cut down a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of trees that were near the lines leading into the neighborhood. Because the lines outside the neighborhood are lines,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are above ground lines, and the stuff inside the neighborhood is underground. So…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the law of, you know, large equipment that you buy for yourself for some kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, you know, special conditions is that the moment you… First of all, the moment you buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, that condition will probably never happen again. But certainly if that condition happens, you will need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it for the briefest of times. So the moment you start your generator, the power will come back on.
⏹️ ▶️ John Correct. Assuming you can get it started after it’s been sitting in your house for seven years without ever being started.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, right, in that case, if you can’t get it started, the power will stay out for three days.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But yeah, I don’t know. It hopefully will not be an issue. But if suddenly I disappear or get very, very quiet,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not because I’m sleepy, even though I am. It’s because we lost power, so hopefully not.
⏹️ ▶️ John We know you’re dying to use it. You have this big thing, you’re like, I just hope we lose power so I get to run out and use the big
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah. I would very much like to use a generator. I would rather not do it under duress during a podcast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That I’m not as keen on. Are you trying to use recreational generator use? exactly
ATP Store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have to remind you that the HP store is back. It is back and better
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than ever, maybe. I don’t know, it’s back though. We have a whole bunch of stuff for sale. We
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a bunch of returning stuff from past years, which I’m not gonna talk about. We talked about that last episode,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but we have some new stuff. John, if you don’t mind, would you quickly just talk through the new stuff? Very, very quickly, please.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you enjoyed slash endured the member special where I showed how I manage my windows on
⏹️ ▶️ John my Mac, we have a shirt celebrating that. Don’t worry, the shirt doesn’t look too ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just our logo with some windows behind it that most people won’t even be able to recognize as windows. And then you get to explain
⏹️ ▶️ John the shirt and explain how you feel about my window management technique, good or bad. Anyway, we’ve got that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And don’t forget, it’s not just a shirt. It’s a tank top. It’s a long sleeve. It’s a sweatshirt. Everything is everything, as Merlin says.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then we have the ATP graffiti shirt, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John our logo written in POMOES graffiti style handwriting recognition
⏹️ ▶️ John that also comes in a bunch of different styles and colors. And then finally,
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess we said we weren’t talking about returning stuff, but I want to talk about the performance shirt because that has basically
⏹️ ▶️ John not been for sale for like five, seven years or something. If you work out and you get sweaty
⏹️ ▶️ John and you want a shirt that will, I guess, wick away that moisture better than normal, try the ATP performance
⏹️ ▶️ John shirt. And yeah, then we have a bunch of returning stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, the polo too. So yeah, check it out. So you can go to atp.fm slash store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to go and make your purchases. Remember, you have until Sunday, the 28th
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of April ATP time, but you’re not going to, you don’t need to worry about when the store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey closes because you know what you’re doing right now? You’re signaling, you’re pulling over, or if you’re walking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re looking for a gap in the crowd, you’re going to walk to the side of the sidewalk or what have you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you’re going to go to atp.fm slash store, and you’re going to place your purchase right now with plenty of time to spare.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We had someone write in, I don’t remember if it was an email or a tweet or, well, toot or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they said, we all know that what Casey’s saying about people saying, oh, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey missed it, we all know that people are just ribbing Casey. Let me assure you, while
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I cannot say with absolute unimpunable certainty, I don’t think that’s what I’m looking for, but nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t say with certainty that these things really do happen, but every fiber of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my being know or feels like, yeah, there’s a bunch of people who say, Oh, it’s like two minutes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey later and I forgot her, which fine, whatever I deserve it. I own that. But every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey single time, there’s at least one, usually between two and five people that say, Oh my gosh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m the one. I never thought it would be me. And I’m the one. So ATP dot
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s happened to me. I think one of the sales sales, I forgot to buy stuff. Luckily, because it’s my sale, I can just
⏹️ ▶️ John go to the the content of your people and say, yeah, I know the sales over, but I want X, Y, Z. Um, but that doesn’t apply
⏹️ ▶️ John to you, the listener. So get your order in before the store closes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. And as a final note, remember you go to your member page at atp.fm slash member and get your bespoke, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey coupon code or whatever you want to call it, discount code, uh, which will get you 15% off. And if you aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a remember and want to get 15% off at p.fm slash
Special: Computing Origin Stories
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why else might you want to write this very moment? Go to atp.fm.com. Join John.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ve got a new member special. Our member special this month is another ATP Insider, and it’s about
⏹️ ▶️ John our computing origin stories. If you want to hear a bunch of old guys wax nostalgic
⏹️ ▶️ John about how they got their starts in computers, we have a podcast episode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you. Indeed. It was a lot of fun. You know, it’s funny because I’ll only speak for myself. My memory
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is garbage, and I can barely remember what I had for dinner three hours ago, two hours ago, whatever time it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I feel like there are these moments, and I’m sure this is true for everyone, not just me, but there are moments that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are just crystal clear from decades ago where I just vividly remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a feeling or a thing or an event. And it was fun going through some of these like seminal moments in our lives
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and talking about, you know, kind of like a speed run of all of Reconcilable Differences. You know, how did we get to be the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way we are? Well, we kind of sort of, at least in the technologist slash nerd
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way, We tried to do a speed run of that on this week’s, or this month’s, excuse me, member special.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I had a lot of fun recording it. I thought it was really, really fun and happy. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was good to be happy and fun and nostalgic for a little while. So check that out if you’d like, hp.fm slash
⏹️ ▶️ John And we found some very surprising coincidences that related all of
⏹️ ▶️ John our three stories. There’s an obvious coincidence, the long-time listeners of the show know, but there were more that
⏹️ ▶️ John were uncovered. So if you want to hear how we were connected and how our lives might’ve been different if not
⏹️ ▶️ John for a few connected events, check it out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, so please have a look, hp.fm slash store, hp.fm slash
How to write “4”s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One of you and I got to assume it’s John but you never know one of you put the following in our internal show notes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Document how little kids write fours. What’s this about?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sounds like it’s about graffiti.
⏹️ ▶️ John Mm-hmm All right, you know I listen to the episode every every week It’s just a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that I do and and it’s for stuff like this because I missed it during the live recording Marco was describing
⏹️ ▶️ John graffiti and he was weird as like which characters we like from graffiti and
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco said he liked the fours because it’s written like how a little kids write fours and
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t catch that when we were recording and I have to I feel like I need to bring it to follow up here
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco how do little kids write fours
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so what I meant by that which is actually funny because it’s not how my kid writes them which I realized afterwards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but what I meant by that is you start in the upper left you draw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a right angle that goes down into the right and then you lift the pencil up and you go to the top and you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco draw a straight down line from the top to the bottom so it has an open top and there are no angles or you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s just right angles basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah that’s how I have always written a four.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah now it’s funny that my kid actually draws fours with pointed tops but starting from the bottom
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so he draws the ascender up from you know down the bottom straight up diagonals
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down to the left and then across to finish it out.
⏹️ ▶️ John But why did you describe that way that you the first way you described as the way that little kids write fours. How do you write
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, so I write fours with those same two strokes, but I write them as angled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fours. So the top forms a triangle, not an open, like, you know, two parallel lines.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna say, I don’t think there’s anything little kiddish about the first way you
⏹️ ▶️ John described. It is one of the ways to write fours, for sure. I would think it’s the most common way,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I don’t know. But definitely it’s not a little kid way to do it. I mean, as evidence from your own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kid who was once little. You don’t think that the angled top is more common?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No. I think the open, like graffiti, as you described, you know, you come down, hang a right,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then lift up and go straight up and down, or straight down, I guess I should say. That is the most common way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I see of writing fours. I asked Declan when I saw this in the show notes, I was like, how do you write a number four? And he basically described what I just said.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am almost certain that Erin does the triangle four. And I don’t remember what her,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is all one stroke. I don’t recall where she starts and
⏹️ ▶️ John Margot wasn’t saying that the triangle four that he was drawing is one stroke. He just said he angles the starting line.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, he goes down into the left then straight across to the right and then picks his pen up and makes a vertical stroke. Which
⏹️ ▶️ John in practice, if you do that, you’re basically doing the graffiti style four,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you’re just angling that. And like, practically speaking, it’s not always gonna touch the vertical. Like the angled line is not
⏹️ ▶️ John always gonna exactly meet the vertical line. How sloppy are you writing your fours?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you know, it depends on how fast you’re writing. Our handwriting isn’t great. Anyway, I just wanted to put this in here is I don’t think the graffiti
⏹️ ▶️ John way of drawing for us is the little kid way. And by the way, speaking of kids drawing upwards, my son also writes
⏹️ ▶️ John all of his letters from the bottom, despite me and all of his teachers trying to tell him not to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This drives me nuts, and it’s one of those things that it’s kind of in the spirit of secret things. What is it? Weird things? People
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do secret things? Secret weird things. People do. Thank you. It’s like secret weird things to piss you off. You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know? Like, I don’t know why, but it bothers me way more than it should when people go vertical and,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, go bottom to top rather than top to bottom. I don’t know what it
⏹️ ▶️ John My son is the first person I’d ever seen to do it. And I think maybe it’s because handwriting is less emphasized
⏹️ ▶️ John than it was when we, at least when I went to school. And so kids are left to their own devices, and maybe left to their
⏹️ ▶️ John own devices. It’s like a 50-50 whether the kid’s going to decide to do it from top down and bottom up. And all I can say is that
⏹️ ▶️ John I could not convince my son to write his letters from top down. Neither could any of his teachers in school.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I tried harder than his teachers in school. So it is what it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t recall Adam ever getting a grade in handwriting, But I did, like I went
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a Catholic school for elementary school. So we very much got a very prescribed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way to write. Of course, we had to learn cursive. And we got graded. We got a separate grade on our report
⏹️ ▶️ Marco card called handwriting. That’s right. But none of that existed anymore, at least in Adam’s public school that he’s in now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know if the Catholics, they probably still do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not saying it has to either. I’m just saying there’s a difference. And yeah, I’m with Casey. It
⏹️ ▶️ John just makes me unreasonably angry if people draw letters from the bottom up. But somehow he survives.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you fellas use the crossbar on letters Z’s or Zed’s and uh in sevens?
⏹️ ▶️ John I I do it on sevens and I I I will I will shamefully admit I started doing it on sevens when I Started
⏹️ ▶️ John taking french in like fifth grade.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do not slash sevens or z’s or zeros. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John too Actually, I forgot about those. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don’t I don’t do zeros. I I do sevens. I don’t do z’s
⏹️ ▶️ John I just do sevens and it’s pointless because my ones don’t look like sevens that’s the point of the slash and the seven
⏹️ ▶️ John is to distinguish it from ones because one of the ways to do ones is to make it like a seven
⏹️ ▶️ John where the where the top part angles down a lot. So I don’t even do that. I totally admit it’s an
⏹️ ▶️ John affectation that I started in French class in fifth grade.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey At some point, I think it was much later in life. I think it was like high school or something. I this was something that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I became aware of and I was like, oh, that’s fancy. I want to be fancy. And so I
⏹️ ▶️ John started a fun little thing to do like drawing hearts in your eyes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, Yeah, right. I started doing it with sevens, even though my one is just a vertical bar.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I started doing it with Zs. Now that does make sense because in my font, if you will, my two in a Z
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is effectively identical. I used to originally do like the very swooshy, like loopy two early
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on. And now I’m just a Z for a two. So the Z crossbar I stand
⏹️ ▶️ John the Z and the two aren’t the same. The top of the two is rounded, Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, that, no, mine is not. It’s three straight lines. But there’s, that’s not a two then. That’s a Z.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s why I have the crossbar for the Z. In any case, and then zeros, I forgot, I do put the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now I know. I think what I’m learning today is that both of you have terrible handwriting. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John like- I could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have told you that a long time ago. Yes, can’t confirm. Like mine is nothing special at all, but man, you guys are
⏹️ ▶️ John terrible. I don’t remember your handwriting being nice, Marco. We need to see a sample. Casey and I both admit we have terrible handwriting. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think you do too, let’s see some.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I do, here, I’ll show you. Actually, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know what? Yeah, I was gonna say, once upon a time, I made a font out of my own handwriting.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re not an all-caps person, are you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, although I do find I find that charming.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I find that I find that a deranged Deranged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John so I just sent you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco example of good handwriting No, i’m just I said mine’s nothing special. But yours this is all your handwriting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Uh, most of it and keep in mind. This is on a whiteboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. No, this is not good handwriting By any stretch of the imagination. I’m, sorry I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, maybe it’s not as bad as mine, but it’s close. It’s almost as bad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Look, my handwriting is not good, but yours is worse, it sounds like.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, no, it looks very similar. This is what amazes me. Like, computer nerd
⏹️ ▶️ John guys who are similar age to me all have handwriting that looks like mine and it makes no sense. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John this could, if I showed this to my wife, she would think this was close to my handwriting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was gonna say, this looks very similar to my handwriting. I think this is clearer, much clearer and easier to understand,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it’s not that dissimilar from my handwriting.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, here’s where it looks like mine. See the line that says, Ice Maker doesn’t? second to last blue line.
⏹️ ▶️ John Look at the word doesn’t. That is 100% me. Yeah, I messed up that D.
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no baseline. Letters are all over the place. The apostrophes go in the wrong direction. Yeah, it’s the wrong smart
⏹️ ▶️ John apostrophe. The T is upside down. The
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco N just looks like an upside down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How is a T upside down? This
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco is my handwriting
⏹️ ▶️ John right here. That word doesn’t. That’s me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s really, that’s not a good look, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey else I actually think is pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is what happens when like, you know, So you start out Catholic and then and then you leave it
⏹️ ▶️ John computer’s coming. You never have to write anything
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco by hand again. So you get graffiti and then once a year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to read like you know your grandmother’s birthday card and like what is this you have like recursive once
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no this I actually I was told one time by around around you know my teenage years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by a psychologist. I was seeing who I mean he was terrible. Let’s be honest, but he
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco me that feeling
⏹️ ▶️ John of the bumps on your head to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He I think he at the time totally failed to recognize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a dd and instead just told me I was just lazy and we should just keep trying
⏹️ ▶️ John It was easier to be a psychologist back then. You just tell the kid they were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yes, exactly. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And every I go in like once a week and and you know, I still wasn’t doing my homework
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and my mom was frustrated and trying to figure out what was wrong with me and I go in there and the guy would meet with me for a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while. They meet with her and and he would tell her, I was just being lazy and I was just trying hard, and you just need to try harder, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s, you know, that works great. It’s like telling a depressed person, just smile. You know? Did the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guy ever think that maybe homework sucks? I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John it does, but. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that’s a fair point, John. I still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco him in my answer, why aren’t you doing your homework? Anyway, but he told me, he told me with that wonderful skill set that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he actually analyzed my handwriting, and he said that my handwriting was lazy handwriting. Geez.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, this guy was a real gem. He did a number on me. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he told me, basically, he looked at it, he’s like, well, you can see I’m kind of doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John in each letter, like to like I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not leaving a lot of space, not putting a lot of effort into it. It communicates the words enough, generally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it does only the bare minimum.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s it. Gracious. John, we’re gonna need some sort of handwriting sample to put in the show notes. So get on it,
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don’t have an accent. I don’t even have any pens on my desk. That tells you how much I love handwriting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You have an Apple Pencil though, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I do. No, wait, actually I have the Studio Neat
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco thing. Oh, yeah. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got one of those too right here. Triplets.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey God, we’re such dorks. I just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have anything to write on, but anyway, I’ll get you something. I think I’ve bought more Studio Neat pens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than I have depleted pens in the last 10 years. Maybe they’ll dry up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on their own. I can’t count that as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pen. When’s the last time either of you went through a notebook? Like actually use all the paper in a notebook? I don’t think I’ve ever
⏹️ ▶️ John used all the paper in a notebook in my life. I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have either. I have. I used to be – there was a window of time where I was a devout field notes person
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then I eventually just kind of meandered away from that. But I filled – I’m no Stephen Hackett that fills them weekly, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever it is. But I filled a fair number of field notes way back in the day and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I still love, love, love those notebooks. Like, they get my highest recommendation. I honestly don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know if they’ve ever sponsored. Truly, they’re incredible notebooks. But no, I haven’t carried one in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey years, and I haven’t filled one in years and years.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, I never even purchased one of those. I was never a feelingless person. Last time I wrote in a notebook was, I think, college,
⏹️ ▶️ John and those notebooks I never filled.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I was going through some of my old high school stuff when my mom sent me a bunch of my childhood stuff recently,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I was going through all my school notebooks. You know those black and white Dalmatian print
⏹️ ▶️ Marco composition notebooks that we had back then? I don’t know if they still make them. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do, they do. There was one for every class, and every class did the same thing. The first three or four
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pages would have something on them, and then the entire rest was just blank. So I’d just given up.
⏹️ ▶️ John all blank. It’s the equivalent of a January gym membership in attendance.
Neutral follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh man, we’ve gone right off the rails. This is going to be a long show. All right. So I wanted to quickly call attention
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to, um, Paul Chernoff wrote and said, Hey, the car buying process,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the case he described, this was a reply to an ask ATP last week. Uh, the car buying process is basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exactly what some guy or group of people, I’m not entirely clear on where the Genesis for this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was, but there was somebody who wrote the three-step car buying process. And this is no longer on the internet,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I dug up a, uh, archive.org link, which I’ll put in the show notes, where they say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty much the same thing I said. I mean, it’s not exactly, but it’s spiritually the same basic idea. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the three steps are determine the make and model of car you want, write a bid letter, which basically means, all right, I’m going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to send a letter to these dealers that says, I want this with this, this, this, this, and this options. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would like your out-the-door price with tax title, fees, taxes, et cetera, et cetera.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then you contact all your dealers and have them effectively negotiate with each other through you. And that is a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of work and it takes a long time, but that’s how I’ve done it the last several years. And you can see a more,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a longer writeup of this, if you go through this archive.org link. So I wanted to call it to your attention
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the gentleman whose name I don’t know who wanted to buy a car like six months ago, and we’re finally now getting around.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John we are. Someone
⏹️ ▶️ John also wrote in to tell us that there are people who do this for you.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John And of course, because anything involving paying someone to do a thing for
⏹️ ▶️ John me, Watch out for the ones who are actually paid by the dealership, because obviously they’re going to steer you towards buying stuff from
⏹️ ▶️ John the dealership. But apparently there are legitimate people who you pay a fairly large amount of money, sometimes even a percentage of the
⏹️ ▶️ John cost of the car. And they will essentially perform the exact process you just described, although
⏹️ ▶️ John presumably a little bit more efficiently, because they know all the dealers and are constantly talking to them or whatever. And they’re not just a
⏹️ ▶️ John stranger. So if you really don’t want to deal with it, you can find one of these people who will negotiate
⏹️ ▶️ John your car sale for you for either a fixed fee or a percentage of the sale price. make sure you find one that is not paid
⏹️ ▶️ John based on sending sales to particular dealerships, because that’s not what you want. You just want the best price.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is very true. Also, if you happen to be a Costco member, and this may be true of like BJ’s or Sam’s or other things, but I know Costco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they have some sort of auto program where allegedly they have effectively pre-negotiated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on behalf of all their members. And if you say to a company, hey, I’m buying under the Costco program,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think your options are limited. But allegedly, they have pre-negotiated. So it’s like, this is the price.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s the deal. and it’s usually a decent deal, maybe not the best possible deal, but a decent deal with very little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work involved. However, that being said, when we bought Aaron’s Volvo, which is the last car that we bought that was applicable for this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that made zero difference whatsoever. Now, our dealer, our local Volvo dealer, the sales department in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey particular, were trash. And it was one of those scenarios where I was very clear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up front, Aaron was sitting next to me, this is her car, we’re buying it for her, and she would ask a question, and the gentleman,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the salesman, would then look at me to answer her question, which was super gross and I hated it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was real bad. And I could tell you all sorts of stories about this, but in theory,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there are places where you can do this Costco thing and it will help. Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have great news about your car. Rivian’s new software update will help you avoid all the broken EV chargers,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of which we know there are many. This is from The Verge. Rivian is pushing a new software update that will give its customers better
⏹️ ▶️ Casey insight into which EV chargers to visit and which to avoid. Rivian’s solution is to use their vehicle fleet to gather data about broken
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chargers, which then get downranked in the company’s software algorithm. Chargers are rated A to F. This is like an anti-Reddit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What was the dig? Was the other one that predated Reddit? Anyways, Rivian says,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every time one of our vehicles interact with the charger, we have a number of data points which are uploaded to the cloud. And that give us a very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accurate understanding of the health of the session that vehicle is having. So we get data related not only to the number of successful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sessions, but also how many trials did you make? How was the payment? What’s the speed of the interaction? What’s the overall peak performance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you have within a session? What’s the thermal derating behavior? And so on and so on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s cool, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good news. Yeah, this is great. Because like, and even, like, I don’t know if they’re gonna necessarily like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, surface user comments and all, probably not. But like, even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco simple things to know, like, you know, hey, this one is like timing out, which I guess this algorithm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will include that if I guess what they mean by like trials, number of trials that I made. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sometimes like you’ll pull up to Electrify America charger, and the first bay you pull up to, you plug in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it just won’t connect for whatever reason. It will time out or it will throw some weird error and then you have to like, all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, get out, unplug, back the car out, pull into the next spot, restart
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the whole thing over, plug, like this is the experience of modern Electrify America chargers. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that has never happened to me at a Tesla charger. The only thing that ever had happened negatively at a Tesla charger,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco occasionally you get a slow one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still, you know, it would still be like, you know, 60, you know, kilowatts. it would just be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slower than like 100, 120, 150, you know, some of the higher speeds we can see these days. But that was the only problem I ever had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at a Tesla charger. So once again, I continue to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all, I love my Rivian. Second of all, I love when I get to use Tesla
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chargers with it because they work better. And third of all, I still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maintain that I think Tesla owners are going to be very upset about this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe Tesla maybe shouldn’t have opened up their chargers, but there’s a lot of arguments on both
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sides of that. But I definitely think that they’re making everyone else’s lives better with EVs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco except Tesla owners whose lives are being made worse by this
⏹️ ▶️ John Actually, one other bit of a follow-up, I don’t have the person attributed to this too, but someone told us
⏹️ ▶️ John that Tesla essentially had to do this if they wanted in on the,
⏹️ ▶️ John what is it called, Inflation Reduction Act, whatever infrastructure
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco bill. Federal funding.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, to get, if you want in on that gravy train, you essentially had to open up your chargers to everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John else. They didn’t necessarily have to propose their thing as a standard or whatever, but many things aligned to
⏹️ ▶️ John make this essentially the only move that Tesla could make because Tesla wants that government money.
M-chip size limits
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Joe Lyon writes with regards to reticle limits, and I’m gonna nope right out of this because I don’t even know what the heck is Going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on here. So John take it away.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sure reticle sizes the physical glass slash quartz mask our industry standards so chip designs
⏹️ ▶️ John that can be shared between Foundries and fabs and reticle designs can be put into different photo lithography tools in reality
⏹️ ▶️ John Asml is the only supplier of EUV photo tools So they more or less determine the reticle size any fab
⏹️ ▶️ John using asmle EUV tools will use the same reticle size and therefore have the same die size limit So this was, we
⏹️ ▶️ John were talking about reticle limit and TSMC’s reticle limit. TSMC’s reticle limit is the same as everybody’s reticle limit if they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John using these extreme ultraviolet stuff, which they’re using if they’re doing stuff at like three nanometers.
⏹️ ▶️ John So anyway, EUV reticles are 104 millimeters by 132 millimeters, which can project a
⏹️ ▶️ John field size or die size on the wafer of 33 millimeters by 26 millimeters. That’s where the 858 square millimeter max die size
⏹️ ▶️ John comes from. So that number we had in last week’s episode
⏹️ ▶️ John was correct. That is the reticle limit for how big can a single exposure or single die
⏹️ ▶️ John thing on a wafer be? The answer is 858 square millimeters. Joe continues,
⏹️ ▶️ John any chip using modern EUV processes over that size has to be made from multiple physical dies with dotted eye interfaces
⏹️ ▶️ John or mounted on silicon interposers, et cetera. I think you can also do multiple exposures, but that gets even more expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ John Continuing, all of TSMC’s N3 whatever lines are on standard EUV
⏹️ ▶️ John as are Intel’s processes from 3D, 20A, and 18A. Intel has weird names for their processes.
⏹️ ▶️ John The up, because they’re using Angstrom, so that’s what the A is for. The upcoming N2 line will also be standard EUV. So N3
⏹️ ▶️ John and N2, both EUV and EUV max reticle size is 858 square millimeters.
⏹️ ▶️ John After TSMC’s N2 and Intel’s 18A process, the plan is to move to high NA EUV.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the NA stands for numerical aperture. It’s the measure of the ability of an optical system
⏹️ ▶️ John to collect and focus light. We’ve talked about this in the past, but it’s good to remind everybody this is
⏹️ ▶️ John coming. The N2 stuff, this high NAEUV, will allow
⏹️ ▶️ John continued transistor shrinks, that’s thus the N2, two nanometers instead of three, but at a huge cost.
⏹️ ▶️ John High NAEUV will use the same 120 by 132 millimeter reticle as a UV,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the max die size will be cut in half to 429 square millimeters. So that’s gonna be big. Like I
⏹️ ▶️ John said, we’ve talked about this in past episodes, just to remind people this is coming. Not in the N2 generation, N3 and N2, They’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John still be 858, but after that the max reticle size will be half
⏹️ ▶️ John the 429 is I think smaller than the m3 max So you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t even fab an m3 max as it is currently designed on the process that’s going to come after n2 I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know what they’re gonna call it or whatever So this is out there in the future and this is why we talked about on the show in the past
⏹️ ▶️ John An interview with Johnny Siruji where he said talking about future Apple stuff in very vague ways
⏹️ ▶️ John He said quote one of the one of the things that is going to be important is packaging We’ll put a link in the
⏹️ ▶️ John show notes to both that ATP episode and that clip from the interview Why is patching packaging
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna be important because Apple will literally not be able to make max size chips or larger Once this
⏹️ ▶️ John process comes unless they cut them up into individual pieces and do chiplets or something like that Or I suppose
⏹️ ▶️ John they could do multiple exposures as well. But I think when Johnny surgery says packaging is important
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s what he’s talking about. He’s talking about not the n3 generation not the n2 generation But the one after
⏹️ ▶️ John that those chips are already being designed or have already been designed or and you know Like there’s money
⏹️ ▶️ John many many year lead time in this So the reason Johnny Sturgis saying one of the things I think it’s gonna be important is packaging
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s because he already knows about the chips that Apple is planning for this generation where the reticle
⏹️ ▶️ John size is cut in half And I don’t think Apple’s gonna just say well, I guess we can’t make any chicks chips
⏹️ ▶️ John bigger than a pro No, they’re gonna still make big chips, but they’re gonna make them out of a bunch of smaller chips
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’ll be fun to watch still doesn’t quite answer the question about what the You know m3
⏹️ ▶️ John ultra is gonna be is it just 2m3 maxes? What about the m4? There’s a bunch of rumors this week I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John really put them in the notes, but just people been talking about m4 stuff saying Oh here are the rumors are all the
⏹️ ▶️ John m4 ones yet There will be an m4 and the m4 will have low-end chips medium and chips and high-end chips.
⏹️ ▶️ John The rumors aren’t juicy They don’t say okay, but what are those chips? Is it are they gonna be a Mac size
⏹️ ▶️ John chip? Are they gonna stick to them together to make an ultra like I think once we see the M3 results We’ll know more about that
⏹️ ▶️ John Still doubt in the rumors whether there will be an m3 ultra some people say oh well Let us skip the
⏹️ ▶️ John m3 generation for the studio and the Mac Pro and maybe the m4 will be out sooner
⏹️ ▶️ John than you think I think they’re rumors of the first m4 chip coming out before the end of the year So
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of rumors swirling about this, but those are the m3 and the m4 They’re all still 3 nanometer.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think when we see what the hardware announcements are, WWDC will tell us a lot more. But for
⏹️ ▶️ John now, know that the M4 is coming and it’s supposed to be really good at AI. There’s a quote from Johnny
⏹️ ▶️ John Sirugi in that interview as well saying, many years ago we determined that AI would be important. And so obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John all the Apple chips going forward will have even more AI stuff in them, not that they didn’t already have stuff in them.
⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, the M4 rumors are not exciting or concrete at this point, but it’s exciting to see the number
⏹️ ▶️ John go up and it will be interesting to see if Apple skips the M3
⏹️ ▶️ John generation, the M3 marketing generation for the chips in its high-end computers and jumps them right to
⏹️ ▶️ John M4 or something. I hope they don’t because that would mean a much longer wait, but we’ll see at WWDC.
DockKit phone robots
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What was the context for this next item?
⏹️ ▶️ John Robots thing. We talked about robots in the ATP overtime, and I said I would love something that could
⏹️ ▶️ John hold my phone, and I mentioned the first product that we’re going to talk about here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so there are a couple of Belkin iPhone mounts, or phone holders, if you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will, that exist that are specifically designed for use with a TV. And there’s the $50 Belkin iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mount with MagSafe for Apple TV 4K, which you can sit either on top of your television
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or in front front of it on like a mantle if you’re a crazy person with TV too high up like me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or perhaps TV stand or something like that. And then there’s another one Belkin auto tracking stand pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with dock kit. And this is $180, which is quite a lot of money. But hypothetically,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it will follow you around as you’re walking around the room and it even has a little battery. So if you’re like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a tick tocker or whatever, you know, you’re doing Instagram reels and you can bring this out in the field and have it track
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you as you walk around. So that’s again, 180 bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we had this in the notes ages ago. I’m not sure I made it into a show.
⏹️ ▶️ John The tracking stand works with DockKit, which is a framework that Apple introduced
⏹️ ▶️ John for this purpose. It lets like third party camera moving thingies
⏹️ ▶️ John have an API that works with them. I assume it works with FaceTime, but I don’t know that for a fact. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I really want the Belkin one because I’m always just like precariously like leaning my phone against
⏹️ ▶️ John my television. I do have a TV stand, but it’s like you have especially the phones are not even
⏹️ ▶️ John With the camera bump on them and everything and they’re kind of slippery even with leather case So I would like something to hold it like the Belkin
⏹️ ▶️ John stand is but $50 for an inert piece of plastic with a magnet. It seems kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of pricey So I haven’t bought one and then the auto tracking thing I totally forgot about but this is kind of what I was talking about I would love it
⏹️ ▶️ John if something could just point my camera at me But I think that doesn’t change Continuity camera continuity camera would
⏹️ ▶️ John still be using the wide-angle lens and it would still be cropping out of it and I’m not sure that the Belkin thing would change that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But on the topic of Apple making robots, which we’ve now talked about on the show in at least two
⏹️ ▶️ John separate episodes, this thing, all it is is a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that you it’s got a magsafe thing that you stick your phone on and it like moves to, I guess,
⏹️ ▶️ John rotate and possibly tilt your camera. One hundred and eighty dollars. So I would
⏹️ ▶️ John use that as a context for how expensive is it to make things that have electronics in them and move? This doesn’t go
⏹️ ▶️ John anywhere. This doesn’t vacuum your house, doesn’t clean your dishes, doesn’t do anything. It has no cameras. It has
⏹️ ▶️ John no sensors. It is literally a powered thing with a motor that moves your phone and it sits in one
⏹️ ▶️ John place. And it’s $180. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, you can bring it out. Like I said, I take your point. Your point is still fair. But I mean, it is designed for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use elsewhere. And so it doesn’t need to be plugged in always, although presumably it’s going to need to be plugged
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in most of the time.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the battery adds a little cost. But remember, this isn’t even an Apple. It’s Belkin.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And we never really did get any good read on whether
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or not Apple like feeds Belkin designs, right? Because a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people theorized and I mean, it tracks if you ask me, that a lot of times Apple will be like, Hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hey, hey, Belkin, take this envelope and see if there’s anything interesting here. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up making these like, you know, stands or holders or what have you. And there’s there were there was one in particular camera what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was now that was like, very clearly and Apple design, but was made by Belkin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the life of me. I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John remember what
⏹️ ▶️ John it was. One of the dongles. So this Belkin thing, doesn’t the Belkin thing look like a Google device to you? It looks kind of like the bottom of a Google Home.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it does. But nevertheless, this is cool. And I’d love to try one, but I am way too frugal.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I also don’t do that many FaceTime calls on a TV.
Sponsor: Fastmail
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this episode by Fastmail, not only a wonderful email
⏹️ ▶️ Marco host, but the email host that I personally have chosen to use since long before they were a sponsor, since
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 2007, before the show even existed by a good margin too. I’ve been a Fastmail customer since 2007
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all my personal and work email, and it is fantastic. I don’t have to worry,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, whenever there’s some big privacy dust up with one of the big email hosts, the free email hosts,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn’t affect me. I’m on Fastmail. You know, because when you use free email services, you’re paying with
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Duo plan is for you and a partner. Family goes up to six people for just a little bit more money. And when you have one of these family
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plans, they also have shared features. You can have things like shared calendars and shared contacts with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your family group, and then also have your own private personal stuff or work stuff off to the side.
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First look: EU app stores
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, moving on, we can talk about a first look at Europe’s alternative app stores.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This actually posted, I think, before we recorded last week. We didn’t have the time to get to it. This is on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey verge. Another potential roadblock to widespread third-party marketplace adoption is just how fiddly it is with each store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey taking around a dozen screen interactions to install. It goes like this. You begin by checking a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clicking, excuse me, a browser-based link to load the alternative store. From there, you receive a pop-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey informing you that you’re installation settings don’t allow marketplaces from that developer. Then you head to settings to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enable the marketplace. Then you return to your browser and click the download link again. Then you receive another prompt asking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you to confirm the installation. Finally, you can open the store and browse the available apps. That is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not exactly delightful, not surprised at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is something, this happens in the Mac too, and it’s an annoying pattern, but the annoyance
⏹️ ▶️ John serves a function, so you can’t really get rid of it. The Mac experience is
⏹️ ▶️ John you try to run some Mac app and it’s like, you need to give me
⏹️ ▶️ John full disk access or screen recording permission or some other thing that it needs to do its job,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But you can’t give it that permission from within the app, because if you could,
⏹️ ▶️ John people would just throw up a dialogue, there would be people that go, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, okay, yeah, yeah. If you could
⏹️ ▶️ John approve it from within the app by clicking a button, apps would trick you into doing it. So there’s always
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s like, that they’ll tell you, go to system preferences slash system settings
⏹️ ▶️ John and go to this screen and do this and do that. And some apps on the Mac went so far as to sort of automate that process.
⏹️ ▶️ John They would like lead you through a wizard style and they would bring up system settings and they would make their own windows lined
⏹️ ▶️ John up alongside the window with like arrows pointing to the things you had to get. Like that was short-lived I think, because
⏹️ ▶️ John system settings, system preferences changes to system settings and Apple moved everything around and I feel bad for
⏹️ ▶️ John the people who made these, you know, wizards to do that. But it’s because the user has
⏹️ ▶️ John to, it’s like when someone calls you and you don’t trust them or whatever, hang up and like go to
⏹️ ▶️ John the website that belongs to that company and find the number and call them back yourself, right? So you know you’re actually talking to the person
⏹️ ▶️ John you think you’re talking to, don’t trust that the number they called you from is not spoofed or whatever. So you as the
⏹️ ▶️ John user have to go and do a thing. And all the app or
⏹️ ▶️ John alternative app store or whatever can do is say, or in this case, the OS saying, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John you haven’t allowed that developer to install third-party mark places, you need to do that. And users are like,
⏹️ ▶️ John how do I do that? I don’t know how to do that. Go to system settings, where in system settings? Can’t you just do it for
⏹️ ▶️ John me? Can’t you just send me a button that says, okay, approve, yes, and the answer is no. They can’t do that because
⏹️ ▶️ John if they did that, if it was possible to do that at all, every app would throw a thing in your face that says,
⏹️ ▶️ John do you like puppies? Click yes, and then you just approve the app. Like, and, oh, don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John worry, App Review will catch that. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John We know how many things get past App Review. So it is annoying and fiddly,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’m sure Apple didn’t really care about streamlining as this much, because this is still more than
⏹️ ▶️ John one or two back and forths, but some part of that fiddliness is essentially unavoidable
⏹️ ▶️ John to actually implement the security that isn’t trivially exploitable. I think it’s too much
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac. I think, you know, Jason Snell’s talked about this a lot and he had to set up his new Mac, and he just went into a rage about how many
⏹️ ▶️ John times he had to approve things. I think there should be a way to sort of do mass approvals
⏹️ ▶️ John or a better interface to approvals instead of the current way of digging in to find stuff and
⏹️ ▶️ John scrolling. This process can be approved, but you can never get rid of the part that is essentially the equivalent
⏹️ ▶️ John of the user hanging up and saying, for whatever you say, I’m gonna call now
⏹️ ▶️ John the number that I think is for a Visa credit card, like the number on the back of my credit card, right? I’m going to call
⏹️ ▶️ John that myself, And if you’ve hacked me so bad that that goes to the wrong place, then you win.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Oh, goodness.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. So we’ll see what happens with this. We talked about it, Mike and I, on not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the upgrade that just dropped this week, but last week when I guessed it on upgrade. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just, I really feel like this is a non-starter unless something really, really weird happens. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think some dorks will, like us, will enjoy doing emulators,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which we’ll get to actually in a second or something along those lines. But for most people, I just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t expect that most people will bother unless Facebook like pulls their app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the traditional app store in the EU and says, Oh, you have to go to Facebook’s app store now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in which case that’s different. But assuming it’s just, you know, alternative app stores, you know, like what it says on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tin, I just I just don’t see people going through it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, this is surmountable. Like if you think the number of steps here isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John too hard, there’s nothing in it that doesn’t involve just, you’re just tapping things on your screen. You just, people
⏹️ ▶️ John just need to be adequately motivated and things that can actually motivate them are, like you mentioned, you know, some must
⏹️ ▶️ John have app like Facebook or whatever doing this, that would do it. Right? But even stuff like, you know, someone
⏹️ ▶️ John does a TikTok about some app that they saw and then someone else does a TikTok that’s like, oh, if you want
⏹️ ▶️ John this cool app, you do these six steps. Like never underestimate how influential
⏹️ ▶️ John a fast tutorial video plus the FOMO of some cool app that someone found
⏹️ ▶️ John on an alternative app store. It doesn’t take much for that to happen, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John You need something like that. You need something to make people do it. They’re not going to casually do it on their own, but the things
⏹️ ▶️ John that could lead someone to install a third-party app store can be much smaller and more trivial
⏹️ ▶️ John than, oh, you have to go there to get Facebook now, which I don’t think is gonna happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, I mean, so many people install things like configuration profiles just to get like different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app icons on their phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s way scarier and takes more steps and more fiddly than this is basically just going back and
⏹️ ▶️ John forth between a web browser and settings.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, guess what the App Store cares about? None of that. Those are App Store apps, that doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco matter. Yeah, install a configuration profile to change the icons for your Instagram and stuff. Yeah, go ahead.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What could possibly go wrong?
⏹️ ▶️ John To Apple’s credit, they did provide APIs for doing that eventually. Not on Vision OS. Yeah, well, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe you’ll be able to rearrange the icon someday. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As an app developer, I can’t allow a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey user. Yeah, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t change your icon.
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac, there’s API to change your icon, but no APIs for other Mac apps to get what the hell you changed the icon
⏹️ ▶️ John to. The dock can show your icon, but nobody else.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not that that would be bothersome to somebody writing a window management
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feedback filed against it. No, but for the App Store stuff, I think people will go through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this when there’s an app they want to use. That’s it. It’s not going to stop them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Going back to what John was saying earlier about the Mac with its security dialogs of like, the app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can tell you or the system can tell you, go to system settings and do this, but it won’t give you an easy way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not sure I accept without comment that that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good for security. It seems like a modern Apple security practice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is to make something a real pain in the butt and make it really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suck and hope that people we’ll just not wanna do it or we’ll do it carefully because
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to say though, the sucking part of the Apple side of it is not necessary for the security.
⏹️ ▶️ John The necessary part is that you have to go do something. If the app doesn’t have an opportunity to dark pattern
⏹️ ▶️ John you into doing it, like the app can’t put up a dialogue, that’s the necessary part for security. The fact that when you go to
⏹️ ▶️ John do it, it sucks because system settings is Byzantine and it’s a pain to do, that’s on
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple and that’s not a necessary part of the security. That’s just the way Apple did it. system settings is not
⏹️ ▶️ John easy to navigate. The big scrolling list doesn’t like sort by most recently requested, like there are
⏹️ ▶️ John ways that Apple could do this better and they don’t. But that’s not part of the security. The security part is the app
⏹️ ▶️ John does not have an opportunity to trick you. And that’s the essential part that you essentially have to, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John what is it, the variety tech, remember I can’t call you, you have to make the first call. You have to go make the move.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I would say Apple could fix a lot of the suckiness by not being so bad at
⏹️ ▶️ John making system settings.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I actually, I agree with that. Yeah, you’re right. Because like, I don’t mind like, okay, there’s one place
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to go do this. That’s okay, but it just really sucks. And Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t always follow this themselves. Like, how often do you get a pop-up on your phone saying like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gotta go into your password in system settings, and you tap that, and it brings you to a screen where you need to enter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your password. That’s terrible for security. But that’s doing the same thing with your Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ID password. there’s all sorts of, you know, kind of paper cuts around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this area. What I hope is that Apple is motivated to improve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that user experience side on the Mac. Because you’re right, the Mac definitely gets like the worst of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I just, we don’t see any evidence that they care. It seems like, as Jason Snell wrote in that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco article, it seems like the Mac security team always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wins over any kind of remote usability concern.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that the Mac team in general seems to not really have the resources behind it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make bigger changes to make all this stuff suck less.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and especially like in the mass case on the Mac, of like you just set up a new Mac, to do
⏹️ ▶️ John the things that would make that easier actually require the security people to do a bunch of stuff. So for
⏹️ ▶️ John example, having a thing where like, look, I already gave this app permission and I’ve set up a new Mac and I want that permission
⏹️ ▶️ John to essentially transfer over, doing that in a secure way is difficult and complicated. The UI
⏹️ ▶️ John team can’t do that on their own. That’s the security team would have to say, you have to say like, hey, security team, you have to
⏹️ ▶️ John come up with a trusted, secure way to transfer
⏹️ ▶️ John permissions from one Mac to another based on, oh, you allowed it on this Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ John and on this Mac, I say,
⏹️ ▶️ John do you want this Mac? Do you want all the apps on this new Mac to have the same permissions as they did on the old Mac? And the user just says yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then security happens, and that happens in it, you know, in some way, right? And so
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s part of the problem is to get the better user experience, you also need buy-in from the security
⏹️ ▶️ John people and they have to do a bunch of work. And then on top of that is, even with no help from the security team, the UI team could
⏹️ ▶️ John surely make this a hell of a lot better. Like I said, how about just a different way to sort the apps so I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have to scroll through that giant list? How about default sorting them by the app that most recently asked for something?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like imagine that. So I’m just constantly scrolling through a list which I convince myself is alphabetical until
⏹️ ▶️ John I scroll and it’s like the alphabet has started over again and it’s like, is this ASCII-abetical and the capital letters come first, what the hell?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, it’s amazing.
Retro emulators now allowed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so definitely not because of any legal issues
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or regulations or anything like that. Absolutely had nothing to do with the fact that Apple is now allowing the App
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Store the App Store to offer retro game emulators. Definitely had nothing to do with any pressure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I love this. I love this so much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is it’s so okay. Here’s here’s how this goes. is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now all of a sudden forced in the EU to offer side loading. What’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco popular reason that people often side load in a way that wouldn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco matter at all if they allowed it in the App Store? Game emulators.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So isn’t it interesting that right as they need to force open their side loading
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing in a pretty big market in the world, they suddenly have a change of heart
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on allowing gaming emulators on the App Store everywhere which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody might think that might deflate a lot of the demand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for side loading and therefore retain control for the App Store what a surprise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know what’s in that maybe there’s a larger lesson here maybe allowing things in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco App Store that are otherwise harmless is better for Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco continued long-term control of the platform.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Whoa, whoa, let’s not get let’s not get, you know, completely out of bounds. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think Apple, Apple doesn’t think it’s harmless. Like the one of the reasons they stopped this was like, Hey, how
⏹️ ▶️ John we there’s no in app purchase in those games. We don’t get
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco paid for those games.
⏹️ ▶️ John We don’t get to approve those games. Like, as far as they’re concerned is like, look, you want to put space invaders on the iPhone, we
⏹️ ▶️ John better get our cut. Right? And then that’s, that’s, uh, if you ask them, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John that it would tell you that’s why we don’t want to have essentially app stores within app stores. We don’t want apps that that run other apps, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John that was their main objection to this. Now, I agree with you, that’s not actually a problem, Apple is being stupid about
⏹️ ▶️ John it, but that’s what they think. And so, yeah, they’re being forced to do this. And this is even more hilarious because, what’s his
⏹️ ▶️ John name, Riley Tested? Yep. So he is the Alt Store guy. Alt Store is a thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John existed for a while to let you install non-Apple approved apps on your iPhone, but it
⏹️ ▶️ John was complicated and used, what did it use? They use a test flight system or something like that? I forget. I think, I forget the details too, but.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, it was technically complicated and weird, But anyway, Alt Store is a name that you might have heard. It is,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, for all the time before this whole EU thing, you’re like, is there another way you can get apps under the app
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of the app store? You might have heard of Cydia and you might have heard of Alt Store. And these are all kind of like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John skirting Apple’s rules and technically complicated or whatever. All right. But Riley’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got his start by making an emulator, a retro game emulator for
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS that then was not allowed on the App Store and then, you know, got
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Alt Store. It was just his thing and is funded through Patreon. And so now he’s
⏹️ ▶️ John making Alt Store a third party app store using the Apple DMA
⏹️ ▶️ John third party app store thing or whatever. And his the reason he’s doing this so he can put his retro
⏹️ ▶️ John game emulator on his Alt Store using Apple’s official thing. So like this
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple opening the store to retro game emulators is lightning focused on the one dude who
⏹️ ▶️ John ran Alt Store and is now gonna put Altstar in the EU, you know, alternative marketplace
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, right? For his one emulate, it’s not like they said, well, here’s all the world of things that could possibly
⏹️ ▶️ John be in a third party store and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey we better compete with
⏹️ ▶️ John them. It’s like, I know this one guy, and Altstar, by the way, has been waiting for approval, I think for like
⏹️ ▶️ John a month or something. I forget what his complaint was, but it’s been a slow roll for them to get
⏹️ ▶️ John a thing. Like, they know he’s doing this. So this rule is targeted on one person’s Altstar to say, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna preempt you, which is ridiculous. And I feel like he should be honored that
⏹️ ▶️ John they feel like he’s such a threat to putting an emulator where they’re just like, come on back, come on back
⏹️ ▶️ John to the App Store. You don’t have to have that third party store, even though we made you jump through all these hoops and do all this stuff. Nevermind, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can have it on the App Store, it’ll be fine. Which is
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco not because you can’t, his thing is funded through
⏹️ ▶️ John Patreon and you still can’t do it on the App Store, so he’s still doing Alt Star, but whatever. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know that it’s aimed at this one person, but it is strangely coincidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know if it’s aimed at that one person, although honestly that is exactly the kind of pettiness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that App Store leadership would actually do. But no, I think it’s more strategic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s literally just like, this is a reason why a lot of people might side load. Let’s deflate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the air in that balloon. Because it turns out this is some low-hanging fruit. There
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really is not any good reason why Apple couldn’t have emulators in the App Store. It really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t harm them at all. it doesn’t really, as long as they keep it within the parameters they’re keeping it, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco retro systems and kind of bring your own ROMs and you assert they’re okay, like, as long as they do all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, then they’re not really in legal trouble with it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so, but yet there is all this demand for it. So this is a clear instance where like, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can just allow these because they really wasn’t that good a reason to disallow them in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the first place. So they’re just allowing them now because it is high
⏹️ ▶️ Marco benefit to the App Store and to Apple strategically and very, very low risk and cost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compared to like other ways they could open up to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of deflate demand for side loading. I think other ways would have larger downsides and costs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It wouldn’t be as clear cut. So for instance, if for some reason, like, you know, big crypto
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps that don’t fit what they currently allow in the App Store become big, big, you know, in some kind of side-loading thing, which, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, is anybody still doing crypto? But if they are, like, maybe that would be a thing. But like, there’s bigger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco downsides there. If they would start allowing, like, porn apps, that, you know, they’ve never allowed porn apps in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco App Store, that’s probably obviously going to be, like, a big thing in side-loading contexts, I’m sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s obviously bigger downsides to that if they want to keep things a certain way in the App Store, keep certain standards, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, stay out of certain legal problems there. But with emulators, like, there really was not much reason not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to allow them. So I think there might be some element of spite,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of personal spite there, but I think that that’s probably a small component, if any. The much bigger thing is, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just pure strategy. Right as they’re forced to offer side loading,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco remove a big reason why anybody would need to do that. So that would be, hey, come back to the App Store, back inside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the walled garden. Look, it’s nice here. Here’s an emulator. Go nuts, kid.
⏹️ ▶️ John You described that as a couple of times as like deflating the need to go to a third party app store. The other word for that is competition.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Hey, our competitors are doing
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing that customers want. If we want to get those customers back, let’s do the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that customers want too. Imagine that competition. When there was no competition, they could just say,
⏹️ ▶️ John nope, not allowed and you can’t get apps from any place else, so no problem. And now suddenly you can get apps from somewhere else. And it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, what are those other people have that we don’t have that we can add to your point? Like, they’re probably not gonna add porn
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff, like, I guess we’ll add retro games. Someone says, no, don’t allow that. We can’t get in-app purchases from Space Invaders.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like, but we have to do it because competition. And so I like this development.
⏹️ ▶️ John We should, but let’s let’s read the the details of this, because the devil is in
⏹️ ▶️ John the details, as always.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple is loosening its App Store restrictions and opening the marketplace up to retro game emulators. In an update on Friday, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey announced that game emulators can come to the App Store globally and offer downloadable games. Apple says
⏹️ ▶️ Casey those games must comply with, quote, all applicable laws, quote, though an indication it will ban apps that provide
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pirated titles. The App Review Guidelines read as follows, Apple, or excuse me, apps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey may offer certain software that is not embedded in the binary, specifically HTML5
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mini apps and mini games, streaming games, chatbots, and plugins. Additionally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey retro game console emulator apps can offer to download games.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now of course, James Thompson, friend of the show, immediately quipped, well, I’m looking forward to an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey official Apple definition of the word retro.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is where the devil starts in the details. Because remember, this is the App Store, and your apps go through
⏹️ ▶️ John App Review, and App Review is capricious. All right. What
⏹️ ▶️ John is a retro game console emulator app? What does it mean to, quote, comply with all applicable laws?
⏹️ ▶️ John App Review will tell you. You’ll find out, I guess. All right. And that was the question when this story first came
⏹️ ▶️ John out. People were like, but, like, what does this mean? Can I put up a Nintendo
⏹️ ▶️ John emulator? Or will Apple, like, so what I immediately thought of is, Casey’s trying to send
⏹️ ▶️ John screenshots for Call of Duty, and Apple’s like, hey, before we approve this app, can you tell us that you
⏹️ ▶️ John have the rights to use this movie poster? And it’s like, all right, well, so,
⏹️ ▶️ John is Apple, if you send it to Nintendo emulator, is Apple gonna go, hey, before we post your Nintendo emulator,
⏹️ ▶️ John can you tell me that you have the rights to ship a Nintendo emulator? Because we’ve heard
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the same way
⏹️ ▶️ John that they’re asking Casey if he has the rights to these known Hollywood movies. Like this is the thing with AppReview. You can
⏹️ ▶️ John send up an app sometimes called like, I think someone did like a Mario app
⏹️ ▶️ John or something like that. Sail through AppReview and they’re like, hey, AppReview doesn’t deal with copyright. We just wait for someone to complain,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s not our job to vet all your copyrighted material. But apparently with Casey’s app, that reviewer
⏹️ ▶️ John was like, you know what? It’s my job to vet copyrighted material. So how is it gonna work
⏹️ ▶️ John when they send a game emulator? They’re gonna say, the disclaimer is Apple are basically saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, you just have to follow all the laws. Someone complains to us, we’re gonna say, hey, we told them they have to follow the laws.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t look at us, just directly sue the developer. Don’t sue us. We said they have to comply with all laws and they
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t do it, so they violated the agreement or whatever. But when your app goes to app review, is the app reviewer gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John say, hey, everything in your app, are you allowed to do all that stuff? Are you allowed to have a Nintendo emulator? Are you allowed
⏹️ ▶️ John to, like, I see you have like an icon that looks like an N64, are you allowed to have that icon? Do you have the rights to this?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or are they just gonna be like, fine, go on through, I don’t care. And we didn’t know the answer to that question. I think we continue
⏹️ ▶️ John to not know the answer to that question because we just have one or two data points. But even just in the guidelines, retro
⏹️ ▶️ John game console emulator apps. That’s multiple words in there. It’s not just retro games, retro
⏹️ ▶️ John PC games, that’s not a console. So I think if you’re doing PC games, you can’t do this. And what does retro mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John Last generation? The generation before that? Is it a number of years? Is the Switch retro because it’s so
⏹️ ▶️ John damn old? Who knows? You’ll find out. Submit your app and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s probably fairly clear. I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all, yes, they will absolutely make you assert
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you own things or prove that you own things that are shown in your screenshots and that come with the app.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, hey, look at the IGBA emulator that we’re going to get to in a second. I don’t think they did that in that app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all. I’m sure scrutiny will change and be inconsistently applied like all other apps or
⏹️ ▶️ John like who knows because we just have the one data point IGBA which is a Game Boy Advance emulator if you look at it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John filled with like Nintendo proprietary looking stuff right down to like you know the
⏹️ ▶️ John the UI it looks like the the Game Boy Advance or whatever did someone
⏹️ ▶️ John have to assert that they own all that stuff or did the reviewer just be like it’s fine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah there wasn’t my reviewer so it’s cool yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no I think I think you know if I was making an emulator for the App Store, I would assume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I can’t use trademarks. So, you know, stay away from, like, especially stay away from the word
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nintendo. Like, just
⏹️ ▶️ John stay away from it. Or the word Game Boy. What about GBA?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think acronyms might be easier to get away with, but, you know, certainly I would stay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco away from as many trademark names as possible. I would obviously not include any ROMs with it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or I would only include only, like, you know, open source enthusiast ROMs, which probably exist for most of these systems.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like there for almost all these old systems, there are enthusiast communities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who make new ROMs that were never actually made on cartridges. So like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could ship this with like only freely available ROMs, like they exist.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you could do that or ship it empty and have people bring their own. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you ship it empty and you get that one reviewer who’s like your app does nothing rejected, then you’ve got a problem. Because you know those
⏹️ ▶️ John reviewers exist, right? Like if your app doesn’t do anything, you know, when you launch it, you’re like, oh, well, people have to supply their own
⏹️ ▶️ John ROMs. I’m like, sorry, rejected your app, does nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, anyway, so I think the path is fairly clear. Like when they first made this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rule, we all thought they’re not gonna allow arbitrary ROMs to be loaded into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps. They would, you know, allow somebody like Nintendo themselves to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an app that includes their own emulated old games. But it turns out, like they’ve given a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of press comments here and there, including there was one in MacRumors today, I believe, that basically where Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco given statements basically saying like, it will be okay for you to like bring ROMs to it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the web. So that’s allowed. Yeah, we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John got that quote down on the show, in the notes. Here’s what MacRumor said. Apple confirmed to us that emulators on
⏹️ ▶️ John the App Store are permitted to load ROMs downloaded from the web so long as the
⏹️ ▶️ John app is emulating retro console games only. Again, what is a retro console game?
⏹️ ▶️ John Let your heart guide you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think ultimately this is, we’re gonna hear about occasional, you know, pain in the butt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stories about AppReview where somebody’s gonna have to say, no, I don’t own Mario, so I can’t show it in the screenshots,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine. And the whole thing’s gonna be very like wink, wink, nudge, nudge, yes, of course, you’re gonna load it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up with Mario games. Like that’s what we’re going to do in practice and it will be fine. But it will be just like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any other app, like CallSheet, like Overcast, like Instapaper. Like it’s like any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other app that has the ability to show third-party content, some of which somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might have rights over and some of us, somebody might not care. It’s gonna have that same kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trade-off of risk versus reward and possible occasional app store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco snags mostly involving metadata and screenshots. And I think it’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, speaking of app review problems, our friend Ben McCarthy,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’re about to release a Pokedex app, like a Pokemon database sort of thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t think there’s any marketing site for this, but I’ll put something in the show notes that you can look at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at least briefly. Nevertheless, I bet you anything that when we look at the app store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screenshots for Ketchup, which is the name of this app, I think it’ll end up being
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little to no Pokemon in the app, or it’ll be like, I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey outlines or something like that. Because if you get too close to the actual Pokemon,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then you’ll end up running a foul of app review. And I bet you any amounts of money that Ben has had to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do some really heavy lifting to to try to show this app in the App
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Store without using any of Nintendo’s copyrightable assets.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m sure it’s gonna be a real pain.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we’ve had one example of emulators first, and it’s been an unfortunate one. So this is the Verge story.
⏹️ ▶️ John The first approved Apple emulators for the iPhone have arrived, and one of them was the aforementioned IGBA, which is a Game
⏹️ ▶️ John Boy Advance emulator. Unfortunately, it was essentially a clone of Rally
⏹️ ▶️ John Tested’s first retro game emulator, which was open source and it was
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially forked and someone forked it and made a iOS game out of it and uploaded
⏹️ ▶️ John it to the App Store and apparently didn’t follow the open source license. And shortly
⏹️ ▶️ John after that story was posted, the thing arrived, there was another story that says, here’s why Apple removed
⏹️ ▶️ John the first Game Boy emulator from the App Store.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And of course, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a 9 to 5 Mac. Apple said that it removed IGBA from the App Store for violating two App Store guidelines,
⏹️ ▶️ John copyright section 5.2 and spam section 4.3. IGBA’s functionality
⏹️ ▶️ John was originally approved in compliance with the App Store’s guideline. The app was then removed, however, when Apple learned
⏹️ ▶️ John that it was a clone of GBA for iOS, a violation of copyright and spam App Store guidelines. So this
⏹️ ▶️ John explanation is, we approved it first, but then realized we made a mistake. And the mistake was not that this retro game
⏹️ ▶️ John thing is not allowed, but two things. One, there’s the copyright thing, and I think that’s just like failure to comply with an
⏹️ ▶️ John open source license. And two is that it was a clone of a previously existing,
⏹️ ▶️ John but rejected app, a GBA for iOS. And I think it’s the spam guidelines are like, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t just, like, if we reject an app, you can’t just upload another version of it or something. So I don’t actually understand
⏹️ ▶️ John this rejection at all, but the bottom line is a retro game emulator appeared and then was quickly pulled down.
⏹️ ▶️ John And for what it’s worth, Riley said that, and Attute said, I just want to reiterate
⏹️ ▶️ John that I’m not mad at the developer. Everyone makes mistakes. And they even reached out to me via email to personally apologize for the mess. So
⏹️ ▶️ John no hard feelings. So it’s not a big deal that the person uploaded a thing that was a clone and not compliant or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the fact is it appeared and disappeared and it was rejected by Apple, but not for
⏹️ ▶️ John using Nintendo’s copyrighted material or loading ROMs from the web or anything like that for other
⏹️ ▶️ John App Store guideline related reasons. And I said before, Nintendo says you are allowed
⏹️ ▶️ John to download ROMs from the web. On this topic though, there are other parties that are able to
⏹️ ▶️ John stop the retro dream from happening on all our phones and iPads
⏹️ ▶️ John and so on and so forth. I guess just phones. No iPads too because it’s global for the App Store. Nintendo recently
⏹️ ▶️ John nuked from orbit the Yuzu Switch emulator and
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s something that hadn’t been happening too often. It was like game console
⏹️ ▶️ John developers were like, you know, turned a blind eye to
⏹️ ▶️ John emulators of their old platforms, which always seemed weird to me because in the olden days, like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t care. They just care about their latest console. They don’t care that you’re emulating an NES and some open source thing that nobody
⏹️ ▶️ John cares about. But over the past decade or so, all the big console makers
⏹️ ▶️ John have been making money off their own old games, often using emulators and hiring
⏹️ ▶️ John emulator developers into their own companies so that you can pay for and play NES
⏹️ ▶️ John games on your Switch
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s not like these companies no longer care about retro consoles. They do care. every
⏹️ ▶️ John person who downloads for free an NES emulator and downloads in the legal NES ROM of Mario and plays
⏹️ ▶️ John it is a customer that is less likely to pay whatever it costs to get that in
⏹️ ▶️ John Nintendo’s own official store where you can buy old NES games.
⏹️ ▶️ John But this Nintendo thing with Yuzu, I was asking before if the Switch was
⏹️ ▶️ John retro. The Switch is a really old console, hasn’t been updated in a while. The OLED one came out, people thought that might’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ John a revised Switch, but it was just a better screen. Anyway, it’s been out for a long time, and it was slow when it came out.
⏹️ ▶️ John From hardware perspective, it is retro. But from Nintendo’s perspective, it is their current console.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Nintendo didn’t like many things about the Yuzu emulator, one of which, obviously, that it runs
⏹️ ▶️ John Switch games that people illegally download. But the second one is, I think, supposedly, the people
⏹️ ▶️ John involved with the Yuzu emulator might have somehow been involved with, like, leaking the
⏹️ ▶️ John Tears of the Kingdom game before it was actually officially released. So people were playing it on their Steam Decks before it
⏹️ ▶️ John was even out on the Switch and Nintendo was just like enough and so lawyers descended
⏹️ ▶️ John and as you can imagine Nintendo has a pretty slam-dunk case against an emulator
⏹️ ▶️ John whose entire purpose and community and website and tutorials and everything is so
⏹️ ▶️ John clearly aimed at letting you figure out how to essentially play your illegally acquired ROMs
⏹️ ▶️ John and And they had a court case and I believe the court case was settled and the settlement was Yuzu
⏹️ ▶️ John loses everything Nintendo gets everything by my user and user had to pay 2.4 million dollars
⏹️ ▶️ John and You know shuttered its entire company and Nintendo continues to wander the web Finding
⏹️ ▶️ John people and things who are doing things. It doesn’t like like it’s getting a bunch of discord server shutdown because users open-source There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like forks of Yuzu and Nintendo’s getting their discords shut down So they no longer have a place to hang out with
⏹️ ▶️ John each other and work on their emulators So Nintendo is awake and angry and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not I’m kind of surprised like I said because Nintendo like many other Console makers is making money
⏹️ ▶️ John off quote-unquote retro game console. So yes Apple may allow your retro Thing
⏹️ ▶️ John up on the App Store, but if Apple sees that Nintendo sees
⏹️ ▶️ John that that thing is essentially being used for piracy I can imagine Nintendo
⏹️ ▶️ John will ask Apple hey, we think this app violates our intellectual property, yada, yada,
⏹️ ▶️ John yada. And then Apple will take it down or Apple will direct them to you. And you’ll take it down yourself because
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have a bazillion dollars to pay for lawyers to fight Nintendo. So and the same is true, by
⏹️ ▶️ John the way, of alternative app stores. If you have an emulator, you put it up on alternative app store and Nintendo comes a knocking
⏹️ ▶️ John either at the alternative app store or comes knocking on your door. Guess what? You’re going to fold like house of cards just like user did.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you’re not going to have two point four million dollars to pay them to settle a lawsuit. So it’s a dangerous world out there for
⏹️ ▶️ John console emulation, especially since like in the case of the switch, it’s so retro that the switch
⏹️ ▶️ John emulations like in Yuzu play switch games better than the switch because
⏹️ ▶️ John any reasonably powerful PC or probably even iPad or whatever can play
⏹️ ▶️ John switch games at a higher frame rate and higher resolution than the switch itself. And cause the switch hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John is so anemic and old. And so not only is it not retro
⏹️ ▶️ John or you know, the switch is their current console But it’s it’s so retro that you can play it faster in emulation
⏹️ ▶️ John than you can on the actual switch so it actually gives you a superior game experience superior fidelity than an actual
⏹️ ▶️ John switch and partially Nintendo is to blame for that, but really Nintendo is not
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s angry and they are awake and I think it’s gonna really put a damper on everyone’s fun with this whole
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. Yeah, we’ll see what happens I mean, I’m sure something will show up. And I’m glad that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple’s finally doing… I was going to say what’s right. I think that’s a bit dramatic. I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good that they’re finally embracing things that aren’t cut and dry, perfect fits
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Apple. And again, I think it’s competition that’s caused it. And I’m here for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like, I want more of this. So I don’t know what specifically, but I just want more of this. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey please and thank you.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and this is an example just to reiterate where there was a the EU DMA thing That’s forcing Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John to do a thing and Apple’s response was to change the rules for the whole world in the App Store So we actually benefit from it in this
⏹️ ▶️ John case We don’t get the alternative app stores like the EU folks do But we do like the retro
⏹️ ▶️ John game rule is not just for the EU So I think that is what Apple should be doing I you know
⏹️ ▶️ John You would think that it annoys Apple to have a fragmented ecosystem where the rules are different in
⏹️ ▶️ John the EU in significant ways that like impact the OS and the user experience and I’m sure Apple doesn’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John that but in every case where Apple can bring itself
⏹️ ▶️ John to make a decision for the whole world they should because it’s just you don’t want to fragment it even further
⏹️ ▶️ John like and I’m glad they managed to convince themselves that this would not be the
⏹️ ▶️ John end of the world to allow retro game console emulators but not retro PC the emulators.
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#askatp: Safari tab spawning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do some Ask ATP and Jan Wedekind writes, how does John manage where new tabs spawn in Safari
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with so many open browser windows? It drives me bananas in that it always opens in the last active window
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’s cumbersome having to manually move them around. Any tips?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it is cumbersome. Two ways I manage this. One
⏹️ ▶️ John is the not great way, but practically speaking, this happens sometimes. You click on a link, it opens,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, where it’s gonna open. Safari has a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John rules about where it’s going to open new windows and new tabs based on your settings, based on what the front most window was, yada, yada,
⏹️ ▶️ John yada. Whatever Safari picks, it’s not that big a deal that if it picked the wrong place,
⏹️ ▶️ John just yank out that tab, put it where you want it. Put it in the window you want it, put it in its own separate window, that’s the thing you can do. The second thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John which I do a surprising amount, is don’t click links, right click them, copy link location, switch
⏹️ ▶️ John to Safari, make new window, paste in the URL. you can do most of this from the keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then you can decide where it goes. You can put the tab where you want it to appear and paste the URL into the location
⏹️ ▶️ John bar and it returned. And I know this probably sounds cumbersome, but like as a
⏹️ ▶️ John career web developer, I’ve spent a lot of time in the address bar, let’s say.
⏹️ ▶️ John other people never even touch it. In fact, Apple, I think correctly, de-emphasized it many, many years ago
⏹️ ▶️ John to the point where they don’t even show the full URL anymore. I think people just think of that as the Google search box ignore
⏹️ ▶️ John it when it has any other text in it. But as a web developer, I spend a lot of time in there. And so copying
⏹️ ▶️ John and pasting things into the address bar of browsers is like how I spend half of my day. And that’s a weird way to work for most
⏹️ ▶️ John people. Practically speaking, that is one way that I essentially determine where things are going to open. It’s because I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John inverting the process. I am not clicking a URL now in the OS to dispatch, in the app to choose, or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. I’m grabbing a URL as a text string, and then I’m going to the browser that I want to go in, because remember, I’m running
⏹️ ▶️ John two of them all the time. And finding the window or tab where I want it to be, or making a new window or whatever, and pasting the URL and hitting
⏹️ ▶️ John return. So that is the very unsatisfying answer, but that’s how I do it.
#askatp: Case-sensitive filesystems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pedro Fernandez writes, what’s your take on using case sensitive file system formatting for Mac OS? I had a bug that was driving
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me crazy because it was working perfectly in Mac OS, but failing in Linux. A folder was named dataset
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with capital D, capital S. What is that Pascal case? I always get it wrong. That’s Pascal, right? Sure. Sure. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was accessing it with the string dataset with capital D and lowercase S. It worked on Mac OS, but not on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Linux. I once I recall once formatting Mac OS using case
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sensitive and having many problems. I honestly don’t even remember what I do. I feel like I do case-sensitive.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one feel? You do not. Okay, I guess I don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because the case-sensitive is not the default. And yeah, before we let John tell us the right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco answer, I will butt in and say, case-sensitive is wrong in most cases.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is a poor choice in most cases. I mean, obviously, there’s a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complexity once you get into various other types of Unicode normalization and things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that. There’s a lot of complexity there. And I think it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco creates better outcomes for users, and it avoids more problems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and potential bugs, and even sometimes security problems, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the file system normalizes names as much as possible when doing duplicate detection. So let you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enter whatever case you want, and then display whatever you entered back to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco user, but prevent the creation of another file in the same folder
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a name that matches it in any kind of normalized form. So for instance, capital
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A versus lowercase a in the name, don’t allow that, it’s just in the same directory. But even other things like, you know, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this whole mechanism in place for character normalization of, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, letters that are beyond just the, you know, the English Roman alphabet. So for instance, like, you know, an E with an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accent over it. should a word with an accented E
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be unique from a file system perspective from that same word with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco English E with no accent? They’re both E’s, but they have different forms,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sort of, or certain letters are normalized in different ways. There’s that big capital B
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking symbol in German that kind of translates to like SS, I think. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s all sorts of like, different in different alphabets in different languages, there’s different characters that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of can normalize down to other characters. And there’s a question of like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how should file system handle that? Should they treat those as two separate spellings and therefore allow two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco files to exist with, you know, one each of those variants or not. And I think in general,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is better to coalesce those down for duplicate detection so that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, like similarly translating characters are allowed to coexist
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as two different file names.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, John, what’s the right answer?
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you are listening to this and you don’t recall what you picked, you took
⏹️ ▶️ John the defaults and the default is not case sensitive. So that’s the answer to what most people are doing.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s a long history behind this, a long, mostly sad history. In the
⏹️ ▶️ John HFS plus slash HFS days, maybe this was just HFS plus, but anyway, in the
⏹️ ▶️ John classic macOS days, what the file system would do was it would perform
⏹️ ▶️ John Unicode normalization. So you’d give it a file name and it would be like, that’s great and all, but I’m gonna normalize that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Unicode normalization is essentially picking, there’s a bunch of different normalized forms you can look up in the Wikipedia page, well, in
⏹️ ▶️ John case you can find a link for it. But to give an example, like, I was just the word cafe,
⏹️ ▶️ John with the E with a little accent over it, right? That little E with the accent can be written at least two different ways. One of them is
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a Unicode code point for the E with a little accent over it. But another way is you can write the Unicode code point for
⏹️ ▶️ John E, and then the one for little accent combining character. And they
⏹️ ▶️ John both make an E with an accent over it. One of them is a single thing, one of them is E plus accent, they combine,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? There’s these combining characters in Unicode. So they look exactly the same. They are
⏹️ ▶️ John the same comparison size, but the bytes on disk are different for both of those things. So if you
⏹️ ▶️ John did a blind byte comparison, they’re both UTF-8, like they’re not different encodings, they’re both
⏹️ ▶️ John UTF-8. But if you went byte by byte and you compared cafe to cafe, they look the same, They are
⏹️ ▶️ John the same character, they’re the same, but byte by byte, like, nope, these are different, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And what HFS Plus did, I believe it did one of the normalized forms. It
⏹️ ▶️ John normalized everything. So whatever you fed it, it would do, maybe it was like normal form D or something, I forget what the names are.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that, you know, and setting aside the case sensitivity, that Unicode normalization
⏹️ ▶️ John made some computer nerds angry, like Linus Starbolt,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the creator of Linux.
⏹️ ▶️ John He was very angry about the fact that HFS Plus did that because he’s like, how
⏹️ ▶️ John dare the file system change the bytes that I gave it for the file name? Because it violated
⏹️ ▶️ John what he thought was the contract, which is, hey, file system, here’s a bunch of bytes that is the file name. And then later the
⏹️ ▶️ John code would go, look for that file in the file system based on those bytes, and it wouldn’t find it because
⏹️ ▶️ John the file system had changed the byte sequence to do whatever normalized form like one normalized form is combine everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John The other normalized one was like, have everything decompose. And you wouldn’t get back the same bytes that you
⏹️ ▶️ John put in. He’s like, this is a violation of the contract. When I read the file name back from that directory, I better see the bytes that I put
⏹️ ▶️ John in there, otherwise it’s insanity. And he was super angry about that. You can find his email on the internet where he was angry about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John So when APFS came along, APFS made a different choice. Maybe not because Linus was angry
⏹️ ▶️ John about it, but whatever. APFS, the original version of APFS said, you give me some bytes, I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John store some bytes. Whatever, I’ll just, whatever bytes you give me, I’m gonna store, that’s that. And when you read the directory and you look
⏹️ ▶️ John at the list of file names I’m giving you back the bytes that you gave me and as soon as APS came out In fact before it was
⏹️ ▶️ John released at least on the Mac Anyway, I filed a bug against Apple that said hey I can make two files named cafe in the
⏹️ ▶️ John same directory in the finder One of them is the e with the accent as one little thing and one of them is the
⏹️ ▶️ John e with the combining accent character but in the file system They literally look the same
⏹️ ▶️ John and here they are side by side with each other in the same directory to Marcos point this and there’s not A capitalization difference
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever They literally look the same and it’s because the file system was totally hands-off and it was like
⏹️ ▶️ John I am not you give me bytes I store bytes. I’m not involved in this at all I just I just put the
⏹️ ▶️ John bytes in and when you read the directory I give you the bytes back out kind of like what Linus wanted But of course from using or interface
⏹️ ▶️ John perspective, that’s not great Eventually future versions of APS APFS changed to do
⏹️ ▶️ John I think this is current someone will correct me if I’m wrong But I think the current strategy is this APFS still takes
⏹️ ▶️ John the bytes that you gave it and gives them back to you just the way you gave it to it But the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that looks in the directory to see if a file by that name already exists, that mechanism
⏹️ ▶️ John normalizes everything. So the comparison is normalized. They normalize before they do the comparison of both sides,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it will always give you the bytes out that you put in. So if you try to make a second file called cafe with a different
⏹️ ▶️ John normalization, it won’t let you because it will say, sorry, file exists, right? It will clash. That seems like the
⏹️ ▶️ John best approach. Yeah. Well, it is certainly better than the previous two that we said, But this, I believe this is what everything
⏹️ ▶️ John currently does. And that in case sensitivity, I assume, I don’t know how case sensitivity implemented, but I assume it’s in the same type
⏹️ ▶️ John of thing where the, the case and sensitivity comes in the checking, whether that
⏹️ ▶️ John file already exists or not, but when you put the file in the file system, the case is there, so it is case
⏹️ ▶️ John preserving. It is encoding preserving, but it is not encoding sensitive. And if you choose the case and
⏹️ ▶️ John sensitive, it is not case sensitive. Here’s, here’s my take on this. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John that the file system should be case sensitive on comparisons.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think that higher levels of the OS should implement case insensitivity for places
⏹️ ▶️ John where it matters. But it doesn’t matter what I think because we have decades of Mac OS
⏹️ ▶️ John history where the file system by default has not been case sensitive and the plain fact is that
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac apps sometimes will misbehave on a case sensitive file system. Shouldn’t be that way. People
⏹️ ▶️ John shouldn’t be careless when they write their programs But reality is what it is. I would say the
⏹️ ▶️ John answer, there’s a long-winded answer to this is, do not format your file system as case sensitive,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially your boot disk, on Mac OS, and expect to have a problem-free experience. Don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do it. It’s the legacy of software for the Mac that is going to thwart you. And as much as you may
⏹️ ▶️ John want to have a case-sensitive file system for your own purposes, don’t do it. Now, if you want one,
⏹️ ▶️ John make an external disk with an external file system. Make a disk image. I have this on every Mac for
⏹️ ▶️ John my entire existence. I’ve had a case sensitive file system disk image that I would launch and
⏹️ ▶️ John mount and CD into to do stuff. And why? Well, you may be angered
⏹️ ▶️ John slash surprised to learn that one of the file name extensions for C++ source files in Unix,
⏹️ ▶️ John the file name extension is capital C. How do you feel about that?
⏹️ ▶️ John Lowercase C is a C file. Capital C is a C++ file. Oh, gosh. And
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John think that’s not true. It’s CPP. It’s C with two plus characters.
⏹️ ▶️ John I will tell you, as an old school Unix person,
⏹️ ▶️ John five extensions for Zipfiles files was in the past, capital C. And why might that come
⏹️ ▶️ John up? Well, you download some open source thing and you untar it and you try to build it and it doesn’t work. And you’re like, why the hell doesn’t it work?
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s because when it untarred, either a foo.capitalC overwrote a foo.lowercasec
⏹️ ▶️ John or vice versa, and now you’re missing one of the files. That’s why you need a case sensor. So the
⏹️ ▶️ John Unix, the culture of Unix and all Unix software is to have case sensitive file systems
⏹️ ▶️ John by default. But the culture of Mac OS is not. So there’s tons of Mac software out there where in the source code,
⏹️ ▶️ John someone copy and pasted like a folder name or a file name that’s part of their application
⏹️ ▶️ John that has the wrong case. And it’s been working for 30 years because Mac file systems are case insensitive
⏹️ ▶️ John by default. So the sad fact is we are essentially all stuck with case insensitive file systems, which
⏹️ ▶️ John I agree that that should be the policy. I just kind of wish the file system at the lowest level was case sensitive
⏹️ ▶️ John and that just the higher levels implemented that, but that’s not the world we live in. So Pedro, case insensitive,
⏹️ ▶️ John keep around a second disk or a disk image that is case sensitive for when you need it.
#askatp: Best ceiling fans
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Matt McCurdy writes, in the style of throw money at the problem for the best product, I’m curious to know what brand of ceiling fan Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey landed on. Where does one shop for fans? I’m trying to avoid the big box store generic brands for fear of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a low quality and noisy product. And then I can only seem to find styles that are stuck in the 70s or hyper
⏹️ ▶️ Casey modern like they belong in space. So what’d you do, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I get space fans. So the short version of this is, is it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t matter in my experience that much in terms of quality.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve had good fans, I’ve had crap fans. I’ve had fans that I picked out myself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and put in new. I’ve had fans that came with the place that I was renting or an old house that I bought or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not that different because fans aren’t that hard to make, it turns
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out. So buy fans that you like the look and other specs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, fans that fit your rooms, that fit your style. For the most part, it’s probably better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off fashion-wise for you not to notice your fan very much, because they’re not that attractive, even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the nice ones. So, all that being said, I suggest get whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fits. The ones I get are, I think the nice ones, I get the Fanimation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brand. It is fine. I’ve occasionally had some that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got loose and rattled and had to be tightened, just like any other brand. Most of them have been fine for years,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like any other brand. The only weird thing that I don’t like about their fans
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that they seem to mostly or all now come with those dumb like custom remotes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to control them. Instead of just having like three wires. Now, they can be adapted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and converted to the three wire system, but that requires you to have three wire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wiring that goes from the switch to the fan. And so in some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ways it’s better that they have an option to not do that. Like if you use their little smart remotes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can just have regular two-wire wiring that was never planning for a fan on a certain circuit or switch, and you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can make it work and it’ll be fine. But so I currently, in the new house,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we got a bunch of Fanimation fans, and they all have these dumb little remotes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I gotta deal with that now. Is
⏹️ ▶️ John Fanimation the name of an anime animation? That’s funimation. Sorry. I
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like there’s a trade possible trade bar conflict. Can you explain the three wire thing? I don’t quite understand
⏹️ ▶️ John what you’re getting out there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Many fans have built-in lights. And so the idea is If
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have a switch on the wall for the fan If you only have one set of wires
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that runs from the switch to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John fan and light on the same time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, if it has the fan and the light so you have multiple options there Sometimes the light switch is kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the main switch but then the fan will have two pull chains, one for the light, one for the fan speed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s one option to do it. Or, the nicer fans, you can control them without pulling chains,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but then you need basically a third wire, one that goes from the switch to the fan, and one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that goes from the switch to the fan’s light. And that way you can control them separately. Do you have lights on your fans? I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do, only because most good fans come with lights. I find the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actual light on the fan usually to be really harsh and terrible. They also usually now these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco days are custom LED fixtures, as in you cannot replace the bulb. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they say, oh, they’ll last forever, and they don’t. And so, eventually,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the LED in it will start going bad and will start flickering or will just outright die. And then you just don’t have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco light in your fan anymore, unless you go through the hassle of replacing the custom LED thing in there. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the most part, no is the answer.
⏹️ ▶️ John As a non-fan person, I would think that what I would want is a fan without a light, because it would be lower profile and
⏹️ ▶️ John sleek, but that’s just me thinking about headroom, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In practice, the LED lights only add like one inch of height.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because they’re not bulbs and they’re the stupid custom things, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s why there’s all… Yeah, you’re right. If you want to minimize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the protrusion from the ceiling, yeah, don’t get one with a light. But yeah, with these modern, terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco custom LED things, the difference is pretty small.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As a final note, and I think I’ve told this story before, I don’t recall the specifics. please, please, please,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey please, please talk to an electrician or do your own research. But we bought space looking fans, I couldn’t tell you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what brand they were for the screened in porch, and they came with like the RF boxes, just like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you described. But certain kinds of fans, I want to say it’s AC fans. And then there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey others that like have a conversion into DC. Again, double check my math on this, I’m probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting this all wrong. But certain kinds of fans you can will work with, say the former sponsor,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but one of my favorite things in world Lutron Caseta fan switches. And so what we did was or what the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey electricians did was they wired it up to the you know, RF receiver, whatever. And then I took one of them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was like, well, let me see what happens. And sure enough, it’s been this way for two, three years now, we can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use them with the Caseta things, and it’s working just fine. And I vastly prefer that even though the Caseta,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey especially the early Caseta stuff wasn’t the most beautiful stuff in the world, but it’s extraordinarily reliable, as Marco and I’ve talked about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many times. And, and it’s so much better looking than the RF boxes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that were mammoth and stuck out of the wall and so on and so forth. So do your own research. But it is possible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in certain circumstances. But especially if you have a fan that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does not have a light in it like like those are, you might be able to use casetas, which is pretty in a pretty straightforward
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you to our sponsors this week Squarespace and fastmail. And thank you to our members
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who support us directly. You can join us at atv.fm join members get a bunch of perks including
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ATP overtime a bonus segment every week this week on overtime we’re catching up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with some old friends we are talking about the reviews of the humane AI
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pin and also that automatic has acquired beeper so this will be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interesting thank you so much to everyone for listening and we will talk to you next Tweek!
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ John show notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Mastodon, you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, Auntie Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John mean to, accidental Tech Podcasts, so long.
Lutron Diva smart switches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Casey, you’re just part of Lutron Caseta and the switches. In the new house, I’ve had the electricians
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put in Lutron’s new Diva smart switches.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, those are the ones that are way prettier, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my God, they’re great. So, okay, huge caveat. First of all, yes, they were a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco former sponsor. I don’t know if they’re gonna sponsor again. Second of all, I’ve had them in my house for like two weeks,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but oh my God, they look so nice. So one of the challenges of Lutron’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dimmers before is that they, it was kind of like BMW’s controls.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They were fine once you learned them, but when you had a guest over, like how do I turn on the lights?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it was, the Lutron switch controls in the past
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were a little bit unintuitive. The Diva switch looks just like a big Decora
⏹️ ▶️ Marco style, like the big square paddle switch, you know, the up and down. And then it happens to have one of those slidy dimming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things on the side. but it looks, but the up and down is not stateful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like it’s always like rocked in the middle and you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey tap it up. And it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rocks for a second, you tap it, but then you release your hand and it just goes back to the center. So they can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be smart controlled, but still have the look and feel of regular light switches.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then other huge benefit of that, I know nerds out there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bet many of you like me, me when you have a three way switch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in your house, there is a certain alignment that you consider correct. Correct.
⏹️ ▶️ John brother life, my life and my house.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. Oh my gosh, preach and it’s all this is going to cause a marital issue between Aaron and me. Oh gosh,
⏹️ ▶️ John welcome to New England where every switch is three way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is this is the problem because our main kitchen light has a switch at the entryway from the garage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a switch where the telephone would have been when the house built, you know, like the main area of the kitchen, like halfway
⏹️ ▶️ Casey through the kitchen or well, like at the other end of the kitchen, really, but right next to the main hallway downstairs. And Aaron
⏹️ ▶️ Casey loves to use the switch by the garage door. And I prefer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to use the switch that’s on the other side. And we basically just fight each other constantly. Jared
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Raneree It cannot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stand. Michael Mann
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, it drives me bananas. Jared Raneree You need to have like a summit, a switch summit where you can come to some kind of a joint resolution.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Michael Mann Yep, yep. Now, and I would actually listeners, I’m so sorry, I railroaded you, Marco, but this is No, no, this is great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey triggered me. But listeners, it does not have to be a smart switch. It does not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have to be a smart switch. If you have a paddle style or whatever this is called, I think Decora is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what you had said earlier, Marco. I think that’s the right name
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco for it. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Decora is the large shape, like where it’s like a big rectangular cutout instead of like a little tiny stick
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the middle. It’s a seesaw.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a big seesaw. It’s an 80 seesaw.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, a big, big, big seesaw, yeah. If you have a state-free Decora
⏹️ ▶️ Casey switch, and I don’t need this to be a smart switch, but based on what you just told me about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the decor, excuse me, the- The diva. What is it? Thank you, the diva. I might be spending a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lot of money because these are not cheap. I might be spending money on these just so I never have to see these stupid rockers upside
⏹️ ▶️ Casey down ever again. But if you know of a dumb equivalent, you know, a non-home
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kit, just a freaking switch, please, please find a way, write me, tweet me, send
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me a letter, shoot a carrier pigeon my way, do something and let me know because I would love to have one of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think it has to be somewhat smart to make this
⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s not smart, you’re just you’re just making yourself angry like the switches won’t appear to be wrong But you’ll never
⏹️ ▶️ John know whether you need to hit up or down to make the light go on or off That’s very yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whereas like the way so the way that the the smart divas work is They have they sell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a right like a smart regular switch And then they sell accessory switches that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you put them on a three-way circuit with it You can just tap either one of them up or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down and it will turn the light on or off off exactly the way it should be. So both switches are visually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always centered and whichever one you’re near, you can tap it up to turn it on and tap it down and turn it off.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So there is no wrong configuration of a three-way circuit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It is life-changing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like that’s how much, cause I’ve always hated that with all three. Could not agree
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m pretty good about forcing things to be the correct way at our house.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No. Yeah, so let me
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve been living in this house for over 20 years now, 23, 24, we’ve been living in this house a long time, okay?
⏹️ ▶️ John And still, like when my parents come to visit or something, they find like a switch that I didn’t even, I
⏹️ ▶️ John forgot existed, and they will flip that one, it will reverse all the switches in the kitchen, right? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John that was the three woman that we never touch. It’s like, what the hell happened in here? And I have to go and fix
⏹️ ▶️ John them all. Like, you’ll know you’re, I think we should, let me just explain this briefly so people know what we’re talking about. A
⏹️ ▶️ John three-way switch is, let’s just give a simple example. There’s one light in the middle of the room, and the room has two switches
⏹️ ▶️ John on the wall, right? I know this sounds silly because they’re in the same room, but maybe there’s two entrances to the room. Yeah, two entrances
⏹️ ▶️ John to the room and each entrance has a switch on the wall, right? And a three-way switch means that if you want that light, one of
⏹️ ▶️ John the lights, one of the switches is gonna be when you push the switch up, the light goes on, push the switch goes down, the light goes on.
⏹️ ▶️ John The other switch is gonna be reversed. When the switch is down, the light is on, and when the switch is up, the light is off, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And what we’re saying is, if you live in a house for a while, you come to decide, look, the switch
⏹️ ▶️ John by this door is the one that’s going to work as you expect. The switch by this door
⏹️ ▶️ John means when you push it up, the light goes on and push it down, the light goes off. And that means you never touch ever
⏹️ ▶️ John the switch by the other door. And often people employ something like a piece of tape over
⏹️ ▶️ John that switch to indicate this switch is not a switch. Never touch it. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John by preserving the state of this switch, like tape it into the up or down position, whatever it needs to be,
⏹️ ▶️ John that makes the one true switch work in a sane manner. And that’s what we’re all trying to preserve in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s actually slightly different than my situation. So with the kitchen switch, it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forget the terminology. I did all the switches in the house during COVID. It was one of my COVID projects and I’ve lost all the terminology, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the kitchen switch, I’m pretty sure there’s only two physical switches. And I think it is still considered a three-way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey switch, you know, in terms of the wiring and all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. If there is more than one physical switch, it is a, it’s like a plus one situation. That’s what I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying. It’s two wall switches, one line. Yeah, if there’s three switches,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s a four-way. But the thing of it is, If maybe I somehow screwed up the wiring, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worked in our favor, because you can have it such that both of them are off and the light
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is off. Then you turn either one of them on and the light goes on. But the problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is if one of them is on and you want to turn the light off from the other switch,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s when it gets all backwards. But my point is there is a good state when only one is up and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the light is on. Like that is the standard state. The problem comes where Aaron will turn on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the one that I don’t want her to turn on and I want to turn on the one that she doesn’t want to turn on.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you don’t want them to be in essentially what you consider to be invalid states. Like it
⏹️ ▶️ John comes down to the point of like, if I could just erase one of these switches and simplify it, I would, but instead I just prefer you not
⏹️ ▶️ John to use. Everyone else in the house not to use it. And our weird New England house, it’s convenient because a lot of those switches
⏹️ ▶️ John that I don’t know exist, like they’re behind appliances or like they’re just never used by anyone who lives
⏹️ ▶️ John here until someone visits and somehow is looking for a light switch and they find it behind the toaster and they flip it and then like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco is reversed and it’s madness.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and modern electrical codes, this is not even that recently,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I find three-way switches are much, much, much more common than they used to be because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the intent of modern electrical codes is basically like, you should be able to find a light
⏹️ ▶️ Marco switch when you’re entering a dark room. So, okay, what if you have a big hallway? There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco certain conventions, or some of them might even be coded rules of like, within a certain amount of distance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a bedroom door. You want to be able to come out your bedroom door and hit a switch to turn on the hall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco light. Well, if it’s a long hallway, you might have multiple bedroom doors that need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their own switches near them somewhere. So you might have two, maybe even three switches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down this long hallway. Or four
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on two different floors. Because our upstairs is like a big L. I’m a little oversimplifying slightly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but our upstairs is a big L. There’s one bedroom that’s the office where I’m sitting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right now that’s kind of off by its lonesome, and there’s a hall switch by that bedroom, then there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a hall switch outside Declan’s bedroom, which is on one extreme end of the vertical bar, if you will. There’s one outside
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of our bedroom, and then at the bottom of the stairs, there’s number four, baby! And oh my gosh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if anyone even breathes on any of these switches, the whole thing is ruined. Everything is upside down.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because again, like, because you want switches on the outside of every bedroom for the hallway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want switches on top and bottom of staircases. Any kind of common room
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a living room or kitchen, you want a switch at every entrance. So if it’s like a long room with like a door on each side
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to go to other rooms, you got to have one on both sides. Like so modern construction has tons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of multi-way switches. And yeah, let me just tell you, the Lutron Diva smart switch with the accessory
⏹️ ▶️ Marco switch, life changing. That is good to know.
⏹️ ▶️ John One of the benefits of living in New England is my house is so old that it predates all these
⏹️ ▶️ John things. I’ve said that like my dining room has one power outlet in it, not one double
⏹️ ▶️ John socket power outlet, literally one power out in the entire room. And the actual modern code
⏹️ ▶️ John is like, you need to have a power outlet every like four and a half feet or whatever, right? One, one power outlet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a single. So like, you know, one pig nose, like that’s it. Yeah. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I believe it was not grounded until I fixed it. Oh, of course.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my great googly moogly. Oh my
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, yeah. So I don’t have this problem. And you got the New England thing of people who’ve been in New England house where like the switches are on
⏹️ ▶️ John the outside of rooms. Someone goes in a bathroom, closes the door and realize they’re in darkness and they can’t find to find the switch, guess what?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not in there. It’s outside the bathroom. Yeah, that’s the worst. So the good thing
⏹️ ▶️ John is we didn’t have all these codes, but the one place that apparently in the 20s, whenever my house was made or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John that they did decide to do is what Mark just said, top and bottom of the stairs. We have top and the bottom of the stairs light switches. Someone,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it was done later in the 80s, but either way, we have top and bottom three-way switch for the stairs light,
⏹️ ▶️ John which makes sense from a safety perspective. All right, and that is the only one that my family
⏹️ ▶️ John uses consistently. And I don’t know if they realize this, but I fix it every single day.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco always the last one to come upstairs, last one to come off the life.
⏹️ ▶️ John I put it to the known good position at the end of every single day. It does eventually get messed up, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I essentially throughout the day try to preserve the one true position. Which in case you’re wondering,
⏹️ ▶️ John the switch on the bottom is the real one. When the switch on the bottom is up, the light should be on. When the switch on the bottom
⏹️ ▶️ John of the stairs is down, the light should be off. No one else in my family respects that, and it is the one switch that I must fight
⏹️ ▶️ John with. But every other switch in the house, There is peace and there is one good configuration. Top and bottom
⏹️ ▶️ John of the stairs. There’s nothing I can do. I don’t even mention it to anyone in my family because I know they’re not going to do it. I just fix it