436: Eddy Cue Shows Up at Your Door
24 Jun 2021More WWDC tidbits, John’s lucrative App Store career, Sega VR, and the risks of sideloading on iOS.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show:
- Follow-up:
- Safari page reloading
- Pull-to-refresh
- John’s extension
- Finn Voorhees’ experiment
- Safari on iOS 15 & Monterey automatically upgrades HTTP → HTTPS… kinda
- iCloud Private Relay
- Rauli Rikama’s observations
- What about embedded browsers? (via Maarten Hazewinkel)
- Private Relay is always used for known trackers (via Renaud Lienhart)
- FLoC
- You monsters that use unnatural scrolling
- Avara source code is available (via Dan Watson)
- Apple Podcasts & our show notes
- SSD wear reporting in macOS
- Mailo
- Safari page reloading
- StoreKit refund API (via Jake Mor)
- Per-app text size slider
- tvOS 15 will allow sign-in via iPhone/iPad
#askatp:- Have we cut the cord? (via Ian)
- What keyboard do we use? (via Kyle Matson)
- What’s the deal with “side-loading”, anyway? (via Lewis O’Neil)
- Apple’s FUD PDF
- Daring Fireball
- Gui Rambo tweets 1 and 2
- Post-show:
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#/media/File:SNES_Star_Fox_(Starwing).png){kind=link}
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Chapters
- Preflight
- Safari Reload Button
- Safari auto-HTTPS
- Private Relay regions
- Sponsor: Memberful
- Private Relay for all trackers
- Unnatural scrolling
- Avara 🖼️
- Show notes in Apple Podcasts
- Sponsor: Made In (code ATP)
- M1 SSD-wear reporting
- Mailo
- Refund API
- App-specific text size
- tvOS sign-in
- Sponsor: Linode
- #askatp: Cable TV plans
- #askatp: Favorite keyboards
- #askatp: Sideloading risks
- Ending theme
- Taz-Mania
Preflight
⏹️ ▶️ John You went live before we could pre-flight.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, we’re going to be doing a show. It’s going to be about technology. And we’re going to go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through some follow-up first, followed by some topics, and then some Ask ATP if we have time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pre-flight accomplished.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It’s not accomplished. Does that work?
⏹️ ▶️ John much more complicated than you think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is. Can you imagine if you’re getting in like a Cessna or, God forbid, like a real jet, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you watched the pilot do that pre-flight? there’s wings, there’s landing gear, eh, screw it, we’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is why I’m not a pilot. This is why you should never give me a job
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where serious injury or death might result if I do something wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did you know, fun fact, you need to, if you ever dig out your drone again, you need to take a about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 15-minute course before you’re legally allowed to fly it again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah? That’s interesting because I actually I registered with the FAA like a couple years back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I’m sure the requirements have probably changed since then.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, so there’s that. That’s still applicable if you have a drone that’s more than 250 grams.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But in addition to that, as of like a couple of days ago, you have to take a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like 10 to 15 minutes. Please don’t fly into other people. Please stay below 400
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feet. Please don’t be an idiot. That’s the deal. Of course,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you can do it for free. And like I said, it doesn’t take very long. But in order to you, if you were to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey questioned and you did not have that little card to show,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then you could get hypothetically in trouble. Now, the likelihood of the FAA or even local law enforcement coming to question
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you is not great unless you’re flying in a national park or perhaps a national
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seashore, in which case there’s 50-50 chance.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I wouldn’t be flying in a national seashore. Of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not. I would be flying next to a national seashore and possibly overflying it, however, standing in a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco place where it would be legal to pilot a drone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Actually, I don’t know if that’s OK or not. I do think it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it is in the clear.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. The rules are that you are allowed to overfly national parks. Um, as long as you are standing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and taking off and landing in a place where it is legal to fly drones and as long
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the flight itself remains legal, which means it has to remain within your line of sight. So you can fly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like as far as you can see into a national park while standing outside of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hmm. Well, now, you know, yeah, I want to, I still I want to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my part 107 or whatever it’s called in order to be able to do it commercially.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like not that I expect to make any money off of it, but basically if there’s even the whiff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you could one day make money off of something that you’ve done with a drone, then you should be part 107 licensed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’d like to do that, but I told myself, I’m not going to do that until I get this app that is never going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be released, released. So basically I’m never going to do it ever. You’re going
⏹️ ▶️ John to make some money from your drone? Do you like Uber for chipmunks? I’m like,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey what’s the passive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey drones? No. So like, um, if I took pictures of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my house or a friend’s house, and then I wanted to give
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it to them, like I’m not even receiving money for it. And I give it to them to use in a real estate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey listing that’s falling afoul of the FAA’s guidelines. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even though I’m not receiving money because it was a commercial use, I need to be part
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that is a stupid but silly example of, you know, even my own house,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I wanted to use drone pictures of my own house, if I wanted to sell it, then I would need to be licensed
⏹️ ▶️ John I do wonder how much money the FAA has for enforcement activity
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve recently learned about how terrible even the IRS is about enforcing any of the tax
⏹️ ▶️ John laws. You know, because they don’t go after the rich people because it costs too much money to pursue them, so they just
⏹️ ▶️ John go after a few poor people and call it a day. How much enforcement activity is
⏹️ ▶️ John there for the FAA worrying about people with drones? Probably near airports, maybe some, but I don’t think they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to find out that that you took a drone picture of your friend’s house to use in a real estate listing and track you down. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John they don’t have that, I don’t know, you should find out, I’m very interested to know. Like, do they have like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John thousands of agents wandering the internet looking for this, or is it just like, three people in a department
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I don’t think so. I think if I was Casey Neistat in flying, and I presume
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that he’s part 107 licensed, but if I was Casey Neistat and you know, posting to a million people on YouTube or whatever. No, they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can’t go after him, he’s rich. Well, fair point. But nevertheless, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is unlikely that anything would happen where anyone would care what I was doing unless
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m flying near an airport, which is what you just said. And I’ve also understood that national parks genuinely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do get real upset and real cranky real quick. So as an example, I would love to fly in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Shenandoah National Park, which is not too far from where I am, but the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Shenandoah National Park is a national park. And because of that, I will make people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very upset very quickly, in no small part because they want to be peaceful in the park. And they don’t want to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fill with the carcasses of a thousand drones. Exactly. No, you’re right. And so I think if I were to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey national park or airport, I could get into kind of big trouble kind of quickly. Outside of that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think it would be terribly easy to get in trouble, but I mean, I don’t want to. And certainly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I don’t pay a lot of attention to Reddit at all, but one of the things I I do pay a little bit of attention to is slash r
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slash drones. And it seems like everyone there is super
⏹️ ▶️ Casey prickly or they’re super, they’re, they’re sticklers for the laws because as long as everyone’s behaving,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the long band hammer of the FAA will not come down upon any of us. But if there’s a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of idiots flying through the national parks and so on, and like buzzing airports, then the FAA
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is going to have to start making ever increasing regulations, making it ever harder to even just fly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recreationally, which is what I do, which is, you know, just for the fun of it. Uh, so the theory
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is if you’re not a jerk and if other people aren’t jerks, then we’ll probably be okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. It’s like, don’t ruin this for everybody.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. Exactly. So in short, you’re doomed. I may have. Yeah, absolutely. Without question. without
Safari Reload Button
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do we want to do a pre-flight? That’s not where this all started. Too late. Too
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Well, let’s just dive in. This is John’s favorite. Let’s just start with some follow-up. Hey, if I wanted to reload
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a page in Safari, how do I do that, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John The eternal struggle to reload pages in Safari. Continue
⏹️ ▶️ John John. A few tidbits. One question that a bunch of people had that I actually didn’t confirm
⏹️ ▶️ John until today, because because I just hadn’t gotten around to it, is does pull to
⏹️ ▶️ John refresh work on Safari and Monterey on a Mac?
⏹️ ▶️ John And as far as I can tell, nothing I can do on the trackpad in terms of pulling the page
⏹️ ▶️ John down or anything seemed to make it reload. The reason people bring up pull to refresh is, especially early
⏹️ ▶️ John on when everyone was complaining about the lack of a reload button, I mean I was specifically
⏹️ ▶️ John complaining about the lack of reload button with accompanying screenshot and link to video of
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac version of Safari. That’s why this came up. But everyone responded because, you know, it’s Twitter.
⏹️ ▶️ John Went off into the woods and said, oh, you just pulled the refresh, right? Because they didn’t realize I was talking about the Mac version and not the
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS or iPad version. But one of the features that was touted for the new Safari on iPadOS
⏹️ ▶️ John and iOS is that you can pull to refresh the page, which is great. Like that should totally be a feature. It makes sense.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of native to iOS. People are used to pulling things to refresh them. But
⏹️ ▶️ John practically speaking, it is not a complete replacement for a reload button.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because reload, like, well, I mean, again, this is more of a web developer bent. But even for regular users,
⏹️ ▶️ John say you are down at the lower section of some web page for your town, and you’re trying to see
⏹️ ▶️ John if something has been updated to let you know that you’re allowed to park or that school was canceled or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s somewhere farther down the page. People are used to, I think, even just regular
⏹️ ▶️ John web browsing people who are not web developers, scrolling a web page to a particular position, and then just
⏹️ ▶️ John bouncing on command R or in Windows parlance F5 or whatever or hit clicking the reload button
⏹️ ▶️ John to reload that web page and for many many many many years now most good web browsers when you click
⏹️ ▶️ John reload will try to return you to the same place where you were on the page assuming the page hasn’t changed
⏹️ ▶️ John that much. It’s not an easy feature to implement but it’s you know expected right? So if
⏹️ ▶️ John you were looking at something that’s you know three screens down on a web page and you hammer on reload, you expect a good
⏹️ ▶️ John web browser to reload the page and not make you scroll back to find it again. Well, the only way you can
⏹️ ▶️ John pull the refresh is to go back to the top of the page again and pull the
⏹️ ▶️ John On iOS, of course, you can tap the status bar or whatever at the top of the screen to zoom up to the front, then you can pull the refresh.
⏹️ ▶️ John But now you’ve lost your spot and you’ve gotta scroll back down to where you were. It’s not as nice
⏹️ ▶️ John an experience as being able to be on a particular position on a page and just bounce on reload as you impatiently wait
⏹️ ▶️ John for something, you know? So pull the refresh is great. It should definitely exist, but it doesn’t appear to exist
⏹️ ▶️ John at all on the Mac. And it is not, like it doesn’t preclude the need for
⏹️ ▶️ John any kind of reload UI, especially on iOS on a phone where you are unlikely to have a keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John attached to it where you can’t actually hit command R. Your only recourse for reloading is some kind of button or UI
⏹️ ▶️ John element or going all the way back to the top of the page and scrolling. Another one is maybe like, I don’t know, people go to web bulletin
⏹️ ▶️ John boards. If you’re towards the bottom of a page in a web bulletin board and you’re trying to reload to see if someone replies,
⏹️ ▶️ John having to scroll back down to the bottom would be terrible. So there’s that.
⏹️ ▶️ John One more item on my reload button extension. As a bunch of people noted who looked at it, and
⏹️ ▶️ John as I myself, of course, noted for a while, did I talk about this? Yeah, I did on the last show. The reload glyph was
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of misaligned because the arrow sticks up from the top of it. I think I talked about that last week.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve been messing with various ways to fix that. A lot of people sent in this suggestion, it’s the exact suggestion
⏹️ ▶️ John that I had been pursuing, which is to try to defeat the quote unquote smart algorithm
⏹️ ▶️ John that positions that glyph by putting some kind of technically not completely
⏹️ ▶️ John transparent pixel somewhere to shove the perimeter of the thing around. And that does
⏹️ ▶️ John work. I put a very tiny, you know, single pixel thing that is like 1% opaque.
⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t actually show up in the UI in a way that you can see it, but it does let me reposition the button. Unfortunately,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re still at the mercy of the algorithm, which is trying to like scale you and center your non-opaque
⏹️ ▶️ John pixels. So for me to try to get it aligned the way I want, first of all, I can’t get it
⏹️ ▶️ John all the way aligned the way I want because I can’t push it up high enough. Like there’s a limit to how high
⏹️ ▶️ John the non-transparent parts of my glyph can go. So I can’t do whatever I want, but just to align
⏹️ ▶️ John the circle with the greater than or less than signs. I can align the bottom of the circle to the bottom of
⏹️ ▶️ John the greater than or less than sign, but then the top of it’s too small and it scales it down. So anyway, I messed with that.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s a new version of my reload button up if you want to redownload it. I keep bumping the version number every time I do something like tweak the
⏹️ ▶️ John reload glyph by two pixels. But I think it is better aligned now. The bottom is not aligned
⏹️ ▶️ John and neither is the top, but it’s kind of splits the difference. I think it looks better. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John as Groover said, it looks better at a glance, but if you really squint at it, it looks worse. But unfortunately, I can’t get the result that I really want because
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t have total control over where these glyphs are drawn. All I can do is essentially,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, put a key in a plist that points to a PDF to my bundle that says please use this glyph as the
⏹️ ▶️ John button. Oh and one final reload thing, um, Finn Voorhees posted
⏹️ ▶️ John on Twitter that he has a reload button web extension.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not the same thing as mine I think, I think it’s like the, you know, if you think of a Chrome extension, like that type of thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Safari supports those too, in fact it’s the same format as the Chrome extension. Anyway, it’s a web extension that
⏹️ ▶️ John puts the reload button back in the address bar. So if you miss that, because like I said, Safari
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t even have the reload button in the address bar, but if you liked the reload button being in the address bar and you wish it came
⏹️ ▶️ John back on your Mac, apparently there’s a web extension that you can use to do that. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want that. I want it in my toolbar, which is why I have my extension. But if you want it in the address bar,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, oh, this Finn didn’t give a link to this, so I don’t know if this is just a private
⏹️ ▶️ John web extension, but honestly, it’s if you can make any kind of web extension, you can make this one. It shouldn’t
Safari auto-HTTPS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. Can you tell me about what Safari is doing to keep us safe, please?
⏹️ ▶️ John This was confusing to me. I put this in the follow up and and as as usual when I have time,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like, well, let me see if this is actually true. Someone said this someone this is Mac rumors dot com
⏹️ ▶️ John Safari and I was 15 and Mac OS Monterey automatically upgrades web connections to HTTPS on compatible
⏹️ ▶️ John sites for improved security. I’m like, oh, they finally added the equivalent of whatever HTTPS everywhere or whatever those
⏹️ ▶️ John various extensions that you could get for your browser. what they would do is you’d go to a website and if you didn’t put HTTPS
⏹️ ▶️ John in the front, they would try HTTPS first and only if that failed would they fall back to HTTP.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I tried my own website because my own website supports HTTPS but it also supports HTTP.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I went to http://hypercritical.co and it just went there. It didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John redirect to HTTPS. Like maybe they were just wrong about this? I’m like, but this is a story
⏹️ ▶️ John on Mac Rumors. It’s not just a random tweet. So I read the story more closely from the article. Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John says that Safari now quote, automatically upgrades sites known to support
⏹️ ▶️ John HTTPS from secure HTTP. So
⏹️ ▶️ John my website is not known to support HTTPS. It does support it, but it’s not known. So they
⏹️ ▶️ John might, do they have just like a giant list of websites said, hey, these are all the websites we’ve discovered
⏹️ ▶️ John that support HTTPS because it’s gonna be a really long list.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s certainly not desirable, but you know, it’s better than nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I kind of understand why they did it because those HTTPS everywhere things, It’s like if every time you
⏹️ ▶️ John went to a URL, it first tried some other one, it’s a lot of failed attempts
⏹️ ▶️ John that, I don’t know what percentage of sites that people go to on a daily basis don’t support HTTPS anymore,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I can imagine when you do things at Apple scale, you kind of have to be careful with a blanket policy of let’s
⏹️ ▶️ John try this thing that might or might not work before we do the thing you asked me to do, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe, I mean, it makes sense for them to be conservative, but I also, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems like these days it would be safe enough to just try HTTPS first. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, the only way that would really break is if sites like have it enabled, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they don’t really test on it. Maybe they have it enabled accidentally. And you know, maybe a certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco functionality breaks on it. But I can’t imagine that would be a common enough case to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to accommodate now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, it’s still an improvement, but I’d like to see it better. It seems like it could
Private Relay regions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And speaking of things that could be better, iCloud Private Relay and Regions. So this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was observed by, among others, Raleigh Rekama, who writes, I’m from Finland, and Safari has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put me into Russia and Germany. Not that close, and all the services complain that they see me logging in from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unknown locations. Also, all services that use IP for localization tend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to break. Whoopsie-dupsies.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s kind of a non-US-centric thing. Like, we kind of think, oh, if you can get close enough to my region, that’s fine. But
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re in the middle of Europe, like close enough to my region, maybe in an entirely different country
⏹️ ▶️ John that speaks an entirely different language with, more importantly, entirely different laws and restrictions
⏹️ ▶️ John and websites that may or may not want them accessing it. So yeah, that’s going to be a challenge. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John Finland. They call it the Wyoming of Europe. Not a very high
⏹️ ▶️ John population density. But if you are in Finland and a website thinks you’re from Russia, I can imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John you will not get the experience you expect.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is very true. I actually went to Helsinki once, I probably told this story before, for a very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey brief work trip. And I will never forget, it was late April,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it was fricking cold in Helsinki, go figure. But we were doing a thing where my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey company and this other company in Helsinki were trying to collaborate on something.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And they were trying to modify their API for us a little bit, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they were fielding requests from us and so on. And this was late April, and I said, well, you know, we’d really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like to do this, that, and the other thing. And they said, okay, okay, we’ll get that to you in September.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So what? Yeah, September. Why not like May? Like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it wasn’t that much stuff to be done, famous last words, but it wasn’t that much stuff to be done. Right. And they said, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, no, we can’t do it over the summer. I said, well, why? Cause we’re not here. What?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, yeah. We take off from like May till August. What? Yeah. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we all go up to our lake shanties, houses, whatever they called it, sheds, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Lake shanties?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m pretty sure it’s not lake shanties.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Whatever it was. Or sheds.
⏹️ ▶️ John It loses something in translation.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yes, probably.
⏹️ ▶️ John I learned that Avara is Finnish as well, though I’m sure we’re saying it incorrectly. Avara. Avara.
⏹️ ▶️ John It means wide open spaces.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Either way, my point is just that apparently the entirety of the country just like buggers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off for three months in the summer and nobody cares. Whereas an American
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can’t leave work for three minutes without somebody getting perturbed about it. We live in the wrong country, gentlemen. And this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has been very obvious for the last four years, four and a half, but man,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we are in the wrong spot.
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Private Relay for all trackers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tell me about Martin Hayswinkle. That’s a great name. I probably mispronounced. What did Martin have to say?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is a question that I actually don’t know the answer to, and I tried to look it up before the show, but
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t find anything conclusive, so I figured I’d put it out there for the public if someone, perhaps someone from Apple, can let us know.
⏹️ ▶️ John A lot of people were asking after the last show regarding iCloud Private Relay, what about other
⏹️ ▶️ John applications? Like we read off the stuff from the WWDC slides like, oh, it does traffic in Safari, it does
⏹️ ▶️ John DNS lookups, and it does plain HTTP traffic from any app. But the question is, like, what about
⏹️ ▶️ John like Overcast or net newswire, where they embed a webkit view, and aren’t doing anything different or special?
⏹️ ▶️ John Does webkit always do private relay if you’re signed up for it? If you embed it in your app, are you doing
⏹️ ▶️ John private relay? Or does the WWDC slide apply and say, well, if you’re doing plain HTTP,
⏹️ ▶️ John then we’ll apply private relay. But if you’re doing HTTPS in your embedded web view, we won’t do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I don’t actually know the answer to this in terms of how many third party apps that are not Safari
⏹️ ▶️ John that are doing HTTPS connections will get this. I saw a bunch of interviews with people like, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, Federico went on this long tour of visiting people that seemed to imply that any app that uses
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s frameworks, meaning like if you just embedded one of the modern web kit views, you will use private
⏹️ ▶️ John relay. But the WWDC session totally didn’t say that. that said Safari, plain HTTP
⏹️ ▶️ John from apps and DNS queries. So if anyone knows, please tell us.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then Renaud Lienhardt said, I learned from the talk show, I think this was with Federico
⏹️ ▶️ John interview and JAWS, that private relay is always used to contact
⏹️ ▶️ John known trackers even without an active subscription to iCloud Plus. So I think this is part of Apple’s anti-tracking
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, that Apple does have a list of, these are like the various web, DNS
⏹️ ▶️ John entries, host names that are used to track people for ad networks and everything. And no matter
⏹️ ▶️ John what, even if you don’t have iCloud private relay because you don’t pay for iCloud storage or whatever, no matter what,
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole OS, just Safari, again, same question, but either way, they will use private
⏹️ ▶️ John relay to connect to those trackers no matter what, which is nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s a huge thing. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the whole Safari intelligent tracking prevention feature that launched a few years back, if I remember correctly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, they’ve amped that up every year. And to basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco remove IP address trackability from all known trackers for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all iPhone users, not just iCloud Plus subscribers, that’s a big deal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s yet more wonderful anti-tracking stuff from Apple that actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems to have no real harm to the good side of things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and seems to just only foil the crappy, creepy people.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, foil, I mean, this is always a cat and mouse game. Every time, Apple has been doing these moves for
⏹️ ▶️ John years and every time Apple has done something, there’s been an answer. Like, okay, well, if we can’t do that, we’ll do this. So we can’t do
⏹️ ▶️ John that, we’ll do, even just the recent Google thing of, what the hell is it? Chatroom, tell
⏹️ ▶️ John me the acronym that I can’t remember that has an F in it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, their weird like cohort thing. Yeah, FLOC, but I don’t remember
⏹️ ▶️ John what it stands for.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Federated Learning of Cohorts. See, you don’t need to wait for the
⏹️ ▶️ John chatroom. There you go. There’s always an answer or before that it was like fingerprinting based on your installed fonts and
⏹️ ▶️ John those doors were closed It’s a cat and mouse game So so I don’t think anything that Apple does is a sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of permanent solution to this but this is this latest salvo is Seems pretty potent and I
⏹️ ▶️ John hope it takes longer for the creepy ad tracking companies to figure out how to way how to hack
Unnatural scrolling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So for you monsters that scroll unnaturally, I hear that you cannot set
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that up by device like we thought last week. So what’s going on there? That’s part of the magic
⏹️ ▶️ John trick. We talked about the magic trick of universal control. Am I getting that right?
⏹️ ▶️ John they use the edge of the screen that you jam your cursor against as a signal of you basically telling
⏹️ ▶️ John the computer which side of your Mac the iPad is sitting
⏹️ ▶️ John on or whatever so they don’t have to figure it out and they don’t have to ask you. Well, last show I mentioned that
⏹️ ▶️ John you can set the mouse and trackpad scroll direction separately. Something that I’ve done through my entire
⏹️ ▶️ John life of using Apple devices with mice and trackpads. And you can guess where this is going.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s always worked for me because, there’s the magic trick, I never use them at the same time.
⏹️ ▶️ John occasion to like, oh, here’s a trackpad, oh, I rarely use a trackpad, but I’m gonna hook one up for a second. And I’d
⏹️ ▶️ John be like, oh, the scroll direction is wrong. And so I would go to system preferences and I would go to trackpad and I would see the checkbox there
⏹️ ▶️ John and say, oh, I see the problem. It’s set to the wrong direction. I would click it and it would go back the other way.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then later on I’d switch back to a mouse and then the mouse, I’m like, oh, the scroll direction’s wrong. I must’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John messed it up when I had the trackpad and I’d go to the mouse preferences and I’d change it or whatever. It was tricking me into thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John that those are two separate checkboxes, but are you getting it? These are not two separate checkboxes.
⏹️ ▶️ John They are the same checkbox. If you don’t use both input devices at the same time,
⏹️ ▶️ John you may not realize that, but there is apparently only one setting. But fear not, third-party software
⏹️ ▶️ John to the rescue, because unlike iOS, Mac apps can do this. We’ll put two links in the show notes, one to Scroll
⏹️ ▶️ John Reverser and another to a utility called Mose or Mouse, M-O-S. Both of them
⏹️ ▶️ John let you have actual independent scroll directions for mice and trackpads, despite
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that even though you might think you can with the OS, it’s a trick you can’t.
Avara
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then you had brought up a vara of a Vera whatever it’s called earlier. I
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t know. I’m going with like the Google Translate like Finnish voice thing Like if you make it try to say it in Finnish
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know It’s like it’s like petty force like knowing how you’re supposed to say it in the origin language doesn’t mean you know how to
⏹️ ▶️ John say It in English, but I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John say it in either one. So yeah that cool mech game from the 90s 80s
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what decade anything happened in it’s gotta be 90s. Maybe it was the 2000s anyway Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is from Dan Watson. He says, wild hearing you talk about Avara this week. I and a group of
⏹️ ▶️ John old players got permission from Ambrosia and the original author to port it to modern OSs. Check it out if you want to
⏹️ ▶️ John take a trip down memory lane and we’ll link to the GitHub page where you can see the source code and also download binaries.
⏹️ ▶️ John For Mac and Windows, I downloaded the Mac one. It runs on modern Mac OS and it is amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you don’t have nostalgia for this game, you’re gonna be like, what the hell is this? But if you do have nostalgia for the game,
⏹️ ▶️ John It is, as you remember it, it’s pretty amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This does not look good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I understand it’s from a very different time. Like I get that. Like you look at Descent with modern eyes and Descent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did not look good, but at a glance this looks primitive.
⏹️ ▶️ John What this had over Descent, I mean, this was still in the age of software rendering. Descent was also in the
⏹️ ▶️ John age of software rendering for the most part as well. At least it started in the age of software rendering, right? So no 3D cards, just
⏹️ ▶️ John your CPU and trying to texture map stuff. But what Avara had over at
⏹️ ▶️ John Descent was like what all Mac games had over things, is Macs had pixels that weren’t the size of boulders.
⏹️ ▶️ John it was quote, unquote, high resolution. What it had against it was, hey, no texture mapping.
⏹️ ▶️ John So extremely sharp, but flat shaded polygons.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see, I’m not impressed. Because I look at Descent, and I’ll put links in the show notes. If you look at one of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screenshots from Descent that is on Wikipedia, it looks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like a video game. Whereas you look at the screenshot from Wikipedia of Avara,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first of all, it’s a postage stamp, which may just be because of the screenshot. It may not be because of
⏹️ ▶️ John If you put it on your 6K monitor now from the modern version, you can make it really big.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair. But it looks like garbage. It looks like Star Fox, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John anything. I don’t even see
⏹️ ▶️ John a screenshot on the-
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just put it in the chat. It’ll be in the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes too. Oh, no, that’s not how big the game is. I don’t understand why that’s so tiny. But yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s flat-shaded polygons, and I misspoke like 12 times during the last show. The little walker
⏹️ ▶️ John that you play, it’s a two-legged chicken walker, not a 2D chicken walker. Anyway, it’s got two legs. It looks
⏹️ ▶️ John like an AT-ST. And a descent, so what descent had going for it, which apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John was too complicated to ever do again with six degrees of freedom. Almost no games
⏹️ ▶️ John do that these days. I mean, I suppose technically you could say X-Wing does it, but not really, but anyway, descent was really
⏹️ ▶️ John all possible degrees of freedom. There is no up, there is no down, there’s only like you and you can face any direction,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Which is cool, and that’s one of the reasons descent was memorable. Avara, the main thing I mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ John last time, is that your movement direction and your looking direction were independent, which
⏹️ ▶️ John almost no games do these days. The simplification that almost every game does is,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you look in a direction and press forward, you will be going in the direction that you’re looking, which greatly simplifies
⏹️ ▶️ John moving around in a 3D world, But the possibilities where you are actually like a little mechanical two-legged
⏹️ ▶️ John tank where your movement direction And you don’t kind of like any kind of tank your movement direction and where your guns are facing
⏹️ ▶️ John are independent Really makes the game much more complicated Difficult and
⏹️ ▶️ John unfamiliar and why you probably won’t enjoy it if you try it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco selling it John. This this looks like back in probably 1995 or something the local
⏹️ ▶️ Marco science center in Columbus, Ohio, where I grew up, called COSI,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they had this VR demo. It was like a huge, do you remember around that time those were going around?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it was way before you could get VR or anything for any kind of home hardware, but there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were some big installations of it you could go try at these science center places for kids. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was very much like this. I tried it for like five seconds, and it was very much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking like this, this screenshot of this game were just like a very small number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of very big flat shaded polygons. Like no, not even like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, lighting effects. Like there’s no gradients or any shadows. It’s just like flat shaded polygons,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one color per face, you know, vague 3D perspective, not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really anything fun. And it was barely even impressive. But the idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like VR sounded really cool. This was like back when there was the rumor that the Sega Genesis was gonna get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a VR headset, it would have been about this good.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, these VR demos were always running on like $60,000 worth of SGI hardware, you realize
⏹️ ▶️ John like to get these flat polygons.
Show notes in Apple Podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, goodness. All right, with some very old follow-up with regard to Apple Podcasts and Show Notes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which one of you would like to explain to me what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ John I threw this in here just because I think it’s fascinating to watch how Apple’s podcast stuff is evolving
⏹️ ▶️ John slash breaking slash getting fixed. We were trying to figure out what the deal. We mentioned on a past show that Apple Podcasts,
⏹️ ▶️ John the application on iOS, is bad at displaying show notes, right? But then we were getting reports
⏹️ ▶️ John in from our listeners, hey, you know, the show notes look messed up. Or some people saying the show notes look fine here. I can see
⏹️ ▶️ John all the links. And so gathering the feedback, eventually what we learned was that the ATP
⏹️ ▶️ John member feed displays correctly in Apple Podcasts, but the ATP public feed does
⏹️ ▶️ John not. And I thought, well, maybe there’s something weird about the feed, so I diffed them. Nope.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey They’re the only thing that is
⏹️ ▶️ John different in the feeds are the URLs and a couple other things that have nothing to do with the content. And yet I could
⏹️ ▶️ John reproduce this on Apple Podcasts on my own phone. I would look at the member feed and the show notes would be a nicely,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, indented list with links and everything like that. and then I’d look at the public feed and it was just a giant mess and there
⏹️ ▶️ John was no links. I have no explanation for this.
⏹️ ▶️ John to Marco, what the heck is going on, but we’re just telling you that this was reported
⏹️ ▶️ John to us and was reproducible and we don’t know what’s causing it. But I can tell you that the feeds are not different from
⏹️ ▶️ John each other in any way that would cause this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the reason why is not the feed, it’s how Apple is getting and managing it as far as I can tell.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Apple Podcasts, until this update, every client
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out there was downloading the feeds directly from their publishers. This is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what almost any other modern podcast app does. Almost all our modern podcast apps, they’ll download
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the audio files directly from the publishers, but they won’t download the feed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The feed is getting refreshed centrally by their app servers, and they’re just pushing notifications
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the apps to say, all right, hey, download this, download this, download this, whatever. And Apple Podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does not work that way, at least did not work that way until this update. And as a result, it got some interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco benefits. So Overcast does server-side crawling and has since the beginning. One limitation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of server-side crawling is that you can’t crawl podcast feeds that are not public, like that are not on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the public internet. So if some business has an internal RSS feed for an internal podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s only accessible on their network, you can’t listen to that in Overcast. You can listen to that in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Podcast, you’ve always been able to. And there’s very few apps that still do that these days, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are among the ones that people really know. Well, when Apple released this big update a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco months ago that enabled all this new stuff, they moved to server-side
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crawling, but only for podcasts that are in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their directory. If you still add a URL,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like directly from the app, like subscribe by URL, rather than subscribing through their directory,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it will still crawl that feed the old way directly from the app. So there’s two different paths
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the data to get into the Apple Podcasts app. The server-side crawling path
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that most feeds in their directory are now using strips out HTML for show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The local path where the app crawls the feed directly, which is what would happen for our member feeds,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and any other feed that you add by URL, the app is keeping those,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s keeping the HTML in the show notes and it’s not doing the same kind of filtering as going through a whole different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco path. And my guess is they didn’t write that code into the app. So that’s why this is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these two different things that are happening. It’s not a good reason, but I’m pretty sure that’s the reason.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, just to make it clear, we’re not doing this to punish people on the public feed. Really, you’re being punished by using
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s podcast app, which is not great. You should use a different app. Even if it’s not overcast, Any app will do better,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think, with the show notes. But for the members, I guess this is a fringe benefit
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re getting without knowing it. You get non-broken show
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey notes if you use Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John Podcasts. but really maybe don’t use Apple, I guess.
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M1 SSD-wear reporting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, SSD ware reporting in Mac OS. Remember this? Uh, Apple Insider
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reports that a source they spoke to at Apple confirmed that the problem was always an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey issue with what the OS was displaying, not what it was actually doing behind the scenes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So help me remind myself and the listeners. So this is that people were getting Apple Silicon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Macs and they were seemingly absolutely thrashing the SSDs to a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point that was deeply concerning. And so it sounds like that’s really just a display issue,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not an actual thrashing
⏹️ ▶️ John issue. Yeah, we’re using some tool that was showing a bunch of stats and the stats look terrifying. And as when we discussed
⏹️ ▶️ John in the show, we said, Well, we don’t know if these stats are necessarily accurate, but we’ll have to wait and see. Well, this is the long term
⏹️ ▶️ John follow up we waited and saw. And apparently, this was a display issue.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, again, this is from Apple Insider and anonymous Apple source, you know, it is not like Apple’s that making
⏹️ ▶️ John an official statement on this. The other part of this is that in Mac OS 11.4, which
⏹️ ▶️ John I think was just being released when this story was written, it now properly
⏹️ ▶️ John reports the numbers. So the same tool will get better numbers from the OS. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a combination of okay, well, if you if you run those tools, now you will see more reassuring
⏹️ ▶️ John numbers. And also, by the way, supposedly back when you were seeing the numbers that were scaring you, those
⏹️ ▶️ John numbers weren’t inaccurate. So if this is all true, it is good news for everybody with an ARM Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John that their SSDs are not going to prematurely wear out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s a very big if, but it is plausible that this would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be true. And that I think is more plausible than SSDs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somehow writing like hundreds of gigs of data without any correspondingly obvious file
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system activity or anything like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Or without like bogging down your whole system. Like it’s always been the problem with the whole Chrome thing
⏹️ ▶️ John is like, look, if this is a real problem, eventually we should be able to have some kind of reproduction. And so same thing with the SSD.
⏹️ ▶️ John If those numbers are real, where is that data coming from and going to? And shouldn’t we be able to
⏹️ ▶️ John see that happening somehow? If not the file system, then at least some tacit amount of CPU involvement.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so I don’t, again, this is not conclusive, but I just did want to follow up if someone is out there still being terrified
⏹️ ▶️ John that their M1 Max SSD is destroying itself.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Probably isn’t.
Mailo
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then John, if you wanted to email yourself, how would you do that?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, this is the best app. This is my app of the year. My
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey personal app of the
⏹️ ▶️ John year, maybe the app of last year. I’ve been beta testing this for a while. On a show a long time
⏹️ ▶️ John ago, I was complaining about my inability to find a good replacement app for
⏹️ ▶️ John my old app that would mail something to myself. And the main thing that I’m mailing to myself is tweets. I know
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a terrible workflow that everybody hates and will tell me I shouldn’t do it, but I’ve been doing it for a long time and it works for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, oh, oh, hold on. You get to do that with your tweet email workflow and everyone just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John okay. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a one step workflow. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey quite that as Byzantine. Don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you ever talk about my photos again, sir.
⏹️ ▶️ John And also there’s no sort of Apple supplied, you know, equivalent one, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, very often I wanted to mail a tweet to myself because I want to, you know, say, talk about it on the next ATP.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s not like really a good, with my third party Twitter clients, there’s not really a way to like bookmark those tweets
⏹️ ▶️ John or anything like that, so mailing them to myself is the way to go. And I had this like mail to self
⏹️ ▶️ John app, you know, from years ago that would make a nicely formatted
⏹️ ▶️ John email that would include the entire tweet and any attachments and who it was from and a link to the original tweet, it would
⏹️ ▶️ John make a nice email to me. So I had all the information there, I wouldn’t have to go dig it out again, right? And that app eventually,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think GDPR killed it maybe, like, or the developer just stopped doing it. You know, anyway, it broke
⏹️ ▶️ John years ago. And I was like, all right, I need some equivalent. I tried to make a bunch of shortcuts to do it, and I just couldn’t figure it out because
⏹️ ▶️ John some combinations of me hitting shortcuts, me not using the official Twitter client,
⏹️ ▶️ John and just generally, it’s mostly me hitting shortcuts. If I banged my head against it, I probably could have come up with a shortcut that would
⏹️ ▶️ John have worked, but I didn’t. And there’s a million mail things to yourself apps on the App Store, and I
⏹️ ▶️ John think I bought all of them. None of them quite worked the way I wanted, and I complained about it on ATP ages
⏹️ ▶️ John ago, and somebody heard me and said, Oh, we’re making an app. Maybe they’re, I don’t know if they were already making this app,
⏹️ ▶️ John but anyway, they made an app that you, that mails stuff to yourself. And they added a bunch of features
⏹️ ▶️ John just for me. Like it’s got this advanced pane for mailing tweets specifically, where you can do a
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of a print F style format string.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Where you can basically say,
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s what the message is gonna look like, you know, with little, you know, percent sender, percent date,
⏹️ ▶️ John percent message, percent, you know, you can just basically make the email look like exactly what you want it to look like, including
⏹️ ▶️ John the subject line and the body. So I did that and I’ve been using this beta, I don’t know, it seems like for a year
⏹️ ▶️ John now, and they finally released the app. The app is called Mailo. I don’t like the icon,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I don’t care. It is the best app because it lets me do,
⏹️ ▶️ John with one tap, send this tweet to me in an email format of the way I want it.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can use the Mail Share Sheet, you can use a million other apps. My whole thing was I needed it to be one tap. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John wanna enter anything, I don’t wanna enter an address, I don’t wanna type anything, I just want to do one tap. Of course, around the
⏹️ ▶️ John exact time that this thing came out of beta and to release, my favorite Twitter client switched to making me
⏹️ ▶️ John do two taps to get to the share sheet, which kind of bummed me out.
⏹️ ▶️ John once I get to the share sheet, it is just one tap. So if you ever wanted to mail yourself something with one tap,
⏹️ ▶️ John specifically if that might be a tweet, check out Mailo. This is an app just for you. Not
⏹️ ▶️ John a sponsor of the show, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t make the app entirely for me, but it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John an app is just for me. Goodness. Thank
Refund API
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do a couple of WWDC quick hits before we move on to Ask ATP.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is my favorite piece of feedback that we’ve gotten in a decent amount of time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jake Moore writes that there’s a refund API, and I think we briefly touched on this, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we thought would let app developers actually issue refunds back to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey users. And that’s not actually the case. And Jake Moore writes, the refund API doesn’t let you programmatically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey issue a refund to to your customers. It merely lets you show a sheet to customers so that they can request a refund from Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They hear back within 48 hours.” And Jake continues, thank you Apple for giving a sheet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nailed it. Well done Jake. Love it. Absolutely love it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is something that I’m a little disappointed that they didn’t give us what we actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought we were getting. Like when it kind of breezed by in the keynote in the State of the Union.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of the biggest challenges for app developers is that we can’t issue refunds. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only way for users to get refunds is to submit a request to Apple, and then they’ll hear back within 24
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to 48 hours or whatever. And so it kind of sucks to solve certain customer service
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems, that we can’t do this for people. And it isn’t just people who buy it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and think they got ripped off or whatever. What if somebody buys it thinking it’ll do something and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it turns out it doesn’t do it, and they email you and say, hey, you know, why isn’t it doing this? And you have to write back and say, that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what it does, or sorry, that’s impossible, or whatever else. Like there’s all sorts of cases like that where you need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ability, when running any kind of business like this, to be able to tell customers, hey, I’m sorry,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this didn’t work out the way you wanted, or I’d rather not take your money for this, here’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a refund. And they didn’t give us that. They did give us something that makes it a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little bit better. The only downside to the system they’ve done here, so what they’ve done basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is allow you to, as Casey said, to pop up a sheet that basically submits
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the refund request to Apple easily for them. The problem there is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that there’s this expectation that customers think that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco developers have control over the money. And customers think that if the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco developer wants to refund them, they can, and that this is like a choice and an ability that the developers have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By putting this sheet up in your app, you’re blurring that line even more. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making it look even more like the developer has control over this. So if somebody submits a request
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a refund, and then it doesn’t work out for whatever reason, they’re probably gonna blame
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the developer even more, and be even less happy, and leave even more one-star reviews
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as if it’s our fault, but it’s not. So this is a good step
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the sense that it shows Apple’s listening to a problematic area. Like we have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this problem area, Apple for the first time ever is making something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit better and easier about refunds from within apps. And that’s good, that’s a good first step,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but this isn’t really solving the problem we actually have. So hopefully
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the good intentions that went into this first step, they’ll take that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forward maybe next year in next year’s releases and give us the real second step that we actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want, which is let us actually issue refunds if we want to.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s fascinating to me that Apple seems to not want to do that. I mean, I guess it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, do they still do the thing where if you give someone a refund, you still have to pay Apple the 30%?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think they ever did that. I think that is a misunderstanding of certain like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco language or maybe it’s just like an urban legend. As far as I know, that was never actually the case.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, either way, like the existing rule they have about, not rule. The policy that they
⏹️ ▶️ John have about perhaps not explaining the situation clearly to the customer, I’m assuming applies here. So for
⏹️ ▶️ John example, if you threw up your own sheet before the official one that said, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John going to throw up a UI right now that’s going to let you refund stuff. I know it’s going to be inside my my app. But keep
⏹️ ▶️ John in mind that that I the developer of this app can’t actually give you a refund. Only Apple can.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the only thing the sheet you’re about to see does is submit a thing to Apple and then you trigger I’m assuming
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple would reject you for that. Because Apple doesn’t really like you explaining to people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things work. I mean, I have an email snippet that does exactly that because I get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the question so often. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John have like- No, yeah, no, every developer
⏹️ ▶️ John does. That’s why this is a problem, right? But I’m trying to think of why doesn’t Apple want developers to be able
⏹️ ▶️ John to refund stuff? Because a developer seems to have the same incentives as Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John to either give or not give refunds because you’re giving back money, right? And so good customer services, you give
⏹️ ▶️ John back the money, but then of course that means you make less money. And if Apple never really did keep its 30%,
⏹️ ▶️ John then like, what are they afraid of? They’re afraid that if we let developers refund, they’ll just refund
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody. Why would a developer do that? They would lose all their money. And just like, I’m gonna refund everyone who’s ever bought my app.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m mad with power now that I can officially issue refunds. The developer,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, is not a threat to, if you give developers this power, like what is the
⏹️ ▶️ John bad thing that will happen, right? Now I can see the reverse where people say, well, Apple will issue refunds
⏹️ ▶️ John in the case where the developer can’t. By all means have an escalation path, as in developers can
⏹️ ▶️ John issue refunds, but also Apple gets to see the requests and Apple can make its own decisions. So even the developer
⏹️ ▶️ John says, no, I’m not giving you a refund, Apple can say, actually, we are giving this person a refund, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John That seems perfectly plausible. And I don’t see any harm in giving the developers
⏹️ ▶️ John power on the sort of the opt-in side, as in developers
⏹️ ▶️ John can immediately give a refund anytime they want. And also customers can go directly
⏹️ ▶️ John to Apple and ignore the developer and just say, Apple, give me a refund, this developer’s a jerk, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John we don’t have those, instead we just have a UI. Maybe this is a step on the road to that, right? Sometimes these things roll out slowly,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll see. But yeah, it’s kind of a bummer that we all thought developers weren’t gonna have the ability to
⏹️ ▶️ John give refunds. And really it’s just the ability to throw up, as Marco pointed out, a very confusing UI that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John only going to make customers even angrier or developers because like, I can imagine what your little
⏹️ ▶️ John like text expander snippet or whatever says, but I know for a fact, having told this to many
⏹️ ▶️ John people in the real world, nobody believes you when you say that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John absurd that the developer of an app can’t issue you a refund. And
⏹️ ▶️ John when you say that, you sound like you’re scamming them. You sound like a scammer, like, oh, sorry, we can’t do that. Yeah, you have to
⏹️ ▶️ John wire the money to a special, you know, it’s like, it sounds like a scam, but it’s the truth of
⏹️ ▶️ John the app store. and it’s so absurd nobody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believes it. No, I mean, and to be fair, I do think there are legitimate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reasons why Apple would be really cautious about going into something like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. In part, it’s because it has to do with money and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it’s the app store. You
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco use it for money laundering. You
⏹️ ▶️ John just buy expensive applications and refund.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, possibly. I mean, the way the system is set up right now, developers don’t get paid for a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s like 45 to 90 days, or 60 days, after you actually make the sale, that’s when you actually get the money.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you can only request a refund within that time period. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you get a refund through Apple, the developer has not yet been paid that money.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so if you get a refund during that 30 day period or whatever, Apple just subtracts it from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they owe you. So no money actually changed hands between Apple and the developer in that process.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that end is probably fairly safe. But when you’re talking about the App Store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and something where somebody can automatically do something to the money.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That opens it up to potentials for ridiculous scams on ridiculous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scales that we can’t even imagine because the App Store is such a,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like all of Apple’s stuff, but especially the App Store, it’s such a massive target for any potential
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scam with the money side of things will be exploited in mass. And so I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple probably goes about that extremely cautiously. And not to mention
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fact that when you’re talking about the money side of things and adding capabilities to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, you’re talking about modifying a very important and very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old part of Apple’s tech stack. Like the whole like, you know, App Store, iTunes Store, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that whole infrastructure is really old and really important. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like modifying old banking software. There’s never a good time to do that. Nobody ever wants to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. What manager is ever gonna say, I wanna take on that project? Like, the incentives are all wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No one’s ever gonna wanna do that. So it makes sense why, like, I don’t, I think Apple’s gonna put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in relatively little resources into actually making that kind of thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen because the incentives don’t make sense for anybody taking on those problems, and the risks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are very high to the company, even though it is something that we want as developers.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, as a developer of two dinky apps that no longer sell, I’ve often wondered
⏹️ ▶️ John how the refund stuff works, because my apps are also confusing and people buy them and don’t understand what they do, and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not their fault, they’re really weird apps, right? And they ask for refunds. So very often when I look at my app figures,
⏹️ ▶️ John graphs or whatever, what did you make today? I made negative $4. Frequently,
⏹️ ▶️ John I make negative money, which hopefully is offset by a positive day
⏹️ ▶️ John somewhere else in the month. But I do wonder if I go a whole month with like a net negative
⏹️ ▶️ John balance from people getting refunds for my apps, what does Apple do? Do they just, do they come
⏹️ ▶️ John and collect that from me? Or do they just assume that I will have future income from which they can subtract it? Because I’m not sure
⏹️ ▶️ John if that’s entirely the case. Eddie Cue shows up
⏹️ ▶️ John door. Yeah, he just goes, you owe us 15 bucks. I’m like, all right, I guess, here. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Do you take cash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or do I have to Apple Pay?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As far as I know, I don’t think that would be possible. Because again, like I think you can only get a refund for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sales for which the developer hasn’t been paid yet. So I don’t think it would be reasonably possible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for you to actually have like a negative sales statement.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean like the day’s income may be negative, but like a previous day was positive and it’s just, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. Yeah, I don’t know. Anyway, buy my apps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nice. And don’t get refunds.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John And don’t get refunds. Like read
⏹️ ▶️ John the descriptions. I try really hard in the descriptions to explain like literally everything they do. If it’s not, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just what you see on the menu, right? Like if it’s not listed in the description, my app doesn’t do it. People have all these fantasies about
⏹️ ▶️ John what my apps will do. And I’m like, no, it doesn’t do that. If it did, I would have written it in the description,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That reminds me of my favorite one-star review ever for Instapaper. One star, not a very good game.
⏹️ ▶️ John True, got you there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Congratulations, you played yourself.
App-specific text size
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have good news for people who are old and or blind, which I think basically covers all three of us,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey per app text size in iOS 15. So I have not played with this myself, but apparently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think in Control Center, you can set the text size
⏹️ ▶️ Casey application, which is very, very cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is fantastic. Like this is so, this is another thing that’s like so badly needed for so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long. In this case though, it should be fairly straightforward for Apple not involve potential for massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Russian money laundering at scale. So in this case, every developer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who’s ever made an app has had user requests saying, can you add
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feature X that would allow me to override some system preference just for your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app? It could be rotation, it could be dark mode, it could be font size. Those are the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three big ones. That’s why so many apps have options in their setting screens that for rotation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lock of of just this app or override dark mode with your theme, override light mode with a dark theme, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a very common request, and font size is one of those things. So to have a feature built into the system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where people can now adjust the font size for your app independently of the system font size removes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the need for lots of those features to exist and gives people who want to customize or need to customize the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco font size way more control over exactly how and when that happens. So this is great.
⏹️ ▶️ John Does anyone know where this UI comes from? I just have the screenshot here, but I don’t know. It does look like a control center UI.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Same. This looks like control center to me, but I don’t know. And the device that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have the beta on is downstairs. So if you really care, I can run and get it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I put iOS 15 beta on my iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s true. I do. I have it on there and the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John iPad is up with me. Hold on.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was like, it seems like it’s stable enough and I don’t really care that much on my iPad. The one thing I wanted to play with was like
⏹️ ▶️ John Safari on the iPad. That’s why I put it on. time I tap on the,
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess you still call it the address bar. Anyway, the tab where the address, whatever, the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco active tab with the, with the web
⏹️ ▶️ John address in it, anytime I tried to put the insertion point into that text field, Safari immediately
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Reproducible across restarts. So
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS 15 beta one, not really working for me so far, but I will continue to look into it as, as it hopefully improves.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’m on my iPad, which is, uh, you know, the 2018 13 inch and it’s on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey beta and I go into settings, control center, and I can add text size
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as one of the controls in control center. So I’m doing this live while we’re all listening and then I went into Fantastical
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I see, yeah, I can change the text size in Fantastical which is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s the shipping version of Fantastical.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s kind of a weird UI because I think of a control center as a global thing. For people who
⏹️ ▶️ John aren’t looking at the screenshot right now, it’s a giant text size bar with like the volume slider,
⏹️ ▶️ John of the big version. And then at the bottom, it has a little slider that says, and what does this
⏹️ ▶️ John one say? Slack only or all apps. So
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey if you switch
⏹️ ▶️ John it to all apps, yeah, it’s global. You’re changing the text size for the whole OS just like you would do in settings. But if you slide it
⏹️ ▶️ John over to the left, it applies only to the current app. And I can’t think of, maybe I’m missing something.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is there anything else in Control Center that applies to the active app and not
⏹️ ▶️ John to like, not globally, maybe the now playing
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey widget or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s now that’s globally playing, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yes, it’s applicable to one app.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it is kind of weird to think that the control center now has a context, now has like
⏹️ ▶️ John an implied target, right? The implied target is the app you’re currently using. Try to make it clear with UI.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think this is a reasonable UI. And honestly, I’m not sure where else you would do this except for burying it in settings
⏹️ ▶️ John somewhere, which no one would ever find. So I’m not really saying this is a bad place for it. It’s just a change from
⏹️ ▶️ John the way I conceptualize what control center is. But anyway, definitely a good feature. because I wanted this feature
⏹️ ▶️ John myself. Like changing the text size for the whole OS is kind of a big commitment and not every
⏹️ ▶️ John app deals with text size changes that much. But if you have one app that, for example, handles it really well,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the text is just generally too small by default on this app, to really be
⏹️ ▶️ John able to crank it up in that app without screwing up all your other ones, that’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, it’s funny. I try to do a decent job of testing with preposterously large
⏹️ ▶️ Casey text, because this is something that I need, especially if I don’t have my contacts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in, I’m freaking blind. Well, I am in, again, on my iPad, I went into Control
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Center. I went and again, I happen to be in Fantastical, and when I go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to all apps, I have a six position slider, which is a little different than what you see in the screenshot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not sure why. If I go to Fantastical only, I have a 10 position slider.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If I crank it all the way up to a text size of 310 percent, the 310%
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is visually below the slider. So even Apple has instances where they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey haven’t quite accounted for the biggest possible text size because it is freaking big and that makes me me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happy that it’s not just me.
tvOS sign-in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey TVOS 15 will supposedly let you sign into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apps with an iPhone or an iPad. Tell me how this works.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it works the way that we had discussed is like, you know, if,
⏹️ ▶️ John so for a variety of reasons, there’s no way for you to authenticate with just the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John TV. You need some other device where you can essentially say, oh, it’s totally me here.
⏹️ ▶️ John Free up all those passwords that are in my iCloud keychain. Despite the fact that presumably your Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John TV is signed into your same Apple ID and would have access to your iCloud key chain if only there was a way to connect those dots.
⏹️ ▶️ John But still they’re using the phone and the iPad for that. But now it is, you know, aside
⏹️ ▶️ John from you just using your phone as a remote, right? Where yes, you’re still accessing the same passwords, but you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John accessing them so you can put them into a text field on your phone. Apparently now you can use your phone or iPad just
⏹️ ▶️ John as sort of the access key to say, yes, I approve on my phone, therefore let me in. And hopefully that will further streamline
⏹️ ▶️ John the sign in. I had in my mind, but did not write in the notes, the technical
⏹️ ▶️ John explanation for why the Apple TV can’t just do this on its own, but I didn’t write it down, so
⏹️ ▶️ John now I don’t remember what it was. Presumably it’s because there’s no sort of way to authenticate yourself on the Apple TV. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John for example, when you turn on your television, no one, you know, you don’t have to constantly sort of unlock your
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV or sign into it like you would with a laptop or a Mac or something like that. Like the Apple TV, once you enter
⏹️ ▶️ John your Apple ID and everything is like perpetually unlocked. I know there’s a setting for like don’t allow purchases
⏹️ ▶️ John after 15 minutes after entering your password and a bunch of stuff like that, but it just seems like the Apple TV is, its current mode is that
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not, it doesn’t have the same level of security as any of Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John other devices. So for it to have unfettered access to all the passwords in your iCloud keychain
⏹️ ▶️ John without another device somewhere else that has higher security confirming it, like a watch or a phone or
⏹️ ▶️ John an iPhone, you know, an iPad or whatever, it just seems like something Apple’s not quite ready to do. But they did
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently make it better with tvOS 15. I don’t have this beta installed, but we’ll find out when we get it installed. But
⏹️ ▶️ John if it saves me, even if it just saves me having to enter a text field and do the password completion there, if it’s just instead a
⏹️ ▶️ John UI that I can just, you know, stare at my phone or have it, you know, or do watch unlock, like the Watchworks
⏹️ ▶️ John for unlocking a Mac, that’ll be an improvement and I will enjoy that the next time I buy
⏹️ ▶️ John another Apple TV for some inexplicable reason, because we all just keep buying every new one that they put
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#askatp: Cable TV plans
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do some Ask ATP and Ian writes, Hey, I’m curious if any of you have cut the cord or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you still have cable, classic cable or one of the, what is OTT over the,
⏹️ ▶️ John over the top, I believe. Over the dare. I think it’s supposed to be over the air, maybe?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, no. OTT is, it’s like, it’s like you pay stuff in addition to other stuff. Hmm.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, anyway, I will start. I still do have a cable plan.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, I wonder all the time why I do it to be honest with you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but, um, but no, I still have a cable plan and I, we use it enough that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not actively looking to get rid of it. And my understanding is if you were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to look at, if one was to look at the thing, the shows that they watch, oftentimes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you don’t have a cable plan and I’ve not done this math myself, but if oftentimes you don’t have a cable plan,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by the time you piecemeal all the different things to get all the shows you want, you end up basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at a cable plan anyway. So I’m still paying Verizon Fios for cable TV
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I have a single set-top box that consumes it as well as past sponsor channels,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which uses TV Everywhere, I think it’s called, in order to be able to consume it as well. And that’s what I do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, I think you’re in a slightly similar boat as me, is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I still pay for like all the channels and a regular cable thing. I still have multiple TiVos in the house. They
⏹️ ▶️ John have cable cards, they record things off of the television. I
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of in, you know, similar situation to Casey in that like occasionally I look at it and say, could we
⏹️ ▶️ John drop cable and just do it all on streaming? I mean, maybe it’s slightly different in that I already pay for like so many streaming services,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it would probably not save me that much money due to the big bundle that I get with my internet
⏹️ ▶️ John and telephone and everything. And it would be more of a pain to
⏹️ ▶️ John seek out and subscribe to and deal with all the various channels to do it. But and still we are still using
⏹️ ▶️ John the Tivo’s right? I do watch tons of stuff on streaming, but the Tivo’s do catch a lot of stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of frustrating how streaming centric my viewing is now because sometimes I forget
⏹️ ▶️ John to set up the Tivo to record a thing and then I realize I don’t have any way to see the most recent episode of
⏹️ ▶️ John Show X if I didn’t tell the Tivo to record it. But I did, you know, the show
⏹️ ▶️ John aired and I could have recorded it, but I didn’t, but it’s not on any streaming yet. Uh, and, but
⏹️ ▶️ John But if I didn’t have cable at all, I would have no chance of seeing that because sometimes they’re still sort of cable first or cable
⏹️ ▶️ John only things. Anyway, I know there are other options like YouTube TV and Hulu has a TV thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you don’t have to pay for traditional cable to get sort of broadcast television, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I still do just because it’s what I’m used to and I think it actually is saving me a little bit of money. And
⏹️ ▶️ John some of the other things like, you know, I pay for HBO, like plain old fashioned cable HBO. It means I get
⏹️ ▶️ John HBO Max quote unquote for free because it’s part of my cable channel. Same thing with like, when I’m looking
⏹️ ▶️ John for something on streaming, I have no idea where anything is. So I go to the Just Watch app or site and it tells me,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, that’s on Epix. I’m like, what the hell is Epix? Do I have Epix? It turns out
⏹️ ▶️ John I do. I have everything. So I go to the Epix app and it says, hey, sign in with your cable provider. And I do, and I’ve got Epix.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like same thing with everything. Showtime. But I have all the channels. And very often by having all the channels with plain
⏹️ ▶️ John old fashioned cable means I also have all the streaming apps with no commercials. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve still got the cable and I like it. By the way, the cord cutting thing, it’s like a mechanical keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Or doing something in hardware versus software. It’s a nonsensical phrase if you think about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna cut the cord and only do stuff over the internet, which comes to my house probably through a
⏹️ ▶️ John cord, but it’s not the same cord, but sorry, maybe it is the same cord, but still, it’s not the same thing as, as you say, in most cases,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it is the same cord. But you know what I mean, I mean cable, not like the cable,
⏹️ ▶️ John but cable as in Cable Town with a K, you know, from 30 Rock, like that’s what I mean.
⏹️ ▶️ John English is a confusing language and cutting the cord so you can then use a different cord
⏹️ ▶️ John or the same cord, but it’s not, anyway, it’s confusing. Mechanical keyboards, very dumb too. Anyway, go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, what’s your situation?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I cut the cord, sorry, John. I canceled cable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something like 11 years ago
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John or more. Is that
⏹️ ▶️ John all a K is? You cut the cord and canceled cable, every single one
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco of those words has a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it? I think it was 15 years ago. It’s been a while because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, the thing is like, what keeps people on cable longer, like even people who are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nerds, usually it’s either you watch a truly absurd amount of TV like John,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or you are super into sports. And I’m neither of those things. I watch some TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and no sports, no live news, nothing like that. So it was very easy for me.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m gonna say you watch substantially less television than the average American. Most likely,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. I think it’s substantially, not just less in terms of hours spent, but also fewer
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Correct. You’re very selective with your TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and one of the things is that there’s so much stuff on Netflix
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything else that we pay for. Like, right now we have Netflix, the Disney thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the HBO thing, and the ad-free Hulu thing. Between all those, I mean, there’s so, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess we also have Amazon Prime Video because everyone has Amazon Prime Video accidentally. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have all these things, we don’t watch most of what’s on most of them. Our needs are low
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I don’t want cable TV. I will occasionally get a chance to watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco TV, like over the air TV or cable TV, like in a hotel or something, or when I’m like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at my family houses or whatever. And I can’t stand it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t stand the commercials and the channels and everything. This is why I’ve never been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into like the whole TiVo option, because you still have to deal with the commercials. I mean, you could fast forward
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through them, but.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t see the commercials. Like that experience you described, that’s exactly why people got TiVos. I said
⏹️ ▶️ John goodbye to that experience like in 2003, or whenever the hell I got my first TiVo.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I haven’t seen broadcast television with commercials. Like the only time I ever see it is the Super Bowl, and then I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John the only there to watch the commercials.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still have to like fast forward through them,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? There’s a single button press, like literally a single button press. You just press the button, it jumps to the end of the corner. Why do
⏹️ ▶️ John they make you press that button instead of doing it automatically? I don’t know, they’re afraid of getting sued, but anyway, it’s down to a single button press.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, that’s still too much for me. But anyway, I have no interest in that whole thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s way better than like if I am doomed to watch something on a streaming service that either
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have a way for you to give them money to get rid of the commercials, or you don’t feel like giving them money
⏹️ ▶️ John to watch just one episode of the show, and they have unskippable commercials on a streaming service that makes
⏹️ ▶️ John me beg for my little green button on my TiVo remote. Please, please, just let me skip.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I literally won’t watch a show if that’s the only reason. If that’s the only way I can watch it, I just won’t watch it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And because it’s always the same commercial three times too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, that’s why I didn’t have Hulu until relatively recently when they launched a truly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ad-free thing, because I will not do that. Like I don’t care how good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people say the show is, if that’s what I have to do to watch it, I won’t watch it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I know Hulu has some other kind of broadcast television thing or whatever, but whatever Hulu I’m paying for
⏹️ ▶️ John never has commercials, I don’t think I’m paying for the one where people try to use Hulu to replace cable. I just pay for
⏹️ ▶️ John Hulu so I can watch like the Mad Men Woman Dress Doll
⏹️ ▶️ John and Handmaid’s Tale. I got it eventually. I’m sold.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey But yeah, Handmaid’s
⏹️ ▶️ John Tale and a bunch of Hulu quote unquote originals. That’s what I watch on Hulu and they don’t have commercials. But I always
⏹️ ▶️ John dread wandering around Hulu and accidentally getting something with a commercial. That’s bad. Speaking
⏹️ ▶️ John of streaming services and cable television, despite me having just said that I subscribe
⏹️ ▶️ John 2 million streaming services and pay for like all the things you can pay a cable company for.
⏹️ ▶️ John I recently experienced something very frustrating which I’m sure is very familiar for people who live outside
⏹️ ▶️ John the US which is that there’s a thing that aired on quote-unquote television
⏹️ ▶️ John that for reasons having to do with like region or
⏹️ ▶️ John like rights I don’t even understand the reason but I was unable to watch this.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is a, it’s a weird show to begin with. It’s a remake of War of the Worlds.
⏹️ ▶️ John First season aired what seems like ages ago. It was probably only like a year and a half, but you know the COVID year really screwed everything
⏹️ ▶️ John up. But whenever the first season aired, I watched and I’m like, oh, that was cute. I wonder if there’ll be a season two. Well, there
⏹️ ▶️ John is a season two and it was just released. And according to everything I can find on the internet, it was released all
⏹️ ▶️ John at once in a big dump on a French streaming service. And it was also released
⏹️ ▶️ John one episode every two weeks on like Fox or Epix,
⏹️ ▶️ John speaking of Epix from before, right? But like everywhere I go on the internet, it says, oh yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John no, totally, they dropped this whole season, all like 10 episodes. They were available since May 24th. But how?
⏹️ ▶️ John Who do I have to give money to? By the way, it’s in English for the most part.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s some French subtitles on the part. But anyway, like it’s a show with like American-ish
⏹️ ▶️ John actors or at least British actors or whatever. Like it’s not, you know, a foreign program where I’m trying to like get
⏹️ ▶️ John their content or whatever. Seems like a show that’s made for me, but I can’t figure out how
⏹️ ▶️ John to give anyone money for me to see the things that everyone in the rest of the world was able to see
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently in its entirety on March 24th. Or not March, it was May 24th or whatever. So I’m sitting
⏹️ ▶️ John here waiting around because some local television stations are getting episodes, like two episodes
⏹️ ▶️ John every week or something. So I’m assuming waiting around for a new episode of the show to be released.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it feels terrible. I can feel, when the shows are released one, you know, at a time, like on Apple TV+,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d be like, hey, the rest of the world’s waiting with me. But for this middle of the road, War of the Worlds
⏹️ ▶️ John remake series, season two, I feel like the whole rest of the world has seen it. And I’m just sitting around here like a schlub
⏹️ ▶️ John waiting for something to happen so I can get the next episode. Again, I’m totally willing to give people money, but apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John that is not possible and it’s frustrating.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m so sorry, John. Bye.
#askatp: Favorite keyboards
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Kyle Mattson writes, what are your favorite keyboards? I, like Marco, I believe, have been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey using the Microsoft Sculpt for a while, but the thing has an average lifespan of about 11
⏹️ ▶️ Casey months in my experience. For me, I am using the keyboard that came with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the iMac Pro, which is the space gray or black or what have you edition of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad. I like this one. I don’t use Numeric Keypad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that often, and I could make a strong argument with myself to get the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tenkeyless version of this, but nevertheless, this is what I’ve been using and I quite like it both aesthetically and the feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of it. As I’ve been saying for years and years, I love the feel of the Magic Keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have not yet gotten to the point of getting like the cherry taster pack, or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s called, sample pack.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Because I know-
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s for tasting. Yeah, it’s for tasting. Because I know if I do, I’m gonna turn into an imposter by Curly, but nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s what I’m using. Marco, let’s start with you since you were mentioned. Are you using the Sculpt still?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have tried almost every other ergonomic keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’ve ever heard of or been told about. And many of them are okay. Many of them are even decent,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but none of them are as comfortable on me and fit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me as well as- Was it a pair of pants? Yes, as the Microsoft Sculpt ergonomic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboard. And not the Surface keyboard, even worse, doesn’t work with Macs, don’t get it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve tried, believe me, all the various like super like boutique-y custom ones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ones with those giant wooden rests, I’ve tried all of them. The Logitech one, everything. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tried them all and the Sculpt ergonomic keyboard is still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my favorite keyboard. It is most comfortable for me. I never have RSI problems when I use this keyboard so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m still very much into it. Now, it is correct that they’re not very well made.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they do tend to die between, you know, one and two years of use and experience.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, I just have like four spares. So
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re a cheese grater. So you got a design flaw, it breaks, but you really like it, so you bought a bunch of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is. There are a couple of tips I can give you. Number one, if you are into this keyboard as much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I am, don’t buy like the big box set for a hundred bucks that has the mouse that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to keep throwing away. They have one called the Sculptor Ergonomic Keyboard for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Business. The serial SKU is 5KV-00001. We’ll put a link in the show notes. It’s only about 60 bucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the time, and Amazon sells it. You can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get it, and it only has the keyboard and the little numpad that I keep throwing away. So I’m only throwing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco away a numpad instead of a numpad and a mouse. And it’s, you know, less packaging, less waste.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So when it dies, you can get this one for less money than the whole set. And I just consider
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it a cost of doing business that I have to, you know, use a new $60-ish keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every, you know, 18 months or so whenever it flakes out. The second thing I can recommend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the way it flakes out seems to be like, it kind of feels like low reception.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like things like dropped keys or like lag while typing. And you might think, replace the batteries,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it usually doesn’t do it. Because of how you know it’s, like, if replacing the batteries still makes it flake out,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s how you know it’s dead. but the reception on it is kind of weak in general.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, it’s not Bluetooth, it’s one of those ones that has a little USB transceiver thing. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so, what you can do is get a USB extension cord,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tape it to the underside of your desk, and stick the receiver in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the end of it, and tape it so it’s right below the keyboard on your desk.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so therefore, it only has to travel, I mean, it’s still traveling through your desktop, but it’s only traveling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, four inches or whatever, instead of however many, you know, feet it is between you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the back of your computer where the USB thing is plugged in. I have found that helps a lot. It makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it much more reliable. And you might be able to get a little more time out of one when you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have the USB transceiver, like, taped very, very close to it somewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John My experience is that Bluetooth is the one with bad signal. And I love the little Logitech things because their signal works from like
⏹️ ▶️ John across the room. So I have the opposite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hear people pooping all over Bluetooth all the time for like keyboards and mice and stuff. I guess I’m a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey CEC and a Bluetooth unicorn because I have never had those kinds of issues with Bluetooth and the idea
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of relying on a wart, especially on a laptop, is just disgusting to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I am sad for you that you have not been able to live the glorious Bluetooth life that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I still haven’t either. Like I use, for my point devices, I still use a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Magic Trackpad on the left and an Apple Magic Mouse on the right. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there are, I’m still getting Bluetooth problems with my M1 Mac, which is worse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the M1s, but was never really good even on the Intels. And this is like using Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware paired with Apple’s computer and Apple’s OS. Everything is new, everything is perfect. Like it should be, it should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be perfect. And I still have like Bluetooth flake outs, which feel like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software issue, but still, regardless of whose fault it is, it’s an issue that is constant with Bluetooth peripherals.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the things with their own little USB dongles never gave me those issues.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, John, what are you
⏹️ ▶️ John using? So I used the Apple Extended Keyboard for most of my life,
⏹️ ▶️ John after the introduction to that keyboard, but then RSI made me switch off to a keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John that is easier to press the keys on, that requires less force. Even though I prefer
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple Extended to just, you know, RSI and health said you need a keyboard with extra keys.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so I eventually switched to Apple’s sort of slim aluminum line
⏹️ ▶️ John of keyboards that have changed over the years in subtle ways. I always use the extended one. I
⏹️ ▶️ John do use the numpad. I’m reminded of how much I rely on the numpad every time I’m booted into Windows
⏹️ ▶️ John doing something and I start typing numbers into a web form and nothing happens! Because Num Lock
⏹️ ▶️ John isn’t on, because there was a good article on like, you know, how long ago, like where did Num Lock come from
⏹️ ▶️ John and why was it added for like to add cursor keys for keyboards without arrows on them. It’s like a 50
⏹️ ▶️ John year old decision that Windows users continue to suffer with, much like drive letters. Anyway, I do use
⏹️ ▶️ John the numpad to enter text. With that said, I would buy an Apple extended keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John without the numpad, probably, like this is speculative because I’ve never actually done it, probably,
⏹️ ▶️ John if I could get one that still had real arrow keys and page up, page
⏹️ ▶️ John down, home end, right? Like those keys I use all the time. And I love having full-sized
⏹️ ▶️ John arrow keys. You know, just every single one of the arrow keys is completely full-size.
⏹️ ▶️ John People are just begging on their laptops, obviously we’re just a more space-constrained environment, to get the left and right
⏹️ ▶️ John keys to be half-size so you can feel for them. Guess what? I can feel for them. And they’re all full-size. This is the
⏹️ ▶️ John ultimate luxury. Everyone should have a full-size extended keyboard. Yes, I know it pushes your mouse off to the right because of the
⏹️ ▶️ John dumb numpad, but like I said, the numpad is actually kind of cool. When you’re good at entering numbers with it, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John half the time I feel like I’m on a screen and when entering is like two-factor codes and stuff. The numpad is actually kind of great, but yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Arrow keys and home and end. So what am I actually using now? Pretty much as I’ve continued to buy
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac computers, every time they came with one of those slim aluminum ones, I would just rotate my previous slim aluminum
⏹️ ▶️ John one for the new one, and they changed in size and color of the key caps or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m currently using the keyboard that came with my Mac Pro, which I believe is the same keyboard that Casey was talking about. They
⏹️ ▶️ John have, what is it, Magic Keyboard or whatever? And it has black keys on it, because that’s what comes with the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro. And up in the attic, I have a bunch of Apple aluminum
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboards of various messages. I have worn out slash broken two
⏹️ ▶️ John aluminum keyboards in my life. One of them was the one I used at work for like eight years and the D key started
⏹️ ▶️ John to fail and I feel like that one put in some hard hours. So I don’t feel too bad about
⏹️ ▶️ John that. But in general, they have been pretty reliable. And that’s why I have the spares
⏹️ ▶️ John up in the attic because I stopped using them if I get a new one, the other ones are perfectly fine. And all my peripherals
⏹️ ▶️ John are connected with a wire because my computer probably has bad
⏹️ ▶️ John Bluetooth connection, but it’s also far away from my mouse and keyboard. And you know what doesn’t glitch out?
⏹️ ▶️ John Wired USB. Not through a hub. All right.
#askatp: Sideloading risks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So this is probably going to take us a minute. Louis O’Neill wrote a long time ago, and then things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey keep happening. But Louis wrote, Tim Cook said in a recent interview that allowing sideloading
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would destroy the iPhone security and privacy measures. Lots of people seem to disagree and say that it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t add up. What specifically would you say would be detrimental to users who wouldn’t sideload
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if other users were allowed to sideload or use third-party app stores? There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of a lot to unpack there. But in short, like, what’s the deal with sideloading
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this topic was sideloaded into SKTP.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, I think you’re right,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Well done. I mean, so
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple put out this big PDF that’s like, oh, here’s how the world would
⏹️ ▶️ John end if we allowed sideloading. And there’s lots of people commenting on it, and so on and so forth. As has been
⏹️ ▶️ John the case with all of Apple’s interactions with the courts and our government,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple presents a unified theory
⏹️ ▶️ John of what they’re trying to do that glosses over technical nuances that seemingly
⏹️ ▶️ John no one involved in the court cases or the government
⏹️ ▶️ John proceedings knows enough to challenge them on. But that every single technical person who looks at
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s larger argument says, yeah, but Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John All those things you said, you’re lumping everything into one big ball of mud, but
⏹️ ▶️ John we know, like between us technical people, that these are separable things.
⏹️ ▶️ John And just because you like to think of them as a big hole doesn’t mean they are a big hole. That said,
⏹️ ▶️ John there are a lot of nuances to this. So this has become a big story recently, a bunch of people have been writing
⏹️ ▶️ John about it and tweeting about it. And again, Apple has put out this PDF that you can look at this paints this picture
⏹️ ▶️ John of what Apple’s doing and why. But I think the nuances are worth to getting
⏹️ ▶️ John into. So just to be clear, to start the side loading means, can
⏹️ ▶️ John I put apps on my iPhone or iPad that come from someplace other than the app store?
⏹️ ▶️ John Obviously you’ve always been able to do that if you’re a developer, you can build your own app and stick it on there, test flight betas,
⏹️ ▶️ John enterprise certificates, there’s a bunch of places that qualify for that. But really what we’re talking about is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John a regular person who’s not a developer, who’s not on a beta, who’s not getting apps pushing them from
⏹️ ▶️ John an enterprise certificate just like, Oh, I heard about this cool new app. You should try it out. And you tell your
⏹️ ▶️ John friend and they can go get it. And that app comes from someplace other than the Apple App Store.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is the scenario that Apple is painting as this apocalyptic thing that will destroy the universe and destroy Apple’s business
⏹️ ▶️ John and destroy customer’s confidence and so on and so forth, right? And so Lewis is asking,
⏹️ ▶️ John what would be the harm in side loading? Like if you don’t wanna side load, don’t side load. But what if I want to, why can’t you just let me do it? What
⏹️ ▶️ John would be detrimental to users who wouldn’t side load if other people were allowed to? Like how does
⏹️ ▶️ John allowing someone over there to sideload hurt me? Uh, and that I think is a good question.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why I put it in here because an Apple kind of makes this argument, but they spend a lot of time
⏹️ ▶️ John making a bunch of bogus arguments. So it’s distracting, but the sort of real damage that would be
⏹️ ▶️ John done by sideloading isn’t what Apple spends most of his time talking about, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, it’ll have viruses or there’ll be scams and, you know, there’s all these things you can look
⏹️ ▶️ John at and say, okay, well, but there’s scams on the apps or two. and well, viruses, you’d still be subject to sandboxing. You
⏹️ ▶️ John can get all these sort of technical arguments, but here’s what I think the biggest damage would
⏹️ ▶️ John be. It’s not damage as in like, oh, the freedom of
⏹️ ▶️ John these users to sideload apps would cause a problem. The problem is sort of in the supply
⏹️ ▶️ John and demand arrangement, right? This is the scenario that I think would play out pretty quickly.
⏹️ ▶️ John All you need is one app that is desirable to a large
⏹️ ▶️ John number of people. Let’s say Fortnite, but I don’t know. I don’t wanna pick Fortnite. Pick anything, some
⏹️ ▶️ John app, an app that we’ve never heard of before, a new app, right? The equivalent of Fortnite 10 years now. Some
⏹️ ▶️ John app that is super popular, that is desirable, that this app controls
⏹️ ▶️ John demand because people want this app. When there is something like that,
⏹️ ▶️ John individuals will overcome a lot of barriers to get that thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Witness having a hit show on a streaming service. Suddenly people who had no interest in streaming
⏹️ ▶️ John service and maybe hate streaming services will say, but everyone’s talking about the show. I gotta get Netflix because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s got the show that everyone’s talking about. I don’t know what Netflix is, but people keep talking about the show, so I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John get it. Or insert a streaming service, right? All you need is one app
⏹️ ▶️ John that is desired by a lot of people that is only available through side loading
⏹️ ▶️ John to essentially bootstrap the entire world to a first approximation into
⏹️ ▶️ John sideloading your thing. And once they’ve sideloaded your thing and have started bypassing the app store, this is the whole
⏹️ ▶️ John like, how does it harm me if I don’t wanna sideload? Like, well, what if I just wanna sideload but other people don’t want to?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not something that Apple or you or users can control.
⏹️ ▶️ John App developers essentially control how many people are going to be sideloading, right? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John by creating a desirable app and then only offering it for sideloading, that will
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of require everyone to do whatever it takes to make their phone
⏹️ ▶️ John able to sideload this popular app. So for people who say sideloading, it wouldn’t be a big deal
⏹️ ▶️ John because not a lot of people would do it. That I think is not true. Initially, sure, who cares about
⏹️ ▶️ John sideloading? No one would do it. They would be behind a million toggles or whatever. But one popular app, CrackSide to Arban,
⏹️ ▶️ John and once everyone’s phones are able to sideload, because they all did it so they could run,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, hyper Fortnite 2057, whatever the popular app is, Flappy
⏹️ ▶️ John Birds, like, you know, it doesn’t matter what it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John if it’s Facebook. Right, Facebook. God knows what they would do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Once you’ve done that, then you’ve essentially opened up everyone’s photo silo. So what’s the harm
⏹️ ▶️ John in siloing? What can possibly happen, right? What I was thinking about this and what it really comes down to
⏹️ ▶️ John is you’re giving up, At the at the
⏹️ ▶️ John least you are giving up One extra set of eyes on crap that goes on
⏹️ ▶️ John right because you could set you could there’s a million protections in iOS And you can leave
⏹️ ▶️ John every single one of those protections in Sandboxing is in app has to be notarized by Apple no private
⏹️ ▶️ John APIs because Apple will scan them for you Can you can include every single restriction that exists in the App Store?
⏹️ ▶️ John Just subtract one and the one you would subtract as a human being saying you know
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t tell people your website exists, right? It’s the human oversight
⏹️ ▶️ John is the one thing that you’re giving up in side loading. But everything else that is protecting
⏹️ ▶️ John our phones would still be there. But the human oversight is not nothing, right? It’s terrible and that
⏹️ ▶️ John they say, oh yeah, we don’t like your business model, therefore you can’t be on the store. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John want side loading. That’s why Apple is dumb to be fighting this fight, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John it is actually a thing. And the lack of that human oversight means
⏹️ ▶️ John that because the side loading door has been opened by Fortnite or Facebook or Flappy Bird or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John that allows the world’s worst scams to sort of freely flow in.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re not using private APIs. We don’t break out of the sandbox, but we do present a user
⏹️ ▶️ John experience that’s filled with dark patterns and terrible things that would never get past a human being,
⏹️ ▶️ John or we hope wouldn’t get past a human being app. Now we all know tons of scam things get past the app store, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John why we complain about it, because it seems like we’re getting the worst of all possible worlds. But I feel like with a side loading door open,
⏹️ ▶️ John there would be more of that. So I don’t think side loading would be a pocket and apocalypse.
⏹️ ▶️ John But for the people who think there is this rosy picture where side loading would just be for
⏹️ ▶️ John the nerds and everyone else wouldn’t have to wouldn’t have to deal with it and they would just buy everything from the app store. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think that is plausible because the motivation to side load is extremely
⏹️ ▶️ John strong for quote unquote benign reasons. Oh, I want a different business model. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John all the reasons we all want, you know, we want these restrictions to be lowered
⏹️ ▶️ John so that we don’t have to follow Apple’s idea of what should be in the app store. But then once you’ve done that,
⏹️ ▶️ John now every possible app can flow through that door. And even if every single one of those apps is just as safe as
⏹️ ▶️ John the current apps, but just has one fewer step to get in front of people’s
⏹️ ▶️ John eyes, that one fewer step is still one fewer step. And, you know, you give these people
⏹️ ▶️ John an inch and they’ll take a mile. So, uh, you know, I read, read the Apple PDF. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think that most of what they say in there is bogus because they, they lay out the case of like
⏹️ ▶️ John every protection will go by the wayside and won’t be able to do everything. And I feel like the actual reality is
⏹️ ▶️ John side loading can be done with every single protection still there, except for one.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple doesn’t make that case. Apple makes the case that if you take away one protection, you take away them all. And I think that’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’m not trying to be funny, but I feel like I’m getting two different vibes from you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re saying that Apple’s PDF is garbage. Maybe that’s a bit extreme, but Apple’s PDF
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is disingenuous and sideloading ain’t so bad. But then again, sideloading could
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m kind of doing the thing where like the people who are super optimistic about sideloading, they’re not thinking it through. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John thinking only nerds are going to sideload and it’s not going to be a big deal. And I think that is not the case. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John more towards Lewis’s question. Like he’s saying, what’s the big deal? Side-loading, if I side-load, how does that hurt you? Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not realizing that the motivation to essentially get everyone in the world
⏹️ ▶️ John to jump through a million hoops to enable side-loading will exist rapidly. And so if
⏹️ ▶️ John you think side-loading is unharmful because most people won’t do it, that’s bogus. But Apple’s thing on the other hand of saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you have side-loading, that means it’s a free-for-all is obviously not true. Like it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John the same as jailbreaking. Apple can still require notarization, they can still scan
⏹️ ▶️ John for private AVI usage, like you’re just subtracting one step and it’s the step that we all hate where
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple says, like, oh, you can’t tell people your website exists. That’s the step people want to get rid of.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or you can’t use a third party payment service, right? Those are all technically possible within all the restrictions
⏹️ ▶️ John that I listed. Can you use a third party payment service while still applying all the restrictions?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, there are apps in the App Store right now that collect your credit card, right? Because they have physical goods, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s clear that you can comply with every single one of the App Store’s restrictions,
⏹️ ▶️ John except for that very last one where someone says, oh yeah, you can’t take credit card numbers. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the world doesn’t end.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I feel like this, like you can both say most of Apple’s PDF is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco garbage, and also agree with the general idea that side-loading on iOS is probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bad idea. I think also, you know, see also John Gruber’s post on Daring Fireball
⏹️ ▶️ Marco today, which makes a lot of similar arguments to what John was just saying. I thought that was pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I’m mostly with John and John that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really don’t want side loading on iOS to become a thing. I do think it would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dramatically change the platform, not for the better. Because again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like what the Johns were saying, it’s not like only nerds will do it. there will be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco major apps instantly that just want to be out of the App Store process
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that will just bail out like Facebook, Netflix, whatever it is, like Amazon, they’ll bail out and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then tons of customers will all of a sudden become like side loaders and that’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just become a norm and that introduces, at that kind of scale, that introduces potential
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for problems. Not all the problems Apple said in their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco PDF. not even close, but some problems nonetheless.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is why, you know, whenever we criticize the way Apple’s handling this in-app purchase
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff and all their weird, like, studies and PR BSE
⏹️ ▶️ Marco statements and their terrible testimony that they gave during Epic’s trial,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whenever we criticize that, or whenever I complain on Twitter about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wow, do I see a lot of people jumping to defend Apple and to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco excuse every single greedy thing they try to do, saying, well, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco built their platform, they can do what they want, or shouldn’t they be entitled? Today I had somebody tell me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that if they give up their in-app purchase requirement, they would have to start charging me to use their APIs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which I thought was funny,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s, like, it’s like, well, did they do that on the Mac? That’s weird anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But, and the Mac is obviously a great example of like, well, the Mac is already this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way that they say is impossible, slash would bankrupt them, slash would become a virus ridden hellscape,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s not. And it’s fine, but anyway, for all those people out there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who are super defensive of Apple in this way, who really want to keep arguing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with us to say, Apple deserves all this money for themselves, and how are they going to pay for themselves,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m sure they’re going to have trouble. have trouble. For all those people out there who jump to that defense, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ask you to consider what happens if US
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Congress people get to decide what Apple can and can’t do with their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco platform. Do we really want that? Think about that really hard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Look at the history of how well US congressional representatives
⏹️ ▶️ Marco understand and know about and handle technology issues.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco These are not the people we want to make massive controlling decisions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about our little world of tech over here. We’ve grown and we’ve been great and we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had a wonderful time in this little world over here of tech, mostly because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we move too quickly for all those ignorant dinosaurs to interfere with us.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If they’re going to start interfering with us, we’re not going to like the outcome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s lots of really good important reasons why, if you like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way Apple does things, if you like the way the tech business does things, you really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really don’t want to have the US government start writing the rules
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a big way. And that’s what they’re doing. And the The primary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco concern, like if you look at what Apple’s doing here strategically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I think it says a lot that people like Ben Thompson and John Gruber are making this case as well, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strategically it makes very little sense for Apple to be so vehemently defending
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very small part of their revenue in a way that might make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco legislators interfere in a in a very big way with the way they make their products.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like that is strategically bizarre. It’s almost like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think if we look back, if suppose in 20 years we’re looking back on like this era
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Apple and we’re trying to figure, and people are enumerating like, you know, what went well and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what was maybe a strategic blunder that they made? I think there are gonna be two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive strategic blunders that we’re going to point to at this time in Apple history in the future. Number one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the over-reliance on China, and number two is this decision right here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this is a massive strategic blunder for Apple to be holding on so tightly to their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in-app purchase exclusivity and non-competition rules, the anti-steering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rules. They’re holding on so tightly to that, which is probably, if they relax
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those rules, might cost them a few percentage points of their service revenue. It wouldn’t even be a big amount.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re holding on so tightly to that while kind of like playing chicken with legislators and saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? Like, well, they’re about to, they’re trying to do a lot. And yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the US is pretty messed up in our legislative branch. And most of the stuff probably won’t get through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because we can’t get a lot of things through these days. But what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they do? What if any of these bills get through? Like if any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these bills get through, Apple has a problem. and depending on which of the bills
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might get through, they have bigger problems. They really shouldn’t be playing with this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much fire and they are doing it, they’re gambling their own future
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ability to operate in basic ways that they need to operate in,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in order to not potentially lose a few percent of their services revenue.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It seems like a gamble that is not worth taking. And so if you are out there saying, Apple deserves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do whatever they want and they should keep all their money can they just keep me keep making more and they need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people like me to defend them they don’t but you know if if you’re that kind of person that’s your point of view you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want them to do what it takes to relieve the regulatory pressure and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get the government off their back because if the government stays on their back things are going to go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco badly for all of us we don’t want that you don’t want that and they shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want that so what we need is to relieve the government pressure. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the best way to do that is for them to relax the in-app purchase
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rules just enough so that people like Spotify can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have their own business off to the side, not use in-app purchase, maybe kick them out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a web view to do the purchase, who cares? Maybe if you have to carve out an exclusion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to say, all right, games can’t do it, but everything else can, that’s not great,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that would also probably be enough to get most regulation off their back. If you could just do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, this entire barrage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of crap that’s all over Apple right now from regulators around the world mostly or entirely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco disappears. And then the government has way less steam
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in it to try to make larger changes to Apple, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco banning integration of their own stuff, banning bundling of their own services. Believe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me, we don’t want that. As an industry and certainly as Apple people and Apple itself, you do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not want those kind of laws to even be floated, let alone to get anywhere near passing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we want Apple to get the government off their back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and be like self-regulatable. And the only way to do that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at this point is relieve those in-app purchase rules a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little bit. Let people like Spotify and Netflix and Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco link out to a payment method that’s not in their app. That is the compromise that’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be necessary here. And if Apple continues to refuse to do that, they’re playing with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fire. And that is a massive strategic blunder.
⏹️ ▶️ John I do wonder if it is already too late. Like I think about like, you know, we’ve been saying this forever,
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like at a certain point once the ball starts rolling of Apple says, I know we changed our mind You can
⏹️ ▶️ John use your own payment method people like that. Yeah. Well too late. We’re already kind of doing this thing here
⏹️ ▶️ John like but no, we’re gonna be nicer. We’re gonna do it It’s like yeah, but you don’t understand see we already kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John we have things like drafted up and we’re gonna like vote on them and stuff and we would have to like sort of re-litigate this
⏹️ ▶️ John whole thing and rediscuss it because of your last minute like now we’re that what Apple I I think really
⏹️ ▶️ John wants or is expecting to like, okay, if it looks like we’re going to lose this, we will essentially come
⏹️ ▶️ John to the negotiating table and sort of plea bargain our way down to, okay, you, if you don’t pass these
⏹️ ▶️ John laws, we’ll do X, Y, and Z. Like I think they’re hoping that that’s what’s going to happen, but I can’t tell if that really is happening.
⏹️ ▶️ John But at a certain point, when momentum gets going, like maybe it’s too late, like no matter what Apple does for
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of reasonable fixes that just like, it’s a thing that’s sort of, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John trundling down the tracks and something’s going to happen. Now, as you noted, our country is not particularly
⏹️ ▶️ John good at passing laws even when everyone in the country wants them. This is kind of popular, but it’s not as popular as many other
⏹️ ▶️ John things that we’re not able to get passed. And there’s always good old money and politics and corruption, all the other things that can stop this from happening.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it seems like from the outside that Apple is of the opinion that there’s no way you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to do this to us because we just have too much money and power. And so we are not going to give an inch.
⏹️ ▶️ John and we are just going to press and press our case as hard as we possibly can and just assume that
⏹️ ▶️ John we are too rich and powerful to be subject to your laws. And then maybe they’re right. Like, you know, Marco, you’re saying, is it gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John come out as a big blunder? But if they play this game of chicken and win, it’s gonna look genius,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? We stared it down, we didn’t give an inch or whatever. But the thing about giving,
⏹️ ▶️ John setting aside like the current situation with these laws, most of which I think have no chance of going anywhere, but some of them might,
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, if you think about where Apple has to give, like
⏹️ ▶️ John in general, you want to boil it down. Uh, nobody cares about the stuff until you mess with their money.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. And the only people who count are the people who are also rich and powerful. So if
⏹️ ▶️ John you mess with the money of other rich and powerful companies and people, you find yourself in the situation.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if there’s anything Apple is doing in the app store, ask yourself, are they messing with somebody’s money here?
⏹️ ▶️ John And if the answer is yes, those are the places where, if Apple wants to not be forced to do side loading or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has to change the rules. Am I messing with someone’s money by taking 30% of all their in-app purchases?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh yeah. Am I messing with someone’s money by telling them, you can’t run that kind of business
⏹️ ▶️ John on the App Store because we don’t like it? Yeah, you’re messing with their money. Like if you’re basically
⏹️ ▶️ John saying, you’ve got a great idea for an app, we don’t think that’s the right fit for the App Store. So you just
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t have an app like that, period. No, any app like that. It’s not your specific app. It’s just this whole category
⏹️ ▶️ John of app. You feel like, but, you know, especially if you’ve already built that app, you have big problems, but even if
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not, right? That’s, if you just turn those relief valves
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple will mess with your money, not at all, but less, much less, there
⏹️ ▶️ John will be less messing with your money. Suddenly all the other legitimate complaints
⏹️ ▶️ John that people have mostly disappear, because it’s like, yeah, but no one who’s rich and powerful cares.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, you know, abstract arguments about innovation or whatever, it’s like, look, is there some big company
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not able to make money or make as much money because of some rule that is essentially self-serving for Apple?
⏹️ ▶️ John Then you’ve got a problem. But if not, everything’s fine. So it’s not as, you know, if Apple wants
⏹️ ▶️ John to triage this and do sort of a plea bargain type deal, they know what they have to
⏹️ ▶️ John do, right? It’s just painful for them to ever give up
⏹️ ▶️ John money that they’re currently getting. And as Marco pointed out, It’s not like this is like, oh, if they give up this money, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to go bankrupt. Like this is not the majority of their income. It’s not even that big a percentage
⏹️ ▶️ John of their income in the grand scheme of things. And especially if they carve out for games, which is like 85% of their
⏹️ ▶️ John in-app purchase revenue anyway, if they set aside that carve out, which seems perfectly plausible because
⏹️ ▶️ John of how the whole rest of the game industry works, the hit to their income would be miniscule, but you would
⏹️ ▶️ John stop messing with people’s money. Oh, and by the way, on top of all that, there’s all this stuff that we’ve talked about for ages, which is like, oh
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, and maybe it would be nice to buy Kindle books inside the Kindle app. That’s not why they’re doing it.
⏹️ ▶️ John They would be doing it to stop messing with Amazon’s money. But as a side effect, customers would also get a better experience
⏹️ ▶️ John from using their phones because wouldn’t it be great if on your iPhone, you could use the Kindle app and find a book and buy it and read it?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not asking for too much, but that’s not why they’re doing it. That’s all these highfalutin reasons that we talk about. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, wouldn’t that be better? Apple can’t appeal to their sense of like providing the user experience. That’s not the right appeal.
⏹️ ▶️ John The appeal has to be, you’re messing with Amazon’s money, and Amazon is angry,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know, dot, dot, dot, now you’re facing congressional, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John possible congressional action. There is a bunch of things in those dot, dot, dots, but basically, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John has messed with the money of too many rich and powerful people for too long, and
⏹️ ▶️ John collectively, they are able to rally the will of elected slash bought
⏹️ ▶️ John representatives to the point where now, there are some very terrifying laws coming down, which I agree with Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you look at a lot of these, they have a, at best, you could say a utopian view of what
⏹️ ▶️ John the new world would be like by essentially restricting Apple from doing the things that Apple does,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is integrating hardware, software, and services in a way that quote unquote, only Apple can do. I
⏹️ ▶️ John know the alternative of that, I’ve even talked about it in this program, like, wouldn’t it be great if just everything was an open platform
⏹️ ▶️ John with interchangeable parts and companies can compete on those parts? And like, wasn’t it great when like, Apple did
⏹️ ▶️ John the hardware on the OS and Google did the services, right? And everyone sort of stayed in their lane and Google
⏹️ ▶️ John was good at doing maps and Apple was good at doing OS’s and apps. And, you know, it just was the best
⏹️ ▶️ John of everything. Uh, but that’s not the way the world works. It will never work that way. Eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John Google made its own phone and Apple made its own maps and you know, like everyone wants to do everything right.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I understand the law is thinking like, well, if we had laws against that, that wouldn’t happen. If the OS vendor wasn’t allowed to have
⏹️ ▶️ John a music service, then there’d be more competition for the music service. and the OS vendor
⏹️ ▶️ John would benefit from making it the best OS for you to plug in your music service. And there’d be general
⏹️ ▶️ John hooks for plugging in your music service into iOS so that every music service
⏹️ ▶️ John could have the same integration that Apple Music has today. Wouldn’t that be great? It would be,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I think history has shown that never actually happens. Like even with laws to try to make it happen,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s always deals and preferred vendors and things you can do with APIs
⏹️ ▶️ John within the letter of the law that are perfectly legal, but that nevertheless favor or disfavor
⏹️ ▶️ John your friends slash enemies. And I understand that the vision
⏹️ ▶️ John that they’re going for, but the laws as written, if implemented, would certainly destroy the good we
⏹️ ▶️ John have now, and I think would not be successful in replacing it with the good that is envisioned.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not the same as OpenDoc, but it’s a similar type of thing that if you describe it, it sounds like a great thing from
⏹️ ▶️ John both a technological and a economic and capitalistic thing. But in practice,
⏹️ ▶️ John OpenDoc didn’t work for the same reason these schemes won’t work, is that it’s not in human nature
⏹️ ▶️ John to be as magnanimous as these things are required. It’s not in human nature for companies to give up
⏹️ ▶️ John power that they have. And if it’s taken from them, they won’t just say, aw shucks, let’s be great citizens and make
⏹️ ▶️ John a super open platform where everyone plugs in. They’ll just find new ways to collude and compete and favor
⏹️ ▶️ John and attack, because that’s what people do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our sponsors this week, Linode, Memberful, and Made In. And thank
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you to our members who support us directly. You can join at atp.fm.com. We
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to begin Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental And you can find
⏹️ ▶️ John the show notes at atp.fm And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, N-T
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse It’s accidental, they
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to Accidental, check
Taz-Mania
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Speaking of difficult problems, I replayed for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first time in about 30 years the game Tasmania
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the Sega Genesis.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, we haven’t spoken about your, I almost said emulation, but God forbid, it is not emulation. We
⏹️ ▶️ Casey haven’t spoken about your adventures in old video games in a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while. Yeah, I recently, I played through it over the last couple of days. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wow. Is that game like just comically hard? Like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tasmania, like the Tasmanian devil.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was one of those like annoyingly like, you know, cheap license to things. Uh, and I had this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco game, like I actually own this game and uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is like, so Tiff has this game on her phone that I think it’s called like super trap world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something like that and there’s this whole genre of games, I forget what it’s called, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like something core, like Massacore I think, where the idea is to just be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as ridiculously hard as possible, like just like comically frustrating, like you jump
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a platform and it just like falls over and then like something else comes and crushes you, like the only way to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through the game is to basically try getting through, just keep dying,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco memorize what’s going to happen and just plow through until you can actually get past
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you know the very first level and no matter how you play it no matter how good of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a player you are you will run into something that like the first time you do this well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re just going to die because you had you had no way to possibly know that that would happen nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco indicated this would happen or you have to like you take a blind jump and not even see what you’re jumping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco toward and just hope there’s something there and then the first three times you do it you’d fall and die
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because you don’t know where that other platform is eventually you’ll get there right so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tasmania for the Genesis is like the very early version of this style of game
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I know this wasn’t the first one I’m sure that people will talk about like pitfall and stuff like that but my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco god like people often talk about how games have become easier over time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and certainly they’ve become less tedious with things like you know save games and and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco various ways that you don’t have to beat the entire game in one sitting like you did with the old consoles that didn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery backup or anything like that. But like, playing through Tasmania was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so- I was laughing at how ridiculously, cruelly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco difficult it was at times. It was just like, you just jump and you just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco land somewhere, oh you’re dead. Like that’s I’ve laughed my ass off like in the minecart level which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like one of the great minecart levels in video game history There’s actually two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them. They’re so great because they’re just brutal like just like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ridiculous levels you’ve ever seen you will just go through so many deaths Just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to like just memorize the order of things that you have to do in the minecart level to get through it Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s comical. So if anybody wants, if you’re into that kind of game of just like the like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of masochistic humor of trying to get through it, Tasmania for Sega Genesis.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m watching a YouTube video and this game looks terrible. Everyone should just play Battletoads.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I remember Battletoads being really hard too, by the
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep, it’s really hard. And it doesn’t look as bad as Tasmania. Like it just, Tasmania
⏹️ ▶️ John looks, I mean, it looks like what it is, like a licensed game. Like just the animation of
⏹️ ▶️ John the sprites and the main character and everything just don’t, they don’t fit in, it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John look graceful. It’s not, you know, I mean, I’m sure it plays like any other sort of, you know, instant death
⏹️ ▶️ John platformer of the era plays. Like that’s everything Marco said about it, I’m sure it’s true, but aesthetically, it’s kind of like,
⏹️ ▶️ John Vara is elegant, beautiful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I wouldn’t say either of those things.
⏹️ ▶️ John You download the Mac version and play it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say, in the era of terrible licensed Genesis games,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this was not the only one I owned. I also owned Cool Spot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the 7UP logo
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to think, what is this? The tie-in Cool Spot, is it an ice brand?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No. It’s also a brutal platformer with
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, that’s what, if you had a sort of, if you had to white label a thing for
⏹️ ▶️ John laundry detergent, right, it’s just gonna be a 2D platformer that’s really hard and you’re just gonna put the
⏹️ ▶️ John laundry detergent as the main character and you’re done.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But Cool Spot’s that, like, I really enjoyed it because Tasmania is just kind of cruel.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cool Spot is kind of whimsical in a lot of the ways because you’re playing as a miniature,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the scale of everything. You’re kind of like, you’re playing as the spot character who’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically the size of, it’s kind of vague as to whether it’s the size of a bug or a dog.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it kind of varies, really different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey levels. That’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey difference there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, they’re not super consistent and like they’re scaling.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was like the movie cats
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, but cool spot is less about like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things coming in and just crushing you and killing you instantly and more about comically frustrating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco jumping puzzles where like you just keep jumping and jumping and you eventually fall down level
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have to start all the way at the bottom, which has media does contain some of those as well. But cool spot is like an entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco game made of difficult jumping puzzles. But it’s a little bit whimsical. And the guy’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so cute, the little spot, he’s really cute. He’s wearing sunglasses.
⏹️ ▶️ John The modern versions of all those games are so much better, presumably the ones that are typically like Celeste, the game that
⏹️ ▶️ John I really likes. It’s a similar type of thing, but there’s so much more to the game than that. And on the
⏹️ ▶️ John 3D side of it, there’s the quote unquote Souls games, like, you know, popularized by Dark Souls,
⏹️ ▶️ John where it’s a 3D third-person adventure game with high fidelity graphics, but also
⏹️ ▶️ John has a similar type of, if you can imagine a 3D version of that where you’re gonna face a boss and they will kill you with
⏹️ ▶️ John one hit and you don’t know how to fight them yet, but you throw yourselves at them and eventually memorize. That, you know, it’s like sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John high stakes, right? Where you’re not sort of a sponge for damage. You can just go in there and just
⏹️ ▶️ John button mash your way through it. No, you know, everything in the world is deadly and you have to
⏹️ ▶️ John approach things cautiously and have a strategy and learn how to do them in the same way that you would be in Tasmania where
⏹️ ▶️ John like before you go into the level, you have no idea what’s gonna kill you and anything can kill you. And eventually you figure out, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s sort of the pattern, right? Imagine that, but in super high fidelity, third-person 3D sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of medieval people with swords and giant monster settings. And those games are very popular because they’re moody
⏹️ ▶️ John and atmospheric and the ever-present threat of death fits with that type of game.
⏹️ ▶️ John And, you know, things like Celeste, where there’s so much more to the game than the platforming, but also it’s that kind of platforming.
⏹️ ▶️ John And even before that, there’s the bullet hell games. Yeah, you know, top-down, spaceship, a million bullets
⏹️ ▶️ John coming at you. And those just ramped up to an absurd level where, you know, it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John like there’s no way anyone could possibly survive this, but eventually you figure out how to weave your way through the, I was thinking of them,
⏹️ ▶️ John rather than being bullet hell, I think of them as the, you know, when you get like, it’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ John a progressive, but maybe also Campbell, you know, the soup where you get the little dots of pasta? Right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, it’s not noodles. It’s not chicken noodles. It’s- Like orzo? No, it was orzo’s
⏹️ ▶️ John oval, right? actual circular little dots of pasta. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think I know. They look almost like tapioca beads, but pasta version, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Exactly, right? Anyway, whenever I see a bullet hole hell game, I think all the bullets look like those little things in the soup,
⏹️ ▶️ John because in the soup, they have a little red around them, and it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just like these tiny little beads of pasta coming at you and spraying in all directions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I will agree that, in general, the storyline of Tasmania
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t really hold up to the storyline of Celeste or similar.
⏹️ ▶️ John What about the 7-Up game? Is there a moving story in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that one? I don’t think Cool Spot is known for its plot either, unfortunately.