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

212: Meatspace Windows

John still really, really likes windows.

Episode Description:

Sponsored by:

  • Away: Travel smarter with the suitcase that charges your phone. Get $20 off with code ATP.
  • Squarespace: Build it beautiful. Use code ATP for 10% off your first order.
  • Pingdom: Uptime and performance monitoring made easy. Use code ATP for 20% off.

MP3 Header

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

Chapters

  1. Intro: Kid tech support
  2. Cold water on USB-C iPhones
  3. VGA ports at work
  4. Sponsor: Pingdom (code ATP)
  5. USB-C: What charges what?
  6. USB-C port strength
  7. MacBook Boost case
  8. Sponsor: Away (code ATP)
  9. iOS windows
  10. Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
  11. Programmers in denial
  12. Apple in education
  13. Ending theme
  14. Post-show 🖼️

Intro: Kid tech support

⏹️ ▶️ John Not only do my kids not know how to use computers, but they all

⏹️ ▶️ John because they don’t know how to use computers They don’t know how to fix things on computers. Like they don’t even

⏹️ ▶️ John have they’ve never had to fix anything on a computer It’s like how do you learn how to fix crap on computers?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like because when we were kids our parents didn’t know anything so there was no one to ask And you had to just figure it out yourself.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, we’re gonna broke everything and figured out how to fix it That’s basically how we how we figured this all out

⏹️ ▶️ John My son had a problem recently where he was like, dad, the computer only types capital letters.

⏹️ ▶️ John Um, and so I came over and he was like in a Google document and he’s like, look, capital letters and it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John caps lock because cap lock light on or off either way, just produces capital letters. Right. And he was,

⏹️ ▶️ John that was it. That was the extent of his debugging. Like he had, he knew cap locks existed and he had

⏹️ ▶️ John tried toggling on and off and it confirmed that in one position, light is on in one position, light is off, but either by capital letters come

⏹️ ▶️ John out. But that was it. He was out of ideas. That’s not good. What was it, like a stuck

⏹️ ▶️ John shift key? So I tried another application, which is the first thing you try. Is this just Google Docs or the browser?

⏹️ ▶️ John Or is it everywhere? So I open TextEdit, sure enough, only capital letters in TextEdit, right? So I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John like, the things you learn from a lifetime of debugging are things that could potentially solve this problem. So log out,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? We go to log out or switch users.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The master troubleshooting step. Turn everything off, turn

⏹️ ▶️ John everything back on. And the login screen, I went to log into my account, And when you see the little password thing, you see the little arrow

⏹️ ▶️ John that tells you that the thing’s cap lock is on, you

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. That puts it, right. And so basically it was like the computer thought cap lock was on all the time. It wasn’t. You could look at the

⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard and it doesn’t matter if the light was on or off, but the computer was totally convinced the cap lock was on or off. So I unplugged

⏹️ ▶️ John the keyboard and plugged it back in and that fixed it. And then my son said to me, how could

⏹️ ▶️ John unplugging the keyboard and plugging it back in fix it? And I was like, if you’ve ever fixed anything on a computer,

⏹️ ▶️ John this fixes a surprising number of things. Log out and back in, unplug and re-plug, reboot,

⏹️ ▶️ John turn everything off, wait 10 seconds, unplug it from the wall, wait 10 seconds. All these things have reasons behind them, but even

⏹️ ▶️ John if you don’t know the reasons behind them, eventually you learn by fixing things that sometimes you

⏹️ ▶️ John just have to do crap like that. And the only way you learn that is by actually fixing problems in the real

⏹️ ▶️ John world without understanding why they fix. You’re just like, what can I do to make this problem go away? And once it works

⏹️ ▶️ John for you once, it’s in your bag of tricks of like, just you know the general idea of start

⏹️ ▶️ John the thing over again unplug it and plug it back in disconnected and reconnected

⏹️ ▶️ John and my kids don’t even have that they don’t they don’t even have the basics they don’t have any understanding of that because they never had to fix anything

⏹️ ▶️ John themselves like nightmares of like them leaving the house and living on their own as an adult and having a

⏹️ ▶️ John job and calling me and saying I can’t get my TV show I can’t watch my TV show it’s not working

⏹️ ▶️ John like cuz you know like Netflix is broken or something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel this this might be kind of how like like whenever anything breaks about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco our house usually you know if it’s not that critical that it gets fixed you know like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there isn’t water pouring all over everything and we’re not like installing a fire hazard outlet in the wall but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but if there’s you know like some like you know we have to like hang something that’s kind of heavy-duty on the wall

⏹️ ▶️ Marco somewhere or we have to like fix something that’s made of wood you know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually those tasks just accumulate until my father-in-law comes to visit.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco He will basically just go around to the first days here and just like fix everything around the house that we’ve been putting off forever.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I feel like maybe the way that he thinks about it or at least the way he should think about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how we seem to be totally incapable of fixing these things ourself might be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same way that you are thinking about like how can your son possibly not know how to troubleshoot these computer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco issues himself.

⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m gonna show up at house when he’s an adult and it’s like, Oh, thank God you’re here. We haven’t been able to watch TV in six

⏹️ ▶️ John months. Maybe we can’t figure out why I’m going to go up to his television plug unplug it from the wall, plug it back in

⏹️ ▶️ John and go. There you go.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That very well might be how this generation plays out.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, my word. I feel the same way, though. Like I can’t think of a specific example other than my fire

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hazard plug that isn’t actually a fire hazard. But there are plenty of things that either

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my dad who is very electrically inclined or Aaron’s dad who in a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey prior life was a carpenter, so he’s like woodworking inclined. There’s many things that without

⏹️ ▶️ Casey them I would have to either pay someone to do something, maybe figured out myself

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the spare time I don’t feel like I have or just live with it forever.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t feel that incapable for home repair things. My my my parents did. My father does come and

⏹️ ▶️ John fix everything exactly like you were saying your father-in-law comes But it’s not because I don’t know how to fix it,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s because I don’t want to fix it, I don’t have time to fix it. And he’s

⏹️ ▶️ John going to do a better job too, because he’s fixed it more times than me. But I do know what to do, only

⏹️ ▶️ John because I spent an entire lifetime watching home improvement television shows.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I spent a lot of time watching those, not as much as you, but I spent a lot of time watching those shows too, so all I can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do is be the annoying person of like, are you sure you want to do it that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John way?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be like that guy which is the worst possible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey role to play.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Nobody likes that guy. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, because like I know just enough to be able to like criticize and make stupid comments about something but not enough

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to actually do it right myself or to realize what the way they did it is actually correct not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what not my amateur view of what homes on homes would think is the right thing to do.

⏹️ ▶️ John You got to keep watching them though like I’m there I still have season passes for those shows I still watch them

⏹️ ▶️ John so then you’re up to date on the latest technologies. Hopefully it’s just mold generation

⏹️ ▶️ Casey technologies. Criticizing and making snarky comments, whatever it is you said, isn’t that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty much our show in a nutshell? Just criticizing from afar, not really knowing what we’re talking about?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I like to think that we at least, I think we know more about what we criticize

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on this show than I know about home repairs. Yes,

⏹️ ▶️ John yes. I would say that’s definitely the case. Because at the very least, all of us do

⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of things related to the things we’re talking about. Despite me watching home improvement shows for my entire life, I’ve never

⏹️ ▶️ John built a house, Not even once.

Cold water on USB-C iPhones

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So we should start as always with some follow up. And somebody, I think, John, phrased

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this section as pouring cold water on Apple USB-C notions. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so we talked last episode about whether or not the forthcoming iPhone will call it for the purposes

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this conversation, the iPhone 8, whether the phone itself will have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a USB-C port on it. And there was a Wall Street Journal report that seemed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ambiguously to say yes. And then Ming-Chi Kuo has come out and said, well,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey we believe all three new iPhones launching in the second half of 2017 will support fast

⏹️ ▶️ Casey charging by the adoption of type C power delivery technology while

⏹️ ▶️ Casey still retaining lightning port. So probably sticking with lightning port, which

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I’m in support of, but having listened to most of the shows that are like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ours that cover this sort of thing, I feel like I’m the only one, which makes me wonder if I’m just the old man

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the crowd all of a sudden.

⏹️ ▶️ John I was hoping this was a reaction to the Wall Street Journal story, which was weird and ambiguous and had everyone talk about

⏹️ ▶️ John USBC. And then Ming-Chi Kuo just says, no, no, no, no, here,

⏹️ ▶️ John I know how to speak in sentences that have meaning that is clear to the reader. Every

⏹️ ▶️ John single new iPhone coming this year will have a lightning port on the bottom, boom, done. And so

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m hoping it is just simply a clarification. I’m hoping what it’s not is like

⏹️ ▶️ John a competing rumor of, you know, without any particular foundation, but it certainly

⏹️ ▶️ John seemed like that ambiguous story was out there, there was a lot of chatter, and then this thing came and just

⏹️ ▶️ John shut everybody up and said, it’s the boring thing, never mind. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, at some point I think Ming-Hsu Kuo needs to evolve into just the Dalrymple, just,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco nope, yep. No, I think, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, as we said last show this we all thought this was fairly unlikely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be the case that they would have that they would replace the lightning port with the USB-C port. I do think it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is still worth considering as a thought experiment. I do think that if they were to actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like get drunk and do this I I would actually welcome that change. I think it would be it would be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco temporary pain but long-term it would be great and Apple usually errs on that side of that kind of decision.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ultimately though I still think it’s very unlikely with one little exception that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we keep hearing from people about the EU regulations about phones all having

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same connector and for the for the last few years ever since the introduction of lightning basically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the EU said all phones have to have you know what used to be micro USB I have not honestly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco been following this very closely but what I keep hearing from people is that that regulation is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting more strict now and that Apple will no longer be able to get away with just shipping an adapter

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that converts lightning to USB to micro USB rather or in this case I assume it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB-C. So there’s something going on there where the EU is putting pressure on Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I don’t know if they’re going to be able to negotiate the way out of it again but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there might be something there you know like that there might be a strong reason for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple to say okay you know what in addition to all the other reasons we have to get rid of lightning

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and switch to USBC these days. It would also probably cause less friction with the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco EU and any other kind of similar regulatory body around the world that might get in the way. You know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t expect in the next three and a half to seven

⏹️ ▶️ Marco years that the US would really care that much about reducing waste in a regulation,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I imagine other countries actually have functioning governments

⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably all have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey similar goals.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That would be cool. Yeah, that would be awesome, right? They probably all have similar goals of reducing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco electronic waste and standardizing on things that really matter and stuff like that. So I think Apple’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to keep getting pressure from large markets. If China did it, game over.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Imagine if China said, okay, to sell a phone in China after 2017, it has to have USB-C on the bottom.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Lightning would be gone the next day. You know so I can make two different they

⏹️ ▶️ John make two different models one for that market They’ve made different models with different things inside them before

⏹️ ▶️ John but like I trying to could do something like that But my understanding of the EU thing is not it’s not like

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple can’t sell it. I think it’s more like a guideline or Agreement, and I’m sure there’s some kind of carrot

⏹️ ▶️ John and stick thing where if you follow along with the agreement voluntarily There’s you get some boon or whatever, but

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not convinced that it’s the type of thing where like if Apple Apple doesn’t do it, then they can’t sell a phone in Europe.

⏹️ ▶️ John And if it wasn’t China where China can say, Guess what? You have to do this no matter what, like actually make

⏹️ ▶️ John a requirement. I think they would make a different model if if the conversation had not

⏹️ ▶️ John been one inside Apple for USB entirely, because making a different model for China is probably fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Uh, I mean, and they have done that in the past for other things, but it seems like you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s arguments on both sides of whether they should do this or not. And And so if there’s a big thing external

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a big external factor that tips them one way or the other, they would probably go that way right. And so if there’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a major world market of buying phones that demands in a pretty strong

⏹️ ▶️ Marco way or absolutely requires that they that they have a standard port on the bottom instead of their proprietary port,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would probably be enough to to sway the argument one way or the other if there were no like massive downsides

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we aren’t thinking of you know like there is if there’s some kind of major engineering challenge of doing it but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know on a brand new phone that they could that they have designed separately from the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone 7 and 6 God I hope that assuming we finally get a new design

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then they could totally do it and I don’t see any obvious downsides as we talked about last week anyway

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still don’t think it’s likely I still think the most likely scenario is what makes you quote said where yeah this rumor

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the Washington Journal that was horribly written the facts wrong and it’s actually just USB-C on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the charger end. That’s the way more likely explanation here.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I still do think it would be better to go USB-C on both ends or at least

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the phone end. And there might be better reasons for them to do that. We don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ John So the hardware mind virus worked on me because I was getting all excited about USB-C phones until I read this

⏹️ ▶️ John Cold Water story. I’m like, oh, never mind. But really what happened related to this is

⏹️ ▶️ John my Nintendo Switch did arrive which maybe we’ll talk about later and and I got a pro controller with it

⏹️ ▶️ John and this is the first device besides my Apple TV which I never plug any USB C things into that I

⏹️ ▶️ John had occasion to see and mess with USB C

⏹️ ▶️ John connectors with. When I got my pro controller I had to plug it in to charge it and there’s a little USB C connector inside the

⏹️ ▶️ John little switch dock or whatever and so I’m holding here the the pro controller charging cable

⏹️ ▶️ John And when I took this out of the box and plugged it in, my immediate thought was, oh, no

⏹️ ▶️ John way is Apple gonna ever use this thing. It’s huge! Like, I know it’s not that much bigger than the Lightning.

⏹️ ▶️ John It is barely bigger than the Lightning. But just seeing it in real life, I’m like, can you imagine Apple putting

⏹️ ▶️ John this thing on their phone? No, no way in hell. Like, obviously this is just my gut reaction. Like, I’m not using my brain at that

⏹️ ▶️ John point. But my visceral reaction to this connector was how massive it was compared

⏹️ ▶️ John to Lightning. It was like, if I was inside Apple, I would like recoil in horror at the start

⏹️ ▶️ John of the conversation of like,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey remind

⏹️ ▶️ John me again, while we’re doing lightning again, it would take look at this, look at this giant, we can’t, we can’t have this on our phones. It’s ridiculous.

⏹️ ▶️ John What’s next VGA ports. So God,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it really isn’t that much bigger.

⏹️ ▶️ John I know. I know. I was like, it cracked me up that that was my reaction. Like it is not that much bigger. Like I have a lighting

⏹️ ▶️ John part here right next to it. I’m holding up next to it like it is bare millimeters. But the fact

⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s wider and also thicker, it just makes it seem so much more massive. And it doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John help that I have one of the good old lightning connectors here that are in front of me with a very small plastic part that’s barely

⏹️ ▶️ John bigger than the metal part. Like, it looks so small and dainty. It’s almost like lightning can go inside

⏹️ ▶️ John a USB-C port.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it almost can because of the gender flip between the connector and the wire, you know?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And actually, I suspect, I don’t know this for sure, I haven’t looked that deeply into it, but I suspect

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the design of USB-C probably permits for there to be less clearance around

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the port opening. Like I bet you can shrink the device thickness closer around

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the port size with USB-C than you could around Lightning, because Lightning has to have all the pins and everything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the inside, as opposed to USB-C

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has just like, you know, the flat conductors on the inside. So I would imagine there might be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco something there with USB-C. Also, they have tons of room. They got rid of the headphone jack and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this other speaker on the bottom is fake. So they have tons of room on the phone.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, thickness wise, obviously, width they’re not at a loss for. But anyway, it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John that big of a deal and I still think it would be cool for them to go USB-C, but this rumor seems to say they’re not and so we’re

⏹️ ▶️ John back to the default universe of Apple where it’s lighting for a while longer yet.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What I do wish for at least, since we’re probably not gonna get our USB-C on both ends cable,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Does anybody make the USB-C equivalent of these wonderful

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anker like five port USB chargers? Like all I’ve seen out there are chargers that have one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB-C port. I have not seen any that have like five. Like I would love to standardize on just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one cable type and just like it might like I’m traveling soon and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m packing my travel bag and I have to have all these different cable types because it’s like well I need every combination of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco something on one end and something else on the other end. Everything between USB-A, USB-C, Lightning, Micro-USB,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have all these stupid cable types and these 50 different chargers, come on.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, I hope the USB-C ecosystem blooms soon, because when it does,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that will be even more reason for Apple to please for the love of God change the iPhone to use USB-C.

VGA ports at work

⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of VGA, you better hope USB Type-A connectors doesn’t turn

⏹️ ▶️ John out to be the VGA port.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Hang on forever? Remember how long

⏹️ ▶️ John VGA held on? We had so many other standards that like, and it was just like, you could not get rid of VGA. It just

⏹️ ▶️ John stayed stubbornly on the side of PC laptops, it stayed stubbornly on projectors, long after multiple better, smaller

⏹️ ▶️ John standards existed. I’m really hoping that USB-A hasn’t like, gained enough

⏹️ ▶️ John momentum that it will not be dislodged by USB-C for like an extra, you know, five to ten years

⏹️ ▶️ John just because that will be said,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, it’s certain sometimes transitions are easier like the second time through and this case like the transition

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from dot connector to lightning was very painful. But a lot of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people took that opportunity to not just go to lightning for their devices or needs, but to just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco go directly to wireless to airplay and bluetooth and things like that with the with the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco VGA conference room projector situation. I wonder like how many conference rooms

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually just went from VGA to DVI or lightning

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and how many just switched to other solutions like air playing to an Apple TV or something like that.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s fucking for someone who doesn’t spend a lot of time in corporate America. Yeah. No, they don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John use air play. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey so air play

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not the answer, but I gotta tell you, so my office is all

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in on the Google ecosystem, which at first glance for an Apple-centric show like ours might sound

⏹️ ▶️ Casey terrible, but truth be told, it actually works out really well. And so in most conference

⏹️ ▶️ Casey rooms, there’s a Chromebox, and I don’t know enough about Chromeboxes to know if

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s something special about them. Like I’ve seen the physical cardboard boxes that the Chromebox

⏹️ ▶️ Casey comes in, and I think it says like Chromebox for meetings or something like that on it. The

⏹️ ▶️ Casey specific wordage doesn’t matter, but what ends up happening is there’s a TV in each of these conference

⏹️ ▶️ Casey rooms, There’s a Chromebox hooked up to the TV, and the Chromebox shows

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that room’s schedule for the day, and you just select the, oftentimes,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the currently active button, and that will jump into the Google

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hangouts for that meeting. And not having used Google Hangouts prior to coming to the company,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had heard a lot of mixed things about it, and I thought it would be kind of garbage, but it’s actually pretty nice.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And what we’ll do is if you are trying to present something to the meeting,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you just hop on the Hangout on your laptop and it will thus implicitly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey go to the TV in the conference room, and it will also be presented to anyone that happens to be remote as well. It works

⏹️ ▶️ Casey out surprisingly well. And yes, there’s hiccups and coughs and whatnot from time to time, but it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really solid. I was very surprised how much I’ve really gotten to like Hangouts

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in this regard.

⏹️ ▶️ John when your other choice is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey WebEx, anything

⏹️ ▶️ John looks

⏹️ ▶️ Casey good. Yeah, that’s true too. Amen, brother.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh yeah, so before we get on the topic of conference rooms, like I remember going through this several

⏹️ ▶️ John years back at work when we were going through a corporate, I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know, disturbance, of upsetness about conference room tech, like

⏹️ ▶️ John everyone was cranky about it, especially the tech people. And we tried all those things. We had a Google box, we tried

⏹️ ▶️ John Google Hangouts. And, you know, air playing to Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John TVs came up because if you look at how much money all the equipment we had that we were installing, his competition

⏹️ ▶️ John was costing. It’s like an Apple TV is nothing compared to that. And this is yet another market that Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John could have done well in with either a dedicated product like a Chromecast or just by making the Apple TV better. But

⏹️ ▶️ John it was basically a nonstarter, partially because, you know, no airplay on PCs and everything.

⏹️ ▶️ John But we had a lot of Macs and I don’t think that would have stopped it, mainly because It was so much of a pain to get

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TVs onto the corporate network. You could do it, but you needed a special weird utility and it wasn’t simple and

⏹️ ▶️ John no one wanted to go through with that. So now, instead of being able to bring your Mac into the room and AirPlay to the projector,

⏹️ ▶️ John you plug into one of the 800 cables that’s poking out of this giant Hydro.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco One of it, yes,

⏹️ ▶️ John is still VGA. Who knows what they’re going to do if and when my work ever buys the new laptops

⏹️ ▶️ John that have the USB-C connectors because most of the time the Mac users plug into HDMI these days.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have to mention too, like HDMI, because you know VGA was analog and then we finally got

⏹️ ▶️ Marco DVI and then HDMI which is basically DVI with bonus stuff attached to it,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like it’s easier to adapt to the new digital standards these days. And HDMI is also pretty

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well supported now. I mean I don’t think it’s as big, like as universal as VGA

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was at its peak, but I think it’s getting there. It’s going to be fairly trivial

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for almost any new port standard to adapt to HDMI for the foreseeable future. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just going to be in such high demand, every new device that has video out capability

⏹️ ▶️ Marco will have some way to translate that to HDMI for a long time. So I think that’s mostly a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco moot point these days. Your sponsor this week, BuyPingdom, my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco favorite server monitoring service.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco start monitoring your websites and servers today at Pingdom.com slash ATP, you get a 14

⏹️ ▶️ Marco day free trial. And when you enter code ATP, a checker, you get 20% off your first invoice.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pingdom makes the web faster and more reliable for everyone by offering powerful, easy to use monitoring

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tools and services for anybody with a website. So Pingdom can monitor availability and performance

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of servers, databases, websites, anything with the URL for more than 70 global

⏹️ ▶️ Marco test servers. So you can see, for instance, that there’s some weird DNS problem where like your site is offline

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for only a certain part of the world, but it happens to not be where you live. You might not know about that otherwise,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but Pingdom can tell you that. They can tell you so much. Your performance, uptime,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they can emulate visits to your site as often as every minute to check its uptime. And they can check for things like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco regular expressions or patterns or substrings or anything else and all sorts of, you know, you can have it served with cookies

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and conditions and everything. It’s incredibly powerful. breaks on the internet all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the time. And I mean, heck, this past week there was an interesting outage of Amazon S3

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that caused a lot of stuff to break and Pingdom had a lot of outages to report. And of course they did.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They did their job very well there because they always do their job very well. I’ve been using Pingdom since I think 2007.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s been a very long time. I used it for the vast majority of Tumblr, all of Instapaper, all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Overcast so far. I use it for my personal site. Our friend, underscore David Smith, used

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use it to monitor the Apple WBDC page for changes and have it alert him

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every time whenever the page changed so we’d know when tickets went on sale. Because you don’t have to actually own the URLs that you’re testing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s all sorts of great uses for Pingdom. And of course, if you run a server

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a website or any kind of web service, you need to know when your site goes down. And you need to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the first to know. You shouldn’t need to wait around to later read Twitter and see like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ve had 50 responses people on Twitter that your site’s been down over the last three hours and you didn’t even know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about it. With Pingdom, you’ll be the first to know. You can be alerted by a text message, push notification,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco email, and you will be the first to know so you can go fix it before all the people on Twitter

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see it and start bugging you about it, before your customers see it, before you lose any business.

USB-C: What charges what?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco check it out today, go to pingdom.com slash ATP for a 14 day free trial and get 20%

⏹️ ▶️ Marco off your first invoice with offer code ATP. Thanks to Pingdom for sponsoring our show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Eric Peterman writes in, part of the USB-C spec is two-way power. Devices

⏹️ ▶️ Casey choose what charges what based on the order of plugging them in. So a Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Casey could charge the switch.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco So this is with regard to- That’s a terrible way to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey do it. It really is. with regard to the rumor or maybe, I guess it wasn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a rumor, but somebody had plugged a switch into one of the new MacBook Pros and they said,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, this is weird. The switch is charging the MacBook Pro rather than what you would expect, which is the reverse.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this is what Eric’s talking about. So I had heard separately from a not reliable

⏹️ ▶️ Casey source that that was actually a firmware issue with the switch. But this indicates that it’s all about who plugs into

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what when, which is kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bananas. The fact that it wouldn’t be deterministic, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco imagine in real life, anybody using these devices who isn’t intricately

⏹️ ▶️ Marco familiar with the USB-C spec, you know, oh I accidentally plugged this in backwards

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and depleted the device that I was trying to charge.

⏹️ ▶️ John Plug your phone into your laptop and it drains your phone into your laptop. Why would you design a spec

⏹️ ▶️ John that way? Who knows, I haven’t looked this up, but I think it’s actually a reasonable way

⏹️ ▶️ John for things to work in the absence of anything else dictating. I would imagine if you plug a phone

⏹️ ▶️ John into an Apple, you know, an iPhone or an Apple laptop, they have already they already have a system

⏹️ ▶️ John through some resistor values, some other crap to ensure that it never goes in the opposite direction. But if

⏹️ ▶️ John you have two devices that are basically from their perspective, but I don’t know, I’m making up terminology of like two host

⏹️ ▶️ John devices like the laptop and the switch. That’s as reasonable way as any if they both expect to be the

⏹️ ▶️ John thing charging, but they’re plugged into each other, there has to be some kind of negotiations of plug water sounds fine but I would hope

⏹️ ▶️ John that for the common case where it’s like one really big one and one really small one like I would hope that the phone

⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have the power to charge anything I mean I suppose it does it powers like audio peripherals but it’s not charging

⏹️ ▶️ John them

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey right now.

⏹️ ▶️ John Barely.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah.

USB-C port strength

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Daniel Klein writes in USB C versus lightning Isn’t the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey middle part of USB C a lot more breakable than the solid lightning connector? And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey he continues more important than springs. I’m not entirely sure what he’s referring to there

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John like the little

⏹️ ▶️ John springy bits

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey This

⏹️ ▶️ John is my concern about the USB C before seeing them and even when you see you can kind of

⏹️ ▶️ John look in look into the the Female connector on USB C and you see the little circuit boardy thing with

⏹️ ▶️ John the contacts sticking out and in theory you can stick your fingernail in there and just crack that thing down and your port is

⏹️ ▶️ John dead. I don’t have enough real-world experience plugging

⏹️ ▶️ John and unplugging USB-C to say how fragile that thing is and how likely it is to either get stuff jammed around it or break.

⏹️ ▶️ John These are all question marks. I would imagine that it is probably

⏹️ ▶️ John sturdier than you think because it’s wedged up in there and Unless you actually

⏹️ ▶️ John stick something in there to get at it It’s not it’s not someplace where it can get bumped or hit or anything

⏹️ ▶️ John and when the connector is around it It’s very secure because it’s completely surrounded by the thing so I’m gonna give them the benefit

⏹️ ▶️ John of the doubt give Apple the benefit of the doubt of whoever designed this connector that that it is okay and

⏹️ ▶️ John What this question made me think about and some other people who asked similar questions about the springy bits in the contacts and maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John think about my what I was saying last show about how it is better

⏹️ ▶️ John to have the springy bits in the cable because if they fatigue and start making bad contacts you just throw out the cable and get a new

⏹️ ▶️ John cable whereas the springy bits fatigue inside your iPhone what can you do there’s not much you can do about it

⏹️ ▶️ John but that was in the context of the the hardware virus where the the springy bits get less springy

⏹️ ▶️ John and don’t contact well with the contacts and start arcing and make a little Bernie spot and that Bernie spot doesn’t connect with other one

⏹️ ▶️ John it spreads from thing to thing seems to me that that could still happen no matter where the springy

⏹️ ▶️ John bits are because if it starts arcing because the springy bits in your cable are bad, it’s gonna leave that little scorch mark

⏹️ ▶️ John on the The stationary part inside the female USB-C connector. You won’t see

⏹️ ▶️ John it You won’t see the little stripey thing, but it’ll be there Which means that even after you throw out the cable now

⏹️ ▶️ John one of your contacts inside your USB-C connector Inside the female end is a little bit scorchy And so when you stick

⏹️ ▶️ John your brand spanking new cable that you bought in there It’s gonna have poor contact with the scorch

⏹️ ▶️ John mark So like that that it could still happen one is what I’m saying now I guess this all depends on how

⏹️ ▶️ John resilient the springy bits are maybe it’s the design of the springy bits this different They certainly you know

⏹️ ▶️ John look different if you look inside the connectors, and they do inside lighting, so I don’t know Again, it’s very difficult

⏹️ ▶️ John to eyeball these things based on like the few people you know and your guesstimation by looking at

⏹️ ▶️ John connectors Only the companies that make the products have actual numbers, and they don’t seem to be sharing

⏹️ ▶️ John them but I imagine if there is a large reliability difference between lightning and USB-C,

⏹️ ▶️ John we as a society will learn that together over the next few years, because even though we won’t have the data,

⏹️ ▶️ John eventually it’ll be clear. Is there some sort of widespread problem with this and not a widespread problem with that?

⏹️ ▶️ John Or is there are problems with both of them, you know, like I imagine it’ll be a battle wash, but we’ll see.

MacBook Boost case

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jeff Spivak writes more naked robotic MacBook Pros and there’s a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey link to Yanko design which has a Super case

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for your MacBook what the deuce is going on here.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just like the MacBook Pro This isn’t a Mac Pro. This is a MacBook But hey, you know these these laptops that Apple makes

⏹️ ▶️ John have USB C and or Thunderbolt 3 ports on them But don’t have any other ports that people

⏹️ ▶️ John wanted no SD card slot. No big honking USB a slot or whatever whatever. Maybe you want more battery

⏹️ ▶️ John on it and these sort of cases for your laptops that plug into the USB-C and or Thunderbolt 3

⏹️ ▶️ John port and add a bunch of other ports just like one of those adapters or docks that they sell that are external and maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John also adds battery. And so here you go, make a robotic core of your MacBook. You want it to be thicker and a little

⏹️ ▶️ John bit heavier and have an SD card slot and a USB-A thing and another USB-C pass through and a

⏹️ ▶️ John micro USB. I can’t even tell what the hell this thing has on it. Anyway, you want a bunch more ports and you want to look like an ugly PC laptop

⏹️ ▶️ John with a bunch of plastic crap. And

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco wait a second, it doesn’t look good.

⏹️ ▶️ John But I’m saying it’s like this is this is 100% the naked robotic core as applied to max

⏹️ ▶️ John like we made it as small and as thin as possible. If you want something different, you can add it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like the tech is there, you know, like all the like all those breakout docks and adapters like the tech is there, you could put

⏹️ ▶️ John an ethernet port in this thing, right? Go ahead. And it’s kind of amazing that this, you add

⏹️ ▶️ John this thing to it, and it makes your laptop like seven times thicker. But it really does on one side have USB

⏹️ ▶️ John a in an SD card slot on the other side have another USB a USB C and a micro USB or whatever the hell or maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just another USB C. I can’t tell like suddenly your MacBook one is MacBook way more

⏹️ ▶️ John than one.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this this thing is is something else. I do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco commend the effort of things like this to make these laptops more useful,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think they are destined to have the same problem The same thing I always complain about with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery backpacks on phones, that all of the casing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and electronics overhead of having to have the separate stand-alone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco device with its own plastic on both sides and its own metal shielding and different

⏹️ ▶️ Marco parts and charging components and discharging components and everything else, the additional bulk of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco having to bolt this on as an external thing makes the entire

⏹️ ▶️ Marco package end up being so bigger so much bigger and heavier than if you had a laptop that just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco had these things in the first place built in that it just doesn’t it just doesn’t seem compelling to me.

⏹️ ▶️ John And so the alternative in Apple’s universe assuming Apple doesn’t actually make a machine that has the ports that you want on it

⏹️ ▶️ John like because Apple does make these things with a very capable port on it that is capable of supporting all this like

⏹️ ▶️ John the reason he’s going to exist because there is a cable, the Apple alternative is a whole mess of adapters and wires.

⏹️ ▶️ John And we look at this and we said it was an ugly is an inconvenient, it makes it thicker, it makes it heavier. Is it uglier

⏹️ ▶️ John and more inconvenient than a whole mess of adapters or an external

⏹️ ▶️ John breakout box doc? I mean, it really depends on the environment you’re using it, I wouldn’t want to be, I would be more happy

⏹️ ▶️ John carrying this from conference room to conference room, attending a series of meetings, no matter how ugly it is, because

⏹️ ▶️ John self contained and I don’t have to have like put down my laptop

⏹️ ▶️ John then dump on the table a handful of adapters or a breakout box or this big hydra of cables like that. That

⏹️ ▶️ John is worse in many ways for a machine that is supposed to be portable. So yes, it is technically possible to plug in a bunch

⏹️ ▶️ John of wires. It kind of reminds me of those old iMac ads where they would show like the PC with a million wires poking out of the

⏹️ ▶️ John back of it and show like the iMac and how clean it was and you didn’t need all this stuff just had one power cable right? That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco mouse that is like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every MacBook one that people use to get anything beyond the basics done on.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah. And arguably,

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re using the wrong computer for that. But even I recall seeing like if you ever see a picture of a real

⏹️ ▶️ John person’s, like not just a marketing shop, but someone who bought a Mac Pro and uses it for work, bought a trash can and uses it for work,

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a million wires coming out of it. And it looks for all the world like those ugly PCs. I’m not saying this is the

⏹️ ▶️ John wrong solution, but it’s kind of like how they always show like lamps in product shots without wires coming

⏹️ ▶️ John from them or like appliances or like there’s There’s never any wires, like wait, how does that lamp get power? They erase

⏹️ ▶️ John the wires because wires are ugly. They don’t want you to see them. When they’re showing a picture like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John here is Samsung’s fancy new TV. They don’t show the wires coming out of it because that’s ugly. You know, even when they show

⏹️ ▶️ John the back of it, they don’t show the wires because they want to show you all the ports. Wires are ugly and inconvenient

⏹️ ▶️ John and make your products look worse and are generally annoying to wrangle. And so as ugly as this weird little sleeve thing

⏹️ ▶️ John is, I hope the signal it’s sending to Apple is, Hey, Apple, if you made a laptop

⏹️ ▶️ John that made a different set of compromises, you may be able to, you know, I feel

⏹️ ▶️ John like it should be Apple’s job to make sure that no one ever wants to buy this thing. And maybe they don’t want to buy it just because it’s ugly. But say they

⏹️ ▶️ John had just an SD card slot, as we’ve discussed on the Mac Pro 13 inch.

⏹️ ▶️ John Would that satisfy everybody? No, because it doesn’t have micro, you know, USB and USB a ports

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. But it would satisfy slightly more people. And what would the cost be?

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s very difficult knowing what what the right compromise is for the complement of ports. I do like the idea

⏹️ ▶️ John that things like this are possible. I don’t like the idea that people would be driven to buy them because they’re,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, they’re, we’re gonna say they’re they’re not of Apple quality for the most part.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, this like, you know, what you said, like, if Apple were to allow us to make a different set of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco compromises, if you had to boil down all of my complaints about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s hardware lineup from the last five years or so, that’s it. I wish Apple would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco allow me the choice of different compromises. Because for the most part,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they tend to enforce the same compromises on their entire product line,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on every member of the family. So for instance, all the laptops are now thin and lights,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which sacrifice ports and now keyboard usability and trackpad usability. They

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sacrifice things in the name of thinness. And for a lot of people that’s great. It’s great to have that as an

⏹️ ▶️ Marco option in the lineup, but I just wish it wasn’t now the only option in the lineup. And I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco products like this just show that there is still substantial demand, even

⏹️ ▶️ Marco though any given one of these types of things is not going to sell very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, I don’t think. But I think it says something that this is not the first thing we’ve seen like this.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there’s also the whole, you know, beyond just like the whole like, you know, new bottom case

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing like this that you kind of sit the laptop in. There’s also the entire ecosystem of all these different USB-C

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hubs that like almost every MacBook One owner has one of these hubs, at least one, if not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like seven from different Kickstarters and everything. Like this really says, I think Apple,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wish Apple would look at these results and realize like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would be better for a lot of customers to just have different

⏹️ ▶️ Marco choices, not just to be able to pick your given screen size

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the same compromised ultra-thin laptop. We are sponsored this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco week by Away.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Go to awaytravel.com slash ATP for $20 off your order use promo code ATP

⏹️ ▶️ Marco during checkout Away makes basically like modern-day Nicely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thoughtfully designed luggage at great value prices So these away suitcases

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are made with premium German polycarbonate Which is unrivaled and strength and impact resistance and very lightweight

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The interior is incredibly thoughtfully designed if you use a patent-pending compression systems, you could

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fit a lot in there They of course have four full spinning wheels for a smooth ride.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you’ve never used four wheeled suitcases, it’s a pretty big upgrade over two wheeled suitcases. They have of course a TSA

⏹️ ▶️ Marco approved combination lock, but to the top. They also have a couple of interesting things like a removable washable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco laundry bag. So when you’re out traveling, you put all your dirty clothes in this removable washable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco laundry bag that’s built into the suitcase so you always have it with you. And it keeps it separate from your other clothes and it’s easy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to take out later and wash. And they also in their carry on model, this is incredibly thoughtful. You might

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have heard about this elsewhere. In their Carry-On model, they have a built-in USB charging battery.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you can plug in cell phones, tablets, e-readers, and anything else that’s USB powered.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can plug it in and charge it with your Carry-On suitcase from Away. A single charge

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the Away Carry-On’s internal battery can charge your iPhone five times. And if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything ever breaks on these suitcases, Away will fix or replace it for you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for life. They have a lifetime warranty. And of course, because you’re buying a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco suitcase on the internet, which sounds kind of weird, they have you covered there too with a 100 day trial.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So here’s how this works. You can buy it for 100 days. You can live with it. You can even travel with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. So you can actually buy it, travel with it for three months, and then decide after that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether you want to keep it or not. If at any point you decide it’s not for you, you can return it for a full refund

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with no questions asked. So check it out today. These are really thoughtfully

⏹️ ▶️ Marco designed, well made suitcases with a lifetime warranty and a 100 day trial

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so there’s really nothing to lose here. Check it out at awaytravel.com slash

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ATP and use code ATP during checkout to get $20 off your order. Once again, that’s it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for today. Now,

iOS windows

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s awaytravel.com slash ATP and promo code ATP for 20 bucks off your first order.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you very much to Away for sponsoring our show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so we’re gonna start tonight with- We’re starting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey tonight? Sort of. With a couple, maybe all

⏹️ ▶️ Casey three of us, iPad grumps talking about Windows or windowing, I guess I should say,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on iOS. And Stephen Troughton-Smith, who

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is probably the best iOS hacker, and I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, I hate using that term unironically, but I don’t know what else to call him.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think he would take offense.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and I don’t mean it in a disparaging way. Anyways, he has been

⏹️ ▶️ Casey putting together over the last week or so basically a windowing system for iOS,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess specifically for iPad. And it is absolutely bananas

⏹️ ▶️ Casey how impressive it looks and how fluid he’s gotten it to look. And there

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are several tweets about, well, there’s many tweets about it. We’ll put one or two in the show notes. But what’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of interest to us, I guess, is he tweeted,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone call from app review. Side-by-side windows, fine. Resizable

⏹️ ▶️ Casey windows, fine. Overlapping windows, scream emoji. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey apparently AppReview does not like the idea of having two

⏹️ ▶️ Casey windows or views on top of each other. And this relates to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of my favorite iPad apps, not necessarily in terms of how much I’ve used it, but just, I think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s an unbelievably clever idea, which is Panic’s Status Board app,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which if you’re not familiar is basically you can arrange a series of widgets on the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad screen and use your iPad as a status board. Or if you want to, you could plug it into a TV

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and use a whole TV as a status board powered by an iPad. And it’s very similar to this. And so Cable

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sasser of Panic says, still in our blog CMS is a never posted goodbye status board

⏹️ ▶️ Casey post. From the time Apple said widgets are okay, but we can’t have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey more than one widget. And this post included an illustration that may have helped change their minds.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s an illustration of this humongous TV with a little teeny tiny widget on it trying

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to make the point of, you know, this is kind of ridiculous. So, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, there’s kind of a lot to unpack here, but before anything else, I am

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so unbelievably stunned and impressed by what Stephen Troutman Smith has done with this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad. I was gonna call it a mock-up, but I mean, it’s working, it’s real. It’s a tech demo. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s a much better term for it. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so freaking cool. He basically made Finder. Yeah. simple version of Finder

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with like Finder Windows and everything being able to browse files and preview them and everything.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s pretty impressive. It’s kind of like the Mac OS X Finder anyway, not the real Finder, but you

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and the point of it is not to be like a useful application. The point of it is, I think,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to show off like here’s a really easy, obvious way that you could do windowing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on iPads and let’s see how it actually behaves and works. Like is it useful? Is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it easy to Is it confusing or does it just kind of work? And so far, I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just kind of works.

⏹️ ▶️ John You left off the last few tweets here, which I think are important, both Steve and Cable’s thing. So Steve

⏹️ ▶️ John continues after his scared face emoji or screaming face. I didn’t know the… Sorry, Casey, I didn’t know the correct

⏹️ ▶️ John name of that emoji and Chrome couldn’t handle it, so I couldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco actually paste it. If only we

⏹️ ▶️ Marco had a resource on this show of somebody who was really an emoji expert.

⏹️ ▶️ John He handled it. He read right over scared face and he replaced it with the correct, which I assume is the the correct

⏹️ ▶️ John one, because we’ll just defer to him. He’s fluent in emoji. Right here. So this is about

⏹️ ▶️ John app review, saying the side by side window, you know, overlapping windows is no good, right? So he’s saying, effectively,

⏹️ ▶️ John this is merely an informal heads up that if it were to be submitted to the App Store with overlapping windows would

⏹️ ▶️ John be rejected. Remember, he’s not submitting an application to the App Store. He’s just doing like tech demos on Twitter. And he gets a

⏹️ ▶️ John phone call from every you saying, by the way, if you were to submit that no. All

⏹️ ▶️ John right. And so the final bit here is, this is why the iPad can’t have nice things, you’re stuck waiting for Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John to innovate, which is exactly the point of all this is like, who knows if this is a good idea, maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John this is a terrible idea. But if Apple is going to not just enforce a

⏹️ ▶️ John set of guidelines in terms of quality and viruses and advertising, and, you know, adult content and

⏹️ ▶️ John all sorts of other things that the App Store does, but to add the level at this level to say,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you do whatever you want, if you’re making a game, and you I can’t look, you make a bunch of GUIs. But

⏹️ ▶️ John in the in between place where you try to make your own GUI, we’re gonna say no to that. And it’s like Apple,

⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t know, like, it’s a third party application. Maybe it’s a terrible idea when everyone hated, maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a great idea, and you’ll end up stealing it like pull to refresh, you have to allow application developers to

⏹️ ▶️ John do things like this. With the devices that you’re making, like this is not a

⏹️ ▶️ John ridiculous notion, right? And, and maybe if it was more ridiculous, it would be allowed. Because again, games can like

⏹️ ▶️ John look, my whole screen is a big open GL view, I can do whatever the hell you want. And Apple’s not going to be like, Oh, your menu system

⏹️ ▶️ John in this racing game looks a little bit weird. Like they don’t care. It’s fine. But this looks too much like a regular

⏹️ ▶️ John UI. And this is not like the image that Apple wants for their thing. And I feel like this starts to cross a line

⏹️ ▶️ John of you’re not ensuring quality in the App Store, you are constraining the

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re constraining innovation, like legitimate innovation, not that he’s not trolling with this, he’s trying

⏹️ ▶️ John out an interface idea, an interface idea that is just as valid as half the other people’s terrible uses of UI

⏹️ ▶️ John kit that ended up being terrible interfaces. Maybe those will be terrible, too. Who knows? But why is this not allowed?

⏹️ ▶️ John But so many other like sketching applications that have like drag off palettes that you can float cycle, that’s okay, because

⏹️ ▶️ John the background is your painting or your sketch that you’re doing, and that’s not a window. And then the things are floating on top of it

⏹️ ▶️ John are windows, but they can’t overlap with each other. It’s, it’s ridiculous, like, and so we are forced to wait

⏹️ ▶️ John for Apple to slowly, but you know, perhaps, surely perhaps

⏹️ ▶️ John not decide what it’s going to do with this whole window. Okay, picture and picture is fine. And Apple do that and make an official

⏹️ ▶️ John API for it. Can we have any other floating windows and type other windows? Maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John one or two and apps all out but don’t try to solve the whole problem in a general purpose way. Because only

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s allowed to do that. So you’re so the users of the iPad, the users of iOS are stuck

⏹️ ▶️ John waiting for Apple to figure out what to do. It is impossible for third parties to innovate on iOS

⏹️ ▶️ John devices because Apple simply won’t let them and that is terrible because most of the awesome innovations on the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ John and many of them on iOS came from third party developers that did something. It became popular. Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John saw it and said, Oh, that’s a good idea. We should build that into the US or incorporate a similar mechanism

⏹️ ▶️ John or you know, buy super clock and put a clock in the menu bar. I mean, come on, come on, Apple. This is super disappointing,

⏹️ ▶️ John especially since they’re proactively dickish about it, calling him and saying, you better not submit

⏹️ ▶️ John that to the app store because we’ll reject it just so you

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey know,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hold on, though, was that? I don’t think that was out of the blue. And I might have this wrong. But my interpretation,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which may be my own fabrication was that he had submitted it for like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey test flight or something. And so as part of that, he got like a little mini review.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it was then that it was brought to Apple’s attention. And then that they called him and were like, Oh, no,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s not going to work.

⏹️ ▶️ John But either way, like whether even if he had officially submitted it, the bottom line is that they are they’re saying you

⏹️ ▶️ John are not allowed to innovate in this way, which I think is ridiculous. Let the app die on its own if it’s a terrible idea.

⏹️ ▶️ John Right? It’s not it. You know, it’s not malware.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, so there’s there’s been this rule and I just checked it’s still there. There’s been this rule this app review rule

⏹️ ▶️ Marco since I think the first publication of app review rules back whenever that was like 2009 2010. And it’s rule number 258. apps that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco create alternate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco desktop or home screen environments or simulate multi app widget experiences will be rejected.

⏹️ ▶️ John I know, like Launch Center Pro had that problem a while back too. I think that rule is bogus too.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Oh, I think so too.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think it’s worth questioning why that rule is there. And it might

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just be some like, you know, crazy Steve Jobs control freak holdover. But there also might

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be good reasons for it. So it might be, for instance, like, they don’t want, like, another

⏹️ ▶️ Marco app to basically like start like its own entire app ecosystem within itself.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, Although you can kind of argue that’s kind of what like WhatsApp does and everything but and Snapchat

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway Facebook geez anyway but I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s probably like this rule is probably not helping innovation overall. This

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is probably holding things back now that being said you know for any kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like windowing system like this to get anywhere the way to do it on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS is for Apple to do it like it’s never going to get anywhere, you know, in the market like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I disagree if it was actually a good idea, and it was implemented in a popular or soon to be popular,

⏹️ ▶️ John widely used creative application, like for example, if Adobe Illustrator came and it had tear off palettes that you could overlap and

⏹️ ▶️ John rearrange just like the desktop one, right, there’ll be disallowed under the under the stupid overlapping

⏹️ ▶️ John rule things because you can overlap two palettes with each other. But if it was popular in that application,

⏹️ ▶️ John and people liked it on their big iPad Pro, every competitor application

⏹️ ▶️ John would be scrambling to implement that a new competitor in the market would say, if I want to make a professional vector drawing

⏹️ ▶️ John application on the 12 inch iPad Pro, I need to have these floating overlapping palettes,

⏹️ ▶️ John because the market leader has them and everybody loves them. And if I don’t have them, you know what I mean? Like, let the idea live and

⏹️ ▶️ John die on its own. I agree that if you’re going to say, Okay, well, individual applications get a window only applicant

⏹️ ▶️ John do that period. And that’s fine. But just to see if bearing out the idea of like, is it is it ridiculous

⏹️ ▶️ John to have people poking their fingers at window digits? Is this a dumb idea? Does it not work in a touch interface? Like

⏹️ ▶️ John the only way you will know is by trying you can think about you can do the mental exercise and be like, Oh, I don’t want to drag around

⏹️ ▶️ John a window with a title bar. How would I arrange them? How does it work? You have to try like I feel like it’s, this is the

⏹️ ▶️ John role of third party developers. If someone wants to muck with that and see if it’s useful. I think you can

⏹️ ▶️ John get a result that says either this is useful, and maybe it would be even more useful if applied broadly

⏹️ ▶️ John by Apple, but even just within the confines of an application, just like floating pallets that are in a lot of applications now where there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John one floating thing that you can tear off and move around. That I think it’s is proving its own utility because

⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t know where it has to be. And if it’s always stuck to the side, it’s kind of difficult, let the person move it around. So it’s out of their way when

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re drawing, but it lets them sort of configure their tool set and you know, push it off to the side where they want it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I think that is an idea that is showing its value, merely one confined to third party

⏹️ ▶️ John applications. And this is just taking to the next step. And maybe it’s a step too far and it’s a terrible idea. But Apple,

⏹️ ▶️ John you just You just got to let people try it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Have you seen PanelKit, which is apparently an open source framework to do these

⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of like snap to the side and like sticky popover panel

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sort of things. There’s a really good animated GIF that’s on the readme

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for this thing. And we’ll put a link in the show notes. But it’s not exactly apples to apples

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what Steve Troutman Smith was doing, but it’s very much of a similar spirit. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it looks really like I haven’t looked at the code, but just the demonstration looks really good.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, I think that the more productive conversation to have on this kind of thing is not like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how we can get Apple to let it through AppReview, because let’s face it, they won’t. Or if they suddenly have a change of heart

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on an ancient rule like this, it won’t be because of us. But I think it’s worth

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all these things, PanelKit and Steve Trout & Smith, you know, his thing, whatever. Does it even have an

⏹️ ▶️ Marco official name? I don’t even know. I don’t think so. you know, I think it’s it’s worth

⏹️ ▶️ Marco talking about. And I think this is probably why he made it. It’s worth talking about, like, does this work on iOS?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And do you think there’s a future of windowed apps in some form

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this on on iPads?

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. So yeah, on that topic, like, because I brought this up several shows back

⏹️ ▶️ John when what was it we were talking about that had the floating thing is when we were talking about picture in picture,

⏹️ ▶️ John and there was some application that also had a floating

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco thing on top of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Oh, I don’t know. You got all the references.

⏹️ ▶️ John It was a thing that we took. Come on, chat room. Mark, we’ll cut this out as we discover it. What was it?

⏹️ ▶️ John Floating iPad keyboard. See? See? Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that thing. Okay, you’re right. Yeah, it was a floating keyboard. That I’m pretty sure Steve Trout

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Smith also found.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yes. Secret,

⏹️ ▶️ John hidden API, private API to put a keyboard that wasn’t just the bottom of your screen that slid up from the bottom,

⏹️ ▶️ John but rather was a floating keyboard that was much smaller that you could move wherever you wanted on the screen. And that’s that made

⏹️ ▶️ John me say, this is kind of like a window. And we have another example of that, which is picture in picture. But it’s another kind of window,

⏹️ ▶️ John basically a little square that’s on the screen that you can move wherever you want it, more or less within constraints, blah, blah, blah, blah,

⏹️ ▶️ John blah, which is different than the traditional iOS experience, which is a panel comes in from a side or goes out

⏹️ ▶️ John from whatever. But you can’t move it around. Right. And that that was me initiating a larger discussion

⏹️ ▶️ John about windows with a lowercase w on iOS spawned by this, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John hidden keyboard type thing. And we also talked about some existing iOS applications like drawing

⏹️ ▶️ John applications that also have floating palettes, usually only one of them, and it floats over the background, which is your drawing.

⏹️ ▶️ John But that is the thing a lot of people are trying. And what I was trying to pitch them was that, uh,

⏹️ ▶️ John as if you want to keep taking the iPad even more and more pro, uh, in addition to making the screen

⏹️ ▶️ John bigger and especially when you do make the screen bigger, you want to make better use of that screen. And one proven

⏹️ ▶️ John way to let people make use of a larger screen is to give them different regions of it to do

⏹️ ▶️ John things more than just splitting it up into halves or thirds or whatever, but even within an application to be able to move things

⏹️ ▶️ John around to arrange things the way they want them. Now, the thing I’m going to add to this conversation here is

⏹️ ▶️ John based on things that have been discussed on other podcasts,

⏹️ ▶️ John starring Mike Hurley, but also on cortex, that’s also him and CGP great talking about their multi

⏹️ ▶️ John iPad type things and all for all the people out there who

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco use multi pads at the same time.

⏹️ ▶️ John Come on. Yes. Or or phones and iPads which is just as common where you got the iPad but your phone next to it or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John Very often this is presented as a way to

⏹️ ▶️ John basically to multitask. Like to say my smaller iPad over here has this thing on it, my bigger iPad

⏹️ ▶️ John has this, my phone has this, so my phone I have messages available, my little iPad I have like Slack and

⏹️ ▶️ John on my big iPad have the thing that I’m doing, right? Uh, C. G. P. Gray often refers to it the same way that

⏹️ ▶️ John people have multiple pieces of paper around their desk. At the same time, you have this pile of paper over here, and then the main thing you’re working on, then you’re referring

⏹️ ▶️ John to your notebook for notes and you have a book open over here. I think it’s more like having multiple desks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I had this desk over here and then I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my left hand desk and my right hand desk. Each hand has its own

⏹️ ▶️ John desk. It is. That is like if you were writing a paper referring to another thing and had a book

⏹️ ▶️ John open, right for referring to your notes and had a reference book open, right? You would do that. Um, now

⏹️ ▶️ John every time I hear them discuss and I’m not caught up on car to cortex so forgive me if this comes up sometime in 2015 but

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco every

⏹️ ▶️ John time I hear this discussed in the distant past where I’m living in cortex right now I keep waiting

⏹️ ▶️ John for one of these two knuckleheads to realize that what they’re talking about is called windows

⏹️ ▶️ John why do you think we made windows on personal computers it was like a desktop like a literal

⏹️ ▶️ John like not a literal desktop but the other meaning of literal or which is figurative desktop a metaphorical desktop

⏹️ ▶️ John right like it’s the top of your desk like it’s not even a distant it’s not even distant like they were talking

⏹️ ▶️ John about the top and then on that desk would be different documents each of which will be

⏹️ ▶️ John represented by a window that you could move around the only difference is that it was all within one piece

⏹️ ▶️ John of glass so you would take the windows slash documents and arrange them how you wanted with

⏹️ ▶️ John the thing you’re writing in the middle and the notes you’re referring to on the left and open reference book on the right only middle left and

⏹️ ▶️ John right would all be on the screen and so it’s maddening to hear people talk about oh i have my my big

⏹️ ▶️ John iPad and my little iPad. Those are just windows, but they’re physical now. And in some respects, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John better to have physical windows. There are advantages to physical windows, but imagine if your whole desk was a freaking

⏹️ ▶️ John giant retina screen and you could arrange these windows, we’ll call them, and you’d have your little

⏹️ ▶️ John phone and you’re like, they’re just differently sized windows, guys. You’re just

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco reinventing windows in

⏹️ ▶️ John meatspace. They’re just meatspace windows. And it’s so painful to me

⏹️ ▶️ John to see. And I know they’ll say I don’t want that. I don’t want Windows. Window arrangement sucks.

⏹️ ▶️ John Arranging my two iPads on my desk is great. And there is, I’m not going to say, there is something

⏹️ ▶️ John to that because dealing with physical devices is better than dealing with Windows. There are compromises

⏹️ ▶️ John to having them all be virtual on a 2D device, but there are also advantages, really, really big advantages. And people

⏹️ ▶️ John with long experience with using very large screens with lots of Windows on them, hello, that’s me,

⏹️ ▶️ John can tell you that there are also advantages to that approach. And so I’m not saying one

⏹️ ▶️ John precludes the other and you have to stop the other one. I’m just saying they are siblings, they are they are solving the same

⏹️ ▶️ John problem in almost exactly the same way with only slightly different compromises. And if they’re going to say

⏹️ ▶️ John that that the multi device thing is the way they prefer versus the other one, that’s fine. But to never mention the other one

⏹️ ▶️ John never realized that what they’re essentially doing is exactly the same as having a really big screen with multiple windows. And that

⏹️ ▶️ John there are advantages to having a really big screen with multiple windows in that virtual things

⏹️ ▶️ John are easier to deal with and manipulate than real things like you can’t switch spaces, you can’t swipe your

⏹️ ▶️ John four fingers to the left and suddenly a new desk slides in with a new set of iOS devices on it

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey like Casey does

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco with his spaces,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? You can’t minimize or window shade or snap them to edges or resize

⏹️ ▶️ John them because you can’t make your iPad mini into a different orientation or a different size.

⏹️ ▶️ John There are trade-offs to be sure and I’m not saying one is dominant over the other but as a strong, strong proponent

⏹️ ▶️ John of the virtual pieces of paper as a better approach for me personally

⏹️ ▶️ John than the physical pieces of paper or the virtual screens, aka Windows instead of the physical screens, aka

⏹️ ▶️ John iOS devices. I think this has to be in the mix. And that’s why when I say, see Steve

⏹️ ▶️ John Trout and Smith’s, like, let’s make some windows on iOS devices. I say yes, yes,

⏹️ ▶️ John finally, because if Apple ever does make a 27 inch iPad, an approach that I

⏹️ ▶️ John think would appeal to a lot of people is to be able to have different overlapping resizable

⏹️ ▶️ John things to so that you’re not it was who wants to split a 27 inch screen into thirds

⏹️ ▶️ John or halves or quarters or like I know everyone loves tiling window managers on Linux or whatever but there’s a reason

⏹️ ▶️ John they have not taken the world by storm right not that overlapping windows is the greatest either they have anti-patterns too and people

⏹️ ▶️ John do like to zoom everything for full screen but I feel like this is an avenue that has to be pursued it may

⏹️ ▶️ John not be the ultimate answer and it may be some hybrid of panels and snapping actually is the best compromise for

⏹️ ▶️ John most people but you have to pursue it because it has proven utility. We all sit in front of Macs all day and somehow,

⏹️ ▶️ John somehow we manage to get work done in this chaos of overlapping windows where we can

⏹️ ▶️ John never tell what the hell’s going on and we’re the janitor. Like somehow we do it, right? So

⏹️ ▶️ John I desperately want to see this avenue pursued in every way by third-party

⏹️ ▶️ John application developers, by Apple experimenting, and yes, by Apple doing things in the OS and releasing larger

⏹️ ▶️ John iOS devices. And for all you multi-iOS device users. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re butchering. I kind of say more power to you because you are kind of like the steampunk

⏹️ ▶️ John of multiple

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco windows because

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re steam powered. They’re physical manifestations of windows

⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re ugly and dirty and grimy and they’re made of brass, but you like them. So go for it. Add some beard oil.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow. John, I love you. That was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco incredible. Oh my

⏹️ ▶️ Casey word. I feel like this episode’s done. We’re done. Good night everybody.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John That’s it. It’s over.

⏹️ ▶️ John Do you guys get what I was saying with the multiple windows?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know where you guys fall on multi-devices versus multiple windows. I know you’re not as gung-ho on multiple windows as I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco am. Multiple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco devices is a terrible solution to this problem. It is, you know, in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some contexts, if you’re trying to do certain things as an iOS power user, sometimes it’s the only solution

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the problem. But, you know, I think, and granted, you know, to be fair to the multi-pad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lifestyle people, I don’t think this is the only reason they do that. It’s not just to have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco two different applications running at the same time. There’s other reasons why they would have multiple devices.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco For, you know, the same reason that many of us have multiple Macs, like, you know, to have like a big one and a small one for travel

⏹️ ▶️ Marco versus home, you know, stuff like that. So, all those things aside, and honestly, I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco running two apps side by side on two different iPads is probably a fairly uncommon use

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of multiple devices from the people who have them. But if you can picture

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a future version of iPad multitasking where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could just resize the apps, not just with the split view that we have now,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where you can have at most two apps on screen if you don’t count picture and picture video

⏹️ ▶️ Marco playback as one of them, you have at most two apps on screen and they can only be arranged

⏹️ ▶️ Marco left and right in just different split sizes that are like three different preset sizes that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they can possibly be. That’s very limited. It’s a lot better than having no

⏹️ ▶️ Marco multi-window environment on the iPad like we had before iOS. What was it, 9 out of that? It’s a lot better

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than that, but it’s not nearly as powerful as having a more freeform

⏹️ ▶️ Marco system like overlapping windows or just more… even if it has to only be tiling windows,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so they can’t ever overlap. Even if that’s the case, iPad screens are a lot bigger than phones,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and any universal app is made to scale from an iPhone 5S all the way up to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an iPad 12.9. Why can’t you have like six windows on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen? Like, have it be like a 3x2 grid on the 12.9 inch. Each one would be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the size of a moderately sized iPhone. Why couldn’t you do something like that? Like, have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco six apps open at once, or have four apps open at once where they’re all small rectangles or something like that. I feel

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like there’s so many more places iPad multitasking can go and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco granted there’s a few fundamentals that really need to be built first before that makes a lot of sense. Things like drag

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and drop and some kind of more coherent file system access

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in some form but ultimately multiple applications

⏹️ ▶️ Marco being open at once and not just two of them is the direction this has to go

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for these devices to become more productivity powerhouses.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steven Connelly Yeah, and I think, you know, John and, or John, I think that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mike and CGP Grey would both say that this is a terrible solution.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like, I think one of you said that a minute ago, but it’s important since they’re not here to defend themselves to stress

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I don’t think that they love the solution. It’s just that they do love iOS and and they’re hamstrung by

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the things that iOS lets you do. And I feel similarly, I mean, I do love

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my iPad, but I’ve been really, really strongly kicking around the idea of getting a MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Adorable expressly because I want something that’s effectively as portable as an iPad or as

⏹️ ▶️ Casey close as I can get to that, but that doesn’t make me feel hamstrung

⏹️ ▶️ Casey every time I use it. And to me, the best answer to that question is a MacBook Adorable. For them,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think they feel near as hamstrung in general, the problem is simply that they can only do with so many things

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at once. And so for them, it does make sense to live the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey multi pad lifestyle. I think it’s a little bit kooky, but just because I think that doesn’t mean that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it wouldn’t work for them. And clearly it does.

⏹️ ▶️ John The most common multi device thing I would imagine is a personal computer style device and your phone.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because, like I said, there are there are definite advantages to steampunk windows. And

⏹️ ▶️ John one of them is you, you compartmentalize the thing. So very often it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John text messaging, whatever your text messaging services of choice, text messaging on your phone while

⏹️ ▶️ John doing other things on your computer and your computer may have messages on it or maybe it doesn’t have whatever app you’re using.

⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe you don’t choose not to get messages, but that division of labor, you’re sitting somewhere,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, sitting in a coffee shop, typing something on your computer and you get a text message and you look at it on your phone,

⏹️ ▶️ John That that steampunk window, it’s physically in a different location, you’re in a portable scenario where

⏹️ ▶️ John you can have a gigantic 30 inch drafting board, you know, Surface Book Pro, like you can’t

⏹️ ▶️ John have that you’re on the go. It is a different sight line, a different focal distance.

⏹️ ▶️ John It is a physical device that you’re used to texting people from all your past texts in the apps that you love are on there.

⏹️ ▶️ John Using that as a steampunk window to do your, your texting is perfectly valid

⏹️ ▶️ John and probably is an advantage over trying to cram your messages window onto your 12

⏹️ ▶️ John inch MacBook screen next to the thing that you were trying to write in your distraction free writing environment,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? So like, I, I get it, I get why there is I do it myself.

⏹️ ▶️ John Sometimes when I’m at work, sometimes at work, I will send and receive text messages on my phone, even though

⏹️ ▶️ John I could be getting them on my Mac screen, just because it is a nice compartmentalization of work versus personal, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John texting over who’s gonna pick up what kid from what activity or whatever, you know what I mean? Like, it makes sense to me

⏹️ ▶️ John to do that starts to make less sense when you’re in an environment where you have a big desk and a raid

⏹️ ▶️ John on your desk, you have a series of iOS devices of different sizes, because then, then I feel like you’re compromising

⏹️ ▶️ John in ways in you know, who is this a case you saying like they’re using iOS because they want to, and

⏹️ ▶️ John I understand that and they have to do this because they’re limited in their multi asking and they more than anyone would like richer multi

⏹️ ▶️ John tasking. So I’m not I’m not slamming them for saying you should just use Windows because you can’t you can’t use it on iOS. And if you

⏹️ ▶️ John want to use iOS devices, there, we’re stuck waiting for Apple to innovate there. It’s just frustrating to me that

⏹️ ▶️ John we seem to be creeping users are organically creeping up on on that solution.

⏹️ ▶️ John And that the solution is much bigger iOS devices suitable for a desktop environment

⏹️ ▶️ John that support something like Windows that gives the users more flexibility and how they arrange their space.

⏹️ ▶️ John Everybody does it. This is one of my big things with the whole spatial founder rant. Everybody arranges their workspace,

⏹️ ▶️ John especially if it’s a job you’re doing all the time, whether it is a carpenter arranging their tools, or

⏹️ ▶️ John an artist arranging their palettes and their paints and their brushes and their easel like

⏹️ ▶️ John and having or a chef setting aside all the ingredients that they’re gonna you know, use in their thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, everybody arranges their workspace efficient workers do arrange their workspace. We all do it on our

⏹️ ▶️ John computers. Now we all have different arrangements and different amounts of things and whether you spaces or not or tiling window

⏹️ ▶️ John manager not or maximize everything and flip through them with your fingers or alt tab through things or click like,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the thing that we’re going to do no matter what we do with we do with Windows, we do it with our steampunk windows,

⏹️ ▶️ John we do it in the physical world. And I think no matter what our interface to work

⏹️ ▶️ John is, it has to allow us to do that in some way. And so you know, Mike and CGP gray and everyone

⏹️ ▶️ John else who’s living the multi pad lifestyle, they’re doing it the only way that is available to them with

⏹️ ▶️ John the tools that they like. But I think we have to acknowledge the other approach

⏹️ ▶️ John is fairly well proven at this point for a certain set of users. It is disproven for a

⏹️ ▶️ John certain set of users as well because we all know that novice users, the reason why they love iOS is because it doesn’t let them have to deal with

⏹️ ▶️ John this crap. They don’t get all confused by a bunch of windows, right. But for a certain set of users, you know, if you were

⏹️ ▶️ John to tell someone that they had to, you know, do 3d animation for Pixar, but

⏹️ ▶️ John they weren’t allowed to use windows, they just had to use everything full screen or a split screen, they would have a much harder time

⏹️ ▶️ John getting their job done, I would imagine.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, like one other side benefit, if Apple were to do windowing on iPads,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would also solve a tremendous problem of the iPad app ecosystem, where iOS apps

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are often not very well optimized for the iPad or aren’t optimized for it at all. And sometimes they’re really big apps like Instagram,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which famously still does not have an iPad app, and also shut down the API

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that allowed other iPad apps to exist for them. Imagine if,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead of having the dumb, giant letterboxed iPhone simulator

⏹️ ▶️ Marco version on iPad, what if you launched a non-iPad optimized app

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it just launched in an iPhone-sized window? And you could drag it around and you could have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco other apps that you could shrink down to that size and tile around your screen if you wanted to.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Almost every iPad app that is a universal app with its phone version can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco scale to all these different sizes. You could solve problems like this very, very well.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, things like when Apple does make larger iPads, there’s still a lot of iPad apps

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that aren’t optimized for the 12.9. What if when you launch one of these things on a 12.9,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just launched in a 9.7-sized window, and it was just one of many windows on your screen?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There are lots of benefits to this. Granted, there’s a lot of UI challenges and a lot of probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco technical challenges of things like how do you manage memory for all these different apps that could be, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, appearing to be running all at once and be in the foreground all at once. There’s lots of API challenges

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with things like touch handling and what kind of gets the attention and what doesn’t. And there’s some weirdness already

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with like multitasking of like, if you have a keyboard connected and you have,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, two and you have two different apps open right now during multitasking and you hit a shortcut key

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the keyboard, which app gets it? And right now, I think it’s just like whatever app you tapped last

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something, but it’s like but there’s no active state on the title bar to Indicate which one that is so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you just have to know or guess or try it so like If they were to go in a direction like this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that that brought like full-blown windowing in some form or full-blown Most hasn’t like this to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ios there is a lot of work to be done. It’s not a small task It is a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is not something they could do in you know likely one release You know, this is like a massive undertaking.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they’ve already done some of it, but doing a more freeform system like what we’re describing would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco require a lot more of it. But I think the result would be pretty great

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and incredibly powerful and would really revive the iPad for productivity use. It

⏹️ ▶️ Marco does seem like Apple needs something to do that. That would be great. And that would also, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if we do it the way I was saying, where like, you know, non-optimized apps would just launch in old device-sized

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Windows, that could also solve this major market and software ecosystem problem

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the iPad also faces. So like, this would be a really great solution in a number of ways. The only question

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, would they ever do it? Would it be worth devoting the resources to? And would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they then just be recreating the Mac poorly, like the old Lisp joke, or Unix,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever, it applies

⏹️ ▶️ John to everything. It applies to everything. They should be recreating the Mac better. They should be learning from

⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac and making it better, faster, like the $6 million man type of thing. They should like

⏹️ ▶️ John trying to slowly convert the Mac into a thing that is better than Mac is difficult, but

⏹️ ▶️ John iOS is a relatively clean slate. They can reconsider everything.

⏹️ ▶️ John They can only bring over the things that are good. They can make different compromises. They can skew it in a particular direction.

⏹️ ▶️ John They can try to make it so users who can’t deal with lots of windows

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have to. Shave off the sharp corners. Because everyone has seen someone

⏹️ ▶️ John struggle to manage windows on a personal computer. Lowercase w again. Whether it’s on

⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac or on the PC. Even on the PC where everything is full screen and people are alt-tabbing,

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s still some confusion about floating things and layering and dialog boxes that appear and where did it go.

⏹️ ▶️ John mission, you know, mission control and formerly expose and all that was supposed to help with that. And all those are great things. Those

⏹️ ▶️ John are all things to learn from finding the right compromise for iOS devices, where

⏹️ ▶️ John most of the time it works the way most people want it to, but that the more advanced users have the ability to,

⏹️ ▶️ John to get the productivity and managers that these people are currently getting with multiple physical devices.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s, that’s the balance that Apple should strike. And I think it’s great to do that on iOS where you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John not constrained by by even making something like Stephen’s thing here where it looks like a Mac window.

⏹️ ▶️ John Who says the title bars are the right thing? Who says that the window should have window widgets? What about scroll bar? Like you rethink everything.

⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, I’m thinking broadly speaking, like you were saying, applications

⏹️ ▶️ John running simultaneously as we get more and more ram becomes much more viable and figuring out what that

⏹️ ▶️ John means as screens get bigger, letting people divide up the screen space the way they want to divide

⏹️ ▶️ John it up among the applications that they want to run. And then eventually gets in, you know, you can decide it is space

⏹️ ▶️ John is the right approach to this thing. What about preserving the arrangement? Because sometimes you do side by side windows, but then you go off and do something else.

⏹️ ▶️ John How do you get back into that side by side arrangement or maybe you want to go back to just one application and not be in a side by side arrangement.

⏹️ ▶️ John There are so many things that are still undetermined and it’s young and they haven’t made a lot of decisions

⏹️ ▶️ John yet. So I think it’s fine. But you know, as Marco pointed out, they already painted themselves into weird corners where like, oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John we allowed multiple things on the screen and we like keyboard shortcuts, but we never thought of a way to indicate

⏹️ ▶️ John which one is the has the focus. So already we’re in a weird situation like you should

⏹️ ▶️ John they should think more of those through before they take the next step. Maybe they are maybe like we don’t want you to do this because we have this awesome idea that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John going to be out in five years. And we don’t want you stomping on it. But I think it’s silly. I think you should let third party developers

⏹️ ▶️ John go nuts and figure out what works and maybe you get some good ideas from them.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco make your next move with a beautiful website from Squarespace. Almost everything we do today

⏹️ ▶️ Marco uses a website. You need a website for any kind of online store, or blog, or portfolio,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or business, or new project, or podcast. Almost everything that you would do needs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a website these days. But it’s not really worth installing a whole CMS and building the entire

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing from the ground up, and having to manage a server, and having to manage software updates and everything else, and then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco having to hire somebody to custom design it for you. That’s so much overhead and hassle and cost and time,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when really, you should just have the website be taken care of as quickly and easily as possible, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then move on to your actual project that you’re actually building a website for. Squarespace

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lets you do that. Whether you’re making a site for yourself or for somebody else who’s asked you to make a site, because if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you listen to the show, you probably know how to make websites, and you probably had people in your life ask you to make them for them. Squarespace

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is so much better than any other option out there for making most websites, Because they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have built in templates, they have built in widgets and capabilities, so much is built

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in that you can do a remarkable amount in less than an hour. Like I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco challenge you, next time you have to make a website for anybody, for yourself or somebody else, try it on Squarespace

⏹️ ▶️ Marco first. Give me the benefit of the doubt here. Try it there first and just see how far you get in an hour

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or less even. And I bet you’re going to get so far that you’re going to just say, you know what, this is done.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or you can finish it in another hour and then you’re done. That’s it. No matter what your skill level, whether you’re a novice

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whether you’re a web programmer, you can get so much done with Squarespace. You can make a beautiful website. It looks

⏹️ ▶️ Marco professionally designed and it stays up because they manage it for you. They support it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you’re making it for somebody else, it’s very important. They support it. You don’t have to worry about all the back end stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They take care of it and your site looks awesome. Check it out today. Start a free trial with no

⏹️ ▶️ Marco credit card required at Squarespace.com. When you decide to sign up, make sure to use the offer code ATP

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get 10% off your first purchase.

Programmers in denial

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Make your next move with Squarespace.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Speaking of iPad woes, Apple, God, we’re going to get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so much anger from the iPad people. I’m so sorry, everyone. We shouldn’t. We

⏹️ ▶️ John all said good things about the iPad.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And the good thing is like the Cortex hosts have now moved on from talking about the multi-pad lifestyle. Now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re both just slowly becoming programmers, but they’re both in denial of that fact. They both just kind of keep

⏹️ ▶️ Marco inching more and more towards like guys, you’re actually just becoming programmers and it’s okay and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s good. It turns out there’s a way to automate our computing tasks.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You just write these little things, you could call them, I don’t know, programs.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it reminds me of some, what did I say, somewhere in some business snark

⏹️ ▶️ John website thing talking about specifications for software projects that could be right up the requirements,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? requirements and typically requirements like I want to do blah blah blah and it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s too vague I don’t know exactly what you want so you go back and forth about the requirements that you want how do you want to work know how do

⏹️ ▶️ John you really want to work you want to work like this work like that and eventually the business person getting frustrated and it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John look just I’m going to tell you exactly how I want it to work with no ambiguity and it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John if you do that what you’ve done is wrote a program yeah it’s like eventually to specify

⏹️ ▶️ John it that’s what programmers do like people just want to specify it and like and the audio audio, so all the details in the computer, you

⏹️ ▶️ John can’t yada yada, you have to say, No, how exactly do you want to work? All right, I’m gonna tell you exactly how you want it to work.

⏹️ ▶️ John In every case, in every condition, here’s what you should do, blah, blah, blah. It’s like, that’s programmed. That’s called programming. You

⏹️ ▶️ John are you want to be a programmer now. So go ahead. All right. You can you can very

⏹️ ▶️ John quickly find yourself becoming a programmer with accidental programming podcast becoming a programmer without knowing

⏹️ ▶️ John it, because eventually, you’d be like, getting down to a level of detail where you’re you were telling it. I’m going to tell

⏹️ ▶️ John you about every possible eventuality what you should do. That’s programming.

⏹️ ▶️ John Cue does no, just does what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you tell it. Well, I love how like I think I think Mike in particular is in this is in a special

⏹️ ▶️ Marco denial place here of like he makes fun of not making fun of but like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco he talks about the way developers use the terminal and just geeks

⏹️ ▶️ Marco use the terminal as this kind of like crazy opaque thing that is this incredibly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco geeky, obscure thing. And then they’re talking about using workflow

⏹️ ▶️ Marco against web APIs to automate certain things. It’s the same thing. It’s a different

⏹️ ▶️ Marco era of the exact same thing. Like the same kind of learning curve, really. The same kind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, similar kind of capabilities. As usual, the old people like us think the old way was better, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s really the same kinds of things.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, although I think Mike, I, my understanding of what Mike is doing is that he’s largely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cribbing what others like Federico or CGP Gray have done and modifying them a little bit,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but to build on what you were saying. So on the surface, you know, it sounds like, oh, Mike’s not really a programmer at all, but really that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey how all programmers work is they take something that gets you 80% of the way there and fix what

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you need in order to get the rest of the way. And so I agree with you. And Federico to me is the king

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey he’s writing like ridiculous Python scripts in these hyper-involved workflows with

⏹️ ▶️ Casey potentially even recursion within them. And it’s just, he is a developer. Federico and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I, in a happy way, had this fight two or three months ago where I said to him, dude, you are a developer at this point.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Don’t even try to pretend you’re not. And he didn’t want to hear it. Not in a jerky way. He just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was like, oh, I’m not a developer. I don’t know how to do the stuff you guys do. I’m like, you’re doing it. It’s not even a question.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s already happening.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, in the same way like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that our friend Dr. Drang is, you know, like Dr. Drang posts on leadingcrew.com and like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s not a programmer by trade, but he writes tons of scripts, most of which are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in Python, to do all sorts of things for his work. And so like he, while

⏹️ ▶️ Marco he, while he probably does not consider himself a programmer, he uses programming. He

⏹️ ▶️ Marco knows a programming language and he uses it to get tasks done for his work.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there’s lots a room for that type of person. Microsoft

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Office has forever had its macro language. That’s the same thing. That’s just visual basic.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s also programming. My first job was programming VBA in a giant

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Excel spreadsheet for some company to save them a bunch of time. That’s a lot of what programming in the real world

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually is. People doing little custom or one-off things. That is programming.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s kind of this continuum of power users. The first thing you learn as a power user

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is you might learn a keyboard shortcut for some common stuff. You’re like, Oh my God, this is great. And then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco eventually you might learn some kind of automation of something. First you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco figure out how do you do manual work faster? That’s the keyboard shortcut approach. Then you start

⏹️ ▶️ Marco figuring out how do I actually use the computer’s immense speed and power

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do things faster than I could do them manually? And that’s when you start getting into the basic things like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco batch operations in pro apps. On the Mac, you have things like Automator.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco On the iPad, you have things like Workflow. And then eventually, I feel like the next step after that is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, no, you’re actually just writing code, if some sort. Whether it’s just a simple thing like a shell script,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a JavaScript thing, or whether it’s actually a Ruby or Python,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we’d call a real language script or app to do something custom.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco These are all just points on the power user curve. And being

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a programmer is not like some special boundary that you have to go to college to know how to do.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it’s just the next step on that curve after you’ve used tools like Workflow

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Automator and you kind of want a little bit more customization or a little bit more power. And then you get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco into these things that really are programming. You just might not realize it until after you’ve been doing it for a while.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, Mike and Vatici would both be making HyperCard stacks 30 years ago.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You guys don’t remember that era, but I

⏹️ ▶️ John used HyperCard. Yep, same here. There used to be many more. Back before

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple and most of the rest of the industry gave up on the idea of trying to make programming easy enough for people who didn’t want to

⏹️ ▶️ John be into programming, there were many, many attempts, AppleScript is one of them, to try to make programming more

⏹️ ▶️ John accessible to the masses With something that is farther along that curve that

⏹️ ▶️ John actually is a real programming language, but is this a language? It looks friendlier or whatever

⏹️ ▶️ John And lots of people may have hyper card stacks and like it’s another accidental programmer thing where sure people made hyper

⏹️ ▶️ John card stacks and most People it wasn’t easy enough for them to tackle many people who didn’t consider themselves programmers

⏹️ ▶️ John were like they weren’t intimidated by Hyper card and like oh, I’ll go

⏹️ ▶️ John through these tutorials Oh, I can make a button new I click a button in it makes a beeping noise like and you know and

⏹️ ▶️ John And for someone trying to make a button on a Mac of that era was much harder if you were using

⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac toolbox than it was in HyperCard. And so they could be successful pretty quickly. And for the people who

⏹️ ▶️ John had the who were into that, who were like the they never thought of themselves

⏹️ ▶️ John as programmers. But it turns out if you introduce them to it, fast forward three months, and they’re writing this incredibly complicated

⏹️ ▶️ John HyperCard stack using HyperTalk like a real programmer, and they have suddenly found themselves it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John everybody who does it’s not like it turns people into programmers, it reveals programmers that were always there, right.

⏹️ ▶️ John And they just you know what happens with someone who is who is like just naturally wants to do this. They

⏹️ ▶️ John start off with the beeping button. And you just you just step away for like a couple weeks and you

⏹️ ▶️ John come back and it’s like, What have you done? And like

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey they have made this entire world for themselves. And they have no formal

⏹️ ▶️ John education. They don’t know what a subroutine is. They don’t know any theory about data structures are but they’re like deriving

⏹️ ▶️ John from first principles, the basics of programming and hyper talk. And you know, doing incredible,

⏹️ ▶️ John I saw it all the time doing incredible things. And it’s like someone who runs a general store and makes a hypercard stack to do their

⏹️ ▶️ John inventory. And it’s like, you may not know it, but you are now a programmer. And this is the

⏹️ ▶️ John thing you could have done as a profession, even though you have no formal education in it, and really still don’t quite know what you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John doing in the formal sense. But you are you are rediscovering the rudiments of programming

⏹️ ▶️ John with no instruction from anyone else, really by having a box in front of you and knowing some basic things. And that

⏹️ ▶️ John is that is a beautiful thing to see. And I love hearing stories of places that are still running HyperCard stacks

⏹️ ▶️ John and their Mac SEs just because they run their entire business on it and somebody wrote it years

⏹️ ▶️ John ago. I guess that’s more heartwarming because I know it. It’s not quite as heartwarming for people who are still running their payroll on COBOL

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I think Y2K

⏹️ ▶️ John took care of a lot of those. But either way, for people who are listening who

⏹️ ▶️ John think they will never be programmers, that’s possible. You may never be it. But

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a reason people call it the programming bug. You get bitten by it and you just find this happens to

⏹️ ▶️ John all of us here on this podcast, I’m sure, and everyone else is into computers. At some point, you get exposed to something

⏹️ ▶️ John and it just, you know, it sinks its teeth into you and you lose track of time,

⏹️ ▶️ John you lose track of the years and you realize this is just this whole world that you bury yourself into. Some people

⏹️ ▶️ John are exposed to the exact same thing. They’re like, meh, not for me, right? But

⏹️ ▶️ John the distinction between those people has nothing to do with education or even desire. It is just like how their brains

⏹️ ▶️ John work. is programming addicting to you? You will know that pretty quickly. And you look at someone like

⏹️ ▶️ John Vatici, guess what? Programming is addicted to him. He would not be doing these things if he…

⏹️ ▶️ John He’s bitten so hard by this. He’s mad with the power of being able to tell the

⏹️ ▶️ John computer to do what he wants it to do. In a series of sophisticated ways. Breaking down the problem into smaller

⏹️ ▶️ John pieces and recombining them, right? He’s bitten by it so hard. Just because he’s not writing

⏹️ ▶️ John C doesn’t mean that he has not the programmer bug and B, become a programmer.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I feel like that’s the whole beauty of computers, is like when you break

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that barrier between, like what I was saying on my curve about like, when you’re just doing manual things faster,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco versus when you have the computer start working for you and way faster than you ever could manually,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the whole beauty of computers is the ability to cross that line, the ability to do that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like the famous Steve Jobs quote about the computer is a bicycle for the mind. Like, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not because you know all the shortcut keys to do things repetitively over and over again. It’s because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can just like put in some, just the right kind of input, and this computer can just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco skyrocket past you executing that code way, way, way faster and more reliable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and more consistently than you ever could, or doing things that you could never do in a practical amount of time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s just like, one of the reasons why I get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco frustrated when things like iOS move or start in directions where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things are really locked down and it’s hard to do that kind of stuff is because I feel like that’s kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco missing or kind of like blowing the whole advantage that computers have given

⏹️ ▶️ Marco us as a society. Like the whole point of computers is to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco enable humans to do things, to have these kind of information-based

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tasks done in in ways and at speeds and volumes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we could never do on our own like through manual calculations or anything else

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and for any computer platform to be truly empowering to its users

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has to allow that in some way and hopefully in in a reasonably easy and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco capable way and efforts to do that on iOS are really really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco held back by just the limitations of iOS and things like Workflow and Pythonista,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these things have existed and do exist and are good for people,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but there’s so much further to go to make them even just match

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the level of power and sophistication that regular people can achieve

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Windows or a Mac, let alone like on future things that we might think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of even better ways to do these things. And so that’s kind of like, it kind of hurts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me philosophically, whenever it appears the computing platform is going in the opposite direction.

⏹️ ▶️ John And what most of these people are doing, by the way, like, in the continuum is that they you can use tools made by other people,

⏹️ ▶️ John which is what the app store is great, like gives regular people access to tools other people have made for doing common

⏹️ ▶️ John tasks. Hey, so you’ve, you know, you’re taking the inventory of all the books that are on your shelves, there’s an app that

⏹️ ▶️ John you can just point your phone at it, and we’ll look up, you know, so on and so forth, like it’s a tool to do a job better, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John The next step along that is, I don’t see any tool that does the thing that I wanted to do, I’m going to make my

⏹️ ▶️ John own tool. So it’s not just that they’re automating repetitive tasks, but that they’re building a tool for them to do whatever

⏹️ ▶️ John real world tasks they’re doing, whether it’s managing their business or doing their hobby, keeping track of their model trains,

⏹️ ▶️ John or controlling their model trains or whatever, like, they don’t see the thing that they want in the world. And they

⏹️ ▶️ John realize they can make this thing do what they wanted to do it. So they build a tool for themselves.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it doesn’t mean they have to suddenly become an app developer and sell that thing or whatever. It’s just like the people who use a file maker database to

⏹️ ▶️ John manage their, you know, retail store or something, where they sell cameras, they don’t consider that

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re making a tool to do to accomplish some other task. That’s just another point in the line, using other

⏹️ ▶️ John people’s tools versus saying, no one else makes this tool or the tools they make aren’t to my liking.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I can make my own tool to do it. But he is essentially making his own tools for his workflow, because there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John no existing thing that integrates all the different pieces the way he wants them to do and he has specific needs about it. So,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s not, you know, in some cases he is automating something you have to do manually, but other cases like he’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not application development, but it’s it’s tool building and we all do that. It’s smart little monkeys that use a stick

⏹️ ▶️ John to, you know, hit something instead of our hands because the stick is better, right? You know, it’s it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John all, you know, a bicycle for the mind has more poetry than a wooden

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco stick monkey with a stick.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, or the you know, the monkey with the bone from 2001. But that’s basically what it boils down to

⏹️ ▶️ John and taking away the ability to, or, you know, not taking it away. But

⏹️ ▶️ John making the barrier to making your old tools mean like either you get to use tools other people made

⏹️ ▶️ John giant giant gap X code. That gap is too big. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s too big for most people to cross. And there, you know, apps like workflow show that there is or even an automator

⏹️ ▶️ John or simple scripting languages or anything like that, or hyper card or all that stuff, even though

⏹️ ▶️ John most of the experiments failed in what they thought the goal would be like, everyone’s going to be a programmer. Nope, that’s not going to happen.

⏹️ ▶️ John Right. But you do need something on that middle tier for the people who are never going to graduate all the way up

⏹️ ▶️ John to being a full fledged programmer and using Xcode. But they don’t need to, they just need something in the middle

⏹️ ▶️ John that can, you know, they can let them make the tools to make their life better.

⏹️ ▶️ John Even though their goal in life is not to be an application developer and there never need to make something in S code and submit it to the app store.

Apple in education

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, Apple and education. Bringing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John this back around. Slight sidetrack.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, after that 45 minute sidetrack.

⏹️ ▶️ John Was that the topic? Believe it or not. Because then we got into saying how people with iPads are going

⏹️ ▶️ John to be mad at us and we just got buried back in iPads again. That’s right, they’re all secret programmers, all right.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, so anyway, so Apple and education, there was a New York Times article that says, well the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey headline is, Apple’s devices lose luster in American classrooms. And I didn’t get a chance to read the article,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but my understanding is basically that there are fewer devices being shipped to schools from

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple. It seems like Microsoft is slightly on the up, and Google, thanks to Chromebooks,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is way on the up, which is great, I guess, for Google and kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bummer for Apple, since this used to be their stronghold. I mean, I think I can speak for Marco in saying my only exposure

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to a Mac or to an Apple II was at school. I didn’t have any friends that had one. It was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey always at school that I was exposed to it, and that seems to be changing now. It seems to be all Chromebooks. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco My experience was slightly different in that my first exposure to Apple computers was indeed at school,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it was to the Apple II in the early 90s. The heyday of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Apple II. Yeah, my school was so poor that the only computers they had were like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ancient, hand-me-down Apple IIs, most of which were not even like, you know, the later models.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco were like you know the old like you know green and black one like you know before color and things like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco memory they were it was it was you know pretty pretty basic

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I loved them because they were the only computers I’d ever used up to that point and they were amazing even in like 1992

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whenever that was but and then after that like when I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few years later I went to a different school and they had just PCs because at that point that was like that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was like 93 ish and 94 and And by that point, Macs, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think, were too expensive for most schools at that point. And I think most schools,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was one Mac in one of the computer labs that you weren’t allowed to use,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco unless you were in some kind of graphic design class that they could use it. But otherwise, it was all PCs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the same reason that we’re probably about to talk about, which is cost. Because when you’re in schools, cost is a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really, really big factor.

⏹️ ▶️ John So, I mean, this article, the news in this article and the graphs in this article,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not a surprise to Apple. Apple knows all these things. Apple knows how much it’s selling. Apple knows how much its competitors

⏹️ ▶️ John are selling. And the graph they show is only from 2012 to 2016, so it’s not a long span, but they show it basically

⏹️ ▶️ John because Google comes out of nowhere, basically like zero market share sometime in 2010 or 11,

⏹️ ▶️ John and flies past both Apple and Microsoft, who are more or less flat, uh, flies

⏹️ ▶️ John past them around 2014 and now is at like four times their

⏹️ ▶️ John sales volume in terms of units, right? So that’s in a very short period of time, Google comes out of

⏹️ ▶️ John nowhere and becomes the dominant player in the market. And the fact that Apple knows that this happened

⏹️ ▶️ John because they keep track of their own stuff, but seemingly has

⏹️ ▶️ John not had a strong response to it. Uh, I know we talk about the pro market mostly on this program,

⏹️ ▶️ John but imagine we were, uh, You know instead we were very interested in the

⏹️ ▶️ John education market We would be complaining that Apple has faced

⏹️ ▶️ John a strong competitor in the form of Google For many years now and its reaction to

⏹️ ▶️ John it has been Half-hearted features to let more than one person use an

⏹️ ▶️ John iPad at the same time by logging in and out and storing crap on iCloud and some improved management stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John and And a bunch of new different shapes and sizes of iPads Which all seem like they’re good and fine

⏹️ ▶️ John kind of like their efforts to add like multitasking stuff to the iPad in a different realm but

⏹️ ▶️ John If you look at the you know has this Made them competitive again

⏹️ ▶️ John in the education market or as Google still kicking the butt answer Google still kicking it But if you measure things in terms of unit sales,

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe Apple doesn’t measure that maybe I don’t care What the hell the unit sales are we’re making all the money we make all the profit

⏹️ ▶️ John But that is, I guess, a reasonable place to be in. But when it comes to education, I have to think that you

⏹️ ▶️ John shouldn’t really view it as a profit center. Not that you shouldn’t make money on it, but like the

⏹️ ▶️ John one of the most important things Apple is getting out of it is just what Marco talked about and Casey talked about and me too. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John we saw Apple computers in school and it doesn’t mean that we’re going to grow up to only use Apple computers,

⏹️ ▶️ John but it sure as hell doesn’t hurt being familiar with them, comfortable with them,

⏹️ ▶️ John conceptualizing computers in terms of what is presented to you, like this is what a computer is.

⏹️ ▶️ John So you know these multiple generations of students who are growing up using Google Docs in school

⏹️ ▶️ John and using Chromebooks, maybe they’re conceptualized Chromebooks as the equivalent of the crappy Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John IIs that are crappy computers they would never buy for themselves that are pieces of junk that are managed by the school and they have

⏹️ ▶️ John to use for school work. But they are becoming familiar with Google Docs and they are associating Google with

⏹️ ▶️ John computing in a way that there used to be associating Apple with computing, you know, so there are pluses

⏹️ ▶️ John and minuses to being stigmatized as the computer I had to use in school. But I think

⏹️ ▶️ John if Apple again, if Apple cares about the education market at all, it should not be happy to

⏹️ ▶️ John have its unit sales be flat over the course of the same course of time where a competitor comes from

⏹️ ▶️ John zero to squash them by a factor of four. Like I don’t think that’s a good

⏹️ ▶️ John position to be in the market. Now, maybe Apple doesn’t care. And they’re willing to just let that ride. But how many markets

⏹️ ▶️ John are we going to look at and say, Apple doesn’t really care that much. It’s not a big deal. Like what does Apple really care? But it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John just phones, because even in the phone market, they’re still making all the money and sell

⏹️ ▶️ John lots of phones, I think doing a great job with their phone hardware. But they’re also getting their butt kicking unit sales

⏹️ ▶️ John there, you know, by an increasing percentage by this larger, more open platform. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what to think. Apple stock is way up. The iPhone is awesome, everybody loves it, I love it, but when I look

⏹️ ▶️ John at education or the pro markets, maybe it’s just nostalgia for the Apple that used to be, but boy,

⏹️ ▶️ John things have sure changed.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like both education and the pro markets are places that you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco go when you don’t have the consumer market. They’re these nice holdouts that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you can get market share there, you can have a reasonably sustainable business,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if you have lost or you never even gained ground in the consumer market. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so when Apple was doing poorly in like the 90s and stuff, they retreated

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to those markets. Because with education, you know, and pros to some of your, like there’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco special needs and you can deploy a sales force tactically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to like, you just need a relatively small number of very big sales

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to succeed in these markets. And that’s not necessarily easy to get, but that’s easier

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than convincing the entire consumer shopping public to buy your stuff if they aren’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco already interested in it you know and so you know Apple I feel like Apple went these markets

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not because they thought they were especially important necessarily for things like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know your kids are going to use what they’re familiar with but because they were the only ones willing to buy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple stuff for a long time and now that that’s no longer the case, Apple is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco seemingly being more managed by numbers these days, which is unfortunate, if that’s true,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that is sure how it looks. And these days, because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are popular with consumers by so much that they can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of afford to throw away less profitable market segments, that is basically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they appear to be doing. Regardless of whatever Tim Cook’s vague statement of the week is about how much they still care about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco us, the reality is that schools are, especially these days, pretty

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard to make money. I mean, again, like Apple’s heyday in schools back in the late

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 90s and stuff, that was also at a time, or early 90s too, that was also a time when technology

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was new and novel, and schools were getting all sorts of these funding grants

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for going and getting computers. know and granted not every school but there was a lot of like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco other people’s money being poured into like we need to get our kids in technology and it was I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel like it was probably easier to sell into that environment than it is now the computers are no longer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new and cool now it’s just a budget item and now it’s down to okay we really need these to be cheap

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and whatever is cheapest and easiest for us to manage and and again cheapest that’s what we’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna go with with. And so, basically, I feel like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the conditions are very different now, that both Apple needs education

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and pros less than they used to, and also in the case of the education market, the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco education market, I think, now is significantly more price-driven, specifically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with regard to computers, than it was 20 years ago, you know, back when these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things were new and there was all this grant money coming in.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think it was always tight for schools. I don’t think it’s that much of a difference. I would

⏹️ ▶️ John probably agree that schools are not as well funded as they used to be, but I would disagree that price

⏹️ ▶️ John consciousness is a new phenomenon when it comes to computers in schools.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And again, that was also back in the 90s too. I feel like the difference in price was not as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco big. Like these days- Back in the 90s, you’re killing me. These days,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the difference in price between a Chromebook and a MacBook Pro or MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air, it’s like four times. That’s a massive multiplier. You can literally get,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco depending on the model of Mac that you select, you can get four to eight Chromebooks for the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco same price.

⏹️ ▶️ John It was worse when your choice was a Macintosh SE or an IBM PC, believe me, or a PC clone.

⏹️ ▶️ John Gateway 2000 or Mac SE, Gateway 2000 or Mac 2CI. it was worse.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Really? It was more than like a four to five X multiplier

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John on the price.

⏹️ ▶️ John It was terrible and the numbers were all bigger. Right? Don’t you remember how much I don’t know if you remember how much Max used to

⏹️ ▶️ John do. Do you remember how much my Macintosh s e costs?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wasn’t there when you bought it. No, but I but like I’m like back like in the nineties a decent

⏹️ ▶️ Marco PC was about 2000 bucks. All right,

⏹️ ▶️ John so I’m gonna do the calculation here.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. We spent like three or four thousand dollars at least I thought on my beloved Pentium

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro 100 megahertz machine. It was a lot of money. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not to say that all of them were necessarily that much money, because that was pretty cutting edge at the time, and it was dad that was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey buying it for himself, and I just never let him use it because I’m a jerk, but that thing was not cheap.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and schools wouldn’t buy the high-end ones usually. Sure. They did have to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco conscious of the budget, of course, but basically, my theory is basically that like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only was the money a little bit easier to justify spending on computers back then because they were so new and everyone wanted

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get their kids computers, but also that now the price difference

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is so vast between them. And I don’t think it was as vast back then.

⏹️ ▶️ John It was for Macs, mostly because Macs were so much more expensive. So the educational discount, the college

⏹️ ▶️ John educational discount for my Mac SE30, which again is not a Color Mac. Color Macs were available, but this

⏹️ ▶️ John was not a Color Mac. It was a monochrome Macintosh. But was it still a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco high-end configuration?

⏹️ ▶️ John It was more high-end than the SE or the Plus, which were still for sale. But still not color,

⏹️ ▶️ John which again was a big thing in schools, which is the reason they would buy a color PC. So 1990-ish, $4,300.

⏹️ ▶️ John In 1989 dollars, or 1990 dollars, if we convert it to current dollars, that’s $8,600 for a

⏹️ ▶️ John monochrome computer. Oh, God.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No

⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard, no keyboard. The keyboard was $189 in 1989 dollars, and you had to convert that.

⏹️ ▶️ John $1,600 for one monochrome Macintosh like the little you know the little you know iconic

⏹️ ▶️ John like vertical Macintosh thing you could get a Gateway computer for

⏹️ ▶️ John less than two thousand dollars in 1989 money The price difference

⏹️ ▶️ John was Just as big if not bigger especially because schools needed to have color That’s why they

⏹️ ▶️ John all had Apple 2gs is in them because the Apple 2gs is more color No No,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you just proved my point. Your price multiplier was like 2x. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would also say that the gate would like to get a mid-spec gateway…

⏹️ ▶️ John But that gateway is color though with the big color monitor. If I go with like the Mac 2 with a big color monitor,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco worse. Not for under $2,000 in 1990. If that’s a mid-spec machine, it’s going to be a little over $2,000. So basically,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re roughly a 2x multiplier, which is very different from a 5x multiplier, which is basically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we have today.

⏹️ ▶️ John We don’t have exactly a 5X multiplier now because they get educational discount on these things and they don’t buy the top dollar MacBook. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I think that… I’m talking

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like 250 bucks versus like 1200. They’re not paying $1200 for it and they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John also not paying $250 for other things all told. But

⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, if I was to go to like the Mac 2FX, like a high-end computer that actually had color, which again, schools wanted

⏹️ ▶️ John colors, it gets way, way worse, much faster. Like if you add a monitor, just adding the cost of the monitor to the thing because you’re just buying

⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac, but that doesn’t come with a monitor and it doesn’t come with a keyboard. Multiplier was worse for Mac versus PC than

⏹️ ▶️ John it is for Chromebook versus iPad, which is the real comparison you should be doing, that Chromebook versus MacBook Pro or something.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but I, well, I think that’s the comparison Apple wants people to do. I think Apple wants to present the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad as the competitor to the Chromebook, but in practice I don’t think it is. I think those are separate things.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It seems like schools have a pretty substantial need for laptop-shaped

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things. You know, whatever form that takes, it does seem like, you know, obviously they do sell lot of iPads in education,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that seems like it’s almost a separate thing. I think the laptop form

⏹️ ▶️ Marco factor has proven to be more popular in recent years than

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tablets in schools. And in that form factor, I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s one of the biggest reasons why the MacBook Air still exists. If you look at

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s average selling price of the Mac, it’s basically the MacBook Air

⏹️ ▶️ Marco by a long shot. It seems very obvious that they sell like cratefuls of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Airs. Like, they just sell a ridiculous number of them. But that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really is like, I think most markets who were buying Chromebooks as an alternative,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s an alternative to MacBook Airs, not to iPads, most of the time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John probably going to get the non-education discount. Turns out the non-education discount for the Mac IC30 was $4,000, but no

⏹️ ▶️ John hard drive. No hard drive for for the $4,300 model. What

⏹️ ▶️ Marco did it have like a magneto optical

⏹️ ▶️ John or just floppy? So the non educational discount for the good for the good SE30 that had

⏹️ ▶️ John an 80 megabyte hard drive and four megs of RAM $6,500 in 1989 money. Wow, that’s pretty bad. That’s the one that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the one that’s the one with the good amount of RAM and the big hard drive. Let’s see what that one is. $13,000.

⏹️ ▶️ John Alright, so now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re getting into the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John modern. Still,

⏹️ ▶️ John still, still Still no keyboard. Still no keyboard. That’s an extra 200 bucks. Yeah. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey how much was a Civic in 89 or whatever year we’re talking about here?

⏹️ ▶️ John I got to think it was less than or around 13,000 or less than that. Yeah. They were,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey they were very… That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John what I’m saying. It seems like it would be… Ridiculously. It’s only ridiculously expensive when you convert for old people. It’s only

⏹️ ▶️ John ridiculous when you convert to today’s dollars because back then, like, you know, it was the old adage

⏹️ ▶️ John from like whatever that was in a PC magazine, the computer you want always $5,000. And that

⏹️ ▶️ John remained true. But that remained true as the decades passed. And like, you know, inflation happened, right? So it was always five

⏹️ ▶️ John that in 1981, the computer you wanted was $5,000. And 2010, the computer, maybe if your computer that you wanted was $5,000. But

⏹️ ▶️ John that $5,000 was worth a lot, a lot more in 1981 than it was in 2010. Right?

⏹️ ▶️ John So it just it was a car. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, Macs were astronomically expensive. I was always amazed when I saw them in schools, it’s because Apple gave

⏹️ ▶️ John deep discounts. And you know, so that $4,300 for his mind had a hard drive, the $4,300 for the good as he

⏹️ ▶️ John 30 was an amazing bargain. But nevertheless, a tremendous cost. And,

⏹️ ▶️ John and, and my kids schools these days, I see a surprising amount of desktop Macs still

⏹️ ▶️ John like their old iMacs, right? And then you see carts full of laptops, which are like ice books, right? Because that’s around the

⏹️ ▶️ John era when they bought these things. The reason everything you said about Apple’s like when you have a consumer market

⏹️ ▶️ John who cares about these things. That’s all true, except that Apple Apple’s image of themselves

⏹️ ▶️ John and the image of themselves that they project to the world still seems to include a lot of stuff having to do with education.

⏹️ ▶️ John Not that they lean on it that much, but I think they like the idea of showing students using these devices and a lot of

⏹️ ▶️ John even a lot of their advertisements for their modern hardware. Granted, there may be a picture like college students or whatever, but I think

⏹️ ▶️ John the company always presents the use of its products in education as something that they are proud

⏹️ ▶️ John of.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that could just be marketing, though. You know, like, I mean, they’re also very proud of people who can draw

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on an iPad and call that a creative pro, but that doesn’t mean that they actually have interest in addressing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more of the pro market.

⏹️ ▶️ John But it means that they’re not… What it says to me is they have not given up or are not abandoning

⏹️ ▶️ John that market. They’re just not competing that well in it. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe you just have

⏹️ ▶️ John a reasonable participation and don’t really worry that, like, some cheap vendors coming in

⏹️ ▶️ John and swapping you in unit sales because you’re still a player in the market. You’re solidly second or third place

⏹️ ▶️ John among three players, even though someone else is selling for X as many things as you are into the market.

⏹️ ▶️ John And so maybe that’s maybe that’s fine with them. Maybe they feel like they have the high end of the market. They’re getting all the profits, yada, yada, yada.

⏹️ ▶️ John But I don’t it doesn’t seem like they’re abandoning it. Whereas I see fewer and fewer instances

⏹️ ▶️ John where they’re showing somebody doing pro work on pro hardware because,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, what would they even show them doing? I guess I can show them using Final Cut and… Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have them show… they show them using Final Cut with the Touch Bar MacBook Pro with these two giant LG monitors

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John behind it. They do, they do do that,

⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s… I mean, like, even as far, you know, the recent history of the trash can,

⏹️ ▶️ John their big demo at WWDC was to have people from Pixar using the trash can to do, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John heavyweight stuff that basically like, other computers can’t handle this because it’s just too much. It’s too much

⏹️ ▶️ John memory, it’s too much CPU. That was a a long time ago. Look at how this fancy new computer handles this. That was their demo

⏹️ ▶️ John of like, this is pro hardware for pros, yada yada. And I haven’t seen a demo like

⏹️ ▶️ John that since. I haven’t seen an ad like that since from Apple. You’re right. It’s been more about like, look, this amazing laptop, you can edit

⏹️ ▶️ John 4K video on this laptop. Isn’t that great? That’s great and all, but if your laptop is never going to leave your desk,

⏹️ ▶️ John is that the best choice for your editing bay or whatever? Like a laptop? Maybe it is. Maybe that’s Apple’s vision of the

⏹️ ▶️ John computer, but it’s a far cry from, look, let’s sling around multi-gigabyte textures and

⏹️ ▶️ John paint on these models in real time, you know, but the Pixar employees doing that demo at WWDC.

⏹️ ▶️ John So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think my main skepticism here is like, I don’t think there is any strong correlation anymore

⏹️ ▶️ Marco between the way Apple presents itself and its products in the marketing events and videos

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and commercials and what they actually make. Like it. I agree with you that they do present

⏹️ ▶️ Marco themselves as being, you know, as really being, you know, prioritizing education

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and creative people and things like that. It makes for a great video, it makes for a great commercial, it makes for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco great statements, and I’m sure that a lot of the executives actually believe that themselves. They sincerely believe that. But I think the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actions and the results of the company say otherwise. They really do say that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are totally fine pricing themselves out of education, to a large degree,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and ignoring actual pro-demands when they don’t line up with what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple wants to do for the consumer market.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s funny you bring up the trash can Mac because just today one appeared

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at my desk not for me to use but just to share and it turned out we had just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey bought it just in the last week or two because we have a we have a guy on staff

⏹️ ▶️ Casey who’s a video editor and apparently the dual GPUs

⏹️ ▶️ Casey were enough to sway the IT folks to get the trash can rather than just an iMac

⏹️ ▶️ Casey 5k.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Did they do

⏹️ ▶️ John any research on it? When the new iPhone comes out, be sure to show him your Geekbench score

⏹️ ▶️ John on your new iPhone 8 is higher in single core than the Mac Pro. I know,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know, I wasn’t involved in any of this, you know, it just showed up all of a sudden, but I thought you two would

⏹️ ▶️ Casey be amused. We bought a trash can within the last week or two.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s so sad. Sorry. Oh, I can’t take it anymore. Just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco please, Apple, please fix this.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, the last thing that I want in the entire freaking world is a new

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac Pro because I might as well just retire from the show for like a month.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco No, because that’s the thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s gonna be nonstop. If they keep not making one, we’re gonna keep talking about it. If they release a new one,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then we’ll talk about it for like two weeks and then you won’t hear about it for like a year and a half. Until we start

⏹️ ▶️ Marco worrying that they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John never gonna make another one

⏹️ ▶️ Casey again.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Exactly.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which will be about four weeks. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco what

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was gonna say was, I do not want to talk about it for another

⏹️ ▶️ Casey four weeks if they do finally announce one, or God forbid, they announce one

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is called a Mac Pro, but is in reality just a iMac 5K++.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The last thing I want is for that to happen, so I have to hear you two go on and on about it forever, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey even I am at the point that I’m like, come on Apple, really? Really?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is still a thing? Come on, you’re better than this.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our three sponsors this week, Away, Squarespace, and Pingdom, and we will see you next

⏹️ ▶️ Marco week.

Ending theme

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can find the show notes at atp.fm,

⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at

⏹️ ▶️ John C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and T. Marco Armin,

⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s accidental, they didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John mean to Accidental, tech podcasts so long

Post-show

Chapter Post-show image.

⏹️ ▶️ John You know it’s speaking of another yardstick to seeing how into education Apple is

⏹️ ▶️ John not that I’m saying This is the best idea in the world But a thing they used to do is they used to make special computers just for education

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the eMac

⏹️ ▶️ John There were a spec’d they were designed and spec’d and priced differently sometimes regular people couldn’t even

⏹️ ▶️ John buy them Sometimes regular people wouldn’t want to buy them You know But they as a means

⏹️ ▶️ John of competing in what has always been a very price sensitive market it, it was like we we need

⏹️ ▶️ John to be able to sell into education, none of our existing eventually they learn like none of their existing computers, especially

⏹️ ▶️ John back in the day when every computer that Apple made was better than better and more expensive than all the other

⏹️ ▶️ John ones. They made special versions of computers and special entire computers

⏹️ ▶️ John just for education, suit to suit education’s needs, whatever those may be.

⏹️ ▶️ John That showed I think, a more serious dedication to the education market again, whether that was the best idea to make these special

⏹️ ▶️ John modders, but or they should have just changed the other models. They were suitable for education or whatever. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John farther than today’s Apple seems willing to go. Um, and on the flip side, I think I don’t know if this is in this New York Times

⏹️ ▶️ John article, but I’ve seen it bounced around. Maybe Gruber talked about it, but Apple is doing much better in I T recently,

⏹️ ▶️ John mostly because I think the cold war against Max and and corporate environments

⏹️ ▶️ John has thought over the past, I would say decade or so used to be like, you’re not even

⏹️ ▶️ John allowed to bring your Macintosh from home and connect it to my network because I’m the evil corporate IT guy and the whole world’s gonna

⏹️ ▶️ John end if you do that right to today where I think most people

⏹️ ▶️ John joining a company have some expectation there’s a chance that they will

⏹️ ▶️ John either get to choose between a Mac and a Windows PC or just everybody’s using Macs depending

⏹️ ▶️ John on the company. I mean, look at IBM, they’ve got thousands of them, right? Who would have thunk right?

⏹️ ▶️ John And that Max integrate better and enterprise environment. That’s because of efforts Apple has made both iOS devices

⏹️ ▶️ John and Max integrate better into enterprise environments because Apple has changed their software in ways that enterprise

⏹️ ▶️ John people wanted to make it more remotely manageable to have it be compatible with various protocols. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John been slow and it hasn’t been that dramatic. But the series of things that they’ve done have made Max

⏹️ ▶️ John way more viable and enterprise than they used to be. Despite the fact that they’re still pretty much enterprise unfriendly

⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of like how Dell will service and replace your things versus how Apple will do it and stuff like

⏹️ ▶️ John that. Like they still have a long way to go. And it’s interesting that they’re sort of the same kind of not going to say halfhearted,

⏹️ ▶️ John but the same kind of Apple style approach where we’ll make some changes on your behalf, but we’re

⏹️ ▶️ John not going to compromise our core beliefs about what a computer should be and how our business should run and so on and so forth

⏹️ ▶️ John has yielded dividends in enterprise, probably because there is no equivalent to Google coming from nowhere and

⏹️ ▶️ John taking over the enterprise. just slowly trading market share with Microsoft and other Windows

⏹️ ▶️ John PC type things. Whereas in education, they’ve been doing things as well to try to make their iOS devices

⏹️ ▶️ John and Macs better for education over the years. But their their pace

⏹️ ▶️ John of innovation there has been swamped by Google coming out with a product that is

⏹️ ▶️ John cheap, easy to manage. People like to use it removes a lot of pain points that people have been experiencing

⏹️ ▶️ John because the the Chromebook, as we discussed before, is not just like a slightly better or cheaper laptop.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not a netbook, right? They the advantage they have is that is a different computing paradigm with the, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John things on the web, right? And that whole that that whole thing of I’ve heard them referred to as dumb terminals,

⏹️ ▶️ John but I think that’s a that’s a pejorative there. They’re not dumb and they’re not terminals. It is merely a

⏹️ ▶️ John computer using local hardware to run applications and then using the network

⏹️ ▶️ John for state preservation. And it’s a great solution and it’s easier for people to manage than

⏹️ ▶️ John installing software and all that other stuff. And that’s that I think is why they’re winning, uh,

⏹️ ▶️ John not just because of price, because they could surely get trash, you know, windows PCs for something close to

⏹️ ▶️ John that price. But a crappy windows PC is not as easy to manage as the fleet of

⏹️ ▶️ John Chromebooks. All right. So I think, you know, there is no equivalent to that in enterprise. There

⏹️ ▶️ John is no competitor enterprise that is making things 10 times easier, let’s say

⏹️ ▶️ John for enterprise I.T. than Apple or Microsoft or Dell or whatever, whereas

⏹️ ▶️ John there was an education. So I rather than framing this as a failing of Apple, I think it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John more fair to frame it as a success for Google. Let’s give Google credit for finding one

⏹️ ▶️ John environment into which it can sell its hardware that apparently loves it because it’s not the consumer

⏹️ ▶️ John realm. They just they didn’t just cancel the Chromebook pixels. They’re not making

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco them. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, yeah. Consumers, not so much, but schools, schools love it. And you know, kudos to Google.

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple could have done better. Yes, but and so could Microsoft. But bottom line is Google made a product

⏹️ ▶️ John that education loves.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, how much did you say your 1989 Mac was eight grand

⏹️ ▶️ John in today’s money? No, no, no. And that money, it was $4,300 plus the keyboard. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you would need another half of a Mac to get a three door Honda Civic hatchback for speed which

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was $6,385. Almost John, almost.