446: Dead From Fraud
02 Sep 2021Coding for kids, Apple’s class-action settlement, the “reader”-app rule change, and home security cameras.
Episode Description:
- Please donate to St. Jude. Cancer sucks, and childhood cancer sucks a lot. Please donate any amount of money, if you can.
- Follow-up:
- Wirecutter moves behind a paywall
- Best blender is not a wasteland… sometimes.
- Cryptographic hashes vs. Apple’s CSAM Neural Hash
- What happens if governments get involved with CSAM detection?
- Reflections on Trusting Trust (PDF link)
- More Apple PR own-goals: Apple bans a pay equity Slack channel
- Music metadata
- Marco has a request: how do you get a 9-year-old coding?
- Apple’s class-action settlement with “app developers”
- 📣 BREAKING 📣 Apple will allow “reader” apps with their own purchase systems to link out (details to be determined later)
- Korea: Apple & Google must allow developers to use other payment systems
- Home security cameras and HomeKit Secure Video
- Post-show: Casey’s Dock experiments
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Become a member for ad-free episodes and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- Donate to St. Jude! 🖼️
- John killed Wirecutter
- The web is a wasteland 🖼️
- Sponsor: Fastmail
- Perceptual vs. cryptographic hashes
- Apple’s Slack own-goals
- Music data model
- Sponsor: Linode
- Coding for kids
- Class-action settlement
- Breaking: Reader-app rule change
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- Home security cameras 🖼️
- Ending theme
- Bottom Dock
Donate to St. Jude!
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey I just reloaded this page. I know we’re not up to this yet. Tom. Why do you give him bad ideas
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so we should probably explain what’s going on I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, maybe all right, so I’m gonna try to make myself feel okay about this knowingly how much crap you
⏹️ ▶️ John got last year I still think it’s a little bit a little bit weak sauce. We we had an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is the payback for two consecutive years of making me donate under duress,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because last year I was recording analog and you two numbnuts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were like, oh, we have to donate now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John I- I’m pretty sure that’s an exaggeration of what happened. I do not recall typing the word now multiple times
⏹️ ▶️ Casey row. That was the effective message.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, here’s what happened. So we were talking about the St. Jude, you know, really, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m raising money for St. Jude during child cancer awareness month, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is now September, and we’re gonna talk about that in a second. But so we we do donations as ATP hosts,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we do three donations, and we try to do roughly at the same time. So they show up three in a row on the page.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we try to match amounts. And, you know, we decided what the amount is going to be. And there it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So last year, Casey apparently was recording analog at the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we decided to do this, and under duress, while meaning to allegedly type
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey and Aaron Liss, typed Casey asterisk Aaron Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which was followed by not only us giving him crap, but all of you gloriously giving him
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crap in your own donation names and notes that followed. So we ended
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up, you know, obviously it’s amazing to raise a bunch of money for a really good cause, but to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it while being able to troll Casey is extra amazing. So we had decided, you know, a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weeks ago. All right, we’re going to we’re going to make our donations before the show on a certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco date, and that date was a week from now. Next week’s show is when we decided we were going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do it, and we had it in the calendar and everything like that’s when we’re going to make our donations right before the show, and then we’ll then and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ll talk about the you know give it a big push during the show and everything well. Fifteen minutes ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fifteen years ago, john you know writes in the chat like oh it’s weird how the page laid out like some complain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the page layout showing his donation at the top of the screen a week early.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was the top. I was the top donor and I was like you know I mean what about more since as
⏹️ ▶️ John the show approached for us, I would have been like guys. Are you gonna? Are you’re gonna do the donation?
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, I got it wrong. It was right in the calendar. I think I’m the one who put it in the calendar, but the reminder
⏹️ ▶️ John on my phone came up and it said, oh, time to donate. And I just went and did it blindly because I do
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever my phone tells me to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently, however I seried that reminder into reminders, I
⏹️ ▶️ John got the date wrong. So I just did what my phone told me. I did it a week early. I’m sorry. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I did it. I posted the funny thing about the UI, which made it look like I donated twice, but I didn’t donate
⏹️ ▶️ John twice. It was just once. And then Marco saw what I had posted and he immediately donated. And so now
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s two against one and now it’s now Casey has to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which in of itself was fine, but like I was in the middle of like getting kids ready for bed and so on and so forth. Now all of a sudden
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my phone is blowing up about how we’re donating right now. And I’m like, what the hell we said next
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week, but okay, whatever, that’s fine. And so as I’m running over to my computer, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I like, obviously this is not a big deal, but in the heat of the moment, I was like, ah, ah, ah, ah. And so now I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing it under duress again and we all saw how well that went last year. So I run over to my computer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and as I’m sitting down to do the donation, somebody in the chat says, as punishment,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you should donate $7,000.01 just to kick John off the top since it appears to not count a tie. If I did that, I’d be a jerk,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but if Casey does it, it’s funny. So I kind of did that and did $7,001.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I still think it’s kind of jerky when you do it. Oh, well, come on, it was funny.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the most amazing part of this, So obviously Casey’s now on top kicking John off, which I think is appropriate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for what John did, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I was a honest mistake.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wasn’t doing something malicious. On the other hand, Casey’s was not an honest,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it was in fact a malicious act,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but also between because there was this delay as Casey was, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess putting your kids to bed is important. So because there was a small delay between our donations,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco someone else got in right between mine and Casey’s called Not Star
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey Star List for $1. Well done,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco person, whoever you are.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We are a mess. All three of us are a mess.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right. Well, so let’s have some unity here. How much has ATP the show donated to St. Jude
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco year? $21,001. Right. So as I forget what we donated last year,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I want to say it was $20,000 in sum
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between the three of us. And this year, we thought, well, that seems silly because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we were donating what? $6,333.33 a piece. So… No, was it like 6667 or something? I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco can’t tell.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey it’s just like an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ugly kind of number. So we’re like, let’s round it up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we each donated… Well, two-thirds of us donated… I couldn’t even get it out with a straight
⏹️ ▶️ Casey face. Two-thirds of us donated $7,000. And your favorite and best host donated $7,001.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So yeah, so as much as we’re poking fun at each other,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really do need to lock it up and get serious for a second. September, as Marco had mentioned, is Childhood Cancer Awareness
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Month. And for the third consecutive year, Real AFM, of which we are all a part, even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if this show isn’t strictly speaking a part of it, you know, it is there in spirit, if not by URL.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we are all trying to raise money for the third consecutive year for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So what is St. Jude? this hospital that’s in Memphis, which is where Stephen Hackett lives.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it is of the belief that, you know, Hey, if kids can still die from cancer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then we need to still try to figure out ways to prevent that from ever happening. Ever. And so what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even greater about St. Jude is that St. Jude families pay nothing for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey healthcare there. And that goes beyond just healthcare. I believe, I believe that like some,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some travel costs can be covered on occasion. Food can be covered in many occasions. They, they really take
⏹️ ▶️ Casey care of their families. And if you live in a country that makes sense, as in not America, this probably sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, yeah, okay, whatever. But I assure you for America, for Americans, this is a big
⏹️ ▶️ Casey deal. And so Stephen’s family has probably received millions of dollars of healthcare
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they have paid literally nothing for it. Um, that being said, it’s because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of donors like the three of us and like all of you, that these families never receive a bill for treatment,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for travel, for food, et cetera, because as St. Jude says all a family should have to worry about is helping their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey child stay alive. So for a little bit of context, the average cost to treat just one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kid with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which is the most common form of childhood cancer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is $203,000. So it’s expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So with that said, to make this possible, about 80% of the funds necessary to sustain and grow St. Jude must be raised
⏹️ ▶️ Casey each each year from donors like you, listener to my voice. So if you have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a dollar to your name that you can send to kids that are fighting cancer and their families,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey please, please, if you can, stjude.org slash ATP, I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spell it out for you, S-T-J-U-D-E.org slash ATP. I cannot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think of a better organization to give money to. Obviously, the three of us have given
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I’d like to believe is a fair bit of money the years now. Please, listeners, stjude.org.atp.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I will repeat my offer of last year. I will personally send you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no matter where you live in the world, I will personally use the United States Postal Service, so I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hope you live in the States, but we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to say, what are you going to do, like get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a helicopter? I will personally send you a handful of ATP, not for sale, ATP stickers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Somebody go to Antarctica and invite Casey. Chris Cosentino Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will send you a small batch of small batch ATP stickers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wherever you may be in the world if you can top the current leading contender. Let me check my notes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here. The current leading donor, The List Family. Oh, they seem very kind for having donated $7,001.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you can beat that by even one cent, send me a screenshot, send me your address,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let me know, and I will put some ATP stickers in the mail. Additionally, I don’t remember if we mentioned this last week, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you donate $100 or more, you get a bespoke sticker pack from the relay folks that have all sorts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of fun stickers in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John much less expensive stickers than ours. That is true. Only one winner is going to
⏹️ ▶️ John like the hungry games. Only one winner is getting our stickers and that is the top donor who I
⏹️ ▶️ John guess the top donor who tells us about it. If someone donates a huge amount, but they’re not an ATP listener, they don’t count. So don’t worry about
⏹️ ▶️ John them. You’re just competing with the people who contact us and say, Hey, I donated this amount,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s more than the current top amount. And here’s the question. Do they have to donate more than. They don’t have to donate
⏹️ ▶️ John more than those other people who don’t know about ATP, right? They just have to be right now. They just have to be Casey. And then they have
⏹️ ▶️ John to compete with the other ATP listeners. But if someone donates a million dollars, but they’re not an ATP listener, that
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t count. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s correct. But I will say, unless the other two veto this, if you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are at any moment, the highest donor, even if you don’t end the month of the highest donor, if you were to at any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point, if you are the highest donor, send me your address in the screenshot just in case, you know, the donor list changes. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will send you stickers. Even if you don’t persist as the highest donor, if somebody donates $7,002 right now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you want to send me your name and information, I will send you stickers. And then if 10 minutes later, somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Casey donates $7,003, I’ll send them stickers too. Just let me know. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John generous of you, but I feel like the game theory would say like you want people to go as high as possible knowing it’s their
⏹️ ▶️ John only shot, but that’s fine too because they’re just stickers after all. So please go for it. And by the way, you keep saying contact
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey, how do people contact you?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, the best way would probably be Twitter, because I hate email. But if you need to email
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, you can find my email address on my website. And that’s part of the game, is finding my email
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John address. So, this is the second challenge. You have to find
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey on Twitter, which may be very difficult. I know, you might not know what Casey’s Twitter handle is,
⏹️ ▶️ John or how to spell it. But if you can find his website, also very difficult.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Then maybe you can get some contact information there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we know that obviously not everyone is going to be able to donate this kind of large sum. We
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also know that every dollar helps. So if you can just donate a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dollar, great, donate a dollar. We know also our rough audience demographics, and we also know that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can probably do more than that. And one thing to keep in mind, I say this every year,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that in roughly probably two weeks or so, there’s going to be an Apple event, and they’re going to unveil a new $1,300
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone that we’re all going to pre-order. And when you’re ordering a $1,300 phone that you might not necessarily need,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you’re thinking about, oh, should I tack on like an extra 70 bucks for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco newest case, because it’s slightly different, that now I need a new $70 case, or a new $150 AppleCare plan, or any other,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, how much you’re gonna pay in sales tax, it’s gonna be 100 bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Think about, like, donate that kind of amount, or more. Because if you’re willing to just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of casually, you know, spend that for this frivolous hobby we all have a buying gadgets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we, you know, quote need in finger quotes, but like really do we really need to buy the new one?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Probably not. So if you’re if you’re able to do stuff like that, I encourage you to also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be generous towards this because this is a really good cause. And yeah, give them like, you know, a few hundred bucks if you can, or, you know, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can do, you know, give it a shot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Just skip your morning coffee one day, send five bucks to stjude.org slash ATP.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So thank you for anyone who has donated truly. Where do we stand right now? We are at $105,000
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or thereabouts, which is excellent. And we are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not that far away. What is it? $196,000 for the year, or for this month, would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be a total of a million dollars across all three years that Relay’s been doing this. So I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we can get there. Again, we’re at $105,000 right now. Let’s do it. at jude.org slash ATP.
John killed Wirecutter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do some follow up. Apparently we ruined Wirecutter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do we have the same curse that Connected did with photo sharing services or photo management services?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because we bring up Wirecutter, and next thing you know, it’s moved behind a paywall.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think that’s ruining it. I mean, we talked about finding product recommendations and mentioned Wirecutter.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s because it’s a thing that people find valuable. Unlike IMDb, which does not deserve to be in
⏹️ ▶️ John any results or movie stuff because their website is terrible, the Wirecutter does more or less what it says. You can disagree with their picks or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they’re fairly straightforward. They explain their reasoning and, you know, they have affiliate links to products, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is how they make money. Now they’re behind a paywall. I don’t begrudge them that. They’re the type of site that I would be willing to pay for because
⏹️ ▶️ John they provide a valuable service. And the plans are you can do it for $5, $5 every four weeks,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is different than monthly. But anyway, if you’re looking for a product, you could just say, I’ll just pay the five bucks
⏹️ ▶️ John and then cancel. Now that said, the New York Times is somewhat notorious in our circles as being
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the few quote unquote good companies that makes it next to impossible for you to unsubscribe. You have to like call someone on the phone or do like
⏹️ ▶️ John a text chat with them or something, and they try to convince you to stay, which is crappy. But the other alternative is that Wirecutter
⏹️ ▶️ John is 40 bucks annually. And if you already have a New York Times Premium digital subscription, you get it for free. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I think they can go behind a paywall because they have a service that people are willing to pay for, so kudos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What’s the upgrade pick? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I mean, I feel like the $40 is
⏹️ ▶️ John the upgrade pick I get, I don’t know. I would pay extra to be able to cancel more easily.
⏹️ ▶️ John One of us needs to go first. Whoever needs to buy an appliance first, sign up for it and see how hard it is to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And I think really the upgrade pick is having a Marco Arment in your life who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has also bought the particular item in question, say like a flashlight or something. And then you can just say, hey Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what should I buy? And then the bad news is you’ll be spending an asinine amount of money, but the good news is you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gonna get something really nice. So you just need a Marco in your life.
The web is a wasteland
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then tell me, speaking of the Wirecutter experience, the best blender is not a wasteland?
⏹️ ▶️ John For some people. So Best Blender is a Wasteland was titled last episode. It was about trying to Google, do a
⏹️ ▶️ John Google search for best blender and just finding all these terrible SEO type results and not trying what you want and saying, if you
⏹️ ▶️ John type best blender Wirecutter, then you’ll get the Wirecutter’s recent review of blenders and it will be
⏹️ ▶️ John more informative and useful than just typing best blender. So someone sent me a screenshot and they typed best blender into
⏹️ ▶️ John Google and the number one hit was the Wirecutter’s blender review. So I was like, ah, look at that. Wirecutter’s, you know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John so popular. It’s got so many, such good SEO and such good content that so many people link to it. They’re the
⏹️ ▶️ John number one hitter for Best Blender. So I was going to follow up with that information, but then I figured, you know what, as
⏹️ ▶️ John usual, confirm what listeners send in. I type Best Blender into Google. I’ll give
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco the screenshot of this, perhaps for the show art. Everything above
⏹️ ▶️ John the fold, meaning within the viewport of my reasonably-sized window,
⏹️ ▶️ John is an ad. And when I do Best Blender, I’ve got a row of ads
⏹️ ▶️ John with pictures on top. Then I’ve got consumer reports ad and recommendations and sub links
⏹️ ▶️ John and a bunch of other pictures. So literally every single thing I can see in my browser window after having Best Blender into Google.com
⏹️ ▶️ John is an ad. If I scroll, Wirecutter is right underneath that. And then another box
⏹️ ▶️ John that tries to where Google tries to answer the question and then Good at housekeeping and Forbes
⏹️ ▶️ John and homes and gardens and CNET and consumer reports again, and then a map with a bunch of stores
⏹️ ▶️ John on it and then NY Mag and anyway. So I’m gonna call this a
⏹️ ▶️ John medium. Best Blender is not really a wasteland. Maybe Google is a little bit of a wasteland
⏹️ ▶️ John though, because nothing that’s not an ad above the fold is pretty crappy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I would not argue with Google being a wasteland at this point. It’s like Google web
⏹️ ▶️ Marco search is a disaster most of the time. Although to be fair,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a most of the time DuckDuckGo user who jumps over to Google when I can’t find what I’m looking for there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seems like all web search is a disaster these days. So Google might be like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, the least crappy of the options that are out there, but they’re all, I think just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the web is a wasteland right now. That’s the real, the real problem is, yeah, the web is a wasteland.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh man, that’s tough. DuckDuckGo has been doing what they need to survive, but I’m seeing more and more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff that I don’t want to see and fewer and fewer things that I do want to see, which is very frustrating. I do still love DuckDuckGo,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but golly, there’s more and more and more ads every year, and it’s frustrating.
Sponsor: Fastmail
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Fastmail, my favorite email host. This is
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Perceptual vs. cryptographic hashes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cryptographic hashes versus Apple’s CSAM neural hash. We got a little bit of feedback about this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about how some of the things we said weren’t 100% accurate. John, you want to correct the record here?
⏹️ ▶️ John Everything we said was accurate. It was just overly general, right? So there’s different kinds of hashes, right? And we just described
⏹️ ▶️ John the general case of hashes, which is a thing that takes a bunch of different inputs and maps them to a much smaller
⏹️ ▶️ John finite number of outputs, right? So the whole world of possible files of
⏹️ ▶️ John any size, and make a function that’s going to map
⏹️ ▶️ John each one of the contents of those files to one of a finite number of hashes. Obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John there will be collisions because it’s a one-to-many relationship, right? That’s what we were talking about in broad strokes,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? In a more detailed view, there are different kinds of hashes for different purposes.
⏹️ ▶️ John One particular kind of hash that a lot of people brought up as an objection, but that we didn’t talk about specifically is called a cryptographic
⏹️ ▶️ John hash. In certain cases, when you’re trying to do encryption, you want a hash that has certain properties
⏹️ ▶️ John because there are lots of different ways that you can map from an infinite number of inputs to a finite number
⏹️ ▶️ John of outputs. Like the hashing algorithm decides how you do that mapping. There’s lots of different choices you can make. So
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll link to the Wikipedia page for cryptographic hash function, but I pulled out two points that are salient to what makes
⏹️ ▶️ John them a cryptographic hash. One is that it’s infeasible to generate a message that yields a given hash value.
⏹️ ▶️ John In other words, to reverse the process, right? So if we tell you the hash value
⏹️ ▶️ John is this number, and I say, you go get me something that hashes this value, it’s really hard to do, right? And two, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John infeasible to find two different messages with the same hash value, right? So if I find one
⏹️ ▶️ John message hashes to this, find me another message that hashes the same thing. And we know there are collisions because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a hash function, but it’s hard to find them. It’s infeasible to find, right? That’s what we want out of a cryptographic
⏹️ ▶️ John hash function. Now compare this to Apple CSAM neural hash. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John the purpose of this hashing algorithm is to take two different images and get the
⏹️ ▶️ John same hash. Like the purpose is to collide. What I mean by that is, remember, they’re not just doing a one-to-one
⏹️ ▶️ John comparison against their database of pictures. They want to detect this picture, even if it’s been modified
⏹️ ▶️ John in some minor way. Scaled, rotated, blurred, new text added to it,
⏹️ ▶️ John turned black and white, right? So for this thing to operate correctly,
⏹️ ▶️ John multiple images that are different from each other are supposed to map to the same hash.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s how they tell if this is quote unquote, the same picture. That’s what makes this a neural hash. Again, it doesn’t make
⏹️ ▶️ John it not a hash function. It is mapping from multiple values to a finite number of values. But the way this hash function works is,
⏹️ ▶️ John we want it to tell us that these three images, even though they are technically different byte for byte,
⏹️ ▶️ John they are the same picture, just modified slightly, and we want them to hash to the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, and that’s what makes this very difficult to do and tricky and it’s not the cryptographic hash functions are
⏹️ ▶️ John easier, but like the demands of this neural hash are for it to be to have some kind of intelligent
⏹️ ▶️ John matching and collisions are what we want when it functions correctly. What we don’t want are collisions that aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ John the same picture like that is a different picture entirely. I don’t want that to hash the same thing as these three pictures.
⏹️ ▶️ John But these three pictures are all variants of the same picture. And so they should hash with Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John neural hash to the same value.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then keeping in the same theme, Jonathan Trott wrote, if governments can mandate Apple make code
⏹️ ▶️ Casey changes to CSAM detection, then they can mandate making code changes to photo object recognition
⏹️ ▶️ Casey machine learning, and always on OCR. So in other words, I think what Jonathan’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point here is that they could say, oh, if you detect certain phrases in what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being shown in the camera, or if you detect certain things that they don’t want you to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see, then you could potentially be instructed to alert the authorities about it. So Jonathan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey continues, slippery slope arguments seem to skip over those.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the ML one is the most salient because people are like, I don’t want my phone scanning all my pictures.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s been doing that since Apple added the ML feature. It is the reason you can search for dog in your photos and find
⏹️ ▶️ John pictures of dogs. It’s scanning every single one of your pictures and categorizing them using machine learning model.
⏹️ ▶️ John The only difference, obviously, with the CSAM thing is that it also sends some data back to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John about it. But if people’s hang up is, I don’t want my device scanning a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of my pictures, or I don’t want that capability to exist where my device
⏹️ ▶️ John is passively scanning all my photos all the time and categorizing them. Or if they’re afraid like it’s too open-ended, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John they say they’re not gonna add anything to that NICMEC database, but what if they get something else in there? They already have
⏹️ ▶️ John a completely open-ended, totally not audited or controlled ML service running over all your pictures
⏹️ ▶️ John that probably expands in every release to identify more and more things. The only difference
⏹️ ▶️ John is it just doesn’t transfer anything back to Apple. So, yeah, like I alluded to in the first episode,
⏹️ ▶️ John we talked about this, trusting Apple is a key component of having
⏹️ ▶️ John an iPhone. If you don’t trust Apple, don’t get an iPhone because Apple makes the OS and the hardware and they can do whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John they want with all your stuff and they can inform you about it or not, but it’s very difficult for the average user
⏹️ ▶️ John to be able to audit that information. Like you can’t expect the average user to know
⏹️ ▶️ John everything that’s going on inside their phone. In the end, what it comes down to is trust that what Apple is telling
⏹️ ▶️ John you is true. And if you don’t have that trust, don’t get an iPhone. But that’s the problem with anything you buy.
⏹️ ▶️ John You must trust the brand, the company, the thing that made this product
⏹️ ▶️ John for you. If you don’t trust that, all bets are off.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What was that paper on trusting trust or something like that? What is the
⏹️ ▶️ John of it? Yep, it’s a super old one. I think I read that many decades ago. What year did that come out? It was
⏹️ ▶️ John Thoughts on Trusting Trust. I think it was Dennis Ritchie, one of the C compiler guys. It was basically like a
⏹️ ▶️ John technical paper saying, hey, if you can exploit the lowest levels of
⏹️ ▶️ John a system, like for example, if you can mess with the compiler that’s used to build the operating system or whatever, like
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t trust anything. Like it’s basically, you know, the computers are a big stack of stuff, right? From high level to low level.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you can insert yourself at a low level, everything above it is suspect, right? Because once you’re down there,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can do all sorts of nefarious things. It’s a really cool paper if you’re a computer nerd and want to look at it. We will find the link for the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Reflections on Trusting Trust by Ken Thompson. Does that sound right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What was the year? Ken Thompson,
⏹️ ▶️ John not Dennis Ritchie. 84. 1984. I did not read it in 1984, but I did read it in like 1993. Well, I was two in 1984, just to make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel really and truly old.
Apple’s Slack own-goals
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving right along, let’s see. So in the continued effort for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple to own gold themselves as often as they possibly can when it comes to PR,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple just banned a pay equity Slack channel. This was covered in The Verge. We’re not gonna go too deep
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into this, but I’ve been instructed by a dear colleague that I need to read the following. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from The Verge, Apple has barred employees from creating a Slack channel to discuss pay equity. Apple HR
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said that while the topic was quote, aligned with Apple’s commitment to pay equity. Quote, it did not meet the company’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Slack terms of use. Seriously, this is what rang your hat on.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s, that’s, remember I said last time, like, oh, you can probably come up with some reason to
⏹️ ▶️ John not allow it, but, so Apple is saying, it’s aligned with our commitment to pay equity. See, we,
⏹️ ▶️ John we, we’re all on the same team here, but don’t do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Continuing, continuing from the verge, quote, Slack channels are provided to conduct Apple business and must
⏹️ ▶️ Casey advocate the work, deliverables, or mission of Apple departments and teams. The employee relations representative told employees
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the company’s rules for the in-office chat app say that, quote, Slack channels for activities and hobbies not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recognized as Apple employee clubs or diversity network associations, or DNAs, aren’t permitted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and shouldn’t be created, quote. This is continuing from The Verge, but that rule has not been evenly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Currently, Apple employs- You don’t say, how is that possible?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Who’d have thunk it? Apple employees have popular Slack channels to discuss fun dogs, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has more than 5,000 members, gaming with more than 3,000 members, and dad jokes, which I want to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be a part of, which has more than 2,000 members. On August 18, the company approved a channel called
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Company Foosball. The cat and dog channels are not part of official clubs, and all of these channels were specifically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey created to talk about non-work activities. So turns out that they also need to work on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey equity within Slack channels, too.
⏹️ ▶️ John What a mess. Yeah, I’m just like, what a flimsy excuse of like, oh, yeah, no, we’re totally for pay
⏹️ ▶️ John equity, But here’s some like weird letter of the law rule about oh, you just can’t do it in Slack,
⏹️ ▶️ John sorry, it’s because of our Slack terms of use. And just like App Store review, it’s not like you can go, but what about the
⏹️ ▶️ John Dad Jokes channel? Don’t look over there. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John like App Review. It’s like this is the new part of Apple’s DNA, arbitrarily, you know, enforced
⏹️ ▶️ John or not rules, and by the way, you’re not allowed to ask us. It’s not about what little Jimmy is doing, this is about you
⏹️ ▶️ John right now. Can we focus on you? Your Slack channel, unfortunately, doesn’t meet the terms of use. has nothing to
⏹️ ▶️ John do with the fact that it’s pay equity. We’re committed to pay equity, but really don’t make that channel.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s so bad. Seriously, I’m telling you, Apple has just nothing but PR own goals for the last month or two. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ridiculous. If you don’t believe me, listen to the last episode.
Music data model
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving right along, we had some really interesting feedback from an anonymous feedbacker. This was with regard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to how things are stored within like Apple Music and Spotify and whatnot, and what is an album,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what is a track, what is a recording and so on. This is a little bit long as well, but I do think it’s absolutely worth
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. So this anonymous person writes, for a while I worked on music metadata at Spotify. The data model
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is generally like this. Recordings are an audio record of a specific performance.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They may appear on many albums as tracks. So what are tracks? Tracks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are like a slot on an album where recording goes. So for example, track number three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the White Album is the song Glass Onion. Every recording track and album is attributed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to an artist, but there are a lot of corner cases. Under Pressure is a recording by both Queen and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey David Bowie. Should you attribute it to both of them separately with an entry under each artist? Should you make a new artist
⏹️ ▶️ Casey called Queen and David Bowie? Or what about tracks that feature an artist? Is Snoop Dogg the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey artist when he did a reggae thing under the name Snoop Lion? What about various artists’ albums? And then that brings
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us, of course, to albums. Albums are way more complicated than they seem initially. There are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey usually many slightly different versions of an album to be released in different markets, US, Canada, UK, et cetera, or with bonus
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tracks or with special art. The same album is often released digitally on CD and on vinyl.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Attributes of the audio, like live or radio edit or remix, can also be supplied at the recording track or album
⏹️ ▶️ Casey level. So this is pretty bananas. And then this individual gave us a link to MusicBrains,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is music, B-R-A-I-N-Z.org, which has, according to them, a pretty good schema
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that represents most of this. So you can go and check that out if you want to dig deeper.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this tells me that Spotify, unlike Apple, did spend some time thinking about
⏹️ ▶️ John the data model for music and all the various choices they have to make and how the things are connected and so on and so forth.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m glad to hear that. Although I have heard a lot of complaints about Spotify getting confused about artists that
⏹️ ▶️ John have the same name. Merlin complains about that a lot. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not to mention they have spam issues. Like, it’s beyond like, they’re not just confused. Like, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being actively spammed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, that’s part of anything where you allow people to submit
⏹️ ▶️ John content. Even if it’s not like the whole world, but just people who record music, it’s a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I’m glad there’s some thought put into this stuff on Spotify’s end. Hopefully, they do better
⏹️ ▶️ John than Apple in terms of tracking these things. But I still feel like, yes, the data model is very complicated. But
⏹️ ▶️ John there are more complicated data models. And just spend a week maybe whiteboarding it before you just go ahead and implant
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco your thing. But
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple didn’t do that a couple decades ago. but now we’re stuck with what we have.
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Coding for kids
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My kid is nine and is super, let’s say,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made of me in certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, half his DNA came from me. So, you know, unsurprisingly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s super into technology and computing devices. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s very interested in learning how to write code. recognize 9 is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little young but not too young. He, to give you some idea of where he is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he has already seemingly very much mastered the language of Minecraft command blocks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a lot of the various things you can do with that. And so he’s interested in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco learning how to code enough that he can start actually making his own games. So I was wondering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the audience had any feedback and John possibly as well, because I know you went through some of this, at least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if not all of it, but I’m curious, like, what’s a good tool set
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and language and platform or whatever out there for kids to learn how to code?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, some things to consider. So number one, I don’t care what platform it’s on. If he can do it on his
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad, that’s better, but if it has to be on a Mac or PC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop, that’s fine too, we can make that work. I already have on his
⏹️ ▶️ Marco list of things to try that we’re gonna give a shot, Swift Playgrounds and Hopscotch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think I’m also gonna have, he plays Roblox on his iPad. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you can create Roblox worlds on the iPad. I don’t know literally anything about it. Yes, I’ve seen that video about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how people get ripped off and I will show it to him when he’s ready. But anyway, so maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the answer is Roblox on a PC where he can like do the full blown creative experience. I assume that’s what that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is. But he wants to be able to make games. And so I have concerns of like, I don’t wanna just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dump him right into Swift as a game platform because that’s, I mean, I wouldn’t even do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, I think. Because he wants to make game worlds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where, okay, you’re gonna go to this place and get this thing, go to this place, go to this thing, these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco multi-level game logic things that, I feel like if I start him in a lower level language,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m afraid that he might get intimidated by how much work that will be and how hard it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get from zero to that and possibly give up too early or get frustrated. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m okay separating the concerns of like making games and learning programming. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that might be two different activities. Like if he wants to make something in Roblox as a game
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then in Swift Playgrounds or something like that, learn the more low level coding stuff, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine too. This might be two different things, it might be one thing. He would get a lot of value
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in learning Swift because he knows I use Swift. And so that’s like, there’s value there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe he can teach me some stuff about it. And so anyway, so I’m curious,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, what people have done for that recently, like what’s out there. If it’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel too much like a toy language, I think it would turn him off. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I don’t know, like I looked at Hopscotch, I downloaded it, it might be too like young for him, I’m not sure. I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco find out and I’ll report back, you know, as this series goes on. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so if anybody has any really good stories about what language or environment you were able to start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a kid on who wants something that’s not just a toy, he wants to make real stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously, but within the realm of what a nine-year-old can make. And so let me know if you have any good experiences,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I learned programming on QBasic, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought briefly, I’m like, what if I just give him BASIC somehow, whatever environment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would be, if I can get an emulator, or if somebody makes like a modern interpreter for it or whatever, like what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey if he just-
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So get DOSBox and run QBasic in that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if Apple hasn’t kicked it off the app store yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m talking about on your Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I mean, maybe that’s a fun answer. I even thought like, maybe I should like get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco him an Apple II and just like boot it up and just like, just have him type
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the command line, like 10, print high, 20, go to 10. Like, you know, because the more basic it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is and not, you know, lowercase B basic, The more basic it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the more accessible it is and the more kids can get into it, even if they can’t necessarily make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the next Minecraft, which no individual could. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d love to hear anybody’s suggestions, and this is not going to be a one-week project, this is going to be probably a multi-month
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or multi-year project, as we try different things and we kind of have a feedback
⏹️ ▶️ Marco loop from him and see what he likes and what he doesn’t like, and what he gets into and what he doesn’t. I appreciate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any stories or input you can provide on like, what should kids learn today? What
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes a good balance between letting them do the kind of stuff they want to do but not being too frustrating up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steven Connelly The deal you’re making though is that whatever you come up with, whatever you like, I want you to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey come back to the show please and let us all know because I’m probably, hopefully not too far away from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wanting to answer the same question. And granted, it’ll be a little different then, but I would love to hear what you guys end up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really liking or not liking for that matter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And once again, I have seen the Roblox video about how they rip everybody off. I don’t need to be sent that. Thank you.
⏹️ ▶️ John So here’s a little bit of stories from my experience trying to get my kids into
⏹️ ▶️ John programming. And I think what you said, like you basic like that probably
⏹️ ▶️ John led me down the wrong path because. So
⏹️ ▶️ John every kid is different, blah, blah, blah. There’s our disclaimer. Right. But my impression from my kids and
⏹️ ▶️ John kids in general is a big part of the motivation is to
⏹️ ▶️ John do the thing, whatever the thing is, right? Make a game, let’s say.
⏹️ ▶️ John We all know on this show that sort of the foundational programming knowledge is very important
⏹️ ▶️ John and transferable to lots of different uses and so on and so forth. But I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s pretty rare the kid, especially young kid, that wants to learn
⏹️ ▶️ John how to program. It’s only a means to an end. And if I think about how I learned to program
⏹️ ▶️ John and the reason why that wasn’t in the forefront of my mind is the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing I wanted to do, like make the computer do the thing, computers couldn’t do anything when I was
⏹️ ▶️ John learning. They could print, like a VIC-20 can print text and color blocks the size of characters
⏹️ ▶️ John on the screen. Right? That’s all it could do. And so when I wrote a program
⏹️ ▶️ John that, you know, 10 print hello, 20 go to 10, I was making the computer do the
⏹️ ▶️ John things that it does. Like it wasn’t like, oh, that’s just, I’m just learning to program or learning conditionals or
⏹️ ▶️ John loops. That’s all it could do, right? Color blocks, characters, print output,
⏹️ ▶️ John accept input from the keyboard, show it on your TV. Right? That’s it. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems like, oh, you know, when I was a kid, I learned the foundations of programming and I bet
⏹️ ▶️ John other kids would like to do it too. But I think the only reason I was satisfied that, and probably the only reason Marco was satisfied
⏹️ ▶️ John with QBasic is they can make computers do the thing that you thought was the thing. QBasic could make
⏹️ ▶️ John Windows, right? Like Windows in Windows, right? Am I getting
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco QBasic right? You’re talking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about Visual Basic, which I went to right afterwards. QBasic was like the DOS one, just a big blue screen of text
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it had like, you know, built-in documentation so I could just hop over and look up every function and make, you know, games like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, really basic, you know, text in and out games like you were just talking about. Or you could do graphics.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I eventually got to that in my later years of playing with it, but it was initially just all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco text-based stuff, and then occasionally drawing ASCII graphics, basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I made a little Bomberman clone using ASCII as the graphics. It was a mess,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it was a lot of fun.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, but it was like, at least it was closer to what the computer could do, right? So, when I tried to
⏹️ ▶️ John pitch my kids and things, I started with things like Hopscotch and a bunch of other stuff that were like, tried to gamify learning
⏹️ ▶️ John to program, right? So they were, you know, there’s all like kind of like Swift Playgrounds is today. I forget the names of the things,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like Swift Playgrounds is like a little character that moves around, is trying to make it fun for you to just be in a text window
⏹️ ▶️ John by pre-doing a bunch of stuff and letting you feel like, hey, I’m making a cool looking character move
⏹️ ▶️ John around, but you didn’t make the character. It’s just already there, right? With my kids, I had no success
⏹️ ▶️ John getting them to want to learn to program at any age. I didn’t really push it that hard, but I always put it in front of them, see if they ran
⏹️ ▶️ John to it, see if it would grab them. And they never got hooked. And we all, all three of us know, like what it means
⏹️ ▶️ John to get hooked on programming. Like it just, it’s one of those things that just happens. Right? It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can see when programming gets its claws into somebody and it, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not subtle. You’ll find yourself just sucked in and just constantly working on this
⏹️ ▶️ John program. And just like, we all experienced it. Like how, this is how we became who we are. Right? But when that doesn’t happen,
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t happen. Right? And I don’t know what it takes to make it up. So I tried a lot of those things of like, Let’s
⏹️ ▶️ John gamify learning to program. Didn’t work at all. I think what will
⏹️ ▶️ John work with a lot of kids and the reason Roblox and everything are exciting is fastest way to do the thing. And
⏹️ ▶️ John unfortunately for kids today, do the thing is make like a 3D game, 3D
⏹️ ▶️ John network connected game, right? And that’s so far above, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John print and input a dollar sign. Like it’s so, it’s like, how are you gonna go from zero
⏹️ ▶️ John to that? So you gotta use these things like these, you know, these game creation engines where they basically do
⏹️ ▶️ John almost all of it for you. They take care of the networking, the multiplayer, the roster, the 3D graphics, and
⏹️ ▶️ John you can start off with a bunch of canned stuff and make something that is recognizable to modern
⏹️ ▶️ John kids as a game. And that can get them hooked on programming because they start using
⏹️ ▶️ John the pre-made models and the pre-made everything, but now they wanna add some kind of behavior. When you hit this block,
⏹️ ▶️ John I want it to explode. And so now they’re into like, okay, well, is there somewhere I can do that in the UI,
⏹️ ▶️ John or do I have to type some kind of scripting thing? They start to learn about conditionals and variables, and then they’re off to the races
⏹️ ▶️ John because they want to make the thing. And making the thing is tricky. I’m going to suggest something in a second that I think
⏹️ ▶️ John might not be that popular, but not for the reasons we would expect. So the Playdate is coming out
⏹️ ▶️ John soon, and they have a web-based dev thing where you can have no programming skill and
⏹️ ▶️ John make a game that will run on Playdate. And also it has a scripting language built in and stuff like that. I’ll put a link to an article in the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ John where Nevid Mergen again, talks about how this IDE works, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s only useful if your son wants to make a game that runs
⏹️ ▶️ John on a Playdate. But does he wanna make a game that runs on a Playdate? How many of his friends even know what a Playdate is, unless they have nerdy
⏹️ ▶️ John parents, right? He might wanna make a game that he can show to his friends and they can play on their
⏹️ ▶️ John PCs at home. And so this Playdate pulp thing is of no use and no interest to Adam because
⏹️ ▶️ John he can make it for himself and play it on his dad’s Playdate or his mom’s Playdate or whatever that’s in the house, it
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t travel any farther. Do the thing means something different to a lot of kids. For some kids it means it has
⏹️ ▶️ John to be a Minecraft mod because all my friends are in Minecraft and they want to see the thing that I made. To some kids it wants
⏹️ ▶️ John to be a PC game or whatever it is. So I feel like that really is going to
⏹️ ▶️ John determine how you approach this. And it could be Atom is super into programming as a programming
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, right? So who knows? Again, every kid is different, you’ll find out. But I think that is the tricky part
⏹️ ▶️ John about this, that even though we as programmers value programming in the abstract,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s probably rare the kids that value it in that way. And then, so this is a story for
⏹️ ▶️ John my kids. My son, after I, I, I pitched him on, I tried to show him how to program Pearl, of course,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Hey, look, you can just
⏹️ ▶️ John get tech. You monster. Text input. I was trying to basically do the equivalent of like basic,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, Hey, you know, you can print things and you can accept input. Are you trying to scare him away from programming? Really?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like if you try, if you’re trying to look for like the equivalent of like basic where you, you know, you can print strings, accept input,
⏹️ ▶️ John do conditionals, run subroutines, right? Just like you can make a text adventure in it, right? So I try to show him those basics.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not interested. Hopscotch, all that stuff, not interested. Scratch from MIT, not interested. And at various times I would throw
⏹️ ▶️ John him in there. He played Minecraft like crazy, was not into making mods at all, had no interest,
⏹️ ▶️ John he just wanted me to bang my head against trying to install the terrible mods that other people made, see past episodes of the show.
⏹️ ▶️ John But eventually in high school, he decided he was gonna take a programming course. And in that programming course, he learned
⏹️ ▶️ John Swift and Java, And he took the computer science AP test. And
⏹️ ▶️ John then he took a course on iOS development. And now he’s got an iOS app. And yesterday he was asking
⏹️ ▶️ John me, how do I get an app on the App Store? I think, and by the way, this is my question to the audience. I said I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know. And I said to try to look it up. And what he determined is I think miners can have an app on the App Store, even if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John free. He just wants his app to be free. He just wants to be on the App Store. But if anyone knows, how
⏹️ ▶️ John is it that miners can get free apps on the App Store without having their parent do it or something,
⏹️ ▶️ John please let me know. So that’s the state we’re at there. But anyway, he did that all on his own. Like, what is it that clicked
⏹️ ▶️ John in his mind? And by the way, he’s totally hooked now. It’s like the programming thing got him. Not because of anything I did,
⏹️ ▶️ John not because of any of my attempts to encourage or support or anything like that. In fact, probably despite all
⏹️ ▶️ John my efforts, on his own, he decided at age, you know, 15 or 16, that
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s gonna look into programming and fast forward a few years and he’s spending hundreds of hours sitting
⏹️ ▶️ John in front of his laptop in Xcode every three days coming out of his cave to ask
⏹️ ▶️ John me some question that I can’t answer about why something’s broken in Xcode. And he’s using SwiftUI
⏹️ ▶️ John and Swift and doing all the things. And as far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t know the fundamentals
⏹️ ▶️ John of programming and didn’t have a bottom-up education. He just wanted to do the thing. So he made an app for his school to
⏹️ ▶️ John read his school’s newspaper. It’s basically an RSS reader combined with a podcast player. I sent Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John a few screenshots where it looks a lot like Overcast because he was quote-unquote inspired by Overcast, which is the only podcast
⏹️ ▶️ John player he’s ever seen, I think. Um, but anyway, that happened like all on its own.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, uh, my advice to Marco is like, let Adam lead you where he wants to go.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if he, if it turns out that he’s not into it, it doesn’t mean that he’s never going to be into it. It could just be that
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s, you know, he’s not interested in the way that you want him to be interested in, which is the story of kids
⏹️ ▶️ John all the time. Like, yeah, they, they can be led by what their parents do, but at a certain point, what their parents want
⏹️ ▶️ John them to do starts to become less attractive. He’s nine. So that’s probably not happening yet, but rest assured it will happen. So
⏹️ ▶️ John my only suggestion is to look at pulp if he’s into it and he’s into the playdate. It’s great. It’s web
⏹️ ▶️ John based runs on every platform. You can program in it by writing code, but you can also make a complete game
⏹️ ▶️ John without writing a line of code just by clicking on stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s also not out yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, but like, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s nine and it’s going to be out soon.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, no, I actually I thought about the play as a possible thing because it is a simplified environment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it has this monochrome small screen. It has some of these really easy to use tools allegedly that I haven’t actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looked at them yet, but like this is one of the goals that they have of developing the playdate. It’s like in addition to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco available lower level languages, there’s also this like easier thing that you can do. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s certainly something that I’ll be happy to explore with him, you know, once we get ours. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not sure like he might fall in love with the thing, but he might not. Yeah, as you were saying, like you kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know. So I was going to kind of wait and see on that. But you know, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think he has, he’s very motivated to write code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a thing. He’s also very motivated to like create custom game worlds and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that might not be this like tied together. Like he, that might be two different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interests that happen to overlap. But that, you know, maybe he’ll get into the coding side for its own sake.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Who knows? So we’ll see. He wants to write a spreadsheet. I mean, probably not that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I mean, look, I’ve been programming for a very long time. I’ve never written a spreadsheet. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a lot more to this world than that. So yeah, so we’ll see. I’m glad to hear that it worked out for your
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, it worked out. I mean, like, he came to it on his own. The other thing I would suggest, by the way, is web programming. I know you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not super into that, but like, you can do a lot of, I mean, I don’t have any, again, concrete suggestions. I’m sure listeners will send in
⏹️ ▶️ John good stuff. But there’s a lot of stuff you can do with JavaScript and web pages. And the advantages that has is that all
⏹️ ▶️ John his friends have access to web, the web browser. Like it is a platform that everybody can access and
⏹️ ▶️ John you can write some pretty cool quote unquote web-based games, you know, with using web processing,
⏹️ ▶️ John that JS or all sorts of other stuff that my son was also into at various times. Web tech is easy
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of you don’t need a complicated IDE. The language is pretty friendly. There’s lots of examples,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you can create even just learning HTML and CSS and then learning CSS animation and then making some stupid
⏹️ ▶️ John fart thing with CSS animation. Like that’s great. That’s fine. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John that may be, you know, it really depends on where his values are. Are his values, I want to make a cool thing for me? Are his values, I want
⏹️ ▶️ John to make a cool thing to show off to my friends? Or his values, like literally, I want to learn about programming because I’m intellectually curious about
⏹️ ▶️ John it? Or is it a spectrum? And like you said, are they separate things or are they actually combined?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I guess we’ll find out. I’ll report back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Please do. I’m really genuinely interested to hear. John, what is the latest?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because how old is your son? He’s a rising junior? Senior.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Senior, OK. So he’s licensed to drive. That’s right, that’s right. OK. And I remember on RecDiff’s, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey starting to talk college. So sitting here now, is he going for like CS, CPE, or
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s going to be a computer science major in college.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Nice. Not CPE.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or computer engineering. Like, I told him, if you’re in computer science, it’s probably going to be on liberal arts college,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you have to take more English courses. And that’s turning him off. So he’d rather be in engineering, but he does like computer science. So there
⏹️ ▶️ John are some cool schools with CE. And actually, I think Cornell lets you take computer science
⏹️ ▶️ John in the engineering school? So does Virginia Tech, just saying. He’s not going to Virginia, but yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John science, computer engineering. What the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hell, man? What is that absolute disgust in your voice? He’s trying to stay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey close to home. All right, all right, I’ll allow it, I’ll allow it.
Class-action settlement
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So in the last, I don’t know, it was like a week ago or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco It was mere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hours after we released the last episode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey of the show. That’s right, that’s right,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thank you. There was brilliant news that Apple has made
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of our lives so much better. According to the Washington Post, Apple loosens rules
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for developers in a major concession amid antitrust pressure. The Wall Street Journal says that Apple set
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to let app developers alert users to alternate payment methods. Financial Times says Apple makes app store concession
⏹️ ▶️ Casey payments. The Verge says Apple finally agrees to let app developers communicate with their customers. Finally, CNBC
⏹️ ▶️ Casey says in major policy change, Apple will allow developers to email customers about alternatives to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app store billing. Oh, hell yeah, gentlemen, we are gonna be rich.
⏹️ ▶️ John And those headlines, by the way, are from Stratechery. Ben Thompson collected them all on it. It is
⏹️ ▶️ John a great example of how the initial flurry of stories about this thing were reported. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John saw some of these headlines flying across on Twitter. I’m like, wow, what is this big news? Turns
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out, maybe not. So I don’t think we really need to go that deep into this famous last words.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But basically, there aren’t any concessions at all. And it seems like the only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people that really understood what was happening here were Bloomberg, where their headline is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple settles with app developers without making major concessions. Almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Almost accurate.
⏹️ ▶️ John Settles with app developers. Who are these app developers? and who are. Bingo!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s like, I, look, and we did a lot about this on Under the Radar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this week that came out today, so I will also refer people to that. I think it’s a very good episode if you’re a developer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or not, and I strongly, even if you don’t listen to Under the Radar normally, I strongly recommend this week’s episode. I think it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was a really good one. But anyway, I’m going to cover some of the same ground here, but yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is no dealing with quote app developers. App developers are not a unified group. No one speaks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me. No one speaks for all the other developers. I’m not part of some organization. I’m not part of a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco union. I’m not part of some kind of trade group. I don’t know any developers who are. We all want different things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We have some common themes about what we want. And we have some communities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are somewhat cohesive. But it’s a pretty big group of people with lots
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of different communities, lots of different cultures, lots of different priorities, lots of different needs. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is no app developers suing Apple. There is no Apple settling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with app developers because that group doesn’t exist. And so anyway, minor nitpick there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no one speaks for me. I’m not part of any group that’s like, oh, I didn’t agree to this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, frankly, I didn’t even know about this lawsuit until this press release.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s a class action lawsuit, and the class is developers on the App Store. And the nature
⏹️ ▶️ John of class action lawsuits is that they are a big payday for the lawyers involved, and you may or
⏹️ ▶️ John may not be in the class, and maybe you’ll find out about it later. So here’s what the, all right, so the
⏹️ ▶️ John overall story is that it seemed like that this class action lawsuit was gonna fail, that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John was going to win because it was a flimsy case. I don’t even remember what the details were. It was just something like, oh, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John being unfair, whatever. But it seemed to observers that Apple was probably gonna win it. So Apple settled
⏹️ ▶️ John it, and they settled it on terms that as the Bloomberg headline said, didn’t give any major
⏹️ ▶️ John concessions. Because why give concessions when you’re gonna win the case anyway? You’re settling it to save everybody time and money. Just
⏹️ ▶️ John take the settlement, be lucky, happy with what you got and what did the class of app store developers
⏹️ ▶️ John get? Well, Apple put together a $100 million fund to help app
⏹️ ▶️ John developers out and I think they’re going to like if you’re in the class you can apply to essentially get like 3%
⏹️ ▶️ John of what you would have gotten if Apple’s cut was 15% instead of 30
⏹️ ▶️ John like Apple recently reduced the cut for the small business program. You know, if you make less than $1 million in revenue
⏹️ ▶️ John per whatever and you apply to this program and Apple approves you, then instead of taking 30%
⏹️ ▶️ John of all your sales, they’ll take 15%. Well, if you were in the class of developer and you choose
⏹️ ▶️ John to receive some of this money, this $100 million pool would be divided up amongst
⏹️ ▶️ John all the people who were in the class who paid 30% during the time that it was supposedly unfair.
⏹️ ▶️ John The lawyers also get paid out of this $100 million fund and they want 30 million of it. So kiss that money goodbye. which gloriously
⏹️ ▶️ John is 30%, which I love so much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John So a handful of lawyers get $30
⏹️ ▶️ John million. You may possibly get up to 3% back
⏹️ ▶️ John on what Apple took from you in some period of time. Oh, and by the way,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you take the settlement, if you take this money from Apple, this piddling amount of a couple hundred bucks that you’re probably gonna get,
⏹️ ▶️ John you also promise to never ever sue Apple for anything ever again. Like this whole big legal agreement, it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John by taking this money, you agree that Apple must be held harmless and didn’t do anything wrong, and
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not allowed to, and you agree that the App Store rules are fair, and so on and so forth. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John all these sort of stipulations, right? So that’s one thing. That’s part of the second settlement. Second thing is
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has clarified, and again, Ben Thompson, Mr. Tech, you have to pay for this article, but you should, because he goes into way more
⏹️ ▶️ John detail than we’re going to here. Also clarified an existing rule that says, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John had flipped a lot back and forth on it, but previously they had said, App developers, you cannot communicate
⏹️ ▶️ John with your customers by collecting information in the app. So in other words, you couldn’t make an app that says, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John customer, enter your email address here, and then to sign up for my whatever, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John you would get their email address, and then you would use that email address to say, hey, customer, you gave me your email address, and I just wanted
⏹️ ▶️ John you to know that if you go to my website, you can sign up for an account or a subscription or blah, blah, blah, and if you do
⏹️ ▶️ John it through the web, you don’t have to pay Apple 30%. There used to be a rule where Apple said you couldn’t do And now Apple is clarifying
⏹️ ▶️ John that developers can use communication such as email to share information about payment
⏹️ ▶️ John methods outside of their iOS app. But wait, wait, outside their iOS app? Yeah, outside
⏹️ ▶️ John your iOS app. Well, that’s not a concession. No, it’s not really. They’re basically saying, if you wanna email people
⏹️ ▶️ John and you already have their email address that you didn’t get from the app, that’s fine. Thanks, Apple. Am I allowed to
⏹️ ▶️ John talk to the person sitting next to me or do I need your permission to do that too? It’s like, Apple’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, We don’t want you ever saying anything about other payment methods to your customers, even
⏹️ ▶️ John if you do it outside of the app store, but now you’re allowed to, it’s fine. You can talk to your friends. We won’t, we won’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, I mean, how would Apple even stop us? It’s totally unenforceable. Apple’s just saying, now don’t tell anybody about other payment
⏹️ ▶️ John methods outside of your app. Anyway, so that’s clarified.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple also agreed to keep the small business program for at least three more years, which is nice, but it’s like, wait
⏹️ ▶️ John a second, there’s an end to this program?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, I was gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say, I do not recall there ever being any mention of this being a temporary thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John They didn’t say one way or the other, but they could say, hey, let’s throw them a bone. It’s like, oh, if you’re worried about this program going away, it’ll be here
⏹️ ▶️ John for at least three more years. And also, Apple also agreed not to make the App
⏹️ ▶️ John Store search even worse by doing things unfairly, unfairly waiting its own apps, which is a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple totally did, right? In the epic trial that came out that Apple had been unfairly waiting
⏹️ ▶️ John some of its apps for a while, and then reverse that. So Apple also agreed, yeah, we won’t do that anymore
⏹️ ▶️ John either. Aren’t we great? So yeah, Apple gave basically nothing. I mean, $100
⏹️ ▶️ Marco million is nothing. Well, by the way, that search thing is nothing because what the 7
⏹️ ▶️ Marco allows them to do is use like objective metrics, like user downloads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and reviews. Well, yeah, guess what apps have the most usage on the App Store? Apple’s apps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they can just say, oh, we’re gonna rank them by usage. There, bing, Apple’s apps come out on top.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not artificially waiting. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco a meritocracy. Anyway. Yeah, right. Oh.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. The bottom line is Apple could do whatever it wants with its search. Like, the only way we would ever find out that they did anything,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, we have no visibility into their algorithm, right? It’s the reason we didn’t know that they had been unfairly
⏹️ ▶️ John waiting their app until we saw the discovery in the Epic trial. I mean, in all fairness, their algorithm is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty easy to see because it’s so terrible. I think it’s like a MySQL-like query.
⏹️ ▶️ John So basically, Apple didn’t have to give anything here, and they didn’t give anything. In some ways, people
⏹️ ▶️ John are saying, well, what do you expect? Apple’s gonna win the case, they’re not gonna give any concessions. But it’s actually a tricky situation
⏹️ ▶️ John for Apple because if you know you’re gonna win, I bet somebody thought if we do this $100 million thing, that’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John make us look good. But it doesn’t. It only makes them look worse than doing nothing. If they had given
⏹️ ▶️ John no money, it would have just been like, well, Apple won that case and didn’t give anything. It’s almost like a slap in the face, the $100 million
⏹️ ▶️ John when you know that the lawyers take 30 million of it, and then you’re gonna get pocket change out of it, and
⏹️ ▶️ John in exchange you agree that Apple never did anything wrong on the App Store?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a couple angles to this. Obviously, some of this is probably over our heads in terms of like the legal ramifications
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything and some of the strategy behind some of it. But one theory I did hear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few times that makes a lot of sense is, even though Apple was probably not going to lose this case if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it went to trial, Apple, I think, has learned from the Epic trial that they really don’t wanna go to trial.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s bad for them in a number of ways to go to trial because then you start getting discovery and you start getting these like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco controversial emails coming out, and Apple’s executives making asses of themselves in the stand,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so you just, I think Apple learned, hopefully, like, yeah, we actually don’t really wanna go to trial if we can help
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Like, if there’s a way to settle easy lawsuits like this, so they don’t even get that far, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better for us to settle them. So that’s probably what happened here as part of this. And,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, and for the, you know, accepting the settlement, a lot of people keep asking me if I’m going to accept it. I don’t know yet, I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to look at like, what it means to accept it really in more detail. But if it’s along the lines
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like, you agree not to sue Apple over these particular claims
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this particular time span, like if I can’t sue Apple for this same thing, like double
⏹️ ▶️ Marco jeopardy kind of thing, where like, okay, I can’t say you took too much money from me between 2015 and 2020 or whatever. Oh well, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wasn’t gonna do that anyway. Like I’m not gonna sue Apple. None of us are gonna sue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Apple. Like they have bazillions of dollars.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like no individual on this podcast is ever going to sue Apple probably.
⏹️ ▶️ John Unless it’s like a wrongful death suit for a phone that explodes or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, or a car. Oh God.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I don’t like, it’s just like, it’s mostly the optics, it’s not mechanically like, oh, you give up all
⏹️ ▶️ John these rights because again, we’re never gonna sue Apple. But it just seems like a slap in the face for what I assume will be a pilling amount
⏹️ ▶️ John of money. And I’m kind of disappointed, just, I mean, it’s just dumb luck for me, but like all the money I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John ever made in the App Store came during the 30% times more or less. And then the 15%, like the
⏹️ ▶️ John small business program, happened after my apps had sold their initial burst of stuff or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would love to have only had Apple take 15% of that first burst of money, but bad
⏹️ ▶️ John luck, bad timing. And if I can only get 3% of that difference back, for me it’s like chump change. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like 200 bucks or something, so who cares, right? So I probably won’t do it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I think part of this, like most class action lawsuits in theory depends on how many people
⏹️ ▶️ John ask for the money. So if more people ask for the money, you get a smaller cut or something like that.
Breaking: Reader-app rule change
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Did you see there’s a press release that just came out right now that’s something else now. What the
⏹️ ▶️ John hell is this? What? We don’t have we can’t do this Apple stop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the I mean at least it’s now. Okay Japan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fair Trade Commission closes after investigation Apple will let developers of reader app that has a special meaning we’ll get to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around the world link to an external website to set up or manage an account beginning early
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next year. What? Oh my God this is big. While in-app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco purchases through the App Store, Commerce System, Marine, The Safest, and blah blah blah, Apple will also help developers of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reader apps protect users when they link them to an external website to make purchases.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it says worldwide.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey While the agreement was made with the JFTC, Apple will apply this change globally to all reader apps on the store.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, it’s reader apps only.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so what that, that has special meaning. So while I think about how,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this actually might be really big, but um, all right. If we’re reading it, obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you gotta like, get around Apple’s PR spin here, but this might actually be a really big deal. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they’re talking about, reader apps means things like Netflix, Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eBook, Kindle app, things like that. It’s a special category of apps where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they, it’s the same category that they would allow you to have externally purchased
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff in these apps and not use it in a purchase, only if you didn’t mention how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to purchase it. that kind of, it was that whole category of apps. So it’s, they’ve used this term reader
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps throughout the App Store rule evolution and it’s grown like in scope over time. So if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is what we think it might be, what this would basically be is like, you know, kind of everything but games
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically is what this would most likely mean in practice. You know, the big companies that are giving them the most trouble,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Spotify, Amazon, Netflix, HBO, all that kind of stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they would all be able to link out to make external purchases. that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John would be a really big deal. Well, sort of. They
⏹️ ▶️ John said to set up or manage an account.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, no, no, but then it even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco says. So, but see, this is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco third paragraph here about safe guidelines. This is where it can get tricky. So they’re saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, before the change is going to affect next year, Apple will update its guidelines and review process to make sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco users of reader apps continue to have a safe experience on the App Store. Blah, blah, blah. Apple will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also help developers of reader apps protect users when they link them to an external website to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make purchases. So that to me kind of sounds like Apple’s going to be heavily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reviewing and probably have a lot of rules around like if you link out for an external purchase,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you can do there, how you can do it, what you might have to offer the users like safety wise or control
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wise, which if this is as big as I think it kind of might seem like it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that might be a pretty good compromise. But man, this is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m gonna have to analyze every word of this to really know for sure what’s going on here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, well see, to that end, to that end in the end of the second paragraph, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey agreed with the JSTC to let developers of these apps share a single
⏹️ ▶️ Casey link to their website to help users set up and manage their account. So do they get like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a single, literally one
⏹️ ▶️ John you get Netflix.com slash sign up or whatever?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It could be through the associated domain system. So right now, apps have the content
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the associated domain. This is how universal links work, where you open up certain links and they open up the app instead of the website.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you have a way for an Apple system to verify
⏹️ ▶️ Marco between an app and a website or a web domain. I own this domain. This domain is related to this app.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so they could possibly use that system and have a field somewhere that says, this is my purchase page
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever. This is my login or signup page. And then maybe they can have some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way for, boy, I don’t know, I mean, this is all like, you know, shot in the dark here. Maybe they could have some way to like, you know, have like a managed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco payments kind of centralized control flow or something, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If this is what it sounds like it is, this is A, going to be a really big deal,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and B, going to depend a lot on the implementation details. And there’s a lot of details
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here that are kind of saying, all right, coming early next year, you know, hand wavy, and maybe it’s gonna take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until that because this is kind of a big deal. Like, it might require some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software updates, infrastructure building, in addition to working out the rules and trying to settle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down the regulators around the world.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, given how well the App Store review folks are at understanding
⏹️ ▶️ John and figuring out what apps do, like very often they will misunderstand, like screens in the
⏹️ ▶️ John app or how to get between them or what is actually available. The idea of them clicking through to your website and making sure
⏹️ ▶️ John that your website is satisfactory according to some set of rules, I feel like their main
⏹️ ▶️ John skill set is finding where you hid the link to netflix.com. It is not. Once you get to netflix.com,
⏹️ ▶️ John figuring out if the website complies with whatever rules they’re gonna make up or whatever. So
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, this story is literally breaking news while we’re recording the podcast. So we apologize if we got any of
⏹️ ▶️ John it wrong. Surely we’ll talk about it more next week. but it transitions nicely into the next item.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love, by the way, I love the concept of like, we just were saying how all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco initial headlines about the other thing were totally wrong. So I really hope that we didn’t just make our own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like totally wrong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John summary of it. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John we have an excuse. We’re getting it thrown at us in real time on a podcast. We didn’t write an article and post it to the web about
⏹️ ▶️ John it. We would have done a little bit more research there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So actually, so here’s a question before we move on. Just, you know, ballpark. If this is kind of what it sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, And if it’s actually, you know, that, that, you know, the reader apps, which by the way, those are the rules. So what reader apps is defined
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as apps that allow users that may allow users to access to previously purchased content or content subscriptions,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco specifically magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video. So that’s, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how they define reader apps. So what this would basically mean is like, you know, that kind of app, you know, magazine, newspaper, books,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio, music, and video would be allowed to have external purchase systems, but things like games
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would not. And this is, this is not unprecedented that I believe the Google whatever store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also has like, you know, the games have to do as things a certain way, but other apps were able to do things a different way. Although I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe that’s not changed. But anyway, so if this is what it sounds like that external purchases
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be allowed to be used for these kinds of apps, but not games and other kinds and other stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do you think that’s a good compromise? I think I think it kind of is.
⏹️ ▶️ John It really depends on the implementation. Do you obviously from Apple’s perspective since we know that like 85% of their or profits or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever come from games, you can do a lot of stuff in the non-game part without hurting yourself too, too much.
⏹️ ▶️ John But historically, Apple has been like, but why would we give up that 15%? Like, why would we even screw
⏹️ ▶️ John with, like, I know it’s not the majority, I know games are where all the big money is, but why are we giving up anything? And the
⏹️ ▶️ John answer is because world governments are getting up on your business and making you do it. Or like, are
⏹️ ▶️ John threatening to make you do it. The US government is doing stuff, this is the Japan Trade Commission, and the other story we have is
⏹️ ▶️ John in Korea, where they’re trying to say you have to, South Korea has passed a bill that is trying to make
⏹️ ▶️ John it so that app stores like Apple and Google have to allow alternate payment systems. This
⏹️ ▶️ John bill hasn’t been signed into law by their president yet, but it looks like it’s going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be. And so again, a country
⏹️ ▶️ John somewhere in the world, not in the US, is going to have a law that’s going to apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John affect both Apple and Google and their app stores. And what I was going to talk about before the Japan thing came
⏹️ ▶️ John out is like, OK, well, if some country makes some law that you have to allow alternate payment methods or
⏹️ ▶️ John do whatever with the reader app things and linking out to websites, do you just do it in that country or
⏹️ ▶️ John do you do it everywhere? And I’m glad that it seems like Apple has chosen
⏹️ ▶️ John to do it everywhere, at least in the case of the Japan thing, because it’s just such a pain to try to have different sets of rules and different approvals
⏹️ ▶️ John of what apps can and can’t do based on country. It’s much better to have one set of rules if you can possibly help it, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John for stuff like this, and to build a system around it. And the larger story is like, look,
⏹️ ▶️ John governments are making Apple do what it previously wasn’t doing on its own. Because various governments
⏹️ ▶️ John think that the current competitive landscape for app stores is not great for the people who
⏹️ ▶️ John live in those countries. So they’re passing laws to make these people do things. And that apparently is literally
⏹️ ▶️ John the only thing that will make Apple do this stuff. Either the threat of them, like the small business program or whatever, the threat
⏹️ ▶️ John of laws or actual laws. I thought this story about Korea was interesting because it’s got
⏹️ ▶️ John response quotes from both Google and Apple. Like here’s what spokespeople from those companies had to say
⏹️ ▶️ John about the idea that Korea says you have to allow alternate payment methods in the apps, as in not in-app purchase, but
⏹️ ▶️ John some other way to pay for things inside your app. So here’s Google.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just as it costs developers money to build an app, it costs us money to build and maintain an operating system in an app store.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Google, it costs so much money to
⏹️ ▶️ John run an app store. Where’s Google gonna get all that money from? How can you take money away from Google?
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re the ones trying to build, to maintain an operating system, build an app store.
⏹️ ▶️ John Cry poverty, Google. All right. We’ll reflect on how to comply with this law
⏹️ ▶️ John while maintaining a model that supports high quality operating system and app store, and we will share more in the coming weeks. So
⏹️ ▶️ John Google’s going to reflect. They’re going to reflect on how they’re gonna comply. They wanna comply, but they also wanna provide that high
⏹️ ▶️ John quality experience after they just said, feel bad for us because it costs so much money to make this
⏹️ ▶️ John operating system. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like soccer injuries.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know how we’re gonna, what are we gonna do now that people can use different payment methods? We needed that
⏹️ ▶️ John cut of that money because I don’t know where else we would get money. It’s really confusing,
⏹️ ▶️ John Google. I don’t know. Anyway, Apple, here’s what Apple says. Their response
⏹️ ▶️ John is very different in tone. “‘The proposed law will put users who purchase
⏹️ ▶️ John digital goods from other sources at risk of fraud, undermine their privacy protections, make it difficult to manage their
⏹️ ▶️ John purchases, and features like ask to buy and parental controls will become less effective. We believe that user
⏹️ ▶️ John trust in the App Store purchases will decrease as a result of this proposal, leading to fewer opportunities for
⏹️ ▶️ John the over 482,000 registered developers in Korea who have earned more than 8.5 trillion Korean currency units,
⏹️ ▶️ John whose name I don’t know, sorry, to date with Apple. So they’re basically saying, you are inviting fraud.
⏹️ ▶️ John You will cause confusion and delay. This is going to be a problem. You’re going to destroy the App Store
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re gonna take money out of the mouths of those hardworking Korean app store developers. That’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple says. Very different in tone. They just go right to the dire consequences, most of which are,
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly BS because the whole ask to buy, Gruber had a good post about it. This doesn’t preclude continuing
⏹️ ▶️ John to support ask to buy and parental controls. You know, as we just read in the Japan press release, Apple can totally
⏹️ ▶️ John make any external payment methods also feed into the ask to buy before
⏹️ ▶️ John approval. Like I can make an API for this. This is a thing that Apple’s able to do, like payment. Anyway, whether they do
⏹️ ▶️ John or not, it’s entirely possible. All right. The story, where is it from? Is this from the Verge,
⏹️ ▶️ John This story continues. Lobbyists for the two companies have reportedly argued to American officials that Korean
⏹️ ▶️ John legislation violates a trade agreement as it seeks to control the actions of US-based companies. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re lobbying the US government to say, we don’t have to follow that Korean law, right? Because we have a trade
⏹️ ▶️ John agreement with them and this violates the trade. So they’re trying full court press. we don’t want to have to do what this Korean thing says. Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it basically says, you know, you in Korea anyway, you in your apps,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re allowed to collect payment through some way other than an app purchase. Now, obviously already
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS apps can collect payment not through an app purchase for physical goods. And somehow
⏹️ ▶️ John the world doesn’t end.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or services, you know, things like Ubers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and stuff. And services.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Somehow, somehow that happens. And we are not all just dead from fraud. Like it’s always
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey be like. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re going to allow people to enter a credit card in Amazon.com. The world will end. How will people know what
⏹️ ▶️ John to trust? How do people buy things online? It’s like, it’s OK. We buy things online all the
⏹️ ▶️ John time. Like, it’s fine, right? And also, on top of that, especially now, you know what you can buy things
⏹️ ▶️ John online with? Apple Pay. It’s really easy. Turns out. And it’s also
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s service. You don’t even have to enter your address. You use Apple Pay. Apple Pay is a product
⏹️ ▶️ John that succeeds based on its merits. It’s a convenient way to pay because we already have Apple accounts,
⏹️ ▶️ John they already have our address, you do the little click, you do touch ID, whatever, Apple Pay,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But Apple, every time they talk about this, it’s like, I swear, if you let anyone enter a credit
⏹️ ▶️ John card or pay with anything other than an app purchase, the world will end. It’s like the whole world outside
⏹️ ▶️ John of the app store is constantly buying stuff online with their credit cards and they’re doing inside your apps for
⏹️ ▶️ John physical goods and services, which you think there’d be even more fraud of like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, I have to get a physical good and who knows if it’s actually gonna arrive and I might get defrauded. But
⏹️ ▶️ John then once you touch, what Apple never says is, but now you’re touching our money. Because we get 30% of all the in-app
⏹️ ▶️ John purchases and please don’t touch our money. And they frame it as a big fraud problem or whatever. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what’s gonna come of this Korean thing, especially in light of the Japan announcement of maybe they’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John take the Korea thing and say, well, if it turns out we have to do it in Korea, we’ll do it everywhere as well. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see. But either way, I’m reading the Japan press release a little more closely. It seems less.
⏹️ ▶️ John a good fool just like the verge.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, there’s an important detail in the Japan press release. So it’s in the second paragraph. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re talking about reader apps again, what that means. To ensure a safe and seamless user experience, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app store’s guidelines require developers to sell digital service and subscriptions using Apple’s in-app payment system. Here’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco important part. Because developers of reader apps do not offer in-app digital goods and services
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for purchase. Apple agreed blah blah blah to let these share a single link to the website. So here’s what this
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s for sign up only.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. What this means, if I’m reading it correctly now, is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you are allowed to take purchases on your website. And you are going to be allowed, once this goes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into effect, to link people to your website to create your account.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What you cannot still do is allow them to purchase stuff in the app using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your system. So we’re gonna have a similar situation as we have now, where you have that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dumb situation with the Kindle app, where you can go here and look at your books that you’ve already purchased,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we can’t tell you how to purchase new ones, but you can look at these books, look at them, how great are they?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, you want more books? Well, you gotta figure that out on your own. So it’s gonna probably still be that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But somewhere in the app, they’ll be allowed to link you probably out to Safari, definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not like an in-app web
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John view. I wonder
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’ll be allowed to have a sentence next to that link explaining that if
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you follow this link,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a place where you can buy eBooks and then you’ll see them in this app. I bet if, that’s the key thing, like the details,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So if Apple lets you have a link, but all you can literally do is put a URL that people can click
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco on, but you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John explain anything, like you have to be able to put a sentence there that says, hey, go to amazon.com
⏹️ ▶️ John and buy Kindle books. And when you do that, you’ll see them in this app. That’s the key
⏹️ ▶️ John information that we can’t get out to people. And they, like you said, to figure it out on their own.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, my best guess here is that, so there’s definitely not using your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco saved Amazon credit card to buy an e-book in the app.
⏹️ ▶️ John Except for maybe in Korea.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, actually, that’s true. In Korea, I believe, by the wording of the law as we understand it, I believe that would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be, especially allowed in Korea. But what this is saying, I think, is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we will literally just allow you to have a link in the app that will link out to your website
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to then have people do stuff there if they want to. but you’re definitely not buying stuff in the app using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their system, which is still an important change. It’s like, that’s still a really big deal, but it’s not quite
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t, I skipped the important part on the Korean law. So the law is a thing that will,
⏹️ ▶️ John will prevent major platform owners like Google and Apple from restricting app developers to built-in payment
⏹️ ▶️ John systems. So it’s like basically saying, Apple and Google, you cannot restrict app developers to your payment
⏹️ ▶️ John systems, which implies that that means you’ll be able to use other payment systems. It’s no longer you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John restrict can’t say you have to use in-app purchase which leaves the dormant other thing and some people been Questioning. Okay. Well, what does Apple do?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like do they have to build something whatever like if Apple wanted and this becomes a law
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple Felt like they had to comply with it like all their lobbying efforts to the US government failed
⏹️ ▶️ John and they had to comply with it They don’t have to do anything They just have to approve apps that do this
⏹️ ▶️ John because you can send an app to the App Store app review right now that has a a little web form that it takes a credit card. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John this is not complicated technology. Apple doesn’t need to do anything. Apple probably
⏹️ ▶️ John should and will do something like by making APIs and so on and so forth, right? They’ll comply with the letter of law,
⏹️ ▶️ John but say, hey, if you want to use alternate payment methods, use this new API that will trigger
⏹️ ▶️ John the parental controls and they ask to buy and, you know, we’ll be able to collect analytics on it and find out how bad we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John doing against your payment. You know, like there are things Apple could do, but the thing about the Korean law is
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple doesn’t need to build or do anything technically, they just need to give thumbs
⏹️ ▶️ John up where previously they were giving thumbs down. Because believe me, Epic shipped it already with it behind the
⏹️ ▶️ John toggle, remember? Where they would take money for, instead without using an app purchase.
⏹️ ▶️ John App developers are more than capable of collecting money from people in iPhone apps without any help
⏹️ ▶️ John from Apple. So I am interested to see how the Korean thing shakes down. Assuming it’s signed into law and assuming Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John has to comply with it, then they have to choose, are we just doing it in Korea? are we doing it worldwide?
⏹️ ▶️ John And it seems potentially more damaging than the Japan thing now that we know
⏹️ ▶️ John more about it. The Japan thing seems like a minor concession on the linking out thing
⏹️ ▶️ John subject to lots of details that we don’t know the answers to in terms of how draconian is Apple gonna make it? Are they gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John let you explain what the link is for? Why do you only get one link? How annoying are they gonna be during
⏹️ ▶️ John app review about getting your app through? Because Apple can say whatever it wants about
⏹️ ▶️ John the supposed rules on the app store, But experience has shown that even a 100% legit,
⏹️ ▶️ John right down the middle within the rules thing can be very hard to get through App Review because sometimes they just don’t understand or
⏹️ ▶️ John disagree about the reality of the app you’ve submitted to them. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John breaking news. Since we began, is there any new press releases from Apple?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one, I think only that one.
⏹️ ▶️ John Okay, well, I don’t know if we should wait a couple minutes to see if another one’s gonna come.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this is the first time they’ve announced a significant App Store rule change during our show.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a Wednesday, what are they? I don’t understand.
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Home security cameras
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So a week or two ago, in the show notes, in the section that we keep
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for potential after show topics, the following appeared. Marco bought two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new cameras. And then we were talking before the show and we thought, well, maybe we should upgrade that to an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actual topic. So that time has come. Marco, what the hell are you spending money on, man?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not what you think. And it’s more than two now, actually. It was two. Oh God.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like home security cameras?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, I did. Hey, you figured it out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Good. I want all the knowledge you have about this because I want to do this on my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at on whatever to my house, but I haven’t done it yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, so here’s how I was hoping to trip up John with buying two new cameras thinking I bought like, you know, a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bunch of mirrorless stuff or
⏹️ ▶️ John My guess was, especially since I saw some stories about the new magnetic nest ones that has dissuaded
⏹️ ▶️ John me from buying those. So I hope you have some stories that are more encouraging than what I heard about those.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So here’s the deal here. So as I mentioned, I kind of live in a party
⏹️ ▶️ Marco beach town and as a result, we have things like casual bike theft all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because it’s a party town in the summertime, you definitely get people coming onto your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco property and doing weird stuff, whether it’s just sneaking under your deck to drink
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they’re teenagers or worse. There’s just like, you know, there’s certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things you kind of want to discourage. And a lot of people around here have cameras, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I thought, you know what, let me see, I’ll at least put a camera like where we park our bikes, and in this area that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was under a part of our deck that keeps getting like, you know, liquor bottles left there by strangers, and we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco caught people enjoying each other there a few times, and so we’re like, okay, so let
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me put up some cameras and maybe that’ll make the people go somewhere else. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve had a little bit of experience before with Nest cams. We’ve, we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use Nest cams for, for a few years now to like watch our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco porch to see like it were packages delivered, you know, and we could like, you know, make sure we bring them in or whatever else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We also would have Nest cameras. Like if we were like, if we’re going to be away from home for a while, we would,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we would put one like in the bedroom just in case like somebody broke in, who knows, right. Which has never happened,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but we, we, That’s kind of the context of how we’re using them. So the Nest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cameras, we don’t have the current models. We have whatever the Nest cams were that were available like four years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago. So the Nest cams we have are admittedly very out of date. But at the time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they were something like 200 bucks each. They weren’t cheap, like 200 or 300 bucks each. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have a couple outdoor ones, couple indoor ones. The ones I bought for this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I decided not to go with Nest because first of all, Nest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a software and services company has just been going so far down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the tubes in recent years. I believe I mentioned in the show a little while ago that I ripped out all the Nest thermostats
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this house and replaced them all with the Echobee HomeKit compatible ones because I was just so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tired of dealing with Nest crap. Their stuff just is very unreliable. It’s hard to set up, their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco web service is down all the time, they’re making this weird transition to Thread radios
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that has a lot of bugs in this transition and makes it very hard to like manage their thermostats
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and set them up and get them on the network. And so I’m just like, I’m done with Nest. I’m so done with Nest. And then setting aside the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fact that they are owned by Google, which I, you know, has always been a little bit creepy. And like when I first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bought their stuff, they weren’t. But anyway, so Nest, I wasn’t super happy with. I also know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from having Nest cameras for the last four or five years, whatever it’s been, I know that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are reliable in the sense that, You know, you will record video footage, but I also know that their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco object detection and people detection is really bad. It’s really unreliable. I get false alarms all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. Like I have the camera that I have set up all the time that’s a Nest in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco another location. I get an alert every single day that there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco movement detected in my room because the sun moves. And the sun moves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very slowly throughout every day. And you would think that Nest would accommodate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for this and maybe design their algorithms to account for the fact that the sun is real, but they don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t know if the new ones are better in this regard, but the old ones, they literally like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco alert me every day that the sun has moved at about the same time every day. And I’ve tried
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a little bit different positions of the camera, it doesn’t matter at all. Like it always happens. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not super thrilled with Nest. Nest is also somewhat expensive, you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for something that, you know, If you want, Nest is only cloud-based. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recording and streaming stuff to the cloud. There is no local storage. There is no option for local storage. And you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pay for their cloud service to retain your stuff for however long you need to be retained. So those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are the downsides of Nest. So for this I decided, let me look at other stuff. If it ends up I need to go to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nest, fine, but let me look at other stuff. So the two things I wanted to try were, first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wanted to try HomeKit Secure Video. Because this is what Apple keeps talking about the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keynotes and everything. And it looks really cool. And I love the idea that I’m not sending my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco video to some like weird company’s service. I’m sending it to Apple’s weird
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, you have a solution in your house already, but carry on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Synology does this man. Synology does this, but carry on, carry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did you really get a Viberslap for Synology? I sure did. Oh my gosh.
⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t have the elegance of the bell, I feel like. Maybe you need to get closer to the mic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s more of an operation to pick it up and you gotta hit it. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John The other solution you have
⏹️ ▶️ John in your house is your, what do you call it? What’s your fancy wifi thingy? Ubiquity. Yeah, Ubiquity.
⏹️ ▶️ John They have security cameras too, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, they do. But the thing is, I don’t have a NAS set up here. I don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. And I’m trying to get myself out of operating that kind of stuff. I don’t wanna deal with that. My
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs are not big enough for that anymore. And so I don’t want that kind of thing. Also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the cameras that are made for these kind of things, they’re bigger, bulkier, it’s more serious stuff, and my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs aren’t that high either. Even the Ubiquiti ones, I thought they
⏹️ ▶️ John were tiny, the Ubiquiti security cameras. Maybe I don’t have a sense of scale
⏹️ ▶️ John when I see them online.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe, I’ll have to look. But the impression I got was that they were bigger, higher end stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so the ones I first tried to get, Logitech Circle View. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the problem with Logitech Circle View is it’s like weirdly backordered and it’s hard to get and it was going to be a long
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wait. And so I decided to take another risk also on the Eufy line. E-U-F-Y.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is Anker’s home security brand. So Eufy has a bunch of options
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and some of them are HomeKit compatible. Some of them, most of them aren’t. But I decided, you know, let me,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll get both. So I’ll get a Logitech Circle View and I’ll get, I got the Eufy Solo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Indoor Cam C24. So a point of comparison here, so you know I said Nest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cams are like you know 150 to 200 bucks usually. The Eufy Indoor Cams
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are $70 for a two-pack. Oh my! And the outdoor models are like 80 to 150.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Logitech Circle View is 160 and is outdoor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sort of. And that sort of is important. The Logitech Circle View is outdoor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compatible in the sense that the power cord is sealed around its back and it has no openings,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the power adapter it comes with, which is a USB power adapter, is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco waterproof. So you have to, you can mount the camera in the elements,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but then you have to run the cable to somewhere that’s inside or sheltered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John because… That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what I was thinking about with your house. I would not want to drill any holes in your house.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And I haven’t. Like, that’s just me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, just, yeah. So like if the requirement is you must drill a hole in your house, I would pass
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it. No, and I definitely wouldn’t do that. I also, I’m only trying to cover a couple of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco small areas here. Critically, the areas that I want to cover are not visible from the street because I don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my house to look like a prison. Like, I don’t want to have like, look at my cameras, stay away. Like, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t want that. I just want, if people sneak under my house, I want them to be discouraged and leave. All that aside, so here’s how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this stuff works in practice. So first of all, the Eufy HomeKit support
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is terrible. It does not work reliably. It was very hard to set up. I did eventually get it working,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it kept like disconnecting, and what you find out when you hook it up to HomeKit is that only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a small subset of the camera’s features are actually supported if it’s in HomeKit mode. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would not recommend the Eufy cameras for HomeKit. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did eventually, as I was playing with these over the last few weeks, my Logitech CircleViews did eventually come
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in, and so I mounted a CircleView right next to a Eufy, looking at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same area, and I set up, you know, the Eufy, I set it up in just its own app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the Logitech I set up, and yes, I did put a Eufy indoor camera outdoors.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s under shelter, so it’s fine. This is your
⏹️ ▶️ John big thing now. You like to take non-outdoor electronics and put them outdoors because you think it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well, because the Eufy ones that are outdoor compatible, they weren’t shipping yet, like the ones that I wanted.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is that an explanation? Like the problem here is putting things, electronics that aren’t waterproof outside
⏹️ ▶️ John where there’s water. and you’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco well, the other one
⏹️ ▶️ John wasn’t shipping, so it’s okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well, when it’s a two-pack for 70 bucks and I can put it under a shelter.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so practically disposable. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, so I have like the Eufy and the Logitech right next to each other to kind of compare
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like how good these are. And I have the Eufy running only through its own app now. And what’s interesting about the Eufy is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it, they don’t have, well, I guess, I think they do have a cloud service, but you don’t have to use their cloud service.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can view their cameras remotely. which I guess just like, you know, relays through them to like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to like, you know, set up the IP connection. But, but your camera is not recording to their cloud.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Your camera has local storage. Like you, you put a micro SD card on it or some of the other ones have like built-in, you know, solid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco state storage. So when you connect to your camera, you’re just having it play back from its own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco local storage. And I like that a lot because-
⏹️ ▶️ John this is, I’ve thought about this, like with the storage question. And I know why people don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want like their private footage from like, especially inside their house, going up to a cloud thing, but anything
⏹️ ▶️ John where there’s storage in your house, and especially if the storage is in the camera, I feel like almost
⏹️ ▶️ John defeats the purpose because, you know, I don’t know, I don’t know how smart
⏹️ ▶️ John thieves are, but it’s like, look, you just yank the camera off the wall and now you’ve got the camera and all the footage. So
⏹️ ▶️ John you commit the robbery, break into the house, get the stuff, and on your way out, yank the camera off the wall and you’re on your way
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’ve got the little SD card with the footage of you doing the crime and you’re all set. And if it’s in your house, same deal.
⏹️ ▶️ John If they break into your house, They can just go find your servers, yank all this stuff. I mean, that’s harder, obviously. Yank all this stuff out and they got the footage.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wherever it’s recording constantly to the cloud, there’s nothing they can do to your house that prevents the recording from happening. Nevermind that
⏹️ ▶️ John having a recording of someone breaking into your house means nothing because the police are never gonna do anything about it and you’re never gonna get your stuff back.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco But just let’s pretend for a second. I’ll get to that. That’s not the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll just, but yeah, you’re right. I mean, and this is why I think HomeKit Secure Video is an interesting option because HomeKit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is streaming it to the cloud, but here’s a key difference for HomeKit Secure Video.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is not a constant recording. It is event-based. So it doesn’t record 24-7 to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the cloud, it’s looking for motion, and if it detects motion, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it records for some brief amount of time until it stops detecting motion.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you have only events. So one thing I was curious to see, it’s like, well, how responsive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are they? If somebody walks into this area real fast, grabs my bike and walks out, is it gonna react fast enough to start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that recording and send that to me or not? And so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you actually want continuous recording, 24-7 recording, Nest does that to the cloud,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Eufy’s cameras will do it to their internal storage. Obviously, it’ll probably wear out your micro SD card faster,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they will do it. If it’s an option, it’s off by default. So anyways, that’s an option you have with those. You don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have that option with HomeKit Secure Video. Basics here, the image quality on the modern cameras,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Eufy and the Logitech’s, is great. Like, this is one of those areas where the progress of technology,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t believe the UFI image quality for $70 for a two pack. It’s really good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Logitech circle view is a much more like almost a fish eye view. It’s ultra wide. I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually a hundred eighty degree.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s right there in the name circle and a circle as we know is a hundred and eighty.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The front of every camera is a circle. The opening to the lens is a circle
⏹️ ▶️ John as in profile not head-on. Yes, I know. Anyway, and I swear if someone writes and tells us
⏹️ ▶️ John a circle is 360. All right, here we go. I sometimes I make a joke and I
⏹️ ▶️ John think better of it. Let me just save myself. I was trying to make a joke. Was it funny? No, but please.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway, so the motion detection, the image quality, so the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco image quality is actually great. As I said, the new ones, they’re far better than whatever my old Nest cameras are, which of course that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes sense. That’s like five years later. The ultra wide fish eye view of the Logitech is nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a small space, but it’s less useful if your camera’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be higher up or further away from the area you’re looking at. And the problem with HomeKit Secure Video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that there’s almost no cameras that support it. Like there’s only, it’s like two or three models of cameras
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are actually on the market that support it. And the Logitech is the only outdoor one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s currently on the market. So that’s a little bit, you know, again, welcome to HomeKit, right? Like you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less choice. But I will say the Logitech, again, the Eufy, It has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco HomeKit support officially on this model, but it sucks, don’t use it. And I couldn’t even get recordings working.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could only get live view working through HomeKit on the Eufy. The Logitech works perfectly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is exactly what I want. So Logitech Circle View
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to HomeKit Secure Video is a great setup if that fits what you want. Again, it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an outdoor camera, but you have to, the power cord is something like maybe about 10 feet long.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you have to not put it too far from some kind of sheltered area where you could have the power adapter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The video quality is great. And one thing I noticed for a while, and so I ran this like in our bike
⏹️ ▶️ Marco area, which gets multiple events per day, because me and Tiff and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Adam, we’re going in and out of the area all the time. Occasionally somebody will creep and try to look under our house.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we have like the actual use case there as well. All of this has happened a lot over the few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weeks that I’ve had these cameras up. And so I have a good amount of data now. And I can tell you that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the person detection for them, like the motion,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can say like detect any motion or detect people or animals, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the thing, and that works great. And in fact, between the Logitech
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using HomeKit and the Eufy camera using its own app, both of them would notify me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at almost exactly the same time. Every time I would like go under to get my bike out or somebody else would go under there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was notified on time every time. And as far as I remember, I had zero false positives.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There was never a time when either camera said it detected a person and there wasn’t a person there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So good on them. Like, and there were also zero times where I went under there and it didn’t detect me. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seems like the people detection for both Eufy and HomeKit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Secure Video, it’s great. And it worked so much better than Nest. I can’t even tell you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So big, big thumbs up there. The home kit, the eufy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one, you can configure it to put a thumbnail, like a still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thumbnail, in the notification payload, so that when you get the notification on your watch or your phone or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can pop it up right there and you can see that. Eufy’s app you can also install on a Mac if you have an M1
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac because it’s in the Mac App Store, because they didn’t opt out of the M1 iPad app compatibility. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s all really nice. The Logitech one, it just shows up in the Home app.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So for all the pluses and minuses that means, the Logitech one, it’s right there in the Home app.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s very convenient. It does alert everyone in the Home. So like Tiff was complaining that she’s getting
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna say, one of the things I always see about HomeKit video is they always show the picture of someone watching TV and then someone’s
⏹️ ▶️ John at the front door and this little picture in picture pops up on their Apple TV and I don’t want that. Is there a way
⏹️ ▶️ John to not make that happen?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, I didn’t actually see if that worked, because there was never a time we were watching TV when somebody was under
⏹️ ▶️ John to be watching Apple TV, I assume, too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, well, we usually are. But yeah, I’ll take a look. I’ll try to reproduce that and see if I can get it to work. I don’t know if that feature’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually out yet, or if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that’s like-
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like that’s an anti-feature. I
⏹️ ▶️ John you could probably turn it off. Like, if you’re watching TV, that’s the last thing that I want. Like, sure, by all means, notify
⏹️ ▶️ John me on my phone. And if I have my phone on do not disturb, that’s a signal I don’t even want to be notified about that. but don’t pop it
⏹️ ▶️ John up on top of the TV show I’m watching. It’s basically letting someone outside your house screw with your television
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, right. But yeah, I mean, and that’s, you know, one of the problems of HomeKit is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there aren’t just a lot of settings and options. There’s some, and the ones they have do seem to work pretty well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’m happy with that overall. But also, the Eufy app has,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, yeah, it’s what you’d expect from like a manufacturer making an app. It’s not like the best UI, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it works really well. And the only thing that HomeKit really outclassed it on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that the HomeKit notifications would have video clips instead of image
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clips. So the HomeKit notifications, you could hit little play on them or open it up to make it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco push it so it opens it up, and you can actually see a brief video clip of what’s going on. So that’s really nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So again, the HomeKit just seems like a little bit of an upgrade in how well it integrates with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your Apple stuff, obviously. But the Eufy app is really good, and for 70 bucks for a two-pack,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, for the indoor camera, but still, that’s really good. And so I’m actually going to keep the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Eufy ones, even though I think I’m gonna go all HomeKit for the outside needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with one little possible change in the future, which I’ll get to in a second. So a couple of weeks ago, during
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recording this show, I got a notification on my watch that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody was spotted under the deck. And again, we are recording the show while this is happening. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I open up the app on the phone I see what’s going on, and I see a young couple enjoying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco each other, and I’m like, oh God, I don’t wanna deal with this. No, I mean, it wasn’t quite that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad, but it would’ve gotten there. It was going that direction. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I’m like, all right, I just want them to leave. Like, I don’t wanna deal with this. I don’t wanna call the cops either,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and also, I’m recording a podcast. It’s like, I just don’t wanna deal with this. So at first I messaged Tiff, I’m like, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can you go down there and turn the light on or something. And eventually I learned she’s not home, and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m like, okay, what do I do? And I see in the Eufy app, there’s one of those options
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you can speak through the camera.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’m like, okay, great. So I just, I held down my mute button here to you guys, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I talked to the camera, and I said something like, you should leave. Nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, what do you say, right? And you could tell they kind of like looked up for a second and then like kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, you know, went back to it. I’m like, oh, crap. So I’m like, maybe they’re just like, you know, they’re gonna get up in a second.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They didn’t. So if like, you know, a few seconds later, I said something, something, I’m like, leave now. Or so I forget
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly what it was, something like that. Then they got up and left.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why don’t you just say, I am watching you on my security camera and I would like you to leave.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you could say false sentences. Like you have to spell it out because they’re highly motivated not to stop
⏹️ ▶️ John what they’re doing. So you really need to, you really need to make the case.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t, I wasn’t sure like how clear the voice would be coming through. You know, I don’t want it to sound just like, rah, rah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, and so I chose like few words, you know? Anyway, and I don’t know what to say. What am
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I gonna do? And the other thing is, I don’t wanna sound like a jerk because what if they vandalize my house?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, like I don’t, it’s like, there’s no good way out of this, right? So anyway, so you know, they left and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so, all right, fine, you know, problem solved. I didn’t have to like involve the cops or go out there and interrupt the show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or anything like that, so good, okay. So that’s, I caught that and I guess took
⏹️ ▶️ Marco care of it. I also, you know, there were a number of occasions where we’ve seen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people literally just walk up to our house and like peer under it and like look around and then they see the camera and they kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco run a little bit. But the other day somebody came under the house where the young couple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was being that and some guy just comes under and like changes his bathing suit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nice. In the middle of the day and I’m like. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey spectacular.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’m like, all right, I have cameras, they work, It’s fine,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I wonder like, was I better off not knowing before? Like maybe, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is this actually serving an actionable role here? Like, am I actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting actionable information from these cameras? And I’m not sure that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco am. Like, so if things were actually getting stolen or broken into,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or, you know, then we’d have a different story. Then I could try to bring these videos to the police
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have what John said happen, which is nothing. So again, it’s like, I don’t even know how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actionable this would be. And the other problem is that people don’t seem to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be seeing the cameras. So I think what I actually want to do is add like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco motion lights. I think that-
⏹️ ▶️ John no, not motion lights. You need, first of all, if you could buy like, and you know when you go
⏹️ ▶️ John to Ikea and they have the little like cardboard television sets, right, to fish out of the furniture? You don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ John cameras. You just need like the shell of a camera, like a little blown plastic thing that looks like a camera.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco They sell those.
⏹️ ▶️ John And what you need is signage. Have you learned anything from, if you’ve ever done anything like
⏹️ ▶️ John in upstate New York or whatever, that say this area under surveillance with a giant red arrow pointing
⏹️ ▶️ John to your fake camera, right? That might get people to leave. And motion lights can contribute to that because how are they gonna read
⏹️ ▶️ John the sign when it’s dark? Like, so that’s part of it. But like, it’s the reason people have all those signs on their lawn of like burglar,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the cameras only work as a deterrent if people know they’re there. You need signage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. Well, but again, I don’t want my house to look like a prison and I don’t want it and I don’t want to be a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco jerk, right? So like I’m trying to avoid that like again, this is like my goal here is can I just make these problems go away? I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want to be a jerk. I don’t want to, you know, look like I’m a massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Republican. Like I just want people to not be doing weird stuff under my house. All right. So like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I’m going to try next is I just ordered the new eufy camera that has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a built-in light on the camera. That’s a real certified outdoor camera,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so John is happy. So I ordered one of those, I’m going to try that in one of these areas and see how it is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Which model is that? I was looking at these eufy things and I can’t find the model that you were talking about that’s two for seventy bucks or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John Tell us model numbers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Two for seventy bucks is the Solo Indoor Cam C24, and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one I just ordered is the L20? L20 yeah, I think it’s a l20 it just came
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out like last week So it’s I’m hoping this will this will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Improve things like I actually don’t want video footage people doing stupid stuff under my house I just want them to not do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it or if they if they’re if they’re thinking about starting to do it Maybe they run away before they like leave you know liquor bottles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff behind So you know that’s that’s the main goal here, so I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco try like some kind of motion light Options and and see if that does better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because ultimately the cameras are working great but I’m not sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually am benefiting from having them in my life. Now I do intend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to keep at least the Eufys going indoors sometimes because what I want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is also during this few weeks that I’ve had these cameras we had to evacuate because of a hurricane coming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up the coast and so I set up the indoor cams indoors, John,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to look at areas of my house that I was afraid might be like water leak risks or damage risk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco areas if a hurricane came through that was really strong. And so I was able, as we were not here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anymore because we were evacuated, I was able to monitor how my house was doing in the storm. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was great. I was very happy to have that ability. And again, to have that with no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cloud service, monthly fee kind of stuff, to have that just be like on these cameras in here, that was awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so that was, again, for 70 bucks for a two-pack, highly recommended.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s kind of the same thing, though, is your question about what value am I getting. Like, being able to see in real
⏹️ ▶️ John time as a lawn chair comes through your windows, I mean, I suppose it could be diverting
⏹️ ▶️ John and entertaining. But the bottom line is, you’re not there. There’s nothing you can do about it. And you’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We know people who are here, including our contractor. Like, we know people who could come and, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ John send someone over and say, hey, chair just went through our sliding glass door. Could you go over there and what? Remove
⏹️ ▶️ John the chair and put plywood up on our house? Like, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not during the storm, but like, you know, afterwards I can say like, oh, you know, we can’t come back for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco another day or two or whatever. Like, can you go, you know, put plastic over there? You know, like, obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope that never happens, but it does provide a level of like peace of mind to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be able to look directly at, like, here, look, here is my sliding door that leaks water
⏹️ ▶️ Marco during heavy storms sometimes. and it’s, look, it’s not leaking.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I guess it’s better to know that it’s safe. Like you wanna know, you want a positive result. If you have a negative result, that doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John really help. It’s almost like, well, we’ll find out when we get there. But the positive result is you can sleep easy knowing that nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John bad happened to your house.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, I was nervous as hell all night and I kept, I like woke up a couple of times and checked the cameras. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like a baby monitor. Like you wake up, you look at it, you know? It’s like, that’s, cause you’re nervous, right? So that’s, it made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sense. That’s not the kind of thing that would be healthy to do all the time. But in a situation where like, oh, I live near the coast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a hurricane, like that’s a big thing to do. That helps a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I definitely will love keeping the indoor cams around for that kind of thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When, you know, if we can’t be here and some kind of severe weather is happening or something, that’s a great time to have indoor cams. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do not intend to have indoor cameras in my house all the time. That to me is not the kind of lifestyle that I wanna leave.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the outdoor cams, hopefully I can find some kind of balance with maybe motion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco light integration to serve as the deterrent role that I want them to serve without being
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I feel like you can mount all sorts of like what would otherwise be fairly ugly and you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ John oppressive stuff under the bottom of your house, where it’s not visible until you go under there to change your bathing suit. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John you see the big sign with the arrow pointing and says, smile for the camera, right? And then the motion light comes on, the one under your house.
⏹️ ▶️ John And hopefully you can also mount the stuff under your house to point at the bike area, you know what I mean? Like no one can see that unless
⏹️ ▶️ John you are in fact, trespassing and wandering around under your house, right? But otherwise your house looks normal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, that’s how they are now. The problem is they’re too subtle now.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, I know, but I’m saying like, you should be, feel free to get less subtle with big scary signs and
⏹️ ▶️ John humor and motion lights because it doesn’t make your house look like a prison because it’s all underneath.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but I also like, I don’t want, like every time I go get my bike out, I don’t want to have a sign saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smile for the camera. Like that’s such a jerk move. Because I always like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on my old dog walk route, there is this house that has,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you’ve probably seen these, it’s like a cast iron thing you stick in the ground that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a silhouette of a dog pooping, and it says under it, no.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’ve made their house ugly
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco to avoid poop, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco These people are so obsessed with dogs not pooping on their lawn, that they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a statue of a dog pooping on their lawn. Like that to me, that’s ridiculous. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would never want that. That to me is like a weird, like toxic attitude thing. So I don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an intimidating sign in front of my bike all the time that I’m going to multiple times a day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that my whole family’s going to. Like I don’t want signs and be like, look at the camera, you’re under
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surveillance. Like that’s not the kind of thing I want to do. So that’s why I’m hoping a motion light
⏹️ ▶️ Marco setup combined with a visible camera should probably make this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a balance that works enough, but it doesn’t make me feel like I live in a prison.
⏹️ ▶️ John Take a look at the most obnoxious dog deterrent sign I’ve ever seen in
⏹️ ▶️ John my life. I just put it in the Slack.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my God, this is a whole paragraph. Yes. Very poorly written.
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey, would you like to read this? Because I feel like it has some of your- Oh my goodness. I also
⏹️ ▶️ John like the dollar sign S that reminds me of you. Casey, would you like to do a dramatic reading here?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hi, we hope you’re enjoying your dog walk. Just in an off chance you don’t realize that what your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dog does in our lawn costs us hundreds, dollar sign, letter S, every year to fix.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We assure you it does. Please keep your dog off our lawn. If you still decide to let your dog use our
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lawn, please smile for the camera. Have a nice day.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’ve got a comma splice, they’ve got dollar sign S, and they’ve got a lot of attitude.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And can you imagine like having this on your house So you see it all the time. Like that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the kind of attitude. Like I just, I don’t want that kind of attitude, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ John And this is, this gets into the same problem that Margo was just saying before. If you still decide to let your dog use your lawn, please smile for
⏹️ ▶️ John the camera. Okay, what the hell is the camera gonna do? Are you going to use the photo
⏹️ ▶️ John to track me down? And what? Nothing’s gonna come of this. You can’t get anything to happen from having footage of something.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe if you’re the neighbor down the street and they’ll be like, now I know the neighbor down the street is doing it. So what? Now
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re going to sick the police on your neighbor? Are you going to sue your neighbor? Like this
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco is the type of people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what do you have at the end of the day? You have a bunch of videos of dog pooping. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John why, who wants that? Right, and then you have to use them as evidence to say this dog is doing hundreds of dollars worth of damage
⏹️ ▶️ John to our lawn. You’re going to bring your neighbor to small claims court. It’s like, what kind of, what kind of life do you want to lead
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that point? Exactly, yeah. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want like, you don’t want, if you’re so obsessed with dogs not pooping on your lawn, but then you spend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time in your day reviewing footage of dogs pooping on your lawn.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John And planning
⏹️ ▶️ John your lawsuits, right? Or whatever you’re gonna do, like turn them into the police. Like it’s just, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not gonna be a popular neighbor and you may want to pick your battle slightly different. And honestly, I walked past their lawn, there was no
⏹️ ▶️ John dog poop on their lawn. Like I think, and maybe it’s a different neighborhood than I live in, but I think everyone around here is
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty good about picking up their dog poop. People should pick up the dog poop for sure. But that sign feels like overkill.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it works. Maybe that’s why there’s no dog
⏹️ ▶️ Marco poop on their lawn.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe no dogs live in this neighborhood and they’re just waiting for somebody. Like the person who buys a gun just waiting for someone to break into
⏹️ ▶️ John their house so they can be a hero.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Marco, I have to ask you, why, why didn’t you look at like power over ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey powered cameras? Because I know almost nothing about any of this and I have not started my, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, research or anything, but it seemed to me like if I were to do it, I would do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something that is powered via POE and would, would be streamed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey either to my sonology or I am, I am right there with you with HomeKit, Secure Video, whatever it’s called.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think one of those two options. So if you do PoE, then it makes a lot of the indoor,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey outdoor, in terms of power anyway, go away, doesn’t it? Or is that not solving the problem I think
⏹️ ▶️ John you’d have PoE Eufy. Eufy is such a terrible name. It’s like someone trying to hold in a sneeze.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean, so if I was doing like a really serious setup for something that had larger needs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or if I was putting a camera somewhere where there was, there weren’t nearby outlets for USB cables,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine. But these cameras, they need like a micro USB, one amp, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can feed them off of anything. And so their needs just aren’t that high. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you get into things like cameras with bright lights in them, then you have more serious needs. And that being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco said, usually most of the cameras in this space, at least the outdoor ones at least, most of them have batteries.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the idea usually is because they’re not doing continuous recording, because they’re doing event-based recording, like motion-based recording,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then they can run on battery for like months at a time without needing to be recharged. Some of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have batteries and USB, and you can run USB to them if you want to, to have continuous power or not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So there’s lots of options here. And again, this is why I was actually pretty impressed with Eufy’s offerings
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you don’t need HomeKit compatibility, because they have tons more models that don’t have HomeKit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And because the HomeKit secure video thing, it works great, again, as I said, but there’s just so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco few hardware options to choose from. So if you have certain needs like that, like you have way more options than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other people’s ecosystems. But yeah, the POV stuff, my needs just aren’t that high.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My main need here is a deterrent. And if I really need like, you know, perfect crisp
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 4K video to turn into the police and have them analyze it like CSI,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that’s one thing, but that’s not reality. Definitely not for me and theoretically not for anybody.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s not a kind of thing that I really need. So in this case, deterring people from stealing our bikes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and having fun under our deck, that’s all I really want to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, then to build on your call for listeners’ help with regard to Adam and programming,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if listeners, you have a Power over Ethernet powered camera that works
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well with HomeKit and or Synology Surveillance Station, then I would like to hear about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it via Twitter, please and thank you. So do let me know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco See, I don’t even want to use something called Surveillance Station. Like that to me, it’s so like imposing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want that. HomeKit, secure video, it’s so much more friendly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It is, it is. It’s the same thing though. It’s cameras
⏹️ ▶️ John that record people doing stuff under your neck.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know. Exactly. I don’t know. My dad uses surveillance station with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like three or four cameras in and out of his house. And he seems to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think it works pretty well. I have only very briefly looked at his setup
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I haven’t quizzed him about what he’s done and how he’s done it and so on and so forth. But yeah, if you have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a suggestion for a camera, indoor or outdoor, please let me know. Probably, I’m probably more concerned
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about out than in. Actually, I am more concerned about out than in. But if you have a suggestion,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey please let me know on Twitter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Linode, and Fastmail. And thanks to our members
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash join. We will talk to you
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t let him Cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, N-T
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean to Accidental. Tech podcasts. We’ve been broadcasting
Bottom Dock
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Casey, it says here in the show notes, you are trying out bottom dock.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is that code for something? It’s something that happens under my deck.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well played. No, this is with regard to Connected
⏹️ ▶️ Casey episode 358, which I think it was a couple weeks ago at this point. And the title of the episode was Roast My Dock.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this was, I think it was Mike and Steven, I think Federico was out that week, if I recall correctly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And they were making making fun of each other’s docs. And I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very strong opinions, as I am wont to do, about where the docs should be. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for forever and a day, I have been of the opinion that the docs should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be on the left-hand side of the screen and it should be always auto-hidden. I am,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and this is where everyone’s gonna get very angry at me, I do like magnification. I am a magnification user,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I know drives everyone nuts. I don’t have it magnifying very much, but I do like it. And that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the way I had my doc. Now, I am not really looking to turn this into a roast my doc, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reprise, if you will. But just for context, John, where do you keep your doc, generally
⏹️ ▶️ John Bottom on desktops and on laptops, either bottom or right. Doing it on the left is ridiculous because we live
⏹️ ▶️ John in a country where the predominant language is left to right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So why does that make the left ridiculous?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because that’s where your windows start with the text in them. And I don’t want a doc overlapping
⏹️ ▶️ John them and I don’t have to avoid it. That’s prime real estate. That’s why the cursor starts in the upper left-hand corner of the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John screen when you boot. Or I think it still does. But like, that’s the origin. Upper left. You read
⏹️ ▶️ John from left to right, top to bottom in English. And we’re all reading, using our Macs in English, so left-hand
⏹️ ▶️ John dock is ridiculous. Now you hide it so it’s not that big of a deal. It’s not really messing with your window space. So it’s whatever. But anyway, that’s what I do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Bottom everywhere pretty much. But if I do it on a side, because I have a small laptop screen, I do it on the right side. And
⏹️ ▶️ John pin to the bottom back when I could pin.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, whatever, whatever. All right, and Marco, what’s your situation?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m a left docker with no auto-hide, except on laptops where I do auto-hide. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, you know, I am a side docker, which is for the same reason that almost everyone,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco except apparently you and John, but almost everybody would choose the side because we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually have much more width in our screens these days than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey height. Yep,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yep, yep, yep, and I’m glad you brought that up because that’s exactly how I landed on a side dock myself. occurred to me, wait, what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am I doing to in this is, you know, early on in my Mac life when I would not auto hide?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What am I doing? Having this doc taking up, you know, all of this precious vertical
⏹️ ▶️ Casey real estate, when every Mac I own is is a wide screen. So why would I not put it on the side?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I can I can give you an answer to that question. So everyone Yes, are the screens are wider than they are tall, unless you have an XDR and
⏹️ ▶️ John rotate it, which is a possibility, but still, they’re wider than they are tall. But that doesn’t mean that
⏹️ ▶️ John vertical space is more valuable to you than horizontal because being able to make a window
⏹️ ▶️ John an extra inch tall might have less value to you than having an extra
⏹️ ▶️ John inch of width in which to arrange more windows. So maybe you could have three nicely sized
⏹️ ▶️ John window, but oh, the dock is overlapping one of them. So I have to make one window narrower than I want it. Whereas
⏹️ ▶️ John if you have to cut an inch off the bottom, it’s probably not that big a deal because in general width is more important
⏹️ ▶️ John than height when reading stuff because you want a reasonable size width to contain the content. But of course you’re always gonna scroll, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John if they’re web browser windows or text editor windows, is always more vertically, but you wanna get a good size horizontally.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m not saying this is wrong, like, you know, again, there is more horizontal space
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can divide it up how you want, but I would introduce the thought technology that it could be in your situation,
⏹️ ▶️ John depending on how you do window management, that horizontal space is more valuable to you, even though there is more
⏹️ ▶️ John of it around than vertical space.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I understand what you’re saying. I can’t say I agree with you and I’ve reached the same conclusion as Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dock for a while, see what you think. Well, it’s funny you bring that up because it occurred to me, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not doing the always visible dock anymore. And I haven’t for, I don’t even know how long. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recall when I made the switch from always visible to auto hide, but it was many, many, many years ago. Do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you have the
⏹️ ▶️ John animation cranked down?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, no. So using the default
⏹️ ▶️ John with auto hide, I find that a little bit, I feel like I’m waiting around. And if people don’t know that you can do that,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can make the animation delay basically zero. So as soon as your cursor hits the edge, the dock just appears
⏹️ ▶️ John fully formed in its position. And I feel like auto hide in general, if you do that, the edge is so much
⏹️ ▶️ John less important because the dock isn’t getting in the way of any of your windows because it’s not visible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s exactly it. It occurred to me, well, wait a second, since I’m auto hiding anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it doesn’t matter what side of the screen I’m on. I can put it wherever I want because it’s not taking up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey real estate always, always, always, always. And so for the last couple of weeks now, I’ve been trying bottom dock and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my probably decade, maybe less than that, but many years of muscle memory is I’m still reaching
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the left-hand side of the screen as my default idle gesture. But I think I kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having bottom dock again, especially since for better or worse, I often have many different applications running
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and my dock is often relatively large. So I wanted to encourage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey those of you who maybe had very strong feelings about side dock when you and you are not auto hiding, if you’re an auto hide
⏹️ ▶️ Casey person like I am, maybe consider using the bottom dock again.
⏹️ ▶️ John And one advantage to what you just said is like, now you can, you know, you have more room for your dock. You can also make your dock bigger.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I like looking at nice icons. I mean, granted, we’re not in a good age of Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco icons right now because
⏹️ ▶️ John the current predominant style is pretty boring, but you know, I still use custom icons
⏹️ ▶️ John for the things or whatever. It’s nice to see pretty icons for your apps. And if you’re auto hiding, like
⏹️ ▶️ John why not have big meaty click targets when they come up, right? Make them really big. They’ll shrink if there’s not enough
⏹️ ▶️ John room, right? But you’ve got all that room down there. And for magnification, I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John tested this in recent years, but magnification as originally implemented doesn’t actually make the click
⏹️ ▶️ John targets any bigger. So if you want to make the click targets bigger, you kind of have to actually just make the dock bigger.
⏹️ ▶️ John But again, if you’re auto-hiding, no big deal. So I would say, try that. Try giving yourself a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John bigger dock than you expect, and then maybe try turning magnification off and
⏹️ ▶️ John see if you prefer that. because I get where you’re like the magnification, it feels like it’s bigger and it’s more, the one you’re gonna click on is more prominent
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can kind of make sure you’re on the one that you wanted. But if you just made all the icons as big as your
⏹️ ▶️ John current magnification size, try that for a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I take your point. And I just thought it was a fun observation because I was very, very devout in my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey side dock only, you would be a monster to use the bottom dock until I had that epiphany slash apostrophe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I could put it on the bottom with auto hide and everyone’s still happy. So-
⏹️ ▶️ John can have two docs on your screen at all times. I mean, talk about bad, like
⏹️ ▶️ John hard habits to break, like from, you know, from Mac OS 8, whatever. Like I’m so used to having the list
⏹️ ▶️ John of running applications and a little, you know, vertical, running application
⏹️ ▶️ John icons and a vertical list in the upper right corner of my screen. And my cursor just goes up there. And so I have,
⏹️ ▶️ John yes, Switch Glass, my silly little thing that basically has a little icons for all our running apps in the upper right. And
⏹️ ▶️ John then I also have the doc, which also features all my running apps, plus a bunch of folders, plus the trash can.
⏹️ ▶️ John As I’ve said many times, I would love to not have to run the doc, but I do because
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of the stuff that the doc does can’t be done with public APIs anywhere else and no one is willing to
⏹️ ▶️ John maintain, including me, to maintain an application that somehow hacks into the private APIs to get the notification
⏹️ ▶️ John badges and the menus and the notification bounces and all the other things that only
⏹️ ▶️ John the doc can do, so I’m kind of stuck with it. But hey, that’s another
⏹️ ▶️ John reason I have this giant screen. I can afford to have two always visible things showing all