704: Past the Ternus Horizon
13 Aug 2026Apple Watch overhaul rumors, beta icon updates, Mac backups, and the app with John’s favorite login system.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Marco has a rose and thorn
- Follow-up:
- Marco’s favorite feedback (about Myke) was from Analog(ue) 😬
- Post-show Neutral
- Professional negotiators / “headhunters” are very much a thing
- CarEdge (via John Siracusa)
- Delivrd (via Roger Coxon)
- The Car Chick (via Juan Boyce)
- The #1 trusted automotive expert for women and smart men
- Your Car Buying Advocate (via Ian McCullough)
- Two options from Colin Macdonald
- Casey makes some discoveries over the last week
- Justification from the midwest dealer
- Ventilated seats
- Laser headlights
- Marco takes a spin as well
- Professional negotiators / “headhunters” are very much a thing
- John’s passwords pro-tip
- Codex Micro (via St. Chris)
- John and Casey weep for a while about Verizon CableCARDs 😭
- Backups
- Time Machine has a fatal flaw (via Jonathan Dechko)
- …but also a workaround (via Eric Jacobsen)
- Are backups even necessary? (via Mustapha Hamoui)
- Apple Upgrade
- Lease agreements are between customer & financier, not the retailer (via Patch)
- Apple Card also has 12 months interest-free (via Andrew Haglund)
- RAMpocalypse
- New macOS & iOS 27 β5 icons
- Apple Watch overhaul rumors
- The Casio watch everyone has (it’s small; here’s a bigger one if you want, or a more modern one with step-counting)
- John’s Passwords pro tip
- Post-show: John’s macOS update woes
- Members-only ATP Overtime: More AI hardware rumors
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Chapters
- Annoying thing
- Good thing
- Analog(ue), not Connected
- Finding a bug in SQLite
- Neutral follow-up
- Sponsor: Factor (code atp50off)
- OpenAI’s dumb keypad follow-up
- Bye, CableCARDs
- Mac backups
- Sponsor: Claude
- Apple Upgrade follow-up
- Chip-shortage drama
- Beta 5 icon updates 🖼️
- Sponsor: Quince
- Apple Watch overhaul rumors
- Name your passwords!
- John’s favorite login system
- Ending theme
- John’s warning story
Annoying thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have a happy thing and a annoying thing. Okay, I'm going to start with the annoying thing. Yes, please.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have been waiting 12 days for launching my new app. I've been waiting for app review.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wanted to launch it today. I wanted today's show to be all about my new app and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey promoting it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I even set a pre-order date from today, thinking like, obviously, in 12 days, because I submitted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John today's August 12th, like obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 12 days is enough to get at least one loop around from AppReview. And if they happen to reject it the first time around,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after two to seven days, I will be able, obviously, I'll be able to just push that date
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back and do the whole thing again. And the Mac app was approved after six days,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is a lot. And the iOS app is just sitting there waiting. I filed a ticket today, no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco response. I don't know. App review is really having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems. Only in the last month or so, it seems like review times have spiked up to like six
⏹️ ▶️ Marco days for most apps.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can't imagine why. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay, so everyone's like, yeah, it's vibe coding. Yeah, but vibe coding didn't just start
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, but it's like, when do people, you know, when do the people start doing it, playing with it, figuring they're going to put it up on the store?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, it's kind of like, you know, a thing that builds like a snowball. And as you frequently point out, when
⏹️ ▶️ John people are stuck in traffic, you are traffic. You're submitting a vibe-coded app. You're one of the traffic people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well it's partly it's partly ai coded it's I didn't vibe code the whole thing, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco um in fact i wrote most of the code in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John but Anyway, it's Apple's job to get their review times under control, regardless of the spikes in traffic.
⏹️ ▶️ John They just want to be stingy about it. And it gets harder when there's bursts. But it's like, look, you chose to be
⏹️ ▶️ John the, as the EU would say, gatekeeper. So uh figure out how to get it done.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That's the thing. Like, you know, I feel like in times like this, I think Apple often sees itself as the victim of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco external forces. That is certainly the impression they give off. And when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you talk to people inside, they definitely have a victim complex about a lot of things. And app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco review, it seems like they've always kind of seen themselves as like, well, when times
⏹️ ▶️ Marco explode, it's obviously because the external world is forcing upon them some factor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, all these people are submitting updates all at once, or oh, AI coding is making their spam attempts or whatever. But like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they created this whole system. They put themselves in this position and they control everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about it. So it's a problem of their own making and it's going to require a solution of their own making.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the direction the world is going where a lot more people can now make apps didn't just start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last month. So they've had a lot of time to observe this and to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco try to make changes to scale up. And maybe they have scaled up, but obviously they haven't scaled up enough. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the system is breaking.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you use a lot of different they's in that in this description. There's the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey they that are complaining of
⏹️ ▶️ John victimization. There's the they that shows the app review system. There's many days and they're not entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John overlapping. Obviously, if you work in app review and you're overwhelmed, you're not the one setting the policy for the
⏹️ ▶️ John app store. But then there is the larger they, which is Apple leadership, which did set the policy for the app store and
⏹️ ▶️ John is ultimately responsible for crappy review times. And yeah, there's many overlapping they's, but from the outside,
⏹️ ▶️ John it's just Apple and they're not performing well in their self-appointed duty to be
⏹️ ▶️ John the sole app store for the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And we have no other choice. Like the reality is, like, my development has screeched to a halt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I can't ship the software. Like, I have the Mac app, which is approved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and waiting, but I can't release it because the in-app purchase that it needs is submitted with the iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app because there's no way to make one submission that covers when you submit a new app to the app store that requires an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in-app purchase. You have to submit the in-app purchase itself for review as part of the submission
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the app. And they both have to be approved for the app to work. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Mac app that shares that same in-app purchase with the iOS app,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can't bundle the in-app purchase for review with both. You have to bundle it with one or the other.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I bundled it with the iOS app, figuring I've always heard stories about the Mac App Store taking forever for approval. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I figured the iOS app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John is likely to be approved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first. So the Mac app is sitting there waiting. It's approved after six days.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the iOS app is now on day 12, still not approved, but with the in-app purchase bundled with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. So I can't release either one of them if I wanted to. It's a mess. And I also can't release
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any new test flight builds. So I can't be working on like version 101, really,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, with any testers because I can't create version 101 yet in App Store Connect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because version 1.0 is still awaiting approval. And if I cancel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 1.0 submission and, you know, developer reject it for iOS, that'll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco start the whole countdown over. And also, what the heck happens to the Mac app, which is approved and pending
⏹️ ▶️ Marco release? I have to release it before I can submit a new version. So it's everything is tied
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up in Apple's own system that they built that honestly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is crumbling. Like this system, this system relies on fast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app review. We had a time back in the day when App Review frequently
⏹️ ▶️ Marco took six to eight days. There was a person who was allegedly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in charge of it that was replaced when Phil Schiller kind of took it over. And magically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things got a lot faster after that. And that's when App Review, this was in about 2015,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that app review times dropped from up to a week to usually one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to two days, where it has mostly stayed for most of the last 11
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years. And just in the last month, that one to two days or two to three days
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time has become six to eight days. And now here I am with 12.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Something has seriously broken. And it reveals quite how broken the rest of the system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco becomes if app review takes a long time. Because what they want you to do, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want you to like set up promotion. I had a pre-order date sex. That's what you're supposed to do now to promote an app, set up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an app store pre-order. So I set that up. You're supposed to like, you know, email app review or the app store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco editorial people some number of days or weeks in advance. You can like plan a launch and you can try to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco market it and co-market it. I can't do any of that right now because I have no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clue whether this almost two-week-old submission will ever be approved, let alone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when. Am I going to be able to launch this app by September? I have no idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If this build doesn't get through, if they have some nitpick with it and they reject it, is the next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco build going to take two weeks also? There's just no end in sight when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like when you're when you're looking at the situation, it's like you have no idea what to do. You're stuck. I hope Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco realizes how severe of a problem this is. I hope someone over there is running around with their head
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on fire because this is so broken. You know, they're never going to show. Like you're never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to see any external signs how much they care. From the outside, it just looks like they just don't care at all. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I'm sure that's, I'm sure someone in there cares. How high up is that person? Does Phil Schiller care? I hope so.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe he listens still. I don't know. Phil, hey, this is broken. Please, please, for the love of God, fix it. All right.
Good thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Uh, the good thing, that was that was my bad thing. The good thing is I have achieved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a homeowner milestone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What did you repair?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I replaced the stupid ceiling fan that I've complained about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for years here and there to you, Casey, at least. I don't know if it's if anybody's really made the edited show,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco um, but I had a ceiling fan in my office here. The only way to control it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its own like proprietary wall controller like that goes in the light switch box.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it was it's like a proprietary DC signaling system, and you can't just wire it to an AC fan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco switch. Because if you can wire a fan to an AC fan switch, then you can put in like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Lutron caseta switch, which I love. And then you can control it with the Pico remotes from anywhere. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Jonathan Mann at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other place, I have a Lutron fan or a Lutron-controlled fan, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then on my desk, I have a Pico switch. So when you're a podcaster wanting to adjust your ceiling fan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You don't have to stretch across the whole room with your big quilted headphone cable trying not to knock over your drinks onto your laptop. So…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, who would do that? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. But here, I had, there was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this like proprietary custom crappy fan from a brand I won't name to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them a favor. I always hated this fan. But, you know, a fan is just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a piece of permanent architecture in a house. I can't change a fan. I changed a fan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And let me tell you, changing a ceiling fan is so much harder than I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, Marco, you're gifted in many ways. You're gifted in so many ways. Height
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not one of those ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, there are things like ladders and step tools.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey No, I'm just. I'm just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being a jerk. I couldn't help myself. No.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Getting the old fan off from the crappy brand.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, that sounds terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, there's a million like, you know, hooks and brackets and cables and everything else. And like the old fan was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a piece of crap in a number of ways. And one of them was the way it mounted was just horrendous.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it was like, it's, and fans are heavy. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco They they weigh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like 25, 30 pounds. And you have to hold this thing It's 24, 24, 30 pounds, like way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco above your head for a while as you're like unscrewing things or unhooking things. So it's, it's a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco significant workout, honestly. Like afterwards, you know, your shoulders are going to be sore. Oh, absolutely.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the new fan was a fanimation fan, and it's the last AC one they make, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that's controllable by these switches. Um, But it was so much nicer. It's like night and day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco difference of like the good brand versus the crappy brands. It was so much easier to install. Getting the old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fan off was so much harder. But anyway, now I have a fan control on my desk and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco am happy. But please, Apple, approve my app already. Come on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I'm giving you a hard time because I'm a turd and we're such close friends and I can get away with it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, doing a fan replacement, I feel like I'm capable of doing that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I've done like ceiling light fixtures, which is considerably lighter and considerably easier, but spiritually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the same ballpark. But I am petrified of the idea of replacing a fan. So as much as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I'm giving you a hard time, much respect from me. That that sounds extremely scary.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it's, I mean, it's like, it's not scary in the sense that like it's not, you know, as long as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you're not an idiot about it, you're not going to be exposed to any more safety risks than like, you know, changing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a light switch. But it is just like, it's a very like logistically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and physically challenging task. Like one of the one of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey the challenges
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of putting up the new fan was like, all right, the the blades all have to like rest in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the like on this bracket and you have to lift it up and screw it in. Well, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you lift it up, the blades will fall out. So you need like five hands.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now I'm doing this and like Tip was like at the restaurant working. I'm like, I don't want to you know call her back here. Just let me see if I can do it myself.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I ended up having to like make basically like a support structure out of blue painter's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tape to like hold the fan blades
⏹️ ▶️ Marco together so they wouldn't droop as I lifted it up and screwed them in with only my my, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, minuscule amount of hands. It was ridiculous. Like my process of doing this rather than like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco waiting until someone to get home to help me, Uh, it was ridiculous, but I'm so glad it's done.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, Like I said, much respect. Uh, Was this the chat room is asking, and I concur, was this brought on by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our friend? He doesn't know he's our friend because none of us have met him, but our friend Alec over at Technology Connections.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is this brought on by his incredible almost one in or almost one hour, 20 minute video about fans?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That was an incredible video. However, no, it was not. I've had this fan sitting in my office for like two months
⏹️ ▶️ Marco waiting to be installed. I knew installing it was going to be a job and I've been procrastinating for this
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, your app was released and could remind you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasn't. So anyway, that one did feel good to check off, though.
Analog(ue), not Connected
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I dread admitting this in front of you too, but Marco, you brought up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your favorite piece of feedback, excuse me, from Connected. You had said last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week, you had said that somebody had corrected Mike, you know, Mike Hurley
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the day of his birth, on his birthday. And Alex Chan wrote in to say, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mentioned some podcast follow-up from Connected in which Mike was corrected on his own birthday. The clip was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually on analog number 10 with Casey starting at two minutes and 48 seconds.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I remembered this being a thing. If if you would say, well, you did say that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was on Connected. And I was like, yeah, totally. I'm sure that's where it was. I I feel bad. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John not only that
⏹️ ▶️ John 10. So that was a long time ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And you are right. Uh, And then John in our internal show notes noted the correction
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wasn't actually Mike's Excuse me, was Mike's age. It was not his birthday,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is an important correction as well.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I thought the birthday was plausible because you misspeak on shows. Like I listen back to a podcast that I'm on and I hear myself
⏹️ ▶️ John say something that's not what I thought I was saying at the time. So I'm like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Jonathan Mann maybe he just
⏹️ ▶️ John misspoke and said the wrong date of his birthday. But no, he was just wrong about his age, which let me tell you for
⏹️ ▶️ John youngsters, if you have not already experienced the notion of not knowing how old you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. Yeah. Once you get past like, I don't know, 25, it's all kind of like, what? How old am I again?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don't even know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I have to do the math every time. Like when, like, when somebody, how old am I? like, oh, 1982, subtract.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It's every, literally every time.
Finding a bug in SQLite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also, this is not follow-up. This is nominally follow-out, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the same Alex actually works at Tailscale. And Alex wrote an incredible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey write-up about a SQLite bug that Tailscale
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had to struggle to find. This is really, really cool. I am familiar with SQLite,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I've never had the, I don't think I've ever used it professionally or personally or anything like that. But I'm familiar with it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I don't know SQLite like certainly Marco does, and I would presume John does. And I found this post
⏹️ ▶️ Casey freaking fascinating. So if you are at all interested in like forensics and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like figuring out what a weird and wild bug could be caused by, we'll put a link in the show notes. This
⏹️ ▶️ Casey write-up is really great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And by the way, you're missing out. SQLite is amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, no, I'm not trying to slag on it. Like, I know it's great. It's just I've never really had the occasion to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use it. I almost kind of want to invent a reason, to be honest with you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it's almost like it's one of the most important pieces of software in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modern world because it's everywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I agree. It's like that in FFmpeg, and that's it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it goes even more places. Yeah, you're right. First of all, it's all over Mac OS and iOS. Like, it's just,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it's everywhere. It's the foundation, I believe it's a foundational data store of core data, also.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could be wrong about that, but I think it's that. I use it, of course, with my Blackboard library, like Overcast uses it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My new app uses it. And SQLite, it's so bulletproof. The fact that they could find
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bug in SQLite at all is pretty impressive because it's not buggy generally.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rock solid piece of software. So that's also like, you know, part
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the story would be impressive because even just finding a bug in it that hasn't been found yet is is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty remarkable. But it's, it's amazing software.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The TLDR is that they are using SQLite in a reasonable way, but a slightly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off the beaten pathway and, And that's what it boiled down to: is they exercised a code path that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is certainly valid. It's not that they were holding it wrong or anything, but it's not the happy path
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that 99.9% of people run through. And so that's how it ended up happening.
Neutral follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyways, all right, we're going to do a quick follow-up with regard to our post-show neutral from last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week. If you missed out, I'd like to buy myself a used, preferably CPO
⏹️ ▶️ Casey BMW i4 M50 because I'm a child. And one of the things that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lamented was: hey, you know, it would be really nice if like car headhunters
⏹️ ▶️ Casey existed. And I couldn't think of the right term for it. um But a bunch of people wrote in with a bunch of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different options, and I will run through these super fast.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, before before you do, I just want to say that when you asked for this, you were saying, hey, I'm looking for this particular model of car.
⏹️ ▶️ John I want these options, blah, blah, maybe this extension, all that stuff. The reason I didn't mention any of this
⏹️ ▶️ John is because I thought that you were specifically asking for someone find me a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey of this car with these options and these things.
⏹️ ▶️ John That's why you said headhunter. It's like there's a car out there that is exactly spec the way I want it. I need one that that they'll
⏹️ ▶️ John sell to me because they can't be in the Midwest and like not sell to me and you'll have
⏹️ ▶️ John second. Like find the car. That's as opposed to what you're about to describe, which is mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John go through the laborious car buying process with, you know, and that does involve finding the car, of course, when you
⏹️ ▶️ John tell them what you want. But I feel like the main value proposition of these people is we will do the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that you have described as a terrible experience. And it is a terrible experience. And also presumably these
⏹️ ▶️ John people are better at it than you because they do it for a living. So you pay them and they get you a good price.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I've always felt that that was their main value, not, oh, I'll find you the one yellow
⏹️ ▶️ John version of this car with ventilated seats and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, continue. Yes. No, you're exactly right. And honestly, I think both are valuable. And it turns out both exist.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Roger Coxon writes that professional car negotiation is very much a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And they included an article about Delivered. That's D E L I V R D.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, That is a Wall Street Journal article. So we'll put an Apple News link next to it if you're a News Plus subscriber.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, The long and the short of it is that Delivered, I believe, if I remember this right, was founded by a former um, car salesperson.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then they realized, well, wait, I could just charge people, and I think the, I think it's a thousand bucks. They, you know, they, They would bill
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me a thousand bucks and they will go out and source the car and then negotiate on it. And basically, all I have to do is show up and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sign on the dotted line.
⏹️ ▶️ John CarEdge does the same thing, by the way, also founded by an ex-car dealer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay. So uh, additionally, uh, I've been using Visor. the The website
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is visor.vin, uh, which I think was recommended by Matt Howie, if I'm not mistaken. But anyways, Visor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is very good. Um, and on, on the results, probably when you're looking at like a detail
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a car, the details page for a car, they actually offered a link to delivered, but I just assumed it was like some sort of scammy,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey awful thing. And it wasn't until a lot of people reached out and were like, no, no, no, this person apparently like does a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of YouTube videos and like, you know, films themselves negotiating these cars and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so on and so forth. So apparently delivered is the real thing. Juan Boyce contributed thecarchick.com,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which in and of itself sounded funny to me, like good in a good way. Like, oh, that's kind of funny. But my favorite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey part about the car chick is if you look at their website, they self-proclaim they are the number one trusted automotive expert for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey women and smart men, which I thought was very good. So points for the little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slogan there. Ian Nicola suggested yourcarbuyingadvocate.com. Colin McDonald
⏹️ ▶️ Casey suggested automatchconsulting.com and insightautoconsulting.com. All these links will be in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was not aware that there were so many options, but I am not surprised there are so many options. So your mileage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey may vary, but all of these people seem to be able to source, but more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey importantly to your point, John, negotiate all these cars. Now, with regard to why the Midwest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dealers were turd, the one Midwest dealer was a turd, I can't tell you how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I came about this information, but the information I was eventually told, and this is from a reliable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey source, is that in summary, the reason they don't want to sell out of state is twofold.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There's the obvious reason, which is that the surrounding states, they have relationships with and understand how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to title a car and register a car and so on and so forth, which fine. Like as we talked about ad nauseum
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last week, I was perfectly capable of making them not have to worry about any of those things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But nevertheless, that's reason one. The bigger reason though, and and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quizzed you two on this, and you didn't come up with this answer in the same way that I didn't come up with this answer, but this is a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reliable answer. The biggest reason is I'm not coming back to service the car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with them. So they're not interested, which is super gross, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do understand. I'm not happy about it. And it's gross. And it's so flippant stupid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be worried about that with a battery electric vehicle.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why is it gross, first of all? also, it's not stupid to think about, but why do you think it's gross? That's how they make money. That's how dealers make money.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, if that's how they made money, I would have signed on the dotted line on a car I'm bickering with a dealer about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right now. But anyways, no, I hear what you say. It just feels icky to me that they're
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uninterested in selling the car if they can't service it forevermore. It's like Apple services
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is what it is. It's just, I don't know. It just feels icky to me. I mean, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ John they'll make more money long term if they sell it to someone who has at least a chance. It's not like they're
⏹️ ▶️ John that the person's going to service them, but at least there's a chance they'll serve it with them if they don't live on the East Coast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you're saying there's a chance. That's
⏹️ ▶️ John That's just playing the odds. It makes sense. And as you were complaining about in the Slack, like, well, electric vehicles don't even need maintenance. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John accidents happen, things break, there's recalls, there's warranty repairs. Dealers get a profit margin on those. It's not
⏹️ ▶️ John a great profit margin, but it's non-zero. So yeah. And that probably hurts them even
⏹️ ▶️ John more. It's like, oh, now we sell these electric vehicles and they don't come in for the same kind of regular maintenance. So it's even
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey more important
⏹️ ▶️ John that what little maintenance we do get.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco need them to come back here.
⏹️ ▶️ John We just got to hope they back out of their driveway and sheer off a side view mirror.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I mean, like the maintenance that most EVs need is comically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco half butted. Like they, because they try to make it like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh, you should come in like, you know, once a year for your annual service or whatever. And like most EVs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there's not much they even can service about them. Like, you know, the batteries usually are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco factory sealed. There's rarely anything that you can check about anything. You know, you can try to find
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one or two fluids here or there. There's not many of them. And so they're like, all right, well, we'll change your wiper
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blade inserts and your cabin air filter. And that's about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That's to repair
⏹️ ▶️ John your wonky non-working door handles. Well, yeah, that's true.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That's so true. So yeah, that's the answer. I find it deeply dissatisfying, but I do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey understand what you're saying, John. And annoyingly, you're, as usual, very right about it. Also, over
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the last week, I've made some discoveries. And this is the hashtag
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Casey Was Wrong section of follow-up. First of all, I was fussing and moaning about how I absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my extremely fragile buttocks apparently needed a ventilated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seat in order to cool them down. And as it turns out, I don't think I do anymore. And there's
⏹️ ▶️ John That should be hashtag John was right instead of hashtag Casey was wrong. But continue.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I'll allow it either way. But the extremely short version is BMW ventilated seats apparently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey suck, both literally and figuratively. But the long version is, is that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first of all, it just moves the cabin air. It doesn't move, it doesn't pipe like air-conditioned
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco straight from the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey source. It just pushes cabin air, allegedly, into the seat. Or I guess
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually that's not true because I've also heard, I've heard that a little bit. And I've also heard that allegedly it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pulls air, which would actually be cabin air.
⏹️ ▶️ John a sporty car. They want to suck you to the seat.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, exactly. Yeah, there you go. You got
⏹️ ▶️ Casey corners. We're going to get to that. That it pulls you into this, or it pulls
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the air into the seat rather than pushing it out of the seat. Why would anybody want that?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don't know. And additionally, it's allegedly very loud, Like, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey annoyingly loud. And also the vibration is very, very tangible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, especially when it's at its highest setting. So there exist excellent ventilated seats. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would say Aaron's a mobile house. I'm sorry, XC90 has excellent ventilated seats.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, uh, Somebody wrote with some flavor of Porsche, I don't recall which one it was, that said their ventilated seats are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excellent. But allegedly, the BMW ones are kind of trash. The other thing that's difficult
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about this is that if we rewind to my 2011 335, that had,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don't think they were particularly special seats, but the seats in that car had adjustable side bolsters.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So if you imagine sitting in the car seat and right around the bottom of your rib cage or, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of the sides of your tummy area, the seat could adjustably squeeze
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in on that. Not to the point of like pain, of course. You would adjust it just so that it would be firmly against your side.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this is what you were joking about earlier, John, except it's really true. As you're going around turns, that keeps you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey squared up laterally, right? You can't slide to the left or right because these side bolsters are keeping
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Jonathan Mann loved
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that feature of my old car and I don't want to give up on it. And so not only was I not willing to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey give up on it before I realized that the ventilated seats suck in every way, but additionally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the ventilated seats stink. So apparently don't need that. Furthermore,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had told myself, you know, it would be really nice to have, and I could probably find a car that has BMW's
⏹️ ▶️ Casey laser lights. I forget exactly the mechanism by which these work, but it's like shining a laser,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like some sort of phosphor, I believe, and then like reflecting it a zillion ways or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I found some people say, well, it's not as good as you think it is, blah, blah, blah. And then I found a post
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about it, which we'll put in the show notes. Let me read you a quick section of that post. The problem with laser lighting is simpler.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They're just too bright. Compliance systems in the U.S. state a maximum of 150,000 candela,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whereas Europe, which uses the UNECE vehicle regulations, allows up to 430,000.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that's what, like two and a half, three times? These restrictions leave laser lights in the dark,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey limited to performing only as well as, well, basically any other high-end lighting system made in the last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 10 years. Additionally, since laser lights aren't allowed to offer their enhanced range, it's
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hard to find an argument that validates them. They're certainly more expensive. And I don't mean expensive, but it's a BMW.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean carbon ceramic brakes expensive. Mind you, this is, I believe, from a BMW like blog or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever. Anyway, continuing. While I was still working at a BMW dealership, an M8 on the lot was damaged
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the cost with shop time to replace one laser headlight was $8,000.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So no thanks on that. I will pass. Thank you very much.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Additionally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I've read that they only work at like highway speeds. And to be honest with you, I drive in the nighttime
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so rarely and even more rarely am I on the interstate at night. So it's no, it's a no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, going back to your ventilated seats for a minute, I will also confirm like I've, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I've had them, I think the M5 might
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann have had them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don't think I've had them since then. But Tiff used to have this little Lexus IS250
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sedan way back in the day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. It had a like it was like sitting on an air hockey table made of ice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was so satisfying. And like, and that's what you want. If you're going to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey air-conditioned seats,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you want it, like, you almost want it to be so cold that for a minute you're like, oh my God, am I sitting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in something wet? You know, it's like, that's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey what you want. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you want that, that feeling of like, oh, ooh, what's that? Oh. That's so true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And, and yeah, for whatever reason, like it does vary a lot between brands. And yeah, as you say, like, it must be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, I'm sure the Lexus with the good seats was probably like piping in a direct air vent from the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco air conditioning source directly to the seat. However, you would route all those things. That sounds like a nightmare.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I'm sure most cars don't do that. But for whatever reason, yeah, it's a pretty rare feature
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to see on cars, more rare than I would expect. But I wish that were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more common because it is really nice when you get a good one. That's just not common.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that's the thing. And like I said last week, you know, Aaron's XC90 seats have ruined me because they're
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excellent. And unfortunately, it's just not going to be the case in this car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say one more thing before we leave the topic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your search for a BMW i4.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I forgot about this follow-up. I forgot to put it in the show notes. This is excellent follow-up. I'm so sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The other day, I had not much to do for an afternoon on the mainland, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John I'm not doing the New Jersey thing anymore. I told you I can't do it. It's too much. Oh, it's over? All right. You just
⏹️ ▶️ John continue to say the wrong word for it and look foolish. Feel free.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I think it would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco foolish. Anyway, so anyway, I was on the mainland, John, for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a day, and I was like, oh, let me finally go actually see and drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of these because I've also been thinking about the i4 for my next car, and they're about to go out of production, or I think they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already have gone out of production. So I kind of wanted to be like, all right, well, is it worth you know, waiting for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it or you know, getting, maybe getting, getting one early if I have to end my lease early or try to try to get a used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one next year or whatever? So I'm like, let me let me just, I want to just see what it, what it's like.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I went and found one and drove it. It's really fun. Right? You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were right. Slash, I was right. We were both right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I'm not sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I'm not sure I should be taking credit for this one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm the one who told you you should probably look at the i4, but it was really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco super fun. Um, I do think, though, I think I'm going to wait
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the the upcoming new I three,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the, the Neue Klasse or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco it's called. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cause like it, it has substantially more range. Uh, And that's, you know, for, for my uses,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that's actually pretty pretty useful. Um, And I think I want like some of the, like some of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new stuff about it. But what I was mainly what I mainly wanted to see was like, all right, should I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all look at the iX3? Because the iX3 also looks amazing. Or should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I go back to a sedan? And like, I looked at all the sedans and they all look amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have a million different models now. They have like, you know, a two series, you know, all these different things. And they all they all looked great. And I was like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Jonathan Mann yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would love to, you know, have that as my car. And then I saw on the lot an X three,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh, which is not the iX3, but the iX3 is going to be very similar in size and proportions to the current
⏹️ ▶️ Marco X three. Um, And I saw that and I'm like, I don't feel anything for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then I drove the i4 and it was so much fun. I'm like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this car, it's, I am, I feel like I'm, I'm more nimble. It's a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smaller footprint. It, it steers better. It moves better. And like, I'm like, this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is it. I have to go back to a sedan next time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey So I decided
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am probably going to go with the new i3. I got to see, you know, once it, once it actually comes out,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, maybe see reviews of it. And if I can get my hands on one to drive, try to test drive it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that's probably how I'm going to go. But the i4 was a ton
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of fun. It would be, if I was shopping today, it would be very tempting to get that instead,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead of waiting.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could throw in a jammas right there with the sedans being better than SUVs. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco honestly, I do feel like having,
⏹️ ▶️ John coming off so many big trucks and SUVs, going back down to a regular car is always going to feel exciting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know that the reduction in cargo space and the shrinking of the size of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the cargo window that you can get cargo into it through a regular trunk, I know there's going to be times
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I'm like, oh, this is this is unfortunate. You know, like I'm sure it's going to be inconvenient at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco times, but I'm going to like my car again. And I haven't really liked my car that much for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a while Cause I've been optimizing for maximum function and hauling and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, beach traction and stuff. And like, now that I don't need that anymore, like I'm pretty sure I can just carry less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff and and be happier all the time. So that's the that's the direction I want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to go. And I'm hoping it doesn't give me weird back and sciatic problems to go back to a lower seating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vehicle. That remains to be seen. But here's hoping.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, no, they're really fun. Now, to be clear, you did not drive the M50, though. You drove like, whatever the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey next rung down is, I believe.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, those are allegedly also extremely fun, but not like break your neck fast. And because I'm a child,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would like break your neck fast.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco With my current IX, I have like the middle speed one. I don't even know what it is, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it's not the one with the M in front of the name. It's like the regular trim right below that. And it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so ridiculously fast. It's fast enough for me. when i had Back when I had like the Tesla Model S,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn't have the P line with like the super ridiculous acceleration. I had the middle one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that maximized range. And that was that was as fast as the M5.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am perfectly happy getting like these middle grade performance EVs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they are as fast as you know the super cars of 10 years ago were.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, God, yes. Yeah. This, The reason you're happy with that is because you're an adult. However, I am
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we'll, we'll see what happens. I mean, uh, as it turns I'm not going to get into it much, but as it turns out, I'm in the midst of negotiating on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one car that's like, I was saying to the boys before we went live, like it's maybe 95% perfect,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but we haven't quite reached a middle ground, me and this dealer. And I think we're at a stalemate. So I'm probably going to have to walk.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, But I mean, we'll see what happens. But I am looking forward to ditching gasoline.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you made a mention a minute ago, which I think makes a lot of sense, that for your needs, you have a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey higher priority on range
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think I do. And I think both of us are right, that for your needs, you should worry about range and less speed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For my needs, I don't need to worry about range. And thus, I am a child and will get speed instead.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I think it's important to recognize that you are 100% right about that, from my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey personal opinion. And I think maybe if I had different needs, I would feel differently about what trim level and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what speed car to get.
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OpenAI’s dumb keypad follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey St. Chris wrote with regard to Codex Micro, the silly little keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dingus. The Codex Micro is an OpenAI branded version of the Work Louder Creator Micro 2 keypad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a special set of chat GPT-themed icon keys. And so we'll put a link in the show notes to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the thing that St. Chris is talking about. Additionally, Ian pointed out that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the keyboard, little keyboard dingus, does not have a microphone. The demos that we were talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about were presumably just using the computer's mic.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is in the context of overtime on a past episode. We were talking about this thing, and I was complaining, I can't believe they're doing this.
⏹️ ▶️ John OpenAI is making hardware and they're spending time on this silly keyboard thing because any amount of hardware takes such an investment.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I actually feel better knowing that all they did was take an existing product that someone had already developed and just
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially dress it up with some OpenAI stuff. So that is less of a distraction than I thought
⏹️ ▶️ John it was. So good for OpenAI. But still, it is a non-zero distraction. And I think the product is silly.
Bye, CableCARDs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh John, you know, generally speaking, it obviously, I would prefer to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey record this in person. I wish we were all closer together and we saw each other more often. This moment,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey though, for you and me, John, I wish we were together so we could give each other a supportive hug.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because at about the same moment, you and I each received a truly terrible text message.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Verizon sent to each of us individually. This is an urgent message from Verizon regarding your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fios TV equipment. Our records indicate you have either a digital adapter and or cable card that is scheduled for deactivation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on November 5th. To avoid service interruption, please take action now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Please disregard this message if you've already upgraded your equipment. So what this means, John, we have until November 5th.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we knew this day was coming, but they never gave a date. They would send us these scary, threatening emails. Oh, we're
⏹️ ▶️ John not going to support cable card anymore. You're going to have to upgrade XYZ, but no date. They wouldn't mention anything. So
⏹️ ▶️ John see past episodes for when that was. But now we all have a date. And the thing about those emails, they seem to trickle
⏹️ ▶️ John up. but this text message seemed to go to everybody I know at the same instant because we
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco were all messaging each other. Every
⏹️ ▶️ John friends are in the same boat. People with cable cards, people with your, what is it called?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, HD Home Run, all sorts of other. Cable cards enabled this whole ecosystem advises as they were
⏹️ ▶️ John supposed to, which is like, hey, if we forced cable companies to support this, then third parties can make hardware that can get cable TV
⏹️ ▶️ John and do interesting things. And that stuff is obviously really old and essentially obsolete by now. And cable
⏹️ ▶️ John card is gone, which is why they're dropping support for it. But cable card, we salute you. You did actually
⏹️ ▶️ John do what you were supposed to do, which is make an ecosystem for third-party stuff. It's just that the will
⏹️ ▶️ John to do something good in the realm of television only lasted for about a moment and then
⏹️ ▶️ John disappeared. And then the cable card expired or they passed a law that said you don't
⏹️ ▶️ John need it or whatever. Anyway, and now it's all going right, which is fine. Like we'll be fine. I am still
⏹️ ▶️ John putting off calling Verizon to try to get my bill lower. I did check the website a couple months ago.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when I went through the website to try to like remove or reduce my television service,
⏹️ ▶️ John my bill went up instead of down. So yeah, I'm going to have to call them on the phone. Obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John their website is probably just broken or whatever. But when do I call them on the phone? Not a, not when we all got this text message
⏹️ ▶️ John because I bet a bunch of people were calling then and not close to November. So sometime kind of in the middle between
⏹️ ▶️ John now and November, I will spend probably an entire day on the phone with Verizon
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to get my bill to be lower in exchange for not having TV anymore. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you said a bunch of people probably called them. How many people do you think are still using a cable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco card today and know it?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, more than like, just think of what their normal support load is.
⏹️ ▶️ John There's a bunch of people who were absolutely not going to call Verizon suddenly are going to call them. And also nerdy
⏹️ ▶️ John people, especially if they haven't been paying attention or missed the previous email, are going to be mad. So
⏹️ ▶️ John they're going to call and they're going to be mad and say, what? I've had my TiVo for blah, blah, blah,
⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, enjoy that Verizon support people.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, this is the bed they made for themselves. No sympathy. So your plan is to just ditch any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sort of cable and you're just going to stream everything?
⏹️ ▶️ John not sure if they'll let me. They might say,
⏹️ ▶️ John as part of your triple play, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I don't know what the
⏹️ ▶️ John deal is, but basically, if I could get them to remove my television service, I would. I suspect that the best
⏹️ ▶️ John I'll be able to do is to switch to the cheapest possible television service because they'll probably say, well, if you removed your
⏹️ ▶️ John television service, your bill would actually go up because of X, Y, and Z. Anyway, my goal is reduce bill,
⏹️ ▶️ John not care about television.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You still have a landline
⏹️ ▶️ John them? Yeah, and that's the same. I do actually want to keep the landline phone. I could ditch that, but I actually want that number.
⏹️ ▶️ John It's convenient to have the landline that's separate from our cell phones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Really? Because I was going to say, if you just get the Fios internet service without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco TV and phone, that's got to be lower.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we'll see what we can do. And the other bad thing, and this is so stupid, but it's how much I fear Verizon.
⏹️ ▶️ John Our cell phone service is through an account that my wife made. And
⏹️ ▶️ John our internet and television and telephone is through an account that I made. And you do get a discount
⏹️ ▶️ John if you get all the stuff through them. But because it's two separate accounts, the fear of like, hey, can you combine
⏹️ ▶️ John two accounts technically
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco to two different people? Although,
⏹️ ▶️ John trust me, we're married and we live in the same house. The chaos that could ensue from that, I've just been avoiding that entirely.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we'll see how it works out. But yeah, I'm going to spend some quality time with Verizon. And hopefully I'll do
⏹️ ▶️ John it in such a way that I'm still able to podcast because my internet
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann connection
⏹️ ▶️ John still functions. Not fun.
Mac backups
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let's talk backups. And Jonathan Dechko writes: I disagree that the baseline backup should be Time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Machine. I bought my son a MacBook Air for college along with an external drive for Time Machine. I set it up and told him
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to connect the drive weekly. I was helping him with something last month and saw a notification the Time Machine had not backed up for 340 something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey days. He had never plugged in the drive. But I also installed Backblaze on the computer and added
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it to my account. It dutifully backed up his computer every day, considering that, quote unquote, all Macs or laptops,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you own or have access to a parent, spouse, or child, their computer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on a limited basis, online backup is probably the best starting point.
⏹️ ▶️ John As I said in the SKTP section, when we were talking about this and we were uh, categorizing people
⏹️ ▶️ John as like more casual computer users and more like nerdy computer users, the challenge with casual people
⏹️ ▶️ John is getting them to do literally anything. And this is an example of that. If they're not going to ever connect the drive,
⏹️ ▶️ John that option is off the table for you and you have to like literally anything, whatever you can do. Now, my first
⏹️ ▶️ John choice would still be Time Machine because the function of backups, especially for somebody who's like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, they never connected to the drive because I didn't notice until I revisited them. That means you're not like living with them all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ John That means they're on their own. And so that means if they do something stupid and screw something up,
⏹️ ▶️ John they have to be able to do something useful with the backups. And Time Machine is the easiest thing
⏹️ ▶️ John to restore from because it's built into macOS. It will prompt you for it. Like you could walk someone
⏹️ ▶️ John through sort of, you know, getting to the point where you can do a time machine restoration. You could walk someone through that on
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone. Whereas Backblaze, great. You don't have to do it. It'll back up for them. They don't have to remember to do it, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Restoring from Backblaze is not part of the macOS recovery process and would
⏹️ ▶️ John be substantially more complicated for a non-technical person to do on their own. So yeah, the
⏹️ ▶️ John challenge is with people who are just not going to do backups, get them to do anything. In the end, it's more important that their data
⏹️ ▶️ John is saved than the ease of restoration. So if Backblaze is all they're going to do, if they've proven they will never plug the drive
⏹️ ▶️ John in, yeah, cloud backup is the only option, but it's a struggle.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I honestly, I disagree. I think backblaze should be the first step. And, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ideally, you would have both. And the good thing is, like, I mean, right now is maybe a bad example
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because right now hard drives are expensive, but hard drives usually are not expensive. And in most times,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, you buy the hard drive once for maybe, you know, $150, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for whatever is big enough to store your computer plus a little bit extra, maybe. You buy the hard drive once,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there's no ongoing fee for Time Machine that can last years and years and years.
⏹️ ▶️ John That's the barrier to Backblaze because people are like, I got to pay another monthly fee. And even though it's only like five
⏹️ ▶️ John bucks or eight bucks or whatever, just the idea of another monthly bill makes people's heads explode.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. But I think like in a case like this where you're kind of, you know, being a caretaker for somebody,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether it's, you know, your kid going off to college in this case or like maybe like your elderly parents or whatever, like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, whatever it is, if you are kind of being like the computer caretaker for somebody, if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can just eat that eight bucks a month yourself for Backblaze, I think that is the best way to go.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That's the most reliable way because they don't have to then plug in the drive and do anything. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what John said is correct. If you have to do like a full system restore, like if you, you know, if your disk totally dies,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to do a full system restore. Backblaze is much more optimized for like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we're going to give you all the files, but you're going to have to like put all the apps back yourself and everything like that. And Time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Machine is way better at that. You can directly restore from a Time Machine backup when setting up a new Mac with the migration
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assistant. So like that is a better, easier setup. But if no one's going to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, a Time Machine backup that's 300 days old is is not a very, very useful system restore.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you just got to know who, what it is you're dealing with. And obviously, if you're willing to pay the bills for them, that really makes
⏹️ ▶️ John Backblaze a lot easier. Although I will say Backblaze has been chucking up some dialogue boxes lately, complaining about permissions.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I'm, as far as I can tell, everything's fine. But if that was someone else's computer that I was supporting, they're saying, Backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ John keeps throwing up a dialogue. I'm like, is there actually a problem? Are they being backed up? You know, every little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit of third-party software is one more place that things can go wrong, or if they automatically do a macOS update
⏹️ ▶️ John or something. So yeah, there's no perfect solution to this. It's still more difficult than it should be. But again, for people
⏹️ ▶️ John who are not, who are probably going to not do any backup, getting them to do literally anything is the first
⏹️ ▶️ John barrier. And you just have to sort of negotiate with what's their situation? How far are they? How far away
⏹️ ▶️ John from me are they? What do I want to deal with? Do I want to pay a monthly bill for them? Do I not want to?
⏹️ ▶️ John Are they not going to ever buy a hard drive? Like, it's complicated. But yeah, Backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ John is a good alternate choice if there's no way that they're going to either pay for a hard drive or use one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And ideally, I would love for Apple to someday, I mean, this is probably not the time, again, with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like resource pricing and everything. I would love for Apple to someday offer effectively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iCloud backup for Macs. You see the way they do it on iOS devices is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very clever. You know, What they do with iOS devices is iCloud backup backs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up not like your entire photos library because that's separate. That's already in your iCloud storage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They don't need to make a copy of the files of your photos from your phone to iCloud. They don't
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back up that. They don't back up your music, your downloaded MP3s and stuff, because again, that's already included
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in Apple Music or whatever. So they're able to exclude things. They don't back up your apps themselves,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the actual app binaries and the app bundles that are now… these days, apps are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like hundreds of megabytes or maybe even gigabytes each. They don't back those up either because they know you can just reinstall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them on an iOS device. You can redownload them from the app store and reinstall them. So iCloud backups on iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco devices are able to be pretty slimmed down from the total storage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the device. Like my 256 gig iPhone does not need to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back up 256 gigs of data to iCloud. It backs up probably something like 50 gigs of data
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because so much of that is re-downloadable through Apple's other means. And apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also, apps can mark any file they create or write to. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can mark it as exclude this from backup because I can regenerate it or re-download it. So for instance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overcast does that with its local SQLite Casey database file because the SQLite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco file from Overcast is just generated from your sync, like back and forth with the servers. And as soon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you log in on a new phone, it just regenerates that whole database. So there's no reason for that to take up space
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in your iCloud backups. So I mark that as excluded. And apps can do that for anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they can re-download. So like, you know, on suppose you have like YouTube offline files downloaded,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, for YouTube. They probably mark those that same way. That way, all those offline copies of YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ Marco videos don't sit there taking up your iCloud storage space when if you set up a new phone, you can just re-download
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those directly, you know, back to the app again. If Apple were to ever bring that kind of system to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac, obviously there's very different storage needs on the Mac, and there's the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entire file system to have to worry about, that apps have more access to where they can put data, what kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco data they can put different places. So it would probably need to be like a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different of a situation. But if they take some of those ideas from iOS, from the way it does iCloud backups,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they could do a reasonable job on the Mac of offering something pretty compelling, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the common cases like it's just a person with a MacBook Air who wants to just back up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like most of their stuff. So I hope someday that gets on their radar. Again, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don't think this is a good time for Apple to take on a significant large storage burden
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the server side right now. But in probably a few years, that might be a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very good time to do it. So I hope they consider that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like I said last week, iCloud backup for Mac is
⏹️ ▶️ John overdue, but you can't get people to pay for the iCloud storage for their phone backups.
⏹️ ▶️ John on top. It's just some people are just so resistant. I already own a phone. I have to pay Apple for something.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so this is just another front for that same war. And let's not talk about the five gigabytes of free space that we've gotten
⏹️ ▶️ John for 18 years or whatever the hell it's been.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, actually, that's the main problem with the system, with this idea, is like they would have to lower
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the price of iCloud storage because it's so ridiculous. Like to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco try to back up a whole Mac to iCloud, it would be like a thousand dollars a month.
⏹️ ▶️ John You're going to buy an 8TB Mac. You can't even back that up for any amount in iCloud now. I think what is the maximum?
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe 8 is the maximum. I forget if you do like the double thing where you do the expensive plan and the add-ons. Anyway, it's
⏹️ ▶️ John again, maybe not the time to consider this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Eric Jacobson adds, MacBook Pros have a slot for a second internal SSD, these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little JetDrive SD cards that fit flush in the MacBook chassis. You can use it for additional storage or like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, time machine backups everywhere all the time. There's also a newer solution, a similarly designed micro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey SD card adapter. It should be significantly faster. The JetDrive uses a very old SD standard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and costs about the same, which is incidentally double what they were roughly a year ago because of course.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Eric provided a couple links in the show notes. This reminded me that in like 2014, uh, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey backed, I forget the name of it. It's like Tiny Drive or Nifty Disk. Nifty Disk. I think that's it. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which was, as far as I knew, the originator of this whole idea. And it was great, Um, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I haven't thought about this in a long time. But Eric's right. You could get a little thing. It sits flush.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So from the outside, you can't really tell it's there. So you don't have an SD card slot. And you can get astonishingly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey large micro SD cards these days. So this is a very feasible answer, despite being a fortune.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, the main problem with this one is that it only works on laptops that have an SD card slot, which
⏹️ ▶️ John pros. So, you know, for the more casual user who's going to have a MacBook Air or MacBook Neo, this doesn't
⏹️ ▶️ John help them, even though the MacBook Air should totally have an SD card slot. Also, SD cards,
⏹️ ▶️ John they're slow, but who cares for Time Machine? But also reliability under heavy, constant, tiny
⏹️ ▶️ John writes like Time Machine does. But still, this is a possible solution to, oh, they're never going to plug in the drive.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just shove this thing in there and tell them, see this? Don't ever take it out. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like Time Machine was a lot easier to set up for somebody else in the age of desktops. And laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco create this problem of like, well, they're never going to plug in the drive. But this is a very elegant solution
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to that problem. Again, maybe not so much on current pricing, but it's better than
⏹️ ▶️ John Although it is fairly cheap because SD cards are cheap for the size. It's just such a shame that the… Have
⏹️ ▶️ John you looked recently at how much SD cards cost? I know. Well, but the smaller, cheaper computers should totally have SD
⏹️ ▶️ John card slots. The Neo should have an SD card slot. They're like, it's so cheap just to add one of those slots, but those are the computers that need
⏹️ ▶️ John it the most, not the MacBook Pro, because someone who's got a MacBook Pro, you can probably convince to buy a drive. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John it's out there if you want to try it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. And then Mustafa Hamoy writes, you guys just love to talk about backup this and backup
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that and backup software. But I find the idea of backup hilariously obsolete. My code is in GitHub. My photos are in Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Photos and Google Photos. And my music is streaming. My documents are in OneDrive. My house can burn down
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right now and I won't lose any data. All these services are infinitely better at backing up than I will ever be doing your own backup
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and using backup software. Should be sent to wherever typewriters and other horse carriages went.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I get that for a lot of people, but certainly not for me because I've
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got like 17 terabytes of stuff on my Synology that I don't want to lose.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A lot of that I could recreate, but certainly not all of it. So while I don't
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think Mustafa is wrong broadly, I I absolutely, completely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reject their point when it comes to nerds like me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so he's right that like things are very different than they used to be. The advent
⏹️ ▶️ John of cloud storage and the ubiquity of cloud storage, so many people have things in the cloud, so many services put stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John in the cloud, has made the situation so much better than it used to be because if
⏹️ ▶️ John you rewind far enough and people just had stuff on their computers and that was literally the only place
⏹️ ▶️ John it was. And it was a terrible situation and people lost stuff all the time. The advent of cloud storage and cloud-backed
⏹️ ▶️ John services has allowed people to use computers more fully than they could before because
⏹️ ▶️ John it was always so fraught before. So that point is absolutely true. But as we say all the
⏹️ ▶️ John time, cloud storage is not a backup. The closest you can get, and this is pretty close and probably
⏹️ ▶️ John good enough for a lot of people, are cloud storage services that support versioning, which as I believe Dropbox
⏹️ ▶️ John does, because that does start to become like a backup. It doesn't function like a backup in all the ways.
⏹️ ▶️ John I'm not sure if like you can do a point in time recovery of your entire Dropbox, but maybe you can. But the point is versioning
⏹️ ▶️ John is like you need to have that to be a backup at all. Because if you don't have versioning and
⏹️ ▶️ John you delete a file and it's gone from both your computer and your cloud storage
⏹️ ▶️ John and you want it back, you can't get it. That's when you need a backup. That's the point of backups, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And you may say, well, but it's it's on my other computer that's turned off right now. So I'll just unplug it from Ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ John and unplug my Wi-Fi router and turn it on. And just like that's not that's not a recovery strategy, right? Cloud
⏹️ ▶️ John storage is not a backup. It is great that it has your data in multiple places,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the point is it doesn't save you from yourself when you screw things up. Second thing I'll point out
⏹️ ▶️ John is cloud storage service companies are not your friend. All my photos
⏹️ ▶️ John are in Apple Photos. Now your Apple ID is banned or got taken over by hackers.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Everything's on GitHub.
⏹️ ▶️ John banned you now. Do you have all your Git repos synced somewhere locally or are some of them only on
⏹️ ▶️ John GitHub? Like if you have, you know, it's true that they're going to do better at backups than they do. You're not going
⏹️ ▶️ John to lose your data probably because they screw something up and like, oh, we lost your data and we didn't have a backup.
⏹️ ▶️ John What's going to happen is your account's going to get banned or you're going to get hacked or something like that. That's what happens to regular
⏹️ ▶️ John people. And when your only place where the data is is on that one cloud storage service that you trusted
⏹️ ▶️ John and suddenly your Google account gets banned for some reason that you don't understand and can never find out because of this kafkaesque
⏹️ ▶️ John world that we live in and no human will ever talk to you, it's a problem. That's the point of
⏹️ ▶️ John backups. It's a backstop against more bad things happening than just your house burning down.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I hope this never happens to people. And I agree that having cloud storage is so much better than not having it and covers
⏹️ ▶️ John almost everybody's needs almost all the time, but not entirely. That is the point of backups.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don't get insurance because you expect to be struck by lightning. You get it because it's a possible thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that could happen and you want triple damages if it does or whatever. So yeah, I
⏹️ ▶️ John disagree that backups are obsolete and historically
⏹️ ▶️ John out of date. They're less necessary than they were, but they are still necessary
⏹️ ▶️ John if you want to be protected. Like, look, if you don't want the protection, you want to live dangerously, it's fine. Go for it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I don't recommend it.
Sponsor: Claude
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this episode by Claude. Literally, right now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I record this, in the background, Claude Code is working for me trying to fix a bug.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I found it earlier. I'm like, oh, why is this behaving this way? And I told Claude, hey, go work on this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I'm pretty sure how it's going to end because probably before I'm done even reading this ad message, this is a two-minute
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ad. And within that time, I bet it will have found and fixed the bug. And then I'll ask it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make a bunch of tests to find similar bugs and make sure there's no other ones in the app. Claude
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can do all of that. It's the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco understands your entire workflow and your code base, and it thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you're a developer like me, you're spending a whole bunch of days and hours on tasks that you wish you could just hand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off, Claude Code is your new best friend. Any really hairy bug or really tedious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco testing task that I don't want to do, I just ask Claude to do it, and it does it, and then it's off my plate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It's amazing at finding and fixing bugs. And there's all sorts of things like writing tests, refactoring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it can do without you handholding it through every step. You just tell it like the problem it you're trying to solve. You can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco paste in images. You can say, a user reported this behavior, audit the code, to find this. I cannot tell you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much time Claude has saved me. And it goes way beyond code. If you're not a programmer, don't worry. It does all the other AI
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff too. You can ask it questions. You can have it work on documents. You can do all sorts of stuff. Read Excel files
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and make presentations. Claude can do so much. I can't even enumerate it all in one ad,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but trust me. It's, oh, look, it's done. It fixed the problem. That's amazing. All right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at claude.ai slash
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ATP. That's claude.ai slash ATP. Check out Claude Pro, which includes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco access to all the features that I talked about today. Claude.ai slash ATP. Thank you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much to Claude for fixing my stuff and sponsoring our show.
Apple Upgrade follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let's talk Apple Upgrade. Patch writes: My company is a broker
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for IT leasing to schools in the UK. The deal between Apple and Klarna may be different, but leases are typically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an agreement between the customer and the finance company, not the retailer or broker. So you would enter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a deal with Klarna, Klarna would purchase the device from Apple, and it would belong to them, not Apple. When you return it, you would be returning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it to Klarna, not Apple. Andrew Hagland writes, I know it's US only, but I have also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey always, excuse me, enjoyed the Apple Card 12-month interest-free thing when I buy big stuff from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple. The payment automatically happens every month, easy to manage, and you're spreading it out over 12 months. Simple. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey advantage over the lease is that I'm in control if I want to upgrade every one, two, or three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey years. Paying $5,000 for a Mac over three years, now that's appealing, especially for a desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where it's unlikely to get damaged. Lastly, the concern over battery health with trade-ins, I don't think they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey care because I think all refurbished iPhones get brand new batteries, says Andrew. Question mark?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, I believe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when Apple refurbishes any device, I believe that the battery is always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new and also all of the external surfaces. So anything that a customer can touch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that you will touch, like the case, everything, I believe those are always new
⏹️ ▶️ John To Patch's point about who actually owns the laptop or the device and when you
⏹️ ▶️ John return it with the Apple upgrade program, maybe they're never going to tell us what those terms are. That would actually be
⏹️ ▶️ John interesting to know because whichever company gets the returned item
⏹️ ▶️ John potentially has some upside for selling a device. You know, again, if they paid 50% of the
⏹️ ▶️ John price of it and now it's worth, it's still worth 60% of its original price, that's another area for profit
⏹️ ▶️ John margin. But on the other hand, if Klarna is the one who owns the device and buys it from Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John as soon as the transaction goes through, Apple's done. They're like, Klarna bought it from us. As far as
⏹️ ▶️ John we're concerned, this is a sold device that was sold and we don't care about it anymore. Klarna bought it and we get our 40%
⏹️ ▶️ John margin or whatever we're going to get. And we don't have to think about that device again unless it re-enters our ecosystem. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John it's Klarna's problem to deal with all of the other stuff. But I don't know. I don't, you know, again, this is apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John the way it is in the UK very often. And that may be the way it is in this deal. But as far as I'm aware, they did not
⏹️ ▶️ John announce who actually gets the device when you return it?
Chip-shortage drama
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let's talk about Rampocalypse. First of all, Hartley Charlton over at Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Rumors writes: Apple's attempt to use Chinese memory maker CXMT as leverage against
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix has backfired, with the two Korean chipmakers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ending up with more pricing power rather than less, Digitimes reports. Citing South Korean and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Chinese trade press, Apple has explored CXMT and fellow Chinese chip maker YMTC
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as potential DRAM suppliers. Apple hoped a credible Chinese alternative would pressure Samsung and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey SK Hynix into cutting their own prices, a tactic that it had used before with OLED suppliers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and contract manufacturers. CXMT is barred from EUV lithography tools under U.S.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey export controls, so it has to rely on older DUV equipment that requires around 30% more wafer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey starts to produce the same output. That extra cost means matching Samsung and SK Hynix's prices
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is CXMT's floor, not a discount it's able to offer. So when Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pushed for lower LP DDR5X quote, CXMT turned
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it down and held pricing at or above the Korean supplier's own rates. With that threat neutralized, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seemingly lost its main point of leverage. Digital Daily reports that Chinese device makers Huawei and Xiaomi have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey already locked up most of CXMT's output through long-term, high-priced contracts, so the company
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn't need Apple's business badly enough to negotiate. The result is the opposite of what Apple wanted.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Without a credible, cheaper alternative to point to, Samsung and SK Hynix face less pressure to lower their own
⏹️ ▶️ John It's a tough world out there, but you know, we'll just wait for those new factories to be built in three to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think we're going to be in this memory crunch for a lot longer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than people think. This is not going to be fixed this year. It's probably not going to be fixed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next year, and we'll see after that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it's not looking good. Also from Hartley-Charlton, but slightly different topic. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A20 Pro will be Apple's first built, its first chip built using TSMC's N2 process. Production
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is reportedly progressing well, but completed wafers are piling up because the DRAM needed to package
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them has not arrived. Because packaging cannot be completed without the corresponding DRAM,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey semiconductor analyst Tim Coolpan estimate estimates that TSMC is currently sitting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on roughly $1 billion worth of Apple processors that cannot move to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the next stage of production. Holy crap.
⏹️ ▶️ John You thought app review was backed up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right? Cheesy peasy. Hartley continues, the bottleneck apparently threatens to ripple into the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey final stages of iPhone production. Main logic board assembly and final assembly are handled primarily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by Foxconn and BYD in China, and delays in package processor deliveries could compress their production schedules,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even if Apple ultimately secures enough memory for launch. Oh dear.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It's not great. Kevin Beaumont writes, all memory on track to be manufactured in 2027
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by Samsung, SK, Hynix, and Micron is now sold out with no additional
⏹️ ▶️ Casey supply planned. We are currently, as I sit here tonight, it is August 12th of 2026.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All of 2027 is allegedly sold out. Kevin Beaumont continues, traditionally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey July and August are when companies secure memory for the following year. Companies who got in early have pre-booked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey five years worth of supply.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is among those companies that pre-booked their supply, but yeah. rough. Not
Beta 5 icon updates
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let's do some topics and let's start with John. I think you want to talk to us about macOS and iOS 27
⏹️ ▶️ John It's one of the few interesting things that's happening late in the beta cycle. They keep changing icons. Let's start with our
⏹️ ▶️ John friend Siri, which had the weird Pepsi logo
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco thing that Joanna
⏹️ ▶️ John Stern used as the weird looking head of the Siri guy in her video about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apparently, we're not the only ones who thought that icon was bad and silly because it has been replaced with something that looks
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of like a, I don't know, a cat's eye marble or something. It's kind of like a 3D
⏹️ ▶️ John sphere with a wavy white line through it. Gone is the monochrome converted
⏹️ ▶️ John Pepsi symbol slash weird guy head. Yeah, this is a significant improvement. I still don't
⏹️ ▶️ John love it, but this is way, way better than the old one. I'm not sure if it reads as Siri to me, but the old one was just ugly
⏹️ ▶️ John and this one is not. So thumbs up there. The next one is more interesting. They were looking at the chess
⏹️ ▶️ John icon. Yes, the Mac OS still comes with the chess app, which is updated recently, I believe. Anyway, the
⏹️ ▶️ John icon was very bad and just typical, like liquid glassy, it was like a you know, four
⏹️ ▶️ John square checkerboard, like it's a chessboard, and then like a thin liquid
⏹️ ▶️ John glass material side view of a night piece.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was one of the It was one of the best examples when everybody was complaining about the liquid glass icons last year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was like it was almost always used as an example of how tragic the redesign was because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was such like a tragic loss of what what was a high personality icon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before liquid glass. And then it just got this horrendous half-assed
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And then in the… I think… we don't see the macOS 26 one in the pictures
⏹️ ▶️ John we're looking at. We'll link all these pictures in the show notes. They're from various people's social media posts. But the macOS 27 beta
⏹️ ▶️ John 1 and 2 had kind of a translucent horse head and 3 and 4 had a more opaque horse head. But in beta 5,
⏹️ ▶️ John it's basically an entirely new icon. First of all, the checkerboard pattern is kind of like black and dark gray and goes
⏹️ ▶️ John edge to edge. But most importantly, the horsey head in the middle, the knight chest piece,
⏹️ ▶️ John has nothing to do with liquid glass, but is actually, as Keir discovered, it's
⏹️ ▶️ John just playing up like an image. Like they did, the old thing they did is they made a bit-mapped image.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it's a 3D render, maybe it's an illustration, but the point is they just did a bit-mapped image of a knight piece that
⏹️ ▶️ John looks cool and shiny. And it's made of glass. There's no liquid glass to it whatsoever.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is just a bitmap.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it is a 3D rendering of what looks like glass. It looks like a glass night
⏹️ ▶️ Marco piece. I think it looks metal. Really? No. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but you can't see the background through it at all. You're seeing the refraction of the gray and black
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John behind it. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It's obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey glass. Yes, John, this is 100%
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John glass. The point
⏹️ ▶️ John is, it is not the liquid glass effects where they have a bunch of layers and recipes and effects on them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Nope. It's just a bitmap. And I see what you're saying, that it looks like it's reflecting the background. But if you look at it in,
⏹️ ▶️ John because they broke open the dot .icon file and you can see there is a checkerboard background, which looks
⏹️ ▶️ John like a bitmap, or maybe it's vectors, I can't tell. And then there is a bitmap of
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing. So yeah, I mean, maybe they rendered it in a 3D program with the background and got the thing, but the point is the
⏹️ ▶️ John liquid glass effects and their very specular high dates and refractions are not used in this icon.
⏹️ ▶️ John They just plain drew an icon and they did it in two pieces. And when you see that, you're like, if you're
⏹️ ▶️ John going to do that, you can just draw it in one piece. And now you're back to having a bitmap icon because look at the pieces. If you take
⏹️ ▶️ John those two pieces and composite them together in an image editor and then just make it one image,
⏹️ ▶️ John it's the same icon. Like, so that is, uh, I mean, I agree that
⏹️ ▶️ John the icon is way better. Like it looks much nicer. It looks amateurish before. It looks less amateurish now. But it
⏹️ ▶️ John is only, it's mostly interesting, because who cares about the chess app, right? It's mostly interesting in that it is basically
⏹️ ▶️ John a rejection of the new dot .icon system or it's a degenerate use of the new icons dot icon systems
⏹️ ▶️ John like you can do this with the new dot icon system you can just put a bitmap there that takes up the whole icon
⏹️ ▶️ John um i didn't look at how this changes when you go to like dark mode and light mode and clear and stuff if they but
⏹️ ▶️ John but looking at the groups in in the icon composer sidebar and this uh post back here it looks like
⏹️ ▶️ John this is it there's not like a dark mode and a light mode version of that so it's just gonna end up like tinting them and stuff so
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah so much for the the vaunted dot icon format i continue to lobby for
⏹️ ▶️ John in a future mac os release forget about the whole clear thing nobody likes it It's stupid.
⏹️ ▶️ John and just like give us a good way to do icons of any kind that we want obviously get rid
⏹️ ▶️ John of squirrel jail blah blah blah but we'll see apple seems to be leaning in that direction now if you look at the Siri icon that we were
⏹️ ▶️ John just talking about that looks like a sphere and look at that that icon file that is a lot more complicated you can see it's broken
⏹️ ▶️ John up into many pieces of like the top half the bottom half this glow that glow maybe those are all just
⏹️ ▶️ John straightforwardly composited together but the point is there are individual components and i think if you look at the dark mode
⏹️ ▶️ John version of the Siri icon they are doing interesting things with icon composer to assemble the pieces with a
⏹️ ▶️ John recipe in an interesting way it is not just we gave you a bitmap of that siri marble
⏹️ ▶️ John and and then it's just shoved onto a white background so two different approaches to make icons that
⏹️ ▶️ John suck less in beta 5.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco i kind of like it because like what they basically did with with chess here a little maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little less so with siri i mean similar i think what they're going for is like okay instead of having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every single icon have to be layers of glass that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are exactly in the template style and form that icon composer can support rendered exactly the way icon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco composer renders them they're saying no no no no no the theme of of modern icons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is glass and you can render that glass in different ways if you want to we're
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to give you this easy way to do it with icon composer if you just make a bunch of you know vector shapes and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can you can stick them in there and this will render as glass and for most icons that'll be okay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but if you want to render your own version of glass it will still look like part of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the cohesive icon and design system as long as it is glassy in some way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so i i think that's that is even though it's again it's just the chess app who cares
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but i think it's it's a good omen it shows kind of where their heads are at just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just as last year the crappy chess icon showed where their heads were at then and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again even though this one particular icon doesn't matter that much it's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco i i think it bodes well
⏹️ ▶️ John so then we go to the safari icon where they're always messing with the safari icon and you'll see pictures
⏹️ ▶️ John and links in the notes where they show the tahoe version the golden gate beta one version and the golden gate beta five version
⏹️ ▶️ John and the main visual difference in the golden gate beta five version is there are fewer little tick marks around the outside of
⏹️ ▶️ John the compass that defines the safari icon and they put a little circle in the center of
⏹️ ▶️ John the compass and they made like the red the red hand of the compass have a little rounded thing and that circle is
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit glassy i think that little round circle is literally the only remotely glassy thing
⏹️ ▶️ John in the entire safari icon but anyway here they are out there taking an icon
⏹️ ▶️ John that really did not get you know run over by tahoe too
⏹️ ▶️ John much like they just made it look a little bit more pale and low contrast like everything in tahoe uh but they're
⏹️ ▶️ John still tweaking it they're still out there saying how many tick marks should there be on the safari icon and those
⏹️ ▶️ John hands could they be a little tiny bit different and apparently the answer is yes so
⏹️ ▶️ John someone's out there changing icon like i would have put a safari pretty low down the list of icons that need some
⏹️ ▶️ John attention but they're they're doing things to it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco i honestly i love seeing this because i have never liked the safari icon since ios
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 7 i'd always thought it had too many tick marks it always looked ridiculous and i think this is like a nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little tweak it makes it a little bit less visually weird to me so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a thumbs up from me
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah and then they're over in preview which nobody liked the old uh 27 preview icon with
⏹️ ▶️ John just had like the little loop uh and i believe the loop i didn't look at the inside of this one but there were some icons in
⏹️ ▶️ John in uh in 26 uh in the various 26 OSs that again
⏹️ ▶️ John tried to look classy, but were essentially bitmaps um and one of the things annoys
⏹️ ▶️ John me by the way about icon composer is that for whatever reason they decided that the the squirkle
⏹️ ▶️ John background cannot have any transparency which i mean i don't
⏹️ ▶️ John really understand that much because i don't think that would have prevented them from doing anything and the whole theme is liquid glass so why can
⏹️ ▶️ John the squircle itself not have transparency like nope squircle is opaque which really anyway whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John so there was the little loop icon of the the 26 and 27 beta
⏹️ ▶️ John one through four preview icon and it looks kind of dowdy it's just the loop by
⏹️ ▶️ John itself it's looping into nothing like you're not looking at anything by loop we mean a little thing with a magnifier on one end and
⏹️ ▶️ John a little glass cone on the other and you put it down an image and you put your eye to the little magnifier and you can see it bigger for
⏹️ ▶️ John looking at prints of images up close um it was using the old preview icon in a different way anyway
⏹️ ▶️ John in an iOS 27 beta preview has a new icon on iOS I believe the Mac version
⏹️ ▶️ John has not changed Um, and it is again the it
⏹️ ▶️ John looks like the old preview icon where there's kind of like a top view of the loop but what is it looking
⏹️ ▶️ John at not a photograph not even I think an abstract representation of a photograph
⏹️ ▶️ John but what looks to me like a bunch of swirly colors in a squircle. And that squircle is inset from the larger
⏹️ ▶️ John squircle for some reason and this is going to be a great representation from all my photos
⏹️ ▶️ John of colored swirling gases that I take it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn't even look like a sunset or a sky
⏹️ ▶️ John like I don't know what it's supposed to be so you know E for effort but I just
⏹️ ▶️ John they're missing the mark here like that I maybe they're trying like we don't want to go back to the old icon
⏹️ ▶️ John it's like well the old icon made it pretty clear that you're talking about photos and the loop makes it
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty clear that you're like looking at photos at least and it has some tradition behind it anyway I think it's an improvement
⏹️ ▶️ John it does look glassier but uh they need to reconsider that weird color
⏹️ ▶️ John blob there because I don't think you know this this is what this is the thing about the icons there's the execution
⏹️ ▶️ John and there's the concept execution on this is okay concept is semi okay
⏹️ ▶️ John but they they blew half of it which is what is it that the loop is looking at they will indicate to me that this is
⏹️ ▶️ John the app I used to look at pictures and they decide we're not going to have a look at a picture yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John uh they changed the settings icon as well we'll link to a post by beta profiles that shows preview series safari
⏹️ ▶️ John and settings all from the the two betas of beta four and beta five and settings they made the
⏹️ ▶️ John little gears a little bit more translucent so they're just they're out there tweaking things which I you know and having
⏹️ ▶️ John spent a lot of time with macOS 27 doing some stuff I do like the icons so much better than they
⏹️ ▶️ John were in 26 and I encourage them to continue tweaking but the choices of the ones they're tweaking
⏹️ ▶️ John is strange like did settings need the very subtle adjustments that it got between beta four and beta
⏹️ ▶️ John five I don't know but it got them it's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nicer I mean this is a weird beta cycle beta four
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lasted a very long time beta five seems like it's changing things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this weirdly late in the in the beta season uh and a lot about beta
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 5 seems like it was actually a step backwards uh which again like it's it seems late in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the beta cycle to be having both that kind of change and that kind of regression that we've
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we've seen so far in five um so
⏹️ ▶️ John have you seen regress in five
⏹️ ▶️ Marco um on the mac it's kind of a mess with um with control layouts especially in search boxes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there's a few weirdnesses there it's it's a bit of a weird step
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be doing this kind of change now um but that being said overall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this has been a very good beta cycle for me but it does kind of it doesn't really give a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco indication of how close we are to this being shippable or done you would think by this normally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by this time of this of the summer you know by by mid-August you know usually we're about three to five weeks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from release and things don't change that much and so to be to see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changes like this happening now is is weird
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Apple Watch overhaul rumors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Watch overhaul rumors. Mark Gurman writes: Apple is considering an overhaul
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to its smartwatch lineup in light of the industry's transition to screen-free devices and other new form factors.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The upcoming Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 is slated to get some under-the-hood improvements, including the first real boost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in performance in years. Apple has also been plotting the return of a ceramic case option, Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John earlier this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey year or next. There will also be new colors and bands and a series of new health and fitness-related
⏹️ ▶️ Casey upgrades, but bigger moves are coming. Apple's industrial design team has been exploring a broader rethink
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of its smartwatches over the past year or so and is evaluating several different directions. Apple's considering new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey devices with no displays as well as different types of screens in various sizes. While unlikely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to hit the market, round screens have even been considered. I'm told
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the work also includes potentially adding premium models beyond the Ultra and Hermes variants. On
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the lower end, Apple's considering more affordable concepts besides the current SE model. The company hasn't
⏹️ ▶️ Casey settled on a single direction yet, but it is determined to reinvent the lineup in response to growing competition.
⏹️ ▶️ John Thank goodness. I think the biggest slam dunk here is screenless device. I'm
⏹️ ▶️ John Honestly, it's surprising to me that Apple hasn't made it. And I don't even think they need to call it Apple Watch. Whatever you need to do, Apple, to make
⏹️ ▶️ John it okay, so you feel like you're not cannibalizing something. They've done the Apple Watch has leaned so heavily into
⏹️ ▶️ John fitness that I believe there is a screenless fitness-based Apple ecosystem
⏹️ ▶️ John device that would sell well and be useful to people and shouldn't cannibalize Apple Watch sales
⏹️ ▶️ John too much. And that solves a lot of problems in that it frees up the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John Watch to be what it already is. There's a pricing umbrella under the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Watch where it's like, well, we don't even sell things that are this cheap. The screenless one could be way
⏹️ ▶️ John cheaper than any possible Apple Watch. A lot of possibilities there. I would even say, I know this is not
⏹️ ▶️ John part of the rumor, but and I know the whole thing is, oh, the point is it's screenless. A tiny circular
⏹️ ▶️ John screen on essentially screenless device that is not an Apple Watch and does not run Watch OS
⏹️ ▶️ John apps and blah, blah, blah, but a tiny circular screen. Like you see this on a lot of devices these days. I was just reading a rumor
⏹️ ▶️ John today of like the the next Xbox Elite controller having a tiny little screen on it. And we've already talked about screens
⏹️ ▶️ John coming up and everything. Don't think of it as a screen that's going to display software that you're running. Think of it as just
⏹️ ▶️ John a more configurable part of a dedicated hardware device. I could even see that working a very tiny,
⏹️ ▶️ John and fine, maybe put a tiny little clock on it if you want. But like it's not an Apple Watch. It doesn't run watchOS.
⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn't run watch apps. It is a screenless device with a tiny screen. I think that would
⏹️ ▶️ John be a great idea. But yeah, that one makes perfect sense to me, and I really hope they do it. Everything else in this
⏹️ ▶️ John rumor, I just throw up my hands and say, how many years have we heard about Apple Watch
⏹️ ▶️ John overhauls? I agree that it's needed, but they just seem unable to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, first of all, there has been a lot of executive change over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the last year or two. So I think hopefully they can actually do it this time. But I also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think this is very exciting to me. When the Apple Watch was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first designed and conceived and released, they didn't know what it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was for. They didn't know what would hit, what wouldn't. They had a bunch of weird directions that they tried to go at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first, and some of them hit and most of them didn't. And now we have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really just continuing evolutions of that same original Apple Watch concept.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The concept has not changed since then. But the entire market around it has grown up,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco evolved, shifted. When I look around now, like I was in the city last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco night, I was looking around at just people I see on the subway and people I see walking around outside.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I look, I'm like, how many Apple Watches do I see? It seems, maybe this is just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anecdotal, but it seems like not only is it seemingly going down over time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but especially when I look at how many young people have Apple Watches on, it's almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco none. Young people don't seem to be wearing smartwatches at all. The most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco common watch I see on young people, which they don't seem to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wearing that many watches in general, but the ones I see almost always are vintage-themed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casio watches that cost $25. Those are like super in, right? They're super in fashion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with all the like young men right now. They're all wearing the exact same $25 Casio. I'll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco link to it in the show notes. It's very popular. It's a perfectly fine watch. That's what everyone's wearing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That's what's in right now is
⏹️ ▶️ John calculator watch going to come back?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Who knows? At this point, the mullet came back. So at this point, everything's on the table.
⏹️ ▶️ John kids are up to CDs, as we discussed before,
⏹️ ▶️ John retro thing. calculator watch has got to be coming in our future sometime. You can cheat on your math test with it, kids.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. But right now, so they're all wearing like 70s and 80s digital watches. But how do you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get people to wear the Apple Watch? Now, I think Apple has been shipping this basically the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco same thing for so long now that I think it's passe. I think it is, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it needs a significant overhaul to be remotely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cool or fashionable again.
⏹️ ▶️ John How many years has it been, by the way? Let's do the math on that. Is it 2011?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, 2014, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure, but I think so.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, Over a decade. Over a decade with essentially the same design.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And, you know, because yes, they have evolved the design a little bit. It's certainly improved. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you look at an Apple Watch from a distance today, most non-super Apple nerds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn't be able to tell if you were wearing an Apple Watch Series 0 from 2014 or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the newest one that's series 11, 12 from last fall. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look basically the same. Again, it's much better. We have the always-on screen. We have cellular. We have all these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different things now that weren't in that very first version. But if it worked for you then, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still works for you now. If it didn't work for you then, it probably still doesn't work for you now. And it just looks old.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the Ultra is the first time they diverge from that. And I do think the Ultra does look distinctive and with a purpose, but that
⏹️ ▶️ John is a narrow section of the Apple Watch product space.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And I think one of the biggest reasons the Ultra succeeded was just because it was a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fresh new look for the Apple Watch. It finally was something else, some other style.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now it also did cover a few more markets and things like that. The Ultra's a great watch, but ultimately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I mostly see when people wearing the Ultra, most of them are not on the side of mountains. They're just wearing it because it looked cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it was different. And that's fine. That's what wearables and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fashion-relevant devices need. They need to change over time to stay relevant. Meanwhile,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so all that's been happening, like, you know, they've been shipping basically the same watch for whatever, 12 years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, the entire market of like fitness bands and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fitbits and now there's rings and there's all these different things. These are all growing like crazy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and people like them a lot. They're not maybe as popular as the Apple watch, but they're
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting somewhere. And for a lot of people, like if you, if you don't want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wear a watch, maybe you'll wear a ring. Maybe you'll wear a whoop band around your bicep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or your ankle or something. Like people like these. They sell. And also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple has not really ever served the very low priced market well with the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Watch. Part of this rumor is they're considering more affordable concepts besides the current SE model.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And what would a watch Neo be? Probably not a full-blown watchOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer as we know it today, because that's kind of what the SE already is. It's like, what's the cheapest one of those we can make?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It would probably have to be competing with things like Fitbit bands that are like $100 or $80. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that's that market. In the same way, like when, you know, in the iPod era, they had to eventually make the shuffle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just to compete with more of that lower priced end. And they had to cut off a bunch of features and things like that, but they got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there and it was a hit. It worked. I think we need that for the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Watch. And I think they did. they wouldn't have originally conceived it that way because they saw the Apple Watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as make a tiny phone, like software-wise, hardware-wise, kind of architecturally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco conceptually, navigationally, it's a tiny phone. And I think what we've learned over the years is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that very few native apps make sense and are good on the watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Most people who use the Apple Watch probably use no third-party apps and very few Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps. Most people use the watch for notifications and fitness tracking. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that's about it. There's like, yeah, you know, I have some people who use Overcast on the watch. Not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of them. I can tell you, like, and I have with Overcast, I have analytics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of how many people have a watch paired, because you can tell that from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the watch connectivity framework. So I actually log them analytics. How many people have a watch paired to their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone at all? How many of those have the Overcast app installed on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the watch? And then how many of those actually use the app? And every one of those is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty big step down. As you go down that list, most people who have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a watch paired, who have Overcast on their phone, don't even put the app on their watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the ones who do put the app on their watch almost never use it. And then the ones who do put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it on their watch and use it almost never download files to the Apple Watch for local
⏹️ ▶️ Marco playback, like when I run around or something like Most people who use the Apple Watch are using it for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco notifications and the built-in fitness tracking. So I think there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a huge market for Apple to make something like the Apple Watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that serves those needs, notifications and fitness tracking, and maybe not even notifications, depending, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco serves those needs without being a full-blown app platform, a full-blown WatchOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer. Like I think a lot of people would buy things like that, and they can be lower end.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They can be mechanically and computationally simpler. They don't need to be these whole computers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They can be smaller. Maybe they can make something like the like the Aura Ring. Like the Aura
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Rings is like, I I'm, I'm shocked the Aura Ring exists, but it actually is pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the whoop band, like people love their whoop bands. Part of that is the physical thing. Part
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it is their whole app and software ecosystem. But there's this whole world out there of all these different devices that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have seen huge success. And Apple currently, with their current watch strategy, can't
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even compete in that world because their current watch strategy requires all of their wearables
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be, you know, basically full-blown computer watches. And you can see kind of like they tried
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to kind of attack the hot, that the kind of upper end of the body, so to speak, with the AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with their heart sensors. And like, aren't there some beats things that also have heart sensors in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey headphones? I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But those don't work that well. And not a lot of people use or want that or are constantly wearing earbuds anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think getting their watch strategy away from the idea that everything has to be a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer with an app store on it and focus on the things people actually want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and make a broader product line. I think that's very wise, just as it worked with the iPod
⏹️ ▶️ Marco line. You know, Not every iPod could play video. Not every iPod could you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had like, you know, all the different media functions and everything. But they all kind of serve like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OK, music players. But much more broadly, here, we're going to we're going to satisfy the different needs of all the different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco models, and all these different price points and physical sizes. The watch is the perfect place to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I do wonder if they'll go as far as to the shuffle end of things. I think they should, but I wonder if they're like,
⏹️ ▶️ John things you can do with screenless stuff that are health related, surely they will not go below
⏹️ ▶️ John the level of like whatever they sell, it will have fault
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann detection.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because that's a thing you can do. It doesn't require a screen, doesn't require complicated sensors, just basically accelerometers. Fault
⏹️ ▶️ John detection is important. A lot of older people who are at risk for falls don't want to wear a computer
⏹️ ▶️ John watch, but maybe you can get them to wear something that just looks like a nice wristband that does that, blah, blah, blah. But then you go to, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John what about pulse detection, blood oxygen, all those really expensive sensors that are at the
⏹️ ▶️ John bottom of the watch that take up a bunch of room? Will Apple be able to resist putting them on a screenless device?
⏹️ ▶️ John just with fall detection and like maybe some, you know, like whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John simple sort of pulse heart rate things you can do without trying to get their blood oxygenation
⏹️ ▶️ John by shining light through their blood vessels and stuff, like just just back it off because price is like like the Neo,
⏹️ ▶️ John price is really important. The most important aspect of this thing. So go all the way shuffle. The thing about the shuffles
⏹️ ▶️ John is they were dirt cheap. Like from Apple, they were dirt cheap. They had nothing in them. They were
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey especially as time
⏹️ ▶️ John, Jonathan Mann went
⏹️ ▶️ John on. Like the shuffle, I mean, like the white shuffle was like mostly air and they eventually got it down to like the trident stick of gum
⏹️ ▶️ John with no buttons, which was too far. But boy, was that cheap, right? Apple can go that far down.
⏹️ ▶️ John And by the way, there are rumors about Apple investigating rings. It's not part of this rumor thing, but there have been various reports about Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John investigating rings. And I kind of understand why Apple's a little bit wary of that because rings on
⏹️ ▶️ John fingers have a lot of uh issues, uh, in terms of fit and
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, dangerous situations that maybe they don't want to get into at this point. And they, maybe they feel like they have, they've got the wrist
⏹️ ▶️ John and they should continue to concentrate on the wrist. And I kind of agree with them because as you were saying, Marco, they haven't even fully exploited the wrist.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like they've just done the one thing, which is a good thing and they dominate the smartwatch market. But things that go on your wrist is bigger
⏹️ ▶️ John than the smartwatch market. It's, you know, there are many things that can go on your wrist that don't have to be a
⏹️ ▶️ John computer watch. And just, just, you know, there's a room for at least two other products there. And then,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, again, what the story is about is what about the actual Apple Watch? Just the plain old Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John Watch. It's good. People like it. It dominates the market. They're finally going to make it faster for the first time in years, which is great. They'll
⏹️ ▶️ John get a new SOC. Maybe it'll be lower power. Maybe the battery, like that product category is not exhausted.
⏹️ ▶️ John The watch battery still doesn't last long enough. All right. The watches are still too big, too bulky,
⏹️ ▶️ John and too heavy, right? In the grand scheme of things. There's a lot of room for improvement there. If you could make a watch,
⏹️ ▶️ John and a plain old Apple computer watch that lasts twice as long and weighed half as much
⏹️ ▶️ John and was twice as thin, people would go gaga. So keep pursuing that, right? Just the years of
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of stasis of just being like, well, it's about the same size. You know, They've really been iterating on
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen. It's about the same size, about the same weight. We changed the materials, we changed the bands, but it's not getting
⏹️ ▶️ John super duper thinner. So it fluctuates in thickness. And mainly where we're, what we're doing is
⏹️ ▶️ John we're making the screen better and better and better and better, edge to edge on all the time, better colors, brighter, brighter. That was all
⏹️ ▶️ John great and everything. Let's iterate on some other aspect. And obviously, yes, also after
⏹️ ▶️ John a decade, after more than a decade, it's time for a new physical design. Not that the current design is bad,
⏹️ ▶️ John but a decade is a long time in a fashion conscious segment. And there's only so far you can coast on the bands because that's really where
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is concentrated with like, oh, it's a fashion product. You can't sell the same thing every year. Well, we don't. We change
⏹️ ▶️ John up the bands all the time. But there is another part of the watch besides the band. And I know it is
⏹️ ▶️ John just a screen. And it's like, well, there's no fashion to that. It's just a black hole where we put OLED pixels or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of pixels they have. I think they're still OLEDs, right? But there is the shape of the thing that's on your wrist.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when I see people wearing Apple Watches in real life, especially if they're a smaller person, I'm still
⏹️ ▶️ John taken aback by exactly how big they are. Because yes, I know people love to wear big watches, but I see people
⏹️ ▶️ John wearing them who are probably not big mechanical watch people,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they are in effect wearing a big non-mechanical watch. It's so big and so thick on their wrist and it has
⏹️ ▶️ John to be that size to get decent battery life. Apple used to make much smaller devices that got horrendous battery life. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so now all the Apple watches, there's been watch inflation to support the new batteries. Uh, We're kind of on the cusp
⏹️ ▶️ John of, uh, you know, what is it? The, I forget what it is. One of you two knows the, the new battery chemistry
⏹️ ▶️ John that everyone's using for higher density batteries and phones. What is that one? Is
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it the life?
⏹️ ▶️ John in the chat room will say. But anyway, um, I'm hoping the new watch will have that. Uh, No, not
⏹️ ▶️ John solid state battery, the chat room said. um, it's,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Jonathan Mann I keep
⏹️ ▶️ John thinking carbon ceramic, but that's brakes. Anyway, I think they do it in the MacBook Air that has the
⏹️ ▶️ John newer battery chemistry, but the other, not the MacBook Air, the iPhone Air. But the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhones don't have it as yet. Anyway, that would be a great boon to the watch because
⏹️ ▶️ John it still needs more battery. It still needs to be thinner. It still needs to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be lighter. It still needs to be better. And it needs a redesign.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is a vague rumor. The only definitive things are like, hey, the Series 12 and Ultra 4,
⏹️ ▶️ John don't expect anything except finally a new SOC, which is great. Thumbs up. Maybe the year after that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe the year after after that. Um, A lot of things I feel like are up in the air when I read these rumors.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, cause I, it's like past the uh, it's past the Ternus horizon, right? It's just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John okay, there are these there are these rumors. There's like, But there's like this thing out there that's like a potential discontinuity.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it's not like there's going to be this big change of plans, but like the future
⏹️ ▶️ John past that point, the future I feel like is unknown until we start to
⏹️ ▶️ John get a feel for what his deal is. Yeah. Or even just even just learn that his deal is he's
⏹️ ▶️ John not going to make waves for the first two years. That's something to know, right? But we don't know. So past that, all
⏹️ ▶️ John these things about like, oh, a big watch overhaul is coming. He's going to have a big say
⏹️ ▶️ John in whether a big watch overhaul is coming and when it's coming, because the watch overhaul is going to happen in his
⏹️ ▶️ John timeline. And he can delay that, accelerate that, change his mind about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that's going to be his call. No plans that Tim Cook makes now are going to affect
⏹️ ▶️ John a product that's going to potentially launch years after he's gone. So a lot of things
⏹️ ▶️ John are up in the air on that. But, you know, And the other thing about the Apple Watch is part of
⏹️ ▶️ John the reason Apple hasn't been motivated, seemingly, to do a lot of stuff here is that they are so
⏹️ ▶️ John dominant. Like every time I see like, you know, share of the smartwatch industry,
⏹️ ▶️ John it's like Apple on the iPad practically. It's like, what is the tablet market? It is the iPad and other.
⏹️ ▶️ John What is the smartwatch market? It is Apple and other. And I think Apple's turning its eye towards
⏹️ ▶️ John what is the fitness tracker that's not a smartwatch market. Apple's not even a player
⏹️ ▶️ John there. So they have to look over there and they say, well, why aren't we a player over there? That is a growth opportunity.
⏹️ ▶️ John There's a lot of competitors there. They have products. They're all competing for each other. We should get into that fight.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I just, they just feel like they've just, you know, not that they're resting on their laurels with the Apple Watch, but they haven't felt this pressing
⏹️ ▶️ John need to, as this rumor says, overhaul the Apple Watch. Why would we overhaul the product that is dominant?
⏹️ ▶️ John And that's, you know, that's not a good way to be. Again, see the classic example
⏹️ ▶️ John of the iPod Mini. Why would we overhaul the iPod? We dominate this market of portable MP3 players.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you overhaul it because you can make something better and better, and you keep iterating, and that's how you stay in the lead.
⏹️ ▶️ John So hopefully this rumor comes true sometime in Turnus's watch,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What excites me about this is that it seems like, first of all, it seems like maybe this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco promising in terms of what Turnus will do to stagnant or complacent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product lines like the Apple Watch. But also, the Apple Watch has just never seemed like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they really were stepping on the gas. It really never seemed like it had a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco effort and gusto behind it. It's always felt like it has a staff of like three people working
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it. And maybe they were a little bit tired. Like, There
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is so much potential for what the Apple Watch and the Apple Watch family of products
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could be, what it could include, hardware and software-wise, different form factors, different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sizes. And they've just done almost none of it. And you know, I'm not just asking about custom watch faces.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, Just in general, watchOS is really seemingly very under-resourced,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very under-invested in. The Apple Watch hardware, as mentioned,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just so repetitive. So let's see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they're really putting a bunch of effort into it. That's great. Let's see what effort can do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I don't think we've really seen that. And in the meantime, if they want to give us a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fun new materials like ceramic and metals to play with to tide us over,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cool, great. I'm in. But they need to do something because the Apple Watch looks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very dated and I don't see a lot of younger people adopting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, I think we are long overdue for a redesign bigger
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than the Ultra. Well, not physically bigger, but a more meaningful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey redesign than the Ultra. And I think while the watches have gotten a lot less chunky
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and lighter and so on and so forth, I still think battery life, especially on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey year two, for me, every single Apple watch, the year two battery
⏹️ ▶️ Casey life is suspect on a good day.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that some of that is just, you know, battery chemistry is only but so good. And these devices
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are only but so big. And I just told you, I like, you know, thin watches, but then you can't have a big battery. So like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I get why Apple is up against a wall here, but I think the physical design
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could and should be a little different. I will be very sad if and when, and I'm sure it's really just when they change
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the mounting mechanism for the bands, because across both
⏹️ ▶️ Casey size watches, we have a lot of watch bands we've collected over the last decade. So I'll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be sad about that, but maybe it's time. And I don't know. I hate to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say change for change's sake, but at this point, you know, 12-ish years on, I think change
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for change's sake may be enough. You know, it might be time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and also like, you know, what people want you know, when you say things like significantly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better battery life, is that possible? Yes. You can look around the market and you can see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like Garmin's and, you know, the sport
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John watch category.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like you can see, oh, yes, there are indeed smartwatches that have way better battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco life. How do they do it? Usually the answer is they make a bunch of different trade-offs in terms
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of screen technology and computational capabilities. It's like if it's going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a full-blown computer on your wrist that can run all these apps and have all these, you know, have this this super bright OLED
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen and and be able to be your music player and stream things over cellular and have Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco support and everything. If it's going to do all that, um yeah, that's going to be kind of rough on the battery.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco um But there's a whole bunch of you know fitness watches that are a few hundred
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bucks and have amazing multi-day or sometimes even multi-week battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco life. How do they do it? By not doing all those things, by making totally different trade-offs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There's no reason why Apple couldn't make a product that did that. Maybe it would be something else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe it wouldn't be able to do things like take your phone calls on your wrist and run
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my little stupid breakout game in Overcast while it's waiting to download podcasts. But like, fine. fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Obviously, people want that and they're willing to make those tradeoffs in a lot of cases.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right now, if you want something, like basically the Apple Watch right now serves a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco narrow band, so to speak, of needs. If you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want a lot of computational capabilities, a little bit of battery life, and a medium to high
⏹️ ▶️ Marco price, Apple's got you covered. But if you want anything outside of that, if you want a physically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smaller device, much smaller, or if you want significantly more battery life, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all these different, if you need to be significantly cheaper than $200 or $300, all these different edge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cases, every one of those is a market. Suppose you don't want a glowing screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on your wrist, but you still want the health tracking stuff. A lot of people do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They buy other products for that. That's a very big market. We can see. There's no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason Apple can't compete in those markets. They have just chosen not to by having the watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be this very narrowly focused product line. Any sign of expansion there, I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is probably a good thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I had to look up the battery chemistry because the chat room failed me. Silicon carbon batteries. That
⏹️ ▶️ John is the slight alteration to lithium ion battery chemistry that all of the fancy phones have been
⏹️ ▶️ John using for a little while, but so far, not iPhones, with the possible exception of the iPhone Air.
Name your passwords!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You want to tell me about passwords?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don't know why I was doing this, but I had occasion to be in passwords, the passwords app of the Mac in particular. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it's the same cloud synced password collection that used to be called iCloud Keychain before it had better marketing.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, now it's the Passwords app and it's your iCloud sync collection of passwords and passkeys and
⏹️ ▶️ John all that stuff. And I was in that app. Well, actually, I do know why I was there because that's the second part of this.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I have a tip for folks who have never really thought about that app other than like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John that's where the stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Jonathan Mann you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John when I auto-fill stuff in web pages, that's where it comes from. And maybe occasionally you go to the app to look something up,
⏹️ ▶️ John but most of the time people interact with it indirectly through autocomplete and forms and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John like that. And my tip is open the app, the passwords app,
⏹️ ▶️ John and use it and go find the passwords that you use frequently. You probably know
⏹️ ▶️ John what they are. Do you log it? Whatever you log into frequently, whatever you find yourself autocompleting frequently, and
⏹️ ▶️ John give the passwords that you use frequently names. In the passwords app,
⏹️ ▶️ John there is a place for you to name them. And the app does a great job of sort of naming them by itself. Like it picks
⏹️ ▶️ John a name if you don't enter a name, but you can enter anything you want there. Picking names,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially short names that you know will fit within an autocomplete field to remind you
⏹️ ▶️ John of what the thing is, incredibly helpful. Also, the names are searchable. So when you're
⏹️ ▶️ John searching for something, you can find it. If you have multiple email addresses and multiple accounts,
⏹️ ▶️ John or if you use one email address for everything, like going to the passwords app and searching for your email address is not going to be
⏹️ ▶️ John helpful. Maybe you remember the domain name, maybe you don't, but take something as simple
⏹️ ▶️ John as Apple IDs or Apple accounts as they're known today. Do you
⏹️ ▶️ John know all of the host names and websites associated with logging in with your Apple ID? I bet you know some of them, but you're
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, it's probably Apple.com. And yeah, Apple.com will get you something, but it'll get you a lot of stuff too that
⏹️ ▶️ John is not your Apple ID. Call your Apple ID account in passwords Apple ID
⏹️ ▶️ John or Apple account. Or if
⏹️ ▶️ John a developer account or a regular one, call it Apple ID parentheses developer Apple ID parentheses personal.
⏹️ ▶️ John Name them however you want. But i I just realized I've spent so much time
⏹️ ▶️ John like going through multiple possible choices in autocomplete menus because often
⏹️ ▶️ John there's two, three, four, sometimes more possible choices to autofill for this field. Which
⏹️ ▶️ John one is it? And you have to look and it gives you enough information to mostly look Cause it'll show you the username
⏹️ ▶️ John and the title is usually pretty good. But like I don't have to put up with parsing that. I can just call
⏹️ ▶️ John them what I want. Like logging into an AWS account, there's like the IAM users and the root user, which
⏹️ ▶️ John and sometimes it's the same email address over most, which one is which? Just call it IAM, you know, call it AWS
⏹️ ▶️ John parentheses root account and like give it the name that you'll see and pick. So if you
⏹️ ▶️ John have never done that, spend a day doing it. And the great thing about it is as long as you don't do something really dumb
⏹️ ▶️ John and like lie in your names and say that it's something that it's not, it's non-destructive. You're not changing passwords.
⏹️ ▶️ John You're not regenerating passwords. You're not changing usernames. You're just putting a label on a thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John putting a name on a thing. And even if you like the name that's there, you can retype the name that's there
⏹️ ▶️ John just so another version, a future version doesn't change what that name is. So that is my pro tip.
⏹️ ▶️ John Name your passwords. Do either one of you do this with
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco your passwords?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do it in one password all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly. Like this is a one password thing as far as I'm concerned. And I, as far as I knew, it wasn't
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like compulsory, compulsory, but it's the way one password works is that they basically expect you to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a name for everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I'll, I'll use names like, you know, like, you know, Apple Overcast, Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, yeah, there you go. That's cause
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that's cause many things I have multiple accounts, or like, you know, things I have to separate for the restaurant or for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overcast or like for personal, like, or stuff that's Adams or TIFs that, that we have in a shared vault.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, you know, there's all sorts of things like that. And yeah, of course, you have to give them names so you can tell them apart.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will even oftentimes for things that we have a lot of logins, like Apple IDs, I will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use the 1Password star feature or favorite. I don't know what it's called, but you can mark one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a favorite that then shows up on the top of the list with a little star next to it in the autocomplete dropdowns.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if there's one that you use all the time and maybe it's like in the middle of the list alphabetically, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put it there and have it pop up at the top. It's really nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John If only you could do that with email addresses and contacts. I know there are
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco those apps that
⏹️ ▶️ John let you reorder the contacts and I do that. I use those apps that let you reorder them, but I'm not entirely sure that
⏹️ ▶️ John the top one is the most favored. Like whenever I need to autocomplete my email address in a form, it shocks
⏹️ ▶️ John me that there's no ability for me to teach it. This is the email address that I always want. Yes, I have a thousand
⏹️ ▶️ John email addresses. No, I'm not going to delete the old ones from my contact. Those are valid email addresses for me,
⏹️ ▶️ John but always autocomplete this one. And so I put it at the top and just hope for the best, but favoriting would be nice. But yeah, to
⏹️ ▶️ John the credit of the password slash iCloud keychain system, it auto generates pretty sensible
⏹️ ▶️ John names. And for most people who don't have a million accounts, that's probably fine. I'm not saying everyone needs
⏹️ ▶️ John to do this. But if you're listening to this podcast, chances are you're like us and you have way too many accounts. And
⏹️ ▶️ John especially like you said, with shared, you know, you shared Vault and 1Password or shared password groups with the password app.
⏹️ ▶️ John Once you start sharing things, good names really make it even more of a difference. Otherwise, you're like
⏹️ ▶️ John squinting at like what the what the username is, which is often in like a lower contrast font and is smaller and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John So name your passwords. And the reason I was doing this, the reason I got into this thing is,
⏹️ ▶️ John as we all know, if anyone uses Slack a lot, when you set up a new device
⏹️ ▶️ John or do anything that sort of resets your world, the worst part of that in the modern age, where almost
⏹️ ▶️ John everything sort of can come along with you migrating your system.
John’s favorite login system
⏹️ ▶️ John Is logging back into all your Slacks.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey If you have one Slack, fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John the worst. But Slack, for whatever reason, doesn't really cloud sync anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John My kingdom for them to at least cloud sync like the order of all of my things in the sidebar
⏹️ ▶️ John and which Slacks I'm in and blah, blah, blah. But they don't. So you're just like, hi, I'm Slack. I've never heard of you before. I'm
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh no. Okay. So anyway, we've all been through that dance.
⏹️ ▶️ John My question to the two of you before I begin this is, what is your mental model
⏹️ ▶️ John of how logging into a Slack works? What is Slack's account system as it relates
⏹️ ▶️ John to workspaces or whatever they call them that you log into?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, it's tough, right? Because for the longest time, every workspace, whatever it is, was a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey completely separate silo from every other one. And for the longest time, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seemed like never the two or three or six or 10 shall meet. And then at some point a couple of years ago
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now, they seem to try to build build or create or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a like a universal Slack level login that could be then used across
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different workspaces. But the ship had already sailed for us old-time Slack users.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I don't know what the right answer is anymore. I almost preferred it when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was each silo had its own login, which was a pain, a royal pain, like you were saying. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at least it was understandable and predictable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, now you can log in with one email address, have it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stupid thing to you, and then you can log into multiple Slacks and that. But the problem is, whenever I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to set up a new device, I have to do that with three or four different email addresses. Because like, okay, well, was it the overcast email?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Was it my current personal email? Was it my old personal email? And it's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco such a pain. And then, oh, I got to set them in the right order. What order do I have them in again? Oh, this one requires 2FA. That's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a whole different login system. It's a mess.
⏹️ ▶️ John So what you described is also kind of how I understood it to be. Look, Casey has added some complications
⏹️ ▶️ John that I had thought didn't exist, but now I'm not sure. So my idea was, my mental model
⏹️ ▶️ John was kind of like what Marco was saying. I, again, for historical reasons, have
⏹️ ▶️ John multiple email addresses that I log into Slacks with. It just turned out that way.
⏹️ ▶️ John I made a mistake, made several mistakes early on. Email addresses changed, blah, blah, blah. And so the first
⏹️ ▶️ John step is for this Slack, what email address, essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John what username, whatever, what email address goes with this one? How do I log into this one?
⏹️ ▶️ John But up until recently, my mental model was once you have gone through
⏹️ ▶️ John Slack's crappy login system with one of whatever email address you pick, and say you pick the right
⏹️ ▶️ John one and you successfully log into Slack you're trying to log into. That I think of as
⏹️ ▶️ John like, that's an account. So I have my like, you know, email address number one account and I've logged into one
⏹️ ▶️ John of my Slacks with it. And the Slack website, to its credit, several years ago, started saying, hey, that
⏹️ ▶️ John email address can log into these five other Slacks too. Do you want to log into them? And you'd go through and say, yes, I want to log into
⏹️ ▶️ John that. I want to log into that one. Right. That's one of the ways you could tell which email address was associated with which
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. And so my mental model is I have, let's say I have two email addresses that I log into Slacks with. I
⏹️ ▶️ John have two Slack accounts, one with email address A and one with email address B. Some of my
⏹️ ▶️ John Slacks I log in with a Slack account number one. And some of my Slacks I log into with a Slack account number two.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was my mental model of how Slack works. But as Casey pointed out, maybe that's not how
⏹️ ▶️ John it actually works because I got into a situation trying to just log back into Slacks
⏹️ ▶️ John where there were some, like, I would log into one of my email addresses and I would log into Slack
⏹️ ▶️ John with it. And then eventually it would say, no, sorry, your password's wrong. I'm like, how can that be?
⏹️ ▶️ John I just used that email address
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and that password
⏹️ ▶️ John to log into three Slacks. And when I go to the fourth, and it's not the same thing as saying, oh, it's the other email address. That's
⏹️ ▶️ John a different error message. The other message is, hey, that email address doesn't even have an account on this Slack. That's a different
⏹️ ▶️ John message. This message is, oh, that's the right email address. You could be able to log into the Slack
⏹️ ▶️ John with that email address, but your password is wrong. And I had done so many of them like, oh, maybe I screwed
⏹️ ▶️ John it up or maybe I auto-completed wrong or whatever. So I would go to change my password, but it's like, where
⏹️ ▶️ John do you go to change your password? Again, I'm thinking of my Slack account as being associated with an email address.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then I looked in my passwords thing and I had multiple entries
⏹️ ▶️ John for email address A, Slack host names and different passwords. I'm
⏹️ ▶️ John like, is that just historical? Like, do they somehow like, like, how is this working? You know, because it would, it would
⏹️ ▶️ John say them by like, you know, slackworkspace1.slack.com, slackworkspace2.slack.com.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I saw different passwords. I'm like, oh, that just must be historical baggage because of course for each slack, for each email address,
⏹️ ▶️ John there's one password that works for that account. But then I found when I could log into,
⏹️ ▶️ John I used one of the passwords from those other entries and it let me log into that slack that I couldn't get into. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I use email address A with one set of one set of just one password, login,
⏹️ ▶️ John login, login success. Then I use that same email address to another Slack with a different password,
⏹️ ▶️ John login success. So now I'm like, what the hell is the system here? Because I use
⏹️ ▶️ John two different passwords with the same email address and successfully logged into four Slacks.
⏹️ ▶️ John Three of them with one password and one of them with a second password. I don't even know how to represent
⏹️ ▶️ John that in the passwords app.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because you can't put like workspacename.slack.com as the only thing because you often get funneled through like the main slack.com
⏹️ ▶️ John like flow before you pick a workspace. And so I don't know. I eventually got
⏹️ ▶️ John logged into all of my Slacks and I like dutifully saved the passwords. This is another feature, by the way. It's one of the one
⏹️ ▶️ John of the few features that I missed from Tahoe and the 26 OSs is that I believe in Tahoe they added a
⏹️ ▶️ John history to the password, the Apple Passwords app. So it'll keep a history of your old passwords. So basically
⏹️ ▶️ John I had to make a bunch of dummy entries and passwords to say, I think I might need this password
⏹️ ▶️ John for Slack, but I put fake email address, fake hostnames in the website thing, which is hard to do
⏹️ ▶️ John because it tries to prevent you from doing this. But I'm just like, look, I need to save this password because it did
⏹️ ▶️ John work for me, but I've changed my password on what I think of as my, the account associated
⏹️ ▶️ John with that to this thing. But this other password still works for the, is it just a cache propagation delay?
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, my point is, I have no freaking idea how log into Slacks work.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know how it should work. We all know how it should work. It should be like single sign on, sign
⏹️ ▶️ John into an account, authorized for, like, there's a million ways that it should work. It should all be cloud sync. It should all be so much easier than
⏹️ ▶️ John it is. They shouldn't bury the password autocomplete behind the link. Like just, But I find
⏹️ ▶️ John it baffling. And I'm not asking for someone on Slack to come and explain it because I think Casey basically did. Like they basically had an old system,
⏹️ ▶️ John they had a new system, there was a transition period. So I probably essentially have three Slack accounts.
⏹️ ▶️ John Email address A, old, email address A, new, and then email
⏹️ ▶️ John address B, email address C. Like that's probably the situation But
⏹️ ▶️ John that situation is untenable because I have no mental model for that. And the Apple Passwords app cannot handle
⏹️ ▶️ John saving those passwords. And by the way, I tried to when I logged in with the second password
⏹️ ▶️ John to the same with the same email address. I said, well, let me just at least just change that password to be the same as my other one.
⏹️ ▶️ John So at least I can pretend they're unified. But no, it said you can't use that password. You
⏹️ ▶️ John, Jonathan Mann can't
⏹️ ▶️ John use a password that you use in the past. So maybe at some point they did have the same password, which to your point, Casey, maybe that
⏹️ ▶️ John was like when they were separated. It's madness. Slack, I still
⏹️ ▶️ John like to use your app, but your account system makes no sense whatsoever. And I literally
⏹️ ▶️ John don't understand it. it's it's rough It's rough out there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. Thank you to our sponsors this episode, Quince, Factor, and Claude.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And thanks to our members who support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash join. One
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the perks of membership, the many perks of membership, is ATP Overtime, our weekly bonus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco topic. This week on overtime, we're going to be talking about more AI company hardware rumors, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OpenAI Donut and Anthropic Silicon, whatever that means.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Join to listen, atp.fm slash join. Thank you so much, everybody. we'll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin. Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him. Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann And if you're into Mastodon, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S. So that's KC Liss, M-A-R-C-O,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann A-R-M, E-N-T, Marco, Armin, S-I-R-A-C,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann U-S-A-S-I-RACUSA. It's accidental, accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann They didn't mean to accidental, accidental. Check
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann the podcast
John’s warning story
⏹️ ▶️ John The chat room said, I thought you logged into Slack with codes that email you. Yeah, that's what they try to lead you towards. And if you do that,
⏹️ ▶️ John you'll forget that you even have a password, but you do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You certainly do. John, I believe you're bringing us an after-show tonight.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is a basically old news, but I mean, maybe I can use it,
⏹️ ▶️ John as a cautionary tale. um that's
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey never good yeah i don't I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don't like this at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, as we all know from listening to the show for a long time, I skipped macOS 26 because I didn't like
⏹️ ▶️ John it. um And I spent a lot of time trying to make that be the case.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you don't want to upgrade to the next version of macOS, it's difficult.
⏹️ ▶️ John Your Mac will say, hey, there's a new version of macOS called 26. Are you sure you don't want it? And it will bug you about
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And you can get it to stop bugging you mostly, but you have to
⏹️ ▶️ John live with a few things. If you keep system settings in your dock, you might have to live with the red
⏹️ ▶️ John badge being there, which is not the end of the world, but I don't like it. Why would you put system
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in your dock? That's what the Apple menu is for. System
⏹️ ▶️ John settings got to be in the dock, man. It's got to be.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You're nuts.
⏹️ ▶️ John I hate people who don't have system settings in the dock. Oh, it's in the Apple menu. Just go to it. Oh, command space, blah, blah, blah. No, no,
⏹️ ▶️ John it needs to be in the dock.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What? You are a loser.
⏹️ ▶️ John all the time, and I don't want to go to the Apple menu and I don't want to command space. I just want to click on it. Command space.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey set, enter. System settings
⏹️ ▶️ John should be in everyone's dock.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey When it's not in people's
⏹️ ▶️ John docks, I get annoyed and I put it there immediately.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hard no on this, John.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Out of curiosity, like what kinds of things do you frequently go into there for? Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John God, I'm in there all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John what? Like, what are you what are you
⏹️ ▶️ John changing? If you are a Mac developer, you're going to spend a lot of time in system settings, let me tell you. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John you're like resetting permissions and stuff? Just privacy and security alone is a maze
⏹️ ▶️ John of crap that you're going to be wandering to, but also changing all the appearance settings, changing all the accessibility settings.
⏹️ ▶️ John Xcode is getting better about having those like in previews and doing UI automation and stuff, but you will spend a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John time in system settings.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, man. In that case, I would have Claude sponsor write me like a script to do all, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to change all those things over and over again. Like whatever I need to do. Like that's, that's wild.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I keep hoping Xcode will get better at that. And it is. It is getting better, but it's still not entirely there, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John when you're dealing with TCC stuff. Just like it's there, there are complications to Mac development. Suffice
⏹️ ▶️ John to say there are complications to Mac development. Anyway, I want system settings to be there. And so I see the badge and I don't
⏹️ ▶️ John like it. And remember very shows past were like, oh, someone figured out that if you add like a profile, not full-blown
⏹️ ▶️ John MDM, but if you add like a profile to your Mac, you can tell it, hey, defer OS updates for like 90 days
⏹️ ▶️ John and just keep reapplying that profile. But then it turns out that was like a bug. It was supposed to be defer prompting
⏹️ ▶️ John for an update 90 days after the OS was released, but there was a bug that it was just 90 days after you installed the profile.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then Apple fixed that bug. And then 90 days since Tao's introduction elapsed. And so the badge was back.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I was out there fighting the badge. Then another thing someone suggested, was the badge was that
⏹️ ▶️ John badge came back. I'm like, oh, it's bad. And by the way, it's not just the badge and it's not just my computer. I'm doing this on my
⏹️ ▶️ John computer, but also my wife's computer and my kids' two computers because they also didn't want
⏹️ ▶️ John the new OS. I didn't spoil. I didn't tell them that they should dislike it. They decided on their own.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like word on the street was they didn't want the new OS. Okay. They they don't listen to this
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like whatever. High school, college. No, they didn't want the new OS. And, but the problem with
⏹️ ▶️ John that is if I say fine, just don't do an update. Like those things will prompt
⏹️ ▶️ John you. Like when you least it, they find you when you're weak and just the dialogue comes up and you're like, updates
⏹️ ▶️ John are ready. Do you want to install? And the choices are like, yes, install or later tonight.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they just click later tonight and then they wake up the next day and their thing's updated. It's not super malicious. It's not super
⏹️ ▶️ John annoying. But over the course of like an entire school year with me not being present, the odds of them not accidentally updating
⏹️ ▶️ John Tahoe are low. So I needed some way to make it so they wouldn't be prompted in any way.
⏹️ ▶️ John It's not about the badge because they don't care. They don't even have some settings in their dock. It's it's the little, you know, upper right corner of the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, hey, did you know there's a UOS update? And the thing is, you do want them to apply like
⏹️ ▶️ John the like the security updates and stuff, but you don't want them to apply the Tahoe update and dialogues aren't always
⏹️ ▶️ John clear. And so I need to do something on all their computers too to prevent them from accidentally updating.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so I was looking for something else that I could do because I did the profile on their things, but that wore out, right? And then people
⏹️ ▶️ John were suggesting, okay, go in the software update thing. And instead of picking, you can pick like,
⏹️ ▶️ John do you want to do beta updates? I'm like, well, I certainly don't want to do beta updates, right? They said, but no, you can pick Sequoia
⏹️ ▶️ John beta updates. Sequoia is macOS 15. It's the one that everyone we want to stay on. So instead of being on the regular
⏹️ ▶️ John update channel, say, I want to be on the Sequoia public beta update channel. like, that's
⏹️ ▶️ John great. There's not going to be any more Sequoia public betas. So we'll always say, you're up to date, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So I put everybody on the Sequoia Public Beta update channel.
⏹️ ▶️ John Badge went away. No more being bugged about software updates, right? Thought it was great.
⏹️ ▶️ John many months passed. And the thing is, Apple was releasing updates
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Sequoia Beta update channel for things like security
⏹️ ▶️ John updates. And for whatever reason in particular, 15, I believe it's 15.7.8
⏹️ ▶️ John had like nine betas. I thought it was a bug. I thought, does this thing not know it already installed
⏹️ ▶️ John 15.7.8? Is it telling me I 15.7.8 is ready again? But then I looked at the build numbers. I'm like, no, this is
⏹️ ▶️ John a new build of 15.7.8. And then I looked up on the internet, how many builds of Sequoia 15.7.8
⏹️ ▶️ John have there been? There have been a lot. And so there was, but it's like, fine, whatever. We're doing software updates.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I know it's annoying, but you're not updating Tahoe, right? No badge on the icon. And the policy is simple to
⏹️ ▶️ John explain to kids. If you see an update, just do it because it's a security update. Your computer's fine. It won't update to the bad
⏹️ ▶️ John OS. This system held for a long time. Kids came back from school.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everything's still fine. Then on my wife's computer, I was on her computer doing
⏹️ ▶️ John some development stuff because sometimes I need to do development stuff on Apple Silicon
⏹️ ▶️ John and sometimes I don't want to use my MacBook Air. And one of the updates come through
⏹️ ▶️ John and I saw that it was like Safari beta. Because if you're on the Sequoia public beta
⏹️ ▶️ John train, you also get offered like Safari beta updates. It's not Safari technology preview.
⏹️ ▶️ John That's a whole different thing. Purple Safari. This is like when there's, again, security updates or like new versions of Safari
⏹️ ▶️ John that support Sequoia. It's good to be clear, it's good that Apple is doing this. It's good that Apple isn't abandoning their old OSs. It's good that
⏹️ ▶️ John they're offering security updates and new versions of Safari for Mac OS 15. Like all thumbs up.
⏹️ ▶️ John But remember, all these Macs are on the Sequoia beta update train. And so they're getting these
⏹️ ▶️ John updates. And she installed one of the Safari beta updates because, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the policy was if the updates come, there's security updates, just do them. And it hosed
⏹️ ▶️ John her system so badly that I, you know, first, basically
⏹️ ▶️ John my daughter's account on the system, like the Apple ID, the stuff in her Apple ID stops syncing, like her photos stop syncing
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything stops syncing. I was like, all right, well, I'll just sign out of her Apple ID and sign back in, which I don't do. I
⏹️ ▶️ John hate doing that, but it's like, in the end, if things aren't syncing, you can't figure it out, and you've done all the other diagnostics
⏹️ ▶️ John and you've just tried everything you possibly try, reboot with the shift key down or whatever the current incantation
⏹️ ▶️ John is, like try to reset everything. It just didn't work, log out of the Apple ID back in. So I logged her out of her Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John ID, could not log her back into her Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John And so I did
⏹️ ▶️ John what you do in this modern age. Hey, Fable, what, what's the deal? What? What?
⏹️ ▶️ John And so there it is. It's decompiling things. It's checking on system daemons. It's doing all the
⏹️ ▶️ John things. And it basically figures out, hey, here's the problem going on. It sorts through the giant wad
⏹️ ▶️ John of stuff that goes in the system log that you could never possibly sort through. And it says, here's what's happening
⏹️ ▶️ John during the login process. It's accepting the username and password, which are correct. The login is succeeding, and
⏹️ ▶️ John then it's going to the part where it's going to log you in. And you basically get a link error where it can't find
⏹️ ▶️ John some library or the library it finds is not what's expected, and it traces where that library came from. And that library was part
⏹️ ▶️ John of the Safari update. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John Safari update replaced or hosed a library that the Apple ID system needs
⏹️ ▶️ John to log in. And so now she just couldn't log into her Apple ID.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Jonathan Mann And there's nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John I could do about it. I'm like, all right, I'll just install regular Sequoia on top of this. And it's like,
⏹️ ▶️ John can't install an old version of Sequoia on top of a new version of Sequoia.
⏹️ ▶️ John can't? It's like, no, you really can't.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, John, you know what you can do to avoid all these problems? Update your feeding operating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey system, you lunatic. Good God, this is such a self-created issue.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you know, so here we, anyway, so there it was. And again, this is not my computer. So it's, I
⏹️ ▶️ John can't, don't really have the luxury of like, I'll sort this out Cause, and, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John my wife's account works, so I'm not really in the doghouse here. My daughter
⏹️ ▶️ John the computer frequently, but the fact that she is no longer logged into her Apple ID and all her stuff is not on the computer anymore
⏹️ ▶️ John is not ideal. So I do need to resolve this. And so I resolved it the only possible
⏹️ ▶️ John way I could, which is to update to GoldenGate Beta.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, to Golden Gate Beta? Of course you did. Of course.
⏹️ ▶️ John right over Tahoe. And let me tell you, it was the best thing I ever did because Golden Gate is so much nicer
⏹️ ▶️ John than Tahoe. So yeah, I updated my wife's computer to Golden Gate Beta.
⏹️ ▶️ John And not only is it, was, it was great because, first of all, this solved my problem. No more badges.
⏹️ ▶️ John It's pretty stable. And also, I started doing macOS 27 development
⏹️ ▶️ John over there. Because I had been using, I had a Tahoe computer that I was using for Tahoe development because I have to release my
⏹️ ▶️ John apps and I have to make sure they work correctly on Tahoe, even though I'm not running it. So my dev machine is running Tahoe and that's
⏹️ ▶️ John great and everything. But what about macOS 27 development? Right. So now I have three dev
⏹️ ▶️ John machines. macOS 15 dev machine, which is my main dev machine. macOS 26 dev machine which is the macbook
⏹️ ▶️ John air macOS 27 beta dev machine which is unfortunately for my wife her computer but hey she's at work
⏹️ ▶️ John during the day so I can use her computer and I've been doing tons of macOS 27 development and doing lots of fun stuff that we'll
⏹️ ▶️ John talk about in future episodes and so yeah she's running uh golden gate beta she
⏹️ ▶️ John barely even noticed that she's running a different os which as far as i'm concerned is thumbs up that's exactly what you want
⏹️ ▶️ John you don't want them to sit down in front of the computer and say what happened i don't understand anything i briefly tried to show
⏹️ ▶️ John her the new siri and she did not care but whatever that's that the computer is working it's
⏹️ ▶️ John running uh mac os 27 beta anyway the cautionary tale is um
⏹️ ▶️ John if you really really don't want that badge to be there and you are fighting against it you can end up hosing
⏹️ ▶️ John yourself because the rules about mac os updating are so harsh now
⏹️ ▶️ John that for me to get out of the situation i was in i essentially would have had to restore from backup which i could have done but would
⏹️ ▶️ John have taken so many hours and would have been disruptive to somebody's life uh so
⏹️ ▶️ John going forward to 27 was fingers crossed i think the best thing available to me because i really didn't want to restore
⏹️ ▶️ John from a backup and you know reinstall 15 non-beta restore from backup on top
⏹️ ▶️ John of it it would have been fine but it would have taken i swear would have taken eight hours because these things take so long
⏹️ ▶️ John um especially since she doesn't have an ssd time machine backup she's got a spinning hard drive time machine
⏹️ ▶️ John backup and a NAS time machine backup and a backblaze backup right but all those things restoring
⏹️ ▶️ John from all those are slow um i think she's also got a SuperDuper clone but also on a spinning disk unfortunately
⏹️ ▶️ John she's she is the she gets the hand-me-down backup stuff doesn't she doesn't get the eight terabyte
⏹️ ▶️ John ssd uh time machine uh backup drive that i have on my thing um
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah so that's the cautionary tale be careful be careful about beta updates because you would think oh as long
⏹️ ▶️ John as the beta works fine i'm fine but then the safari update comes along and stops you from logging into your apple id
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know the other way of looking at this cautionary tale is like i said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stop being a dingus and just update your operating system i mean come on
⏹️ ▶️ John i updated it so far i'm
⏹️ ▶️ Casey i mean on the one side you should be okay before all your flying monkeys come and attack me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you one should be able to stay on the operating system you like and tell apple to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey piss off i don't want any updates
⏹️ ▶️ John and to be fair you can as long as you're okay with the badge and an occasional dialogue and i think the dialogues
⏹️ ▶️ John are actually the worst part because again i can't trust my family not to accidentally click the wrong button on one of those
⏹️ ▶️ John dialogues which is not on them it's just like you know how it is the dialogues come up you don't know what they mean yeah yeah go away
⏹️ ▶️ John go away sometimes the go away the go away button is update tonight and that's that's what gets you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you're right and and again like in the grand scheme of things one should be able
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do this and you should not be nagged incessantly about it that being said this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is such an own goal my guy it's such an
⏹️ ▶️ John did to myself i said this is a cautionary tale
⏹️ ▶️ John from me updating safari can make you not able to log into your apple id you wouldn't think it would happen
⏹️ ▶️ John it's probably a bug i could have reported it but it was too late for me and this is again
⏹️ ▶️ John assuming fable is right in its diagnostic i believe what it said it showed me the log lines i'm like yeah that seems plausible i don't know
⏹️ ▶️ John if it was actually true but you know all i know is that i couldn't solve the problem myself and neither could it
⏹️ ▶️ John so this was his explanation. take that for what you will i am sorry
⏹️ ▶️ John for you i really am but you should be happy for me because uh 27 is uh nice and fun and it's got some cool new apis