catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).

140: Harpooned a Turtle

Expensive trackpads, Facebook’s battery drain, and whether Apple properly balances usefulness, looks, and profit.

Episode Description:

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Transcribed using Whisper large_v2 (transcription) + WAV2VEC2_ASR_LARGE_LV60K_960H (alignment) + Pyannote (speaker diaritization).

Chapters

  1. Pre-show: Star Wars tickets
  2. Follow-up: The two A9s
  3. Casey brings up the Mac Pro
  4. Expensive trackpads
  5. Sponsor: Squarespace
  6. iMac: Then and Now
  7. Magic Mouse 2 port location
  8. Sponsor: Automatic
  9. Use vs. looks vs. profit
  10. Sponsor: Fracture
  11. Facebook app battery scandal
  12. Post-show: Perl 6

Pre-show: Star Wars tickets

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hi John.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s like WEDC all over again.

⏹️ ▶️ John Although at least WEDC was over quickly because it’s like, well, it’s clear I didn’t get tickets

⏹️ ▶️ John here. It’s just clear these people don’t know how to make websites that can withstand any kind of load. But

⏹️ ▶️ John I have, we have many devices working on it. Tina actually did get tickets for tomorrow,

⏹️ ▶️ John for the, not the Thursday opening night, but the Friday one, but she accidentally bought 3D.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s not acceptable because of motion sickness.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s not acceptable because 3d is terrible

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I agree, but I I wasn’t sure I figured you had desperation would make it acceptable,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but apparently not

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna watch it I mean, it’s all I can get it’s all I can get but well, that’s just really

⏹️ ▶️ John I Have many times I got I got to the stage where you’re picking your seats to reserve many many times. I got to that

⏹️ ▶️ John step

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is the theater near you like an all-motor at draft house and some fancy and highfalutin or is it?

⏹️ ▶️ John No, none of these are fancy. They’re all just whatever I mean the one the fanciest one is the one we actually have tickets for its reserved

⏹️ ▶️ John seating and just the big reclining seats And everything like that, but but 3d

⏹️ ▶️ John So I may be distracted during this episode as I Occasionally reload the that 5,000

⏹️ ▶️ John tabs that I have pre-configured to exactly the page where you can buy tickets All

⏹️ ▶️ John of which are just returning, you know 503 gateway errors or just spinning forever

⏹️ ▶️ John because that’s great

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I mean, I don’t think it’s a problem because I’m not at all distracted by the New York football giants that are currently

⏹️ ▶️ Casey acting like the Giants.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John No

⏹️ ▶️ John one cares about football, Casey. It’s the Star Wars. Meh. Football games

⏹️ ▶️ John happen every year. People get concussions. Yeah. They have terrible brain

⏹️ ▶️ John injury that destroys their entire family. Also true. And it happens, what, 16 times every

⏹️ ▶️ John year?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. But to put things in perspective with regard to my priorities,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron and I were just having a very casual debate, which we didn’t even conclude as to whether

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or not we would go see this movie in the theaters.

⏹️ ▶️ John You should stay away and let other people get the tickets.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love John that you are you’re able to resist every Apple product

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on day one, every new release of anything like you’re you’re able to say, you know what, I’m gonna let everybody

⏹️ ▶️ Marco else go try those things first and tell me what’s wrong so I know whether to actually do it myself. But with this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re going right in.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s Star Wars and it’s also a slightly smaller investment than a multi-thousand dollar

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know man your dreams and hopes and wants and desires they’re pretty big investment that you’re

⏹️ ▶️ Casey putting on this movie.

⏹️ ▶️ John The main investment that I’m protecting with this whole thing is the investment I have put into avoiding

⏹️ ▶️ John Star Wars related spoilers. That is a serious investment that can be destroyed very easily when the rest of the world

⏹️ ▶️ John has seen the movie and you haven’t.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so I’m sorry it wasn’t completely successful, but hopefully it’s successful

⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, I’m sure I will see it in 2D eventually. I just really don’t like 3D.

Follow-up: The two A9s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so you want to do some follow up? Chipworks has some thoughts on the 289s.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if, John, you wanted to talk about this a little bit.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I put this in there, and I was all excited. This is going to be a really detailed breakdown of what is different about the

⏹️ ▶️ John chips with little microscopic views. And there was a little bit of that, but there’s two problems with it. One, a lot of the stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John in it is over my head because they’re using lingo that they assume everybody knows and I don’t know, or I

⏹️ ▶️ John have a vague idea of what it means, but I don’t understand the implications. like one of the chips has weak NMOS.

⏹️ ▶️ John I have vague memories of what that is, but I don’t understand what the implications are. Anyway, I suppose I could

⏹️ ▶️ John look it up. And the other one is that there’s a lot of information about all the other components that I don’t care about. Who do they use for

⏹️ ▶️ John the display controller? What chip do they use for the power regulating thing or the battery thing? Or

⏹️ ▶️ John all sorts of other stuff that I’m not interested in. But we’ll put a link in the show notes because

⏹️ ▶️ John Chipworks is the only place I know that is taking these things apart and slicing the chips open and putting them

⏹️ ▶️ John under microscopes and stuff like that. So no real news there, but for

⏹️ ▶️ John people who understand more about this than I do, maybe they can glean something from it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Excellent. And speaking of the A9s, Consumer Reports weighed in about them.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a more, yeah, that’s a more reasonable consumer-focused test. Consumer Reports has had a spotty history with

⏹️ ▶️ John technology and everything, really. Like Consumer Reports, I always wonder about because the more I know

⏹️ ▶️ John about a topic, the more I think Consumer Reports selections are

⏹️ ▶️ John just don’t make any sense. And so that makes me suspect, maybe their dishwasher

⏹️ ▶️ John recommendations also don’t make any sense. I don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco anything about dishwashers,

⏹️ ▶️ John but every time I know something about it, their car reviews, the cars they pick, they recommend for you to get, I guess it’s really,

⏹️ ▶️ John they just have different criteria than I do. The way they pick cars, the things that are important to them are

⏹️ ▶️ John not the same things that are important to me. And that’s true in a lot of things. If you look at car and driver, for example, and

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re always emphasizing performance and handling and stuff like that, And it’s like, maybe that’s not what’s

⏹️ ▶️ John important to

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you.

⏹️ ▶️ John And you should read consent reports. Anyway. You hate performance. Well, I don’t, but.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I have, anyway.

⏹️ ▶️ John So their review, their test of the batteries is more or

⏹️ ▶️ John less what I was looking for. Like they’re trying to do real world testing. I think their testing was pretty timid.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s similar to the battery testing that I did when I was doing Mavericks. It’s very like, I would call light usage. Maybe they’re calling

⏹️ ▶️ John it medium usage. Or they just loaded a bunch of web pages over and over again. But they did do a bunch of fairly

⏹️ ▶️ John standard things, I think probably in a way that is less stressful than someone actually using the phone.

⏹️ ▶️ John They also monitored the temperature of both of the phones during this, which I thought was a good idea, because hey, maybe one

⏹️ ▶️ John of them, you know, maybe one of them is hotter than the other. And they didn’t find any appreciable differences. So basically

⏹️ ▶️ John said one to 2% differences in their tests, which they consider not an appreciable difference and like within the margin

⏹️ ▶️ John of error. So there you go. The the benchmark testing may have showed a 20 or 30

⏹️ ▶️ John percent But the consumer reports attempt to simulate real-world usage which they detail you should follow the link.

⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll put in the notes They detail what they did like oh We loaded a web page repeatedly for this amount of time or we ran

⏹️ ▶️ John this thing for this amount of time You can see what they didn’t see if that is representative how you use your phone And then you’ll know

⏹️ ▶️ John what the difference is, but anyway consumer reports loves a good story about Apple phones being broken in some way so

⏹️ ▶️ John if they are not Jumping on this and saying that one of the a nines is much much worse than the other It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John a pretty good bet that they’re about the same

⏹️ ▶️ Casey excellent all right and Somebody wrote in with regard to fusion drives dropped

⏹️ ▶️ John her horse. You’re not gonna say that name. It’s exciting. Nope, so this is the About the fusion

⏹️ ▶️ John drive size we complain They dropped the the flash portion of the fusion drive and the new iMacs down to 24 gigs

⏹️ ▶️ John from 128 gigs But apparently if you get the two or three gigabyte fusion drive you do get

⏹️ ▶️ John the old 128 gigabytes of SSD. Two or three terabyte. Terabyte, yes. Only the one

⏹️ ▶️ John terabyte Fusion drive option has a 24 gig one so that’s some good news in that front I suppose.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right and

Casey brings up the Mac Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Toby wrote in and had an interesting point. They said,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I hear the merits of the Magic Trackpad discussed, it’s usually in comparison to using a mouse, but I find

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it really comes into its own in combination with a mouse. And we’ve heard this from a few other people.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I heard this from Mike Hurley a year ago now, I think at least,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I’d forgotten about it. I’m glad Toby said something. I have never run both

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Magic Trackpad and a mouse. I love my magic mouse, even though it’s ergonomically

⏹️ ▶️ Casey atrocious, but I love the functionality it provides for me. Um, I was lamenting on Twitter,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, yesterday, the day before, or maybe it was on here, actually on this, on this podcast somewhere, I was lamenting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I think my mousing days may be over, uh, shortly because I think forced touch will eventually catch

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on to the point that I’m going to be. kind of grumbly about not having it on the Magic Mouse. And I’ve been thinking

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot about maybe I should just get one of these stupid Magic Trackpads and just embrace the future in the same way that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe my next car, I should just get a stupid dual clutch gearbox and embrace the future, but neither

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is happening right now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The future is no gearbox.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh God, you’re already getting smug. You’re turning into one of those smug Tesla owners. You’re not even an owner yet.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, this is gonna be a long year or so when you first get that car.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco It’s not gonna be this year. Oh, thank

⏹️ ▶️ Casey God. All right, at least I have a few more months to raise my defenses

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and get prepared for this awfulness. Anyway. I mean, we can talk about Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pros some more if you want, if that’s better. Oh God, please stop. Although I was thinking earlier today

⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually how ridiculous it is, you two fawned over this stupid trash can for like 15 episodes of ATP

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and John never bought one and Marco, you kicked it to the curb within like six months.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I suspect that my next computer will probably be a Mac Pro again.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But, you know, because the difference now between like, like there was a good discussion about this with Serenity

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and John on this last week’s episode of the talk show, about how like the Mac Pro right now is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of like the best of almost nothing, except for multi-core performance

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and things that use that second GPU somehow, which is basically only

⏹️ ▶️ Marco OpenCL stuff that can even use it. So there’s like, there’s a small number of things that are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco better on it, but there’s a whole lot about it that the iMac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco beats it at, for my purposes, including the screen quality,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for one, the fact that there is no good way to get 5K or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco large retina on the Mac Pro. And so if there’s a new Mac Pro in,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, there’s probably gonna be one in like four or five months, but I probably won’t get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that one, but I would probably get the next one.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wait, so you’re saying if there’s a Mac Pro that is released in the next year or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so that supports Retina, you’re not going to Insta-buy it?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not planning on it. I mean, you know with me, I can never really guarantee that as much as you guys.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is what I sounded like when I was like, oh no, I’m totally not getting an Apple Watch, isn’t it?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or a BMW or an iPhone.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John If

⏹️ ▶️ John they don’t have a Retina screen, you’re not gonna get it. Exactly. You’re not gonna give up the Retina screen. So it doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John matter if a Mac Pro is introduced. All we should be watching for is an external 5K

⏹️ ▶️ John screen release. they’re not going to release screen unless something can drive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Exactly. And so I would like there like before I really do an update,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would like for there first of all to be a good performance increase on the CPU side.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think whatever they update to next, I forget what core they’re up to in the z online. And I might even you know, depending on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it comes soon, I’ll probably skip it because I’m still very happy with my Mac. But I would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would like more parallel CPU power eventually because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really do max it out like crazy when doing stuff to my new photos on my new camera because they’re just massive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that’s the only time I really destroy the CPUs so I can wait

⏹️ ▶️ Marco aren’t you happy you asked

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve been watching the football game for the last 10 minutes were you talking awesome

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway while I’m talking and you’re not listening, let’s do an ad read

Expensive trackpads

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I did it all that we never finished the talk about the trackpad. That’s where all this started. That was Genesis,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? So trackpads. Yeah, so I have nothing else to add about this, but somebody had some other notes in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show notes about it It wasn’t me I’m assuming it was John who was also not paying attention because he’s trying

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to buy Star Wars tickets again

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s one of those days. No, I’m you know, I thought you had it handled. Yeah Yeah, I put

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey this in the notes because of the,

⏹️ ▶️ John my question on this is, do any of you work this way? Have you worked this way, like mouse

⏹️ ▶️ John and trackpad at the same time?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I don’t generally, however, because the only trackpad I have is on my, physically in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the computer, attached to the computer. But I did notice a couple times, and I think it was getting a definition

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of a word the other day. I was at work and I’m on a client’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey site now, So I only have my onboard monitor. I’m not using my clamshell with two

⏹️ ▶️ Casey identical externals like I was at our office. So anyway, so I had my keyboard open

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and obviously the trackpad’s right there. And I was trying to get a definition of a word and I force touched in order

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get the definition rather than like right clicking and going to define or what have you.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it took me aback because I didn’t even really think twice about it. I just reached for the trackpad and did it with my left hand. And I was like, wait

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a second, that was weird. And it was kind of nice, But I don’t know,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t fathom getting an external magic trackpad

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in addition to a magic mouse, in no small part because they are damned expensive.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is really stunningly expensive. What are they, $130 I believe?

⏹️ ▶️ John Why is everyone saying that’s super expensive though? I’ve seen a lot of complaints about the magic trackpad. We didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John mention it in the last show, but I’ve seen a lot of people saying $130 for the trackpad. That seems outrageous. Now obviously

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s more than my like $19 plastic Logitech mouse from 1995 that I’ve been using

⏹️ ▶️ John forever. But I wouldn’t flinch at spending $100 on a really good mouse. So

⏹️ ▶️ John why is it that this is a big deal? Is it because you’d see it as just

⏹️ ▶️ John a flat thing that doesn’t move? And it seems like, how am I paying $130 for a flat thing that doesn’t move?

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it’s no,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, it’s it’s because of what you just said, because I’m used to paying like $20 for a mouse, my magic

⏹️ ▶️ Casey mouse that I bought way back when was probably what, $60 I think it was, something like $70, the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey original Magic Mouse, and I thought that was silly expensive. I don’t know, I think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it just seems like a lot of damn money, $130 for a mouse, for a freaking mouse. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a trackpad,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but still. So, you know, the fact is, high-end mice have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco always cost in the $100 range, right? Like the one, the Logitech MX Master,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a hundred bucks, isn’t it?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t recall, but I do remember vividly looking at it when Mike had said that it does a lot of the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff that I do with swipes on the Magic Mouse and thinking to myself, man, I really would love something that doesn’t look like a piece of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sushi. And I looked at it and I was gonna buy it and then I saw whatever the price was, apparently

⏹️ ▶️ Casey between 70 and $100, depending on where you buy it. And I remember looking at it and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey thinking, that’s way too much damn money for a mouse, no way.

⏹️ ▶️ John But why is it so much? Like, I don’t understand why people think that’s a lot of money. Like, the Razer gaming mice are probably similarly priced.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like this brings me a good point to pull this thing that’s been in the post-show section for God knows how long.

⏹️ ▶️ John The Xbox Elite controller, which you should all follow the link to right now. You guys see it up on the top

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco for some

⏹️ ▶️ John reason in the post-show thing. This makes a lot of sense to me.

⏹️ ▶️ John This is an Xbox controller, I believe it’s $150. Wow. It more or less looks

⏹️ ▶️ John like the regular Xbox controller, but they put more money into it. It’s sturdier, it’s more

⏹️ ▶️ John customizable, it has higher quality materials, has better tolerances, I’m sure it feels

⏹️ ▶️ John better to use, it’s also got some extra weird triggers on the bottom so you can use different button pressing arrangements.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like a premium controller. For a controller like a mouse and like a keyboard is something that

⏹️ ▶️ John when you’re using the thing your hands are on almost all the time and for a controller pretty much all the time.

⏹️ ▶️ John And they try to make them as sturdy as they can make them and keep them as cheap as possible to

⏹️ ▶️ John bundle them in with the game consoles and then they’re usually like maybe 40 bucks to 60 bucks to buy another one,

⏹️ ▶️ John which is kind of expensive, but these things do have Bluetooth, they do have a lot of buttons, sometimes they have lights on them and microphones

⏹️ ▶️ John and all sorts of other stuff. And I’m willing to

⏹️ ▶️ John buy a fancier version of basically every controller that I have. By all means, double the price of the controller

⏹️ ▶️ John and put 25% more value of parts into it. So obviously your margins go up for the expensive

⏹️ ▶️ John controller, but I’m getting 25% better, like take that money and put it towards, It’s got the same buttons as everything

⏹️ ▶️ John else. This one has the extra things on the bottom, but put it towards making the buttons sturdier or feel

⏹️ ▶️ John better or improving the materials or making them not wear out as much or not using hardier

⏹️ ▶️ John bushings or surface, you know, things that rub together. You know, whatever they’re gonna do to

⏹️ ▶️ John it, make it more expensive. And I think that is an incredibly smart purchase. The same reason you should buy a

⏹️ ▶️ John really good expensive chair. The best one you can find, keyboard, mouse, all this stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re gonna sit in it all day and touch it all day with your hands, that’s where you should spend your money. So,

⏹️ ▶️ John now the Magic Trackpad isn’t quite the same thing because really, like, it doesn’t do anything. It just sits there,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? So maybe 130 is too much for that because people feel like it is not

⏹️ ▶️ John that much better than the old Magic Trackpad in that, again, it’s just a little surface. It’s a little bit bigger,

⏹️ ▶️ John has slightly nicer materials. It supports forced touch, whatever, but at the bottom line, all people see

⏹️ ▶️ John is like a flat slab that lays on the ground that you put your finger on, but it doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John seem that crazy to me. Now maybe it’s overpricing that there’s no lower price model. In the case

⏹️ ▶️ John of the Xbox Elite controller or fancy keyboards or fancy chairs, you can get less expensive ones that are still pretty good.

⏹️ ▶️ John Whereas the Apple external desktop track pad is not $130 for people who want a track pad, but really don’t want

⏹️ ▶️ John to spend $130 on one because they’re on a budget. That’s where I can see the criticism, but this specific product saying,

⏹️ ▶️ John this isn’t worth $130 because Apple’s margins must be crazy, doesn’t really bother me that much.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not worth $130. It’s just, I feel like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever my barrier for a mouse or mouse like device

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, this is on the other side of that barrier. And, and what you just said makes perfect

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sense to me. I’m touching this constantly. This is how I’m, this is how I’m making my living is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey by using a mouse and a keyboard and sitting on a chair and so on. All of that makes perfect sense. You’re absolutely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. But I don’t know, I look at these prices and as soon as I get much past like 60, $70, I just feel like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s just too damn much. The rent is just too damn high.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But how often do you buy new input devices? Like I mean, people can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco justify spending $100 for an extra few gigs of memory

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on their iPhone with barely even thinking about it often. But then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an input device that you probably buy like once every five years at most. You know, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how often do people buy these things, you know, new by themselves? You know, I think it’s pretty rare.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, you know, this is a high-end premium device. This is not a mass market device. Most people are not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco buying desktops to begin with. Those who are buying desktops are generally gonna be using whatever comes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with it, and by default it comes with the mouse. And those who are gonna be, you know, willing to pay extra

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for, you know, this premium and trap pad thing, like that’s kind of an upscale premium thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in that market. I don’t think it’s a high-volume product. I don’t think Apple probably makes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or sells a whole ton of them. I’m honestly surprised they updated it at all. As I mentioned like last show,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m surprised that the desktop input devices got any attention from Apple given how relatively unimportant

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are in Apple’s overall market. But I don’t think it’s that ridiculous.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, a premium mechanical keyboard is going to cost you between $100 dollars usually.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it’s that crazy to have this trackpad from Apple, which is a premium brand now, it’s a fashion

⏹️ ▶️ Marco brand. I don’t think it’s that ridiculous to have this coming from them, doing things that no other trackpad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can do, at least on a Mac, possibly anywhere, offering that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for $130 that somebody’s going to buy once every five years. That doesn’t seem crazy to me at all.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So a couple thoughts about this. First of all, I don’t know when I bought this Magic Mouse, but I can assure

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you it was shortly after it was initially released, and it’s the same damn one I’ve been using for like easily five years.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, so there’s that. Um, but secondly, you’re, you’re both trying to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey use logic to fight with my emotions and, and, and you’re right.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, you’re absolutely right. Everything you both said, absolutely right. But all I can tell you is I look at these price tags. I’m like,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Holy God, that’s just, it’s too much money, damn it. And, and it’s just because, um,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s, it’s what, what I feel, you know, it’s the same reason that I look at a piece of software on the app store and if it’s,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know north of five bucks. I think whoa, whoa. Whoa, is this something I really want and I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco shouldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John think that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco way No, I know. I’m not saying that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I’m proud of this. I’m not saying that because I think it’s the right approach I’m just saying that’s how I feel and then I remind

⏹️ ▶️ Casey myself Oh my god this is like six dollars or seven dollars and it’s gonna give me plenty of enjoyment for a long

⏹️ ▶️ Casey time like The when tweetbot whatever came out and it was what five bucks

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for tweetbot to four and yes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco five

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so for a split second, I was like, wow, that’s I mean not that I wouldn’t do it But I was like Jesus. No, it’s not you idiot.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You use that app constantly every single day What are you doing even thinking that $5 is too much money? But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but that’s logic talking to the emotional side of my brain, which initially was like wow $5 for an app

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Really and and I’m wrong. I’m not arguing that I’m right. I’m not saying I’m right I’m wrong, but it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just it’s it’s that gut reaction when I see $130 or anything north of 80 bucks for a pointing device I’m just like, wow, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of money. So on

⏹️ ▶️ John the other side of this, the other reason this is in here, like I said, is the, uh, setting aside the price of the trackpad is that

⏹️ ▶️ John the concept of people who either have become accustomed to, or were

⏹️ ▶️ John brought up in the age of trackpads and mice and keyboards,

⏹️ ▶️ John adopting a computer use a desktop computer usage pattern that involves

⏹️ ▶️ John them all. So in the same way that my sort of, if I grew up with a mouse, my way

⏹️ ▶️ John of using computers was alien to the people who were, you know, teenagers or adults when I was first

⏹️ ▶️ John getting my Mac. Their their way of using computers was the keyboard. You sit in front of the keyboard and

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s how you use a computer keyboard keyboard. There is nothing else. I was always from, you know, from day one

⏹️ ▶️ John of you know, of the Mac mouse and keyboard, sometimes just a mouse, sometimes just the keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ John but very often both at once command clicking to clean up icons in the desktop shift clicking, option clicking,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the whole nine yards. Clicking, typing, clicking, typing, switching back and forth between them, doing

⏹️ ▶️ John them both simultaneously, using shortcut keys and graphics programs while you’re drawing with the mouse and switching tools

⏹️ ▶️ John with the keyboard. All those things are second nature to me because that’s how I was brought up. Now that we

⏹️ ▶️ John have trackpads, especially on the desktop, I can imagine there being people who get into a

⏹️ ▶️ John groove of one hand on the mouse, one hand on the keyboard or trackpad, where

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re You’re mousing around and, you know, Toby wrote in to say this is the two things that he uses a trackpad for while

⏹️ ▶️ John also using the mouse is swiping between spaces and swiping between launchpad pages. Why bother,

⏹️ ▶️ John why don’t you just click on the little things to take you to the next launchpad? It’s faster and more natural to do it the other way and what is your other hand doing

⏹️ ▶️ John anyway? It’s sort of, it’s not like being ambidextrous, it’s just like accepting that there are a bunch of places

⏹️ ▶️ John that you can give input to your computer and not saying, well, I can only be using one of those at once. Or

⏹️ ▶️ John I can only be using two of those at once because one of them didn’t exist when I was growing up. Uh, you know, and I feel like

⏹️ ▶️ John if I, it almost makes me want to take down my magic track back cause I have one too. Like I said, I got it for OS 10 reviews so I could do all the gestures

⏹️ ▶️ John to try to find a place for it to see if I get integrated into my life. Maybe, you know, it can’t teach an old dog new

⏹️ ▶️ John tricks. Maybe it’s too late for me, but I like the idea of younger or more flexible

⏹️ ▶️ John people using all forms of input simultaneously, uh, without being constrained by like,

⏹️ ▶️ John well, because computers, because desktop computers didn’t used to have a track pad, therefore there’s no

⏹️ ▶️ John place for a track pad in my computing life. So not that I’m gonna run out and buy one of these track pads but I

⏹️ ▶️ John am kind of fascinated by that idea and I may I may try bringing my thing down from the shelf and trying to find a place for it

⏹️ ▶️ John on my keyboard tray here.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love that both of you always get up my butt about how I buy everything that Apple makes and I’m always buying

⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything. Meanwhile I’m the only one here not even tempted a little bit by the track

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pad because I just know I wouldn’t use it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well we’ll see what actually happens. There’s the talking about it and there’s the buying and the buying is you

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco just bought a new iMac

⏹️ ▶️ John and and you bought a Mac Pro, and you bought a new iPhone, and so you were ahead on the actual buying. I never

⏹️ ▶️ John bought the last trackpad. That’s been around for years. Well, the only reason I bought it, I bought it used on eBay. The only

⏹️ ▶️ John reason I bought it was I had to for OS X reviews because the trackpad on my ancient non-unibody Mac does

⏹️ ▶️ John not do the gestures. You remember when they introduced the gestures and everything? I couldn’t actually do them. I didn’t have review

⏹️ ▶️ John hardware from Apple, and I didn’t have anything else, so I had to eBay a Magic Trackpad.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t believe you bought a trackpad used. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco can’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John over that either. I thought the exact same thing. It

⏹️ ▶️ John was in very good condition. did not smell like smoke. But did you like… And I cleaned

⏹️ ▶️ John it after I got it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t even want to think about the cleaning procedure you put that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John poor

⏹️ ▶️ Casey trackpad

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John through.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Man’s assumption, right? Yeah, exactly. It’s a miracle that that thing worked after you surely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey dismantled it in order to clean the insides that you would never

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John have ever touched.

⏹️ ▶️ John Is it man’s assumption or man’s conjecture? Now I’m feeling doubtful. Neither one of you knows because you’re useless.

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iMac: Then and Now

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco build it beautiful

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you want to talk more about this new iMac?

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I put this last thing in here because it was supposed to be for last week Maybe it’s follow-up, but I don’t know it’s more of the same topic

⏹️ ▶️ John I just and that’s a lot of other people pointed this out, but I thought it was worth Worth

⏹️ ▶️ John hearing them one more time in the 5400 rpm drive So Apple put up a website at apple.com

⏹️ ▶️ John slash iMac slash then hyphen and hyphen now It says hey let’s compare the original

⏹️ ▶️ John iMac that iconic computer from yesteryear with the new one just to see how far we’ve come and they go like

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh 62,000 times faster graphics at 14 million more pixels 1,000 times more

⏹️ ▶️ John RAM 750 times more storage 366 times more processing power

⏹️ ▶️ John But I’m pretty sure the hard drive in the original iMac was also 54 in sharp PM So

⏹️ ▶️ John I would like the last number that scrolls by on this little web page to be 1x more speed

⏹️ ▶️ John on the spindle And a couple of people pointed me to I think it was like other world computing articles and

⏹️ ▶️ John saying oh It’s not even though the RPM is the same that storage density is so massively increased at the bandwidth is higher

⏹️ ▶️ John I agree with that like like I said last show if you come from a spinning disk And you get another

⏹️ ▶️ John spinning disk computer this thing this will be faster than your old spinning This is hard our technology gets better right you know the

⏹️ ▶️ John setting aside the storage density which is going to give you higher, you know, throughput for how many megabytes a second can you pull off

⏹️ ▶️ John the disk, I’m sure the seek times are potentially better as well. Or, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, lots of things about a modern hard drive are better than the big clunker that was in the original iMac. But

⏹️ ▶️ John it this is the reason I put this in there is because like this is the meta argument about the 16 gigabytes

⏹️ ▶️ John of memory in the iPhone and how much RAM app used to put in the computers. It’s not so much the absolute number

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s kind of galls the technology enthusiasts so much. It’s like whatever numbers you come up

⏹️ ▶️ John with, whatever numbers you pick, whatever you feel the line of products with a set of parameters in them.

⏹️ ▶️ John The only thing I’m looking for is over time, make that number go up.

⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s kind of what this whole website is about. Look how these numbers are going up. And on the long term, yeah, it does go up. Look how much better we’ve

⏹️ ▶️ John done since like 1998. Good job, guys. You 1998 2015, you made great advancements, right? But 123 years in a row with the same

⏹️ ▶️ John bottom storage tier on your phones is too much because it feels like where’s the progress? Why are you holding

⏹️ ▶️ John steady at the three year ago levels? Has really nothing changed since three years? Is everything else exactly the

⏹️ ▶️ John same or are we making bigger pictures? Are we making bigger videos? Are the application sizes increasing? Like all

⏹️ ▶️ John these things that change do we have can we not get more storage for the same price? We want to see progress

⏹️ ▶️ John and it really this is the most grating thing for me about Apple because I’m so gung-ho and like oh progress progress is that

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever numbers you pick please just let me see progress in them. It doesn’t have to be every single month, every single six

⏹️ ▶️ John months, and even maybe it’ll give you pass in every single year if the previous year you were above the, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John you seem to be generous. But if time passes and a stat doesn’t change, that’s bad. And that’s why the 5400 rpm hard

⏹️ ▶️ John drives. Like seriously? I remember purposely trying to avoid 5400 rpm hard drives on

⏹️ ▶️ John laptops I bought well before the unibody error. Right? Because it’s like, oh you want to get the fast hard. I’d get

⏹️ ▶️ John the 7200 rpm one, right? It feels like going back in time. It’s like, you know, we should be making

⏹️ ▶️ John meaningful progress and we are everywhere else everywhere else is SSD wow what amazing progress great spread that across your entire line

⏹️ ▶️ John except for these thinkers at the bottom which by the way I think no one sent this theory in but it occurred to

⏹️ ▶️ John me after the show last week that the only reason for the bottom of the line retina iMac

⏹️ ▶️ John is to get people in the door you know kind of like the cars that you advertise in the paper just to get them into the dealership

⏹️ ▶️ John but you never actually saw anyone that car it’s like oh and retina starts at 1500 but not really because you should never buy the 1500

⏹️ ▶️ John one you’re always gonna but you You always have to get the option for whatever, you know, the option that actually gives you a transmission or

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever option they have that, you know, if you want seats, then, then you have to pay the, you know, you have to

⏹️ ▶️ John get, get the convenience package for $800. So that could be another potential reason that they’re trying to hit

⏹️ ▶️ John a price point to get people into the retina line. Like once they start considering, well, this is a non retina, but look at this screen, isn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John it nice? And you can get into this one for only 1500 bucks, but no one should go out the door with the $1500 model. So let me

⏹️ ▶️ John start selling you some options. That’s another possibility. I don’t know if that’s the case. But anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John I just thought the then and now site was like Apple highlighting the worst feature of its new line of Retina

⏹️ ▶️ John iMacs unintentionally.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Awesome. Nice. I actually, in my

⏹️ ▶️ Casey deep thoughts that I had earlier today, apparently I had a lot of time to think earlier today, I was thinking again about,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey whenever it is I upgrade my personal machine, what should I get? And we talked

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about this over a couple episodes, a few episodes back. And I was thinking again, Maybe the right

⏹️ ▶️ Casey answer is an iMac, and maybe the right answer is I just get a 5K iMac. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the thing that made me stop- I can sell you mine.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey There we

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco go.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey At least you’re honest. Now we’re getting to real talk.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Wait till the next

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Mac Pro comes

⏹️ ▶️ Casey out. Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s the most real of real talk. Anyway, it occurred to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey me that the problem I have with an iMac is that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I oftentimes work from home, as we talked about. And when I do work from home, I want to be able to plug

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in to an external monitor. I am one of those people who works much better

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with two monitors, or at least more than just the 15-inch monitor I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey have built into the computer. And I don’t really care that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there isn’t a target display mode or whatever it’s called, but in this case,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it would have made the conversation with myself a little bit different if I knew I could plug

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my Mac into that screen, even if I couldn’t get retina resolutions, even if it was just scaled or something,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that would make it a much more compelling option because otherwise I’m never really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to be able to plug into an external monitor or I’m going to have to have a second monitor

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sitting next to this 27-inch behemoth on my desk, which I really don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey want. And so I don’t know what to do. And I know that we talked

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about this before and I didn’t know what to do then, and I still don’t know what to do now, but the fact that I was really thinking

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about, well, how could I make an iMac work was weird for me in the same way that the, what the same

⏹️ ▶️ Casey way I was thinking about when maybe I should try to make a trackpad work for me. That was another weird

⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought for me because I’ve, I’ve never been interested in desktop Macs or computers of any sort since college.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve never been interested in trackpads. I use them because I have to, not because I want to, a track

⏹️ ▶️ Casey point for life. So I’ve been having a bit of an identity crisis with

⏹️ ▶️ Casey regards to my computing preferences over the last 24 hours.

⏹️ ▶️ John Have you considered the iPad Pro?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, not really. Why?

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. You’re considering, you seem to be open to all options.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, let’s not get crazy.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m standing in for Vitecci saying, you know, iPad,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it’s really big. You can

⏹️ ▶️ John split the screen now.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, no, let’s not talk crazy talk. Although I did briefly consider an iPad Air 2

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as opposed to my beloved Mini whenever I upgrade that, and that was also an odd thought. I don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just weird weird times in my noggin these days gentlemen weird times You guys are so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey much worse than me. Well, you wait different. It’s not worse. It’s different You just buy everything and get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey rid of it instantly including businesses.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey consistent But but but yes, at least you are consistent. I both

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of us actually I although perhaps me more vocally Hammond Hall for three years and then eventually

⏹️ ▶️ Casey get something that we should have bought three years from

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John now

⏹️ ▶️ John I know what I’m waiting for the computer and like I said, I’m probably gonna get one of these iMacs It will be my wife’s computer,

⏹️ ▶️ John not mine. I’m just waiting to see, like, I’m basically waiting to decide which GPU I should get. Is it worth it to get

⏹️ ▶️ John the big one? Is the big one much hotter than the other one? Is it a waste to get the big one because it gets thermal throttle all the time,

⏹️ ▶️ John so you might as well get the cheapest, smallest, coolest one because the gaming performance can be crap either way. Like, I just

⏹️ ▶️ John want to see benchmarks and numbers and noise stuff. And wait for everyone else to get the lemons off the assembly

⏹️ ▶️ John line, and then I’ll buy one.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, for whatever it’s worth, like, you know, I mean, I haven’t used the new one yet, but I imagine, I mean, I know it’s the same thermal

⏹️ ▶️ Marco design deal one mean maybe the actual thermal load would be different. But in general, gaming

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a five K I Mac works fine, but is loud. That’s it. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you, the fan is loud when gaming. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think anything could be louder than my 13 inch MacBook Air that my kids play Minecraft.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I don’t know how much noise the little tiny 13 inch air can make. But

⏹️ ▶️ John like it is at max speed and max volume. And it’s not that loud because Air is such a tiny machine,

⏹️ ▶️ John but it sounds like it’s being hurt the whole time It’s amazing this machine hasn’t died like it They just sit in

⏹️ ▶️ John front of Minecraft for hours and just sounds like a tiny little hair dryer behind there going all the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time No, it is not that bad at all, but it is you know It’s it’s exactly the same thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with their like asymmetrical blades on the 15 retina. It’s like it sounds More pleasant

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a tone, but it’s it’s still just as loud basically

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, anyway like I feel bad for them because because, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, there’s a 27 inch non-retina, but still 27 inch monitor attached to that little 13 inch air.

⏹️ ▶️ John And they play Minecraft full screen at native res. And they get like 12 frames a second.

⏹️ ▶️ John I just, they don’t know what they’re missing, I think. But boy, I look at it and I’m like,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I don’t know how they tolerate it. I guess it’s what they’re used to. Like, well, I guess this is what Minecraft is like on a computer. Like it’s faster

⏹️ ▶️ John on their iPads. A little, like the iPad 2 runs Minecraft Pocket Edition at a higher

⏹️ ▶️ John frame rate, much higher frame rate this MacBook Air runs on this 27-inch screen.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Goodness.

Magic Mouse 2 port location

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so what else we have going on? We have something called Marco’s pet topic.

⏹️ ▶️ John Hey, you skipped a bunch of things. I’m still not done with peripherals on the iMac.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, God, it’s like follow up. That’s not follow up. Okay, carry

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John on.

⏹️ ▶️ John I bet it’s a topic. Yeah, those things we didn’t we didn’t mention last time. We didn’t mention

⏹️ ▶️ John last time that the keyboard and trackpad work, if they’re plugged in, even if you have Bluetooth

⏹️ ▶️ John off. So in theory, you could buy this keyboard and trackpad and connect them to a computer

⏹️ ▶️ John that does not have Bluetooth. Because even though they are Bluetooth peripherals and they charge through a lightning port that connects

⏹️ ▶️ John to USB at the other end, theoretically you could buy a computer with either broken Bluetooth and no

⏹️ ▶️ John Bluetooth at all and still plug these things in and use them. And since the trackpad and the keyboard don’t move

⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have to worry about fraying the ends of the lightning cable by wiggling it back and forth. And

⏹️ ▶️ John that brings up the other topic that’s not in here, of theories about why the charging port is on

⏹️ ▶️ John the bottom of the mouse, which we talked about last time, and you know I was willing to say aesthetics explains

⏹️ ▶️ John it 100% but other people have theories like well if you let if you put the plug like where you would expect the cable to

⏹️ ▶️ John connect aside from it being ugly it would encourage people to keep it plugged in all the time

⏹️ ▶️ John and use it like that and then that would inevitably fray the lightning cable which is not meant to be yanked around like that or

⏹️ ▶️ John the connector would start wiggling or whatever so by putting it on the bottom you assure that it is impossible to use it when

⏹️ ▶️ John it is plugged in and then therefore no one will use it when it’s plugged in that makes some sense

⏹️ ▶️ John I still think aesthetics is the is, you know, Occam’s razor. It is the obvious solution. It is the easiest solution.

⏹️ ▶️ John It explains that entirely.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I guarantee you that was the reason it was not because of the cable fraying questions. No, not at all. The reason

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was it looks better

⏹️ ▶️ John or the or the idea that people would accidentally use it like they understand they’re buying a wireless mouse once they realize it can work with

⏹️ ▶️ John that. Someone would probably use a plug then. I don’t doubt that because people will do all sorts of things. But in general, I don’t think it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John because people would be confused or anything like that. The other side, like I said last week,

⏹️ ▶️ John doing it for aesthetic reasons makes so much sense except for the fact that when you

⏹️ ▶️ John charge it it is almost impossible to make it aesthetically pleasing while charging and charging is a very is charging

⏹️ ▶️ John is a very infrequent occurrence but it’s always going to look like you’ve harpooned a turtle and

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s in the throes of death or already dead when you charge it it just it just doesn’t look good

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not a good look there is no way like you know johnny ives elegant desk with everything

⏹️ ▶️ John cleared off of it and his minimalist setup with his beautiful apple peripherals that look like a piece of sushi and then he’s got to

⏹️ ▶️ John charge his mouse and it’s just there’s just no way to make that look good look good maybe maybe it’s like you know

⏹️ ▶️ John hanging a lantern on it and movie script parlance like we have this thing that’s a problem let’s us point let’s let’s say

⏹️ ▶️ John yes this seriously is a problem there is no way to make us look good when charging guess what your mouse is dead it was harpooned by

⏹️ ▶️ John a lightning cable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John well this is I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean this is kind of bleed this leads in very well to my pet topic if you want to go into that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yes but before we do you should tell us about something that’s awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, John still has to tell us about Apple’s mouse click sounds concerns.

⏹️ ▶️ John Isn’t that part of your thing, though?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, so

⏹️ ▶️ John this was a link to, who did this one, I gotta look at it. It was Steven Levy, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. He got access to Apple’s input peripherals lab, basically, where

⏹️ ▶️ John they work up the mouse and keyboards and everything, they were talking with the engineers and they’re all serious about everything. Like, we really

⏹️ ▶️ John swept the details and I told them a big story about how the click sound of the new mouse wasn’t quite right and they had to figure out why it didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John sound right and adjust the little feet that touched the bottom and they were, you know, they angled

⏹️ ▶️ John the feet differently to make the resonance of the click sound better until they got the click just right.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it talks about sweating the details. And a lot of people pointed out like, that’s all well and good. I

⏹️ ▶️ John love that you sweat the details on how nice the mouse click sounds, but A, you may be

⏹️ ▶️ John missing the forest for the trees and that a lot of people would say that the shape is not particularly ergonomic for the class of people who want

⏹️ ▶️ John to rest their entire hand on the mouse. But I still say that’s a categorical, like how you grip the mouse thing. And B,

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re really concentrating on that, But everyone’s okay with the speared turtle charging thing. Like they really

⏹️ ▶️ John sweat the details, except for this detail, because they say, you know what, I don’t care what it looks like when it’s charging. Have it look as ugly

⏹️ ▶️ John and stupid and awkward as you want. That is the detail we are not sweating. It’s just fine, just forget

⏹️ ▶️ John it, right? So the detail they’re sweating, obviously, and it makes kind of sense. You click the mouse all the time. You want it to be satisfying

⏹️ ▶️ John and feel good. You charge the mouse very infrequently. It’s okay for that to just be a total disaster, I

⏹️ ▶️ John guess.

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco you exactly what’s wrong. So any kind of engine error code that your car throws, you can see

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what it means on automatic and some of them you can even just clear it like if the code is something that’s temporary like your gas

⏹️ ▶️ Marco door is open you can just close it and then go to automatic and have it reset the code. Problem solved you don’t have to go to a mechanic

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or anything like that. Also it has access to all the data that your car has about all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the systems are working, how quickly you’re driving, where you are going, you know with your phone it has GPS.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the combination of those things can do things like if you have an accident it can automatically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco call for help. It can also do simpler things like it can give you a log of your fuel

⏹️ ▶️ Marco efficiency and how you’ve been driving, where you’ve been driving. It can give you your parking location, so you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco never lose your car in a big parking lot. So much stuff like that. And they also now have,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fairly recently they added apps. And so they have a whole SDK now. So if you’re a developer, there’s a whole

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco build apps against. So they have all sorts of apps already. Things like Concur for expense

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Use vs. looks vs. profit

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alright, so tell us about this pet topic of yours.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So this is so it was kind of inspired by this iMac stuff, you know, which I’m saying

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the, you know, being concerned about the detail of how it looks when it’s not when it’s not plugged in and then you know, the the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ridiculousness of how the mouse looks when it is plugged in and how you can’t use it while charging

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything. And then so we got an email from Florian Kuhnlinds and he said

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me the new Magic Peripherals discussion left me the impression that Apple’s laser focus might be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bit too focused. They care about the sound of the mouse but not the weird charging port position,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or at least not enough to change it. Meanwhile, it would make a lot of sense being able to use the mouse wired only like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the other two new peripherals. Similar with the iMac and the 5400 RPM hard drive, why give

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it the super screen but not a good drive? Same with the iPhone and 16GB and so on. And so,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, for me, so that’s, you know, end email.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this is a bigger discussion that I’ve kind of alluded to for a while, but I think it’s worth

⏹️ ▶️ Marco diving into here because these all are relevant. You know, Apple, we all like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to think that Apple always does things that are best for usability. And the fact is,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is not true now, and that really has never been true. has always kind of been

⏹️ ▶️ Marco balanced between appearance and profitability, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, for lack of a better word. And it’s kind of this tight balance that Apple has had to walk.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If usefulness and usability and like, you know, good engineering-wise things being awesome,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if those were the top priorities, regardless of how it would look or how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco profitable it would be, Apple stuff would be… like it would be more like the PC market.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We have that in the market. We see what that is like. And that’s not… It’s a very low-profit business.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s very badly differentiated or minimally differentiated. And it’s not that great.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also, people like us who kind of care about how things look a little bit…

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We like to think that we are objective because we’re geeks. And we like to think like, oh, it doesn’t matter how it looks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll just get the one that functions best. But… Wait, who

⏹️ ▶️ John thinks that? Who thinks that? None of us do.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, so good. So you know in many cases people really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do care what it looks like. So you know looks are important. Anyway, I can look at almost any Apple product and I can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco point out ways in which appearance or you know the overall visual

⏹️ ▶️ Marco appeal just appearance has trumped usefulness or real-world

⏹️ ▶️ Marco use. Like you know John pointing out that that the mouse like when you when you charge

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, like that, it looks ridiculous when you have to charge it like on its back

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or on its side, diagonally, like whatever it is, it looks ridiculous, right? In reality, Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco worked so hard to make the iPhone look super thin and be super small and look great,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but almost every iPhone I see in the wild is in some kind of crappy case because the iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, you know, either it’s a case for durability much which is most of the time or for better grip

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the phones themselves aren’t durable enough and don’t offer good enough grip or it’s a case that’s a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery case because the phones don’t offer good enough battery life for people so it’s like there’s always you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know there’s always these these trade-offs that Apple makes for good looks similar

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing with the iPhone 6 design why is the sleep wake button directly across from the volume

⏹️ ▶️ Marco up button which makes it very hard to hit just one of them without hitting the other one accidentally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reason most likely is because it looks better it is visually symmetrical on that level and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it looks better than offsetting those buttons at all or by having them by having the sleep-wake button be like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the middle or still on top or whatever you know there it looked better that way that might not be the only

⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason it’s there but it’s probably the biggest reason it’s there

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think I don’t think looks is the reason for the sleep-wake button at all I think I think looks is the reason

⏹️ ▶️ John that the tops are aligned exactly but I don’t think there’s any place you could put that that is

⏹️ ▶️ John that is better than opposite the volume buttons unfortunately because top is too high and once you slide

⏹️ ▶️ John either the volume buttons or the power button down they become much more awkward to reach.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well then so even if it was like centered between the two rather than align with the top one. You think that would help?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah I do actually. I think it I mean it still wouldn’t be ideal but I think it would be easier to hit just one of them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they weren’t exactly aligned.

⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe maybe anyway that would still be aesthetically aligned because it would be exactly centered between the two volume buttons.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah but I’m sure somebody said I’m sure somebody was like no it looks better like this and that’s why anyway so.

⏹️ ▶️ John other arguments are stronger. Well, I think your arguments got weaker as you went on, as in, weaker is defined

⏹️ ▶️ John by whether I agree with you or not.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Sure, okay, but you know, let’s,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco let’s go, you know, there and there’s even with the new stuff, like the iPad Pro, I called out, and many people did,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the big problems with the iPad Pro that people are gonna have in practice is that there’s nowhere on it to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco put the pencil. Like, if you have a pencil, there is nowhere on the iPad,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if you buy the big keyboard case, it, like, there’s no slot for the pencil. And part of that is because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s super thin, there’s nowhere to… It’s just not thick enough to have a slot. The pencil, by the way, which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as CGP Grey pointed out on Cortex, the pencil which is perfectly round and can roll away,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that looks

⏹️ ▶️ John better. Matt Stauffer Did you see the person who, I forget who it was, posted a picture of the surface, the stylus for the Surface 4?

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s shaped like a pencil, and the Apple pencil is shaped like a pen. Robert Wallace

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly. Anyway, so there’s issues with that, where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least for the keyboard case, at least make a hole, because you know there’s gonna be a million third-party

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad cases that are gonna have pen holes in them because that’s what people actually need if they’re gonna have the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad Pencil. But it’d be great if Apple made them because Apple’s cases are generally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty nice. So anyway. They

⏹️ ▶️ John should attach it with a chain like at the banks, like one of those little metal chains just so no one walks away with it and you can have the metal thing

⏹️ ▶️ John just clunking around as you try to write. That’d be great. Right.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Obviously, the new MacBook One, that has a lot of these trade-offs for thinness

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it looks nicer. As I’ve ranted many times before, I think the keyboard and the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco trackpad both suffer from that, from this trade-off just to make it look thinner. But again, the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook, like how many people go buy MacBooks because they are,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they kind of inspire lust when you touch one, when you see one, it’s like, my God, it’s amazing. So it does

⏹️ ▶️ Marco work. The iMac is a curious case of this, because the iMac, and the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro, you could look at all these things. The iMac is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really, really thin, and if they would be willing to make it thicker,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even just the thickness it used to be, you’d be able to do a lot of things that would be very nice. You could, for instance,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 21-inch model could use 3 1⁄2-inch hard drives again, which would make them faster and cheaper

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and larger. You could, if it was thicker, you could have a kind of more robust

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cooling solution so that you could have the fans that don’t spin as fast under

⏹️ ▶️ Marco high load. So like the Mac Pro has that one giant fan, which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is awesome because you can stress out a Mac Pro like crazy and you will not hear it. No matter what it’s doing, you will

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not hear it. The iMac is much more designed like a laptop because it’s so super

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thin, it kind of has to be. So the iMac is, I think it’s one main fan in the middle or something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that, but anyway, It’s like, it has to spin really fast under very heavy CPU and GPU

⏹️ ▶️ Marco loads, and it’s very loud as a result. And if they’d be willing to make the enclosure thicker, they could have larger,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco slower fans in there that could have the same degree of cooling. But they don’t, because it looks better

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when it’s thin from the side. I’m looking at this 5K iMac on my desk.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If it was three inches thicker, I would never notice. Because I would never see it,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I’m looking at it head on, and it’s against a wall. It doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John matter. But when it’s on the reception desk at a fancy office, people do see the back.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but even then, they really care. But yeah, that’s why they do it. And it looks nice

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in their press shots, and they like saying how thin it is, even though it’s only that thin on the edge, but oh well. Oh, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco also with the iMac, one of my biggest complaints about the iMac is that the stand is too low.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you actually want to have an ergonomically correct setup with an iMac or an Apple Cinema Display, you have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to put it on a book or something. You have to lift it up by about three inches. What is yours on?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mine is on a, I believe it’s called the Elevation Stand.

⏹️ ▶️ John I thought you had it on top of one of your weird, expensive German amplifiers.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I used to, because those are also the exact right height, but now I move those to the left and right, because they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco holding speakers up for, anyway. So I have an Elevation Stand from Elevation Lab, which is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty perfect.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, all of Apple’s monitors, monitors and iMacs have always been too low. I have mine on a stand too. My stand that is

⏹️ ▶️ John even high enough, I have like a clear piece of Lexan that’s kind of curved in a U shape. Right, yeah. it could be higher

⏹️ ▶️ John still. I bought it thinking, well, I’m surely going to replace this 23-inch monitor as soon as they come out with

⏹️ ▶️ John a big 27-inch one or whatever, and I just never bought one, so now it’s just been too low for a long time. But

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, you’re right, all their stands are too low. Which, I mean, the solution that

⏹️ ▶️ John other monitor makers do, like Dell or NEC or Asus

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, they make adjustable height stands, especially on the fancier models. And adjustable height stands just all look

⏹️ ▶️ John gross and don’t feel good to and you know what I mean? Like, and Apple wouldn’t do that because

⏹️ ▶️ John making an adjustable height stand, making a very good adjustable height stand would be really expensive, and making a cruddy one

⏹️ ▶️ John makes them feel bad about their products. So they don’t, so it’s a single contiguous piece of bent aluminum with a

⏹️ ▶️ John little hole for the cables to come out of, and that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. And even then, like, you know, obviously in all of their photos of it, there’s no cables plugged into any of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco their products, because cables are ugly. But again, like, the reality of somebody

⏹️ ▶️ Marco using these Apple products is usually uglier and clunkier than the way they’re presented,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and because it looks gross. And I can’t really blame them for that, but I do wish that their designs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would consider it more. And I think it seems like over time, the reason I bring all this up, the reason why I wanted to talk about this tonight,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that it does seem like over time, the balance between what is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the best overall product versus what looks the best versus what’s most profitable, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel like the best overall product side of that triangle been losing a little too much recently.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco In seeking out higher average selling prices, more upsells, more profit,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and also, I think… I don’t know how the internal politics work, but it does seem like the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco most powerful person in the company is Johnny Ive, from the outside. That’s how it looks to me. It seems like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco he can do basically whatever he wants, and that anything he says just goes. Because Steve was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so involved in product and design, I’m guessing Steve and Johnny had a really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice balance going that Tim and Johnny just can’t have because Tim is not the same kind of person.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco He’s not really in that role as much. And so I think now Johnny has so much power and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s going less checked or possibly even unchecked. And so what we’re seeing now is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re seeing the Johnny and Tim sides get really strong. If you think about Tim as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the profitability side, Apple is nailing the profitability.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Johnny is making these beautiful looking objects, but it seems like that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco advocate for keeping the product in check was Steve. And that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco role is now just kind of, you know, it’s falling to other people, but none of them are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as… Maybe it’s power, maybe it’s just, you know, high ranking, whatever it is,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco none of them are exerting as much influence, it seems, over the product line the way Steve did

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and could. Versus Johnny and Tim, who are like, if you think about Johnny is wanting the beautiful

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things and Tim is one of the profitability which those are probably oversimplifications but those are clearly like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of where their strengths have lied in the past if you look at that it does seem like there’s this there’s this kind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of vacuum where Steve used to be in keeping the product stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in better balance with those two factors.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know I would put Steve in the camp that’s just as extreme in terms of wanting to remove everything and

⏹️ ▶️ John it seemed to me because every Every time you talked, every time you saw an interview with Steve Jobs, it always seemed like what he

⏹️ ▶️ John really wanted was to get rid of all this crap. Like what he really wanted essentially was the iPad, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Can we just get rid of all this crap? I don’t want any ports, I don’t want any expansion slots, I just want it to be like a beautiful

⏹️ ▶️ John single piece obelisk that has no features on it whatsoever but is a computing device. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean he’s the guy who made the Power Mac G4 Cube for crying out loud. Like he wanted to get rid

⏹️ ▶️ John of it all. Hide it, get rid of it all, and yet even in the Cube! Did he make the cube

⏹️ ▶️ John with no firewire ports, with no connections for a keyboard, with everything wireless? No, because he couldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John do that yet. And so I definitely feel like if he was still around, not that it matters, but anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John he would be on the side of get rid of everything. And in that vein, like

⏹️ ▶️ John the idea of getting rid of everything, the little triangle that you sketched out between, I forget what it was, like profitability,

⏹️ ▶️ John does it look nice and is it a good overall product or whatever? Yeah, basically. There is a little bit of

⏹️ ▶️ John overlap there, because when I look at the products they’re making these days, aside from thinking that

⏹️ ▶️ John Steve Jobs would be totally gung-ho and removing every single port and every single feature and just making them have nothing and just

⏹️ ▶️ John removing all choice because it’s just you shouldn’t need that crap and it’s annoying, there is something to be said

⏹️ ▶️ John for whether intentionally or accidentally, and I think it is mostly intentionally, doing stuff like

⏹️ ▶️ John removing the number of possible moving parts, reducing the number of joints,

⏹️ ▶️ John fewer parts, fewer joints, fewer moving things, fewer ports, fewer holes, simpler,

⏹️ ▶️ John smaller, less stuff. That does actually make a better product.

⏹️ ▶️ John And aggressively pursuing that can get you, you know, it’s not like a smooth gradient of like,

⏹️ ▶️ John well, it was, you know, more ports are good, but fewer ports is fewer things to break.

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple seems to always be looking for the next kind of discontinuity or step jump where it’s like, well, if we remove,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it could be argued that the, you know, the iPhone or the iPad like that. If we remove everything about computers, We give you

⏹️ ▶️ John a little handheld computer that we call a smartphone, and we remove everything about it. No finder, no file system,

⏹️ ▶️ John no installing your own apps, blah, blah, blah. Like, they’re looking for that in hardware design too. Now, are they

⏹️ ▶️ John successful? Do they make products that actually, that people appreciate? Oh, it’s great, it only has one port. See how that’s better than

⏹️ ▶️ John two? Because one is fewer than two, and it’s less things to break, and it’s simpler, and blah, blah, blah. I think they blow it a

⏹️ ▶️ John lot. But it seems to me what they’re going for all the time is to

⏹️ ▶️ John try to make it simpler. and that instinct is mostly a good

⏹️ ▶️ John instinct. It’s just like what you’re putting in the axis of like, is this a better product? It’s judging it by the

⏹️ ▶️ John criteria of like kind of, is it useful for me in the same way that the previous Mac was used for me, only faster

⏹️ ▶️ John and nicer looking or whatever. And they’re always trying to say, but we wanna go beyond that. We want you to not

⏹️ ▶️ John need any ports. We won’t need, you know, if they could make mice and keyboards that you didn’t plug in ever, they

⏹️ ▶️ John would, like tiny little atomic power plants, like they would seal them up and just say like, you never plug these in, they’re wireless

⏹️ ▶️ John forever. If they could put wireless power to the iMac so it looks like it did in their product shots, they would. Like they want to remove

⏹️ ▶️ John everything that makes this thing a computer. They wish, if you could give like Johnny out of a magic wand and say,

⏹️ ▶️ John you can make a computer that’s anything you want, assuming he didn’t immediately go into images projected on the back of your retina by

⏹️ ▶️ John nanomachines, he would just make a beautiful floating screen that floats in midair and has

⏹️ ▶️ John no edges, right? And input devices that are invisible, that either are mind

⏹️ ▶️ John controlled or are controlled by your hands, not touching anything. And there would be nothing. Like they all want to get rid of the

⏹️ ▶️ John computer and just make it it’s you and the screen. That’s all there is. Maybe they’d make something like VR or whatever. And so

⏹️ ▶️ John I see in this thing that you’re attributing to aesthetics as in I want it to look like a beautiful sculpture

⏹️ ▶️ John or nickel and diming as in no, the GPU and the iMac could support two external screens

⏹️ ▶️ John as people in the chat room are saying. But that would mean more ports and more ports means supporting those ports and making sure we have

⏹️ ▶️ John the buses to go through them. It’s more expensive to do that and I got to drill more holes in the case or whatever. them just trying

⏹️ ▶️ John to say, we just want to, you know, Johnny Ive and his white world, boil it down to its essence. What is

⏹️ ▶️ John it? Just you and the screen. You shouldn’t need more than one screen. Just you and this beautiful screen that’s just wrapping around

⏹️ ▶️ John your whole head and it’s all you can see. And you put your hand on the sushi and you touch a little keyboard that has

⏹️ ▶️ John no edges and nothing is plugged in and there are no wires and that’s the world, you know, I see them striving

⏹️ ▶️ John for that and I kind of applaud them striving for that. And I don’t attribute it all to just Johnny Ives disconnect from like, well,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want people to actually use these things. I just want it to be sculpture. I feel like he does want them to be useful things he just

⏹️ ▶️ John has the same sort of allergy that I always sent some Steve Jobs to the to the

⏹️ ▶️ John the greebles in in ILM parlance or special effects industry parts of

⏹️ ▶️ John computers the little doodads and do hickeys and ports and flanges and switches I mean it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John rotation lock has gone from the stupid iPad because like can we get rid of that switch if we can get rid of it because I want there to

⏹️ ▶️ John be nothing I just want to be a screen like that’s why everyone thinks the home button is going away this

⏹️ ▶️ John is It’s like one of the few remaining moving parts in the thing. So I totally get your point. I just I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m myself internally conflicted about applauding their their

⏹️ ▶️ John aspirations while at the same time saying you missed the mark with this particular feature or product

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever we may differ on what those are. So I get where you’re coming from. But I sympathize.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but, you know, most of what you just said, I agree with. You know, it’s it’s just really an issue of like of the balance

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you know, whether they have the right balance now or not. I totally agree that, like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco generally, the track they’re on, the direction they’re going is generally good, and I generally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think, obviously, the world thinks so, too. It’s working for them. And, you know, who am I to say that this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco massively successful company is doing something wrong? But the reality is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that in the real world, there are things that are not ideal with the way some of this stuff works. And I do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think, again, I think they’re on the right track overall, but there are little,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco course corrections that are that are necessary that are not happening now that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it does seem like it’s kind of out of whack with the priorities and and that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco might get magnified over time I don’t know I mean when I read that Johnny Ive was was moving

⏹️ ▶️ Marco into the clouds to be his new position I was happy everyone else was like oh no we’re gonna lose

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Johnny I was like let him let him ascend to into into the heavens to whatever he wants to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do because I would love to get like new blood under him get new people up there get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new ideas here I mean there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John a whole team that’s the whole thing with Johnny Ave though like he’s not coming up with all these designs and the most you can say is that he’s

⏹️ ▶️ John giving yes no no yes to 17 designs that are presented him and so in that way he has an influence over the company

⏹️ ▶️ John but other people are designing these products and maybe he gives them notes maybe he says I’m thinking I’m thinking

⏹️ ▶️ John like an egg but with no rounded parts go like and

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don’t know what he says

⏹️ ▶️ John to people to inspire them but he’s not there with a pencil drawing every single product. I don’t know which products he even has

⏹️ ▶️ John a hand in, but you’re right, like, in the same way that Steve Jobs wasn’t drawing anything. He was just saying, sitting back and say,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m thinking like leather, like on my Learjet, and then iOS 6 would come and he would go, no, yes, yes, no, no, yes,

⏹️ ▶️ John look at this leather sample, no, no, yes. Like, Johnny Ive is more involved than Steve Jobs in just saying no and yes, but

⏹️ ▶️ John like, we’re using him as a stand-in, just for the people who get the idea that Steve Jobs is designing. We’re using him and his philosophy

⏹️ ▶️ John as a stand-in. So, So New Blood, I feel like with him ascending, that maybe that he is delegating more

⏹️ ▶️ John of the, what makes the cut and what doesn’t, and maybe also delegating

⏹️ ▶️ John the direction. What I always think about is, you guys never read the Johnny Ive book?

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a good one. The Leander Canyon one, it’s pretty good. Talking about the early iMac

⏹️ ▶️ John designs and how they’re like, well, we can go a lot of ways with this phone thing. It’s probably gonna be some kind of rectangle,

⏹️ ▶️ John rounded, and we have a couple of different designs. And one of the ones that came up really early on was essentially the iPhone 4 design. You know the

⏹️ ▶️ John one we all know, it looks like an ice cream sandwich with the metal thing and

⏹️ ▶️ John then the glass thing on the front and back. That was like one of the very first designs they were thinking of for the iPhone.

⏹️ ▶️ John They just couldn’t make it happen for the iPhone 1. It was just like, well, that’s great and all. That was one of

⏹️ ▶️ John their ideas in the mix and it was like manufacturability problems and how big it had to be

⏹️ ▶️ John and the timeline that they had. And so they basically had to say, even though we like that design the best, what about this

⏹️ ▶️ John design? What about this design? The iPhone one design that came up with was like the fourth compromise down of like,

⏹️ ▶️ John well, none of us really like this design. Like if you look at the original iPhone, you can tell that Jon Abbott was probably

⏹️ ▶️ John upset about many aspects of it, right? But it’s the best they could do with the time and materials and skills they had at the

⏹️ ▶️ John time. But eventually, by the time the iPhone four came around, he didn’t give up. He’s like, I remember that ice cream sandwich

⏹️ ▶️ John one and it was pretty awesome and we’re going to make that phone. And they did eventually make it.

⏹️ ▶️ John kind of the you know the compromises that are necessary in industrial design

⏹️ ▶️ John and I see in a lot of the products they’re making now like the ones that look like transitional fossils where it’s like well we’re

⏹️ ▶️ John not quite at the point where you can get rid of all these things but they have a design that almost tries to get rid of them but leaves this little weird vestige

⏹️ ▶️ John and in that way you can kind of see the previous iteration now that the new keyboard is out look

⏹️ ▶️ John at the old tiny Bluetooth keyboard and you’re like what is all that crap around the edge and why is that big

⏹️ ▶️ John barrel thing over there I I don’t understand it. Like, it seems unnecessary. And that’s what they’re trying to do

⏹️ ▶️ John with their advance. Maybe they had this idea, like the first time they drew, we’re going to make a Bluetooth aluminum keyboard. Go, go,

⏹️ ▶️ John go. They drew that. And I said, yeah, we can’t do that because we need a place to put batteries.

⏹️ ▶️ John And we, you know, we need to be bigger and more comfortable. How about this? I don’t know if that’s true. I’m just making this up.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, but the whole idea that, uh, that they, uh, what I’m fighting against is the idea

⏹️ ▶️ John that anyone inside Apple is particularly pleased with any product they produce, because I think every product they

⏹️ ▶️ John put out, there is potentially a design that they really wanted to make that they either couldn’t or didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John make that’s still sitting in the back of their mind and knowing that that’s what drives them forward to make the next

⏹️ ▶️ John one. So maybe what I’m saying is maybe a lot of people inside Apple are just as disappointed

⏹️ ▶️ John in like the lumpy back of the iMac as we are. And just that like they you know, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John design is compromising have to say what can we ship and what’s what’s the how’s what’s the best we can make it look Even

⏹️ ▶️ John the 20th anniversary Mac. Do you guys remember that the big vertical thing? You don’t remember this before your

⏹️ ▶️ John time.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is this the one that hack gets obsessed with?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s it’s weird looking anyway that one It was it Johnny I’ve designed all gonna make this beautiful 20th anniversary

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac and use one of these new fancy LCD screens They can have leather and wood and all this stuff like that

⏹️ ▶️ John But then they said it had to have like ports or per I figure what the thing was it had to have some expandability He’s like honey

⏹️ ▶️ John had to put this big giant backpack on the thing like he had to take his design that he liked and

⏹️ ▶️ John add like two inches like this big lump on the Back of it so you can see if you Google for you can see the 20th anniversary

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac both with and without the lump I forget if it was expansion chassis or expansion guards or something like that that was mandated

⏹️ ▶️ John to him from from above The Johnny I have of today will not let that be mandated to him from above

⏹️ ▶️ John if someone says oh But by the way after you’ve already designed thing it actually has to have three more ports drill some more holes

⏹️ ▶️ John He’s gonna go no And and that I think is better because I think the compromise in the 20th anniversary

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac makes that machine worse than if you just said I’m making it the way I want to make it if it doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John have whatever the feature that was that backpack added. Oh Well tough luck. That’s what it’s got And then you

⏹️ ▶️ John can just sort of accept it and say this is the computer and it looks the way I wanted to look and it’s Got the features that I

⏹️ ▶️ John want and if you don’t like it, no one will buy it like the power Mac G 5 g 4 cube And we’ll go back and we’ll reconsider We’ll go

⏹️ ▶️ John back to our rooms and think about what we’ve done and try again and try to make a computer people will buy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I I don’t know how I feel about this because on the one side I agree with you guys and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that there are a lot of compromises. I would love to have a phone that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would never even have to think twice about lasting all day. I would love to have a phone that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I go to a football game and I know I’m going to be using my phone a fair bit and I’m going to be searching

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for signal for three and a half hours, I don’t need to bother putting it in a battery case.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, I am aware that the plus club exists, but I am a human with human-sized

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hands. So I want a human-sized phone I would love to have a phone that’s a little thicker with a little

⏹️ ▶️ Casey more battery But I’m looking at my phone now and it is a freaking beautiful

⏹️ ▶️ Casey device It really truly is and with this Apple leather case on it is perhaps less beautiful than it could

⏹️ ▶️ Casey possibly be but it’s still freaking beautiful and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I charge my phone every night and only have to worry about battery life when I know I’m going

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be using it hard all day long. Otherwise I never have to worry about it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is that really so bad? Could it be better? Sure. But is that really so bad? I was thinking earlier

⏹️ ▶️ Casey today in my continued deep thoughts that I really do love this new 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro that Work got me.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s beautiful. It’s thinner, noticeably thinner. I like that it’s thinner. I like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it doesn’t have an onboard optical drive. I kind

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of wish it had an onboard ethernet port, but I’ve, I can fix that very easily. What year

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is this? I know. Well, I’m just saying, because I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I hate it. I know.

⏹️ ▶️ John I know. Maybe it’s low latency for when he plays quick through arena. He doesn’t really want to wait for

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the

⏹️ ▶️ John wifi

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey latency. God,

⏹️ ▶️ John here we

⏹️ ▶️ Casey go. Um, no, actually all kidding aside, I needed to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey get, well, I already had one, But I would have needed to get a Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for work because the company where I am working does not give

⏹️ ▶️ Casey access to the restricted areas of their network except by hardline. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with my Mac, I need to get on an Ethernet connection in order

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get to the servers that I need in order to develop the things I need to develop. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey would I have liked to have had an onboard Ethernet port? Hell yeah. But would I have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey chosen that over just bringing the dongle and having a device that’s perfect

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or, or nearly perfect in every other measurable way? I’d probably take the dongle.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I don’t know. It’s a very tough thing. And this is what makes engineering so beautiful is that you get to make these tough engineering

⏹️ ▶️ Casey decisions as to what’s more important. And I agree with you, especially John, that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think every engineering decision that Apple makes, I’ve, I would expect that they have a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey serious amount of regret about every single one. but they’re doing the best that they possibly can and And I think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s the case with all of their devices and do they have room to do it better sure

⏹️ ▶️ Casey better for me Absolutely, but better for everyone. I don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what I was looking for That’s what I’m always looking for in the Apple computer is the time when it all comes together when there were no

⏹️ ▶️ John major Design compromises that had to be made like it wasn’t like we wish we could

⏹️ ▶️ John have made it It’s this thin or this size or had this battery life or this performance of this feature but we didn’t have enough room or it was too

⏹️ ▶️ John expensive or the parts weren’t ready in time or the material we were Going to use didn’t work out or whatever and

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just an all-around Good computer that’s like ahead of its time that lasts for a long time

⏹️ ▶️ John that is sturdy That’s nice-looking that that the looks don’t go out of date like you’re it’s the same thing

⏹️ ▶️ John with cars for that matter 9-11 aside when there’s When there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the one model that’s like that was the one to get that’s where it all came together briefly even if it all came together like,

⏹️ ▶️ John oh, the 65 version of that is, you know, the height of the pre fuel injection

⏹️ ▶️ John error, but like just the beautiful specimen where it all comes together. And those are those computers

⏹️ ▶️ John are rare. Like the Macworld did those big like best Mac ever things. And the S30 kept coming up, A, because

⏹️ ▶️ John I picked it. And it’s the correct answer and B, because a lot of other people felt the same way about it. And that obviously

⏹️ ▶️ John modern Macs are so much better. But for that time, it was like it was the perfection of that form. It was

⏹️ ▶️ John they had perfected that form factor. The innards of it were the best innards they could possibly be. Everything about it

⏹️ ▶️ John was better than all previous computers of that size. It lasted a long time. You could expand

⏹️ ▶️ John it in ways that you didn’t expect. It was sturdy, it was beautiful. Like it was just, that was a peak.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I think you can pick out other models that are like that. The 5K iMac could be like that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe you could quibble over the Thunderbolt compromise and say, well, it’s like in between the Thunderbolt 3 era and the

⏹️ ▶️ John USB-C era. So it was a little bit weird to me. doesn’t qualify but I’m sure we can pick out ones like the two how about the

⏹️ ▶️ John 2008 Mac Pro a pretty damn good like in kind of in the middle of the run of the of the

⏹️ ▶️ John cheese graders you know post Intel you know after all the g5 stuff or whatever but before they started to

⏹️ ▶️ John get kind of long in the tooth and that’s a great computer that was that was a high point

⏹️ ▶️ John when we’re looking at any other type of device we have to say like for the iPhone line what are the high

⏹️ ▶️ John points in the iPhone line I would definitely pick if we’re industrial design anyway the four. But maybe I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John wrong about that because I’m not looking at like the broken home buttons and the crappy antenna when

⏹️ ▶️ John you grab the edges of it and stuff. But like industrial design wise ignoring the other parts of the thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John So maybe that’s not the one like I don’t you know, I don’t know what would you guys I’d

⏹️ ▶️ Marco say that I’d say the high points were the three GS and the five s

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe I mean like everyone’s got their own things, but it depends on what criteria you’re choosing from. And the thing is, for the designers,

⏹️ ▶️ John do they care so much like, oh, the stupid engineer screw up the home button. That’s not my fault. The the part that I did my design

⏹️ ▶️ John like I like that sandwich phone or I really liked you know like you said the three is it well no one likes three GS

⏹️ ▶️ John I think inside apples industrial designs because it just had this big plastic bubble on back but but anyway

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right but but you know for the time it not you know it was you know insanely fast you know the great great

⏹️ ▶️ Marco innards huge upgrade from the past one it was also very practical it had you know great group ability on that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco case it was it was durable and you know long term you could see like it I don’t think it really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco had any major hardware flaws whereas you know the The 4 had the antenna issue, it had the bad proximity

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sensor, and then the 4S had those dying home buttons, and the 5 had the flaky finish,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the 5 also I believe had a home button issue, or I mean a sleep-wake button issue.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whereas the 5S I think actually really was pretty rock solid. I don’t think anybody really had consistent

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware problems with the 5S. And I would say the design there was a high point.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s your priorities. I would imagine that there’s not anyone on Apple’s industrial design team who

⏹️ ▶️ John would pick the 3GS as their design high point. No, definitely not. Because just isolating that part of it.

⏹️ ▶️ John And so you’re like, I don’t care that much about the design. It was nice and it looked nice and it was grippable,

⏹️ ▶️ John but the point is that it felt good, it was fast. Like all the things that you listed are the product attributes that you are, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John give a ranking of like, which ones do you prioritize? And that’s why maybe the design people would

⏹️ ▶️ John prioritize the materials and physical appearance and be like, well, I had no control over the stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John they put inside the phone. So if they screwed that part up, it’s not my fault. And I feel like the pinnacle was whatever

⏹️ ▶️ John their favorite design is. And the flaking finish, even. You could even see someone would be like, well, flaking finish,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not really my problem. They should, they probably wouldn’t say this because Apple’s, industrial designers know this is their problem too. But they say, it looked perfect

⏹️ ▶️ John when it was new. Just don’t touch it. You know, don’t even look at it. It can’t be played. I can’t do

⏹️ ▶️ John the accent. But Mike has seen that movie now. I’m finally listening to Mike at the movies. And I realize all these movies now,

⏹️ ▶️ John Mike is seeing them in case he’s not.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like which one?

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, this was Spinal Tap.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You didn’t say that one with him, did you?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh yeah, nope,

⏹️ ▶️ John definitely not. Yeah, anyway, Marco, I’ve given up. Yeah, you know

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I

⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco seen anything.

⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, the point is we should all be kings of our own companies with the resources of Apple, and then we can make exactly

⏹️ ▶️ John the products we want until we find out that we can’t get what we want either because the materials aren’t available or

⏹️ ▶️ John the chips cost too much or Intel’s not ready or whatever.

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Facebook app battery scandal

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. What is Facebook Battery?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. So, actually, I think Vatiki’s been one of the leading investigators on this, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, you’re talking about the ridiculous battery usage?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Ah, gotcha. So, everyone’s… I mean, I think people have known for a while

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the Facebook app is incredibly battery inefficient, but nobody really had a great idea of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco why or how that was that way. And a few things changed in iOS 9.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of the biggest things that changed is that the iOS 9 battery shaming menu

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or screen and settings, it now will tell you how many hours things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco were on screen and how many hours they were in the background. It also tell you what they were doing in the background. So it’ll say things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like audio or network or or whatever, so it’ll tell you what it was doing,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco background refresh, what it was doing in the background. People have been noticing that the Facebook app

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is somehow being woken up really for very long times for background

⏹️ ▶️ Marco usage, even when these people are not using the app. So they’ll have, like one guy had the app was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco open for two minutes, was in the background for seven hours or something like that, and had used up a ton

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of his battery because there’s some crazy difference like that. And more importantly, what people are finding,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if they disable background app refresh, it was still finding ways to run in the background

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and in some cases use even more battery, often by doing really, really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sleazy tricks. So do you remember back forever ago, in like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know, 2009, 2010, something like that, forever ago, before you could do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco much in the background of iOS, one of the things you could do was if you were, one of the very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco first backgrounding modes in iOS 4, whenever that came out, one of the very first things you could do was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could play audio. So if you’re an audio player, like if you were a podcast app, or if you’re a streaming music

⏹️ ▶️ Marco service, that was one of the things that you could run indefinitely if you’re playing audio. And so one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the very first things that somebody, I forget who it was, was it TapBot that made, was it PasteBot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that

⏹️ ▶️ John did this? They played silence the whole time.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yes,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so yeah, so they submitted an app that through this clever hack, you could run indefinitely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you were playing audio. And so they figured out that if you just played silence, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re invoking the audio buffer, but you’re just sending it all silence in the buffer, your

⏹️ ▶️ Marco app can run indefinitely. And so they were using this to do clipboard history management and clipboard sharing between computers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything. And Apple very quickly figured out what they were

⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing and banned them from doing this. Facebook is now doing that same trick in 2015

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and apples permitting it it’s the hope will see what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey happens

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is that what it’s come down to i didn’t realize we figured it out

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes of people have done have done some investigation and face book is using background audio to play

⏹️ ▶️ Marco silence to stay running as long as possible and and among other tricks and so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and i i can explain at least one thing so first of all i’ve had so many people report bugs me

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in overcast sound really weird uh… about like not playing in the background after they’ve launched

⏹️ ▶️ Marco face book or something And now I’m suspecting this might be related to Facebook’s stupid activity.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But also, people have wondered, if I block you with background refresh,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and if I disable background refresh for your app, and I’ve quote, force quit your app by

⏹️ ▶️ Marco removing it from the multitasking switcher, how do you still run in the background? And I can answer this question.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Back when Newsstand was unveiled, one of the cool new things Newsstand apps could do was called a content

⏹️ ▶️ Marco available push notification. Now normally, if you run a web service and you wanna

⏹️ ▶️ Marco send something to all the iPhone people that are using your app, you could send notifications. But previously

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to that, notifications had to be visible on screen. You couldn’t just send an app, like an empty

⏹️ ▶️ Marco notification, to have it just start running and download new stuff. You couldn’t do that before. You could

⏹️ ▶️ Marco send it an alert, and it would show the box and the text, and the user could then say,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay, enter the app, and then it would launch. But all that was user-controlled, and so you couldn’t be doing it behind the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco user’s back. And you had to have the user interacting with it to actually get launched again in the background. With

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Newsstand, they added this new thing called content available pushes, where for a while it was only Newsstand apps

⏹️ ▶️ Marco could do this. They could be woken up remotely by their servers. You

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the server’s owner could wake up all the instances of your app by sending this special push notification

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was silent. It did not show anything to the user. And the way they initially,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so first it was just on Newsstand. And then I think it was iOS 7 that made content

⏹️ ▶️ Marco available push notifications available to all apps. You could be waking up your app all the time. And so initially,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple would throttle these things. And they would be like, you know, it would only allow it to wake up the app once a day,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or only when it was plugged in or something. And over time, those restrictions have gotten loosened.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And in eight, you could wake up your app pretty frequently, if you really wanted to, with content available, it was pretty

⏹️ ▶️ Marco reliable, it could you could usually wake your app up. But if the user quit you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of the multitasking switcher, so if they force quit your app, you wouldn’t get those anymore.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And in iOS 9, they changed that. In iOS 9, even if background

⏹️ ▶️ Marco refresh is off, because background refresh is a separate thing, background refresh is the system of periodically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco waking up the app to do something, and the user can control that. However,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is no system control for whether to allow an app to receive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco content available silent push notifications. And I think I haven’t tested

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this with the Facebook app because I don’t have it installed because I’m not insane. Sorry, Facebook people.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t use Facebook enough to use their app, but I recognize that it’s very popular. Different viewpoints. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I don’t know. I would like to I’m curious to know if Facebook people can test this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who are experiencing these battery problems because people are saying I disabled background refresh, but it’s still doing all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the stuff in the background. Try disabling all notifications because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so anyway in eight if you force quit it those content available silent pushes would not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco come through in nine they still come through. So in nine even if you have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco quote force quit my app if I send content available from my server to your phone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you’ve enabled notifications my app will wake up in the background and I can start doing something. I can start a background download.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can start playing silent audio forever, you know, like Facebook does.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’m curious if disabling notifications entirely is the fix.

⏹️ ▶️ John You mean disabling them entirely on the entire phone or just for the Facebook app?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just for the app, but like, you know, because there’s like, in each app there’s the notifications area and then there’s this big

⏹️ ▶️ Marco magic switch up top, allow notifications. And there’s the more granular stuff, show notification center,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco badge the app icon, what shape should they be. But if you turn that off for Facebook.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wonder if then it won’t get these notifications. But anyway, so that’s what they’re doing,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seems, and they issued some kind of weird response, you know, just like the Volkswagen thing. Well, it must have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco been some bug or rogue engineer, you know, some BS, but the reality is this is a disgusting company

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they do lots of unethical things and this is just one thing, you know, they’re doing it because they can’t, you know, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is not the kind of thing that you program accidentally. They’re doing it because they can and And what’s Apple gonna

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do? Reject the Facebook app? They can’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really do that much for it. And I think it’s unfortunate, but that’s just the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco power dynamic. This is also from the talk show. The Facebook

⏹️ ▶️ Marco app is most likely the most popular third-party app on iOS by a long shot. My guess

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it’s number one, YouTube is number two, but you can’t exactly tell

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Facebook, you can’t do this anymore. How much power do they have? I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, I kind of wish they would exert that power a little bit more here, but they might not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really be able to. But I don’t know. Either way, if you are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Facebook user, you should not be surprised by this. You should be mad, but you should not be surprised.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this is just what Facebook does, and it’s disgusting. Justin Perdue

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t really have anything to add about this. I don’t use the regular Facebook app because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey around the time, this is probably a year ago now, but around the time the Facebook Messenger became a thing,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they eventually took the ability to send and receive messages out

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the standard Facebook app, but they would

⏹️ ▶️ Casey still send you a push notification. still had the entry point to the messages

⏹️ ▶️ Casey section in the app. So it was like a tab or something like that, but you would get there and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they would say, Oh no, we’ve moved this to a new app. You have to go get that other app. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s so sad. This is stinky. But I refused to go get that other app because I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost never send or receive Facebook messages. Eventually I got sick of this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I got sick of the Facebook app. And so I downloaded Facebook paper. one of the 85 things named paper

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is on in our little world. And that allows you to send and receive messages. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s what I use if I, if I’m using anything with Facebook on my phone. Um, and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey fine. I mean, it’s pretty, but otherwise unremarkable. And,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, that was basically it for me. However, Aaron does use the normal Facebook app.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the other day I noticed when I was looking at battery usage, that it looked really high, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t think much of it because I I didn’t know if perhaps she had been using Facebook all day or something. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey then it was just a day or two later that all this kerfuffle started about battery usage, and I really wish

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had paid closer attention to it. But I have been intending to keep

⏹️ ▶️ Casey closer track of the, the apps usage. And I did turn off like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey background updates and all the things that you guys described. And I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey suspect, and I think that’s exactly what you said, Marco, that it’s still getting used a lot for seemingly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey no reason. And that’s just gross. Like just because you can, doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean you should kids. And yet when you’re a company as big and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey powerful as Facebook, when you likely have the most popular third party app on the platform,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can get away with this. And it’s also, it’s kind of too bad that, that Apple allows it that, you know, they

⏹️ ▶️ Casey should have reacted in some way, shape or form publicly in the sense that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe they should have pulled the app or not, not like disabled it on existing devices, but maybe you can’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey download it from the app store or, or something. And I may be, I don’t know, maybe I’m being ridiculous, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like it’s just, it’s stinky that the big powerful people get away with things that the little guys can’t.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. My question is what benefit does Facebook think provide this provides them?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like just ignore everything else about it. This Facebook, I assume Facebook does this on purpose because they

⏹️ ▶️ John want it. Why do they want this? Like wouldn’t you think it would be bad? Like what does their app need

⏹️ ▶️ John to do all the time? Like what? Gather data. Seriously. About what?

⏹️ ▶️ John About like where they’re getting location data from the phone? I’m just wondering. Because they might be. Because I don’t think

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s that much, like if the Facebook app just said, I don’t know what the interval is, but like

⏹️ ▶️ John wake me up every 15 minutes to get updates five is it the immediacy of being able to like I’m always

⏹️ ▶️ John running so as soon as something happens to Facebook people know right away instead of having to wait for a background refresh interval

⏹️ ▶️ John or something like that because Facebook must also know the downside which is that people

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re going to run people’s batteries down more and I don’t know if they just assume well they’ll find a

⏹️ ▶️ John charger somewhere because they’re not going to go without the Facebook updates or they’ll use their phone less

⏹️ ▶️ John like you would think if you had an app what you’d be trying to get maybe information maybe right Casey the thing is like we don’t want

⏹️ ▶️ John your engagement or interaction with the app, we just want your information, I don’t know. I’m just trying to understand from their perspective

⏹️ ▶️ John how it makes sense to try to have your app be running all the time.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So to put things in perspective, just today I was at the dentist’s office and the the dentist’s nurse,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey we were talking, waiting for the dentist to come in, and she, I don’t remember how we got on the subject,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but she said to me, oh yeah, the other day I went to that place, I believe she said she was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey talking about Facebook, I might get this, I might be getting this confused with Google. But I went to this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey place on Facebook where it can show, where it’ll show you all like all the stuff it knows about you and all the places you’ve been.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it was super creepy because it knew everywhere I had been. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey granted, this is one data point completely anecdotally from a person who just 10 minutes before

⏹️ ▶️ Casey told me she was completely inept when it comes to computers, but it’s this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey conversation happened completely naturally. I didn’t prompt it. I didn’t interrogate her. She said to me,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh yeah, it’s so creepy what they know. That’s so weird. So I suspect

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is just data gathering. And maybe there’s non-nefarious purposes as well, like when you start the app, you want it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be totally refreshed, blah, blah, blah. But I think mostly it’s for data gathering.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it’s probably all of these things. You know, it is probably, you know, if they do any kind of like continuous

⏹️ ▶️ Marco location or periodic location monitoring, I’m sure it’s for that. I’m sure it’s, you know, if they’re doing any kind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of analytics of, you know, what kind of phone you have, whatever it is, there are things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they can measure. I’m guessing it’s probably a little bit about location and it is almost

⏹️ ▶️ Marco certainly, what John said, it’s almost certainly about engagement. It is about, I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure that having your app running in the background, being able to get data immediately from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your server, being able to start downloading things, to start caching

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things, to start preloading things, things that you’re gonna be looking at, I’m sure it’s for all those reasons.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’m sure the overall reason is, data gathering is probably part of it. And the other thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just engagement. Because if they can increase the amount of time, if they’re basically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco always running or running as much as they possibly can, then they can get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you notifications faster, they can get you data faster, they can get you new stuff downloading faster. And it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all about reducing the friction so that not only can they bother you as often as possible to come back

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the app, but also that when you are there, there’s no delay in loading anything.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, because they’ve measured that both people like that, and also it increases our numbers. It makes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco us X per year of more engagement and more growth hacking or whatever. That’s why,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, there’s plenty of reasons why they want to do this. Those are the two big ones.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that makes me wonder if like there was a setting in the app that said, should we try to run in the background even

⏹️ ▶️ John when every setting you’re telling us is

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like basically

⏹️ ▶️ John to let the users choose which behavior they want. Because that would be an interesting choice. Because you know, if they didn’t do this,

⏹️ ▶️ John when you launch the Facebook app, less stuff would be loaded, presumably. I’m assuming that they’re taking, like you said, taking advantage

⏹️ ▶️ John of that. Which user experience would people prefer? Would they prefer that when you launch the Facebook app, it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John up to date and most of the stuff is loaded? Would you prefer that as soon as your friend posts something you know about it immediately? Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John would people trade the battery hit for that immediate, most people will think about, oh, Facebook

⏹️ ▶️ John app is using my battery too much. If they’re techie enough to know that, oh, Facebook app is using my battery, I wish it didn’t. Do you

⏹️ ▶️ John really wish it didn’t? if we took away all of the things that it’s doing during that battery time, because

⏹️ ▶️ John then you’d be like, oh, the Facebook app is so slow, every time I launch it’s gotta load a bunch of stuff. Like I’m wondering what trade-off

⏹️ ▶️ John people would make, because like I said, as the app maker, if you’re sucking everyone’s battery down,

⏹️ ▶️ John do you think you’re gonna lose engagement because they’re going to say, well, it’s lunchtime, and normally

⏹️ ▶️ John I would keep looking at Facebook, but my battery is too low, so I’m not going to. No, they’ll just find a charger,

⏹️ ▶️ John I guess, or they’ll use a battery pack or something like that. I wonder if it’s, I wonder if they’ve determined that

⏹️ ▶️ John this is the trade-off that people would choose anyway, so let’s just aggressively be in the background.

⏹️ ▶️ John And the other part of it, like speculating, is just the game of chicken with Apple, because like you both said, what are you going to do, pull the Facebook

⏹️ ▶️ John app? Good luck with that. That will hurt your iPhone sales numbers more than pretty much any other app pulling that

⏹️ ▶️ John you could possibly do. I was getting an iPhone, but it doesn’t have Facebook, so forget it, right? So that

⏹️ ▶️ John is a negotiation between those two powerhouses to say, Apple to say, please don’t run

⏹️ ▶️ John your thing in the background so much Facebook to say, I dare you to pull our app. I don’t know how that’s working out.

⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe they just don’t even know. I mean, because Apple has been, like you said, Margo, changing the rules for

⏹️ ▶️ John the various push notifications and updates and all the other stuff. And they surely they know the consequences of those with respect

⏹️ ▶️ John to the Facebook app. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, I’m sure I’m sure that Apple has been in touch with Facebook over this by now,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, because it’s very possible Apple just didn’t know about it. I find that a little hard to believe because it’s just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so widespread, but it’s very possible that this was brought to their attention, or at least

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the right people’s attention within Apple at the same time that we all learn about it. So I’m sure that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody at Apple contacted somebody at Facebook to talk about this, and we’ll see how it shakes out.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not surprised to see this because Facebook’s entire iOS app,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have this culture, similar to Google has us to this culture of extreme engineering

⏹️ ▶️ Marco arrogance to the point where they don’t feel like they need to respect the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco platform they’re running on. They feel like they know better and they’re above it. And so the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco attitude at Facebook that permitted this to happen, I guarantee you this was not a bug. I guarantee you this was somebody

⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying, screw Apple’s limitations. This is how we get around them, and we deserve it because we know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s best for us and for our users, period. And Apple’s not involved in this discussion. It’s this culture

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of arrogance that is very, very common at Facebook and Google’s engineering

⏹️ ▶️ Marco departments for sure. And you see it a lot in the way their app is this massive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bloated mess of a million different custom written things to custom implement things from the system

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and every… I mean, this massive, massive app and they’re rewriting their own Xcode because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they break Xcode the way they use it and all this crazy stuff that they do out of this arrogance.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like, if they think they’re above the rules, that fits right into all that. It’s not a surprise at all.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also I would argue that this is actually kind of like a hole,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost a security hole. It’s like a battery hole on Apple’s side, which is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco why do none of these switches that used to work or that seem like they should work? Why if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco turn off background refresh on an app, should content available notifications still come

⏹️ ▶️ Marco through. I know in the old rule of iOS 8, if you’d force quit an app,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they wouldn’t come through anymore. That caused definitely some support emails with Overcast because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s how I do my updates and the notification I show on screen is a local notification. So,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would cause problems in that people wouldn’t expect that to work that way. They wouldn’t expect that if they force quit the app, that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it wouldn’t get new data anymore ever. So, it made sense to change that behavior

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from 8 to 9. But I definitely think that there should either be a separate switch, which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is probably less good, or they should just roll this into the background refresh, which is if somebody has disabled background

⏹️ ▶️ Marco refresh for an app, it should not also still get content available notifications.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you feel like where you’ve commented on Google and Facebook’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey engineering arrogance, given our conversation earlier, do you feel like Apple’s arrogance lies

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in industrial design? just that, but perhaps their largest bit of arrogance?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple has no shortage of their own arrogance, believe me. I mean, that’s one of the reasons why the people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who love all these companies love them, because each of them has their own breed of arrogance in different areas,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they all think they know best for the whole stack, top to bottom. And that’s what makes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple ship what it ships as its Windows software, which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco gives a lot of Windows people a really terrible impression of Apple. Like iTunes and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco QuickTime for Windows back in the day, like that, oh boy. This applies to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of them, but generally the results of one company

⏹️ ▶️ Marco being a little too pushy in some area, usually it hurts the customers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the other platforms. This is one of those instances where Facebook clearly thinks they’re above the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco law with App Store rules and iOS system restrictions. And as a result,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they really are hurting their users and it’s not good. But I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think they care. They’re benefiting themselves and that’s all Facebook ever does and that’s Facebook.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s all any company ever does. I mean, I don’t think that’s exclusive to Facebook or Google. I mean, I think Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in many ways does the same thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco generally do, but I think, speaking of striking balances, I think Apple strikes a way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco better balance in that regard, with quality and respect for their users,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than Facebook or Google. And I think Facebook is worse than Google. I put

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Google right in the middle there. I’d say Facebook is horrible. Google is in the middle, and Apple’s decent most of the time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Squarespace, Automatic, and Fracture, And we will see

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you next week.

⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco Armin,

⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John accidental,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they didn’t mean

⏹️ ▶️ John to Accidental, accidental, tech podcast

⏹️ ▶️ John so long.

Post-show: Perl 6

⏹️ ▶️ John Now we got time to talk about Pearl Six for two seconds. We’ll have a short after show. Two seconds,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh?

⏹️ ▶️ John Really? People are asking about Pearl Six because Larry Wall gave a speech that said, hey, Pearl Six

⏹️ ▶️ John is coming, it’s going to be ready. And people are asking

⏹️ ▶️ John me what I thought about it. I think I’ve discussed this before, speculating what I would think when Pearl

⏹️ ▶️ John Six is announced, and now that it has been, I’ll say the same thing that I said before.

⏹️ ▶️ John I like Perl 6, I think it’s a really interesting language, but my interest in it is

⏹️ ▶️ John proportional to the quality of the implementation. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t just want to be able to write Perl 6 in something that executes, I need it to

⏹️ ▶️ John be reasonably fast and stable and better than some other language I’m using in implementing

⏹️ ▶️ John real-world applications. Because as much as I enjoy the language. And what it looks like,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not going to build anything with it for realsy reels. Until it like

⏹️ ▶️ John all all the benefits of the language is supposed to have like, Oh, look at all these contracts that are you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John that are ripe for actual concurrency and look at the ability

⏹️ ▶️ John to pin down types that could let us use more efficient types internally to have

⏹️ ▶️ John higher performance. Well, unless I actually have the higher performance, unless it actually does the concurrency

⏹️ ▶️ John that is Inherent in the semantics of the language. I’m much less interested in it So

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m glad that they’re deciding to put a pin in a 6.0 point. Oh and have it come out 15 years

⏹️ ▶️ John later or whatever but I’m mostly interested in it when I can use it to build actual

⏹️ ▶️ John real things because Like it’s not like I’m being super demanding about it. I’m still I really love

⏹️ ▶️ John the language I think other language designers should study it and take the ideas from it or whatever, but

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m never going to to learn what it’s good for and what it’s not good for until I can implement something in it. And I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John never going to implement something in it if the performance and reliability is worse than every other possible

⏹️ ▶️ John language I could choose. Now I’m not saying the performance reliability are going to be terrible. I know it’s improved. I know there’s multiple back ends because

⏹️ ▶️ John the JVM one might be faster because you’re piggybacking all the JVM work that’s been done over the

⏹️ ▶️ John past decades or whatever. It’s just that I need to see that I need to see Hey, you know, like Marco’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ John Hey, I built this thing and go and it was super fast and really reliable.

⏹️ ▶️ John And by the way, I got to learn go and it was neat. I need to see someone else say, Hey, I built this thing in Pearl six and

⏹️ ▶️ John it was super fast and really reliable. And if I had built it in profile, it would have been worse than if I had built it in Python, it would have been

⏹️ ▶️ John worse than if I had built it and go, it would have been worse in this way or whatever. Like, that’s what I’m looking for. That’s just

⏹️ ▶️ John me personally, your mileage may vary. So I encourage everyone to take up pro six.org, especially the people

⏹️ ▶️ John who have no idea what pro six is, because people who don’t have any idea what is I think they just think it’s like PHP with different

⏹️ ▶️ John like dollar signs and stuff and then nothing could be further from the truth like Pearl Six is strange in

⏹️ ▶️ John ways if Swift didn’t exist it would be more weird because I think Swift is giving everyone a kick in the pants of like what

⏹️ ▶️ John the hell is going on with this language like what are they trying to do there it’s like C with structs but like

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s got this weird stuff like it’s object oriented but they’re also it’s got this functional stuff mixed in like what the hell like

⏹️ ▶️ John Swift is like Pearl Six like a tiny fragment of Pearl Six like Pearl Six exploded and

⏹️ ▶️ John a little tiny star came out of it and it dumped in some other things but Pearlsex has got all the crazy

⏹️ ▶️ John and all the crazy in the best sense like crazy like a fox so I encourage everyone who is interested in

⏹️ ▶️ John anything having to do with languages check out the Pearlsex website wade through the documentation

⏹️ ▶️ John until your eyes roll back in your head and you think these people must be on something they probably

⏹️ ▶️ John are lots of good ideas in language still.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I have two questions first of all on an infinite time scale

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do you think you will use pearl six.

⏹️ ▶️ John Um, yeah, if it’s kind of one of those things like, you know, is there something

⏹️ ▶️ John magical about them putting out a 6.0 point? Oh, that’s going to make the implementation much better, much faster. I don’t know about that. But, uh,

⏹️ ▶️ John I assume people will keep working on it because it’s interesting. I assume at least a small group of people will have enough motivation to

⏹️ ▶️ John keep plugging away. I’m not entirely confident that they will ever get to the point where I

⏹️ ▶️ John end up using it to make a real project because it is conceivable that from my entire life, it could be like

⏹️ ▶️ John a weird research project that is interesting to the people who toy around with it, but it never becomes

⏹️ ▶️ John sort of a thing that large applications are written with. So I don’t know there. I’m not going to say it definitely

⏹️ ▶️ John will because it could on an infinite time fail, it could just Peter out and like people stop working on and it becomes just a historical

⏹️ ▶️ John curiosity from which people take ideas going forward, which would be fine. Like it’s a lot of, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John pro five for that matter. Most of its benefit I think has not been the part where it played the prime

⏹️ ▶️ John role in making dynamic web applications during the web 1.0 era, but the fact that so many other people

⏹️ ▶️ John used Perler looked at and took those ideas forward into their own languages. Yes, including Swift. Question

⏹️ ▶️ Marco number two, which do you think is likely to happen first? You adopt

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pearl six or you replace your Mac Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I remember placing my Mac Pro way before I had that Pro 6 or anything. Definitely.