128: Blue Ring Stud
29 Jul 2015Rootless in El Capitan, the sad state of the Mac App Store, and more on Reddit.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show:
- Invisible formatting
- Chapter markers and Germany
- Follow-up:
- Satya Nadella on Microsoft's iMac
- Samsung SSDs and TRIM
- Marco's cellular-option dilemma
- Reddit
- Reddit is no longer owned by Condé Nast
- John slacked off for 46 days
- What makes Twitter marginally less crummy?
- Q&A about policies
- El Capitan's Rootless Mode
- Mac App Store... still stinks.
- Post-show:
- All three hosts learn something new about life as adults.
- Neven Mrgan's CocoaConf talk
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Chapters
- Pre-show: Invisible formatting
- Chapter markers
- Follow-up: Satya Nadella
- Follow-up: TRIM
- Follow-up: Overcast cellular
- Sponsor: Need & Foremost
- Revisiting Reddit
- Sponsor: Squarespace
- Rootless in El Capitan
- Sponsor: Igloo
- Mac App Store’s iron fist
- Post-show: Life
Pre-show: Invisible formatting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Was a John that fixed my bullet issue.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What magic did you use to do that?
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t you know haven’t you learned by now that when dealing with rich text editing applications?
⏹️ ▶️ John Where you have a kind of a what you see is what you get Output that even
⏹️ ▶️ John though this is not probably technically the case Although it used to be in some things you can conceptualize it as there being
⏹️ ▶️ John individual individual invisible formatting characters, zero
⏹️ ▶️ John with invisible formatting characters attached to text that you can’t delete
⏹️ ▶️ John and that when things touch them, they infect the thing that they touch. All formatting
⏹️ ▶️ John and rich text editors like word or any of these types of things involves manipulating
⏹️ ▶️ John what you can conceptualize as invisible zero with formatting characters. What was the one that actually
⏹️ ▶️ John had them was a word star. One of the old text editors, one of the old word processes, really old one actually
⏹️ ▶️ John had invisible formatting characters and you can make them visible. Those were the days.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can do that in word, I believe. And I thought Claire’s works would do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if any of them still have it, uh, you know, but what, oh, the old days of word processes actually were done that way these
⏹️ ▶️ John days is on behind the scenes. I have no idea how it works. I’m sure it’s much more complicated than simple invisible formatting
⏹️ ▶️ John characters. But anyway, yeah, you just have to learn how to bump the invisible, the bump, the
⏹️ ▶️ John conceptual invisible formatting characters up against each other to infect their neighbors, get their infection and move
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it just well that was the problem is I was trying to indent just the reddit related follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I was Unfortunately indenting all of the rest of the topics and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I couldn’t figure out how to uninfect them I am NOT as good a doctor as you are
⏹️ ▶️ John I know I saw that you know And you just got it like you just got to find a part that looks the way you want and use it
⏹️ ▶️ John to spread its Correct looking this to its neighbors and it’s you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know So this is like an outbreak. I need to find the monkey and then that’ll solve all my problems
⏹️ ▶️ John Word sometimes would defeat me. Word sometimes, sometimes in Word I could not figure out how to manipulate
⏹️ ▶️ John the invisible forces that control the formatting and it’s just like delete everything start a new document
⏹️ ▶️ John Right because like even if you delete all the content and you try to like paste it back in or type
⏹️ ▶️ John it in again it would like it would still obey them. Oh, yeah, it’s like a Homeopathy
⏹️ ▶️ John where like the document still has the what is it the the essence sense memory or whatever of
⏹️ ▶️ John the content that was there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before for. Diluted a million times. It still has the essence of the old formatting.
⏹️ ▶️ John you delete all the text but when you put the text back the document remembers the text that used to be there.
Chapter markers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you want some time stamps to make your your chapter markers easier?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, the time stamps move when I edit so it doesn’t matter adding the chapter markers is only taking like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can I just point out that I think if we’ve received let’s say 20 pieces
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of feedback with regard to the chapter markers Easily 18 of which have somehow traced back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh at least I bet the other two that weren’t from Germany were people who were actually Germans just were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco living somewhere else temporarily you know? Maybe a German heritage,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. It’s so funny. I don’t know what it is with the Germans and their chapter markers, but god do they ever love them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They really do. It’s funny because no one else really seems to care or even notice. Nope.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the Germans love
⏹️ ▶️ John them. Well they’re all using a popular podcast client that doesn’t support chapter markers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just, I wonder what, so what clients do support chapter markers? You would know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I’m the only one who doesn’t, actually. I don’t know. Oh really? I know the Apple one does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a limited degree. I mean it’s easy because there’s actually an API in AV player
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to just fetch chapters and it supports almost every format that’s out there in at least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a basic way And I actually tried it briefly and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It had an issue where it would just it would just write all over random memory Garbage with certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco files that had embedded artwork in their chapters.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it would just destroy the memory and corrupt everything and eventually the app would crash when you were loaded like this one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco particular file and it’s obviously it’s not well written enough to for me to you want to use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know what you should do is whenever you’re up for a new lease you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should spend you know the time leading up to then building
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chapter support so when you return to Munich to do European delivery
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you will be you will be war welcomed there like a god you think that would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work I think so because if there’s anything that Germans love in the entire world other than order
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah they I really do like the Germans though
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually I do too as much as I’m poking fun I really do as well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like these are like my people like they’re they’re nerds who drive well and are on time to things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as I’m poking fun I couldn’t possibly agree with you more and as eschatologist says in the chat, chapters
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are a form of order. That’s a fair point.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I’ve never used chapters myself as a podcast listener. And maybe that’s because I spent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the last two to two and a half years or whatever it’s been using my own app, which doesn’t support them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I’ve just never been compelled to. And there’s also a major supply issue where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very few podcasts use chapter marks. And I don’t know, what are people using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to put them in? I know there’s a web service called Auphonic that does a lot of podcast post-processing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff and they offer it, but that’s like a paid monthly kind of service. I know Jason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Snell uses that for Clockwise, but beyond that, there used to be an Apple tool I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think in GarageBand or something, but they discontinued years ago. So I don’t know what, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, I think there’s two problems here. There’s a tools problem and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a client problem, and that combines to form at least part of demand problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t know. We’ll see. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are you using? I’m solving the tools problem first. And we’re going to move
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so we should probably do some follow-up.
Follow-up: Satya Nadella
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John wanted to tell us about what such an Adela has said about your hatred of Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is a review from a while interview from a while ago where Satya Nadella is talking to
⏹️ ▶️ John Mary Jo Foley at CD net and a long interview and one I think we pulled a snippet from this Interview before
⏹️ ▶️ John which is why I had read it, but I pulled out this other snippet that I thought was interesting This is Satya
⏹️ ▶️ John Nadella talking. He says you’ve got to remember even the Apple regeneration started with colorful iMacs
⏹️ ▶️ John So let us first get the colorful iMacs. I think with what we’re doing with Lumia, we’re at that stage.
⏹️ ▶️ John I want to do good devices that people like, and then we will go on to doing the next thing and the next thing. I thought this was really interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John to see the CEO of Microsoft basically like intentionally
⏹️ ▶️ John pull them set, pull Microsoft down to Apple’s level to say, we are where Microsoft,
⏹️ ▶️ John where Apple was, uh, before their resurgence. we
⏹️ ▶️ John are at such an incredible low point that we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John at the stage where we’re going to make some colorful iMacs. We’re not at the stage where we’re making the iPod. We’re not at the stage where we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John making the iPhone or the iPad. We’re at the stage where we’re making the colorful iMacs, which I think
⏹️ ▶️ John is sandbagging in the highest degree because Microsoft is nowhere near the low point that Apple was when
⏹️ ▶️ John Steve Jobs came back or when they were introducing the iMacs. Nowhere near that low. Like financially,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the quality and number of products they have and that they sell and just
⏹️ ▶️ John like in every other respect but this is this is how the CEO of Microsoft is positioning
⏹️ ▶️ John his company to say we want you to lower your expectations of us
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess like think of us like where Apple was like you know give us a chance where you know maybe we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not blowing you away but we just want to make something cool that kind of catches the imagination is kind of popular and that’s what we think we’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John with these new Lumia phones and I know they’re not the next iPhone but you know, come on, give us a break. It took Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John a while to really interesting strategy, something that I think also that someone
⏹️ ▶️ John from the old Microsoft like Gates or Ballmer could not pull off just because since they were the people
⏹️ ▶️ John in charge when Microsoft was king of the world, it would sound weird for them to say
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft is basically where Apple is in 1998. But you know, because it would just
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if those words could even come out of their mouth or if they could put themselves into that position. But a new CEO can say
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And I thought it was an interesting strategy for how they’re trying to position
⏹️ ▶️ John their company to the outside world.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s an odd analogy, but I mean, it sort of makes sense.
Follow-up: TRIM
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why don’t you tell us about the trim saga that will never end?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think we talked about the Samsung, popular Samsung SSDs, and people were filing
⏹️ ▶️ John bugs against them. And then Samsung was like, that’s not our problem because you’re using it in Linux and Linux is
⏹️ ▶️ John a supported platform and people get angry. And then we didn’t know whether there were problems with these popular SSDs
⏹️ ▶️ John or not. The latest development in that saga is that Samsung says it’s not a problem
⏹️ ▶️ John with our firmware or drives. It’s a problem with Linux kernel. And here’s a patch to help fix it. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John what the actual problem is. Maybe their patch to the kernel works around a problem in Samsung’s
⏹️ ▶️ John SSDs. There’s another link that’s eternally being put off in the show notes where some Mac and an article
⏹️ ▶️ John is trying to test these popular SSDs and OS 10 and see if they can
⏹️ ▶️ John create a corruption. And I don’t know how rigorous their testing is. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I would say this whole thing is still a question mark to me because just because Samsung says it’s a bug in a Linux kernel and provides a patch
⏹️ ▶️ John to work around it. Was it a Linux kernel bug? Like I said, is their patch just
⏹️ ▶️ John working around a bug in the firmware? And is any of this relevant at all to people running OS X? I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ John so still I’m just hanging back and not bothering with the trim stuff and keeping my fingers crossed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. We’ll see if it pays off for him. That’s a reference by the way.
Follow-up: Overcast cellular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, tell us about your cellular option dilemma.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so in last week’s episode, I talked about how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was having an issue with deciding Overcast’s cellular download preferences,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I’m adding streaming for the next big version, and there was a question of, should streaming have its own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco preference? And I already had these two other preferences, and how do I combine these possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three preferences in any way that makes sense and is understandable by users
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and doesn’t have too much clutter in the options and complexity and everything. And I explained that part
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the reason why… so right now I have in the current version there’s two options. One of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is download over cellular which makes sense. The other one is basically like try to do anything over cellular. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reason why I couldn’t just rely on the system toggle for that was because of what I considered a bug
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the system reachability framework which is that if a user had disabled cell access
⏹️ ▶️ Marco completely for the app in iOS settings, which you can do per app, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system would still tell the app that it was connected to the Internet via cellular. And so the app would then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have the app would have no way to tell that it wasn’t that it wasn’t allowed to use this connection. So if it tried
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use the connection, it would show their annoying box to the user saying cellular data is disabled for this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app. You can change that in settings. And my feeling was it should be the way it used to be which is that if somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco disabled cell access for you in iOS 7 it would the system would report to your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app that it was just offline when it was on cellular so then you could just avoid doing things and not show that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stupid alert to people turns out in iOS 8.4 that bug is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still there but in iOS 9 it’s fixed so in iOS 9 I did some testing over the last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco couple days in iOS 9 if you as the app use the reachability
⏹️ ▶️ Marco framework to test the connection if the users on cellular and you aren’t allowed to use it it properly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reports it as offline which is the way it used to be and the way it should have always been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so this lets me remove that second setting I have now which is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s called sync over cellular it lets me remove that setting completely which is great so now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I only will have the download over cellular option in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the downloader area and I don’t need I don’t need a streaming option at all because streaming can just rely on the system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco setting if you don’t want overcast use solid data just disable it in system settings and that’s it so I’ve gone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from two settings in the current version to potentially needing three
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the next version but instead going down to one which is fantastic
⏹️ ▶️ John why don’t you need the settings anymore you saying the next version is not going to run on iOS 8
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m saying I will no longer care about a minor annoyance detail that will affect very very few people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not worth keep it like so So for instance, the current version of the app also has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a setting in nitpicky details called seek acceleration. This is a setting I’ve actually had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since 1.0. When you seek an overcast, if you hit seek back or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forward by like, you know, the 30 seconds or whatever, if you hit that a bunch of times in a row,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like so that you’re doing like you know more than one per second, basically, I forget what exactly my threshold is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if you do more than one of those per second, after a few, I start increasing the interval of their seeking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by. So it lets you, if you’re in a situation where you only have access to seek back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and forward features, like if you’re in a car and it has button integration, or if you have headphones with those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buttons on them, or a remote with those buttons on it, if you want to seek a long distance in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a track, it lets you get there a lot faster. So if you seek a whole bunch of times in a row,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’ll go like, you know, 30, 30, 30, 45, 50, 60, 90, like it’ll accelerate up to a certain ceiling.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’ve always had an option to disable that since 1.0.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that option syncs to the server, because that syncs to your account. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can actually tell how many people use it. And I’ve been watching, and I brought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up on Twitter a few months back, hey, can I just remove this option? And I learned that most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the respondents didn’t really understand what it did. Whether they said yes, remove it, or no, keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, most of them seemed like they were misunderstanding what it did. And so I decided
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that doesn’t need to be an option anymore. And I looked at the server and usage of it was under 1% of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who change the default, which is on. So in 2.0, that option is just gone. I’m not going to keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco setting around in what is a very small setting screen that’s used by fewer than 1% of the users. That’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worth the complexity. So back to the cellular thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco People who are going to disable cellular in the system preferences completely for the app.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t measure that right now I’m guessing it’s probably not below 1% but I bet it’s pretty low
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so people who are gonna disable that and also who are gonna be running iOS 8 for longer than the next couple of months
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not worth it it’s not worth keeping that setting around just just to have them to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have them be able to avoid seeing the cell data disabled dialog box
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as often as they could you know it’s it’s such a small gain for so few people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for such a short time that it’s just not worth it. Also, I’m not taking the move to iOS 9
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as something that needs to be very carefully and slowly done. As soon as iOS 9 is out, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably gonna release an update that requires it, or at least soon afterwards, depending on, you know, what compelling reasons I have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because the fact is iOS 9 runs on every device that iOS 8 runs on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Jailbreakers haven’t jailbroken it yet, I don’t think, but I don’t care. I honestly do not care at all what jailbreakers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can run. I don’t follow that. I don’t need to follow that. I think If you jailbreak, that’s up to you to follow,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I can’t waste my time on that because jailbreaking is just a nightmare of support complexity,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s just not worth it. So regardless, I don’t care about jailbreakability,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and people who hold on to old versions forever because they just don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new version, I don’t really cater to them either. I feel like if your device can run
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS whatever, I don’t feel bad requiring iOS whatever. even if you choose not to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco install iOS whatever, if you choose to keep the old version around, I consider that like, okay, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of your cost of doing that is you’re gonna lose, you know, future updates to apps that require all this stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway, that’s how I feel about that. What was the question? I forgot.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was basically asking you if you were gonna make Overcast iOS 9 only, and you eventually worked up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, right now, I’m building 2.0 against iOS 8, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would like to release it before iOS 9 is released. I don’t know if I will. Like, I don’t know if I’ll be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to. I mean, I’m trying. I would like to release it as soon as I can.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Just to be clear, the last time you said you want to release soon, you ended up a year late. Is that correct?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Something like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yes. Okay, just want to make sure we’re all on the same page here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, no, actually what is motivating me to want to release this soon is actually the playlist
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reordering bug. Because it’s too complicated to backport the fix to that into the 1.0
⏹️ ▶️ Marco branch. And so I would like to, I’m actually planning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on now cutting a few features from 2.0’s initial launch just so I can get it out faster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then adding back those features later in like 2.1 or whatever.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco So this is high-quality American-made stuff, men and women. And as an added bonus,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the code PreFollowUp will also apply to anything you buy from Foremost. So Foremost has
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco TechCrunch wrote, foremost offers J.Crew quality at H&M pricing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now I don’t know what any of those words mean, but Matt
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, do you know what those are? Yes. J.Crew quality at H&M pricing?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s a good thing? It’s a good thing. Alright, check out Need and Foremost for men and women by visiting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco neededition.com and foremostedition.com. You can even say hello and harass them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the live chat widget on the site, which is always powered by one of Needs employees or Matt himself. Never outsourced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to anybody crazy or bots. So anyway, thank you very much to Matt Alexander and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Need Edition and Foremostedition.com. Use code PREFOLLOWUP at checkout to save 25%
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Matt’s a really nice guy. He came in at the last minute, saved our butts, so support him. And he recently got engaged,
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Use code PREFOLLOWUP for 25% off. Thanks a lot to Need and Foremost for sponsoring our show.
Revisiting Reddit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So we had a discussion about Reddit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last episode, and we got some feedback about that. We got nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrong. We got nothing wrong. Not a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco We got some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feedback about that. We got less than I expected, which I was kind of happy about, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was less vile than I expected, which I was super happy about. But we’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some new thoughts or some things to address, perhaps. Um, John, would you like to tell us about some of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the things that you’ve learned, discovered, or thought about since then?
⏹️ ▶️ John Back when this was in the follow-up section, seems so long ago, um, this topic, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought of like removing a lot of it because I just listened to a last week episode and I
⏹️ ▶️ John was like, yeah, I pretty much, I think I pretty much said everything I wanted to say on the topic. And the reason I,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, cause I had all this follow-up, you know, when feedback comes in, I add corrections to the follow-up, go through it, you know, the normal pattern of stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John episode I’m like but in that episode I had so many disclaimers like at the end of the thing I was like I
⏹️ ▶️ John know I got most of the details wrong but it’s not the details that I’m talking about I’m trying to just address the big
⏹️ ▶️ John picture blah blah blah people don’t care they still want to correct you on the details but just fine
⏹️ ▶️ John so I in the end I left it in especially once Casey moved it down to be a topic but there are a couple just
⏹️ ▶️ John straight-up factual things that I didn’t later say that I knew I got wrong one of them
⏹️ ▶️ John was that reddit is owned by condé n’est and that is no longer the case. We’ll link to a little uh
⏹️ ▶️ John fact about it there where they were owned by condé n’est and then they were owned by condé n’est’s
⏹️ ▶️ John parent company but then they were spun out and reincorporated independently and so according
⏹️ ▶️ John to this thing the best characterization might be to say that reddit is a part sibling once removed of condé n’est
⏹️ ▶️ John so well that totally clears things up that was something i did not know i got wrong because most of the other
⏹️ ▶️ John details i was just like winging it and giving examples and every time i gave an example I was like I know that’s probably not accurate or true whatever I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean it makes it seem like I didn’t read a lot about this when I did I just didn’t write down or memorize the
⏹️ ▶️ John individual facts which is why I was trying to go big picture and that brings me to the next topic which is
⏹️ ▶️ John the few mildly mildly negative bits of feedback we got
⏹️ ▶️ John seemed to me to be treating all three of us as if we had never heard of red like what is this
⏹️ ▶️ John crazy reddit thing have you heard about this and I don’t know about you two guys who are younger than I am but
⏹️ ▶️ John like if I gave the impression that you know like we all said we don’t we’re not reddit regulars we don’t go to the
⏹️ ▶️ John site we are not part of the community we don’t consider ourselves redditors or whatever but it’s not as
⏹️ ▶️ John if reddit is this new thing that we just learned about when this controversy came so I went and looked up my info at least
⏹️ ▶️ John uh reddit was founded on june 23rd 2005 according to wikipedia which is never wrong my
⏹️ ▶️ John account at reddit was created on august 8th 2005 which is 46 days after it was founded so
⏹️ ▶️ John i’m sorry that i did not get in on on the ground floor of Reddit. The site was around for a whole 46 days before
⏹️ ▶️ John I joined and was a member for the next 10 years. Like, again, I’m not a regular
⏹️ ▶️ John member of Reddit, right? I do not go there frequently, but I think the
⏹️ ▶️ John most angry characterization is us being entirely out of touch with Reddit or just
⏹️ ▶️ John having discovered Reddit due to the Ellen Powell controversy is wildly inaccurate.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and I think part of what we were trying to describe is expressly what an outsider thinks of the situation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I agree with you, John, I don’t think any of us painted us as experts on what the intricacies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of how Reddit works internally, either for users or moderators or employees.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I know that we were all speaking more of, hey, from an outsider,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of third party that’s not really invested in this looking in, it looks kind of gross.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I stand by that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like that’s the perspective we were giving as casuals, like not as people who are confused by
⏹️ ▶️ John what this whole crazy Reddit thing is, but it’s just like, there’s a community, it exists, and we’re not really that involved
⏹️ ▶️ John in it. We know about it, we dip in and out of it, we see it, right? But we’re, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think that’s most people, like most people are not hardcore Reddit users. Reddit has tremendous traffic.
⏹️ ▶️ John Only a small portion of that tremendous traffic are the sort of very dedicated
⏹️ ▶️ John people who are very invested in Reddit as a community. That’s the nature of any high traffic site.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t have millions and millions of people, all of whom are super invested in you. That’s just numbers.
⏹️ ▶️ John So our perspective as sort of outsiders, outsiders who I think understand the phenomenon
⏹️ ▶️ John of Reddit and sites like Reddit and the dynamics of online communities, but are not
⏹️ ▶️ John so invested in it that sort of any discussion of any negative aspect of Reddit
⏹️ ▶️ John is seen as a condemnation of all members of Reddit. Like that’s not where we were coming from at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John We were we were giving an outside perspective and I think I certainly was not particularly
⏹️ ▶️ John interested in the specific details of whatever the controversy of the day is
⏹️ ▶️ John about he shed He said and she said this and these people are harassing this person and these
⏹️ ▶️ John are the internal politics They’re just trying to say like is red at a place that we feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John we would like to hang out You know, and if not, why not?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree with you Um, the only somewhat decent feedback, well, that’s not fair.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The, the, the feedback that struck me most that we got was someone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who said in so many words, you know, you were complaining and moaning about Reddit and how gross
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Reddit is, but a lot of gross stuff happens on Twitter. And nobody, none of the three of us really complained
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and moaned about Twitter last episode. And I, that really made me think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a minute and I don’t have any good answers. Um, maybe because I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty invested in Twitter and I’m invested in what I like to think of as the good corner of Twitter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, I don’t see a lot of the just absolutely vile, terrible, disgusting things that happen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Twitter. Cause they happen. They definitely happen, but I don’t get exposed to it yet. I feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like I hear a lot more often about the terrible, vile, and disgusting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things that happen on Reddit. And I was curious, John or Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you guys had any thoughts about why Twitter is okay, but Reddit isn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, they’re both disasters. We just know how to… I mean, I think it’s… You can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at both of those and say, wow, both of these are absolutely horrible at dealing with abusive people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s just the way it is. In fact, Twitter might even be worse. I don’t know. I don’t know enough about Reddit to say.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Twitter’s really bad about it. I know that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, we did talk about it at the last show, and I mentioned that was the objection that I said, like, I was feeling some trepidation
⏹️ ▶️ John about going to Reddit because I felt like it was kind of tacitly supporting an organization
⏹️ ▶️ John that provides a home for, you know, communities that that I
⏹️ ▶️ John that make me uncomfortable that I don’t like. Right. And I didn’t feel that with
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter. And I think for me, the difference is and I’d mentioned like, well, because,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I don’t see any ads on Twitter, so what am I really doing to support them? But you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John this feedback from Don is right that like by my participation in Twitter, I’m still supporting them whether I see ads or not. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think the reason I feel differently about is not so much with my investment in Twitter, but that
⏹️ ▶️ John for as bad as Twitter is about dealing with harassment, they,
⏹️ ▶️ John they have policies in place that if you were to look at the policies, you would say, these are good.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they show that Twitter doesn’t want this thing to happen. are really bad at implementing those policies.
⏹️ ▶️ John Many times their implementation, again, like it’s like, oh, we have a way for you to report people for harassment, we’ll do something about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like the form of require revealing your personal information to the person you’re harassing, and they would,
⏹️ ▶️ John their decision making process would not be great on it. But like the fact that the Twitter CEO comes out and said,
⏹️ ▶️ John we are really bad at this and we need to get better, and that they have taken positive steps to
⏹️ ▶️ John make their company better at dealing with this shows that this is the direction they wanna go in. It’s not as if
⏹️ ▶️ John the CEO of Twitter is saying, we’re really bad at it and that’s by design because we don’t want to clamp down
⏹️ ▶️ John too much. We wanna make sure people feel free to say whatever they wanna say. That’s not the message coming out of Twitter at all. Execution-wise,
⏹️ ▶️ John still bad, but everything they have done and everything they have said and done is saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s aspirational. They’re saying, we want to be over there. We want people to feel more welcome on Twitter. We want to
⏹️ ▶️ John deal with the harassment problem. We want to stop this from happening. And here are the things that we’re going to do. And then, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, they try to do something and people complain or whatever. And the thing that’s most upsetting to me about Reddit is
⏹️ ▶️ John the aspirational thing. Does I don’t agree with their aspirations. They read it says we want our community to be like this. I’m like, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John well that’s, I don’t like that. I don’t like that goal state. I think Twitter’s goal state, if
⏹️ ▶️ John you were to talk to the CEO of what do you want Twitter to be like, what are you trying to reach? I would agree more
⏹️ ▶️ John with what they’re going for in terms of a place where people feel like they’re free from
⏹️ ▶️ John abusive behavior or have not free from, but have the tools to deal with abusive behavior, right? The Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ John wants to provide that whereas reddit seems to want to provide a safe haven for
⏹️ ▶️ John people to trade Ideas and behave in ways that I that
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t like right and again this like I’m glad no one has brought this up to The credit of all the people of
⏹️ ▶️ John all the various reddit people who have listened to this thing and sent feedback Nobody
⏹️ ▶️ John has brought out the old, you know, the old saw about like Like, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to say that Reddit doesn’t have a right to exist. Like I’m so glad that, I mean, either that speaks to
⏹️ ▶️ John the small number of Reddit people listen to our show or the general intelligence of people who are
⏹️ ▶️ John on Reddit, not to bring out that ridiculous argument of like, I tried very hard in the last show to frame
⏹️ ▶️ John it as does this feel something, does this community feel like something that I want to participate
⏹️ ▶️ John in, why and why not? Everyone’s free to make the community they want to make. I’m talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John is does this feel like something that I want to join in and my secondary point which I think we’ll get to in a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John was like Does the community that they say they want to make
⏹️ ▶️ John is it the type of thing that I think would be broadly appealing? Right, and I think that’s that’s where you get into you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, like Marco not allowing KKK podcast on his hypothetical podcast network
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the type of decision where you can say if you did that that most people wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John care. Like that, that is something that excludes that, that would be broadly appealing
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s not a system of government. It’s just a private website. And if a private website banned that type of content,
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone would be like, all right, yeah, I’m fine with that. Like that is a broadly appealing decision.
⏹️ ▶️ John Less broadly appealing, banning vegetarians, right? Then all of a sudden, well, now you are really
⏹️ ▶️ John narrowing your audience because if you decide that’s what you want on your site, that’s fine, but a lot of people are going to rightly say,
⏹️ ▶️ John And now that’s getting to be, you know, like the whole idea that there
⏹️ ▶️ John are standards, sort of community standards, like human community standards, whether they’re local or
⏹️ ▶️ John state or country or international, community standards that mean if you
⏹️ ▶️ John want something to appeal to the broadest number of people, everyone’s okay with you excluding these ideas and this
⏹️ ▶️ John behavior. But once you start getting what, you know, once you start crossing over into like, well, that just seems like arbitrary and
⏹️ ▶️ John weird, like not allowing left-handed people. Hmm, that’s, you know, that that seems
⏹️ ▶️ John that doesn’t seem weird, but not allowing the KKK. Yeah, sure. Go ahead. Get banned them.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t like I think that’s okay. They were they were bothersome. Anyway, I don’t like those ideas. And that
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe that bothers a lot of people, especially if you have a sort of logical mindset like no, you can’t you have to allow all ideas or allow
⏹️ ▶️ John no ideas if you can’t. How do you describe that? What’s different about the KKK and left handed people like they
⏹️ ▶️ John there are just it’s equivalently arbitrary, right? They’re just ideas, man. Yeah, and I think that
⏹️ ▶️ John that brings down to the Reddit Q&A that someone linked to with the current
⏹️ ▶️ John Reddit CEO, Steve Huffman, Spez on Reddit. It’s a nice thing with the Q&A.
⏹️ ▶️ John The best thing about it, of course, is speaking of Marco’s complaints about the giant indented conversations, a nice
⏹️ ▶️ John person emailed this to us. I lost the name because it’s somewhere in our email.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the Q&A is like a bunch of questions with numbers, and then the answers
⏹️ ▶️ John follow them. So it’s like questions one through seven, questions one to three, you know, and
⏹️ ▶️ John then down below there are the answers. And the nice person who emailed us did the same thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and put the question, then answer, then question, then answer, instead of a giant list of questions and then a giant list
⏹️ ▶️ John of numbered answers. And you have to keep like mapping back and forth in your mind or keep scrolling back up. All right, so this is section two,
⏹️ ▶️ John question number two. The question was blah, and now scroll down and read the answer. God, Reddit just
⏹️ ▶️ John really is not, yeah. This is totally aside from the policy issues.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not a really welcoming site for people who don’t like navigating giant walls of indented
⏹️ ▶️ John text. Anyway, a few items from this Q&A, which I think
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t pin anything down. Like, they’re still trying to work out what they’re trying to do, but I picked out a few examples that spoke
⏹️ ▶️ John to the thing that I find unappealing about Reddit. So
⏹️ ▶️ John again, this is the CEO answering some questions. mocking and calling people stupid is not harassment.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, that was an answer to which question? I gotta scroll up and find it.
⏹️ ▶️ John In regards to subreddits for mocking another group, what is the policy on them, blah, blah, blah. So mocking and calling people stupid is not
⏹️ ▶️ John harassment. I assume that it’s defined as not harassment because either implicitly
⏹️ ▶️ John or earlier, they’re saying, well, harassment is something we don’t want and mocking and calling people stupid is not harassment.
⏹️ ▶️ John Turning this position around, what it basically means is if you come to
⏹️ ▶️ John participate on Reddit, it very well may happen that you get mocked and called stupid.
⏹️ ▶️ John Which fine, like again, you define the rules of the community, whatever you want, right? But I would compare
⏹️ ▶️ John this to the Ars Technica policy that I talked about in the last show, where Ars Technica’s thing is, no ad hominem attacks.
⏹️ ▶️ John Have a discussion on the topic at hand, disagree as violently as you want about
⏹️ ▶️ John whether Altevec or MMX is better, but no mocking
⏹️ ▶️ John people or calling them stupid. attack the person, attack the ideas. That’s the Ars Technica comment policy, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And I don’t think Ars Technica is a super high-minded site where everyone has good behavior. It is a pretty rough and tumble crowd there,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? It’s also probably male-dominated. It’s got all sort of similar pathologies of the
⏹️ ▶️ John Reddit stuff. And yet Ars Technica has this rule that says, don’t attack the person, attack the ideas. Reddit, they’re saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John mocking and calling people stupid is not harassment. That’s something we think is acceptable behavior in all of our communities.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen to you. You can’t ban someone for doing it just because they call you stupid or mock you.
⏹️ ▶️ John That, I find that distasteful. I don’t think that’s beyond the pale where it’s like, oh now
⏹️ ▶️ John your site is not broadly appealing. But I think it does, I mean, like Twitter, if you come onto Twitter and people are
⏹️ ▶️ John going to mock you and call you stupid, you’re going to want some, you’re not going to like that. You’re going to want to not
⏹️ ▶️ John see their tweets, you want to be able to block them, and if they keep doing it then it might become harassment. But anyway, they’re categorizing,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not harassment if people do that. What if you come onto a Reddit and Everybody says that
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re stupid, but everyone only says it once. And every time you appear and
⏹️ ▶️ John post anything on Reddit, each individual person on that entire forum mocks you or calls you stupid,
⏹️ ▶️ John but only does it once. That’s, I guess, still not harassment. Your experience of Reddit is that anytime you appear,
⏹️ ▶️ John no one addresses anything that you say, but they merely download you, downvote you, call you stupid and mock you.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not a particularly healthy or welcoming community where you were, that I would want to participate.
⏹️ ▶️ John And yet that’s the one that kept the thing they were defining. Another item filling someone’s inbox with PM’s
⏹️ ▶️ John private messages saying kill yourself is harassment Calling someone stupid on a public forum is not again
⏹️ ▶️ John now It’s like if you fill their inbox with private messages that only they can see saying kill yourself That’s harassment.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you just call them stupid in public, that’s not it doesn’t make any sense to me These are outlining
⏹️ ▶️ John behaviors What they’re basically saying is if you’re just if you’re just sending people private messages and saying mean things to them That’s that’s harassment.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you’re just saying it in public and you say it once it’s okay And again, they can define the they
⏹️ ▶️ John can figure out what they want the rules to be This is the things that I read that make me feel like this is not
⏹️ ▶️ John someplace that I would like to hang out because I’m not interested in Watching people call each other names,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if I’m not involved. I’m not interested in seeing people Mock each other and call each other stupid. I’m interested
⏹️ ▶️ John in an exchange of ideas. I Don’t think any of this makes reddit
⏹️ ▶️ John broadly unappealing but the type of of communities that can fit within
⏹️ ▶️ John the rules that they’re laying down that a lot of those communities are broadly unappealing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think like, if you follow the letter of the law as Reddit appears to be defining things, you can have a community
⏹️ ▶️ John that is just terrible that all it is is a bunch of people reinforcing their own really bad ideas. It was another
⏹️ ▶️ John really good one here is the number one thing was harboring unpopular ideologies is not a reason for
⏹️ ▶️ John banning, which sounds great. It’s like exactly like, yeah, what just because my ideal ideology is unpopular,
⏹️ ▶️ John I shouldn’t be banned. I think when people read that on Reddit, what they have in their mind is,
⏹️ ▶️ John if I think Enterprise is the best Star Trek series, I shouldn’t be banned. That is definitely an unpopular,
⏹️ ▶️ John that is an unpopular idea that Enterprise is the best Star Trek series. And so that’s kind of what’s in their mind. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John why should I be banned? Because I would just, you know, this tyranny of the majority, why should I have to agree with everybody else? It’s supposed to be
⏹️ ▶️ John a free and open exchange of ideas. Harboring unpopular ideology is not a reason for banning, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But ideologies are different than just ideas or statements or opinions. Harboring unpopular,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s lots of unpopular ideologies that you would say are not reasons for banning. But if your unpopular
⏹️ ▶️ John ideology is that all black people should be slaves, that is a different unpopular ideology
⏹️ ▶️ John than you think there should be a flat tax of 90% on all Americans, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John To those and from from sort of logical respect, those are just both unpopular ideologies. Why should one be banned
⏹️ ▶️ John and another not be banned? It’s all up to what kind of community you want to make. Especially
⏹️ ▶️ John if you had rules against attacking the idea, not the person. I think you could have a community in which that
⏹️ ▶️ John person who’s really in favor of the 90% flat tax on all Americans could have a
⏹️ ▶️ John reasonable discussion or debate about his or her position.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the person who thinks all black people should be slaves is never going to have a reasonable debate about it. They are different by their
⏹️ ▶️ John nature. And I think anyone can tell that they’re different, but the rules, according to
⏹️ ▶️ John the letter of the rules, they’re both unpopular ideologies and neither one is a reason for banning. And that’s the type of community
⏹️ ▶️ John that Reddit seems to be trying to create. And you know, go for it. Like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the one I make this one I make. That’s why that’s what I’m getting at when I say when I read their sort of goal
⏹️ ▶️ John state, what what are we trying to make Reddit become like they’re still working on the details and not saying they got to have it all figured out. Now the site’s
⏹️ ▶️ John only 10 years old, you know, take your time. But it’s this
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s that’s what’s repelling me. And I think like I said, I think the rules sort of as
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re as they’re evolving them now allow for a lot of things that would definitely be
⏹️ ▶️ John beyond what regular people want to get involved in. And I guess the final only
⏹️ ▶️ John final item I had on this is a couple people saying the bad stuff on Reddit doesn’t affect me. Some people saying the bad stuff on Reddit
⏹️ ▶️ John does affect them and they’re thinking of pulling back. There is something
⏹️ ▶️ John to be said about subreddits that you don’t go to not affecting your life on the Reddit with
⏹️ ▶️ John the cat pictures, right? And I think this gets back to like is all of Reddit,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, are all the people on Reddit bad? No, obviously not the vast, vast majority of people who are heavily participate even like the super
⏹️ ▶️ John heavy users. They just want to look at cat pictures, man, like, you know, it’s all good, like, and there’s great forums there.
⏹️ ▶️ John And where they discuss interesting things like tons of great stuff on Reddit. This is a case of
⏹️ ▶️ John the rules that allow all that great stuff to bloom on forum, on Reddit, also
⏹️ ▶️ John allow some bad stuff. And you don’t want to think about the bad stuff, and you don’t want to see it, but sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John those people wander over to your end. And even if they don’t wander over, you know you’re participating in
⏹️ ▶️ John a system that provides a little incubator for these people to reinforce their own ideas
⏹️ ▶️ John and recruit new people. And even if they stay within the letter of the law on the
⏹️ ▶️ John subreddit stuff, it’s basically an organization tool for things
⏹️ ▶️ John that you don’t want to happen. Like so fine, maybe they email each other privately about inciting violence. Maybe they
⏹️ ▶️ John email each other privately about doxing people, about harassing them, about doing all the things as always. As long as you don’t do it on Reddit,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s fine. Like what do you think these communities are about? Like they’re just hateful, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ John if you are on Reddit, some people isn’t bothered. I stick to the cat picture Reddit subreddit, and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John fine. And I don’t associate with them at all. I don’t think the cat picture Reddit people are tainted by the other people.
⏹️ ▶️ John But they are participating in a system that allows for that. Whereas if you’re on Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ John you are participating in a system that would like not to allow for that but but does because they’re incompetent about enforcing it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that is, I think that is a fine line. They’re like, it’s not clear cut. It is definitely not clear cut.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I like where Twitter says it’s trying to go. And so far,
⏹️ ▶️ John where Reddit says it’s trying to go doesn’t doesn’t match up with what I prefer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It just seems like they pride themselves in these decisions that like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you, I find kind of distasteful. And it doesn’t take a very big,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey logical leap to realize that, just like you said, saying enterprise is the best Star
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Trek is a very, very, very different thing than saying that all black people should be slaves.
⏹️ ▶️ John just… One is not an ideology. That’s why I’ve had the flat tax. Like the 90% flat tax, it’s more of an ideology
⏹️ ▶️ John or like Marxism or communism or some really unpopular, but it’s an ideology, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that type of ideology, like there are certain ideologies that we collectively all
⏹️ ▶️ John agree as society are so distasteful that you wouldn’t want them to be,
⏹️ ▶️ John be, you don’t want them to be part of your community, right? Like
⏹️ ▶️ John people talking about that groups discussing it like, again, because your community is a private website. Obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, we’re not the United States government, people should be able to protest, say what they want, print what they want to do whatever you want. We’re talking
⏹️ ▶️ John about what kind of community does Reddit want to create on their private website, and the kind they want to create
⏹️ ▶️ John allows for things that that I don’t like and the enterprise example. So that’s why I’m trying to come up with something
⏹️ ▶️ John that is like, non controversial, but it’s also an ideology that is super unpopular but but I think
⏹️ ▶️ John perfectly okay to discuss in a constructive way you know what I mean
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah absolutely all right anything else on reddit Marco you’ve been quiet for a while any thoughts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just don’t care honestly there’s a limited number of things I can care about and and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the drama of what seems like a really fragmented and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sometimes good, but sometimes extremely problematic community that I’m not in.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t make myself care. I just can’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not really the specifics of Reddit that I care about so much, because again, I’m not that regular of a user, and I don’t think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like a linchpin of the internet that if something bad happens to it, it
⏹️ ▶️ John diminishes that that’ll be the end of the world.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, that’s not what Redditors think, though. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I think it’ll be fine. But anyway, it is. I think it’s just a good example of
⏹️ ▶️ John how if you read like these guidelines they all seem to make sense you know like you read
⏹️ ▶️ John them and you feel they’re egalitarian they’re high minded or whatever but I
⏹️ ▶️ John you know as a incredibly insightful podcast once said it’s ramifications
⏹️ ▶️ John harboring unpopular ideology is not a reason for banning that sounds awesome right what are the ramifications
⏹️ ▶️ John of that what do you what what what does that lead to what do these series of guidelines lead to? Mocking and calling people stupid
⏹️ ▶️ John is not harassment. What kind of community do you build with this set of guidelines?” The
⏹️ ▶️ John shape of that community is not appealing to me, and I’m making, you know, I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John get called on this and I think it’s true, I’m making the extrapolation that because this is not appealing to me,
⏹️ ▶️ John and because I think I kind of understand what is generally accepted to be sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of like okay within polite society, certain things that fit within these, the letter
⏹️ ▶️ John of these guidelines are things that most people will find distasteful and would not want to be associated
⏹️ ▶️ John with, right, you know, our coon town, people do not want to be associated that in general
⏹️ ▶️ John advertisers certainly don’t, right. And just general people, if it gets too close to them, or they realize what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ John on back there, you know, definitely is not something they want to deal with, right. And I think there
⏹️ ▶️ John is a standard for that. It’s hard to define. That’s why it’s hard to write down and rules. And if you write down the rules for it’s like, Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John slippery slope, now you’re going to ban everything right but it’s something that every community
⏹️ ▶️ John of real people virtual communities everything I think deals with much more naturally
⏹️ ▶️ John and and calmly like I can’t think of another group of people that you know
⏹️ ▶️ John like if you had a bowling league and people came in the bowling lead and were mocking
⏹️ ▶️ John people and calling them stupid and you’re like well that’s not against the you know that’s fine like people say you jerks
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to bowl with you anymore right this And somehow online it’s like, well, they must be allowed to do that
⏹️ ▶️ John because we need to allow them to put their hateful words into our database. Otherwise we’re monsters.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Free speech doesn’t mean what you think it means.
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Rootless in El Capitan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, one of the things that’s been announced for El Capitan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is this rootless mode thing. And I have not had a chance to look into this at all, but I’m very fascinated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by what it means to me. And I say that because my day-to-day life
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, I live in VMware Fusion, and I am running
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Windows and VMware Fusion in order to do my day job. And it may be, and we’ll find out shortly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this will not affect VMware Fusion at all. Or it may be that VMware
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fusion will have to, or VMware will have to go to extraordinarily extraordinary lengths
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in order to get themselves back to where they are today. So John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell me about rootless mode and what does that mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John The framing for this is I just want a brief review of the
⏹️ ▶️ John basic Unix security that OS has. Unlike classic
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac OS, which these days no one listening to this show probably remembers, there are
⏹️ ▶️ John user accounts on OS X. You log into one, maybe get logged into one by default. Your user
⏹️ ▶️ John account, when you create files from a user account, you’re the user that owns them.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can only mess with, for the most part, the files that you own or that have permissions for anyone in your group
⏹️ ▶️ John or anyone at all to modify. And in practice, what that means is the operating system itself
⏹️ ▶️ John and other users crap does not have permissions set on it that allow you to do anything to it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John the files that make up the operating system are owned by a different user, they’re in a different group,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you as your regular user can’t mess with them. You can have an administrative user which
⏹️ ▶️ John is in some elevated privilege groups including something that lets them become the super
⏹️ ▶️ John user. Like when something asks you to enter an admin user password, that’s elevating your privileges
⏹️ ▶️ John to, okay, now, even though you logged into your whatever your account is, now you have super user
⏹️ ▶️ John user privileges, you can modify anything on the system. And usually you’re doing that on behalf
⏹️ ▶️ John of a program that wants to mess with files that otherwise you as a user wouldn’t be able to mess with. And
⏹️ ▶️ John this was seen by Mac users as a little bit of an annoyance, but also as a as a big win
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, oh, finally, I’ll only be able to mess with my files by default. So you can also make non admin
⏹️ ▶️ John accounts that can’t elevate their privileges, you’d have to enter some other administrative account
⏹️ ▶️ John password to elevate privileges so those people maybe couldn’t install applications or mess with the operating system
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. The downside of this, as people have always discussed, and
⏹️ ▶️ John which Rootless does not really address that much but it’s worth keeping in mind, is that, all right, so say you have
⏹️ ▶️ John a non-admin account, which a lot of people recommend, you should have a non-admin account because that way you can’t elevate your privileges
⏹️ ▶️ John to the level where you can modify anything and all you’ll ever be able to modify as your own files, you can’t delete the operating system, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t mess with anything like that. So if somehow malware
⏹️ ▶️ John got onto your system or hijacked your web browser or whatever, and it was running as you the lowly user,
⏹️ ▶️ John it would only be able to modify files on by you. Well, guess what, if they delete everything in your home directory owned by
⏹️ ▶️ John you, you’re going to be super sad because that’s all your crap. That’s all the stuff that you care about.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t in the end, you don’t really care about the operating system or so this counter to the Unix security
⏹️ ▶️ John model goes. You can reinstall the operating system but you own all of the pictures
⏹️ ▶️ John that are in your iPhoto library, all the music that’s in your iTunes thing, all the documents, all your reports, all your
⏹️ ▶️ John homework things, all your work files, all your source code, that’s all owned by you. All the files you care about are owned by you for
⏹️ ▶️ John the most part. So what is this little model where I have a regular user and then the root user
⏹️ ▶️ John is elevated privileges and it doesn’t really help me. Like if something, if some piece of code runs loose on my system,
⏹️ ▶️ John it can delete all my stuff anyway. That is the sort of counter to, oh, the Unix security model, it sounds so
⏹️ ▶️ John great, but really doesn’t help me because it still can delete all my stuff. That is all true,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that’s not what malware wants to do most of the time. Malware, kind of like viruses that kill
⏹️ ▶️ John their host really fast, like literal, you know, biological viruses, malware
⏹️ ▶️ John that wants to either be useful or to spread can’t kill its host immediately. that immediately delete someone’s hard
⏹️ ▶️ John drive is not going to get very far because it’s not going to have a chance to propagate because it’s going to immediately nuke the person’s computer
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know not delete their hard drive delete all their files like that will be really obvious that all their crap is gone they’re gonna be super mad
⏹️ ▶️ John and it won’t spread. What malware wants to do both both for the spreading purposes and like why
⏹️ ▶️ John does it want to spread it wants to spread because it wants to become a powerful thing. What you want malware to do
⏹️ ▶️ John is to silently infect someone’s computer to make it a slave of your botnet to let it mine for bitcoins
⏹️ ▶️ John to launch distributed denial service attacks to do keystroke logging to steal pictures
⏹️ ▶️ John to turn on the webcam and record people like what most malware wants to do
⏹️ ▶️ John is be hidden it doesn’t want to delete all your files because that would be really obvious and you would notice and you would immediately
⏹️ ▶️ John know something is messed up it wants to get its hooks into your system in an invisible way
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s where the standard Unix protection comes from.
⏹️ ▶️ John Where, if it wants to really get its hooks into your system, what it really wants to do is modify files that are part of the operating
⏹️ ▶️ John system. So we can like log all the keystrokes of every user logged in or, or control the hardware in ways
⏹️ ▶️ John that an individual user couldn’t, it wants to sort of infect the binaries that you run a lot of which
⏹️ ▶️ John are applications installed in the application folder that maybe you don’t own because they were installed by a different user or domain user or infect
⏹️ ▶️ John the operating system itself or get into the IO level, or you know, that’s what malware wants to do. And so having
⏹️ ▶️ John a separate set of permissions where plain old your plain old user account can’t modify
⏹️ ▶️ John system files can’t install kernel extensions that that intercept all your keystrokes
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, that’s a good thing, right? So that’s the content. That’s that’s the current situation. We haven’t discussed
⏹️ ▶️ John anything about El Capitan yet, right? But El Capitan is system integrity protection or
⏹️ ▶️ John rootless mode or whatever is trying to do is add another layer of protection, which is instead of just having your regular user
⏹️ ▶️ John that can elevate, you know, the privileges up to the root user that can do anything,
⏹️ ▶️ John and having the root user account that can do anything, they want to say, okay, you got a regular user account,
⏹️ ▶️ John some of those regular user accounts are admin users who can elevate their privileges to root level, but even root can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do everything. So even if you elevate your permissions by entering an admin password, or you become the root user
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, even that user still can’t do some stuff and the some stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John that they can’t do is modify system files,
⏹️ ▶️ John inject their code into other running processes and all sorts of other things that you would take for granted on a regular
⏹️ ▶️ John Unix system. Once you elevate your privilege to super user level you can do anything. That’s the whole point of the super user. They are
⏹️ ▶️ John you know ID zero. They can do anything they want. It doesn’t matter who owns it. It doesn’t matter. They can do everything. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is limiting the power of the root user and it’s doing that because because
⏹️ ▶️ John history has shown that it’s not too difficult to take an admin user account and either trick them into
⏹️ ▶️ John entering their admin password or find an exploit that elevates their privileges up to admin level,
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s where the malware can really get its hooks deep into your system. And this is saying even if the malware gets that far, even if the malware
⏹️ ▶️ John finds, tricks a user into entering their admin password and they are an admin user, or finds a bug that elevates their
⏹️ ▶️ John privileges, we still don’t want them to be able to mess with the operating system. system
⏹️ ▶️ John is super important like that’s where their stuff is but because that’s what malware wants to do to really take over
⏹️ ▶️ John the computer to really like you know install that keylogger that gets every single keystroke that every user ever types
⏹️ ▶️ John in this computer and you know emails it to everybody and takes pictures of them and records their credit card number and does all
⏹️ ▶️ John sorts of other nasty things that’s what these things want to do
⏹️ ▶️ John so yeah that’s that this is the feature as described and the
⏹️ ▶️ John details this if you want to see the details of this. This is in WWDC session 706 innocuously
⏹️ ▶️ John named security and your apps, which is probably the reason I didn’t even favorite it when I was at WWDC. You
⏹️ ▶️ John know, because it’s like, what are they gonna talk about there? That’s boring. But by the time I heard what it was in, it was too late. But anyway, videos are freely available.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll put the link in the show notes, you can take a look at it goes through all the different things it’s going to do. I’m heartened
⏹️ ▶️ John to learn that, like the directories they’re limiting to the system only is like slash system slash
⏹️ ▶️ John bin slash user slash s bin all the things you would expect them to forbid messing with.
⏹️ ▶️ John Where are you supposed to put your stuff, your Unix-y stuff? User local, like they’ve been saying
⏹️ ▶️ John for years and years. Put your stuff in user local. User local belongs to the user. Apple will not blow
⏹️ ▶️ John it away on system installs. I’ve been using it for a long long time now. I’ve never had it go
⏹️ ▶️ John wrong. User local is your friend. That’s where you should put your Unix-y stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And of course in your home directory and all sorts of stuff like that. The limitations that they’re adding here,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, all sound good for the purposes of increasing security,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there are, once again, ramifications of them that are worth considering. Like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t modify system binaries? That’s fine. You shouldn’t be able to do that anyway. Can’t install things in the system locations? That’s fine. Kernel extensions
⏹️ ▶️ John have to be signed? Well, they had to be signed already, so that’s not a new, you know, thing. There may be some badly
⏹️ ▶️ John behaved software out there that does currently try to shove stuff into bin user s bin or something like that maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John vmware does but it’s pretty easy for them to fix that by just putting their stuff in user local so that’s why i think vmware
⏹️ ▶️ John will probably be okay kernel extensions vmware i think has kernel extensions i don’t know casey maybe you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey i’ve never paid close enough attention but i would presume so
⏹️ ▶️ John but if they do you can still have kernel extensions current extensions still saying they have to just have to be signed and i think there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John probably some you know approval process or something going on but like you know official uh atv tipster
⏹️ ▶️ John and vmware doesn’t have kernel extensions but anyway you can still have kernel extensions They just have to be signed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, now he says it does and they are signed. Anyway, I think they’re behind. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not a big deal either. It’s just probably like installers that put stuff in slash bin just because their shirts in everybody’s path.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they really should put it in user local bin and, you know, modify people’s path and do whatever they
⏹️ ▶️ John have to do. Can’t attach to running processes and inject code.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, can’t use D-trace probes on these projected processes. is all sorts of stuff like that. This is
⏹️ ▶️ John a thing that you can disable, obviously. You can’t disable it by becoming root, so you’re not going to do sudo
⏹️ ▶️ John some command and then turn this off, as the whole point is that root’s power is limited. If you want to disable
⏹️ ▶️ John it you have to boot into the recovery OS and disable it from there, the little recovery partition they put in there.
⏹️ ▶️ John The configuration changes are stored in nvram, and if you if you turn off
⏹️ ▶️ John this mode, if you say I don’t want this rootless prediction anymore
⏹️ ▶️ John that setting will persist across across OS install so if you install a new OS it won’t suddenly turn back on or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John so they’re trying to be friendly about this although the slides say this system of how to actually enable this if I don’t want it is
⏹️ ▶️ John something to change probably but you know this is again just you know I doubt most
⏹️ ▶️ John people will bother messing with it’s kind of like when trim support was only available if you turned
⏹️ ▶️ John off the kernel extension signing verification nobody wanted to do that and it was scary. I don’t think anyone will want to turn this off.
⏹️ ▶️ John But there are ramifications for this type of decision. And the one that came to my mind immediately after hearing
⏹️ ▶️ John all sorts of Mac developers talk about this, and all developers complaining for years about the
⏹️ ▶️ John things that the Mac App Store doesn’t allow to exist, like the kinds of apps that that aren’t allowed in the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac App Store, are very often the most interesting apps to me. And the one I thought of immediately
⏹️ ▶️ John is Dropbox, a fairly popular application that got its start, the Mac version
⏹️ ▶️ John of it, got its start by, you know, making that magical folder that syncs. But
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the key features, I think, of Dropbox, when it was introduced and to this day, is that when you
⏹️ ▶️ John install Dropbox on OS X, and you have your little Dropbox folder, and you drag things into it,
⏹️ ▶️ John it badges your little icon with like a little blue spinny thing. And when it’s completely synced, you get a little green check
⏹️ ▶️ John mark badge. And those little badges, like it’s like, oh, it’s just a magical folder, but also there’s this little extra bit
⏹️ ▶️ John of UI tells me when something has finished syncing. Right? That is… there weren’t many features for
⏹️ ▶️ John Dropbox. It made a folder with an icon, it did a bunch of magic stuff behind the scenes, and those little icons
⏹️ ▶️ John were basically the whole UI and also adding a context menu that pops up. But those little icon badges,
⏹️ ▶️ John how the hell do they little add little icon badges to the Finder? Like they didn’t install an alternate version of the Finder. Well they did…
⏹️ ▶️ John they did in-memory patching of the Finder process. The Finder was a running process as part of
⏹️ ▶️ John the operating system, and they would inject their own code into the running
⏹️ ▶️ John image of the finder to make it do those little badges. You could not have Dropbox in a world
⏹️ ▶️ John where rootless mode exists. In the old days. Obviously now you can because Apple made an official API for
⏹️ ▶️ John it because there are no dummies and they know Dropbox is really popular. But what I’m thinking of is the next innovative
⏹️ ▶️ John app like Dropbox. Like, you know, if Dropbox didn’t exist, El Capitan came
⏹️ ▶️ John out, became the dominant OS install, and someone had the idea for Dropbox, it could not exist on OS X
⏹️ ▶️ John because there’s no way to do what it did. The path that it followed was do something super nasty
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple doesn’t like, keep fighting Apple for years to be able to in-memory patch
⏹️ ▶️ John their running process, eventually become so popular that Apple is forced to give you an
⏹️ ▶️ John official API, and then have Apple close the door behind you and say now no one else can do what Dropbox
⏹️ ▶️ John did. And this is the type of thing that I
⏹️ ▶️ John worry about about from with all of Apple’s policies, not so much that like
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re going to stop me as a user from doing what I want because Apple’s pretty good at least on OS 10 for giving you a way to like turn all
⏹️ ▶️ John this crap off if you don’t want it, but that is necessarily limiting the types
⏹️ ▶️ John of things creative third-party developers can do. Where
⏹️ ▶️ John is the next Dropbox going? Is the next Dropbox going to even be on the Mac? Is it even to be able to get off the ground? Is it
⏹️ ▶️ John going to be able to get to the point where it can get to a level of popularity where Apple is forced to
⏹️ ▶️ John put official support for the API’s that it wants into his operating system or
⏹️ ▶️ John is Apple just slowly closing the door on interesting application
⏹️ ▶️ John ideas which have never been available available on iOS because you’ve always been limited what you do there but the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John has been the remaining area where people can try crazy sorts of things and even if Apple doesn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John an official API for them if something works and it becomes popular And people want it that’s sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John the signal to Apple Hey people really like using their Macs to do this and this company has been doing it in a super dangerous
⏹️ ▶️ John ways for years Maybe you can give them a nice API for that this rootless thing is like nope You’re never
⏹️ ▶️ John even gonna be able to do it a dangerous way Because no one’s gonna be able to tell everybody like Dropbox could not have gotten off the ground if they
⏹️ ▶️ John had to tell everybody Hey, by the way reboot into recovery partition and turn off this security thing. You don’t understand and then install Dropbox. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John great Nobody would do it. It would not become popular popular. So that is the
⏹️ ▶️ John promise and the worries surrounding rootless mode or system
⏹️ ▶️ John integrity or whatever you want to call it in El Capitan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do you think some degree of that might be solved by market forces if necessary? So for instance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suppose like, you know, one of the ways that a lot of these, one of the most common categories of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this kind of thing that I know of are kind of hacks and plugins to mail.app.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Aren’t most of those using some kind of thing like this that won’t be possible anymore?
⏹️ ▶️ John They were back in the day. I don’t know if they are, if that’s the thing that goes on. Does
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple have an official API for mail plugins at this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point? I don’t remember. I’m not sure. Anyway, you can look at situations like that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where there’s some system app and it has some shortcomings or there’s some compelling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco features that can only be added by these kind of things, right? And And so you’re saying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, we’re not going to see those at all. I’m saying we will probably still see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. Like if it’s compelling enough, we will still see those things, but we will see them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just in other places. So in the, in the example of Dropbox, like we just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco won’t see it on Mac. Like, you know, if that kind of thing is not possible, it’ll come to windows first. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in reality, these days mobile really matters so much. I’m not sure if something like that could launch today
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and end up mattering. But regardless, it would go on the platforms first. In the case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of application plugins, like mail plugins, if those become not possible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through any kind of rootless protection or anything like that, then we’ll just see things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco alternative mail clients coming up with compelling features instead.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you think that’s an equivalent thing though? Like the people who would make the mail plugin,
⏹️ ▶️ John making a full-fledged mail application that includes the feature that you want is a way higher bar than figuring out how
⏹️ ▶️ John to hack some plugin into mail.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, look at where the innovation’s happening now. It’s not in mail, it’s in Gmail. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe that was a bad example, but there are things like that where there are other ways
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for great, compelling ideas to gain traction and get out. And maybe it’s harder, and maybe some of them are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco closed off but overall, I see this as really just another
⏹️ ▶️ Marco technological progression. First, in the early days, you could just scribble all over memory,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now we have protected memory. and you can’t just do that quite as easily. And a lot of these things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are kind of memory invasion hacks like that, but some of them are not quite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as bad as that. But as technology progresses, we’re getting more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and more protections and safeties around things like system processes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and user security and everything. And most of these protections cut off categories
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of apps and hacks and add-ons that were previously possible. And so far,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can look back at these progressions, and I don’t think anybody’s arguing that we should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco undo any of them, or make holes in any of them. Overall, I think we really have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made substantial improvements by adding more protection over time. And there are certain things like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, like the political downside of these protections are things like there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not being a way to side load apps on iOS for users, you know, stuff like that. Like that, and that’s bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they improved that too on iOS 9. Like now a regular person can
⏹️ ▶️ John build and sign their own applications in Xcode and put it on their device without doing any weird stuff, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, yeah, I mean, yes, that’s true. That’s of limited usefulness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe because most people are not gonna be able to do that, but just skill-wise and time-wise,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regardless, these protections over time generally improve computing for people. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generally improve stability and improve security, and usually we look at them all and say, you know what,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re better off now. So most of these rootless protections are common sense. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only, you know, some of them might be might be restrictive to applications and innovation and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think I think the the percentage of those is going to be extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco low in it, relative to like everything that matters in computing today, where the innovation is happening in computing today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s moving away from places where it’s important to be able to inject code in random
⏹️ ▶️ Marco places or modify system files. I don’t think we’re seeing a lot of that kind of innovation anymore. I don’t think we will,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because of just the way the world is moving. So even if Apple didn’t do this, like how likely is it that the next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco disruptive startup was gonna be a Finder hack? You know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John honestly not that likely.
⏹️ ▶️ John How likely was it to begin with? But it was, like it totally was. Dropbox was essentially a Finder hack
⏹️ ▶️ John and a bunch of Python scripts. Yeah, but how many years ago was that? I know, but like I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think it’s outside the realm of possibility. As doors close, obviously it’s like, oh, we’re seeing less of these hacks. Well, no, you’re seeing
⏹️ ▶️ John less of these hacks because they’re making them less possible. But I agree with you. I think I wouldn’t I’m not arguing against
⏹️ ▶️ John these protections, but I think if you’re going to, you know, if you’re going to add these
⏹️ ▶️ John protections, which I think you should do, you have to modify your other policies to match
⏹️ ▶️ John the reality that you are now disallowing excuse previously, you know, intentionally or not,
⏹️ ▶️ John what Apple was relying on is sneaky, clever people will find ways to bypass things and do
⏹️ ▶️ John things that we don’t want them to do. We will be angry about it and try to stop
⏹️ ▶️ John them. But despite our best efforts, some of them are going to become wildly popular, and then we will grudgingly add
⏹️ ▶️ John official API support. And whether that is a conscious strategy,
⏹️ ▶️ John or just like how things turn out, that is sort of the lifecycle of the of the
⏹️ ▶️ John innovative software application, right on the Apple platform. And if you change that lifecycle
⏹️ ▶️ John by saying, you know what, we want to cut out the early part where they do the nasty thing in the gross way
⏹️ ▶️ John that we don’t think it should be because it’s dumb, like we don’t want people hacking, like I don’t want people, you know, I didn’t like the fact that Dropbox
⏹️ ▶️ John did in-memory hacking. I remember finding ways to disable it by removing the little context menu, like injecting thing and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that’s all bad. But if you take that away, you have to come up with a new life cycle.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the new life cycle could be a developer, you know, a bunch of developers
⏹️ ▶️ John have a reasonable request for system API support for badging icons in the finder.
⏹️ ▶️ John The current Apple would, there’s no mechanism for you to get that API. Like it’s chicken and
⏹️ ▶️ John egg. You can’t say, no matter how many developers say, boy, we really wish there was a way we could intercept audio system wide, because
⏹️ ▶️ John we have some great ideas for like audio hijack three or whatever, like, even if 15 different
⏹️ ▶️ John companies or even if like Adobe and Microsoft said Apple is just like, that doesn’t seem important to us. You
⏹️ ▶️ John shouldn’t do that anyway. Like, like there isn’t there is no alternate lifecycle for these innovations. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re cutting off one way for these things to come out. And I don’t see them opening up to the point where like, we’re willing
⏹️ ▶️ John to entertain your suggestions for new API’s, even if it’s a lot of works for for assemblement, and it will only benefit
⏹️ ▶️ John you as a third party, simply because we want those kind of innovative ideas in our platform.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right? Like, they need to do you need to make an alternate path like as I put just put a link in the show notes for
⏹️ ▶️ John the umpteenth time to my really old paths in the grass thing with which is a thing about hackseas
⏹️ ▶️ John with the Larry Wall quote, which is not really his quote, but he’s quoting somebody else about
⏹️ ▶️ John university campus where they don’t pay anything, they just let people walk around and wherever they wore down the grass, that’s where you put the path.
⏹️ ▶️ John System hacks like that are telling you what is it that people want to do. And it’s really like you need to come up with a good way
⏹️ ▶️ John to find out, all right, do people really want stupid badges on their icons? Or is this just something some random kid at
⏹️ ▶️ John MIT thinks would be cool for people to have? It’s not even a product, it’s just a feature. Like it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John sound like could, what’s his name? Drew, whatever. Could he
⏹️ ▶️ John somehow have convinced Apple to add an official API for badging icons in the Finder? I don’t see
⏹️ ▶️ John how there’s any way he could possibly do it like there needs but there needs to be some way for
⏹️ ▶️ John if you can’t do it the hacky way what is the official way of doing what is the official way of making
⏹️ ▶️ John OS 10 or iOS or any platform that Apple controls a viable place
⏹️ ▶️ John for you to do this new innovative thing that currently there’s no well-supported way to do and like
⏹️ ▶️ John you said markers like well they can’t do it here they’ll do it first on Windows or whatever like I think all computing platforms are moving
⏹️ ▶️ John in this direction. And secondarily, I don’t think Apple would be happy with
⏹️ ▶️ John the answer. Oh, we’ll just let the innovation happen another platform, then we’ll copy it, right? Apple wants the innovation to happen on its
⏹️ ▶️ John platform. But innovation is weird, and you can’t predict what it’s going to want. So you have to have some way for
⏹️ ▶️ John the people with good ideas to be able to do what they want to do on your
⏹️ ▶️ John system. And that’s a harder problem, I think, because back when you just let them hack stuff up, you
⏹️ ▶️ John got to you didn’t have to decide you’d be like, well, that person did a crazy hack and no one cares that person did a crazy hack and no one cares that one
⏹️ ▶️ John did a crazy hack and no one cares oh this person did a crazy hack and the entire world loves Dropbox Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t make that call how does Apple know that is it going to listen to all those guys and say I want an API for this I want an API
⏹️ ▶️ John for like in some respects the old one where you let the people hack your system was easier for Apple but now they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of putting themselves on the hook to either box out these creative ideas or find
⏹️ ▶️ John some new way to sort of vet which crazy ideas are worth implementing and which aren’t.
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Mac App Store’s iron fist
⏹️ ▶️ John Before we leave this topic, a real-time follow-up from the ATP tipster. VMware doesn’t shove stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John in the system directories. VMware does use kernel extensions. And VMware currently works in El Capitan’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So life is good for me. Right, and he mentioned also, too, like Rogue Amoeba’s various audio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hijack products and stuff like that. Those all have signed text. So those will all still work as well. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I think. But they’re not available
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac App Store,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco definitely. Well, that doesn’t mean
⏹️ ▶️ John anything these days. Right. but couldn’t be available. Not just because of their choice to put it there, but they could not put
⏹️ ▶️ John the, my understanding is that you could not put Audio Hijacked on the Mac App Store. It violates the guidelines of the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As far as I know, that’s true. I mean, like there are certain loopholes, like some apps will, they’ll have like a basic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version on the App Store that can do some functionality, but then to do anything fun, you have to like go to their website and download this optional extra component
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all sorts of stuff like that. Like there are different hacks, but for the most part, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think, whether something is allowed at the Mac App Store is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost completely irrelevant to the possible innovation that can happen on the Mac, because the fact is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac App Store is just a disaster in so many ways. I mean, the actual app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco itself, from a user perspective, is awful. The policies are draconian
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and restrictive and oppressive and way worse than iOS relative to what’s normal on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco platform. It’s buggy. It’s just awful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s so many things about it are terrible that we can’t say that, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if that won’t fly in the Mac App Store then it won’t happen on the Mac, because the fact is it’s getting to the point now where the App
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Store is really a ghost town and almost everything good on the Mac is outside of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But like the Mac App Store, as bad as it is and people might be leaving it, I think it does express
⏹️ ▶️ John what Apple wishes Mac Apps would be like, like the fact that sandboxing was there
⏹️ ▶️ John first and was a requirement and and they don’t want you to do any sort of hacks and they don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John you to install stuff. Like, Apple wishes all apps were as nice and neat and self-contained
⏹️ ▶️ John as the Mac App Store guidelines dictate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but the Mac App Store, it’s like XHTML.
⏹️ ▶️ John You really hate XHTML, don’t you? You keep pulling that one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out. Really, why not say it? Well, no, it was a great example of, the cat was already out of the bag,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everybody was already doing things this whole other way, and the standards group’s gonna say, all right, we’re gonna lock everything down be very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco restrictive and formal. Here’s the new way to do it. And everyone basically just said no.
⏹️ ▶️ John XHTML had a had a transitional DTD like it wasn’t that hard and fast. But I think the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac App Store is more like it’s all going to be s expressions like you know, forget about all those
⏹️ ▶️ John attributes and tags like it’s so limited, but the limitations of the Mac App Store like I
⏹️ ▶️ John really feel like they express what Apple wishes Mac software development
⏹️ ▶️ John was like. They don’t match the reality of what Mac software development actually is
⏹️ ▶️ John like and I don’t think they also are enough of an overlap with what users actually want.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think applications like Audio Hijack fill a need for people who want that type of application. Like this is great.
⏹️ ▶️ John It makes me happy that I have my Mac because this Mac can do this amazing thing with this application
⏹️ ▶️ John that like lets me use my Mac to do interesting things. But that can’t fit within the guidelines
⏹️ ▶️ John of the Mac App Store. So you know, history has has shown so far that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John has been really good about like, well, we’ll have this Mac App Store where we show you what we want to be, but we’re not going to stop
⏹️ ▶️ John you from loading crap like we’ll do everything they can with like developer IDs and the, the what is it called
⏹️ ▶️ John gatekeeper thing and they even have like the gatekeeper setting toggle back from the insecure one to the secure one. If you like turn
⏹️ ▶️ John on the insecure mode for a second, you forget about it. And you don’t launch an app that wouldn’t be allowed like it toggles back, like
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re trying to do everything they can while allowing power users to do what they want, but still they just want everything to be kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John herded over there. And eventually they’re just gonna come up against these hard things like what if you know
⏹️ ▶️ John they should go through the exercise and say what if you really did want everything to be in the Mac App Store but now you couldn’t have Photoshop anymore?
⏹️ ▶️ John How would you square that circle? What would you do to deal with it? You’d obviously have to do something because you’re not gonna say like well tough
⏹️ ▶️ John luck Adobe’s got to rewrite their application so it fits in the Mac App Store. Like they would they would figure out hey Adobe what
⏹️ ▶️ John do you need to get like, and they just don’t seem to extend that sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John effort to the smaller applications. And so we’re left in the situation where most Mac software that
⏹️ ▶️ John people really like and care about is either not in the Mac App Store or not in the Mac App Store only
⏹️ ▶️ John and more and more software that people do care about is leaving the Mac App Store because it’s too much of a hassle to be there. And I don’t think this is
⏹️ ▶️ John bad software like panics applications you know, talk about the poster child for like doing things the Apple way they’re practically
⏹️ ▶️ John a miniature Apple, even they can’t stick it out in some cases for the Mac App Store for their applications because it’s just too darn
⏹️ ▶️ John much of a hassle. Did they leave the App Store or did they just get rid of the iCloud thing? I forget. I think they just did their own sync
⏹️ ▶️ John service because they couldn’t handle the iCloud thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe they did leave for one of them. I don’t remember. I think, anyway, you know, the fact is, like, the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco App Store has been, I think, a colossal failure. I mean, not a level of ping, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not, but honestly not that far off in just like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how How much people are using it these days, how relevant it is, how much it is really not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all the future of app deployment and sales on the Mac. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, it’s not as bad as Ping, but I don’t think it’s that far off. It really is terrible. It really has been a huge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco failure, and it seems like there are lots of forces
⏹️ ▶️ Marco within Apple and some of it just like inertia, some of it might be politics. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco internals, but it just seems like whatever forces got it to that state where it’s in now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where Apple just tried to rule with such an iron fist, especially with sandboxing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coming in after the fact, which really hurt things. Just ruling with such an iron fist there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that everyone really just left. Now as a consumer, we’ve tipped the point
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where, when it first came out, I used to buy as many things there as I could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because then I wouldn’t have to deal with serial numbers or anything. I knew I could install it on my laptop and my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco desktop and it wouldn’t give me crap. But what has happened since then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is enough big apps have left it that now I’m afraid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to buy anything there. Now if something is available in or out of the App Store, I’ll buy it out of the App Store by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco default now. I feel like that’s happened with a lot of people. As soon as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that happens to you once, for an app you bought in the App Store then and leave the app store, I think as soon as that happens to you once,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re very likely to switch in that way, the way I did.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there’s still a barrier though to buying outside the app store for normals, right? For regular people, like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a reason everyone loves the iOS app store, like you just click, click, oh, you got a thing, like especially because so many people have
⏹️ ▶️ John iTunes accounts and the credit card is already there, like the benefits are there for regular people. It’s a luxury that we have
⏹️ ▶️ John to be like, oh, I know what to do when I get burned in this way. Because I think regular people
⏹️ ▶️ John do get burned. And by the way, CMF in the chat room pointed out that Coda 2 is the one I was thinking of is out of the Mac App Store. What about
⏹️ ▶️ John all those people who bought Coda on the Mac App Store and now it’s out of it? Like they have the frustration, they’re in the situation,
⏹️ ▶️ John but are all of them ready to know which website to go to
⏹️ ▶️ John and know how to buy it online and deal with the serial numbers and do it like, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John okay with that because that’s the way it was for the longest time. But for people who are sort of came into computers in
⏹️ ▶️ John the iOS App Store age, they’re used to just going someplace and clicking a thing and getting the application
⏹️ ▶️ John and just having it there like those benefits are still there. And you mentioned like them ruling with an iron
⏹️ ▶️ John fist in the Mac App Store. I think the problem is that they,
⏹️ ▶️ John it wasn’t that they’re ruling with iron fist, they have the carrot and the stick, right? And the stick was
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of floppy and non-existent because bottom line, you didn’t have to buy through the Mac App Store, you can get your stuff. So
⏹️ ▶️ John the stick is barely there. Like they don’t really have much of a stick to make people be in the Mac App Store as evidenced
⏹️ ▶️ John by all the people leaving it, right? and the carrot was kind of a rotten, crappy carrot too. So
⏹️ ▶️ John there was no real stick to force people to be there and no real carrot for you. Like, this is why you shouldn’t be
⏹️ ▶️ John in it. In the beginning, it seemed like there was a carrot. Hey, people are excited by the Mac App Store. I gotta be there to get the sales. But as it kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of fizzled, the carrot is looking less appealing. And like, there basically is no stick. Like, even for regular
⏹️ ▶️ John people, if anyone has a Mac and knows how to buy software for it at all, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can Google and find something. And it’s not like, it’s difficult, but it’s no more difficult than it was before the app
⏹️ ▶️ John store, it’s exactly as difficult. And before the Mac App Store existed, people made money selling software for the Mac somehow.
⏹️ ▶️ John It wasn’t a mass market like iOS. It wasn’t something that everybody did. The number of people who owned
⏹️ ▶️ John Macs and who bought software for it was much smaller than the number of people who had iOS devices and install apps.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everyone who’s got an iOS device is just tapping around that app store and installing something, right? Even if it’s just a Facebook app,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But it was still a viable business. So it seems like we’re slowly reverting to that where the Mac App Store
⏹️ ▶️ John is filled with the few apps that can now can still fit within its guidelines. And
⏹️ ▶️ John again, Koda and panic when panic can’t get their app on your thing, like they’re like the most
⏹️ ▶️ John conscientious, like, made an Apple’s image all the similar like,
⏹️ ▶️ John quality and wanting to do the right thing. And they struggled with a really long time with sandboxing with their application
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to make a go of it working with Apple for like a year to like, if they can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John make a go of it like that, like what hope is there for anybody else because they’re not Coda is not like
⏹️ ▶️ John a you know an application that’s injecting code into the finder to put badges and icons like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s an IDE for web development for crying out loud and you can’t have that is that outside the realm of things you can have
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac now X codes in the Mac App
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Store not that counts because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the best thing like you know Apple can put stuff in the Mac App Store does whatever the hell it wants because the rules don’t apply to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it was just part of the problem I mean that’s part of the problem with both app stores but especially the Mac one is that they don’t dog food most of these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things so it’s really a disaster well and even as user so not only am I now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco disincentivized from buying things there that are out that are available elsewhere but in recent times
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t even look there anymore because so many great apps are not available there and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it only takes a couple of times you’re looking for an app before you kind of develop that pattern of you know I now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have now I have to look in the App Store and out of the App Store like an iOS it’s great you can just look in one place and you can and see this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is everything available for this platform. For the Mac, it was never that way, but at least when it started,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could tell it’s going this way, and there was more stuff there, it seemed like. Now, it’s like if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want an app to do X, I have to search in the Mac App Store, and then I also have to do a web search, and I also have to find, it’s like.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like the bad old days, when you just like, you didn’t have one place to look. Like again, this is something that should be an advantage
⏹️ ▶️ John for the Mac App Store, and it’s just not enough. It’s just not enough of a carrot. Like that’s why people were in it in the beginning. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll be findable. People don’t even know that a website exists. Like people don’t know where to even start to get Mac apps
⏹️ ▶️ John or to get Mac software. But hey, here’s a place to start. It’s right at the top of the Apple menu. Let me just go there.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like, I think I fear what’s happening now is people go to that item at the top of
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple menu and they think that’s all there is for the platform. Like that’s a natural thing to think. If you
⏹️ ▶️ John are someone who like came to the Mac from iOS or whatever, oh, I guess these are all the things I can get for the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe someone might’ve heard of Photoshop and go, where’s Photoshop? Isn’t that, I’ve heard of that. Isn’t that, not that,
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess the casual people wouldn’t buy Photoshop because it’s an expensive application, but, or I guess Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John Office too. Is that in the Mac App Store? I forget. I think it might be actually. Yeah, but anyway, like some things are still outside of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there are applications that, you know, like Apple applications that don’t have to abide by the rules, but like that would be the worst
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Like if you get a Mac and think that the stuff on the Mac App Store
⏹️ ▶️ John is the extent of what you can do with a Mac, like you’re just missing out on too much
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. you know, is Dropbox in the Mac App Store? Maybe it is now that they have the icon
⏹️ ▶️ John badging thing, but certainly in the old days, that Dropbox couldn’t be in the Mac App Store because it injected code into the
⏹️ ▶️ John Finder. Not gonna be in the Mac App Store. If you thought that you got a Mac and you couldn’t get Dropbox, like
⏹️ ▶️ John I went to the Mac App Store and I couldn’t find Dropbox. Is that not a thing on the Mac? Like, because I’ve heard my friends talk about it and they said
⏹️ ▶️ John I should get it, but I don’t see it anywhere. Right, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, first of all, little aside here, Dropbox for me has never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worked worse than it does on Yosemite. it is net because that when they added that integration
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the finder integration with the extension point so they don’t have to inject code it’s buggy as hell it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so buggy I caught and I tweeted about this and a bunch of people said they see the same thing I constantly have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco issues where a file will be updated you know remotely from somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else often it’s like our shared folder when you guys upload your audio a file we update upload updated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it in In Finder, in Finder Windows, it will lose its badge,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it will be the old file name, not the new one. So basically a ghost file name
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will appear to be there. And if you go into Terminal and you LS it, it shows the correct contents. But in the Finder Windows, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco showing stale contents, and it will still show an old file, and a new file won’t show up until you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco relaunch Finder, in which case it’ll be fixed for 20 minutes, maybe. So many people have reported
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they have the same problem. Old Dropbox never had that problem. Like, this is yet another thing. It’s like they,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high ground. Anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John Haxeys, man. Haxeys, like, that’s the thing about the whole, like, injecting memory into another process.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I know. The applications that become popular that do that necessarily have to be
⏹️ ▶️ John the ones written by people who really know the ins and outs. Not that, again, that I’m recommending this, that it’s a crazy practice
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but how did Haxeys, how were Haxeys a thing for so long? Unsanity, this company, making
⏹️ ▶️ John these products that just, like, did terrible things to your system. How did that work at all? how did they ever become
⏹️ ▶️ John popular? It’s because the people who made them were able to find ways to do them that
⏹️ ▶️ John would actually work for a large number of people, which is incredibly hard. It’s not a scalable way to do development, but it kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John weeds out all the people who wanted to find hacky ways to do stuff who didn’t know every little intricate detail because they would just crash
⏹️ ▶️ John your system and you would never use them. And so the people who did Dropbox, I think there was a presentation on this, went to
⏹️ ▶️ John heroic efforts to figure out how to safely patch the finder, which is a terrible way to do this and an official API is better,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it was entirely in their hands to figure out how to do this, Whereas now you’re cooperating with Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple’s finder team on we’ll make this API and you can use it and you know what it’s like with Apple API is the first
⏹️ ▶️ John release that it’s out in. There are bugs, it doesn’t work right or whatever. You’re hoping the next year
⏹️ ▶️ John it will they’ll will fix the bugs and like you know, and I’ll cap it down this this new API will work better or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but maybe not. Maybe it’s not a big priority for them. So I don’t I don’t know what kind of hope there is for this getting less buggy
⏹️ ▶️ John for you. I haven’t had as many problems that you described for it. that I have seen situations where like,
⏹️ ▶️ John what I get usually is like the badges don’t appear. I’m like, doesn’t this have integration? Isn’t this supposed to be officially API?
⏹️ ▶️ John Why do I see, where do I see no badges? Like, is it even working? And then like, the
⏹️ ▶️ John context menu is the same thing. Like, I think there was officially API for that before. Anyway, real time follow from
⏹️ ▶️ John the chat room, Dropbox is not in the Mac App Store. I did a search for Dropbox in the Mac App Store. I get a screen full of results
⏹️ ▶️ John that say things like, app drive for Dropbox, app for Dropbox, app for Dropbox menu,
⏹️ ▶️ John drop for Dropbox, Greg share for Dropbox app for Dropbox instant app for Dropbox instant app
⏹️ ▶️ John for Dropbox plus Swift drop for Dropbox anyway, search in the App Store
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple’s decision to let everything in but draw no distinction. Like I don’t even know what
⏹️ ▶️ John these things are. But I fear for someone saying they want Dropbox and these have prices 299 299 499 I don’t think there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John any free Oh, there’s a couple free ones here and there. Drop light for Dropbox
⏹️ ▶️ John DVR webcam Dropbox revisions for Dropbox. I fear
⏹️ ▶️ John for someone thinking the Mac App Store is where you get applications. I’ve heard of this thing called Dropbox. Let me go find it
⏹️ ▶️ John face with this screen. I don’t know what they would do. But they certainly wouldn’t get Dropbox. I can tell you that
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s not here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right? Well, that’s that’s exactly the thing. It only takes a couple of times of searching for something that you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is out there and not finding it the Mac App Store before you just stop looking in the Mac App Store.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or you download half of these because they all have obviously they all have Dropbox icon. not. They all have a little box that is either
⏹️ ▶️ John an exact copy of the Dropbox icon or someone trying to redraw the Dropbox. Like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so bad. Yeah, App Store searches all other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of worms. So things are going really well in the Mac App Store then.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my God. Yeah, we should. And we should mention Craig Hockenberry’s recent post to on this. Yeah, I was gonna say
⏹️ ▶️ John just so we can just we can put in the show notes. Someone mentioned it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely read this because it’s like, you know, because one of the problems with the Mac App Store and Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco development in general is not only that there’s all these policy issues
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and ruling with the iron fist and their floppy carrot and lack of stick, but also it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re ruling with a neglectful iron fist. They don’t even care. So many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco luxuries that iOS developers get or new features that iOS developers get from things like iTunes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Connect, iCloud, APIs, so many of them don’t come to the Mac at all or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come very late to the Mac. Craig’s got examples of test flight builds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff like that where it’s just like this stuff is like and usually it’s promised for Mac it’s like oh Mac will have it soon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just hardly ever gets there gets there very late or whatever and yeah it just obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac API wise development wise and Mac services for developers obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these things are not incredibly high priorities at Apple because if they were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know regardless of what Apple says and regardless of what we hear from from like you know hard-working
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people inside the company world in the in the middle of the of the hierarchy somewhere regardless of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you we can just tell by their actions you can tell by the results that this is you know this is not the priority
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS is the priority iOS has way more users brings in way more money is way more high-profile obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s that’s the higher priority and I can’t really fault them for that but it’s unfortunate as Mac users and it’s even more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unfortunate if you’re a Mac developer that you that you’re really on what used to be the thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple cared so much about and now is clearly third or fourth priority these days.
⏹️ ▶️ John The one that hurts the most is where they did the thing where they disabled app reviews from beta versions
⏹️ ▶️ John of iOS and they didn’t do it on the Mac. Like, that’s not a hard, I don’t wanna
⏹️ ▶️ John say, oh, that’s so easy to do, but look, they dedicated the resources to do it on iOS. That feels like the type
⏹️ ▶️ John of thing, just to save face, you would like, can we do that for the Mac users too? Is it that big a deal?
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe they will do it eventually. Maybe it takes longer to patch the Mac App Store application. maybe there’s no one working on the Mac App Store
⏹️ ▶️ John application. I don’t know what the details are. But that one really hurts because like, everyone’s so excited. Hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John people can’t read it. Nevermind that it’s kind of like a little too little a little too late because already betas are in people’s hands and they were writing
⏹️ ▶️ John reviews, but they fixed it right? Not for Mac users. So you don’t even get that you don’t even get what
⏹️ ▶️ John you think is probably like the lowest effort type of Nope, just not not a priority
⏹️ ▶️ John at all. And like a lot for some respects, like the Craig Hagenberry thing is coming at it from the perspective of a Mac developer. And
⏹️ ▶️ John as people have always said, like Apple cares about Apple first user second developers third or later.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a reasonable prioritization. So it’s like a lot of times developers want things from Apple that Apple doesn’t give them because
⏹️ ▶️ John because they think it’s more important for users to have something or for Apple to have something. But this is a case of
⏹️ ▶️ John developer versus developer. It’s comparing what is it like if you’re developing for Apple’s most popular platform, or developing
⏹️ ▶️ John for Apple’s second most popular platform. It’s a hell of a drop off. Go and
⏹️ ▶️ John get the second most popular. And we’ll see what happens if suddenly the watch becomes the second most popular one, then you’re developing for
⏹️ ▶️ John the third most popular. Not good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I honestly, yeah, I’m not sure that’ll happen. But that’s another show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And either way, remember just a couple years ago we came back to the Mac. So things are fine, don’t worry
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I think they did do, are doing better with API parity.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Because so many APIs
⏹️ ▶️ John reappear in both like extensions API, that did come out at the same time in both. Which is kind of, when that happens,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like a boost to the Mac, because like, oh, I wouldn’t expect that. I would expect it to be iOS first and Mac second.
⏹️ ▶️ John When it comes out simultaneously, you’re like, wow, the Mac really got a boost there. But that’s a user-facing feature, it’s not a developer-facing
⏹️ ▶️ John feature. And so, yeah, there is a priority cascade, and it does still affect things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I would not hold out any hope for improvements to the Mac App Store. I mean, like the beta thing you said, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not allowing people to review from betas. Just look at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco state of the Mac App Store application itself. Just try to use it for anything. Try to do anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in it. Try to browse anything. Obviously doing anything to this app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is… It must be extraordinarily difficult and impossible inside Apple to get anything done inside this app because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn’t happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just don’t think there’s a lot of people working on it, though. I think the underlying frameworks probably have people working on them. Like the
⏹️ ▶️ John things that… Again, I was telling you, you can run updates from the application and then close the application entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John but the updates still run because there are like processes and demons behind the scene that manage software updates.
⏹️ ▶️ John Those I think are being worked on because they they you know, they do the OS updates and they do app updates.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think there’s people working on those but sort of the gooey skin that provides like the view into the store and does all
⏹️ ▶️ John that that seems like I don’t think I can’t remember the last time a new feature appeared in
⏹️ ▶️ John that maybe they have someone fixing the most egregious bugs. It just seems like no one’s working on it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I I can honestly say it’s worse than iTunes it has many of the same problems and challenges
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of iTunes of of you know having this this giant web service rendering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s basically a big web view in the app
⏹️ ▶️ John is it a web viewer is it like XML like the iTunes Store used to be remember when the iTunes Store was like custom XML
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah that’s a good question it might be that it feels like a big web view it behaves like a big web
⏹️ ▶️ John could be like what is that thing that they bought for iOS like chomp or whatever like the I think when they redid the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, when they made the search suck even more by having those big cards, they don’t let you see one app at a time on screen. That was great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, we shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John be trying to guess what the underlying technologies are. Who cares? We just know the end result is an application that does weird things, and sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John the only solution is to close it and relaunch it or to restart your Mac, and that’s not good. Thanks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot to our three sponsors this week, Igloo, Squarespace, and Need. And we will see you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Auntie Marco Harmon, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John check the broadcast so long
Post-show: Life
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I joined a gym. You joined a gym? I joined a gym.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What are you going to do with the gym?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s gonna lift heavy things.
⏹️ ▶️ John I haven’t done that yet. I probably won’t. It’s gonna run in place like a hamster in a wheel.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t done that yet. I have walked really fast in place though. Does that count? Like a hamster that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah. Like a hamster who’s reading his iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How does that work with the official Marco wardrobe?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What do you mean? I wear shirts there and then I wear them home. Black t-shirt and
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s got, I’m sorry, do you have shorts as part of the wardrobe?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In the summertime, yes, I do wear shorts because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just way too hot for pants in the summertime. And I don’t like, I really hate shorts, honestly. But I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco own shorts because I live somewhere with summer. That’s a season you do have, Casey. Yep.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you’re doing this to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fill your circles? I am, yeah. I mean, I would like to generally stay healthy, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes, essentially, it really is just for the circles.
⏹️ ▶️ John So with all the circuit following in the gym, are you like dropping pounds?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Some, yeah, I’m down, I don’t know, like six pounds for like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two months or something. I don’t know, I’m down some. It’s not a dramatic thing, because I’m still eating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Watch versus Blue Apron. Blue Apron’s fine, no, Blue Apron is actually great, because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty small portions. Ever since we started that, it’s been actually easier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be healthy and lose weight because it is so, it’s just, it’s, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a dinner from Louis Apron, even if you add more oil than they tell you to, because you have to add more oil than they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tell you to, because the amount they tell you to is not nearly enough to fry those vegetables, even if you add more oil than they tell you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to, you’re still under 1,000 calories for dinner, and that’s pretty good, so. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, I mean, I joined the gym because I live in an area with a great variety
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of weather, and a good portion of that weather is not that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pleasant to be walking very quickly for three miles outside. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I joined earlier this week when it was like 90 degrees one day and a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco billion percent humidity. And I joined during that day and it’s like 10 bucks a month for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s basically the worst gym in the world. But I don’t care because it’s 10 bucks a month and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that means I don’t have to buy a treadmill and put it in the house anywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re scoping out the gym people you’re doing some people watching seeing the varieties of people that show up at the gym
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In my two visits to the gym so far. I have not seen that many other people honestly It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a pretty big gym, and I go at weird times when everyone else is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco working So it’s I go when it’s almost empty So I’ve seen a handful of people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I just kind of look straight ahead and look at my watch my iPhone stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John And you’re watching video on your iPod. You’re reading things you’re listening to podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t quite figured all this out yet the first the first again. I’ve only gone twice. This was this week
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s been nice other days this week, so I’ve been doing I’ve been walking outside other days this week But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the first time I did podcasts and it was it was kind of boring cuz like I’m fine doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcast when I walk outside cuz like visually I’m amused by the outside world But when you’re just like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco walking on a treadmill staring at bad cable TV that you’re not listening to you listen to podcast that’s kind of boring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the last time I went I did I watched Nevin’s Coco conf talk that was really good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I’ll link to that in the show notes I guess so I want and that was like that was an hour long so that was perfect so maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this might actually be a good time to watch conference talks and do other things that that are that have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a visual component
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get you some VR goggles I don’t know about that hey does have you either of you guys ever used a treadmill before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does the thing where you have like vertigo after get off does that ever go away what
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t say that I got that one
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe you’re just getting lightheaded because you’re it’s only your second day at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no no maybe it’s because you’re looking at the screen and not paying attention what’s going on around you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah maybe you’re getting motion sick well yeah it’s it’s like when I’m on it I’m fine but then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I stop and I’ve tried like slowing it down gradually but but it doesn’t really matter whenever I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stop I feel like I’ve gotten off a boat you’re like whoa you know like I feel I don’t feel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great for a few minutes afterwards.
⏹️ ▶️ John You might be getting motion sick.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it seems like it’s a form of motion sickness where it’s, I don’t know, people in the chat are saying you get used to
⏹️ ▶️ John it. The times I’ve been in a treadmill, I haven’t been staring at an iPhone in front of me.
⏹️ ▶️ John so I don’t know, maybe that is a common thing, especially if you’re like, the difference between the iPhone in front of you and the TV
⏹️ ▶️ John across the room, I think is a big difference in terms of where you’re focusing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the problem is it’s a TV on your treadmill right in front of you. So, and I’ve tried looking at the ceiling,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking across the room. I’ve tried other things like that and it doesn’t really seem to make that big of a difference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Where I’m looking at just like, I’m running so my body thinks I’m moving forward, so it, or my brain thinks I’m moving forward,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it’s probably compensating for that. And then when I stop walking in place,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then it’s like, it has to switch back to the uncompensated mode and I think that’s what causes that.
⏹️ ▶️ John if you had VR goggles as you walked, you’d be moving through, you could be moving through a forest, a virtual forest,
⏹️ ▶️ John while a virtual screen floats in front of you so you can watch Nevin’s conference talk while walking through a virtual Yosemite.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could do that or I could just like use the bikes and ellipticals instead. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Or you just walk outside. I’m amazed that you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco humidity so much
⏹️ ▶️ John that you’d rather walk in like people usually go to the gym like in the winter when you know it’s freezing outside.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well and that’s I’ve I knew like you know I got the Apple Watch in late April when it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really beautiful outside and it’s been pretty beautiful since then but I’ve known like well winter is going to come
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eventually and I’m gonna like I want to keep this up in the winter and winter here is pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad not as bad as you but but pretty bad and and so I wanted to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of option and I looked into like you know should I get a treadmill in my house and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s it seemed like there’s almost no reason for a regular person to do that there’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John need some place to hang laundry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah well it ends up they’re huge like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I know they’re giant turns
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh my god like when you’re when they’re in a gym you don’t you really realize it but like when you when and you tape out measurements
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in your house of how big a treadmill actually is, oh my god, they’re massive. And
⏹️ ▶️ John not just how much room it takes up, but especially for the ones that, if they’re like a stair thing or whatever, how
⏹️ ▶️ John much room you need around them for swinging body parts and getting on and getting off, and then if the thing has
⏹️ ▶️ John moved, moving itself. Yeah, for the winter activity, maybe you have almost the makings,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, maybe not for you, maybe for Adam. If you could get hops and the other two dogs that your parents have,
⏹️ ▶️ John you could have the makings of a dog sled team. You just need to be,
⏹️ ▶️ John they could pull at them. If you just get four of them instead of three, then it would be even. That would be adorable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s way better than buying a treadmill.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now that I put that idea into your head, I want to see some pictures of that. All right, we’ll work it out.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because if there’s one thing that breed of dog does well, is pull in the same direction, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just gonna run in five different directions. Boing.
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, that’ll be interesting. Anyway, yeah, you can’t exercise outside in the winter. People do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of Rogamiba, Paul Kefasis is out there with his bare feet in 20 degree below weather.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That Paul Kefasis is not a fair comparison. He’s like a superhuman. It is not fair to hold me up to his
⏹️ ▶️ Marco standard at all. Not even close.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just, I cannot believe, like when you saw the watch announcement, was the first
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing that popped in your head, darn it I’m gonna join a gym? Not even close. Right,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like how did we get from A to B here? Doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have the antibodies. He was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco infected. You’re right. Because even like when we first started seeing good pictures of it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was concerned seeing the sensor bubble on the bottom, and I was concerned that would be uncomfortable pressing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into my skin. So I even have said in the past, like before I got it, I was like, you know, if they just made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a model that lacked all the fitness features and lacked that big bubble on the bottom, I’d buy that instead so it’d be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more comfortable. And yeah, now that I have it, no, I would never do that. That’s stupid.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m depressed at how strong my antibodies are and how little I care about the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco circles. I really wished I was more like
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco. I was like, maybe Marco’s got into it. Maybe I haven’t done anything like this in a while.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe I’ll still get back into it. And it’s just, God, I just can’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We can start competing with each other. Do you have those antibodies or whatever?
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe that would help. Like Apple doesn’t really have that integration. You have to use like some third party app that keeps
⏹️ ▶️ John track of it. That’s it. Underscore should I have that to Predominator Plus Plus if it’s not already there, like a competition. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John that actually would help, but I don’t know. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the problems also is that Even in WatchKit 2, a lot of the data for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the circles, I don’t think apps have access to all that. You have access to the step count
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the orange circle, but I don’t think you have access to the green or blue.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the step count is enough, though. You see Amy Jane and Montero
⏹️ ▶️ John competing for there, just with their Fitbit step counts. I think that all is in the Fitbit, is just step count, you know, how many
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco steps. Yeah, I
⏹️ ▶️ John think so. That does motivate a lot of people. Maybe that would help. I’m not doing terrible with the circles. When it tells me to
⏹️ ▶️ John get up, I do feel a little bit of guilt, like, oh, I should probably get up and go for a walk now or whatever. But the bottom line is I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John filling them like and my my whatever value of all my circles are
⏹️ ▶️ John at. It’s low. I was filling them all WBC like I know what it takes to fill them. But my daily
⏹️ ▶️ John schedule just does not do enough to fill them at least when my watch is on. But I tend to find when I go home from work,
⏹️ ▶️ John I want to take my watch off just because I just want to get stuff off my body.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then trying to totally naked just, you know, like my house doesn’t have air conditioning so I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John certainly shorts and yeah getting into a home
⏹️ ▶️ John mode and that involves taking the watch off and so that means anything I do after that like walking around with the kids or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John is going to not count but I don’t care I don’t care whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you do you care you care just enough to be annoying to yourself but not enough to actually
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah to feel like a little twinge of guilt when I don’t fill them
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco down up to actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah you’re like you’re just gonna be perpetually mildly annoyed by this
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t bother me that much.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I tell you what, I am a blue ring stud, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the green and red, not so much.
⏹️ ▶️ John The green is the hardest one. I think I basically, I think I feel the other ones, but the exercise one, because like, I don’t quite
⏹️ ▶️ John know what I never, I have never actually initiated like a workout workout. So all my green filling is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John as incidental from heart rate stuff. And I don’t even know how that works, like, whatever, but I’m just
⏹️ ▶️ John never filling it, Except for WWDC.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hmm. To completely change pace, how’s potty training going?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s going, actually. Oh, good. Yeah, it’s not complete, but it’s going.
⏹️ ▶️ John Are they… Is he afraid of going to daycare? Are they reinforcing it there?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so he goes to preschool, and he’s going now to summer camp, which is just school in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco summertime. We were able to do this transition with their support, and they do it all the time because they have school
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for two and three year olds, So they have seen lots of potty training in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their time, and they’re experts at it. So they support it, and they do it while he’s there. So it’s good,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re all good. Are
⏹️ ▶️ John they doing any positive feedback stuff, like sticker charts or anything like that, either at home or at school, to try
⏹️ ▶️ John to reward for compliance, basically?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sticker, I had not thought of a sticker chart. That’s a good one.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s one of the things that our kids are doing. They recommend it at home, but it doesn’t work on some kids or whatever. But you just have a piece
⏹️ ▶️ John of paper, and it’s like every time you do it, you get a sticker on the chart and some kids are motivated by it and some
⏹️ ▶️ John kids aren’t. I just didn’t know if that was one of the things that you were doing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, we’ve just been doing like food motivation. Basically like candy and cookies and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We very quickly learned that you can’t reward going to the bathroom,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to reward like time spans in which you have had no accidents. Because if you reward going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the bathroom, then he just wants to go every five minutes. Yeah, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s that’s no good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to go back a step, you’ve basically outsourced potty training to the summer camp is what I’m hearing?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, he’s there for like two and a half hours a day. I mean, it’s not like camp is a very,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, it’s technically called camp. That’s a very generous word for for what it really is. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just preschool in the summertime, and it’s mostly outside. And that’s, that’s basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. preschool as you will learn soon Casey is really short every day like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it goes that two and a half hours goes by very quickly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh I don’t doubt it yeah it’s it’s been a wild couple of weeks at the Liss household
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because Declan has gone from sort of kind of able to crawl
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ish to pretty adept at crawling and he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used to up until this point barrel roll pretty effectively.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That’s awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do a barrel roll. That’s a reference, John. Anyway, so he would barrel roll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty effectively and then he’d figured out how to crawl and now our world is upside down because he doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just stay still anymore. And that’s kind of petrifying. And additionally, he’s also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey starting to pull up onto his feet, which is adorable to watch and wonderful except that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he’s also he’s also doing that in the crib which is not as good because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then he gets himself all awoken up and doesn’t want to sleep as long and we have to lower the crib again and blah
⏹️ ▶️ Casey blah blah so wild couple of couple of weeks at the list household
⏹️ ▶️ John my favorite picture of Declan recently was showing him next to your computer
⏹️ ▶️ John with the note that that he’d already pulled off a key cap
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah he as genuinely it had been It had been like 15 seconds and he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey crawled over there, ripped off a key.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the great dawning realization that like the idea, like, well, we have a kid. He won’t destroy our crap.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like the second that kid can move, he’s like, I’m going to destroy your crap. Yep. That’s pretty much how
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it went. You
⏹️ ▶️ John can seek out the most expensive item and say, I can get my little baby fingernails underneath this key cap. Look, it
⏹️ ▶️ John comes off. This is awesome. It’s like, I looked away for two seconds.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Were you there? That’s exactly how it
⏹️ ▶️ John went. I know. I know how kids work. I just you to your credit you’re not one of the people who I
⏹️ ▶️ John Who look down at the other people and said well my child won’t destroy my stuff I’ll just make sure they don’t touch my
⏹️ ▶️ John things. It’s like There’s a reason baby proofing is a word
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, so I’m not like that about most things However, I have been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very smug about my car never will my car will not get ruined I will not allow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the my car to get ruined if that means no food in the car screw it no food in the car
⏹️ ▶️ John Is there a car seat installed in your car now?
⏹️ ▶️ John been for a while So isn’t it destroying your seats as we speak?
⏹️ ▶️ John have a cover That cover
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, I’ve had similar good luck. I mean you know we we also like there just by policy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s no food in the car like just and that and that’s been fine you know we also have a policy that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t kick my seat and So far I mean he sometimes forgets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John anyway, we have to yell at him, but so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far Overall it’s pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know what I did with the kid the seat kicking. I don’t it really depends on your kid I think you could pull off the seeking thing my
⏹️ ▶️ John kids not really but the thing I did with them It lasted a pretty long time I knew wouldn’t last forever
⏹️ ▶️ John is that I told them that the seats have airbags in them, which is true And that airbags contain explosives,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is true And then if you kick the seats you could cause them to explode which is not true, but they don’t know that
⏹️ ▶️ John Nice, that’s amazing. Actually, I don’t think I ever did I don’t think I ever actually told them that they cause I would say
⏹️ ▶️ John the seats have airbags in them airbags have explosives I think that’s all I would say and I would say it in an alarmed voice and they would
⏹️ ▶️ John stop kicking and it was awesome that worked for so long until they were like, you know what, these things are never exploding. Kick, kick,
⏹️ ▶️ John kick. That’s so amazing. Good grief. Adam’s a good boy, you won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John need to do that with. Declan, I don’t know, he looks like a scamp. I can’t tell, but I think you’re in trouble,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey. I can’t wait to see Casey just go through all this, because it’s not like I’m any expert
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it, but just by being two years ahead of him, that’s amazing to me, like seeing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, Casey, now you’re going through the beginning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of mobility, which is, as you said, terrifying for the parents.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yeah, what’s great about parenting is that every time you think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have the current stage down pat, everything then changes with the next stage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like, so it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, we finally got him to eat and sleep. Oh my God, now he’s moving.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my God, now he can hurt himself on every possible thing. Yeah, and then once you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get that down, And then he’s going to start learning how to open doors and go outside.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So then he’ll get some attitude. Yeah, then he’s going to get some attitude. Then eventually,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have everything down and then, oh, delete the diapers. It’s just, oh my God. Everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is hard and then you figure it out and then everything changes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve asked a lot of parents, most of whom are roughly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my age, what is their secret? What have you learned? What should I know? And the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey single most consistent answer I’ve gotten almost every time is, don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get used to anything because the moment you do, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco all changes. That’s good. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, how’s your front door? Do you have a front door yet?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new one. So you’ll have a front door in like three more months, maybe?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, two to three weeks or whatever Hopefully though it’ll happen between
⏹️ ▶️ John the vacation. I’m leaving on now and the vacation. I’m Leaving on after there’s some
⏹️ ▶️ John time in between there, but anyway people have been painting How’s that going?
⏹️ ▶️ John yet to find someone who does what I think is a good job of painting anything because it’s all about Surface prep
⏹️ ▶️ John like you know they just they just they just want to get to the point where they
⏹️ ▶️ John start slapping on the paint It’s like I want the surface to be smoothed out before
⏹️ ▶️ John you start slapping on the paint. I want you to think about how it’s going to look when it’s finished painting. If it’s not going to look good, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What we learned when we’ve only done both renovations, you know, Tiff actually, Tiff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can paint her and she learned, like she and her parents can paint like the whole room, you know, no time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all. It turns out professional painters are really no better than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good, you know, home taught painters. Just you don’t have to do it. That’s the big thing. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re not paying them to do a better job than you could do. You’re paying them so that you don’t have to do it. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John I continue to believe there must be contractors out there like the ones I see on TV that do do a good job. And especially
⏹️ ▶️ John for things like surface prep, sometimes you can’t do what they do because you don’t have the tools. It depends on the surface. Like if you’re painting a room,
⏹️ ▶️ John like big walls are big and flat, fine. But if you’re painting like the trim around a window where you just pulled off storm windows from the
⏹️ ▶️ John 50s, they’re a wreck. You have to spend a lot of time on surface prep. pulling off old caked on paint,
⏹️ ▶️ John filling in voids, sanding everything down so it’s smooth. And I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know that I could do a better job at that than a professional, it was mostly because I don’t even have all the tools, all the little, just
⏹️ ▶️ John a plain old random orbit sander, but the little tiny sanders to get into the corners and all the experience filling things.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that just takes a long time. But like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The reality, I mean, you could buy the tool at Home Depot for like 30 bucks if you needed to.
⏹️ ▶️ John If given a limited time, yes I could. But I would take, the amount of time they took do all my trim I wouldn’t get one window done.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d do a better job than they do on that one window but I wouldn’t get one window done because I’d be there like and instead they’re just like you know what
⏹️ ▶️ John good enough you’re not gonna be able to see it from the street paint paint paint.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well exactly that’s the thing like you’re not paying for them to be do for them to do a better job than you could do you’re paying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for them to do it so that you don’t have to do it and they can do it faster.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway uh almost done almost done front door I think the front door is gonna be the worst part
⏹️ ▶️ John though because there’s a bunch of carpentry stuff around there and it’s just like it’s been hand waved over and we just say like see
⏹️ ▶️ John how our front door looks now we want to look like that but with a new door and and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like oh yeah sure no problem like i keep asking them so what part are you gonna remove and what are you going to put back above
⏹️ ▶️ John it was gonna look like this well not exactly like what do you mean by
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s gonna be bad uh but anyway
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah if there was ever a time that any human being should periscope anything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s the conversations that that you have with your contractors. Because they’ve got to be just amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re very one-sided and involve a lot of nodding and smiling from the other end of the conversation. And then me going,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just. They hate you so much, don’t they?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. I don’t know if they hate me. I just, I, I don’t know. Do you tip them?
⏹️ ▶️ John supposed to tip contractors? That’s what I thought. The amount I’m paying these people, no.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, I, we didn’t tip any of our contractors ever. Hmm. Like we’d occasionally buy bagels and stuff for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guys that were working, but we wouldn’t, I mean, yeah, you’re paying a lot for this. I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a tipping thing. Yeah, seriously. This is a tremendous amount of money. They can take their tip out of the tremendous amount of money
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m paying for this project.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, you don’t tip when you buy a car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think that’s really an apples to apples comparison.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s about the same amount of money. I don’t, I fully confess that I have no idea when it’s appropriate to tip, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I also hate tipping as a concept. And so I’m probably a bad person.
⏹️ ▶️ John The places when I’m supposed to tip, do but I literally have no idea when I’m supposed to tip other than like eating at restaurants that’s it
⏹️ ▶️ John and uh staying at hotels I know you’re supposed to do that there but only because I googled it wait what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I never tip in a hotel ever the housekeeping tip that’s a how much is
⏹️ ▶️ John that I when I googled for it they were like a couple bucks a day and that’s what I’ve been sticking to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what yeah and then the problem is they need like you need small bills that’s you know the little envelopes on the desk it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s that’s for housekeeping tips like the most hotel rooms there’s like there’s a small envelope what that says some kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of passive-aggressive thing on it and that is for you to put the housekeeping tip in. Because if you just leave cash
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around, then they might assume it’s your cash.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can leave it. You want to leave it. And even if you don’t use the envelope, you just want to leave it with a note
⏹️ ▶️ John for housekeeping or thank you or something in a way that they know that you didn’t accidentally leave it. Because housekeeping people don’t want to take
⏹️ ▶️ John random cash laying around because then you’re like, hey, housekeeping stole from me. But when you’re checking out, take the wad of
⏹️ ▶️ John cash, a couple bucks a day or whatever, put it somewhere with a note that makes it clear this is for
⏹️ ▶️ John housekeeping, and then you go.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever done that in my entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s a big pain because you either have to have like, you know, let’s say you’re doing a few bucks a day or five bucks a day, then you either
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to have a whole bunch of fives when you get there, or you have to like tip like a 20 at the end. But then like that could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a different person than who worked the last few days.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I just do it all at the end. I don’t do it every day because I just too much of a hassle. Like in my googling
⏹️ ▶️ John what I discovered, it’s like, that if you do it all in one day, it evens out
⏹️ ▶️ John in the end for the people who work there. Like you’re right, it might not be the same person or whatever. but it’s not as if one person has a line on when
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody’s checking out and gets all the money like it evens out across the whole Staff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s good Cuz it’s you usually August like put a 20 in there on the last day and then to call it call it a day But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is lunacy to me. I’ve never heard this before.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hey tipping is crazy. I hate it with a passion I
⏹️ ▶️ John we just they should just raise the prices for everything and pay people living wages and so on and so forth Do you tip
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do too. And so it was it was actually a dilemma So my barber, usually I only have 20s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that’s what ATMs give out. And whenever I have small bills, I hit, when I empty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my pockets at night, they collect somewhere on my desk and I forget to put them back in the next morning. You
⏹️ ▶️ John should really only have 50s in your wallet. I feel like Marco with your M5
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey and your lifestyle,
⏹️ ▶️ John you should be the type of person who
⏹️ ▶️ John 50s, like a grandpa.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So with the barber, the barber I’ve been going to for years, these four Italian guys, they’re amazing. They used to charge $16 for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a haircut. So I’d give them 20, they’d keep the extra four, perfect. Then they raise the price to $17. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t wanna just give him 20 again, because now it’s like, I’m just. You give him 21, right? Right, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now I have to remember to bring a single now every time. So now I. They’ll give you
⏹️ ▶️ John change. If you give him two 20s, they’ll give you change. I’m not gonna,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s such a hassle. I’m not gonna. $3 on 17,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s a sufficient tip. But it’s like they took a pay cut.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it’s not your fault. It is kinda
⏹️ ▶️ John his fault, because he doesn’t wanna have a single with him. Like, just give him two 20s. They’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John give you change, it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now I just bring a single whenever I remember to because it’s so much, because I don’t want to give them a less tip than
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t you give them a $20 bill and one silver dollar, like a grandma. That would be a grandpa.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do those still exist? Can you still get those? Someone’s got them. They’re still in circulation somewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them a $2 bill. All right, let’s do titles.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Floppy carrot and lack of stick is amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wasn’t there a better one? I think I remember seeing a better one somewhere. Blue Ring Stud, that was my other favorite.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, that is really good, actually. That’s probably better than Floppy Carrot. Even though that is not really related to
⏹️ ▶️ John anything, I think it’s a good title. And I just want people to listen to the episode
⏹️ ▶️ John waiting for like, what the hell is Blue Ring Stud? And it’s all the way at the end that it has like nothing to do with like
⏹️ ▶️ John Reddit or the Mac App Store or anything. Since we’ve been saying that Casey knows how to stand up.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know how to stand. You know your son knows how to stand. Where did he learn that from? He got those standing genes from me.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know how to stand. Yeah. Declan stands up, said, you go, just