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

430: Apple Did Not Eat That Food

AirTag mounting options, Apple’s bad hire, an epic (…😎) rant about Apple’s in-app-purchase rules and developer relations, and discovering the slowest way to make a three-page website.

Episode Description:

THE ATP STORE IS BACK!! Make your purchases until Friday, May 14.

Sponsored by:

  • Remote: Whether you want to hire one person or 100, Remote makes it easy. Use code ATP to get started.
  • Memberful: Monetize your passion with membership. Start your free trial today.
  • Mack Weldon: Reinventing men’s basics with smart design, premium fabrics, and simple shopping. Get 20% off your first order with code atppodcast.

Become a member for ad-free episodes and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!

MP3 Header

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

Chapters

  1. Pre-show
  2. Casey’s gas
  3. ATP Store 🖼️
  4. AirTag accessories
  5. Sponsor: Mack Weldon (code atppodcast)
  6. FileVault restarts
  7. Apple TV vs. spatial audio
  8. Apple’s bad hire
  9. Sponsor: Memberful
  10. Apple-Epic so far
  11. Sponsor: Remote
  12. #askatp: Hiding Dropbox icon
  13. Follow-up: Apple’s bad hire
  14. #askatp: SOC-swaps
  15. #askatp: Time Capsule alternatives
  16. Ending theme
  17. Marco tried to use Ruby

Pre-show

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve lost my play pause shortcut on my keyboard. Like it just doesn’t work

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anymore and I haven’t debugged Y yet. And wow is that disruptive. Reboot. No,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did. I tried rebooting. Oh no. Yeah, I’ve had some weird issues. Like sometimes my keyboard will stop being recognized

⏹️ ▶️ Marco until I unplug and replug the USB receiver. So yeah, it’s a whole thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What’s also very strange, I’m gonna have even more pre-show unplanned follow-up.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So this is my two week anniversary, plus one day of being fully vaccinated. So that means

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now I’m like fully, fully vaccinated. And my town has also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lifted the outdoor mask requirement as most places have now. So I have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco been walking around without a mask outside and it’s still kind of like the first

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time I did it, it felt very much like this, but it still kind of feels like I’m walking around naked.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it’s, it feels like, oh, this is like, I’m feeling air on a part of my skin that I shouldn’t be feeling

⏹️ ▶️ Marco air on. Like I feel it still feels like I have like forgotten to put pants on or something. It’s it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very strange feeling. Have you guys gotten that?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes. Ish. Um, I don’t, I didn’t go that many

⏹️ ▶️ Casey places in the past. Don’t you have a dog? Yeah. But around the neighborhood I,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I never wore a mask cause our streets are very, very wide and I would just walk to the other side of the street.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s probably, I’m sure hearing this, it sounds very selfish and very red-hattie,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but truly, our streets are like, the streets in our neighborhood are like easily 30

⏹️ ▶️ Casey feet, which is what, 10 meters, 30 feet wide, and it was not dangerous or disrespectful

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at all to just move to the other side of the road if somebody’s coming. And that’s what everyone does, and that’s fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So yeah, I didn’t really have much of this, and I haven’t traveled in any meaningful way, So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I definitely did put a mask on outside when the situation made it appropriate, you know, when I was close to people,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I was around people I don’t know, etc. But that happened so infrequently that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I never really got to the point that you’re at. But I can’t speak for how it was for you, John.

⏹️ ▶️ John It was similar here. So I had to take my dog for a walk in the park. Like, there’s literally no other people

⏹️ ▶️ John there and I’m just in the woods by myself, right? So it was easy to just not have a mask on because you literally don’t see another

⏹️ ▶️ John human and I’m outdoors, right? I think it’ll feel weird the first time I do it, like, in a place with other

⏹️ ▶️ John people, but that doesn’t happen yet, so I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly. But you are fully maxinated, to quote Gruber.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am fully maxinated. John, remind me, where are you in the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John process here?

⏹️ ▶️ John Next week’s show, I’ll be fully all set.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’ve already had your second shot?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yep, and this is the one week after my second shot, and next week’s show will be two weeks after.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s right, that’s right. I forgot that you and I did it on Wednesdays because we’re amateurs. And then

⏹️ ▶️ Casey how was your day after second shot? Was it bad or not too bad?

⏹️ ▶️ John It was all right. I mean, I felt cruddy. You know, I had a headache, had muscle aches

⏹️ ▶️ John in my neck, and just generally felt like that whole run over by a truck feeling, which doesn’t really make any sense because

⏹️ ▶️ John none of us know what it feels like, or most of us don’t know what it feels like to be run over by a truck, but you just feel like your whole body just, it’s more like

⏹️ ▶️ John being even squished by a giant or something. Like you’re just like, ugh. I felt like that

⏹️ ▶️ John for basically the whole day, and then the next day it was fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so what I’m hearing is after next week’s show,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey then the three of us can all meet up somewhere and hug it out. It’ll be okay then.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco In theory. You still have to make John travel. That’s the hardest part.

Casey’s gas

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Well, I can’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey travel now. I can’t even travel because apparently everyone in Richmond has bought all the gas in Richmond.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, there’s a gas shortage? I wouldn’t have known.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, you are such a

⏹️ ▶️ John jerk. I’ve been keeping track of this story, but like, what is the… I saw, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John one of those things, stories that I see by its third-degree effects on Twitter, but I don’t actually know like

⏹️ ▶️ John why everyone is all super nervous about gas. Is there an actual reason or is it

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey random? So, yeah, you honestly don’t know about this? That’s fascinating.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I

⏹️ ▶️ John know people want gas and they’re hoarding

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it, but I don’t know why.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, so I haven’t dug into this too much and as always, I might get the details slightly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrong, but the general gist as chief summarizer in chief is that there is a pipeline that runs from Texas

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the Northeast, I think, if not all the way to Maine, but it runs somewhere up to your,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to your guys’ neck of the woods and it got hacked and ransomed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it got shut down. And this is, um, this is the, the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pipeline that apparently provides, I would assume crude, maybe it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey refined gasoline, I’m not sure, but provides it for most of the East Coast, particularly the Southeast.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so gas stations on Tuesday, I think it was, started to run

⏹️ ▶️ Casey out of gas because I guess they get daily shipments or whatever, and they started to run out of gas.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so when I went, I met up with a friend of mine to have an outdoor lunch. We’re both fully

⏹️ ▶️ Casey vaccinated. And I met up with him and on the way there, I passed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of our local big box stores and there was a line for the gas

⏹️ ▶️ Casey station all the way to like the street. And this is one of those situations where it’s not unusual

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for there to be a line, but to go all the way to the street, that’s very unusual. And so yeah, apparently

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there are gas stations in my area that have straight up run out of gas. There’s price gouging because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey capitalism. I filled up by pure circumstance on Monday and Aaron filled up I think over the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey weekend and we typically only fuel once a month as it is so I’m not particularly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey nervous especially since I think I saw as we record on Wednesday night that the pipeline has just reopened

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but nevertheless there is a big scare and you there’s pictures and videos

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of people putting gasoline into garbage bags and that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco not a joke. Oh god

⏹️ ▶️ Marco please don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey do that. For long.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now from what I I understand some of these are recycled from years ago, like they’re memes that went around and somebody would recycle

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and say, oh, look what these idiots are doing. But supposedly some of them are really honestly true. So yeah, it’s been

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little bit of a mess again, thankfully, because you know, we never drive anywhere, never

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really go anywhere. It hasn’t been an issue for the List family, but if it were to persist for another two to three weeks,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey then certainly it would be a bit of a problem. So if you want me to come to you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey anytime in the next week or two, I’m going to maybe have to wait on that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you had a Tesla, you could just come here for free when the supercharger network,

⏹️ ▶️ John the chat room says that the pipeline is back up and running again. For, I can’t for, for, I don’t know for how

⏹️ ▶️ John long, but for most of the pandemic, I haven’t even been filling my gas tank up. I think we talked about this before, cause I was afraid

⏹️ ▶️ John of the idea of like. Letting the gas get old in the car. Cause I use my car so

⏹️ ▶️ John little that if I filled up my tank, I was like, I’ll be, I’m afraid it’ll be eight months before I empty it. and

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not good to have the gas sitting there for a long time. So I’ve only ever been filling my tank to half.

⏹️ ▶️ John And even then, even then I’m like, how many months has it been? I just, I never go anywhere. Cause like, well, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, we have two cars and my car is always at the front of the driveway and I just never drive it anywhere. I mean, that’s changed

⏹️ ▶️ John with the kids going back to school and I’m driving them back and forth there, but school is like 10 minutes away. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t even remember the last time I filled up my gas tank. I am back to doing full tanks, but I think I did my last full

⏹️ ▶️ John tank fill up like maybe a month ago, more than half ago. so I’m not worried.

ATP Store

Chapter ATP Store image.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But speaking of spending money on fire, if you wanted to set a little bit of your money on fire and you didn’t want to get gouged with

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ridiculous gas prices, let me tell you about ATP shirts. Because the ATP store is closing soon.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey As we record, it is Wednesday night on Friday night, just two days from now, probably the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey day you’re listening to this in all likelihood. The store will be closed.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I tell this story every time. I know you’re all frustrated with it. Imagine me, who has to live it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Every, every sale, somebody tweets, non-ironically, saying, Oh no,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh no, oh no, did I miss it? Did I miss it? And typically this is but hours after the store

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is closed. Yes, you did miss it because you didn’t listen to your friend Casey. And your friend Casey is telling you,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pull the car over, if you drive anywhere, maybe pull over to the side of the road if you’re walking,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey go to ATP.FM.store. You can get our sweet, sweet M1 shirt,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which speaking of lighting money on fire is not particularly cheap and I’m sorry for that. You can get the M1 shirt, which has

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the beautiful six colors M1 logo on the front and the M1 kind of cutaway on the back.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can get a monochrome version of that as well in multiple different fabric colors. You can get the ATP performance

⏹️ ▶️ Casey shirt, which is, I think the term is moisture wicking or something like that. Basically it means if you’re sweaty,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can take it off without it sticking to you. You can get my beloved ATP pint glass, which I’m super excited

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get in hand. And of course we have our logo shirt. Now, some of you have heard

⏹️ ▶️ Casey our plea on the last episode that, oh, the enamel pin is going to be sold out soon.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Guys, guess what happened? It sold out. Guess what I heard? Oh, did I miss

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the pins? Oh, I missed the pins, didn’t I? You missed the pins. This is how it works, kids. This is how it works.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John only had

⏹️ ▶️ John two years and seven months to buy those pins and you just missed it by a day. Yep.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So yeah. So if you look at my mentions, shortly after the store closes, you will see all the people

⏹️ ▶️ Casey competing to be first to say, oh, did the store close? And that’s fine. Whatever. If it makes

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you laugh, go for it. But you’ll also see a bunch of people saying, oh no, did the store close? Yes, the store closed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey because you didn’t listen to me. ATP.FM slash store. Now remember, if you’re not already a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey member, please ATP.FM slash join, join, do it for a year, do

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it for a month. It’s okay. Whatever you want. Go use the discount code for 15%

⏹️ ▶️ Casey off your ATP merchandise at Cotton Bureau. And then you can, you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, just cancel if you want to, but you don’t have to do that. You can just continue to enjoy the bootleg and all the sweet, sweet perks

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that membership gives you like the bootleg and an ad free feed if you so decide.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s more stuff. So anyways, atp.fm slash store.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The time is

⏹️ ▶️ John now. And if you’ve already made a purchase from the store, we thank you. And now I would like to tell everybody,

⏹️ ▶️ John this is the time when you forget to cancel your membership. I told you in the last show is we make it really easy

⏹️ ▶️ John to cancel. You can get the discount and you can just cancel. It’s really easy. New instruction. Now, everybody,

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t cancel. Just keep it. Just keep it going. Just keep keep the ball rolling. Start. Get used to

⏹️ ▶️ John the show with no ads in it. It’s awesome. Listen to the bootleg every once in a while. It’s fun. Now is the time to not

⏹️ ▶️ John cancel. You can if you want to. We make it super easy, but don’t.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well done, Sean.

⏹️ ▶️ John Some real time fallout for the chat room. for people who think I’m making a joke about gas getting old, this is what happens if you don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John read enough books about the end of the world. If you read any post-apocalyptic books, inevitably someone does some little bit

⏹️ ▶️ John of research and like, you know, three years into the post-apocalyptic world where the zombies have taken over,

⏹️ ▶️ John the gas doesn’t stay good forever. It loses its combustibility. It oxidizes, like

⏹️ ▶️ John gasoline sitting in a gas tank of a car eventually becomes no good for making the car go after a certain

⏹️ ▶️ John amount of time. Which I just did a quick Google for it and some people are saying, Exxon Mobil saying like six

⏹️ ▶️ John months or whatever, but certainly five years into the zombie apocalypse, you find a car on the side of the road with a tank full

⏹️ ▶️ John of gas, you’re not going anywhere. So yes, gas does go bad. Sorry.

AirTag accessories

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Speaking of more ways to set money on fire, I have some AirTag

⏹️ ▶️ Marco attachment follow-up.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I actually just got my AirTag, my one and only AirTag, and I like it. And it’s actually really fun

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Declan to play hide-and-go-seek, where I hide the AirTag and he goes and finds it, but nevertheless.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I haven’t put it in any sort of mount. So, Marco, tell me, how did you set your money aflame

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get overpriced AirTag mounts?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, for science, I bought two AirTag

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mounting options from Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ John You were supposed to get the balloons for science, not the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco AirTag.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did not get the balloons. I also did not get the like $350 Hermes one.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got an AirTag leather key ring in product red,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is $35. And I have here the AirTag Loop

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in white, which is $29. This is probably the worst way I’ve ever spent $64,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever that is. These things are such pieces of crap for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much they cost. First of all, they’re both massive.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco When you compare them to the size of the AirTag, they’re ridiculously large.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I would have loved instead, if you’re going with the Apple Store provided options,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Belkin Secure Holder with Key Ring for AirTag. That would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a much better product. And that’s only $13, but that’s back-ordered until mid-June. So I couldn’t get those.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I have this like plastic kind of like, you know, rubbery loop thing that like loops

⏹️ ▶️ Marco into itself and tucks into itself. And by the way, the location in which the,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what is it called? The air tag loop, the location where it folds over

⏹️ ▶️ Marco onto itself, like there’s a very thin part of material there that will bear the entire

⏹️ ▶️ Marco weight of it when, if it gets tugged or pulled in just the wrong way. And I don’t trust that material thickness

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a second. I think this thing is gonna break with any kind of stress on it. It doesn’t, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these things don’t feel good. Like, the air tag loop

⏹️ ▶️ Marco feels like a silicone wrapped sheet of cardboard. And the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco leather key ring feels okay, but it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not like soft or supple in any way, like the way nice leather is, because there’s just not enough

⏹️ ▶️ Marco flexibility or room for the material. And the main thing with both of these things is that, again, they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just make, I mean, not only does this double the cost of your AirTag, and frankly, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know why Apple’s charging as much as they are for these things, well, I know why, but it doesn’t seem it’s worth

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they’re charging for it. But also like the resulting, you know, combined

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some product of these things is so ridiculously large and bulky and they’re both designed to show

⏹️ ▶️ Marco off the air tag, which I guess makes sense if you’re Apple’s industrial designers. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think in most cases you wouldn’t want to show off your air tag. Like I don’t know. But anyway, so I, these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things got a big thumbs down for me and I hope that in the near future, all of these like inexpensive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco key ring mounts, it’s like the Belkin one become more widely available, or at least, you know, knockoffs from Amazon should

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be available pretty soon. Now, I also have some followup on, I did actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco attach two of these so far to our family bicycles.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the attachment method I went with cost significantly less than $29. I was thinking like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I need to attach this securely to the bikes. Because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what if the attachment method I use, like breaks and the air tag falls off.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I quickly realized like, if my air tag falls off, that’s not that bad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I can just find it. So I realized I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco need anything fancy and I wanted something small and discreet

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and weatherproof. So I just used electrical tape. I used vinyl

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 3M electrical tape. Duct

⏹️ ▶️ John tape is a little bit better for moisture, just FYI, but it’ll be fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just wrapped them in electrical tape so you can’t see them, and it’s fairly weatherproof,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s fairly salt and weatherproof, or salt and waterproof mostly, like salt and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sand and everything, all the conditions it’ll encounter. It’s fairly resilient to those things. And when

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the battery dies in a year, I’ll have to cut the electrical tape off and pull it out and put a CR2032 back in there

⏹️ ▶️ Marco use about a dollar more of electrical tape to attach it. And the electrical tape is a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco far better attachment option than any of these weird $30 pieces of material

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Apple. So overall, I can recommend electrical tape as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your AirTag mounting option. Way, way more than any of the official accessories

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve seen so far.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Mack Weldon, reinventing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco men’s basics. I love Mack Weldon’s clothes. I am wearing Mack Weldon’s clothes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco today as I do literally every single day because every single pair of underwear I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have is Mack Weldon underwear. I’ve threw away everything else once I discovered them. They’re that good. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco also wearing a Mack Weldon t-shirt right now and Mack Weldon socks. Their stuff is awesome. Look,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this year, spring is a little bit different because we’re all finally starting to get back outside

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and see friends again. No matter where your adventures take you, bring Mack Weldon’s comfort and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco style along for the ride. Your closet will thank you. Whether it’s their hoodies, their polos,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tees, active shorts, they have such good stuff. This morning I wore the Mack

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Weldon Ace sweatpants because they are super comfortable. I worked out in the Ace shorts.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m currently wearing the silver t-shirt, which I love the silver t-shirts. These

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are naturally antimicrobial and they hold up. I bought a whole bunch of them,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think five years ago now, four or five years ago. I haven’t lost a single one to like wearing out

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or perma stink or anything like that. They’re really well made. They fit really great. They look

⏹️ ▶️ Marco great. I love Mac world and stuff and it spans a wide variety of needs.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, you can, you can dress down, you can dress up, you can wear it to work. You have workout clothes,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wide range of customized fabrics that really take advantage of, you different properties you might want for different contexts.

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FileVault restarts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, we have some other feedback that involves spending less money. We were talking about,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it was NASC ATP, is that right? About unintended restart when you have FileVault enabled.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And several people wrote in to give a couple of command line commands you can try. You can do using

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sudo fd e setup, space auth restart. We’ll put this in the show

⏹️ ▶️ Casey notes. And on supported hardware, this allows a restart of a FileVault enabled system without requiring

⏹️ ▶️ Casey firing unlock during the subsequent boot. And that’s by using this auth restart thing. Be careful

⏹️ ▶️ Casey though, because file vault protections are reduced during authenticated restarts. In particular, FDE setup

⏹️ ▶️ Casey deliberately stores at least one additional copy of a permanent FDE or full disk encryption unlock key and both

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the system memory and unsupported systems in the system management controller. And you have to run it as root

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it will ask you to unlock your, the file vault password and so on.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Additionally, Paul Galow writes, I regularly use this method to remotely update Macs via SSH

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or Apple Remote Desktop. Running software update space hyphen IA, again, it’ll be in the show notes.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ll install all available software updates, then follow this up with the FDE setup author start to reboot

⏹️ ▶️ Casey your Mac. Or you can also optionally do FDE setup author start and then hyphen delay minutes

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then a numeral. So like hyphen delay minutes space five to delay it five minutes.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then Hugo Jobling writes, another interesting quirk about the FileVault login screen that many or maybe all Bluetooth

⏹️ ▶️ Casey devices will not work here. For example, neither my keyboard, the Keychron K2 or mouse, the Microsoft Precision,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey will work on at this logic screen. I keep my keyboard connected via USB as a result, according

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Hugo. So that is something I did not know today I learned.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s why I couldn’t remember this command last time, but I was pretty sure there was a way to do it. And many people wrote in with this command line way

⏹️ ▶️ John to do it. So if you feel like you can’t enable file vault because you won’t be able to do unintended

⏹️ ▶️ John restarts or you won’t be able to do software updates, that’s not true. Apparently you can use this method. I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think this is broken with the M1 Max. Lots of stuff related to booting has either changed or

⏹️ ▶️ John broken with the M1 Max and or Big Sur, but I’m pretty sure this one still works. So you have

⏹️ ▶️ John tools available. No more excuses for not enabling foul balled.

Apple TV vs. spatial audio

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then a couple of people wrote in, most of, or perhaps first, Matt Friedman,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with regard to Apple TV and spatial audio. And Matt writes, in all of your discussions of the new Apple TV 4K,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m surprised that you have not yet brought up its most obvious missing feature, no support for spatial audio. As Matt recalls,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey when discussing the AirPods Max, we had talked about how great spatial audio is, but the big downside is that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re limited to the iPhone and the iPad, and how obviously it is needed on the Apple TV. I was shocked when the new

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one came out and it wasn’t included. I would have been more perturbed about this had I ever experienced spatial audio, but I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey still on the second gen AirPods. I’ve never had the,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what is it? The AirPods Max, the MaxPods, whatever they’re called, the big headphone-y things. And I’ve never had AirPods Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’ve never experienced this, even though I’ve heard it’s really delightful. But I don’t know if you guys have thoughts on

⏹️ ▶️ John that. So I have experienced it, and unless I’m entirely misunderstanding this feature, and maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John Marco can correct me if I’m getting it wrong, but when I tried it, and my understanding of what it’s supposed to do

⏹️ ▶️ John is, it’s like, so you put the, I tried it with the AirPods Pro because my wife has them, right? You put them in, you put in the spatial audio,

⏹️ ▶️ John and then say you’re looking at your iPad, right? It uses whatever various sensors

⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff to understand where the iPad is in relation to your head so

⏹️ ▶️ John that It fools you into thinking that sound is coming out of the

⏹️ ▶️ John iPad So if you take the iPad and move it to your left All of a sudden the sound is coming from where you move the iPad to

⏹️ ▶️ John and you take the iPad and move it to your right Oh now it’s coming from the right as opposed to just traditional headphones where no matter

⏹️ ▶️ John where you move the iPad, if you have the headphones in your ear, they sound exactly the same. You can move the iPad up,

⏹️ ▶️ John down, left, and right. It doesn’t change the sound, right? Am I getting this right? Like this is what spatial audio is supposed

⏹️ ▶️ John to do?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s, yeah. So that’s one of the things it does, but then it also allows it to then act like surround sound. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only does it sound like it’s coming directly from the iPad, even when it’s, when the things are in your ear, when you’re moving your head around,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the idea then is that it can also then position sounds like around you or behind you like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco surround sound would.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, I haven’t heard that part of it. I’ve heard the panning, you know, the,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, make it sound like the sound is coming from the TV part of it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like I understand where people are saying like, oh, spatial audio, that should be used to trick me into thinking I have

⏹️ ▶️ John surround speakers. But I think the, the thing that makes it sound like this, the audio is coming

⏹️ ▶️ John from wherever you move the iPad or the iPhone to, I can understand how that would work. And

⏹️ ▶️ John I have experienced it. And yes, it does. It feels like that, like it can trick you into thinking, oh, the

⏹️ ▶️ John audio must not be, you know when you forget that like your AirPods don’t connect or something and the audio is coming out of the speakers

⏹️ ▶️ John of your device but not your headphones?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Very

⏹️ ▶️ John often it feels like that. You’re like, oh, I guess I forgot to, the audio is still coming out of the speakers. I forgot to change it to AirPods.

⏹️ ▶️ John But you didn’t, you did change it to your headphones. It’s just fooling you into thinking the audio is coming from

⏹️ ▶️ John the iPad or something. But first on that specific feature, that’s pretty much

⏹️ ▶️ John never what I want when I’m like watching TV on my iPad or something, I don’t want

⏹️ ▶️ John it to sound like the sound is coming from the iPad. I want it to sound like the sound is all around me,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? I don’t, you know, like part of the reason of putting in headphones is it’s a more quote-unquote immersive experience

⏹️ ▶️ John than sound coming out of the iPad that’s sitting on my lap, right? So that is an

⏹️ ▶️ John anti-feature for me. And same deal when watching television, on a big television, I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want the sound to sound like it’s coming from, you know, the person’s mouth on the

⏹️ ▶️ John screen. A lot of modern TVs do this with their built-in speakers now. They take pride in the fact that they do probably, I’m assuming they do facial

⏹️ ▶️ John recognition or whatever and figure out where the speaker is, like the person who is talking, not the audio speaker,

⏹️ ▶️ John but they figure out where the person who is talking is on the screen. And they try to make the sound with the built-in speakers

⏹️ ▶️ John come from that location because the speakers essentially shake the screen, like the giant,

⏹️ ▶️ John the screen is like one big, like, you know, speaker diaphragm but that’s not what I want. That’s not how

⏹️ ▶️ John I want audio to work in general for things like movies with surround sound. I want it to sound like you’re in a movie theater where

⏹️ ▶️ John yes, I want all the sound to be even coming at me, but I don’t want to think the sound

⏹️ ▶️ John is coming from a particular speaker. I wanna feel like I’m completely immersed in it, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John So if people want spatial audio because they want the audio to sound like it’s coming from their screen or really

⏹️ ▶️ John coming from their headphones, you know, more power to them, but that’s absolutely not what I want.

⏹️ ▶️ John If people that think that the sound, that it is able to simulate surround sound convincingly from headphones,

⏹️ ▶️ John I haven’t experienced that. I am very doubtful that it’s going to, like kind of like soundbars, like, yeah, you can do tricks.

⏹️ ▶️ John You can do bouncing audio and obviously headphones, you can do more tricks, but they don’t have my head related transfer function.

⏹️ ▶️ John How good could this possibly be? You know, what Sony has taught us that just, you know, they can

⏹️ ▶️ John try their best, but in the end, actual surround speakers, if you want that, are the way to

⏹️ ▶️ John go. And actual surround speakers do not try to make it sound like all the sound

⏹️ ▶️ John is coming from the television screen. They might make it sound like some sound is coming from behind you because guess what? it really is because of the

⏹️ ▶️ John speaker back there. So I’m not shocked that it wasn’t included and I’m not

⏹️ ▶️ John sure I would even want it to be included. But all that said, for the people who do want it to be included, it

⏹️ ▶️ John does seem kind of silly that it doesn’t support it. This is a completely Apple ecosystem. And for the

⏹️ ▶️ John most part, an Apple TV doesn’t move. So it’s not like they have to do complicated math and computation

⏹️ ▶️ John to figure out where everybody is. Like they’re probably in front of the TV. That’s where they’re gonna stay.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it seems like all the hardware and the Apple TVs must be there for this. I mean, didn’t they put like a thread radio on the Apple TV?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like they couldn’t put in whatever they needed for U1 or, you know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m guessing that’s the issue right there. That they don’t have the U1 in there? I’m guessing that, so, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, we know the Apple TV doesn’t have a U1, but I think the bigger problem is the AirPods don’t have a U1. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think you can look at the AirTag as an example of what’s like the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco smallest you could make something that is, you know, self-powered that has a U1

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and any kind of basic logic. And granted, I’d say most

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the AirTags volume is that battery. Second to that is probably the plastic of the case.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if you look at AirPods and AirPods Pro, they don’t have anywhere near enough space to add

⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably the U1 and the whatever antenna that it uses to transmit stuff. So my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco guess is that the reason why this is not a feature on Apple TV is because the way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s done with AirPods Pro and iPads is probably with Bluetooth. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m guessing that at the distance that you would have an iPad in front of you on a table, that might be accurate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough. But if it’s gonna be like, you know, 12 feet in front of you, you know, across the room

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with an Apple TV, maybe it can’t be precise enough for the effect to work very well.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, Bluetooth range is pretty good. And you know, and the fact that they can fit the hardware to make this work inside the AirPods

⏹️ ▶️ John Pro, the tiny little things that go in your ears, Like there’s no excuse for it not to be in the AirPods Max. Yeah, that’s true.

⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, maybe they’ll get around to it eventually, but I am curious now hearing that it’s supposed to, there

⏹️ ▶️ John is apparently a mode where it’s supposed to simulate surround. I have not heard that myself, but if that is any good,

⏹️ ▶️ John I can see why people might want it. But I’ve tried stuff like that on my various gaming consoles with

⏹️ ▶️ John gaming headphones that supposedly simulate 5.1 and you can watch a movie on your PlayStation with 5.1 sound and put

⏹️ ▶️ John on these headphones and it’s just, it has never, it has never sounded any good to me. So my hopes

⏹️ ▶️ John of this are dim.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, so optimistic. All right. And then Umberto Iriz Pereira

⏹️ ▶️ Casey writes, the new Apple TV has Wi-Fi 6, which might improve connection speed and stability for some people,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey especially given how frequently TVs have terrible connections.

⏹️ ▶️ John Just looking for more reasons to be interested. What’s new about the new Apple TV 4K? Why should I even want

⏹️ ▶️ John it? Hey, maybe if your current Apple TV’s got terrible signal, maybe Wi-Fi 6 will help.

Apple’s bad hire

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s move right along. So as we record today

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the evening of Wednesday the 12th, right not too long before we recorded, there

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was a whole lot of brouhaha about a new hire at Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the three of us haven’t really had much time to read into this, so this is gonna be really quick.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ll put a link in the show notes to a Verge article that kind of talks about it, but apparently Antonio Garcia Martinez

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was the author of a book called Chaos Monkeys, And I have not read this. I’m not familiar with this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey particular gentleman, but from everything I’ve heard, Chaos Monkeys is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey extremely problematic, like really, really,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really problematic and for anyone to hire this individual

⏹️ ▶️ Casey seems unwise, especially since from everything I’ve heard through the grapevine, again, not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey having done my proper research, is that he never really changed his ways, like he’s been doubly,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey tripling, quadrupling down ever since. And so this is a new

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hire that Apple made to lead their ad team, I believe, like their advertising team or something like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And he’s ex-Facebook, which kind of makes sense. But yeah, this is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey from, at a glance at least, this is super gross and none of the three of us

⏹️ ▶️ Casey can endorse or are enthusiastic about it. And we just wanted to call attention to it real quick. But again, we haven’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really had the time to properly look into this. I don’t know if you guys have any further thoughts.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, when I was trying to compile everything for this, I’m like, oh, it’s people saying stuff on Twitter. And then I saw

⏹️ ▶️ John some quotes from his book and like these quotes are terrible, but I’m not sure I have the context. So I did a Google book search

⏹️ ▶️ John to make sure I had the context for this stuff. And it was just increasingly looking like, no, this is the story. This guy’s terrible,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? And what I assume would happen is that if he is this terrible, Apple will eventually get rid of him.

⏹️ ▶️ John And just before we started recording, the Verge article is basically Apple employees who have been

⏹️ ▶️ John discussing this on Twitter and I follow them, saying like, Apple employees saying, we’re not taking this lying down.

⏹️ ▶️ John They are circulating a petition within Apple, asking, essentially demanding

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple to explain why they hired this person, how their vetting process could have let this in. And by the way, if you’re wondering, like, what

⏹️ ▶️ John did this person do that’s so bad or whatever? He published a book that he wrote himself. It’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John like hearsay or people saying bad things about this person. This is his own words. He is the author of the

⏹️ ▶️ John book. It is a nonfiction book. And in it, there are many passages that

⏹️ ▶️ John clearly, clearly label this guy as just a general sexist

⏹️ ▶️ John jerk, Silicon Valley jerk, right? And so Apple, supposed to be an inclusive

⏹️ ▶️ John organization, this petition from the Apple employees,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think, was very well written, because it really highlights why do we care about this? Why do we care if you hire a jerk? Well,

⏹️ ▶️ John actually, hiring jerks affects all of us. What if this person who, you know, like here, I’ll just read you

⏹️ ▶️ John one of the quotes, to let you know what we’re dealing with here. This is from his book. Most women in the Bay Area

⏹️ ▶️ John are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness and generally

⏹️ ▶️ John full of stuff. I’m not gonna do it so far, but believe me. They have their self-regarding

⏹️ ▶️ John entitlement feminism and ceaselessly want their independence, but the reality is come the epidemic, plague or foreign

⏹️ ▶️ John invasion, they’d become precisely the sort of useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry

⏹️ ▶️ John can of diesel.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh. There’s so

⏹️ ▶️ John much in this one statement that lets you know exactly who this guy is, aside from simply being a virulent

⏹️ ▶️ John misogynist. And the idea that, you know, women are useless in the apocalypse and I’m a tough man and

⏹️ ▶️ John I would trade these women for shotgun shells and it’s just, oh my, and just goes on from there, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John So anyway, what’s it, why, why do I, so Apple hires a jerk. How does that affect me as an Apple employee? And this thing

⏹️ ▶️ John spells it out. How can you put this person in, like, in, in the organization and

⏹️ ▶️ John ever have them, like, involved in any kind of person’s performance review, right? You

⏹️ ▶️ John know, like, would you ever want this person managing other people or having any say in

⏹️ ▶️ John who gets promoted? Never mind just having this person in the organization with published

⏹️ ▶️ John works expressing their views of this type. Like it’s it’s you know, it wouldn’t really make you feel welcome. Here’s

⏹️ ▶️ John an Apple employee responding to this saying, every day I go to work and I know that some people view me this

⏹️ ▶️ John way. This is a female Apple employee. I don’t know which people but I’ve heard stuff like this enough to know that it’s ever

⏹️ ▶️ John present in our world. angers me to see these viewpoints expressed by someone in a leadership role at my own company.

⏹️ ▶️ John So Apple employees aren’t taking this lying down. I think this is a sign

⏹️ ▶️ John of health of an inclusive organization. If the people you already have, like your existing employees,

⏹️ ▶️ John see something like this and say, this is not how we do things at Apple, and sort of from the bottom

⏹️ ▶️ John up, rise up and say, what’s the deal? What’s going on here?

⏹️ ▶️ John We want an investigation. We want to know how someone with these views got past our screening process. We want to

⏹️ ▶️ John understand how it’s not like these are secret views that people didn’t know about it and then people who are enemies of

⏹️ ▶️ John this person starting saying bad things about it behind his back. This is a book that he published. It was a New York Times

⏹️ ▶️ John bestseller. It’s not obscure. I’m not saying you have to read everybody’s books, but you should really know who you’re hiring.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And honestly, I’m sure Apple has already decided to get rid of him. They’re just looking for a way to do without getting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sued. And probably by the time that we publish this episode, I bet he’s out.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think you’re right. I think you’re definitely right. But just because we like to,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey we wanna make it clear that the three of us, this is not cool to us and we don’t support this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sort of thing. And we don’t necessarily need to get involved with every Apple hire or anything like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. But a lot of people have asked us, hey, what are your two cents on this? Our two cents is it’s gross

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and shouldn’t have happened. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John hopefully- And

⏹️ ▶️ John this is what happens when you hire people who have a high profile. Like, I mean, obviously, you vet

⏹️ ▶️ John every employee and you try to hire people who you think will fit into your organization. and we’ll, you know, like

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the hiring process. Like we understand it’s big, it’s complicated or whatever. But when someone has a New York Times bestselling

⏹️ ▶️ John book, maybe look at the book. That’s all I’m saying. Like it’s not, you know, again, everyone

⏹️ ▶️ John has enemies. Everyone has things, people change too. Like, you know, that’s also a thing. Like that’s why this thing goes about,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, like just don’t hold people’s past against them forever. Maybe they’ve learned it. We talked about this last show. Everyone

⏹️ ▶️ John learns and changes and grows, right? But I feel like that’s worth discussing, right? Like with

⏹️ ▶️ John the employee during the hiring process. hey, we looked at your New York Times bestselling book and here’s what you said.

⏹️ ▶️ John How do you feel about that now? Like, I feel like it should come up, right? So as the story unfolds, we’ll see. But

⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like this person’s tenure at Apple may not be particularly long.

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Apple-Epic so far

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving right along. Some thoughts on Apple versus Epic. So I think John most

⏹️ ▶️ Casey especially had a few things that you want to talk about, about Apple versus Epic. It is not our intention

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to go into a deep dive on Apple versus Epic. I would expect that we probably will at some point,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but since so much stuff is still developing as we sit here and record right now, I don’t think it’s worth

⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyone’s time going deep into what’s happening. And a lot of other places are talking about it too. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, you said you had some thoughts you wanted to bring up with regard to Apple versus Epic. So tell me about them.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think we’re like a week into this or whatever. To refresh everyone’s memory, this is Epic, the game company. They

⏹️ ▶️ John got kicked out of the App Store for trying to use their own payment method in Fortnite, that whole thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John We’ve talked about it in the past on the show. This is the court case. Epic suing Apple saying Apple shouldn’t be allowed to

⏹️ ▶️ John do what they did to us and Apple saying we totally should be allowed to do that. And just, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John the general consensus seems to be, and it has always seemed from Apple’s going to win this court case, because Epic

⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t really have much of a particular case to make, except for saying, hey, no fair. We don’t like that, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John But that’s just the battle. The larger war is, OK, but then what? Lots of people are

⏹️ ▶️ John viewing this as like, even if Epic loses, they’re kind of winning by making Apple look bad

⏹️ ▶️ John and by triggering sort of government regulation. And regardless of how this court

⏹️ ▶️ John case goes, Apple is kind of getting it from all sides here and under a lot of pressure

⏹️ ▶️ John to change things. And they have been changing things, and I think that will continue, right? But setting that aside, part of the function

⏹️ ▶️ John of this court case, even if Epic loses, is the discovery process where the public gets to see all sorts

⏹️ ▶️ John of things that we would never see otherwise. Emails from inside Apple about Epic, about the App

⏹️ ▶️ John Store, hearing people have to testify under oath about things that are at Apple,

⏹️ ▶️ John current Apple employees, ex-Apple employees. That’s why a lot of the coverage of this is like, each day there’s some new

⏹️ ▶️ John revelation about internal communications inside Apple, things that we wouldn’t see without this court

⏹️ ▶️ John case, right? Um, and I’ve mostly not been following it too closely. Cause again, I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think this court case is anything consequential is going to happen. I think we just have to wait for it to be over and then see what the actual

⏹️ ▶️ John fallout is for Apple. Uh, but the one thing that has struck me with all of the stuff I have read, cause anytime there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John something juicy, like a good email or a good message or, you know, whatever that gets highlighted

⏹️ ▶️ John in various, uh, articles. And the one thing that has struck me about all of it from like

⏹️ ▶️ John communications inside Apple between all the big name executives that we know. Finally, we get to see what were they

⏹️ ▶️ John emailing each other in 2008, in 2011, in 2015 about all these app store controversies, a lot of them that we talked about

⏹️ ▶️ John on this show. What were they saying to each other inside Apple?

⏹️ ▶️ John Or about anything, not just app store controversies, but just Apple corporate strategy and stuff like that. And the thing I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ John been struck by is that nothing anyone says is surprising.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco they’re saying all exactly

⏹️ ▶️ John the same things that you would expect them to say. Like when on shows like this, where we’re speculating about

⏹️ ▶️ John how Apple might think about things, you know, how does Apple like the one that I cut and pasted into

⏹️ ▶️ John the show notes a couple of weeks ago was like, Eddie Q talking to Craig Federighi about the possibility of iMessage on Android.

⏹️ ▶️ John How is Apple talking to itself internally about those possibilities? We’ve talked about it on our show and guess what? They’re saying all

⏹️ ▶️ John the same things. Like there’s no, like it’s shocking how similar

⏹️ ▶️ John the conversation inside Apple is to the conversation outside Apple in terms of what are the factors? What are the pros?

⏹️ ▶️ John What are the cons? The people inside Apple are just people, and they do not have, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John seemingly, for most of these topics that are in this discovery anyway, there is no secret information that really changes

⏹️ ▶️ John the landscape. All of the factors that we would discuss in the show about the pros and cons of iMessage and Android,

⏹️ ▶️ John exactly what they discuss. And there are sometimes some people making a case on one side, and sometimes people making a case on the other.

⏹️ ▶️ John Repeat for anything you can imagine. How do you think Apple was dealing with Epic? Does Apple treat big companies

⏹️ ▶️ John different than little companies, and why would they? Everything that has ever been discussed in the entire pundit

⏹️ ▶️ John sphere about Apple, that’s exactly what’s happening inside Apple, which reassures me

⏹️ ▶️ John that, you know, because it’s always so hard when a company is secretive as Apple. It’s like, well, we’re talking about all this stuff,

⏹️ ▶️ John but maybe there’s stuff we don’t know. And maybe the conversation inside Apple is very different. Maybe a lot of

⏹️ ▶️ John times people will say, they’re like, you don’t understand the secret factors that influenced this decision. And all

⏹️ ▶️ John of the discovery in this entire court case has revealed there is no secret information. all the factors that we were discussing,

⏹️ ▶️ John those are the factors. And these are the pros. And these are the cons. And we saw which decision they made.

⏹️ ▶️ John And they did weigh all of these factors. And there is no angle that anybody in the news pundit

⏹️ ▶️ John sphere is missing. It’s dead straightforward. Obviously, they’re usually talking about

⏹️ ▶️ John it before we do, because they do know about things before we do. But by the time a story

⏹️ ▶️ John comes out or a policy is implemented, when we back solve and say, what must they have been thinking to implement this policy,

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s pretty much been dead on every single time because there’s no secrets. So I would encourage people

⏹️ ▶️ John to look, I mean, the transcripts are mind numbing. That’s why I wait for news articles to pull them out because I can’t

⏹️ ▶️ John read that format with like the monospace font and the deposition format. It’s so painful. So I wait for people

⏹️ ▶️ John to pull out the juicier bits, but I encourage everyone to read it because it really does humanize the

⏹️ ▶️ John company and the people involved. And it reveals them to be also, you know, smart.

⏹️ ▶️ John And like, even though they never talk about the stuff in public, they know about all of the pros and cons.

⏹️ ▶️ John They’re just not going to come out in public and blab them to you. But it doesn’t mean they don’t know them. Like, it’s another thing I think confuses people about

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple. It’s like, well, Apple never says anything about that. So maybe that’s not how they view it. It’s totally how they view it, because it’s the reality.

⏹️ ▶️ John They’re just careful in what they say to the public. But when they talk to each other, they say all the things you think they would

⏹️ ▶️ John say, right? So that I find sort of reassuring and

⏹️ ▶️ John boring and interesting in its boringness.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And then the other

⏹️ ▶️ John thing I’ll add is that I am shocked at how

⏹️ ▶️ John bad people are at writing email in

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco every company,

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, Epic, everyone involved. Because, I mean, granted, I have high standards

⏹️ ▶️ John for this stuff or whatever, but I feel like most people I communicate with on a daily basis at my actual

⏹️ ▶️ John job are better at writing good, coherent, well-formatted, well-spelled,

⏹️ ▶️ John grammatically correct, organized emails than most

⏹️ ▶️ John of the bigwigs at Apple at Epic, right? I’m not asking for much. I’m asking for sentences,

⏹️ ▶️ John punctuation, like some sort of paragraph, some sort of reasonable formatting,

⏹️ ▶️ John some acknowledgement of organizing your thoughts and having respect for the time of the person

⏹️ ▶️ John on the other end. And instead it’s just like, I randomly slapped this out, like while running to catch a flight

⏹️ ▶️ John or something. Like I had no time to

⏹️ ▶️ John do capitalization or spelling correctly, let alone grammar, let alone formatting.

⏹️ ▶️ John People who try to communicate in bulleted lists but can’t bother making any kind of bullets or they

⏹️ ▶️ John just put a hyphen touching a word of a sentence that’s all in lowercase and then the next hyphen is on the same line

⏹️ ▶️ John instead of a new line. And like, it’s just what an incoherent mess. Now, granted, this is not what they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John hired for. Their job is not to be expert. They’re not copywriters, right? That’s not their job. I understand that is not everyone’s

⏹️ ▶️ John forte, but boy, the standard is low. The standard is very low

⏹️ ▶️ John for expressing coherent thoughts in email. Maybe they’re more articulate in person. Maybe the meetings

⏹️ ▶️ John that they have these discussions in, are really where it happens, and the

⏹️ ▶️ John emails are just dashed off. Executives are busy, I totally understand it, but not everyone is a writer. But

⏹️ ▶️ John it really makes me appreciate some of the people in my, on my teams and in my sort of org chart

⏹️ ▶️ John and hierarchy at work of how they, how well I should send them a nice thank you at work and say, you know what, I

⏹️ ▶️ John never say this, but your emails are always well organized and respect my time and have like a topic

⏹️ ▶️ John sentence and front load the important information and are formatted nicely and you always spell things correctly. Thank you for that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Cause it could be worse.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, it’s so true. I feel like the higher up you go in the org chart, the less

⏹️ ▶️ Casey craps you give about what your emails look

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John like. For

⏹️ ▶️ John sure, like no one’s gonna yell at like, I don’t wanna pick a name, I was gonna yell at Eddy Cue for being a bad emailer.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like again, that’s not their job, but, eesh. I just, because you feel like law

⏹️ ▶️ John of averages, like the people at work, like there are people who are better at emails, they’re worse at emails, they’re better writers, and you know, like

⏹️ ▶️ John again, especially if it’s not your job, but you think law of average is one of the big wigs that Apple would be good at writing emails,

⏹️ ▶️ John and based on this documentation, either none of them are, or none of them

⏹️ ▶️ John wanna spend the time to write a good email.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but I don’t know, to me, like, I’m with you that there’s not a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of surprises coming out here, and that’s interesting and it’s boring,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I’ve been mostly trying to stay away from the coverage because it just keeps making me very, very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco angry. And I don’t even want to go into it too much here because I’m in a good mood today and I want to keep that mood

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going. It was a really nice day. I had a good time today. But, you know, what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we keep seeing from Apple in these things is an immense sense

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of entitlement to literally all commerce that happens

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on their phone platform. And I know from having posted about this on Twitter

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and having gotten hundreds of responses from people who think I’m wrong

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or an idiot or naive or whatever, my main criticism of this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that I don’t believe that Apple automatically deserves

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be able to dictate terms for the entire world of mobile commerce that’s happening on their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco platform. When the phone was new and when this world was smaller and more specialized

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and more competitive, you could argue like, well, they can dictate these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco terms just like a game console or whatever and okay. I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco though, you can look at the history of what has happened in the world

⏹️ ▶️ Marco over time when a private company has built

⏹️ ▶️ Marco something that has become critical infrastructure for an entire world of commerce.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you can look at things like the railroads, power lines, phone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lines, broadband lines. Like there are lots of examples in history where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a private company has built something that ended up being so incredibly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco important to such a vast amount of commerce and a vast part of society

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that even though it was built privately, regulation had to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco implemented or antitrust measures had to be taken because it just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco became too important to way too much of the commerce of the world

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at that time. And I think that standard should be applied here.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you look in a vacuum and say, well, if Apple developed this platform, they can dictate whatever terms they want to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for how everyone runs their business and they can take whatever cut they want to because they built it. That argument

⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes sense up to a point, up to like an approximate limit of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco size and complexity and importance to the world. And the world of mobile

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps is so big and such an important part to so much commerce

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these days that I think it has crossed that threshold where regulation

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or antitrust actions need to be implemented here for the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco benefit of society. Like it is now too big. It has crossed that threshold where that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now warranted. And I don’t think that we

⏹️ ▶️ Marco should have side loading or alternative app stores or things like that. I actually, I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would be better for the platform if we don’t get those things. I do think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in order to relieve this anti-competitive behavior and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of relieve the pressure valve on this, I do think we need to allow apps to have alternative

⏹️ ▶️ Marco payment methods if they want to. A lot of people also misunderstand that argument that I’m saying.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not saying that everyone would stop using Apple’s payment system. I wouldn’t even stop

⏹️ ▶️ Marco using it in my app because Apple’s payment system has a lot of merits. It is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco easier. As a customer, I do usually choose it if I have the option. It has

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of advantages. People, as Ben Thompson often says, people tend to make sure that credit card

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is up to date. And so on subscription billing, you do get fewer failures and cancellations and everything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco due to expired credit cards and everything. So there are lots of value points in Apple’s system. And I think if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple, if they allowed people to have their own payment methods in their apps, I think many apps

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would still use Apple’s just because it is somewhat competitive on those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco areas. But I also don’t think it is best for the world

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now, including Apple, for that to be dictated as the requirement that everyone must use

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the system and no other for this category of digital goods that isn’t even all purchases

⏹️ ▶️ Marco made through the iPhone. People keep making like consumer trust arguments and those arguments completely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fail to hold any water whatsoever once you look around and realize how much people have no problem

⏹️ ▶️ Marco using their credit cards to buy all sorts of other stuff through the phone that doesn’t fall under

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in-app purchase rules. Things like physical goods, services, stuff like that. Like there’s lots of things that you can buy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco by typing in your credit card details or using Apple Pay on the phone, which is not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going through the App Store purchase system and people have no trust issues with that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think that whole trust issue thing, I think that’s a BS diversion. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going back to it, I think the rule that you must use Apple’s purchase system

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is going to fall. And I think Apple should let it fall, however that happens through

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lawsuits or government or both, because if they don’t let that fall, way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco worse stuff is going to happen. If they don’t loosen control on that one point, they’re going

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to lose way more control when governments step in and make them do things like allow

⏹️ ▶️ Marco side loading or alternative app stores, because that’s the next step. If Apple will not budge

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the payment rule, that’s going to happen long-term. And I think that’s way worse

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the platform if that happens. So I hope Apple loosens their grip

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the payment processing rule because that, first of all,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that’s an overstep. I think Apple should not be requiring

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that all digital purchases use their system. I think that’s overreaching that might’ve made

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sense 10 years ago. it doesn’t make sense now. There are lots of problems with that, including things like Apple launching

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all their own competitive services that competitors literally can’t match because of that pricing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco rule and everything. So there’s all sorts of problems with that now. I think that rule needs to go, as well as the rule that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco says that you can’t talk about the rules around payment in your app. Those two need to go.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think if Apple loosens the grip on those things, it will save them from much more severe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco forced changes from governments down the road. And so it is in their best interest

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to loosen that grip. And I don’t think they would actually lose that much money by doing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. Honestly, if you look at what people do today,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what big companies do today, you got people like Netflix and everything who just bailed out of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in-app purchase years ago. And so many of the big companies that would be paying

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple 30% have already left, or already have their own alternative set up that they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to draw people to. Many of the other companies, like the big game

⏹️ ▶️ Marco companies, would probably still offer Apple stuff as an option because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco many people, again, they have those credit cards entered, their parents might have certain

⏹️ ▶️ Marco restrictions set for kids’ purchases and everything. So actually, I think Apple would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco still make a killing with their in-app purchase system if it got to compete on its merits.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But right now, it’s not competing on its merits, and that’s anti-competitive and it’s causing major

⏹️ ▶️ Marco issues for everyone, including Apple. And if they just would loosen their grip on that one rule,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of this antitrust pressure would disappear. It would just vanish. Like it is the biggest relief valve in the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco world and that would protect them from, it would let them retain control

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the App Store and on distribution of software on iOS still. So, and if they don’t let go

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that, they’re going to lose that control. It might take a few more years, but they’re going to lose it. Now,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco part two of what makes me incredibly upset following this story is Apple’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco incredibly arrogant and entitled and greedy and dismissive attitude towards

⏹️ ▶️ Marco developers. I have never been less excited

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about WWDC than I am this year, because what Apple keeps showing in their statements around

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, they think we owe them everything. They don’t value

⏹️ ▶️ Marco our contributions at all. They think we owe them our entire business.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they think we should be kissing their feet and thanking them for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco enabling our entire business to function. And we need to be quote, paying our way for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the App Store and paying for their developer tools with our 30% commissions. We

⏹️ ▶️ Marco should be bowing down and kissing their feet. And that attitude, I’m telling you, man,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That, that rubs me the wrong way so hard because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have our own businesses, thank you very much, and we add value to their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco platform. We add tons of value to their platform. How many people would buy iPhones

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they didn’t have third-party apps? I bet a lot less than how many

⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy them now. So we add value to their platform even if we don’t give them a dime. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s why they allow lots of apps on their store but don’t give them a dime that are free or ad based or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s why, because they know this too. Now, in addition to us, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to them not needing our 30% because we make the iPhone valuable and they make a lot of money

⏹️ ▶️ Marco off the iPhone. We do pay them in other ways. Every single developer pays $100 a year

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the developer fee. And then there’s search ads

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that many of us are paying now. I have spent a large part of the last couple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of years paying absurd amounts of money to Apple for search ads.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do this willingly, you know, I’m not being fooled by the system. I am sometimes being ripped off by it, but I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not being fooled by it. I know exactly what I’m getting into, and I choose to pay. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco here I am paying Apple some more. And they just literally, they just launched a new search ad unit,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which I had a hilarious, like overpriced experience with that I instantly stopped after

⏹️ ▶️ Marco setting almost $1,000 on fire accidentally. That was fun. But they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco make money from us in lots of other ways. We are paying our way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco by trying to get our apps visible in their store, which is not doing much for creation, or for curation rather, or promotion

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of our apps, despite what they say. So they make lots of money off of us already.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re trying to play this sad sap card that we owe them and we gotta pay our way to fund

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the app store. No, the App Store is very well funded, even without that 30%. And if they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco loosen that rule, they’re not going to lose the entire 30%. They’re going to lose some of it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I honestly don’t think it would be more than a drop in the bucket compared to all the other services or revenue that they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco making off of us, especially from things like search ads and everything else. So I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the attitude that they are showing in this is both

⏹️ ▶️ Marco nearly delusional, as well as I think many of their arguments are made in bad faith to intentionally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco distract and distort the discussion. I mean, granted, they’re lawyers, that’s their job, but still. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think finally, the attitude they have shown about the way they view

⏹️ ▶️ Marco developers and the way they view how much they think they’re entitled to from us,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much they think we should be bowing down and kissing their feet, and how little they think of us

⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall. This year at WWDC, that’s all I’m going to be thinking about.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And when they have people up there on stage telling us how great we are and how trying to rile

⏹️ ▶️ Marco us up, all I’m going to be thinking about is how much Apple has shown over and over again in their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco statements, in arguments like this, how little they really think of us and how much they think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re entitled to all of our money. Everything they say at WBC, as far as I’m concerned, about what they think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of developers is total bullshit as long as these people are still in charge.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have a lot of thoughts about this and I should start by saying that I pretty

⏹️ ▶️ Casey much agree with everything you just said. I am, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at best, I am a teeny tiny itty bitty indie developer on the App Store. I am

⏹️ ▶️ Casey nowhere near the position that you’re in. And in fact, I bet you John is probably a bigger developer than me at

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this particular moment. But, yeah, something I’ve been thinking about, to go back to the earlier

⏹️ ▶️ Casey part of your conversation, conversation, Marco, and then I’d like to come back to what you just said. I’ve been thinking

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot over the last week or two about the EPIC lawsuit and a lot of the things

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Apple has been saying lately and whether the 30% is fair and I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Casey been thinking about this even since, you know, the small business program, whatever they call it. And it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey funny you bring up what I think is basically common carrier here in the States,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but what you were saying was, you know, at some point you reached a threshold where this is too—this infrastructure is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey too important and it becomes kind of a public good to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a degree. Even though it’s a private company’s thing, it’s so important to so much of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the country, if not the world, that it becomes kind of de facto public. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I definitely think that the App Store is at that point, without question.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I definitely do not think, as you were saying earlier, that early on it was. I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey think early on in the first, I don’t know, two to four years of the app store, I don’t think it was in this like common

⏹️ ▶️ Casey carrier de facto public position. And I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Apple to have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey set the terms to even potentially just, you know, the 30% may not have been so unreasonable then.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But at this point, now that it’s a seemingly well-oiled machine, and now

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Apple gets to on one side of its mouth say, oh, look at all the money we’ve paid all these developers.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re welcome, everybody. at all this money that we got for you. If they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to say all those things, then I feel like they should show a little more goodwill than they have.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The problem I have with this whole common carrier argument that I’ve been building in my brain is at what point did

⏹️ ▶️ Casey we cross that threshold? I’ve yet to come up with a good answer for it. I don’t know if it was after two to four

⏹️ ▶️ Casey years. I don’t know if it was just 10 minutes ago or presumably somewhere in between, but I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey completely and utterly agree that we are at that threshold where I think more regulation is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably necessary. Even if Apple does the right thing, even if they

⏹️ ▶️ Casey do the things you said, which I agree, even if they say, OK, you’re allowed to talk about the rules in-app, and OK,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re allowed to use your own payment method in-app, even still, I kind of wonder if

⏹️ ▶️ Casey regulation would be necessary and or helpful to prevent them from reneging

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or to prevent them from coming up with some cockamamie scheme like search ads that makes

⏹️ ▶️ Casey things gross again or grosser, if you will. And I don’t know, it’s just,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I definitely think, and I was planning to bring it up tonight, so great minds think alike, I definitely think we’ve reached that threshold though,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey where this is a de facto public good. Um, the other thing I wanted to comment on, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey completely and utterly agree with you saying that Apple is looking for us to kiss their feet

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and saying, oh, you owe us, you owe us, you owe us a hundred percent agree.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey However, for the sake of conversation, are they saying that because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’re thinking of Facebook and WhatsApp and people like them, and they’re not thinking of the yous

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the mes and the johns of the world. Again, I agree with you. Don’t get me wrong. I’m just trying to play devil’s advocate here.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, do you think that they’re, they’re confusing the message a little bit because they’re saying these things without any caveats

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or asterisks or daggers or double daggers, but really what they’re thinking of when they say these things are

⏹️ ▶️ Casey screw you Facebook, look at all the money we’ve made you with our app store, where what you and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I are hearing and John is hearing is screw you, John, Marco, and Casey, you should be thankful we

⏹️ ▶️ Casey gave you a darn cent, much less the tens or hundreds or hundreds of thousands or whatever dollars that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey any of you have made. Do you think it’s that they’re thinking of an entire different

⏹️ ▶️ Casey niche of developer, or do you think that they just are thinking of every single developer on the App Store?

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I’m not thinking of that directly, and Marco already touched on this. So I think Marco knows, at least intellectually,

⏹️ ▶️ John partially what’s going on here, although it doesn’t make him less pissed about it. Remember, this is a court

⏹️ ▶️ John case and the lawyers who are working for Apple have to make the strongest possible argument, which is another reason

⏹️ ▶️ John I will cite that even though it looks like I think is going to lose this court case because it doesn’t seem to have particularly good legal standing.

⏹️ ▶️ John The damage done to Apple is by forcing Apple to make their quote unquote strongest argument,

⏹️ ▶️ John which requires them to dump all over developers. You know what I mean? Like they’re saying like this is our store, we

⏹️ ▶️ John run it, you owe us how you know, like the Apple is making all these arguments that make Apple look bad

⏹️ ▶️ John because they are the best legal arguments like given the current laws, right? And so

⏹️ ▶️ John every every time an Apple lawyer gets up there, and just dumps all over developers

⏹️ ▶️ John and basically says epic should be epic should be thanking us. And I can’t believe the nerve of them trying to say that

⏹️ ▶️ John they want to run a store within our store. And don’t they understand what we’re doing for them or whatever? It’s because

⏹️ ▶️ John this is the strongest argument in their favor, legally speaking, and probably why they’re going to win.

⏹️ ▶️ John But it hurts Apple’s reputation with developers so much because like, we can hear you, you know, Apple, like

⏹️ ▶️ John we hear you saying these things, right? And so yeah, definitely it hurts a lot if you’re a developer to hear all this stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ John Now when we look at these stuff from discovery, you do see that same thing echoed in emails

⏹️ ▶️ John within Apple over the decades. So I’m not saying this is just a lawyer thing, right? The lawyers have to be out there

⏹️ ▶️ John today now making the strongest possible argument and also probably, you know, the lawyers don’t run Apple. They’re just making,

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re just trying to win the case, right? But then you see those same arguments inside Apple over the years, but you also see

⏹️ ▶️ John the other side of those arguments inside Apple over the years. So it’s clear that at various times, various people have brought up like,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, one of them that’s been circulated a lot is Phil Schiller saying, just years and years ago, saying, do we really think

⏹️ ▶️ John we can stick to 30% forever? I know we kind of just did 30% as like it seemed like a good deal, but like,

⏹️ ▶️ John as the years go on and as the store gets bigger, do we really think it’s tenable to keep it at 30%?

⏹️ ▶️ John Or should we maybe think about lowering it, like on our own from a position of strength rather than

⏹️ ▶️ John being forced to lower it? And it seems like Phil lost that argument Because the answer is, we’re not going to do

⏹️ ▶️ John it until Congress essentially starts making noises and we get scared, right? That’s why he’s on the roof.

⏹️ ▶️ John Even then, we’ll do it in a jerky way that makes it complicated to make people apply and have all these dumb rules. And

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve talked about it in the past, right? So this is another example of the boringness

⏹️ ▶️ John of like, when we were all talking out here of like, it seems like Apple really doesn’t respect developers. And it seems like Apple is thinking

⏹️ ▶️ John of developers in this way. People could say, oh, that’s a very uncharitable interpretation

⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple. you don’t know what they’re saying internally. Just because you see this policy doesn’t mean that they have this dim view

⏹️ ▶️ John of developers. But now that we see the discovery, we’re like, that dim view of developers exists within Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John and was a factor in these decisions, right? Also, we get to see the other side and that Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John is a big group of people. Not everyone agrees all the time. And at various times, people have had different ideas

⏹️ ▶️ John about what they should do. The iMessage thing is a great example. I didn’t dig into that because, I guess we’ll put a link in the show so you can look at it or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John But it was like, Eddie Q was saying, it’s a quote, We really need to bring iMessage to

⏹️ ▶️ John Android, right? Like he wants to like, he realizes iMessage is a big

⏹️ ▶️ John thing and by keeping it Apple only, we’re stopping ourselves from like becoming

⏹️ ▶️ John dominant, the dominant messaging platform, kind of like, you know, like cross-platform

⏹️ ▶️ John messaging to sort of own the world of messaging. It seems like we could do that, we’re doing real well. And the other side of that is like,

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, but iMessage does keep people on the iPhone, right? And it’s a thing that keeps people from buying

⏹️ ▶️ John their kids cheap Android phones because they wanna be able to do iMessage. And like, again, both sides of

⏹️ ▶️ John the issue are presented. One side is kind of like, oh, you know, we’re leaving money

⏹️ ▶️ John on the table. We could become the dominant force. And the other side is, but we need to protect ourselves, right? And all

⏹️ ▶️ John these developer issues are the same thing. Someone’s saying, we’ve had 30% for a while, and like, there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John no real reason for it other than we can get away with it. Is it a great policy to just see how long we can get away

⏹️ ▶️ John with it until the peasants revolt? Or should we now, so we can look magnanimous? And again,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think this was like 2011 or 14. Like, this is not like last year they were discussing this. It

⏹️ ▶️ John was a longer time ago, you know? And the pitch was, let’s do it now. And you can see like,

⏹️ ▶️ John oh, everyone wants to be so happy. Imagine that WWC, whatever year it was. If it like in 2011 or 2014 or something, Apple had just come out on stage

⏹️ ▶️ John and said, remember the 30%? Now it’s 15 for everybody. People would have gone nuts. Like, they would have,

⏹️ ▶️ John we would have loved it. It would have been, you know, because it wouldn’t be because Congress

⏹️ ▶️ John is investigating them. It wouldn’t be because they’re being sued. You know what I mean? because Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John sort of read the room and figured, let’s do this now. So we look like the good guy. But, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John that faction or that that idea didn’t go anywhere inside Apple and they

⏹️ ▶️ John had to wait until it came to this. So anyway, I feel like I, I feel differently

⏹️ ▶️ John than both of you about the whole sort of monopoly aspect and how important Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John is and all that other things or whatever. But I agree on the important part, which is we can make

⏹️ ▶️ John new laws and we should. And Apple is going to be subject to them. So Apple really

⏹️ ▶️ John should get out ahead of this even more than they have. And even when Apple wins this case, they should really

⏹️ ▶️ John strongly consider the things that Marco is suggesting or other things like that, because, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, just ask Microsoft. If you try to take a hard line, it may not kill your company and they may not even

⏹️ ▶️ John break you up. But there was a long period where after the Microsoft antitrust trial, where

⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft was like wounded, let’s say it was limping for a while. Like it, it,

⏹️ ▶️ John it, it hurt Microsoft to go through that and it took them a long time to recover and

⏹️ ▶️ John they never were what they were before, which is probably a good thing because we didn’t need that in the world. But, uh,

⏹️ ▶️ John if, if Apple wants to learn from that, and I think Apple has learned by like doing,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, doing stuff that, you know, they did the, the small business program there, they’re trying to loosen things

⏹️ ▶️ John up or whatever, but at the same time, they have a bunch of lawyers every day spouting stuff in news stories that

⏹️ ▶️ John makes Apple look so bad to many of its stakeholders, right? To the public to

⏹️ ▶️ John I think it makes Apple bad, but certainly to developers. And I’ve seen so many sour attitudes about the how

⏹️ ▶️ John developers are feeling and I feel like Apple could say, purchase, the lawyers are just saying that. And I know we said that in

⏹️ ▶️ John the email, but look, here’s the other email, we discussed it internally. But just don’t pay them to the lawyers. They have to say

⏹️ ▶️ John this to win the case, and they’re going to win the case. But But don’t feel bad developers and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John like, I don’t think humans work like that, Apple. We’re still kind of pissed at you.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and it’s not just the lawyer saying it, it’s the executives saying it. It’s the press statement saying it. It’s all this,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the little like, you know, PR studies they put out about, look how many jobs we’re creating. Like it’s, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can see it and it’s, it’s in those emails from, from, you know, higher ups and everything.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is not just something lawyers are saying, like the attitude that Apple reflects.

⏹️ ▶️ John It is in the emails, but the other side is also in the emails. The other side is not from on lawyers mouths ever.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fair enough, but there’s not a lot of that other side in the emails. At this point, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard to quantify how much developer goodwill Apple has set on fire

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the last couple of years, but they just keep digging and digging and digging.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I don’t wanna speak out of turn here, but occasionally Apple has asked me for some kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco quote some

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of quote or possible thing they could use like in a press release,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t give it to them now. Like they haven’t asked recently, but I would comply in the past. I would gladly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco try to help them out because I had a better image of what that relationship might have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco been. That goodwill is gone now. I would not cooperate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with them on that kind of stuff now because the way I view

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my relationship with Apple as a developer is completely different now than it was a couple of years ago. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I see now really what it is and how they see it. And I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see that they don’t value me very well. They think things about our relationship that I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think. I see things very differently. And I can’t imagine looking

⏹️ ▶️ Marco across the industry how many developers feel similarly. Like how many developers might

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do something to work with Apple or to help them out who now won’t? How

⏹️ ▶️ Marco many apps that developers were thinking about making that they now just won’t? How much developers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are motivated to adopt Apple’s newest technologies to support Apple’s newest devices

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who now just won’t? How many developers out there who might’ve tried a cool new business model in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of their apps, but can’t because of the stupid in-app purchase rules, or won’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even go near it because it’s near the edge of the rules and they know better than to even step near

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them because they know Apple will just bite their head off at any moment. It’s really hard to quantify

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of this, But this is real massive damage Apple has done to themselves

⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of sheer greed. I have very little respect for the leadership

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Tim Cook. I know a lot of people out there like him. I really don’t. And this is one of the areas

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I think he has really put short-term gains above

⏹️ ▶️ Marco long-term value. And I can’t imagine how they’re gonna recover

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from this. It’s gonna take a decade to recover from this if they turn around now. Like the opinion

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of developers, or the opinion developers have of Apple, I don’t think has ever been lower than right now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re gonna have to really change a lot of things to turn that around, and I don’t see them changing any of them. And furthermore,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I do very much agree, and as I was saying earlier, and as you were touching on, John, a minute

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago, I can’t imagine it would be a good thing if the government

⏹️ ▶️ Marco had to step in and really slap Apple down in a big way with things like alternative app stores or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco side loading. That would be a very bad thing for the platform. I really hope

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple sees that too, and that Apple pulls their own relief valve before government

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has to do that to them. Because that’s not a good thing if that happens to the platform. But again,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco why Apple hasn’t pulled this relief valve yet, I think is entirely down to just short-term gains. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a services revenue company now. Look at all the services revenue growth. What services revenue mostly means

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the Google search deal and App Store taxes. That’s what that mostly means. It’s not everyone buying Apple TV Plus,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco News break, you know, it’s not everybody buying like, you know, Apple Arcade. That’s not most of that revenue.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Most of that revenue is the, you know, Google search deal and app store taxes. That’s what that’s. So when Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco says services revenue, that’s what they’re talking about. So I can’t imagine the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco current leadership of this company doing anything that would reduce that number, that quarterly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco number, even though it is really very much like, you know, a short term quarterly numbers game that we always

⏹️ ▶️ Marco make fun of other companies, CEOs for focusing on the short-term gains at the expense of long-term

⏹️ ▶️ Marco values and things. But that’s what I see Apple doing with services revenue. And I don’t see

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything changing anytime soon unless the leadership changes.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think that they’ll, you don’t need to change the leadership if they don’t change it. They’ll react, they’ll change. I mean, they already have with the

⏹️ ▶️ John reduction of cuts and I think they’re gonna go more in that direction as they realize what’s gonna happen.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And

⏹️ ▶️ John if you think the developer faith, developer faith in Apple has never been lower, you haven’t

⏹️ ▶️ John been an Apple developer for enough decades because

⏹️ ▶️ John if we had to pick the real low point, I would probably say like either just before Jobs came

⏹️ ▶️ John back or right after he came back because like the various

⏹️ ▶️ John modern OS efforts they made and the various new APIs they introduced and trashed. And like, I

⏹️ ▶️ John think that was probably the lowest point because they had so few developers and they were just jerking them around constantly with like, you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John gonna do this and you’re gonna use this new API, nevermind that one, here’s new OS plan. It’ll be out next year. Nevermind. We’re doing

⏹️ ▶️ John a different plan. Well, here’s this thing. Nevermind. We bought next. And it was just like, wow. Like it was, I mean, if you

⏹️ ▶️ John want to watch that, you know, the famous Q and a session with Steve jobs at WWDC 1997,

⏹️ ▶️ John the anger in that audience, uh, is, it’s just like, you can, you can feel like heat

⏹️ ▶️ John coming off the seats. Like it’s just, it was, and for good reason, because it was a giant mess.

⏹️ ▶️ John At least that was job saying like, look, I didn’t make this mess. I wasn’t even here for the past few years. Like, but, but let me just

⏹️ ▶️ John explain to you how we’re going to fix it and having everyone in the audience not believe him. That’s a great thing to watch, by the way. We should find a link

⏹️ ▶️ John to that because in that 1997 Q and a with Steve jobs, can you imagine a WWDC session

⏹️ ▶️ John where Steve jobs gets up on stage and just takes free form questions from the audience? Uh, not a thing that would happen

⏹️ ▶️ John in

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco later years. Right.

⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, but when he did it, he essentially outlined his entire plan for what he’s going to do with Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John and it sounded ridiculous and no one believed him and they all hated him and then he essentially did it all and it was just like, you watch

⏹️ ▶️ John it now in hindsight and you’re like, what? And the audience just does not believe a word of it. They’re

⏹️ ▶️ John just like, we’ve been burned too many times. You make all these promises, we do all this work, and then you

⏹️ ▶️ John pull the rug out from under us and you just keep asking us to do a new thing. So anyway, it has been worse, but that was decades

⏹️ ▶️ John ago, who cares? I did wanna say that I looked up the email that I was trying to refer to. It was 2011, 2011 from Phil Schiller.

⏹️ ▶️ John The App Store was what, 2008? Yeah. So this is three

⏹️ ▶️ John years into the App Store. Phil Schiller comes out with his own infinite timeline thing. Food for

⏹️ ▶️ John thought, do we think our 70-30 split will last forever? I mean, he’s gonna say, sure, it’s good now, but

⏹️ ▶️ John is it gonna be forever? And then you can read the email, I’ll put a link in the show notes to one of these stories that says forever.

⏹️ ▶️ John 2011, so it’s not even like they were waiting until like, you know, like, wow, there’s a little bit

⏹️ ▶️ John of pushback from the App Store and like, you know, around 2017 or so, and this is 2011, it’s only three

⏹️ ▶️ John years, the App Store is three years old. And he’s like, maybe once we start making $1 billion a year

⏹️ ▶️ John profit from the app store, we could think about lowering the

⏹️ ▶️ John rate because, hey, if we’re making a billion dollars in profit, I think we can afford to lower the rate. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John look at the email. As he said, just food for thought. Apple did not eat that food.

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple spit that food back out. And again, Discovery doesn’t show you every single relevant email

⏹️ ▶️ John to these discussions, and I’m sure there’s lots of discussions in person over the years, right? So

⏹️ ▶️ John it shows me that these thoughts are in Apple’s mind, But we know what they did, and we know

⏹️ ▶️ John the only thing that actually caused them to act has been this government pressure. And the thing you were talking about, Marco,

⏹️ ▶️ John of like developers’ sentiment turning south and all the things they’re missing out on,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think the biggest reason that I’m rooting for

⏹️ ▶️ John some kind of regulation in this area that affects not just Apple but everybody is the idea behind like, hey,

⏹️ ▶️ John if you can’t make your business plan work in the App Store or if don’t like Apple’s terms or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, although Apple, I think is not a monopoly and therefore not subject to all the restrictions that these court

⏹️ ▶️ John cases seem to want to put Apple under saying, hey, Apple shouldn’t be allowed to do this. I don’t think Apple is

⏹️ ▶️ John a monopoly. But there is a duopoly for sure, which is Google and Apple, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John And so if you don’t like Apple, oh, why don’t you try Google? Google’s not that much different. They are different in some important

⏹️ ▶️ John ways, but not that much. Like both of them have a fairly strong grip on

⏹️ ▶️ John their app store. And it really makes it so that, you know, this is

⏹️ ▶️ John what you were getting out of like the entirety of the mobile landscape. I don’t think Apple is the entirety of the mobile landscape,

⏹️ ▶️ John but Apple and Google to a first approximation are very close to the entirety of the mobile landscape

⏹️ ▶️ John in the United States, right? And that is a problem. It’s not as big a problem over when

⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft had 90 something percent market share, but it’s not great when Apple and Google have combined

⏹️ ▶️ John again in the U. S. 90 something percent market share because it means that if you don’t like something

⏹️ ▶️ John about the app store, it’s like, well, fine, just go someplace else. Where else am I going to go? Should I start, should I make

⏹️ ▶️ John my own mobile phone platform and try to compete with Apple and Google or is it not possible to, you know, participate

⏹️ ▶️ John in the ecosystem of the most important computing device that everyone on the planet uses? Right. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I think this is a perfect, uh, you know, the right way into this is not to to say Epic demands that Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John does what it wants, because it’s illegal for Apple to do this because they’re a monopoly. I don’t think they

⏹️ ▶️ John are. And I think Epic’s gonna lose this case because you can’t make a company do a thing that you want them to do

⏹️ ▶️ John by saying it’s not fair that they’re allowed to do this. I think Apple is allowed to do it. I just think it’s dumb for

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple to do it. But that’s why we have a place where we can make new laws and say, hey,

⏹️ ▶️ John the situation is what it is. And I think we should, but just like when there were five movie studios or five

⏹️ ▶️ John music labels or a small number of phone companies even after the breakup of AT&T,

⏹️ ▶️ John we apply regulations to industries even when one company doesn’t have a monopoly

⏹️ ▶️ John just because we know that a very small number of companies encompass the entire world. Like there

⏹️ ▶️ John used to be much more sane regulations about owning multiple television stations and also newspapers

⏹️ ▶️ John in the same jurisdiction and everything to try to prevent anyone from getting big enough to be a threat.

⏹️ ▶️ John And here, I think we’ve let the world of mobile platforms get to a point where there is essentially a

⏹️ ▶️ John duopoly. Again, in the United States, it’s slightly different, perhaps in China and other places.

⏹️ ▶️ John And that we need new laws to address that, new restrictions on this industry to

⏹️ ▶️ John make it so that their power is slightly lessened, without saying, oh, you need to be broken

⏹️ ▶️ John up and the app store needs to be a separate company, without saying any disgruntled developer

⏹️ ▶️ John can demand that you do what you want within your app store. Because again, that doesn’t make any sense don’t have an actual monopoly.

⏹️ ▶️ John But regulation makes sense when there are a small number of companies that completely

⏹️ ▶️ John define an important section of the economy, and this surely qualifies. Obviously, any time

⏹️ ▶️ John any laws are made in this country, it is a very fraught endeavor because our lawmakers

⏹️ ▶️ John are dumb. Some of them are dumb. Many of them are bought and sold

⏹️ ▶️ John due to our dumb laws that allow them to be bought and sold. It’s kind of a cycle there. You see? Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not optimistic that we’re going to do the right thing with these laws. Witness every law related to the internet that came out in the

⏹️ ▶️ John 90s, right? But I think that is actually the right remedy for this situation.

⏹️ ▶️ John Aside from Apple doing the right thing by itself, but relying, and we’ve talked about this before, relying on the

⏹️ ▶️ John devalence of the powerful for Apple to preemptively do the right thing, that’s the right move for Apple. But

⏹️ ▶️ John who knows who will be running Apple in 20 or 50 years? I would much rather have some laws on the books that sort of define

⏹️ ▶️ John what is and isn’t acceptable within this space, so that any new company that springs up. Say

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple goes down in flames, Google disappears in 100 years, like whatever company pops up in this space,

⏹️ ▶️ John that these regulations apply to them and, you know, give privacy protections,

⏹️ ▶️ John protect the economy, and don’t allow the companies that control the platforms to control all the profits.

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#askatp: Hiding Dropbox icon

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s do some Ask ATP.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jason Bates Brownsword, what a great name, writes, love the show. I was listening to the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey show on my way to work and you grabbed my attention when you were talking about hiding the icons in the menu bar. As soon as I got home,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I started getting rid of the icons until I got to Dropbox. How do you get rid of it? Well, for me, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey got rid of Dropbox. I think I explained last episode

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’m using a combination of Synology Drive, of which there are like eight

⏹️ ▶️ Casey different things that Synology has done that they call drive. But there’s one of them that is basically their

⏹️ ▶️ Casey de facto Dropbox clone. And then that in combination with, I think it’s called

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Synology Cloud Sync, which will synchronize on your Synology

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a folder on your Synology with your Dropbox. So my Synology drive is my

⏹️ ▶️ Casey quote unquote Dropbox. It’s my shared file structure. And one of the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey folders within there is where I synchronize my Dropbox. And so that’s how

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve done it. And if you happen to have a Synology, I cannot recommend it enough. But for those of you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey who don’t, I don’t know, bartender, what do you guys do for this?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that was why I put this item in here. Because when we were discussing the population of your menu bar, and I was helping you get rid of icons

⏹️ ▶️ John that you didn’t need to be in there. Lots of people said, and you guys should check out bartender. So anyway, yeah, we all

⏹️ ▶️ John know about bartender. But just for the listeners, if you don’t, and this is the actual answer to this question, if you actually don’t want to stop using

⏹️ ▶️ John Dropbox, there are multiple utilities, bartender being the most well known that will let you hide

⏹️ ▶️ John collapse, condense and otherwise manipulate the icons that are in your menu bar. Like bartender is itself

⏹️ ▶️ John a third party application. And what it does is it goes into your menu bar and lets you rearrange

⏹️ ▶️ John and collapse and hide icons that are there. So if you have an icon like Dropbox and Dropbox

⏹️ ▶️ John itself doesn’t let you hide the icon, but you still want to be running Dropbox, check out bartender. I what’s the other well

⏹️ ▶️ John known one. I forgot the name of the other one, but anyway, there’s multiple users do this, but bartender is very well known. I’ve, I’ve had

⏹️ ▶️ John it for a long time. I run it in the past. Now I monitor so freaking wide and I don’t have to worry about it

⏹️ ▶️ John anymore. But if you want to hide, if you want to hide Dropbox, check

⏹️ ▶️ Casey out Bartender. Yeah, there’s also I think it’s Vanilla, if I remember right. It’s by the same fellow who does

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Rocket, which is itself a must have in my personal opinion. Rocket is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a system app there. It’s a mini bar app that lets you do Slack style

⏹️ ▶️ Casey typing of emojis basically anywhere you can do text entry on your Mac. So I’ll put a link to that in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the in the show notes as well. And I’m not gonna stall for time and look it up at the moment, but I believe

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it’s Vanilla that does a similar thing, this is by Matthew Palmer, that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey does a similar thing to Bartender. It’s a little bit different in the mechanism by which it does it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But yeah, I mean, Rocket gets my highest recommendation. Vanilla, I haven’t tried in a while, and it was a little

⏹️ ▶️ Casey glitchy for me when I was using multiple monitors, but you should definitely check it out and see what

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you think.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh yeah, and for people who don’t know, Like if you hold for the Apple icons, I know it’s confusing in Big Sur when

⏹️ ▶️ John they added the control center thing or whatever. Anyway, if you hold down the command key, you can drag most

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple menu bar icons off of the menu bar. You hold down the command key, you drag them off, you drag them down

⏹️ ▶️ John a little ways and then eventually you get like a remove thing and you let go, right? So for first party ones,

⏹️ ▶️ John you can rearrange them by holding down the command key and dragging them and you can also remove them, which essentially hides them.

⏹️ ▶️ John Most of the Apple ones also have a checkbox that’s buried in some preference pane you’d never think to look for it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Third party apps usually have a checkbox in some preference setting somewhere within their app

⏹️ ▶️ John that might be hard to find, but the Apple ones you can usually just drag off.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I

⏹️ ▶️ John think it might work for third party ones too, let me see. No, it gives me the little buster icon. I just tried to

⏹️ ▶️ John drag Skype off. You can hold down the command and drag it down, and when you get down, when you get it

⏹️ ▶️ John like two inches below, instead of showing the little thing that says it’s gonna be removed, I just get a little circle with a line through it,

⏹️ ▶️ John which is the OS’s way of telling me Skype does not let you remove that icon by dragging it, but the Apple ones

⏹️ ▶️ John can be removed that way. And the Skype one, if it can be removed at all, would be a checkbox. And

⏹️ ▶️ John if it can’t be removed, bartender a vanilla.

Follow-up: Apple’s bad hire

⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, some real-time follow-up. According to Mark Gurman,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Antonio Garcia Martinez has already been fired from Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco he didn’t make it through the show.

⏹️ ▶️ John Didn’t even make it through the show. This really does bring up exactly what the people were

⏹️ ▶️ John saying in the petition, which is like, how does this get past our hiring process? It’s not obscure.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not a secret. It’s not hearsay. It’s a literal New York Times bestselling book. Maybe he wasn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John a high-profile enough position. Maybe the whole ad organization

⏹️ ▶️ John is filled with sleazy people and we just don’t know it. Like, that’s, you know, again, it’s not Apple will work

⏹️ ▶️ John out internally, I assume that because that’s essentially what they’re demanding. The people are saying Apple weren’t saying you need to fire

⏹️ ▶️ John this guy right away, although I’m sure they thought that what they were saying is, how did this happen? Exactly. Let’s look

⏹️ ▶️ John at our process because it seems like our process is falling down, kind of like the umpteen emails

⏹️ ▶️ John that you will see in discovery from the epic trial of some Apple executive or another saying, look

⏹️ ▶️ John at the scam app. number one in the free apps right now. How are these getting past review?

⏹️ ▶️ John There are so many emails where people are angry and credulous about that. And yeah, we feel you

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple executives, we have the same questions.

#askatp: SOC-swaps

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on with more ask ATP Chandler Kent writes with more of the computer moving on to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a system on a chip architecture, would it theoretically be possible to swap out a system on a chip to upgrade a computer?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey What would be the disadvantages to allowing that to happen? What design considerations would exist to keep backwards compatibility

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the interfaces to the system on a chip? What are the trade offs? Chandler writes Apple, Apple would never

⏹️ ▶️ Casey do this, but I thought it would be an interesting discussion.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can we just start saying SOC? I know no one says SOC, but like I feel like this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is too awkward of a thing We have to shorten it and it just- Stop trying to make MOV happen

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I get the reference

⏹️ ▶️ John You’re the king of bad pronunciations of computer acronyms

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s S-O-C, SOC. What?

⏹️ ▶️ John What? How would you say it? We don’t. We say S-O-C. It’s pretty short already

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe it’s pronounced SOC

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every single acronym or things that we’ve had that have been like that short we, you always have people start

⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying it like as like a one syllable word.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, but then you have the gif gif war where there’s the people who are right that say gif and the people who are wrong that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey say gif.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John And you also got

⏹️ ▶️ John socks. I mean, you probably don’t know this, but people who work in big companies know socks is already a thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What is it? Standard operating procedure? Like what, what are we? No,

⏹️ ▶️ John S O X Casey. You know,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was that, that’s what am I thinking of? Um, no, I don’t know what it is. What’s the, Oh no, I’m thinking of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oxford. No, no, no. What’s the Sarbanes Oxley. there it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John is. Is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it? Okay. Yep. There

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey go. So

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a little bit of a sound alike. Anyway, SoC. That’s what we’re calling it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. So if you, if one were to do this, I mean, the very first thing you’d have to do is make it socketable, right? Or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey God, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco been so long since I built a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey computer. Yeah, socket it. Socket it. Yeah, whatever. Bop it. Oh, gosh.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, it’s so bad. You would have to make, you’d have to make the system on a chip or SoC,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, a easily pluggable, you know, so a way to eject it from the,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the motherboard or the logic board and then plug a new one back in, which is a thing that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one could do, but particularly on a laptop, I don’t think, or, or even more so an iPad, I don’t think you’re really going to want

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do that. And plus, you know, technology marches on quickly and, you know, there’s different

⏹️ ▶️ Casey inputs and outputs and interfaces and so on. I just, I, I, I don’t see it happening. And I think there’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey too many trade-offs. You’re, you’re, you’re, you’re dedicating yourself to the the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey inputs, outputs, and socket of the day when you make this chip and you can’t change it for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey years if you want to stick with it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean if you look at the world of socketed CPUs like this world exists, it’s existed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for quite some time, you know, in the PC and formerly Mac world, we can see already

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what the trade-offs are. You know, first of all, you need, as Casey, you kind of need like physical

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bulk, you know, you need a socket and then like some kind of mounting mechanism that can hold the chip to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. You need some kind of interface. It’s like a bunch of pits of metal or little pins or something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for them to touch each other to interface with the stuff around it. And so that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cost, it’s bulk, it’s points of failure. But then also, you look at the world of, suppose

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have some Intel or AMD motherboard. After how many years

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can you still use that motherboard with new CPUs? It’s not that many years usually. They change the sockets

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or things get upgraded because the components around the processor change. Now,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you might have things like faster RAM, buses and stuff like that. You might have different IO ports

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that come in and out of fashion, different amounts of PCI lanes or whatever. Now,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you move into a SOC lifestyle, I’m gonna go with it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey As you move into the SOC lifestyle,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of that stuff moves onto the chip. So some of that stuff you could theoretically swap out with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an upgrade. Like if the memory’s on the chip, stuff like that. like some of that stuff you could

⏹️ ▶️ Marco make interchangeable. The problem is that there’s still all that other stuff around it. So for instance, you have things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like just basic power and heat requirements. You design the system with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a certain amount of capacity for whatever socket it comes with, but then if you wanna upgrade it in a couple of years,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe the new one needs more power or makes more heat and then the stuff around it no longer will supply

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. Maybe it’s just a different size, maybe it got bigger or economies of scale worked

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it got smaller, then you have that issue to deal with. And you also have other things like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the things that it’s talking to, not everything is on the SOC. You still have, in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some cases you have RAM that’s off of it if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John need to have a lot of it.

⏹️ ▶️ John You’ve gotta stop, I can’t even parse what you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco saying. Stop saying SOC, you’re killing me.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you have things like the SSD, or the cell modem, or stuff like that. There are other things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are still pretty large things that are not being sock-itted. Ha ha!

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So there are a lot of other stuff, other things around it that wouldn’t go with it still

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or wouldn’t have necessarily a very long lifespan. So I think in practice, even though

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this would probably never actually become a thing, I think if it was a thing,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’d have a similar problem that you have with the PC motherboards today, where you might be able to upgrade it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco within like a year and a half or two years or whatever, but once you go past that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your like motherboard wouldn’t be compatible with the new Socks anyway. And so it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn’t be a very long-lived upgrade path. It would be much more like today where, you know, today if you buy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a processor, you know, you could use it with the motherboard you bought it with, chances are by the time you wanna upgrade

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the processor, you’re probably gonna need a new motherboard as well for all the surrounding stuff. So I think it would work like that if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it ever happened. But again, there are the realities of making this happen that would probably never actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think you covered most of the points. I mean, I what Chandler I would say Chandler is that yes, that SOC

⏹️ ▶️ John does make it easier because it has more stuff on it. But there’s those other trade offs are still there.

⏹️ ▶️ John And some sockets live longer than others in the PC space. And you can make kind of a forward looking socket. But

⏹️ ▶️ John the main reason Apple wouldn’t do it aside from then never wanting to upgrade stuff is, as we’ve seen so far with

⏹️ ▶️ John all of the arm based Max that they’ve put out, they are really emphasizing the size. And so

⏹️ ▶️ John that one thing that Marco mentioned, hey, you gotta make it bigger and thicker and have more stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John for the socket. They don’t want that. They made the iMac as thin as an iPhone.

⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t want those extra millimeters, right? Nevermind that they don’t want you to upgrade it or whatever. Now that said,

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple itself, even though there is no official supported socket, will surely reuse

⏹️ ▶️ John motherboard designs and things. There’ll be an M2-based

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac, maybe we’ll talk about that next week, that the motherboard of which looks very much like the M1 motherboard, but

⏹️ ▶️ John the place where the M2 goes is a little bit different than the place where the M1 went because they don’t have to have a standard socket, but they

⏹️ ▶️ John do end up reusing a lot of stuff. So there, you kind of, Apple gets the advantages of having a system on

⏹️ ▶️ John a chip in that so much stuff, the GPU, the RAM, all the bus stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John is on the SoC that they can reuse the same motherboard for a couple of years, right? It’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John for you to swap out the SoC on, it’s for them to do it. So I think they will take advantage of

⏹️ ▶️ John that. And speaking of sockets, I’m sitting next to a computer right now that has a socketed CPU.

⏹️ ▶️ John The 2019 Mac Pro has a socketed Xeon, and maybe we’ll get to in a future show,

⏹️ ▶️ John but the new Xeons are out, they use a different socket. So if I wanted

⏹️ ▶️ John to put the new Xeon on my Mac on that motherboard, I can’t, because we just crossed over a socket. I don’t know if Xeons

⏹️ ▶️ John change sockets every single time, or every two years, or every three years.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco But like. Pretty often.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, because they don’t get updated that often. And so when they do, usually it’s time for a new socket.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so I feel like socketed things are kind of like upgradable RAM

⏹️ ▶️ John and other sort of upgradable components have their place in the market for, if you’re building your own gaming PC,

⏹️ ▶️ John you would expect to be able to swap out the RAM. Maybe you’d expect to be able to upgrade the CPU one or two times

⏹️ ▶️ John before you get an entirely new motherboard or whatever, but that’s not the market that Apple operates in.

⏹️ ▶️ John And we know which direction everything goes at Apple. The battery gets enclosed, the SSD

⏹️ ▶️ John gets soldered to the motherboard, the CPU stops being socketed, right? It depends on the machine though.

⏹️ ▶️ John The Mac next to me again has everything in it can be torn out. The CPU, the RAM, the GPU,

⏹️ ▶️ John the SSDs even, it’s all removable because

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the role of this machine. But Apple makes very few

⏹️ ▶️ John of these machines and even that may be changing with the new Mac Pro, so stay tuned.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Find out more at www.plastics-car.com

#askatp: Time Capsule alternatives

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Finally, John Larsen writes, now that Apple’s out of the time capsule business, what options are there for MacBook owners that can’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey duct tape an SSD to the back of their machine? Marco, is that SSD or is it Ssss-d? It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sss-d. Okay,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey to know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We always pronounce them. It always happens. I see. I’ve been on the wrong side of this so many times growing up. Like, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would say, like, you know, S-A-T-A or serial A-T-A, like, that became SATA. Like, it just, it always happened.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco People always shorten stuff on me.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so you should learn from that and just always do the opposite of what your instinct is and just say, SOC. Nah,

⏹️ ▶️ John sock.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m going with sock. Oh my gosh. iPod socks. There you go.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ha! Anyway, what can you do for a MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you want to have some sort of time machine backup? I mean, I would just leave something

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on your desk or get a network attached storage like the Synology. Apparently this show is also sponsored by Synology. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would say just leave something on your desk and plug it in, remove it when you leave, which is not fun, but I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess you could get one of Marco’s 17 docking station things that you’ve tried. You could do that too.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I don’t know. What do you guys have for this?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, you can also, any other Mac on your network, if you happen to have a stationary

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Mac,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco those can offer time machine sharing to other things in the network. And yes, Synology offers,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because there’s open source packages that can offer the same network service over the network. So lots of other hardware will also be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to do that over the network if you want to. And I’ve always had no problems with the Synology one when I’ve used it.

⏹️ ▶️ John And this person says, if you can’t duct tape an SSD to the back of your machine, right? But I think it’s worth revisiting

⏹️ ▶️ John why you think you can’t do that because drives get smaller and smaller. If you get a sort of USB-C

⏹️ ▶️ John slash Thunderbolt bus powered SSD that can hold everything in your little laptop,

⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have to tape it to the back of it, but it’s so small and unobtrusive. And especially if

⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have any other kind of docking station, it’s not that big of a deal just to plug it in when your laptop

⏹️ ▶️ John is on your desk, especially if it spends a lot of time at your desk, like it won’t really get in your way. They’re so small

⏹️ ▶️ John now. No, they’re not the size of like a Logitech, you know, RF dongle, right? But although

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll probably get there pretty soon because you can buy like a thumb drive that is actually shockingly small and holds a

⏹️ ▶️ John huge amount of data. So what I’m saying is don’t dismiss the idea of attaching a drive. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not like it used to be where you have to like get a spinning hard drive and a big case with an external power supply and plug it in.

⏹️ ▶️ John You can get something that looks like a stick of gum they can hold the contents of your, you know, 256 gig

⏹️ ▶️ John laptop or something. You can get something that looks like a book of matches that can hold your two terabyte thing. Again, completely

⏹️ ▶️ John bus powered, small reversible cable. It’s not actually as bad as you think. And if you do want to tape

⏹️ ▶️ John it to the back of your thing, you could probably do that and not have it be particularly chunky because, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, things just getting smaller. So don’t discount the idea of actually having local storage

⏹️ ▶️ John for your laptop. It is viable. but yeah, if you don’t wanna do that, network attached storage or another Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also don’t discount the idea of using the SD card slot in your old laptop or hopefully soon to be future

⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey SD

⏹️ ▶️ Marco card, like you can get, I just looked, you can get a one terabyte micro SD

⏹️ ▶️ Marco card for 200 bucks right now. Like that’s, these things are big and cheap.

⏹️ ▶️ John I worry about the durability of an SD card for the type of traffic that Time Machine puts out, but

⏹️ ▶️ John you know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s fair, yeah, they’re not made to do a whole ton of rights, but still, that’s a really good solution.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you want something on a laptop that is seamless and you have an SD card slot, that’s a great

⏹️ ▶️ Marco use for the SD card slot. In fact, there have been companies over time, I don’t know what’s still on the market today, but there have been companies over time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that back for the 2012 through 2015 MacBook Pro line,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could get a little flush mount that would go into the SD card slot, would hold a micro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco SD card kind of, I think sideways or something, and nothing would stick out from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the slot. It was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey amazing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and this is yet another reason why I really hope they bring these back, because there’s so many cool

⏹️ ▶️ Marco uses for the SD card slot, even if you don’t have a camera that uses it. It’s really nice to just have that really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco quick removable storage that’s not taking up a port and having a cable sticking out of it constantly. That being said, TIFF’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop has exactly that arrangement. TIFF’s laptop has a cable sticking out of it constantly with a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco drive duct tape to the back of it. And it’s kind of annoying that this cable’s always there and you lose

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a port, but otherwise it’s fine. It works, you know, it’s very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ugly, but it does work just fine. And so that option

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not that bad, really. But certainly if you can get something that’s like, you know, in the machine or over the network, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously better.

⏹️ ▶️ John I remember one of my blog posts a while back, I made the argument, this was back in the spinning hard drive days, that

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple should sell machines with double storage in them. essentially like, I think I said

⏹️ ▶️ John RAID 1, but like basically like however big a Mac you get, say, oh, I got a MacBook Air with a 512 gig drive, that

⏹️ ▶️ John it should actually come with two completely separate internal 512 gig drives, and one of them would be your main

⏹️ ▶️ John drive, and the other one would be your sort of backup time machine drive. Obviously that would cost money,

⏹️ ▶️ John people wouldn’t want to pay extra for it, like there’s tons of good reasons why they didn’t do it. But again, with my whole argument of

⏹️ ▶️ John like, is there room in the lineup for one machine that’s like this? Like the idea that this would, it

⏹️ ▶️ John made much more sense back before everything was in the cloud, But imagine a world where we didn’t have cheap cloud storage and everything.

⏹️ ▶️ John It was like literally the only way you’re ever gonna get people to back up is to secretly give them twice the storage and just do automatic time

⏹️ ▶️ John machine to the other thing. So when they come into the Apple store and say, my thing doesn’t boot, it looks like I lost all my data. You can go, surprise,

⏹️ ▶️ John you didn’t, it’s all over here in time machine because we’ve been backing it up every hour unbeknownst to you. Nowadays, the

⏹️ ▶️ John solution is to instead, not really, to do the Casey thing and have your Macs be ephemeral and have most of the

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff in the network or the Chromebook thing or whatever. So time has moved on from that solution, but

⏹️ ▶️ John I was reminded of it when these people were talking about duct taping drives to the back of their laptop. It’s like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John there is actually room inside that laptop for one more set of chips, especially on a big 16 inch

⏹️ ▶️ John one. You could have doubled the storage internally, but of course, if you gave people that, they’d be like, oh, I don’t wanna use it for backup,

⏹️ ▶️ John I wanna use it for stuff. And now you’re just back to the same situation. Human nature. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey To go back to the flush mount SD card, like hard drive, my very first

⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing that I backed on Kickstarter was the nifty mini drive, which was exactly that. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was a flush mount thing, so you could add effectively another drive to your MacBook Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I loved that thing, it was great.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, if the SD card does come back, as it’s rumored to, that’s something I actually plan

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do. Like just to have that there as like a backup or extra capacity.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did it in the past with this 2015 model. Like it’s a very common thing for people to do that. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a really cool thing to have.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wonder if I still have this because I haven’t used it in probably a decade. I probably tossed it, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I loved it when I had it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I even in an even older laptop back when you could like easily get to the drives inside of it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, I did, I got one of those brackets where you could replace the optical drive with a second hard

⏹️ ▶️ Casey drive. Yeah. You ever do that? I knew people who did, but I did not.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That was awesome. I had two hard drives on my laptop. Not great for noise.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, thank you to our sponsors this week. Mack Weldon, remote and memberful.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And thank you to our members who support us directly. If you’d like to join them, go to atp.fm.com.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks everybody and we’ll talk to you next week.

Ending theme

⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cause it was accidental,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental

⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause

⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental And you can

⏹️ ▶️ John find the show notes at atp.fm And if you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John into Twitter, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco T. Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John mean to Mechanical, Accidental Accidental Tech Podcasts,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so long

Marco tried to use Ruby

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So in the after show notes,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s a very interesting line item, which honestly we probably should have talked

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about last week, but we just ran out of time, given that we were talking about base camp and the line item reads, Marco

⏹️ ▶️ Casey tried to use Ruby. Now I should stay, say upfront that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve never really used Ruby. Like the only real exposure I have to Ruby is,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, CocoaPods and I hated it. So, what are you up to,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey buddy?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is not what you think it is. Okay. It is the language, but it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything exciting. So for my town,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wanted to set up a little three-page static website.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought this would be a good excuse to try out GitHub pages. I knew there was some way to host static websites

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on GitHub. I didn’t know anything else about it. But I knew, that sounds like something that would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco make things easier. I don’t want to have to keep this running on one of my servers for this stupid static

⏹️ ▶️ Marco page thing. Let me see what this GitHub Pages thing is about.

⏹️ ▶️ John By the way, quick aside, did you see the story about being able to use SQLite databases on GitHub

⏹️ ▶️ John Pages? What? So GitHub Pages is static hosting, right? So it’s like how can I,

⏹️ ▶️ John SQLite, for people who don’t know, makes database as a little file, right? So what they do is they use, they made a library that does

⏹️ ▶️ John HTTP range requests into the SQLite file and GitHub pages to essentially do client-side

⏹️ ▶️ John SQL querying of your SQLite database. This is my understanding. You have your SQLite database on

⏹️ ▶️ John a static web hosting. So if you want to have a database, all I’m saying is you want the world’s most inefficient way to query SQLite,

⏹️ ▶️ John you can do it with HTTP range requests with the library. Anyway, continue.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, fortunately I don’t need that, but I’m sure nothing can go wrong with that. But anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what this ends up being based on is Jekyll, which is a static site generator that I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Marco never used. And Jekyll is written in Ruby. Now, GitHub,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco being a site designed around one of the least user-friendly programmer tools that’s ever been made,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess it’s no surprise that the documentation for how to actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco use Jekyll and their static site generation is pretty sparse

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and pretty incomplete. And so I just wanted to make

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very simple site. Now the templates they give you to start out with, like by default,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco put a whole bunch of stuff in, like by default, like in the sidebar and everything, that’s all about like the GitHub

⏹️ ▶️ Marco project that you are hosting, which is not anything I wanted to be on here.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I just wanted, you know, just a site with basically no template. Like let

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me just like make my own like basic navigation bar and like a list of pages on the side

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something and that would be it. That was very hard to do. And so one thing I realized is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, oh, well it says, let’s start, this becomes a lot easier if you can run Jekyll locally on your

⏹️ ▶️ Marco own machine, and that way you can build it yourself without having to commit stuff to GitHub

⏹️ ▶️ Marco before you can even try to see changes. You can at least run it on your local machine and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco play with templates and everything there. So I thought, okay, great.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, quick question here, Marco. Why did you just not make three webpages?

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a good question. I mean, I know the old ways

⏹️ ▶️ John seem barbaric to you, but back in the day, the way we would do this is by literally writing each page by

⏹️ ▶️ John hand. We didn’t even have server-side includes. It’s like, oh, but you mean you would write the navigation

⏹️ ▶️ John each page, and then on one page you’d have one item highlighted? It’s like, yeah, we would just write it all from top to bottom in

⏹️ ▶️ John a text document, because it was the old,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco anyway.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, that’s what I was trying to avoid. I was trying to avoid, first of all, having to either write raw HTML

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or make my own markdown build script. And I was trying to avoid

⏹️ ▶️ Marco having to like, you know, if I wanted to edit the template or the navigation sidebar or something, having to edit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco five pages.

⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s, yeah, I know what you’re thinking, like as your programmer, there’s a good XKCD about this, about creating a generic

⏹️ ▶️ John tool for passing salt, right? It’s like, we all think this way. But if it really is going

⏹️ ▶️ John to be just three pages, even if it’s five, you would have saved a lot of time. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco continue. I would have saved so much time. because this it ended up taking me like five

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hours

⏹️ ▶️ John because you could have heard you could have written those pages a hundred times over. I know you know

⏹️ ▶️ John copy and paste works, too, so you don’t actually have to re type the now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it’s so first i’m like all right, let me try to set up jekyll on my mac.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This was a bad idea title, so first thing you run into

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like all right, you have to get ruby to like the right version and then it’s like okay, well First,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can’t just install Ruby, you have to install this Bundler thing. Now keep in mind, I’ve never worked with Ruby, well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I worked with it for two seconds back in 2005, but otherwise, not since then. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve never done any of this stuff, so I don’t know any of these tools, so I’m starting from nothing. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco first, you gotta install Bundler or something, and then Bundler is like a package manager, then you have to install

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Gem, and then Gem is the package manager installed by Bundler or for Bundler or with Bundler, that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then has to, GEM has to then install the GEM file from Jekyll that will make the Jekyll build

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the right GEM, but oh, it’s requiring this GitHub GEM, which I don’t have here. I have to use Bundler to install the GEM file to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco install that GEM, and it’s like, oh my God. And getting through all of that to even try

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get it to run Jekyll without errors on my local Mac just to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco start a new empty site, I spent hours on this in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco package management hell. Then I thought, oh, it says you should use Homebrew instead.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, I tried that. But then Homebrew starts conflicting with all the other crap that’s all over my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco system and all over Homebrew. And then I eventually, a couple hours later, got the Homebrew

⏹️ ▶️ Marco version to run, at which point Jekyll gave me a bunch of new errors that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco were still errors and just different. And it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was the most obtuse experience I’ve had in a long time with software.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Well, the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey reason, the reason, Marco, is because apparently you just need to use R, B, E, and V and then it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey magically just works. Or so says every Ruby person I’ve ever spoken to, even though I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Casey tried using it in the past. And granted, I’m a dunce when it comes to Ruby specifically, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it didn’t help me at all. In all, every, all the Ruby people say, no, no, no,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, no, no. It fixes everything. It’s the best. It’s, it’s, it’s a panacea and it’s a silver bullet. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so great. Oh my God, I hate I hated. Oh, I hated using Ruby so much for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey CocoaPods.

⏹️ ▶️ John Somebody already came up in the chat room and came in with the line that I was gonna say. You don’t want RBM,

⏹️ ▶️ John you want RVM. Oh

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco God,

⏹️ ▶️ John because of course, there are two competing things that do that job.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Of course. And really,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey really, Marco

⏹️ ▶️ John should have just learned Docker back when we told him to because he probably could have downloaded Docker container with Jekyll already set up in it. But apparently

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey he hasn’t crossed

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that bridge yet. Yeah, so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just, it took me, and eventually I got it to work. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then I had to figure out how to use Jekyll, which again, the documentation is pretty sparse.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s funny, GitHub actually has, like in their pages documentation, they link to a few

⏹️ ▶️ Marco example repositories of using GitHub pages to make a real website.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they’re all so incredibly complicated and inconsistent and poorly documented.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it just, this entire system was like so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco comically overwrought and just filled with just massive time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things. And all I was trying to do was save myself the trouble of like running

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a basic, you know, document directory on one of my servers, like serving a virtual host,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco serving one more virtual host. And you know, other stuff, you know, they take care of the SSL for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you and everything. So like there’s other like little niceties of it. But, oh my God. And the good thing is,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I finally did figure out, okay, here is a very basic template. Here’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very basic include. Here’s how I can make these things work. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not pretty, it’s not fancy, but it does finally work.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I cannot believe how long it took me to get there. Now, I did actually,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I did finally reach my goal. I have this stupid one page or two page information site

⏹️ ▶️ Marco running. I can add to it easily in the future if I ever need to, which I probably won’t, but if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I ever need to, I can.

⏹️ ▶️ John If you wait too long, the environment that you use to build these two pages will no longer work, and

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you’ll have

⏹️ ▶️ John to do another two hours of work to get that extra page in.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, well, but the thing is, I, sorry, to clarify, I never got it running locally.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just committed to get, and I just, you know, I did like, you know, server-side development here,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just kept committing to GitHub and, you know, reading their error messages and committing again and figuring it out. I literally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco never got it to run locally.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s very efficient. Oh my word. The other one, by the way, is chruby. So you’ve got rbm,

⏹️ ▶️ John rmv, and chruby.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I know what chruby

⏹️ ▶️ John is. Oh my god,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I hate this

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco so much. Oh, I hate this. Even Perl’s

⏹️ ▶️ John got one of these, although I don’t use it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I do not foresee myself using Jekyll in the future.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the good thing is, if I ever need to host another one or two page website, I know how to do that on GitHub

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pages at least. Like now I have a template.

⏹️ ▶️ John I can show you how to do a new HTML document in BBEdit. That might save you some time.

⏹️ ▶️ John It gives you a little template and you just type your HTML right there and then you save it.

⏹️ ▶️ John We used to make entire websites like this.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey My first

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco big website

⏹️ ▶️ John did not even have server-side includes. Like, there was no templating engine, there was no building the

⏹️ ▶️ John site, there was no server-side includes. We would literally type the HTML for every page on every page.

⏹️ ▶️ John And when we wanted to change the navigation, Yes, you changed it on every page. To do that, you could do

⏹️ ▶️ John bbedits, multi-file search and replace, so it wasn’t that bad. But yeah, the web, the original

⏹️ ▶️ John web was very often built that way. That’s right, no CSS, font tags.

⏹️ ▶️ John And we liked it, because it was

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco all we

⏹️ ▶️ John had.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tables for layout, that was a fun time.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we were lucky to have tables for that. We were excited when you can get an image to appear to the left or the right or in the middle.

⏹️ ▶️ John Center tag, I think I’ve talked about this on multiple podcasts, but one of my most profound moments, So

⏹️ ▶️ John you know when you’re learning something new, especially during your formative years,

⏹️ ▶️ John you very quickly come to accept whatever it is that you’re looking at as just the way things are, right? And so

⏹️ ▶️ John I discovered the web in 1993 or whenever it was, and you could have text in H1, H2, and ULs,

⏹️ ▶️ John and you could have images, right? And images would just display in line with everything else

⏹️ ▶️ John or against the left border or whatever. And the very first time I saw Netscape, or

⏹️ ▶️ John not, let’s get mosaic, it must’ve been. Whatever the first browser to do this was, probably mosaic on X11. And

⏹️ ▶️ John the demo, the wow, like the tech demo wow, blow your mind page,

⏹️ ▶️ John was a page that had five images arranged like the five dots on the five side of a die, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John like one, two, and then one in the middle, then one, two. And I was like, you can’t do that.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You can’t have two images

⏹️ ▶️ John next to each other and a centered image? What is this witchcraft? And it blew

⏹️ ▶️ John my mind, Because in the four weeks that I had seen the original version

⏹️ ▶️ John of NCSA Mosaic or whatever, where you couldn’t do that, and then saw whatever this version was, whether it was Netscape

⏹️ ▶️ John or Mosaic 1.1, where you could do it, it’s like they’ve broken the rules of the web. Images are next to each other.

⏹️ ▶️ John What’s next for the web? It was mind-blowing. Few things have impressed me

⏹️ ▶️ John as much as that did. And that was because I had so accepted

⏹️ ▶️ John the parameters and limitations of the web in like the month that I’d been using it, that

⏹️ ▶️ John breaking those was like, the whole world is cracked open. Anything is possible now. Images are next to each

⏹️ ▶️ John other. Ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha. Beep.