469: Tiny Toastie
10 Feb 2022A bunch of fun stuff to avoid spending too much time on the App Store stuff.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: The newest member of Marco’s family
- Follow-up:
- Casey replaces his FiOS set-top box
- AlDente
- Casey’s Email Woes
- Gmail “funnel solution”
- Google Workspace Email Storage (via Ashish Gandhi)
- Running your own mail server (via Daniel Nelson)
- Fastmail’s referral fees can be paid out! 💰
- Video evidence for Wi-Fi ↔ Cellular Universal Control (via Carlos Carpio García)
- Are phones being stolen to steal bank information? (via Gui Rambo)
- Siri attempts at music playback by year
- Apple’s attempt at “compliance” with the Netherlands dating app rules
- Microsoft’s “A Principled Approach to App Stores”
#askatp:- Why doesn’t anyone use Wi-Fi for audio playback? (via Steven J. Stutz)
- Do we use color calibration tools for our monitors? (via Chris Koerner)
- How do we prevent keyboards damaging screens on laptops? (via Priyansh Singh)
- Post-show: Marco’s car problems
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Chapters
- New member of the family 🖼️
- Death of a cable box
- Sponsor: Stack Overflow Podcast
- Follow-up: Email hosting
- Follow-up: Game streaming
- Follow-up: Phone theft
- Follow-up: Top songs by year
- Sponsor: Memberful
- This week’s App Store BS
- Sponsor: Lutron Caséta
- #askatp: Wi-Fi for headphones?
- #askatp: Color calibrators
- #askatp: Keyboard imprints
- Ending theme
- Neutral 🖼️
New member of the family
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I choose to believe that it’s a friendly troll. But one way or another,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel that Marco gets an unreasonable—well, no, maybe it’s reasonable—a considerable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey amount of enjoyment by writing extremely vague and very interest-peaking things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the show notes, especially for pre-shows and after-shows.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So moments before recording, the following appears in the show document. Pre-show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The newest member of Marco’s family. I don’t know if this is a very unexpected pregnancy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey announcement, which I doubt, or if this is something like you found Rivian to replace the FJ,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or maybe Hops really needed a buddy after 10 years or however old he is. So…
⏹️ ▶️ John Or he got a new USB charger. Like really, the family is a very
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey large and wide encompassing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey term. Indeed. So, is this a new jumpstart thing for your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perpetually broken FJ, or is this something else entirely?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually have a new jumpstart thing for my perpetually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John broken FJ, but
⏹️ ▶️ John part of the family? No, I wouldn’t say that. Okay, not yet. It needs to earn its spot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey yet. It needs to earn its keep.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say that the Arment family has been expanded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Another, uh, another XDR?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Another toaster oven.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, this is not where I expected you to go. How many toaster ovens does one family need? Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one is the… Well, okay. So, a while we have had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what the hell is it called is it the dash
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a it’s the tiniest toaster oven you’ve ever seen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dash mini toaster oven in aqua at Nordstrom
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John here’s the link
⏹️ ▶️ John a crate and barrel 25 bucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looks like a piece of garbage yes it is so it is it is a very nice piece of garbage so does that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco one piece of miniscule fits one piece of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John oh my god too big of a piece of bread yes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Or nine kid chicken nuggets, which is its most common use.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so this was your only toaster oven until recently, I take it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. Where we keep appliances in this house is a pretty small area.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like this countertop in a little pantry off the side of the kitchen. Now, we could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep appliances in other places, but then they would be out in the middle of the room, basically. And we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John don’t want to- You
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like you’re spitting in the face of people like me who have no counter space. I just want you to know that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s fair. So we have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John can choose not to use it for big ugly appliances. I know,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re just like, we have it, but we’re not gonna use it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. Yeah, this is hurting me a little too, John, if it makes you feel better, but carry on, Marco. Right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so anyway, we want things to look nice, and so we don’t wanna have our countertops like in the most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco visible part of the room covered in appliances. I wouldn’t want this thing on my counter either, actually.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John So anyway. That’s fair.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know I’m a huge fan of toaster ovens.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Who isn’t? I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come on. Yeah, and I don’t usually toast that many pieces of bread per se,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tiff does. She makes Adam toast every morning almost, but we don’t usually toast a lot of bread, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we do heat a lot of things up in toaster ovens. So I wanted to have one. So in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spousal negotiation process of trying to get a toaster oven in this house, we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco came upon this kind of joke. So Tiff got me this as a joke gift,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this dash mini toaster oven. She got me this about a year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago. I forget whether it was for Christmas or some other occasion, but she got me this as a joke gift. And it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually is really nice if you have extremely small needs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, you know, we have an oven as part of our stove,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but obviously, you know, like the larger the airspace you’re heating up, the longer it takes. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this thing, by being so incredibly tiny, we call it tiny toasty, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it heats up incredibly fast. So when you are heating things like chicken nuggets for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a kid dinner or something like that, it actually is really nice because it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so damn fast to heat up. The downside is that it fits basically nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s so small that certain items can’t fit into it at all. Like if you wanted to reheat a slice of pizza
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something, that doesn’t even fit. So forget it. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the whole purpose of a toaster oven, for goodness sakes. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, but we’ve been getting, and Tiff uses a slot toaster in the morning to make Adam’s stuff so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like we’ve been getting by with just a slot toaster and this both of which were you know cheap kind of garbage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things that were purchased more mostly for aesthetics you know not quite for their functionality you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re both this kind of like you know minty teal aqua color so anyway
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so we’ve had those things for you know a year or two whatever and I kept thinking you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really would love a toaster oven that was a little bit bigger now if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you look at the market of toaster ovens, including the Syracuse approved models, there really are not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many that are both small and good. Almost none.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what small means is actually a pretty narrow range. Because,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay, so at the higher end, you have these toaster ovens that are trying to be everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re trying to be a quote, air fryer, which look, everyone, air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fryers are great, but they’re just convection ovens. what they are. Convection ovens are great. This is just a new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco marketing term for small convection ovens. So it’s great, but we don’t we didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really need a new word for it, but hey, okay, whatever. I’ll leave that aside. Okay? So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so all the new ones trying to be these, you know, they had these large convection fans and they they want to be able to fit a whole like frozen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pizza or they’ll show a picture of people putting like two whole chickens next to each other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a toaster oven. Okay, at that point we’d be fine to just use the oven. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regular oven. We don’t need a toaster oven that can fit an entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco animal in it. Like, that’s fine. We have an oven if we need to do that, okay? So, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco toaster oven is supposed to be smaller than the oven by a good margin
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that it can be faster, more convenient, and, you know, countertop, etc. So, okay. So we have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this small space. So we wanted something that was bigger than tiny toasty that could fit at least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two slices of bread. But we also didn’t need it to fit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eight slices of bread. Like we don’t need it to fit an entire, you know, everything. So, okay, we wanted a new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco toaster oven, but it had to be small-ish, not super, not this, but you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco small and compact and good looking. And ideally, here’s the other thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing we have in this kitchen or in this house, really, is like silver
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stainless steel. every single appliance that everybody makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is silver stainless steel front everything for like the everything for like the last 20 years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s it’s just all stainless steel or fake stainless steel it’s all gray and silver with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the one of the reasons why we have the microwave that we do is that it was one of the only ones that i could find in white
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because white looks best in the place that we’re putting these things so it’s like all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right oh wait you say white just happened to you then michael so
⏹️ ▶️ John what do you have against stainless i I mean, the stainless is obviously a fad, but it is all. It also has the benefit of mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John being neutral. So it goes in lots of different kitchens, whereas if you make it in colors, you got to make it in 50 different colors. And it might
⏹️ ▶️ John not go in everybody’s kitchen. Like, obviously, I know why you’re looking for something that’s not silver. But like if white is
⏹️ ▶️ John OK, why is, you know, it’s kind of the same blog goes with everything neutral, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It only goes with everything because everything in most houses is stainless or has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stainless accents or has at least brushed silver accents. So things like, you know, cabinet handles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and drawer pulls and towel rods and licks in most houses these days that were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco built in time recently Those are all some kind of silver or gray and so it fits
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in only because everything is that color here We don’t have any of that color. So everything is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco white or gold or you know So or you know teal or blue whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John neutral like it doesn’t clash if you have gold Draw pulls the stainless still doesn’t clash with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that really it’s neutral, but it’s not it doesn’t match with anything No, it definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t match unless again, unless you have all stainless steel. And by the way, I had recently was forced to get a dishwasher,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, see upcoming rectifs and I couldn’t get white. I wanted to get white. Every dishwasher I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John ever owned has been white, but a COVID supply chain and like, yeah, no, we don’t have white. Your choices are stainless and stainless.
⏹️ ▶️ John So guess what? I have a stainless dishwasher now. Yeah, everyone does.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, yep. Yeah. Ever. It’s, you can’t, it’s hard to buy anything. It’s not as you just found
⏹️ ▶️ John just so glad I got my fridge before COVID because I would not like our fridges white fridges are always been white, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I would not want a stainless fridge. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I decided to purchase I did some research I measure things I had I took like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boxes of graham crackers and boxes of like tea bags and like stack them up into the shape
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and measurements of different models I was looking at so I could put it on the counter and see like exactly like what kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of toaster oven would fit how much counter space would take up. Because we also like the counter that these are placed on,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is also used as a as an active working area in Merlin’s parlance. This is also like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know sometimes a food prep area or a staging area for food that is like going in and out of the microwave or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So smallness again, smallness was greatly preferred. I came up with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the pretty much the only one I could find that was small,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco white, although it’s kind of white-ish, it’s a little bit off but it’s pretty white. So small,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco white, and toaster oven, and reasonably decent.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wait, is this going to be on your counter? Is that why you’re worried about the appearance so much?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s in the pantry area, but we care about how things look back there too.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the pantry area is hidden. Like, the whole benefit of not having it out is that you can get it in your toaster.
⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t match everything. Who cares? It’s off in another room. We see it. All right, God.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like this is going to be inferior to what you know will be my recommendation which is the 450.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John, through, this was not my goal, however,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got the toaster oven that I think is the choice that will maximally piss you off. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ John no, oh no. Is it shaped like an animal? Does it have a griddle on top for making
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say, what was the red one with, oh gosh, what is this thing? The multifunction breakfast choppy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s what you that’s what Mark got.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here I’m pasting an image in the chat.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my god you got the Balmuda.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got the Balmuda toaster. This is the steam toaster oven. Not as
⏹️ ▶️ John bad as the as the breakfast station thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is the one that we did on stage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah this is the one that Alex Cox and Cars Against Humanity brought up on stage when we did our last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco live show. Mother of god.
⏹️ ▶️ John As a joke. You think this looks better than stainless? I don’t, I think the off-white clashes way
⏹️ ▶️ John more than stainless would.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It actually, when you see it in person, it blends in a lot more. Like I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the camera’s white balancing is doing a little bit more of an aggressive job of showing the difference
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In person it just looks white basically, especially because it is on the other end of the counter.
⏹️ ▶️ John recall the Photoshop gradient toast that came out of this thing? When we did a review
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco on stage? Oh yeah! The picture of me holding it up?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like a, it’s like literal gradient from dark to like white yeah I know that’s that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want out of a toaster oven. I am familiar with all of the shortcomings of this toaster I know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know from doing that live show I know from watching YouTube videos and reading reviews I am familiar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with all the shortcomings of this toaster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and don’t forget what I said a little while ago we don’t actually eat toast that often
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but this was the smallest nice-looking white toaster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oven I could find and it’s nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m going to Photoshop the Breville, the Breville 450 in there, and it will look so much better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the problem with almost all the Breville ones is that it’s like one to two inches bigger in each dimension. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually like substantially larger. I think it’s close to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not. It’s it’s like two inches wider. It’s about two inches deeper. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John height. Well, again, looking at looking at the the embarrassment of riches you have in terms of countertop
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco even in your little
⏹️ ▶️ John pantry thing, you’ve got so much space. Who cares if it’s an inch wider?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I’ve, so I have cleaned this up, you know, for installing the toaster. You know, when you, when you install a new appliance, you pick up all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old ones, you clean under
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John them and everything. You have so much room. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is you, this is a working area. I need the room to put stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess. See upcoming rec tips about active working areas.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I understand what you’re saying, but you have the
⏹️ ▶️ John extra inches there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway, we got this thing. And of course, even though we don’t usually eat a lot of toast,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had to also order the fancy Japanese milk bread to, to put it to. Oh my gosh. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we actually, we had like the correct type of bread as far, I mean, as far as what I could get mailed to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me, but you know, the correct-ish type of bread, this Japanese milk toast with a name that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forgot, but B to the N-S.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a good recipes for that on YouTube if you want to try baking again. Yeah, I thought about that actually, but it was easier just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to buy a pack to see if I liked it first before I like bought the special pan and everything else. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, yeah, we tried it out today. all arrived today tried it out and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually really good. I can strongly recommend making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crazy Japanese steamed toast. It is so good. Now granted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it tastes mostly like toast like it is not like you know if if the best toast can be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know is a 1 to 10 kind of scale it’s not like a 20 it’s more like you know a 13 or 14
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like on it’s it’s a really good toast it still tastes like toast but man is it good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and yeah oh man strongly recommend so now I have the toaster that I apologize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much to mr. Syracuse but my god I am so happy with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ridiculous steam toast came out of this thing and I will say it actually I never actually touched it when we had it on stage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco relative to other toaster ovens that I’ve seen it’s pretty nice like it’s nicely designed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s it’s a it’s a nice appearance the the knobs you You know, they don’t feel like BMW
⏹️ ▶️ Marco knobs, but they feel pretty decent for a toaster oven. The interface is nice and simple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It has nice, simple iconography. It’s very subtle, but it sounds good. The LEDs are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yellow and not bright searing blue. Like, it’s just like a nice toaster. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall, I’m very happy with it so far after 12 hours. And you know, we’ll see how it goes after
⏹️ ▶️ John that. I think I remember one of my complaints from the show was that the rack inside there is made of such thin wire, you feel like you
⏹️ ▶️ John could crumble it up in your hand, which doesn’t give a quality appearance. But you know, anyway, if I,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re not gonna get the toaster I recommend, I’m glad at least you got one that has a trick, like this whole steam thing, like that
⏹️ ▶️ John trick. It has a trick that is, makes it unique, has a unique selling proposition, as they say. And you like the result
⏹️ ▶️ John of that. You like the toast that came out of it. So, you know, at least you didn’t get another
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that’s based like a larger version of the Tiny Toasty, which is just a bad toaster and has no extra features
⏹️ ▶️ John to it at all. Although I, every time I look at this one, I’m so angry that they made the window so small. It’s like, we’re not welding
⏹️ ▶️ John inside there. Just let me see my toast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nice. Oh my gosh. This is not at all where I saw this conversation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going. And I am surprised that, John, you’re being so gentle. Maybe it’s because at least
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco and you and me all agree that the toaster oven is the one true method
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of toasting. but golly, that’s, I’m surprised.
Death of a cable box
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, anyways, I was not happy last week.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So last week we had a couple of power spikes and then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we had a power failure. Now on the plus side, this all happened within days
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of me getting, I don’t remember which one it is, but what is it, what did you think you recommended Marco, a cyber power?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, the UPS,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cyber power AVR series, I believe, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that’s right. I’ll try to remember to put something in the show notes, But one way or another, I had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just gotten that, actually, because my whole power setup, really everywhere in the house, but particularly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my office, was a mess. So now I’ve got that straightened out a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But last Thursday, thankfully it was Thursday and not Wednesday, last Thursday we had a power spike.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it flickered on and off a couple times, and it died for like an hour. And I’m still not entirely sure why. It doesn’t really matter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But there didn’t seem to be any casualties from this, except
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my one and only set-top box for my Verizon Fios TV service. Yes, I still have traditional
⏹️ ▶️ Casey TV service. No, I’m not interested in getting into a debate about it. It’s just the way we work. So we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had this easily 10, possibly 15-year-old DVR. Like truly this thing was ancient. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey remember exactly when we got it, but it was old. And it had been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey long in the tooth already, but apparently it really improperly died. And the behavior that we saw, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was just constantly rebooting itself over and over and over and over and over. So I get online
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with Verizon because the Verizon terrestrial service, I can’t speak for the wireless stuff, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Fios, surprisingly, in the last couple of years, you can do a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with their automated systems. As an example, when the power did come back, my Fios
⏹️ ▶️ Casey internet wouldn’t come back. And I got online, you know, tethered to my phone, and I said, hey, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my phone number doesn’t have, you know, file service right now. And the website just said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey okay, we’re gonna reset you’re presumably my ONT or whatever, but we’re going to reset your service. And you know, five
⏹️ ▶️ Casey minutes later, sure enough, it was back. I didn’t talk to a human, not via chat, not via phone, nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I get on the website and I’m saying, Oh, my set-top box
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is broken. And one of the options that actually gave me was, you know, it’s rebooting constantly and,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, it said, okay, well, we’ll send you a replacement, you know, just like the one you’ve got. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what, which one is it? And the options, I forget if there was like no option for me to select
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the one in question or if that, or maybe it didn’t look right to me one way or another, I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, oh, it’s none of those. And immediately, okay, time to talk to a person via chat. Fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I talked to a person via chat. They’re very, very nice. And even though it took forever, presumably because they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talking to like 17 other people at once. Uh, they did agree to send me a file spot, a new file box
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after. They, they insisted that they send a text message to my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone. Why did they send a text message to my phone? do you think, gentlemen?
⏹️ ▶️ John I want to make sure you’re who you say you are. Is there a two-factor?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well that, okay, yes. Okay, I’m sorry, two text messages to my phone. One was to verify who I am,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but the other one was more interesting. We’ve talked about this just a couple of months back.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Did you have to record a video of the broken box?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am stunned, Marco Arment. Well done, sir. You get a gold star for today. Really? So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John send me this link. And if you’re sure, you’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John have to record all broken things on your phone. Right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John if your phone breaks?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So they send me this link via, via text message to tech C dot me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey T E C H S E E dot me. And what it basically did was initiate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a one-way video chat. So the person, the chat person could see my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey camera, but they couldn’t see me. Like it was, you know, the, the camera on the back of the phone. So they couldn’t see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, but they could see my camera and they had me hold up the set-top box. They could see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. And I don’t know why, but they like used a cursor, which I could see on my screen on my phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They used a cursor to like circle where the serial number was and like circle a couple other things. I’m not entirely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clear why. And then when they were done, they wrote with their cursor, they wrote, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey K on the screen. And that was my, that was my hint that we were done here.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was gonna say, when you put this link in the show notes, I couldn’t figure out what, why you did. I thought we had the wrong URL because
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like, you had to
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco replace your files box. I
⏹️ ▶️ John expected this to be a website with like a different ONT or a different
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco cable box. Right, right, right. But let
⏹️ ▶️ John me just tell you, if you haven’t gone to the site listener, you go to the site and the text on top says,
⏹️ ▶️ John delight your customers with visual AI, apply the power of computer vision and augmented reality
⏹️ ▶️ John to transform your customer experience and dramatically improve your business outcomes. That that trend that
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of business marketing speak there is basically their version of what Casey
⏹️ ▶️ John described, you’re going to point your phone or something and they’re going to write on it. So you can see that they’re circling where the where
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco serial numbers and
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. I guess technically that’s augmented reality, but I’m not sure it transformed the
⏹️ ▶️ John customer experience and dramatically improved business outcomes versus Casey just saying my box is broken and
⏹️ ▶️ John them saying the serial number is on the bottom.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You have to figure like, the hoops that these companies are making people jump through now for simple stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this, there must have been, and probably still is, such a massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amount of like fraud that consumers pull on companies to get free
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boxes or free electronics or make like an extra 10 bucks somewhere, you just gotta figure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the number of scams and the amount of fraud that’s out there must be massive, way more than anybody thinks.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s hard to tell. We always hear about that on the iPhone, like that there are way more scams than you think and I’ve also dealt with them and it’s a headache.
⏹️ ▶️ John But for cable boxes or computer mice, I do wonder.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And remember, they have billing information for me and they made it very clear that if I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey send the existing box
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John back within a month, they’re basically gonna repossess the house.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I agree with you. What are they trying to prevent?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, in this case, I actually believe the marketing speak, in this case. In this case, I think the problem is,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’ve ever worked tech support, you know that you wish
⏹️ ▶️ John you could do something where you could just see what they’re seeing or show
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco their screen or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think this technology is, as ridiculous as it sounds, it beats trying to explain to someone on the
⏹️ ▶️ John phone where the hell the serial number is when you’re not entirely sure that they’re even touching the right box.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true. But consider that at the time in which I was picking up the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or starting the video call, all I had been instructed to do was show them the box.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like I was never instructed to send a serial number.
⏹️ ▶️ John no, they jump right to this tech once they get accustomed to it, right? I’m not essentially defending this
⏹️ ▶️ John use of yours. I feel like with you, a conversation on the phone would have been better, but once this tech is available, it becomes the cure-all. It’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of like when I’m debugging anything with my parents, I just like, step zero, share your screen. Like, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey to get to that
⏹️ ▶️ John to there because it’s just more efficient.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I don’t think the purpose of it was to see the serial number. I think the purpose was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually just to verify that the box was in my possession and didn’t look like it had been drop kicked or something, which is the
⏹️ ▶️ John or just sanity checking what you’re saying. Because when people say, like, you know, I have done tech support in
⏹️ ▶️ John a professional context and you can’t trust people with things that people say because you’re not on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey same page. Yeah. So anyway, I just thought it was funny given that we had just talked about that a few months ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And they eventually did dispatch a new box. It arrived. And very, very briefly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the new box arrives. And it has to activate itself because reasons. And it tries to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s like, nope. And it tried again. Nope, can’t connect. Then eventually,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have it try another time. Meanwhile, my Eero, which is my in-home router, is saying, oh, hey, there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new box that just pulled an IP address on your network. And it’s such and such, such and such, which is clearly the cable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey box. And it was like, nope, can’t activate. So I call Verizon. this time I actually call them and I’m like, Hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my box won’t activate. And they’re like, Okay, well, you know, have you checked that you know, your Verizon routers on it’s not a rising router.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, well, what are you doing? Well, I have an arrow and a couple of mocha bridges and blah, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is when you get kicked up the chain, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Actually, no. So what ended up happening was, it was a very, very, very, very, very kind guy who is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clearly way out of his depth and he seemed to be chatting either verbally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or via keyboard with a co-worker who eventually stumbled on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right incantation to get the thing to force an activation. But it was funny to me because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s an odd setup with Verizon Fios. Typically you have their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey router, not always, but typically you have their router and it’s weird to not, but it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey completely and utterly unusual. Neither of you guys are using Verizon routers, right? Marco, you have a Ubiquiti
⏹️ ▶️ Casey setup. John, you have Eero, if I’m not mistaken,
⏹️ ▶️ John And every time, like the thing is, as long as you know what you’re doing with your stuff, the number of things they can
⏹️ ▶️ John do on their end mostly affect things that are not the router. They’ll help you debug their router,
⏹️ ▶️ John but if you don’t need their help debugging your router, they can still do all the same things that they do on their
⏹️ ▶️ John end, like resetting your ONT or testing their connection from your end or doing all that. Like that’s all you need them to do. And so really,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, you could even just lie and say, oh yeah, I’ve totally got the Verizon router. And if they say, does it use the green light on? Just
⏹️ ▶️ John say, yes, the green light. Like you could do that if you wanted, but. What
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they ask a more point, a more like, you know, vague question, like how many lights do you see on the front?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, but anyway, so it all worked out fine in the end, but it just made me laugh real bad that I had to video chat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with them in order to prove that I had the box that I inevitably have to send back anyway, because otherwise they repossess
Sponsor: Stack Overflow Podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by something honestly very, very close to me, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dear to me, the Stack Overflow podcast. For more than a dozen years,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Stack Overflow podcast has been exploring what it means to be a developer and how the art and practice of software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco programming is changing our world. Now this actually means something to me, you know, personally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the Stack Overflow podcast, you know, they say they’ve been doing it for more than a dozen years. That’s true, because more than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a dozen years ago, I was listening to it. I listened to it whenever it would come out. I remember clearly listening on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my video iPod on the way as I was walking in when I worked in the city.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I was listening to them talk about how they were building the site and what they were the considerations they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were having over time and everything. And it was it really was one of the very first podcasts I listened to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I kind of never stopped after that. And I’m very happy with that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But this is a great show. And it really has evolved over time. As Stack Overflow, of course, became
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the juggernaut that it became in our in our world of programmers here. The podcast grew and everything and it really has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has really gone in great directions. From Rails to react from Java to node, they host
⏹️ ▶️ Marco important conversations and fascinating guests that will help you understand how technology is made and where it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headed. hosted by Ben Popper, Ryan Donovan, Cassidy Williams, and Siora
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ford. The Stack Overflow podcast is your home for all things code.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So check out the Stack Overflow podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Obviously, I’m biased.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But wherever you get your podcasts, it’s great. I strongly recommend if you like our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show, you’re probably gonna like their show too. So once again, the Stack Overflow podcast available wherever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you get your podcasts. Thanks to the Stack Overflow podcast for sponsoring our show.
Follow-up: Email hosting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving right along, we got a lot of feedback with regard to battery charging and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think this originated as an Ask ATP thing. And a lot of people recommended Aldente, which I have not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tried myself, but we got lots of recommendations for it. I believe there’s a free and or perhaps even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey open source and a paid version, if I’m not mistaken. And somebody wrote, and I don’t, I didn’t put the quotation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in here, so I don’t know who to credit. I’m sorry. installed, you can set a charging limit in a more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey healthy charging range and with more features like sailing mode, not sure what that means, or heat protection.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you can keep your battery healthy even longer.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it was marketing copy from the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey website. Oh, is that what it was?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s basically gives you way more options about when should the battery charge to full? What level
⏹️ ▶️ John should it stop? Like if you want to customize that and you don’t want to, you know, use, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John discipline and your own timing system to do it, there’s software that will do it. And so Al Dente is recommended
⏹️ ▶️ John by many of the battery micromanagers who listen to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is accurate. So anyways, moving right along, we have some more feedback
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with regard to my email woes. I haven’t solved anything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yet. I’m still kicking the can down the road, but the current theory is indeed to switch to fast mail for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reasons. That is the plan. However, there’s a little bit of there’s some updates and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something in the show notes I presume John put in called the Gmail funnel solution. Tell me about this.
⏹️ ▶️ John A lot of people suggested it, and it’s actually what I do, and it’s worth mentioning, even though I don’t think it solves any of Casey’s
⏹️ ▶️ John problems. It may not solve all of your problems if you have the same sort of Google for my domains or whatever thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the solution lots of people suggested is, do whatever you wanna do to get
⏹️ ▶️ John your email address at whatever service you want to use. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to have somewhere for the mail to go for you at yourcooldomain.com, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ John for however many accounts you have. But then behind the scenes, what you do is
⏹️ ▶️ John you make yourself a free Gmail account and you forward everything from
⏹️ ▶️ John all your other email accounts to the free Gmail account, and then you set up Gmail
⏹️ ▶️ John so it can send through the outgoing SMTP servers of those services so you can send as
⏹️ ▶️ John those people as well. So you get email to me at my cool domain.com. And when you reply,
⏹️ ▶️ John it comes from me at my cool domain.com. Right. But that people don’t know that it went to the actual mail server
⏹️ ▶️ John for my mycooldomain.com and then got forwarded to Gmail and then it was sent from Gmail through
⏹️ ▶️ John the outgoing mycooldomain.com servers. I do that for all my email accounts.
⏹️ ▶️ John Gmail is my funnel. I have lots of different email accounts, lots of different custom domains, all sorts of
⏹️ ▶️ John random crap. They all funnel into Gmail and I could send as them from Gmail
⏹️ ▶️ John if I want to. In practice I barely bother but if you just set up the rules to say like reply to who it was sent to,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can set that up in Gmail so when you reply it automatically will reply from whoever it was sent to. Sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a pain to set that up. It can be tricky and it’s changed over the years, but Gmail does have enough features for you
⏹️ ▶️ John to get that done in most cases. And that would solve the problem if you’re like, well, I want to use Gmail.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to pay for mail storage. I want to have, you know, I like the interface. I like the search.
⏹️ ▶️ John I like having lots of room, but I don’t want it to actually be the front door to my email. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John your other places where you have mail, if you get a full fledged account somewhere else and don’t just forward it, but instead
⏹️ ▶️ John keep a copy there and also forward it, then you can still use the Gmail interface, but have a backup copy
⏹️ ▶️ John of your mail at FastMail or whatever. But the problem it doesn’t solve is if you have lots of different accounts and you need
⏹️ ▶️ John more storage than Gmail free offers, or you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco want to use the Gmail
⏹️ ▶️ John interface, or you don’t like Gmail, then obviously things like FastMail are more straightforward. But so many people suggested
⏹️ ▶️ John this, I thought I should bring it up, especially since it’s what I actually do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And speaking of storage, according to Ashish Gandhi, the discontinuation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the free custom domain affected me as well, but wanted to point out that for $6 a month, you’d get 30GB
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of storage and not 15GB like free Gmail. So your 20GB
⏹️ ▶️ Casey need would be fulfilled without paying for extra storage space at $2 a month, which I did not realize.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t have any links to share about that, but it is worth noting. Additionally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so this is a very quick tangent, when I was a younger man and really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wanted to watch a BBC television program about cars, I would hang out on a website
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in an IRC chat room called Final Gear in order to see if any trucks drove by with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey episodes of Top Gear on it. And a friend of mine, Daniel Nelson, who I befriended long after
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this was a thing in my life, Daniel is one of the main people that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was at Final Care. And so it’s always a pleasure to hear from him. And Daniel wrote us. And he wrote,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey please don’t run your own mail server. If you do, you won’t be able to run it directly on your Synology unless
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have a, quote, relay host, quote, that has a non-residential IP. Because all known residential IP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ranges are included on all the block lists that email providers use. If you do decide that you want to go down that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rabbit hole of running your own server, my favorite setup is from, and then I’ll put a link in the show notes, and it explains
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things really well. But seriously, don’t run your own mail server. It’s caused me more headaches than anything except for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe running IRC servers. Trying to get your IP unblocked so people can receive your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey email again because someone at Microsoft got a little too excited with their IP ranges is exactly as fun as it sounds.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So yeah, no thank you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I can definitely see like, you know, because if you think about why would mail services
⏹️ ▶️ Marco block residential IP ranges? Well, because if your computer is hacked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by some malware to relay spam through it, then that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to mostly come from residential IP ranges. And how many legit mail servers are coming from there?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Almost none. So it’s like, oh God, back when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was… I think I’ve mentioned this on the show before, but at Tumblr, David was very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adamant that the signup process be as smooth as possible. That’s why there was no confirm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your password box and there was no email verification at first. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if this changed after I left in 2010, but that was a long time ago. But anyway, it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like three fields. It was like the blog name, email, password, that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He was very adamant that it has to be super easy, super smooth and go right in. After a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while of it being popular for a little while, we started getting spam at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an amount like we had to actually act on it. And so we decided to put up a captcha
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the registration form, but only for people who we thought were already spammers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like Earth, or like, so only if we had a high confidence that the person was a spammer anyway, so we weren’t putting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone through a captcha only like only likely spam candidates. And there were a number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of ways that that you know, so I devised a number of heuristics of like, no, well, first of all, what are they entering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as their blog name, email and password, like, know certain patterns are being used by spammers but the one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the one that was by far the most effective the first class a whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is of Russia I just put all of Russia through the capture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything coming from Russia and that stopped something like 98% of spam nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and the Russia you know and and it sounds like you know to the good people of Russia
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who aren’t spam bots you know There are some of you out there. You’re certainly not the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco majority. Most of the people from Russia are not people. They’re spam bots that we experience on the internet. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there are good people there. And I understand, maybe you might be offended by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fact that I was putting your entire country through a captcha as if you were a spammer. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reality is that actually did stop most of it. And so I can see the same thing going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on with this email server thing of, yeah, if you’re running a mail server out of your house, there are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some people who do that. I’m sure there are good people out there who are trying that. But the vast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco majority of email coming from houses, like as the SMTP agent, is going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bots and is going to be people whose computers have been affected by malware. Of course, every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mail server is going to be like, nope, forget it, no way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That actually reminds me, by the way, very quickly, I was reminiscing about the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey open source software Zimbra, which was like some sort of kind of G
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Suite before G Suite existed sort of thing. And I had a handful of people reach out who are either
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recent or current Zimbra users who said, stay away, stay far, far away. Apparently,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it has gone very downhill since I dabbled with it 10, 15 years ago. So I thought that was funny.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, you could have free email forever, or you have other options,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So big thank you to Emmanuel Curvissier, who wrote in to tell me that Fastmail,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I had It said last episode that I’ve been using Fastmail as my email host for something like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 10 or 12 years, some absurdly long time, and I have posted referral links here and there like on my blog
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever else. And so I’ve built up over time like $2,600 in referral credit. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every time they bill me, it just deducts from that, but I’m building up credit faster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than I’m spending it. And so I was joking like it’s going to take me 100 years to actually go through all this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, Emanuel wrote in to say that Fastmail has an FAQ entry that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can get paid out excess referral earnings above $100. So I opened
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a ticket, I’m like, hey, can I have $2,500 of this as a payout? And they paid it out within an hour.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was so fast. So legitimately,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thank you to Emanuel, you made me $2,500 and I’m very thankful for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that paid for some of the car stuff we’ll talk about later.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, no. All right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Moving away from email. Am I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new toaster? Oh, gosh. It’s all Emmanuel’s fault, John. It’s all Emmanuel’s fault. Bye.
Follow-up: Game streaming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so moving away from email, we talked last week. Carlos Carpio Garcia wrote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in with regards to universal control from Wi-Fi to cellular and back. And after hearing the show,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Carlos had recorded a video, which we will link, wherein you can see this in action, which I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was really cool and worth, I think, the video’s like two minutes or something like that. And it’s worth a couple minutes of your time. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unrelated to that, Carlos writes that apparently you can play Xbox Game Pass on the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey using HTML5, which I remember us talking about when that was promised. but I didn’t remember it having launched.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And according to Carlos, it works quote, pretty well,
⏹️ ▶️ John quote. Yeah, that show was a long time ago, so people can be forgiven for not remembering. But it was when we were debating like, when
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft was trying to get their app on the App Store and Apple was rejecting them saying, you can’t put a streaming game
⏹️ ▶️ John service on our App Store. And so they’re like, well, fine, we’ve got to go to the web. But yeah, you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John get the app on there, but you can try and play on the games through the browser. Good luck, works okay, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Could this actually be a good way to get gaming on the Mac? I mean, I understand like iOS has certain limitation and everything, but I know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it still is gonna be limited by what browsers can do, but browsers can do a lot these days. What if the solution to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gaming always kind of being second rate on the Mac is this kind of thing?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, you can do this now, but it’s not really setting the world on fire because it’s not the best way to play,
⏹️ ▶️ John in particular, games that require sort of low latency, you know, quick reflex type stuff, which
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of the most popular games tend to be like that. You could probably play, you know, Hearthstone
⏹️ ▶️ John or Magic the Gathering or something like that, But even then, I feel like it might take away from the experience. I’ve done it. Every time one
⏹️ ▶️ John of these streaming things comes out, I try it. And it’s not the browser that’s holding it back, especially on the Mac, where you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John got a lot of horsepower behind it. And your input options are not
⏹️ ▶️ John as constrained as they are on the phone. But still, the thing running
⏹️ ▶️ John your game is far away from you geographically. And it takes a while for the signals to get
⏹️ ▶️ John from your keyboard to that computer and then back to your screen. So it’s more of a latency
⏹️ ▶️ John And you can, like, don’t get me wrong, it’s viable. And it’s better than nothing if you have no other way to play a game.
⏹️ ▶️ John How I’ve, sometimes before I go to bed, I remember there’s a thing I need to do in Destiny and I pick up my phone and I do the
⏹️ ▶️ John PlayStation 5 remote play thing. I can wake up my PlayStation 5 from my bed with my phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John turn it on, launch Destiny, go do a thing, and then put my PlayStation 5 back to sleep. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is pretty slick. And that’s just me within my house. But it is not a great experience.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, even within my house, like the thing is, It’s just, you know, it’s over in the same wifi network. The latency
⏹️ ▶️ John is not great and Destiny has a lot of controls. Try doing using those controls in a confident manner
⏹️ ▶️ John on a phone screen, not easy, but it’s a good enough for me to go get the thing that I almost forgot to get from Xur.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I hate when that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t you hate when that happens, Marco, when you forget the thing at Xur? That sounds like a
⏹️ ▶️ John parody. Old snake face, yeah. Yeah, sometimes you get good stuff and I forget about it until I
⏹️ ▶️ John watch one last YouTube video before I go to bed. Oh, I should pick that up and I don’t have to get out of bed to do it. That’s the future
⏹️ ▶️ John that I was promised.
Follow-up: Phone theft
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, with regard to the Ask ATP about phone theft, Guy Rambeau points out an article
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where the theory is it’s actually about stealing banking information. So quoting from the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey article, before the pandemic, it was common to see bicycle thieves stealing phones from inattentive people on the street,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but they used to resell the phones. Now there’s a specialized gang that not only invades the iPhone, but also the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bank accounts on it as well. So basically you grab an unlocked iPhone and the first thing you do is go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey searching for banking apps and start plundering poor people’s bank accounts and stealing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey money and stuff. So that was not something I expected, but it’s an interesting thought.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was like a 90s hacker movie, a specialized gang of techno thieves.
Follow-up: Top songs by year
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Marco, did you fix your problems with playing music from the 60s and 70s and so on?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So this is really interesting too. So as part of the three-part aftershow last week, which by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way, normally I would—I always feel like a multi-part aftershow is kind of an editing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cop-out. I try to pick like one part and just make it, that’s the aftershow and that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I just couldn’t—you had these three distinct parts last week. I just had to do it. So anyway, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know I recognize it’s a little bit of a cop-out to just glue things together, But anyway, I think it was worth it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John So one of the things-
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s called editing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but with no transition. I just had to use
⏹️ ▶️ John Like there was any transitions in the actual conversation? It’s fine, you should feel free to do that. You do not have to insert fish between
⏹️ ▶️ John them. Please don’t insert fish. That wasn’t fish.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s Archie Bell and the Drells, which I just heard organically through this music. So anyway, so I was saying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how we’ve been doing this fun thing where we’re asking Siri on the HomePod every morning to play the top
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hits from a certain year. And we’re incrementing year by year, doing one year a day starting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from 1960 and we’re gonna keep going to the present day and we’re still doing that we were in I think 1973 or something like that now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco man the 70s it’s like the first few years of the 70s it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone’s taking a nap because like so much happened in the 60s they’re just tired now like they’re just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s so mellow and sleepy but anyway how
⏹️ ▶️ John dare you there’s amazing hits of the 70s I should I’m gonna take it that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the early to promote
⏹️ ▶️ John an album but it is only going to be exciting to you if you already like things from the 70s so never mind
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco but I like things I like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot I I do like a lot of things in the 70s but like what the top hits are is is a different story necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway so so what I was complaining that it seemed like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I would ask you know I would say play top songs from X year and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would say okay playing top 25 songs from X year and it seemed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it wasn’t getting through that many before would like you know forget what it was doing and start playing something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the 90s or whatever. And so it just, it seemed like it was getting sidetracked fairly easily and we were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, wait, this came out back then? And we’d go and check and it didn’t. And so, even though,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is crazy. So a few people wrote in to suggest that I look at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up next cue on the phone. Because like, one of the great things about AirPlay 2 and the way this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco works with handoff and everything is you can tell the HomePod by voice, play whatever you want.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then you can go on your phone into a control center and you can connect to it, and you can then reveal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the HomePod’s music session in your iPhone’s music app. So you can control it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from there. So you can see everything the music app can normally see. You can see the, of course, artist and band
⏹️ ▶️ Marco info and everything. You can jump to the album, you can add it to your playlist if you like it, and you can see the up next queue.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, if you ask for top hits from a year, and it says playing top 25
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hits, if you actually look at the up next queue, it only has, depending
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the year, between like six and nine songs on it. Nice. So even though it says
⏹️ ▶️ Marco top 25, it’s playing like nine songs and then it’s going to other related stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it thinks is related, but is not what you ask for anymore. So first of all, that’s the most amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Siri thing ever because of course Siri says it’s playing 25 songs and then plays nine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, fine, Siri, I’m used to you now. Siri’s like your stoner
⏹️ ▶️ Marco friend. You mean well, but God, you’re always high. Like, you’re always forgetting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything. It’s like, geez, you seem like a good person, but my God,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m relying on you to do simple things and you just forget what you’re doing and walk away. Oh my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco God, anyway. But a few people wrote in to say, the trick here, instead of saying, play top
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hits from 1975, to say, play pop hits 1975
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they have these playlists on Apple Music, pop hits colon year number.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you say play pop hits year, and I think it’s also, you know, there’s rock hits and stuff like that, but if you say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, that plays much longer playlists that are actually available
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Apple Music, you can go look at them. And so it seems like that is the correct way to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So instead of saying T-O-P or anything like it, you’re saying P-O-P,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John is it? Yes. It’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of shocking that Siri didn’t mishear you and do the right thing accidentally.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe once or twice it might’ve, But yeah, so that’s what it’s like. That’s like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smart thing to do is, well, that’s the effective thing to do, to say pop hits
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from a year or rock hits or something like that. But if you just say top hits,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’ll say it’s playing 25 songs, then it’ll play like eight or nine of them and then walk away.
⏹️ ▶️ John Neato. Or if you’re doing the 70s, you could just say, play Some Guys by Jonathan Colton.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s the album I put
⏹️ ▶️ John in the- I haven’t heard that one. Show notes in the chat. It is faithful,
⏹️ ▶️ John note for note, exact sound alike covers to 70s hits, which is normally when you do covers, like
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna do my own spin on this song or I’m gonna do an acoustic version of a 90s song and put it in a movie trailer.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, this is, I’m going to try to sound as much like the original track as I possibly
⏹️ ▶️ John can, allowing for the fact that I am not those people. I mean, what I did when Colton first put out
⏹️ ▶️ John this album, he also said, and by the way, here are links to all the original
⏹️ ▶️ John tracks, so you can, you know, get them, because those are all on Apple Music, they’re on all the streaming services. So I have
⏹️ ▶️ John both the cover album and the original tracks. And again, obviously his voice is not going to sound exactly like
⏹️ ▶️ John the voices of 17 different singers, but this album is amazing, he does an amazing job. But what
⏹️ ▶️ John it made me do is realize how much I liked a lot of these songs from the 70s, so then I got the originals as well, there
⏹️ ▶️ John on my collection now.
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This week’s App Store BS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So there’s been a lot of drama, additional drama with regard to the Netherlands and Apple’s attempt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at compliance with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco their dating app rules.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my gosh, you guys. So I’m having a real hard time. I don’t think we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gonna have time to explore this during this episode. already running kind of long, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really feel like I’m,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am I rooting for the bad guys? I know I’ve said this before, but like Apple is really not acting like good guys. These
⏹️ ▶️ Casey days are good people. I should say. It, it, it really seems like Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in this context, if not many others is really being
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of gross and it’s, they’re kind of acting like petulant children, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not entirely unlike Apple, but I don’t know. It’s just so much of my being
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is tied around being enthusiastic about Apple. And it’s a real, it’s a real culture shock
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me personally, anyway, when, when Apple does things that I just find to be so deplorable and gross,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and maybe that’s a little bit strong, but it’s just, I don’t dig this at all. And,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I know that like most people who listen to the show are probably also enthusiastic about Apple. And if we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just sit here and complain and moan and whine about Apple all, you know, for two hours every week, that’s not fun for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any of you to listen to. And I don’t want to alienate our listeners. But I also want to call it like I see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. And this is gross, my guys. Like this is gross. And so let’s what’s what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wait, wait. So before we continue, Casey, I need to tell you that this podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All purchases in this podcast will be managed by the developer ATP.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your stored App Store payment method and related features such as subscription payment management, subscription management and refund requests
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will not be available. Only purchases through the App Store are secured by Apple. Now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’d like to learn more.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Continue or cancel. Yes, please. Let’s learn more.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So when you use a third party payment system within your app, this is actually quoting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from an Apple support document. When using a third-party payment system within your app, your app must include an in-app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey modal sheet explaining that purchases are made through a source other than Apple. The modal sheet design
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and messaging must exactly match the specifications provided
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Figure 1. The title is, this app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey system, and the body is exactly what Marco just read. So oh my God.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I understand to a degree that it, I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Apple to want to say, Hey, listen, you are taking, you know, your, your credit card,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost said your life, but you’re taking your credit card into your own hands now. Like this, this is not,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this could be dangerous, you know, here be dragons potentially, but good grief.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is aggressive. This is really aggressive, unnecessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey aggressive. Like I feel like we’re back in like the mid to late nineties
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m sure I’ve told this story before in the show, but my dad started buying CDs from, I think it was CD
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now, if I’m not mistaken. And, and that was like the Amazon of music. And then eventually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got bought by Amazon actually, but it was like the Amazon of music long before
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people were really comfortable putting credit card information on the internet. And I remember dad tried
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it once or twice and like legitimately mom was like, okay, well, we’re going to have to cancel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these credit cards because inevitably this data is going to be stolen. And, and it ended up fine. And dad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spent inordinates amount in an inordinate amount of money at CD now, but it feels like that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of fear all over again. It’s, it could be, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey secure and it’s, it’s not private. What’s going to happen? Oh my gosh, do I need to burn this credit card after use? What am I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to do? Oh my gosh, I should learn more.
⏹️ ▶️ John Obviously the, uh, the incentives are not aligned here when the company that has its own payment method
⏹️ ▶️ John that they want to use that pays them is allowed to dictate the text that you have to
⏹️ ▶️ John write to send someone to your other payment method. Of course, they’re gonna talk up their own thing and say, you don’t wanna leave us,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re great. But you know, and by the way, you have to write it this exact way. I think the worst thing about this text
⏹️ ▶️ John is the bit towards the end that says, your stored app store payment method and
⏹️ ▶️ John related features such as subscription management and refund requests will not be available. We know what they’re saying, because we know all the ins
⏹️ ▶️ John and outs of the thing. Like people do like the fact that all your subscriptions are in one place. And I always say, this is a subscription
⏹️ ▶️ John in a third party. It’s not going to be listed with your other subscriptions. Right. And Apple makes it really easy to unsubscribe.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you don’t have to call someone on a phone and all the other BS. Right. So that’s what they’re referring to there. And we know what that means.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the second bit is really the worst, because it says subscription management and refund requests will
⏹️ ▶️ John not be available. We know that one of the worst things about the app store is that people who sell
⏹️ ▶️ John things on the app store cannot refund people. only Apple can refund them. Even if developers
⏹️ ▶️ John want to give someone a refund, they can’t. Customers don’t know that would never guess
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And this is saying, Oh, you might not be able to get refunds. When in reality, chances are very good
⏹️ ▶️ John that you will have a much better refund experience with a third party payment provider than you will with Apple. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, you know, when you when you if you make a request to developer developer says I can’t refund you and
⏹️ ▶️ John then people think you’re lying because that sounds absurd because it is absurd. And then if you make make a request for Apple for refund,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ll probably give it to you. But Apple doesn’t care about you. And if they reject your refund, you have no recourse
⏹️ ▶️ John because Apple like, it’s not like you can go talk to somebody about it at Apple, like, you’d have to put up it
⏹️ ▶️ John getting getting through the impenetrable wall that is Apple to get a refund for some software that you got rejected for a refund
⏹️ ▶️ John for is the same thing developers have to deal with when their app gets rejected. And they try to get through app review and say, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John you shouldn’t have rejected this because you’re wrong about how my app works. Can I find a human to talk to? And the answer is no. I’m not saying
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple is bad about refunds. what I’m saying one of the reasons people want to use developers want to use third
⏹️ ▶️ John party things services is so that they can give better customer support than Apple does.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is a way to differentiate their product. Please let us you know, good companies, obviously bad companies want to do it so they
⏹️ ▶️ John can refuse a refund, right? But good companies want to do it so they can give you a better experience with customer
⏹️ ▶️ John support. So they can give you a refund more willingly than Apple would and more quickly than Apple would.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know there’s two sides to this, but you you read this text and it makes it sound like, whoa, I might not be able to
⏹️ ▶️ John get a refund. And that’s just like flying in the face of one of the big motivations
⏹️ ▶️ John for people to wanna use third-party ones. Now, granted, the much bigger motivations, which we’ll get to in a second, is
⏹️ ▶️ John save money. And then the bigger motivation for the bad people is refuse to give anyone refunds
⏹️ ▶️ John ever and scam people. But it’s not like scams don’t happen on the App Store as well, so. Anyway, moving on to
⏹️ ▶️ John the exciting part of this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I don’t know which part you’re talking about because oh, so much of this is exciting. But,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is again from Apple, consistent with the ACM’s order, dating apps that are granted an entitlement to link out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or use a third-party in-app payment provider will pay Apple a commission on transactions. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that sounds like, hey, if you’re gonna use, and I’m picking on it just arbitrarily, like if you’re gonna use Stripe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in-app, then you owe Apple a commission. Well, that seems a little weird, but okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can go with it. You know, Google’s doing something similar, kind of. But then as you keep
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reading this document, even via the web, so if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you link to, I believe it you have to go to Safari if I’m not mistaken, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever the default browser is you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to link out to the default browser. You cannot do web payments in-app.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and you can’t provide any sort of query string if I recall correctly, or if you do, it has to be like static
⏹️ ▶️ Casey amongst every single user.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yes, you have to. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can sort of understand that to a degree.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, that is them complying with what regulators are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco asking for in the most minimal way. But again, it’s Apple. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entire thing, I don’t even want to nitpick this to death because it’s probably going to change in a week. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as Casey was saying, I don’t want to bring us down because I’m in a good mood this week. And I’m a huge fan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of almost everything Apple does these days, except all this crap. Except the App
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Store crap. And to be clear, when I complain about the App Store payment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff, many people assume that because I’m an App Store developer, that I’m trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco avoid paying Apple their commission. I’m not. I’m sticking with the in-app purchase no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco matter what people allow me to do elsewhere because frankly it works well for me and my app. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A, it doesn’t work well for everyone and everyone’s apps, and B, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco disagree with the assumption that Apple deserves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to take a third of all commerce that happens on a major computing platform.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I so often will go back to the issue of things like, lots of people build
⏹️ ▶️ Marco infrastructure or systems that then have customers come in, and it’s okay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when it’s a small thing in in a diverse pool. So for instance, it’s okay if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a store like Walmart or something wants to charge you 50%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco markup and you just got to eat it if you want to be in Walmart. That’s okay as long as there are other stores.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As long as there’s a lot of retailers, then what one retailer does on their rules
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not super severe, but as they get larger, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that retailer is, the more of like all of commerce has to play ball with that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one retailer. MW Kind of like Walmart, which is why it might not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco example, but anyway. S1 Terrible example actually, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, like the larger that one retailer is, and the fewer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco alternatives people have or the less of the market the alternatives represent,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bigger a problem it is. And historically, you look at all forms of capitalism, that’s when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you start having to introduced things like regulation. Capitalism in like the more pure forms, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the less regulated forms, work well in certain conditions. Things like, you know, smaller environments
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or diverse environments or environments with healthy competition. Or the first half of a sci-fi movie. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like as a, as one player starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it starts to become more like a public utility or a monopoly where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regulation of some sort is needed just to preserve the health of all commerce
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s involved in such a major area. And I maintain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that iOS is one of those areas. iOS is now large enough,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and has been for some time, and represents such a large proportion of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much commerce these days that to have this one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco provider, being Apple, dictating that they deserve a third of all the money that goes through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it in certain ways, that starts to become problematic from a large-scale
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regulation perspective. And so I do think that this deserves to be looked at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by regulators. Again, my concern remains that we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually benefit when regulators around the world start forcing changes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upon tech companies. That’s usually not great. Ideally, the tech
⏹️ ▶️ Marco companies would kind of self-regulate to the point where the governments wouldn’t have to step in because they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can probably do a better job of knowing what they want, knowing what we want as technology
⏹️ ▶️ Marco users, et cetera. And Apple keeps trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco argue that if they start making less money from the App Store fees,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that this whole world of hell is going to rain down upon everybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through things like side-loading and payment fraud and everything. Apple is trying so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard to conflate these issues. But I really think we need to exercise extreme
⏹️ ▶️ Marco discipline in keeping them separate when arguing about them or discussing them. them because the reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why Apple’s trying to conflate all that stuff is because these other outcomes like side loading
⏹️ ▶️ Marco alternative apps or things I don’t want that Apple doesn’t want that I would say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bet most people who use iPhones don’t want that I bet most iPhone developers don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want that but Apple is lumping those together because what they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to say is if we aren’t allowed to take our 30%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then the only alternative is this other extreme and therefore you must leave things the way they are so we can take our 30%. All
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, but these are all separate issues. Now, if Apple does not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco relent on the 30% rules enough to get regulators off their back,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regulators are looking at it in much larger ways. Regulators and lawmakers are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all over the world floating bills right now to do things like require side loading
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or require alternative app stores. That’s a big problem for Apple. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, I look, I’ll be honest with you. I do not have a lot of respect for Tim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cook on a number of levels. And so maybe this is coloring my viewpoint here, but.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tim Cook’s huge strategic risks he is taking in two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco areas, this and China, I think, are really going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a problem for him long term. And I I think these are blind spots for him, honestly. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think he sees nothing wrong with this because keeping things the way they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are in both China, that’s a whole other thing, and all this app store stuff, they are making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much money from it. But when you make this much money from something, you really start to believe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you deserve it, like you earn this. But Apple doesn’t deserve a third
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all commerce that happens on their phones any more than the cell phone carriers do, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the browser makers. Does Mozilla take a third of all of all commerce that happens through Firefox?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No. Like, imagine if the web came up that way. It would be terrible. Like, that would be, that would have been a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco horrible outcome for the web, and it would have been much more limited and things wouldn’t be where they are today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s pulling a lot of crap here, but I think it’s really important to try to, like, disentangle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to some degree. Try to talk about these things separately. And Apple, unfortunately, won’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see them separately. Because Apple is really doing a very good job of painting this as one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco extreme or the other. Either give us all the money, or you have all the malware, and nothing in between.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the reality is, it’s not that way. The reality is, all this stuff about App Store, to give
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the example of earlier, they’re saying, oh, the App Store can give you easy refunds. Do you know why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the App Store gives you easy refunds? Because credit card companies give you easy refunds. And if you issue a chargeback
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with your credit card company, they’re gonna take the money back from Apple. And that sucks for Apple, then Apple has to pay certain fees
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and chargeback fees, and it raises their risk profile and everything. They don’t want that. So the reason why Apple gives you refunds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easily is the reason why anybody online who takes credit card payments gives you refunds easily, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fear of chargebacks from their credit card companies. And the credit card companies are the ones who provide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco protection from things like fraudulent charges. Additionally, the App Store is filled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with fraudulent charges. And App Store payments are not the only way to spend money on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your phone. So like none of this makes any, like Apple’s trying to frame this in the way that makes them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look best, because that’s, you know, that’s what lawyering does. But A, they don’t provide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the protection you think they do. The credit card companies provide most of that. B, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make tons of purchases on your iPhone in apps like Safari or in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps like Uber or Lyft or apps that sell services that the app store does not take a commission on.
⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon.com, Amazon has an app. Now you don’t have to go through Safari to do it. You can just get the Amazon app and you can buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money. Yeah, I spend money on the Amazon app all the time. And you know what? The Amazon app is not available. It doesn’t support
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my app store payment method and related features, like subscription management and refund requests.
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess you won’t be able to get refunds then.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. And the Amazon app is not having Apple secure my purchases. It’s not keeping my, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, there’s this whole thing, it’s just a huge smoke screen. Apple is taking what they can.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you know what? When I saw this document, I really was laughing my butt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off. This document is a version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Apple that I really, you know, Steve Jobs could have written this. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we, I don’t like to pull out the, you know, if Steve were still alive thing very often because it’s, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s usually in poor taste and usually wrong, but this attitude of like, you know what, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna try to regulate us? We’re gonna make, we’re gonna give you the biggest middle finger,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re gonna shove it right where you know you wanna shove it. Like, this is like.
⏹️ ▶️ John You didn’t even get to the worst part of it because we didn’t get to the, for the people who aren’t already familiar with this document this
⏹️ ▶️ John document and we said, though, they’re going to charge you money. The number that they chose was a 27% commission
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco as opposed to a 30% one. So Apple wants 27%.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then you’re free to use whatever payment provider you want. And obviously your payment provider will also probably want
⏹️ ▶️ John a percentage. And they said, we’re allowing 3% for payment processing, which seems like it’s low. So
⏹️ ▶️ John if you were, if you wanted to use a third party payment with it as an effort to save money. You won’t because
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple wants almost as much money as they wanted before, but Apple’s not gonna process your payment. So you still have to pay
⏹️ ▶️ John a payment processor to do the actual payment after Apple takes its 27%. That’s why it’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John biggest F you, because everybody, seems like everybody knows, but no one ever says, the
⏹️ ▶️ John reason we want to use other payment methods is so we don’t have to give you 30%. And Apple says, okay, fine, you can give us 27. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it’s incredible. Because if you look at the regulations that are coming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down so far, and the Epic case, and what the judge said in the Epic case,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no one is saying Apple can’t collect a commission. So Apple is seemingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complying, for the most part, with the regulations so far.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, not with this Dutch one, because the Dutch regulations said other things. Dutch regulations
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t specifically say how much Apple could or couldn’t charge, but they said you have to allow developers to do A, B, and C. And
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple was like, no, we’d rather have developers just have to pick one of A or B or
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco C. Like, there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bunch of things. Yeah, there are different parts of the Dutch regulation that Apple’s not complying with. But the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco commission itself has not been attacked by anybody yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and seemingly the parts that Apple isn’t complying with with this Dutch dating app thing, it’s like, but why? Why
⏹️ ▶️ John are they not complying with those parts? I mean, it’s almost like there’s just crosstalk and Apple thought this would satisfy it. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is doing this as an FU, especially the text or whatever. But I don’t understand
⏹️ ▶️ John the timelines here. It seems to me that Apple could have made this plan and then this is the plan that the Dutch regulators rejected
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s why Apple continues to be fined. Like I don’t think, if there was a plan
⏹️ ▶️ John that we didn’t get to see before that wasn’t this, then maybe this is a second attempt
⏹️ ▶️ John at it, but this is non-compliant in ways that I think should be obvious to anyone
⏹️ ▶️ John who saw the Dutch thing. So like, why would Apple bother coming up with a technically
⏹️ ▶️ John non-compliant solution that they had to know is gonna be non-compliant and
⏹️ ▶️ John also fill it with all this, you know, FU texts and everything. The upshot
⏹️ ▶️ John of this is Apple continues to get fined. This doesn’t satisfy the regulations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and look what’s gonna happen. They’re gonna get more regulated because there have been these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco couple of relatively light hands trying to be applied to them and Apple’s basically bitten them off. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of course, they’re inviting more laws and regulations upon themselves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are gonna go further like possibly things like side loading in app stores. And that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. That’s not a good outcome. Not for Apple, not for anybody. We don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. And yet, that’s what Apple is forcing to happen by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their insane greed around the App Store. Like, the App Store money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is such a corrupting influence on the company. It’s making them bend over backwards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to defend indefensible positions. They say horrible things in the press. They have a horrible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reputation that impacts the other parts of their business. Like it’s this is not smart
⏹️ ▶️ Marco planning. This is not good strategy. And honestly, they need new leadership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already. This is not how this company should be handling this. And if they can’t see that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they need to bring people in who can.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes. This is one of those episodes where Marco calls for someone to be fired. Mark it on your
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco bingo sheet. Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we need better leadership. This is not appropriate. This is terrible strategy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is not good and they’re going to have more regulation forced upon them. That’s going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a worse outcome for everyone including them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, they’re not compliant. They continue to get a fine. The fines go up to a maximum of 50
⏹️ ▶️ John million euros or something. And then there’s the possibility of this expanding to different kinds of apps. They’re going to the EU
⏹️ ▶️ John and the same scenario that Marco outlined is like this. This could snowball and get worse. There is the
⏹️ ▶️ John possibility that Apple could do something to smooth it over and make things better. who knows what will happen but
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah this that’s why the the sort of the dickishness of this of this thing is so baffling
⏹️ ▶️ John because like why bother being petty for something that you know isn’t going to satisfy
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing anyway like this this uh description of a system is has no uh point
⏹️ ▶️ John in the real world it is not a thing that’s going to be implemented it doesn’t solve any problem that apple was presented
⏹️ ▶️ John with and so apple’s not going to do it because why would they do a thing that that they don’t want to do that
⏹️ ▶️ John won’t solve the problem of them being fine. So this saga continues. I’m sure it will
⏹️ ▶️ John continue for a while now, but this is a this is
⏹️ ▶️ John a sad chapter in the saga as as the ACM, the Dutch Association of whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John that is applying these rules says says the ACM is disappointed
⏹️ ▶️ John at Apple’s behavior and actions. They’re not mad. They’re just disappointed like a sad parent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m just I mean honestly I’m do I’m coping with this just by laughing at it like it’s just it’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over-the-top ridiculous that I just have to laugh at it like I at this point I’m I’m so like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m out of anger I have no more anger left it’s just funny now and and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s sad to watch it really is sad
⏹️ ▶️ John the only way it could be funnier is if they asked for like a 97% Commission
⏹️ ▶️ John like cuz cuz there is especially if these and I’m not sure why regulators haven’t caught on to this
⏹️ ▶️ John yet. It’s like, look, if you don’t include anything about like the fee being charged, Apple’s free to
⏹️ ▶️ John charge whatever it wants. That’s part of the thing that shows why we need regulation. It’s like, okay, well, in a
⏹️ ▶️ John functioning economy, a functioning market economy, Apple wouldn’t be free to charge whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John it wants, because if it charged too much developers will say, well, I’ll just go elsewhere. But it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John that no matter how hard Apple turns the screws, their their market position is, is so dominant
⏹️ ▶️ John with respect to money being made in the mobile space, even though Android exists and is technically bigger,
⏹️ ▶️ John more money is made at iOS devices, that Apple, it’s like, how much could Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John charge before people would actually before would actually have an effect like when someone in the market is so dominant
⏹️ ▶️ John that they can do things that hurt the other people. And those people don’t flee to
⏹️ ▶️ John a competitor that shows they might have too much power. And so that’s, you know, like, in these regulations,
⏹️ ▶️ John if one of the concerns is, hey, these companies want to be able to use third party payment providers, so they don’t have to
⏹️ ▶️ John give 30% to Apple, you need to write that into the regulation. Otherwise, Apple will be like, all right, final, we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John just, you know, we’ll keep charging the same amount we always charge, whatever you didn’t say we didn’t have to. And so if that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the goal of regulation, these regulations are failing to accomplish that goal, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Obviously, the epic thing didn’t even touch it at all. I’m not sure what the Dutch one says about,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, percentages, but it’s clear that whatever it said, it’s not enough
⏹️ ▶️ John to accomplish that goal. If your goal is people should be able to process payments by paying Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John while paying Apple less. That’s not part of this regulation at all. So again, I’m baffled is why
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple didn’t comply and just continue to get their 30% because it was just about
⏹️ ▶️ John the 30%. Why wouldn’t Apple play nice and say, Oh, fine, we’ll comply with all of your regulations in a nice,
⏹️ ▶️ John nice way and continue to get exactly the same amount of money? It’s really that’s why it looks
⏹️ ▶️ John so petulant. It’s like it’s not even like we’re taking the money away from Apple. You can still have the money
⏹️ ▶️ John due to the stupid way this regulation is written, but you still won’t comply with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you know, and so there was some really good coverage about this on this week’s upgrade number 393
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and about two thirds into the Apple’s 27 percent chapter, Jason said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a few really, really interesting things that kind of crystallized something in my head. So Jason
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said, you know, he’s talking, you know, from the perspective of like, you know, an average
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple employee. Since Apple built the platform, Apple deserves a portion of the revenue of the apps that were generated.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so then Jason continues, of course, the truth is that Apple benefits so much from the sale of devices
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that run those apps that if the apps didn’t exist, you know, the products wouldn’t be as popular, you know, and he points out,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think, look at like, you know, late 90s Apple and Mac OS, where things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were not great, unless you were really enthusiastic, like John Syracuse, but things were not great in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey software for the most part. And there wasn’t a lot of software or at least comparatively anyway, there wasn’t a lot of software
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the Mac. And, and I think what does crystallize in my mind is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it appears as though Apple feels like it, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has a parasitic relationship with developers. The developers just suckle at Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and suck all the good stuff out of Apple. And because of that, god darn
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, Apple does deserve 30%. Because all these parasites sucking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the side of us, all they do is take, take, take, take, take, and they never give anything back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Where the reality, if you have two brain cells to scrape together, the reality is it’s a completely symbiotic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey relationship. That without Apple, Marco wouldn’t have written Overcast, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey arguably wouldn’t be as popular, or wouldn’t have made as much money, or what have you. But similarly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey without people like Marco writing apps like Overcast, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe me soon, because I’m getting close, but nevertheless, without people like Marco writing apps like Overcast,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nobody would be buying an iPhone. How many tens of dozens of people bought Windows phones?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Dozens, I tell you. And so, this is what I find so gross,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Apple to think it wants a cut.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think what you were saying earlier, Marco, is exactly where I come down, that there’s a threshold and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe it’s like pornography. You don’t really know it. You can’t, or you can’t describe it. You just know it when you see it, but there’s a threshold
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wherein suddenly this doesn’t feel appropriate anymore. And 30% early on,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was still aggressive, but I think it was mostly appropriate. But at this point we are reaching
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I would call, and I’m probably using the term wrong, but I would call like a common carrier point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where this is, like Like you had said earlier, Marco, this is a utility. And I just find it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really gross that Apple seems to think that because of work they did 15 years ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever it’s been, they still deserve 30% of everything that happens.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like, they still deserve 30% even though, Marco, how much do you spend? This is a rhetorical
⏹️ ▶️ Casey question, but how much do you spend on advertising for overcast just to make sure that overcast appears in search results?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a bad example because a few months ago I dropped it to zero because I was so tired of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have spent over the last few years enough money on search ads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have bought a small house somewhere and I felt bad about that. Given the direction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the app store was going, I didn’t feel like I wanted to support it in that way anymore and so I totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stopped. I stopped all search ads. Honestly, looking like now that I have a few months of sales data
⏹️ ▶️ Marco without them, it seems like the people who I was getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from search ads were not very valuable. And so I’m actually saving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a ton of money and it seems like the business is fine without them. And honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s more of an emotional thing. I just didn’t want to keep paying into that anymore because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you and I are both coming up with just stellar examples in this segment. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the point I’m driving at is that what you just said, it’s a gross system. It really is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And if Apple had really spotless documentation for everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey OK, maybe they’d earn their 30%. If they gave us extremely reliable dev tools that worked every time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and web services that worked every time, hello, Reason iCloud problems, OK, maybe they would earn their 30%. But like—
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see, even that, I feel like we’re conflating it again. Like we’re buying into their framing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the argument by saying that, but Apple makes the Mac and there’s developer tools, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the same tools, build stuff for the Mac, and the Mac has APIs, and they don’t take 30% of all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software that runs on the Mac because that’s not how that market grew up, right? But they still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have very clear incentives to make those things for the Mac, to make the tools,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make the APIs, to run the platform, because they sell Macs and they profit off of Macs and nobody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would buy the Mac if it didn’t have apps. The phone is the same way. They don’t need the App Store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco itself to be a huge profit center. The App Store is what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes people buy iPhones in part and in a big part. You know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not the only thing that makes people buy iPhones, but like the apps that people buy are a huge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason why. And more importantly, if the App Store was not there or was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less healthy or didn’t have as much good stuff in it and had even just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one more scam. It’s so full of crap, like even the app store,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m sorry, the app store is full of scams and garbage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s one of the most galling parts about this. Apple is painting this picture like they’re protecting everyone from scams.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The app store is filled with scams. And it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no one’s watching. It seems like scams climb the top charts and make tons of money.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And as long as Apple is making 30% of that scam money, they don’t give a crap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until bad press happens. Then someone goes and looks. Mm-hmm.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you think about the App Store, it’s kind of an ideal environment for scams. Like any kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of sort of criminal enterprise where you’re trying to deceive people and get money, that is,
⏹️ ▶️ John or anything where it’s like sort of a rigged type of game, that is the most appealing environment
⏹️ ▶️ John for, in a case where you’re gonna get someone, someone’s gonna take a cut, right? Because you’re like, look, it’s all just
⏹️ ▶️ John profit. Like for us, we make the scam app, we triply the loan to paying, we will gladly pay 30%
⏹️ ▶️ John for the privilege of being able to spam our scam apps to get them in front of tons of eyeballs. If you
⏹️ ▶️ John are a criminal enterprise, that you’ll gladly pay that protection money. That is,
⏹️ ▶️ John those are the customers that are the most happy to work
⏹️ ▶️ John within the App Store system. There’s like, yeah, 30%, I’d rather keep all of it, but this is a scam anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it’s all, it’s all, it’s all criminal enterprise. And it’s boy, they make it so easy to just make,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, make a new Apple ID, make a new scam app, send it in the store, get a bunch of customers, burn it down. And we just do that over and
⏹️ ▶️ John over again. It’s a big machine. We turn the crank and we get the money in the same way that organized crime is happy to pay protection
⏹️ ▶️ John money to the people, the big bosses up the chain. It’s like, yeah, but we’re all making money here, right? That’s why we’re all in
⏹️ ▶️ John on this. Like the, I pay protection money because that’s, you know, that’s just the cost of doing business. But I love
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that I can do all these crimes. Right. right? So they are probably the complain the least
⏹️ ▶️ John about the App Store rules, because as far as they’re concerned, it’s just a system that they can work with, I can work
⏹️ ▶️ John with the system, this I can use the system to spray a bunch of scam apps, whereas the very best
⏹️ ▶️ John developers, the ones that make the best apps that want the best for their customers, they like
⏹️ ▶️ John the rules the least because the App Store rules impair them from being really good developers, again, giving
⏹️ ▶️ John better customer service. If someone contacts them, knowing who their customer is being
⏹️ ▶️ John able to help them specifically being able to issue them a refund directly instead of sending them to Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Stuff that good developers want to do the App Store rules like they punish the best developers,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they essentially reward or the cost of doing business for the worst developers.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so like, it’s no surprise that the App Store is kind of filled with scams, because it is they
⏹️ ▶️ John thrive in that environment. And they don’t mind they don’t mind all like, the is just like, well, if something’s bad,
⏹️ ▶️ John or you you get rejected, burn that Apple ID, make a new one, make a new scam app. Like, oh, I got banned. And I’m sure
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple spends lots of time banning thousands and thousands of apps, but it’s just like, they’re outnumbered by the
⏹️ ▶️ John bad scams because they’ve made an ecosystem where scams can thrive.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, in summary, I think Raxel Roff in the chat has hit the nail on the head. Apple should be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey required to distribute to developers 30% of iPhone hardware sales to account for the value of the third-party apps provided
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I mean, that gets back to, like
⏹️ ▶️ John I was looking at this blog post I wrote, at the date of this boy,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it’s 2020. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would settle for 27%. I wrote this post in 2020.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was about whatever the the app store issue of the day was, but I tried to write
⏹️ ▶️ John it in like as clear and generic terms like had and reading over it again. It still applies today.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like on this show, very often we talk about, you know, what Apple Apple is greedy and what
⏹️ ▶️ John they deserve and what they feel like they’re taking and also these emotional type of words about
⏹️ ▶️ John this tug of war between these two parties who are fighting over this pool of money and how much of it should
⏹️ ▶️ John I get and how much of it should you get. But like in the end, it is just it is a
⏹️ ▶️ John it is a market situation where in healthy markets there
⏹️ ▶️ John there is a relationship between the parties involved where neither one of them can really screw over the other
⏹️ ▶️ John one because they’ll just the other one will just go elsewhere, right? So if Walmart decides to
⏹️ ▶️ John quintuple their prices overnight, people will shop elsewhere as big as Walmart is. And it’s really big.
⏹️ ▶️ John If suddenly they said, ha, now it’s quintuple prices. The market is competitive
⏹️ ▶️ John enough that people say, well, I’m not going to Walmart anymore because they just quintupled their prices.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m going to go someplace cheaper, right? You need to have a healthy enough market where when one party
⏹️ ▶️ John does something that the other one other party really doesn’t like that there is some sort of competitive give and take.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you might say, Okay, well, if Apple does things that developers don’t like, they should leave the platform. That’s how it should work
⏹️ ▶️ John if the system is healthy. But I feel like now we’re in a situation where developers and Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t agree on how this relationship should be. But it’s not yet bad enough to make the
⏹️ ▶️ John developers go elsewhere. But is there other countervailing forces, one of which being where else would I go
⏹️ ▶️ John to the other platform that has the same rules as Apple? That’s not much of a choice. What if Walmart
⏹️ ▶️ John can trouble this prices? You said, Well, I’m not shopping at Walmart anymore, I’m going to go to some mother store, and every other store you went to
⏹️ ▶️ John also can double its prices. Then you as a consumer or a developer,
⏹️ ▶️ John in this case, you would feel like why would I go to Google Play their stores, their rules aren’t that much different than Apple’s.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they’re the other only other game in town for if I want to make a native app on a mobile platform,
⏹️ ▶️ John that makes it feel like a market that is not functioning correctly. And what I wrote in this post is
⏹️ ▶️ John like, if, if Apple wants to make this relationship work, and it can, it
⏹️ ▶️ John just needs to come to an arrangement where everyone feels like things are okay. As Casey pointed out, there wasn’t this
⏹️ ▶️ John acrimony on day one of the app store because everyone was getting rich and it was awesome, right? And those rules
⏹️ ▶️ John were not that much better than they are now. In many ways, they were worse, and there were fewer options, right? It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not the specifics of the rule, because we always get feedback. It’s like, well, what percentage is right? If you think they don’t deserve 30%? What about 15?
⏹️ ▶️ John What about two, you think they should have nothing? It’s not the specifics that matter. It’s do
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, and we keep bringing up game consoles, game consoles have way worse rules than Apple app store. So why isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John every game developer revolting against game consoles? Because the game consoles have managed
⏹️ ▶️ John to relationships such that there’s been enough give and take and there’s enough competition in the game console
⏹️ ▶️ John market, even though there’s not a lot of competition, but there’s Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, and they have different rules and
⏹️ ▶️ John different platforms. Even that little extra bit of competition versus Android and Apple is enough to make
⏹️ ▶️ John the game console market function correctly such that the relationship between developers
⏹️ ▶️ John and console makers, though often acrimonious, is not to the dire state
⏹️ ▶️ John that the relationship between Apple and its developers currently is. And it’s up to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John to manage that relationship and it’s up to us collectively to potentially
⏹️ ▶️ John add laws and regulations to make this market function more efficiently such that the two parties
⏹️ ▶️ John can find a way to come to an agreement. Because right now, it seems like Apple has too much power and developers have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, it just, it makes me feel gross. And it’s complicated by all of a sudden today,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as we record, Microsoft announces, quote, a principled approach to app stores, quote.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I’m gonna read kind of a lot, and I apologize. I’m gonna try to summarize as best I can, but there’s a lot here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But Microsoft is kind of seeming, at least on the surface anyway, to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be the good guys. So now, even as someone who was kind of team Microsoft-ish
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the 90s, even I’m kind of looking around like, wait a second, Apple’s the jerks and Microsoft’s the good guys
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now? I keep saying guys, I’m sorry. Apple are the jerks and Microsoft are the good people now?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I don’t know. I think I can
⏹️ ▶️ John summarize this without having to read all the things.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Okay, please do.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’ll put a link in the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes and people can check it out. But you could replace all the text in this entire
⏹️ ▶️ John document with, we’re a distant third. Right? Yeah. So
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco don’t mean that
⏹️ ▶️ John a cynical and bad way to do it. I think Microsoft really does believe all these things. But when you are
⏹️ ▶️ John not the market leader, when you are not the strong second place, but when you are a very distant
⏹️ ▶️ John third, you need something to make you different and to get to get into the game.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so Microsoft has laid out a bunch of rules that are much nicer to developers. This is an example
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, hey, I guess the market is working right? Because look, now there’s a competitor saying, is Apple being mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John you? Is Android Google alphabet being mean to you mobile developer?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or in this case, they’re mostly addressing game developers. Come to the Microsoft side, we’ll be nicer. Why?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because we’re hungry. We want your business. We are a competitor. And right now everyone’s over there. And we’re trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to get people to pay attention to us. So we are going to be nicer to you. We’re going to let you side
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re gonna let you use your own payment methods. We’re not gonna take any percentage of them. You just do whatever you want with that.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll have a great developer program. We’ll give you all the tools you need. We’ll let you deploy to all sorts of different
⏹️ ▶️ John platforms. And if you look at the rules there, like if Apple came out with a set of rules, it would be like the scene
⏹️ ▶️ John of the return, the end of Return of the Jedi, the good version, not the SC, where everyone is celebrating, right? It would be like, yay,
⏹️ ▶️ John look. But Microsoft’s saying, here we are. We’ll do all this great stuff for you.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the reason the cynical take comes in, It’s like, well, of course they’re gonna say that because they’re in third place. And it’s like, well, what if they really
⏹️ ▶️ John mean this? You eventually get down to a
⏹️ ▶️ John lower part of the document and to Microsoft’s credit, they call this out, but still, the lower part of the document
⏹️ ▶️ John that says, some may ask why today’s principles do not apply immediately to the current Xbox
⏹️ ▶️ John console. That’s just the best part. As you, listener, may know, Xbox,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though Xbox is doing way better than Microsoft’s other efforts, right? So Xbox is
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the big three in consoles. And I mean, maybe they’re in third place in this console generation,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they’re not distant third. Xbox does okay, right? And at various times, Xbox has done
⏹️ ▶️ John really well in the console market. So Apple, or Apple, Microsoft is stronger in the console market.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was not asking myself why these rules did not immediately apply to Xbox, because they don’t have to. Because Xbox
⏹️ ▶️ John already has a relationship that works because Xbox has more power in the console space
⏹️ ▶️ John than all these other app stores that Microsoft’s trying to get off the ground, right? And so
⏹️ ▶️ John the spin that Microsoft puts on this, it says, well, you know, emerging
⏹️ ▶️ John legislation is not being, I’m reading from the document, emerging legislation is not being written for specialized computing devices
⏹️ ▶️ John like game consoles for good reasons. Oh, please, Microsoft, tell me what these good reasons are. And Microsoft says,
⏹️ ▶️ John game consoles specifically are sold to gamers at a loss to establish a robust and viable
⏹️ ▶️ John ecosystem for game developers. The costs are recovered later through the revenue earned through the dedicated console store.
⏹️ ▶️ John Okay, well, first of all, Nintendo may not have gotten your memo about selling a hardware at a loss, because at various
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco history, Nintendo
⏹️ ▶️ John has absolutely not done that, because they make really cheap hardware, and eventually, or sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John from day one, sell it at a profit. But second, the idea that you’re saying, well, you shouldn’t regulate
⏹️ ▶️ John us, because we sell our hardware at a loss, and this is the only way we can make money, is like, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a law of nature. You could make money by selling the hardware. In fact, Nintendo sometimes does doing that. Like, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John saying, well, this is the way the market is, course, you have to let us do whatever we want with our console game source, which is kind of BS. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft goes on to say, Nevertheless, we recognize that we need to adapt our business model even for the store
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Xbox console. Beginning today, we will move forward applying principles one through seven. And if you look at the document,
⏹️ ▶️ John principles one through seven are very touchy feely and are easy to comply with. To the store on the Xbox console, we’re committed
⏹️ ▶️ John to closing the gap on the remaining principles over time. Okay, well, good luck with that. Because I feel like if Xbox becomes dominant,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not going to be motivated to comply with with the other more difficult things about complete openness and third party
⏹️ ▶️ John payment methods and multiple app stores and all the other stuff, right? Now, I’m not faulting
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft for this. It’s a smart move, it’s a good move, and they are essentially being the good guys, as Casey pointed out, by
⏹️ ▶️ John having these much more open rules. It’s not hard.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey But it is a carve out.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, in the areas where we are weakest, we are willing to cede power, but in the areas where
⏹️ ▶️ John we have even a little strength, like on the Xbox, yeah, we’re not gonna do all those nice things there, because come on,
⏹️ ▶️ John things need to be exactly as they are today forever because that’s how our console business, and
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t get me wrong, Microsoft is selling Xbox consoles at a loss, and so is Sony, especially in the beginning, for that matter,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then making it up in games, but that’s not the only way money can be made from games.
⏹️ ▶️ John People don’t sell PCs at a loss and then make it up in game sales. PCs are sold for a profit, a small profit,
⏹️ ▶️ John but PCs are sold for a profit, and games are also sold for a profit. There are lots of different ways the market
⏹️ ▶️ John can work, and it doesn’t really matter when we deal. Anyway, this is interesting because it is a contrast
⏹️ ▶️ John to Apple and Google, the Android stuff. It’s also interesting in
⏹️ ▶️ John how little of a splash this is going to make. I know this is mostly about game stores and gaming on PCs, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it is also about gaming on mobile devices and everything. But honestly, I don’t think Google
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple feel like they’re threatened by Microsoft’s better policies because Microsoft, despite their
⏹️ ▶️ John efforts, sorry Windows Phone, sorry, I can’t name all the other ones. The Kin, Windows
⏹️ ▶️ John CE, come on, what else do we got? Microsoft has tried to have a mobile platform. Zune.
⏹️ ▶️ John Many, yeah, Zune, but that wasn’t really the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, Pocket PC was really just Windows CE. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ve tried to have a mobile platform, and it didn’t work out that well for them. So they’re not really a player in
⏹️ ▶️ John that space, which puts them at the mercy of Google and Apple when it comes to do things like, oh, we
⏹️ ▶️ John want to put the Xbox streaming app on the App Store, and Apple says no, and they have to use a web browser to do it, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John not ideal for them. This shows how little power they have in that market. So
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I don’t, again, I don’t want to fault Microsoft for saying we’re going to do, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to be better because that’s how a competitive market should work. But I don’t think the market is competitive enough
⏹️ ▶️ John for this proposal to really change things in a dramatic way. And I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John slightly disappointed that they did not have the sort of courage of their convictions and apply these
⏹️ ▶️ John rules to Xbox as well. I think they may actually apply to Xbox because honestly, like I said,
⏹️ ▶️ John the console market doesn’t have to work the way it has. And a lot of things that Microsoft has said, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John in that interview with Phil Spencer on Sotekri, has indicated that Microsoft has a vision of
⏹️ ▶️ John the future of making money in gaming that is different than it is now. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ John in that future, there’s no reason these rules couldn’t apply to Xbox. But today, they’re not quite ready for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, it’s just, it’s, like I said, I’m having a little bit of an internal crisis.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I love, like Marco said, I love so much Apple stuff, and I love so much about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the choices that Apple makes, but golly, this is, the choices around
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the App Store in China, but the choices around the App Store are really, really gross, and it’s really,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s yucking my yum quite a lot, and it’s really making me sad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, in many ways, I can feel as mixed about it as I often do about my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco country, or my state, or my town.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love my country where I live, and it would be a pretty big ordeal to ever leave
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, but it doesn’t mean I agree with everything that the government does.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can have mixed feelings about something. You can like some of what something does and not all of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So often people try to simplify it into like, oh, these people are all complaining, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is responsible for your success or whatever, and no, it’s more complicated than that. And we can overall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a pretty big fan and pretty good customer of this company, while also pushing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for them to be better in the areas that they’re currently, frankly, full of crap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and doing real damage. And because the thing is, the reason why I care about so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much about this is, as I was saying earlier, I think they’re totally blundering this to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the point where it would not surprise me if two to five years from now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have iPhones that are all out there filled with Facebook BS spyware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mostly because they got side loading or they got alternative app stores. And now everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has to install the Facebook side loaded app to get Instagram or whatever the new thing is or WhatsApp,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever Facebook makes people install. People will install whatever Facebook tells them to install. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I worry about that outcome. I worry like right now, this platform is in a pretty good place in a number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of areas. And if we get side loading or alternative app stores,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s gonna be a number of things about it that I’m afraid are going to get worse. That’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco significantly impact my life, both as a developer on this platform and as an iPhone user.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I really don’t want that to happen. And I really think that where we’re headed right now shows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clearly that Apple does not see anything that they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to change. They see nothing wrong with what they are doing. And more importantly, setting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aside any judgment of whether they deserve anything or what they think is moral or whatever else,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Setting aside all that, Apple thinks they can get away with this. They clearly think they can get away
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with this on the current strategy they’re on, like kind of indefinitely into the future. And that’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big risk. That’s a huge risk. And I think it’s going to blow up in their face by forcing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the platform to get worse in these other ways. That’s why I’m so, you know, riled up about this, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want this platform to get worse. I love this platform. I live on this platform. I make my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco living on this platform. This is one of the most amazing platforms ever come out of computing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s at risk right now. It is being put at risk by Apple’s own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mishandling of the situation, by Apple’s own bad leadership in regards to this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco area of just not giving an inch to the point where they’re going to be forced to give
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way more than that, and that’s going to be bad for everyone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now you’re still against side loading, but my opinion has never been as extreme as yours, and with each
⏹️ ▶️ John passing day is getting more and more in favor of side loading, because because honestly I see it as the best competitive
⏹️ ▶️ John pressure to put on Apple. I agree with you about all the bad things, but I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John I would much prefer Apple to change the rules of the App Store because there is a competitor,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is side loading, rather than them changing them in response to regulation. Because regulation is
⏹️ ▶️ John written by people who don’t understand the problem and it can never be forward-looking enough and it’s so slow moving
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s so terrible. Like regulation at this level of detail of like, oh, this piece of software has
⏹️ ▶️ John to allow thing to happen never works out well. But if there was side loading,
⏹️ ▶️ John in addition to all the bad things, developers who didn’t like apples rules would say, Well, I’m just going to go
⏹️ ▶️ John to side loading. And I think they would very quickly build up an ecosystem of good developers on side loading.
⏹️ ▶️ John Obviously, there would be an ecosystem of bad developers, but there already is that in the app store, there is a system of good developers on side loading,
⏹️ ▶️ John which would apply competitive pressure to Apple, people wouldn’t have to leave the platform entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John abandoning their entire skill set and their entire company and their entire product that they worked all these years on. Instead, they could say,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re still going to have the product, but we’re going to sell through this alternate app store or from our
⏹️ ▶️ John website or whatever, you know, and that would apply pressure on Apple’s app stores because Apple wants
⏹️ ▶️ John those people back in the app store paying a cut to them. They would have to write rules where
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone, the developers agreed, it is worth it for me to be in the app store for these benefits. I’m willing to pay
⏹️ ▶️ John this amount. That whole thing, that whole ratio is screwed up right now. And the problem
⏹️ ▶️ John is those developers have nowhere to go, nowhere where they can go easily because people like, Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John we have competition, they just go to Android. What if you have an entire company filled with developers who are iOS developers,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you have a product line and thousands of customers who are paying you every month on a subscription basis
⏹️ ▶️ John to use your really cool app that you spent years and years writing, and it’s like, Oh, just go to another platform. That is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco form of competition. That’s not an option. I mean, because the reality is like, there’s so many markets of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps, like for instance, podcast players, where like the iPhone has like three quarters of the market,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s not, it isn’t like 50-50 here. We’re not talking about small differences. We’re talking about very,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very big differences. There is no real alternative.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s not like it’s not an impossibility. It’s all about the ratio. How painful would it be
⏹️ ▶️ John for me to move versus how painful is the are the current rules? And Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John has not made the commission 99% because that would be so painful that everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John have to leave and everyone go out of business. But they’re also, and they decrease it to 15,
⏹️ ▶️ John but only if you follow these rules and only if you make less than this amount of money. And like the current balance, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John again, I just I’ll put this link in the show. It’s called the art of the possible. You just read it. It sounds kind of generic or whatever, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John it describes the problem accurately, which is that Apple wants it to be like this and developers
⏹️ ▶️ John want it to be like that. And Apple thinks it can get to its goal state with its current set of rules
⏹️ ▶️ John and just by holding a hard line. And it’s and they’re getting farther from their goal, not closer. Are they getting farther from
⏹️ ▶️ John their role because developers are getting more pissed Or are they getting farther from their goal because they’re making worse rules?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s mostly the developers are getting more pissed because Apple is giving in various ways, but they still
⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t found the meeting point. But the problem is developers have no recourse other than to grumble because it is
⏹️ ▶️ John so painful for them to go elsewhere. Not impossible. It’s not impossible for them to go elsewhere, but it is a
⏹️ ▶️ John balance. How much pain is this versus how much pain is that? developers who really just not be in pain.
Sponsor: Lutron Caséta
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you don’t need to have, you know, speak to a voice cylinder to be able to control the lights or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco run a special app. You can do those things. And that’s great. You know, it’s great to have those options. You can set
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#askatp: Wi-Fi for headphones?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s do at least a little bit of Ask ATP, turn these frowns upside down. We can start with Steven J. Stutz,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who says, I really enjoyed your discussion on AirPods potentially using ultra-wideband chips. This is, I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey took a month or two ago. Something I don’t quite understand is why doesn’t anyone think of using Wi-Fi for audio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey playback? The HomePods users as well as Sonos speakers. Can’t Apple use Wi-Fi in their AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Max? I’m curious to hear what your thoughts are. I think to me, this is pretty clear. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s power. It’s just Wi-Fi is way too expensive from a power perspective. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s why we need to figure out, or not we, but that’s why Apple’s working on all these like super low
⏹️ ▶️ Casey power, but yet high bandwidth tools is because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wi-Fi is extremely expensive from a power perspective. I mean, unless I’m missing something, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, there’s probably more to it than that. I don’t know the specific technical details, but sort of the way the protocols
⏹️ ▶️ John work with Wi-Fi and how like the sort of the use case of Wi-Fi is like full
⏹️ ▶️ John fledged devices that are on the network together. And there are things about that in terms of how do you join
⏹️ ▶️ John the network? How do you communicate across the network? What is the latency? What kind of protocols are used
⏹️ ▶️ John to send packets to and fro that are made for what we use it for? Computers
⏹️ ▶️ John on a network that spans your whole house or like a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John long distance that gets very high speeds, but it’s not optimized for super
⏹️ ▶️ John low latency, for something in your pocket to get to something
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s in your ear with very low power. It’s just not made for that. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not sure what the rules are for wifi in terms of like what do you need to do to be sort of a citizen on that
⏹️ ▶️ John network? Like how many identifiers are available? How quickly can you get on and off the network and
⏹️ ▶️ John latency, in addition to what you said, which is the power stuff. And so that’s the thing about these protocols. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just invisible magic going through the air as far as you’re concerned, but every one of them is made for a specific use case.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when we, you know, when we talk about the ultra wide band stuff, the reason we’re excited is because this is even
⏹️ ▶️ John better for this specific use case. We were talking about like communicating with your AirPods, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John That use case is very different than the requirements for my laptop is on
⏹️ ▶️ John the TCP IP network that’s made in my house so that it can be on the internet through like an ad or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. Very different use cases. So it’s just a technology that never targeted
⏹️ ▶️ John this scenario. And so it’s not as good at it in basically every way that you could possibly measure.
⏹️ ▶️ John Including by the way, like how much does it cost to get a wifi chip and, you know, like all the way down to
⏹️ ▶️ John how small can you make it on top of all the power stuff? Like if you just look at the whole list of requirements, it’s not like
⏹️ ▶️ John wifi is terrible, just a poor fit for this case.
#askatp: Color calibrators
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Chris Kerner writes, do any of you use a color calibration tool like the Spyder by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Datacolor on your third-party monitors? Now that I ask this, I guess this is mostly a question for Casey. If
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so, why or why not? Related, do you think Apple will bring the, quote, use your iPhone to calibrate your TV, quote, feature
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the Apple TV from the Apple TV to the Mac? No, I don’t do any sort of color calibration
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I don’t do the kind of work that I think necessitates it. Or I’m too dumb to know otherwise.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So no, this is not something I’ve ever bothered with. I’m going to guess that Marco, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably haven’t. And I’m going to guess that John, there’s a better than 50% chance you have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually used to use this kind of thing back forever ago before I used like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco IMAX and Apple monitors. Like I, cause I used to like before, before the retina
⏹️ ▶️ Marco age, I used exclusively like third-party monitors. I had, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a giant HP 30 inch. I had Dell 24 before that. And I actually did use one of these like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spider color calibrators for a few years in the middle there, I could never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get my monitor colors and everything to look exactly right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I don’t know if that’s just because I was using, you know, maybe not super great monitors for things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like color accuracy. You know, I wasn’t doing color correction work. I was just a programmer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with fancy camera sometimes, but otherwise, like, you know, I wasn’t doing like super critical work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just thought it was cool. And Tiff was doing like critical photo work at that time. And so we got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it like for her to use it. But once you have the hardware, you can calibrate as many maxes as you want normally. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know if it’s changed since then, but that’s how it worked back then. So yeah, I used it and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was fine. Like I would occasionally look back at the other profiles and kind of switch between them every so often and try to figure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out like, is this better? Do I like this better? Or, you know, some of it might be a little bit too dark or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else. And yeah, I never really quite nailed it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the problem with the calibration tools, especially with third party monitors, is often the monitors don’t give you enough control
⏹️ ▶️ John over the monitor’s output to align it with correct calibration. This is a problem with TVs
⏹️ ▶️ John too. Like, you usually have to unlock the super duper expert surface settings to even get
⏹️ ▶️ John close, but some TVs still don’t give quite enough adjustments to get it exactly perfect, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ John then obviously there’s variations in hardware and whatever technology your screen is using.
⏹️ ▶️ John For calibration, I used to do the silly on-screen calibration with color sync back in the day
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Max just to see that you aren’t super far off. And that for people like Casey and other people who think, oh, I don’t care about colors.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you have a third-party monitor that’s really far off, you should do something about it because if you’re making an app and you’re trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to decide, is this amount of contrast between the label and the background sufficient for this to be a usable thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John you may be fooled by a different calibration on your monitor. This used to happen back in the day when Macs and PCs had different
⏹️ ▶️ John gamma settings, and things that looked awesome on the Mac would look weird on the PC and vice versa. Right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John even if you’re not doing fancy color work, you just want to be in the ballpark, at least, or at the very least, you need
⏹️ ▶️ John to be able to set up your monitor so you know what your customers are seeing. Are your customers on a PC? Are they on a Mac? Are
⏹️ ▶️ John they on a phone? Because you know, the contrast between elements in your application can make a difference in
⏹️ ▶️ John usability. And if you especially if you’re trying to walk that line and be fancy and kind of like push up to the edge of contrast,
⏹️ ▶️ John which you probably shouldn’t do anyway, but if you are, then you have to have an accurate enough monitor to know that
⏹️ ▶️ John your judgment call and when it’s the right color looking at your screen applies to everybody else. And
⏹️ ▶️ John as for the Apple TV feature where you hold up your phone, come into the Mac or whatever, I would guess
⏹️ ▶️ John that the Apple answer to that question would be like, well, you don’t need to do that with Apple monitors because
⏹️ ▶️ John we pre-calibrate them at the factory and we’re really good at it, but your TVs, we have no idea what it’s like out there, so we gave you this
⏹️ ▶️ John feature. But third-party monitors, whether Apple wants to know it or not, are a thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially since Apple makes so few monitors, especially no affordable ones, that I could see that
⏹️ ▶️ John feature coming. Hey, if you’ve got a third-party monitor, use this little thing, but it’s the same problem. It’s like, okay, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s the same problem with TVs, where we complained about the system. You hold the phone up and it does a bunch of measurements or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but then the only thing that that app has the power to do is change
⏹️ ▶️ John what the Apple TV outputs. It doesn’t have a way to change the settings on your TV. and
⏹️ ▶️ John if the settings on your TV are super wackadoo, you’re never going to get close
⏹️ ▶️ John enough by changing the output coming over the HDMI cable to compensate for that. That’s why when people calibrate televisions,
⏹️ ▶️ John they don’t do it by changing the output of the devices. They actually change the settings on the TV itself. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the app has no way of doing that. It has no idea what your settings are. Ditto for third-party monitors. The app
⏹️ ▶️ John has, any app that they made like this has no way to change the whatever buttons and menu systems that are on your third-party
⏹️ ▶️ John monitor for adjusting your thing. And I think the settings on monitors tend to be far less extensive
⏹️ ▶️ John than especially the super duper expert settings on TVs. We have this type of weird code in the remote and you get these scary menus where
⏹️ ▶️ John you can screw stuff up. That’s what a real television calibrator will do to actually get your television
⏹️ ▶️ John accurate. So if Apple does introduce this, just like on the TV,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s probably better than nothing if you’re using a display that is super far off. But the
⏹️ ▶️ John real solution is for Apple to make a much more affordable Apple monitor that is good enough out of the box.
#askatp: Keyboard imprints
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Priyansh Singh writes, my partner is using the new M1 MacBook Air for the last few months, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it has signs of this problem that I thought Apple would have fixed by now. The keyboard leaves an imprint on the screen. I had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the same issue with my Air back in 2017. Do you have suggestions on how to save the screen? Putting it in a case for the laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or a membrane over the keyboard feels icky. I’ve noticed this from time to time, but it’s never been bad enough to bother me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is basically the story of my life. See also fan noise and so many other things that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I I know deeply upsets the two of you. I know people who have put some sort of like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, thin piece of foam in between the keyboard and the screen anytime they close their laptop,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which seemed a bit excessive to me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just make sure you always put it the right way. Fair. Because if you keep flipping it over, all you’re doing is
⏹️ ▶️ John transferring the finger grease to the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey by way of an intermediary.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, right. But for me, I just don’t stress about it, to be honest.
⏹️ ▶️ John People always talk about this as if it’s like a design flaw and the computer, and you could argue that it is,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the engineering trade-offs Apple would have to make to fully eliminate this problem are not the ones
⏹️ ▶️ John that people would want. And like, obviously, if you just leave it on your desk and you close it and it’s getting finger-easy on the
⏹️ ▶️ John screen, that’s probably some kind of design flaw. But most of the time when people get this, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John because they put it in a backpack or something where it gets squished. And it’s very difficult to make something
⏹️ ▶️ John as thin and as wide, you know, large, you know, length and width
⏹️ ▶️ John as the top of a laptop that will resist flexing so much that it won’t flex
⏹️ ▶️ John even the millimeter it takes to hit the key caps, right? So the trade-offs Apple will have to make is that you have to make it way stronger
⏹️ ▶️ John or they’d have to make the gap bigger and or the lid thicker or all of
⏹️ ▶️ John those things. And I don’t think you want a thicker lid that’s heavier and I don’t think you want a bigger
⏹️ ▶️ John gap. And you may say, oh, well, let’s just make it two millimeters. If you put your laptop in a book
⏹️ ▶️ John bag full of books, a surprising amount of force can be applied to the middle of that screen and
⏹️ ▶️ John to try to get it so there’s no amount of force in a book bag that can compress the middle of the screen to hit the keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ John you need a very big gap or a very big screen or both. And I don’t think people want that. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s possible Apple is not making the right trade-offs. So they need a little bit more space, a little bit more strength.
⏹️ ▶️ John I will be on board with that. But if you want to avoid this, rather than putting a weird piece of
⏹️ ▶️ John paper in between your thing, try not to put your laptop in a situation where it gets squished.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if it’s never squished, it’s on a desk and no one is ever putting pressure on it and still getting fingerprints,
⏹️ ▶️ John then yeah, Apple has made a design problem there or maybe your hinge
⏹️ ▶️ John is screwed up in some way or whatever and Apple should definitely fix that. But most of the cases that I’ve seen, especially in
⏹️ ▶️ John the modern age where that happens, it’s due to squishing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and a lot of times if you just flip it around in the bag, if you make the screen point the other direction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from when you’ve been doing it, sometimes that can improve things. Obviously, as John said, if you can reduce
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the amount or frequency at which it’s getting squished, that’s better. But yeah, this is this is entirely from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco squishing. And there’s not much you can do about it if you’re going to keep having it in squished situations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Almost always, backpacks are the are the challenge here. And you know how you solve it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is up to you. I would also suggest that ever since the screens have gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Marco glass coverings instead of the old like a matte coverings, it’s way easier to clean these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco marks off as soon as you see them clean them, because if they sit there for a long time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and build up over years, it will be much harder to clean them off without damaging the screen finish and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything. But if you just clean them regularly as you notice them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s pretty easy to stay ahead of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John The other solution is you just pretend you have a touchscreen Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Wow. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John if and when touchscreen laptop Macs ever come, you think you have finger grease on your screen now, just wait.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our sponsors this week, Stack Overflow Podcast, Lutron Caseta, and Memberful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And thanks to our members who support us directly, you can join atp.fm slash join.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ John show notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental, they didn’t mean
⏹️ ▶️ John to Accidental, tech podcasts so long.
Neutral
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You, Marco, have asked me a couple of deeply alarming questions last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week, including sending me a photograph of your FJ Cruiser
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on a flatbed or being
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco loaded onto a flatbed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What’s going on there, bud?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. So where we left last week was-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Our own traffic hero.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So where we had left was, the previous couple of times I had gone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to run some errands on the mainland I had tried to start up the FJ and it would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco start but it would take some doing it would not start easily it would you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slowly and eventually start but it and and I’d said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also like it didn’t I wasn’t sure if it was the battery because I would like started up eventually run you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go to a store drive for 15 minutes to get there and then I come out of the store and it would have the exact same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trouble starting up afterwards so I was like I don’t know if the battery or the alternator or the starter or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who knows what. Now I don’t know really anything about cars. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I talk about cars sometimes. I don’t know how to fix cars. I don’t know how to diagnose problems.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know what’s what and like what certain symptoms indicate. But you know so I described this in the show and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone was basically like yeah you should get a new battery. So I thought alright. First of all John was saying and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone said like just go to any car store they’ll or any car parts store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that sells batteries they’ll install it for you. And I can do it in five minutes myself. Thanks, John. I know. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay, go to any store that sells them and they’ll install it. Well, not so on Long Island.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I even even like the chain stores that say officially on the website,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like we’ll install it for you. They also all say like, call the store to check.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you call any of the stores around here, most of them are like, Oh, yeah, we don’t actually do that. Or we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sorry, we don’t have enough staff to do that right now. Like clear, I
⏹️ ▶️ John was telling you to install it yourself the listeners were all saying they’ll install it for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, but I did eventually find there was a there’s an advanced auto parts somewhat nearby
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that both had batteries and would install them for me and I called
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the store and confirmed yes we will actually install it for you. Yes, even on a Saturday. I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay. So I went over on Saturday because a Saturday is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only time that I have a window that I can take the ferry over and have a two and a half hour
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stay there. Normally, it’s one and a half hours and you can’t get anything done then. So on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the weekdays, but on Saturday, I can get two and a half hours. So thanks, thanks, winter fairy schedule.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I made this plan like, alright, I’m gonna go and I’m gonna I pre ordered the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery online. So it’d be waiting for me in the store guaranteed stock. I’m gonna I’ll get there. I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do whatever it takes to start up the FJ drive over the advanced auto parts and get the battery installed by them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’ll be all set. And I had so I I had a couple other errands to run, but I figured like worst case,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can just switch over to, you know, the Model S and do the errands and that, you know, but once I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get the FJ figured out, if I have to. Okay, on the way there, I’m bringing with me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my new super cap battery charger or jumpstart thing that I had just gotten, the AutoWit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco super cap from Amazon. And I already had in the car, the lithium
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery that I’d mentioned, which was the, I’ll say it now, That was the NoCo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one that gets really, really high reviews on Amazon. Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I get there and I cannot get it to start. This is the first,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like every other time I’ve tried to start it, I have eventually gotten it to start after maybe 5 to 10 seconds I’d be able
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get it to start. And this was just not having it. So I thought, well, I’m prepared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for this outcome. Pop the hood, look around, oh there’s the battery, pull the little caps off so it gets the terminals.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I connect the jumpstart battery, which I had pre-charged on the boat right over, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I knew it was fully charged. I connect it, it activates,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it beeps, it counts down, and then it beeps when you’re supposed to try to start the car. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I try to start the car, and it turns, and then it doesn’t start.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’m like, oh, that’s not good. So I go back to the battery and tell it to go again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and oh sorry this is the super cap. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it doesn’t start.
⏹️ ▶️ John What noise did it actually make? Because I’m sure it didn’t make that noise. Did you get a ticking noise? Did you hear the starter
⏹️ ▶️ John motor running or not?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not yet. So eventually, after a number of tries,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I started hearing a rapid clicking noise. Now, again listeners,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know anything about cars. I know you’re all screaming now what the problem is. But I didn’t know the problem, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know anything about cars. I remember that somebody had said like, oh, if you hear a clicking noise, it could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be something else, like the alternator to start or something. And I thought, oh no. So here I am,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the super cap won’t start. I then tried the Noco GB40, whatever it is. I tried the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lithium battery, which claimed to have enough charge to do it. It had almost a full charge.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tried that. Also didn’t have enough power to actually get it going. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I eventually just heard that rapid clicking again. So I thought, I’m in over my head.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now keep in mind the situation I’m in. I have a very short
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time window. I have like at this point I have two hours before I have to get back on the boat and go back. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also have other errands I have to run that’s gonna take most of that time and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know what to do. And so I’m like you know what this you know coming over here is it takes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up like the whole day to go over there so it’s like it’s not I don’t have a lot of options here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I’m so I get in in my other car and I drive over and I start doing, I like had to go to a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Target and charge the car and also stuff like that. And so I’m doing those errands. And as I’m sitting in the parking lot, I start calling,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I called the Toyota place that the previous owner always got serviced at. And I’m like, Hey, can you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do you have like a tow service or anything? And-
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you not have AAA? I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t have AAA, no.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hmm, all right. Well, they would have come to you with a big super duper chargey thingy and probably got you going, but.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the problem is at this point, because I had two different jumpstart batteries of two different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco types, both of which being very well-reviewed, both not able to start the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car. I thought at that point, it’s probably not the battery and I’m in over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my head now. And so this needs somebody who has, you know, this is gonna be a bigger problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John AAA will do whatever is needed to get you going. I’m just saying like you would have, rather than calling
⏹️ ▶️ John the Toyota dealership, but you know, if you had a AAA membership, they would have come over for probably
⏹️ ▶️ John substantially less money and they can tackle whatever problem you have. if you know it involves taking your car and putting it on a flatbed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, fun fact, the battery that I had pre-ordered at Advanced Auto Parts was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about $200. And for Toyota to install a brand new battery, including
⏹️ ▶️ Marco labor, was $220. That’s actually not bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so I’m like-
⏹️ ▶️ John It happens when you buy Toyotas and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey not, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Teslas or Lexus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so I called them and I asked, and I learned that, I’m like, all right, you know what? I’m just gonna send the car to you. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they didn’t have a Toyota, they’ve recommended a local company. And so I had to pay an extra like 200-ish dollars,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get it towed there.
⏹️ ▶️ John had the Model S, drive the Model S to the auto parts store, get the car battery,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drive it back. But I didn’t know that it was the battery at this point. Right, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I can’t think of- No, I can get behind- I have two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Jumpstart batteries that both failed to
⏹️ ▶️ John work. Yeah, no, I know what you’re saying, but you also highlighted that you’re an out-of-experience Jumpstarterer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but these things, this is very simple. You know, you don’t have to figure out, Oh, do I connect to the wrong terminals? Do I connect one to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car body? No, you just connect it right to the right terminals and you power them on. Is that actually what the jump
⏹️ ▶️ John starter batteries told you to do? Yes. Did you not read the instructions?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, they tell you to connect it to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John the same colors. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco connect light colors to light
⏹️ ▶️ John Okay, I’m just, sometimes they would tell you to, like when you jump start and you attach it to the car frame to avoid sparks
⏹️ ▶️ John so you don’t blow yourself up, whatever. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so anyway, so at this point I figure it’s gotta be something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else, not just the battery because I was equipped to deal with the battery with these Jumpstart things. It’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s clearly not just that. So anyway, I get it towed over. I’m arranging this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the parking lot of Target as I’m trying to do other errands. And then I eventually go back, meet the tow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco truck at the car, get it loaded up, get it loaded to Toyota, and then yeah, they called me on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Monday morning. They’re like, yeah, you know what? We looked through everything. It was just the battery. The alternator’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine, the starter’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey You should have kept this the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Interestingly, we got this tweet from Michael Panzer Who referred
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me to this YouTube video reviewing? different jumpstart batteries and testing them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out and actually seeing how much voltage they deliver and everything else and included in this test is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an earlier version of the super cap from auto wit that I have and the no code gb40
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing that I have so it was both both of them were included in this test and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Supercap delivered okay performance, but for a pretty short time. It,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, it was it burns out pretty fast The noco battery that I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you know was supposed to be even more powerful Was like one of the worst performers in this test
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, so these so this thing that has very strong reviews on Amazon It turns
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out it seems like it just might be really bad And so I have learned a few things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so first of all keep in mind the cost of these two jump starters was about 200 total. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tow truck was about 200 bucks. All this was to actually just replace a battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that had I had more car knowledge and… Had you
⏹️ ▶️ John just listened to me and ordered a battery from Amazon instead of buying all this weird stuff and carrying the battery
⏹️ ▶️ John from Amazon with you, the car and shoved it in there. Yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I didn’t know if that would be the problem and like because all the other signs pointed to it not being the problem necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so So anyway, Amazon reviews, I know there’s a lot of like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco review spam and fake reviews and everything, but I, yeah, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing, I can’t recommend the NoCo product. The Super Cap maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for different needs, it might be better. But instead I ordered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the video, the one that performed a lot better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that. So now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I spent another $100 on-
⏹️ ▶️ John You got a brand new battery now. If there’s nothing else wrong with your car, you’re not gonna need this thing. This is also true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, in theory, again, for a car that is driven regularly, the way regular people drive their car,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe I wouldn’t need it for another
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John five years. If
⏹️ ▶️ John you start the engine once a month and drive it around, you’re probably OK with a brand new battery.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but that’s a lot of probabilities. And I will gladly spend $100, not six or whatever, but I’ll gladly spend $100 for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a jumpstart battery that allegedly works so that if I ever need something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this again, I’ll be better prepared for
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so I’m sure you thought of this, and probably I don’t know the details of how this
⏹️ ▶️ John works, but it seems somewhat absurd to me that you’re buying a series of jumpstart
⏹️ ▶️ John batteries because you’re worried that when you get over the ferry that your car in the parking lot won’t be able to start because
⏹️ ▶️ John its battery is bad, and it’s parked next to your other car that is a gigantic battery,
⏹️ ▶️ John like a huge battery, like way bigger than those jumpstart packs, and you own it and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John there. Is that not possible in Teslas? You can’t jumpstart another car with a huge battery?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You probably first of all, I don’t think you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, that just I mean, you could I could charge up one of these other ones, but that would take like, you know, a half hour. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it would take a while. It just
⏹️ ▶️ John seemed it just seems so terrible because like again, when regular people have their batteries die
⏹️ ▶️ John on them, very often you have jumper cables in your trunk and you’re looking for a friendly person in the parking lot who can help
⏹️ ▶️ John jumpstart your car. That’s a thing. Yeah. And they and they jumpstart the car with another car
⏹️ ▶️ John that just has a gasoline engine plus a 12 volt battery. But you’ve got a huge battery inside
⏹️ ▶️ John this car. and you’re like, oh, I need a new tiny little 12-volt battery to get my car started.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because it can’t deliver the right kind of power in the right way to an external terminal.
⏹️ ▶️ John know. I just say, what you need is a dongle.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John But it just seems very absurd. You’re buying a series of way smaller lithium-ion batteries, and you have
⏹️ ▶️ John the world’s supply of lithium-ion batteries
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sitting next to you. I know. Well, but the thing is, I’m not always going to have that giant battery sitting next to it. Ideally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all, if I ever get the driving permit, this car is going to be here. And it’s going to be not starting next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you can get a battery tender, because it was plugging into your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is probably a better idea. But right now, I don’t have that option. But I don’t want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to rely on having two cars forever. Like, I don’t know where I’m going to be in a couple of years if I still have the FJ,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I still have the Tesla. I might have only one of those cars. I might have neither of those cars. I might still have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both of them. I don’t know. So yeah. So I don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is all regular people who have better car knowledge could have probably avoided all of this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But because of both my combination of bad knowledge, bad luck with these jumpstart
⏹️ ▶️ Marco batteries, and a weird situation that makes it very difficult to actually get my car worked on. Don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John refusal to listen to me. Add
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that to the list. That’s yeah, I’ll add it to the list. Thanks, John.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, so anyway, that’s what happened. I got the car back. It’s fine. I did, it is kind of funny. they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give you, it’s one of those giant Toyota service centers and where they have a car wash on premises.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they give you this code, you can go get a free car wash. I’m like, oh sure, what the heck? And this is the first time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve been through a car wash with the FJ, and it was an automatic one, just the big rollers and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the front windshield on it is at such a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vertical angle, like it’s so straight up and down, so un-aerodynamic,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the little blow dryer at the end of the automatic car wash,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco couldn’t even, it didn’t even blow the windshield dry. You’re like, it blows all the water off, but that thing assumes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that your car is gonna have an aerodynamic shape, so the water can all blow off the whole thing all at once.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And with this, it comes out, it’s still dripping wet, because it’s so un-aerodynamic.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s like a Jeep. You could end up with a Jeep.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s also got a windshield wiper, so I think you’d be okay. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I have three of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So TWJ writes in the chat, quote, according to the Tesla’s owner’s manual, you cannot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use the Tesla engine to jumpstart, engine, to jumpstart a regular vehicle due to the low voltage batteries
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in electric vehicles. If you were to use your Tesla to do the job, then you risk damaging your engine. I’m not sure why it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey says engine there, but.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That’s weird.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you’re to believe this, then you cannot use that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Are they talking about trying to use the 12 volt battery from Tesla?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I think they would, I assume they would have to, because I can’t imagine there’s any mechanism in the car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to unload the power from the main battery pack like at 12 volts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and probably hundreds of amps.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, some cars have this. Like I forget which brand it is, but one of them has a thing where you can power all
⏹️ ▶️ John sorts of stuff. Like they have
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco power lines, and you can power
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey your house with them. The lightning does that. The
⏹️ ▶️ John lightning that does that. Like it’s just a matter of having the right electronics in there to get the
⏹️ ▶️ John voltage and the amps to the point where it can do a 12 volt battery, right? That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a thing that car makers could do. The problem is not lack of electricity. The problem is we just didn’t think that was a feature
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s worth adding to the Tesla, so they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco add it. Yeah, and it’s not, it wouldn’t be a trivial thing to add. Like, you know, to have,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John to be able to deliver that. It’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of trivial. Well, but to be able to like deliver like exactly 12 volts at a huge amount of amps for a short
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time to like to charge someone else’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John battery or get their car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing, like it is kind of specialized.
⏹️ ▶️ John the grand scale of the electronic stuff that’s going on inside a Tesla, this additional amount of hardware, it would be
⏹️ ▶️ John additional hardware space and expense, but it’s nothing compared to what they have to do to allow you to slam all those volts
⏹️ ▶️ John and turn it into torque at the wheels.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh yeah, it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different. Although I guess now I know that you can actually do that for a hundred bucks. If you pick the
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I was speaking of picking the right one. So this link will be in the show notes to the video review of this. The guy
⏹️ ▶️ John who does this video review, I’m familiar with this person because he comes up in all my channels because I’ve watched videos
⏹️ ▶️ John like this all the time. The channel is called Project Farm. The guy, if you watch one of these videos and then
⏹️ ▶️ John you watch another one, you realize, oh, they’re all like this and this guy is like this the whole time. And I like that
⏹️ ▶️ John he reviews lots of different things and you can get these big sort of, I have 50 of these things and let me show you them
⏹️ ▶️ John in action. But very often he takes these tools,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s mostly tools, takes these tools and uses them in ways
⏹️ ▶️ John that are not a reflection of how they would be used in real life. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco if I get a pair
⏹️ ▶️ John of wire cutters, I probably want them to cut wire, but he’s like, I tried to cut in half this hardened steel nail
⏹️ ▶️ John and here’s how they held up. It’s like, I’m never going to do that. You found the toughest wire
⏹️ ▶️ John cutters, but if all I ever cut is wire, I don’t care how long it takes to get
⏹️ ▶️ John through an inch thick nail. And all I tried to get through an inch thick nail and it broke these pliers. I’m never gonna do
⏹️ ▶️ John that with hand pliers. I don’t have the strength to do that. They use like a hydraulic press to make it do it. I don’t know, these
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t hold up that well, right? And then the second thing is, in addition to testing crap that doesn’t matter,
⏹️ ▶️ John he won’t test things that do matter. Like how comfortable are they? subjective things like does this
⏹️ ▶️ John cut into my hand when I use it? One of the ones I was watching, he was testing scissors and he’s like, here’s how they perform.
⏹️ ▶️ John He said an authentic comment, boy, my hand really hurt after I use these. That should
⏹️ ▶️ John lose the competition. It’s like, but it came in second place because it was sharp. I did the sharpness test after
⏹️ ▶️ John I cut through 500 sheets of, you know, aluminum foil with it and then I did the sharpness. A, I’m not going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be cutting aluminum foil and B, I don’t care how sharp it is if it hurts my hand when I use it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s very kind of like he gets it in his head of you know, how it’s always
⏹️ ▶️ John testing for toughness, kind of like a machismo approach. Like, what does it take to break this tool? How
⏹️ ▶️ John much of a ridiculous thick item can it cut through? And for the batteries is like, can it start a
⏹️ ▶️ John diesel electric locomotive? Like, I don’t care about that. It’s just, can it start a car? I’m not saying all his tests are bad. Like very
⏹️ ▶️ John often he is testing very relevant things, but if you watch enough of them, you realize a lot of the time he’s testing things that you don’t care about
⏹️ ▶️ John and that he’s not testing things that you should care about.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this is my problem with almost every reviewer of almost everything ever. Like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why I actually usually look at things like Amazon reviews, even though I know there’s so much garbage there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I don’t want to get just one person’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco opinion on something because a lot of times what they are looking for is not necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I’m looking for in the qualifications. Like you mentioned, the scissors that hurt your hand.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would love to know that actually, because I bought a lot of products that were rated by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some review site that might be about cutting wires as being like, hey, this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something that’s really, this is the best one, this is the single best
⏹️ ▶️ John one. It holds its edge after cutting through 8,000 reams of paper. It
⏹️ ▶️ John holds its edge better than the other ones. It’s like, I’m never gonna cut through that much paper, but I totally care that it hurts
⏹️ ▶️ John after the first two sheets, and that should disqualify it. Don’t put it in second place because it was the second sharpest
⏹️ ▶️ John after 1,000 reams of paper. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco care. Right, exactly. Like that’s the kind of like, that’s why like, when I read
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reviews, I want to read multiple reviews or something like that. And that’s why, that’s where Amazon has some value. Even though I know a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of stuff on there is fake, I can at least have quick access to lots of reviews of this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I can kind of assess like, first of all, which of these even seem real? And then the ones that seem real, what kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of stuff are they complaining about? And what is this person looking for? And did this give that to them?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And is that the kind of stuff I’m looking for? Or is this person, like, you know, you look at the negative reviews and a lot of the negative reviews
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will say things in that are actually positives to you. So like, and you can kind of be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure those are probably real reviews if they’re negative. And so like, there’s actually a lot of input there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you can process it, even if you assume most of it is garbage, you can at least process it and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get some kind of aggregate value out of bits and pieces you pick up. Whereas if you just go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to like one reviewer, if you don’t know what their priorities are, if you don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether your priorities line up with theirs, you can make a lot of really bad choices or bad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco conclusions of how much you might like something based on how much they did.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the good thing about the Project Farm thing is that it’s clear, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly objective tests. Here’s a measuring device, here’s a challenge. I do the challenge, I use the
⏹️ ▶️ John measuring device, which is like how much force did it take, or I have a sharpness testing thing. It’s not subjective, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John all objective measures, right? But the trap is, these videos are made to get views or whatever and
⏹️ ▶️ John are tuned to the interest of this person, but it’s like, oh, they’re all objective tests. You can just take that information and leave it. The trap is watching these
⏹️ ▶️ John videos and not realizing that you are falling into the trap
⏹️ ▶️ John of saying these are the values that matter because there’s like 17 tests in this video
⏹️ ▶️ John and those are the tests that matter, right? Because it’s very easy to fall into that. It’s very easy not to think about
⏹️ ▶️ John how your priorities might differ or to not see the thing that he didn’t test. And you say, well, they’re objective tests. It’s just data.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can take it or leave it. But because the video is choosing which things to test,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not the fault of the video that this happens, but it is natural for people to say, well, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John so many different chests here. Clearly this probably covers all of the value of the thing. And then you get it and you realize, oh, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John too small for my hand. And that was nowhere in the criteria and you didn’t even think to look for it, right? And because it
⏹️ ▶️ John couldn’t be in the criteria, how can they know how big your hand is, right? So that’s why when you’re looking to buy a product, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John looking at reviews or whatever, don’t sort of like accept the list of things
⏹️ ▶️ John that are being tested as the world of possibilities for things that could be tested about the thing.