506: Our Only SEO Is You
27 Oct 2022Switchglass 2.0, Casey’s new iPad Pro, and our first experiences with macOS Ventura and iCloud Shared Photo Library.
Episode Description:
THE ATP STORE IS BACK, BABY! #🐔👒 The store will be open until Sunday, 13 November! Don’t delay! Our thanks to the teams at Studio Neat, and, as always, Cotton Bureau. Don’t forget, members get 15% off!
- Pre-show: Marco’s long local nightmare is now over.
- Follow-up:
- Costco has some Sonos stuff on sale starting 20 November
- Arc (on Sonos’ site)
- One SL (on Sonos’ site)
- Fire prevention on airplanes (via Andrew Chase)
- Apple mouse shape history
- Costco has some Sonos stuff on sale starting 20 November
- John’s Ventura app updates
- iPad Pro Impressions
- Ventura / iOS 16.1 / iPadOS 16.1 Impressions
- Post-show: Joanna Stern’s Interview of Federighi & Joswiak
Sponsored by:
- Kolide: Make your team into your biggest allies for endpoint security. Solve problems, right within Slack.
- Memberful: Monetize your passion with membership. Start your free trial today.
- Backblaze: Making backing up and accessing your data astonishingly easy.
Become a member for ad-free episodes and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed! And 15% off in the store!
Chapters
- AirPods Pro volume tutorial
- ATP Store 🖼️
- Follow-up: Sonos sale
- Follow-up: Fire safety on planes
- Apple mouse-shape history 🖼️
- Sponsor: Backblaze
- Switchglass 2.0
- Sponsor: Memberful
- Casey’s new iPad Pro
- Sponsor: Kolide
- macOS Ventura
- Stage Manager
- Shared Photo Libraries
- Ending theme
- Joanna Stern interviewed C-Fed, Joz
AirPods Pro volume tutorial
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve had my AirPods Pro 2 now for, I mean, how many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weeks have they been shipping to people? Like three or four weeks?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I learned yesterday how to do the volume gesture. Have you done it? Don’t you
⏹️ ▶️ John just swipe up and down? What do you mean learn? The whole time, did you forget that the feature existed?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, so okay, here’s what happened. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I get them and I’m trying them out and I’m trying them out and I couldn’t get it, I couldn’t get the volume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gesture to work. And like one time I got it to work once and I just couldn’t repeat it. I’m like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are they broken? Am I broken? Like what’s going on here? But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had a lot of stuff going on and so I’m like, you know what, at some point I’ll be in an Apple store and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll bring them in, I’ll deal with it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know why you’re having trouble with this. I’m sure there’s clear markings on the outside of the AirPods showing exactly where
⏹️ ▶️ John to move your finger, right? Or are they just white?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s probably just like dark white markings on the white case.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, no, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John actually two tiny arrows and some words telling you start swiping here and end swiping there.
⏹️ ▶️ John But they’re a very, very, very light gray. And they’re 0.025 point text.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so anyway, so I’ve been using them, and I like them overall. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a couple of bugs with adaptive transparency, but overall I like them a lot. The noise cancellation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is amazingly better. Like, and it was already pretty good before, but it’s really good now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway, I’ve been enjoying those, but I just couldn’t get the stupid volume gesture to work. So I just thought like, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re defective or maybe I’m, you know, I don’t know what. And then the other day, for some reason,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I decided to do it a little bit differently. I don’t even know why I tried this. And then it started working. I’m like, oh my God.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All this time, like now, I’ve been doing it now for like two days and it’s perfect and flawless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I was just doing it wrong. So what I was doing was sliding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both my thumb and first finger up and down the stick almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the point where like you’d almost pull them out and I and which at first I’m like this doesn’t this isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very useful gesture. Why were you doing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that? I am not mature enough for this conversation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah I know it’s hard. Stay strong, stay strong.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But like I that That just seemed logical, like, oh, you swipe, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John don’t know. But
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t you see the videos showing, showing like the Apple marketing materials show people
⏹️ ▶️ John using this feature, and they never grabbed the little stick with their thumb and forefinger.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, that was a long time ago, and I haven’t re-watched it, you know, so, anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s what I was doing, and I kept like almost pulling them out, and I couldn’t get it to work. I’m like, this is just a stupid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feature, and it turns out what you’re supposed to do is, like, leave your thumb, like if you’re using your right hand,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco leave your thumb behind the stick to hold it in place and swipe up and down like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with your index finger on the other side. So like, only, like so one finger is holding it and only the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other finger moves. Oh my god, so much
⏹️ ▶️ John better! So which surface, to be clear, which surface are you talking about? Is it the surface that faces the way your eyeballs face? Is it the
⏹️ ▶️ John surface that faces the way your ear holes face? Which surface are you running your finger up and down?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am, the finger that is stationary is behind my ear and this finger that is moving is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the direction that my eyeballs face. It’s like hitting that surface.
⏹️ ▶️ John Okay. So if I was looking straight at you and if I was a product designer that thought it might be important for the customer
⏹️ ▶️ John to know where to move their finger, they might put a black line such that when I was staring at you head on, I would
⏹️ ▶️ John see two black lines coming down the sides of your AirPods and those black lines would be what you’d run your finger down.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think so. All right. So there you now, you know. So anyway, that’s how for anyone else out there, you know what?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Write in if you didn’t know either, if you’ve been doing it wrong too. I just want to know if I’m the only one. If you’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing it right, I don’t care. I don’t want to hear from you. It’s probably everybody. But if for like the two people out there who’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing it wrong and who I just like, you know, blew your mind with how to do it correctly, please let me know if there were any of you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out there. There probably aren’t.
ATP Store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey John, I hear something curious. It sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like a chicken, John. Beautiful impression. Thank you.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s that time of year again. The ATP store is back, the
⏹️ ▶️ John ATP holiday season store, whatever you want to call it. And we have some exciting new
⏹️ ▶️ John merchandise for you this year. As always, the URL is ATP.FM slash store.
⏹️ ▶️ John Run right there now and see what we’ve got. And the most exciting thing we have for you is a brand
⏹️ ▶️ John new product this year that started, let me see, I wrote this down somewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John In November of 2021, we were contacted by Dan at Studio
⏹️ ▶️ John Neat, maker of many fine products that you may have heard of, studio neat.com.
⏹️ ▶️ John And he said, Hey, I heard you talking about your chicken hat on the episode. This was a recent
⏹️ ▶️ John episode in 2021. I gave him an idea. What do you think about the idea of trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to replicate that chicken Studio Neat makes all sorts of products. So they have expertise in this area.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I said, all right, sure, we could try that. And it has more or less taken this
⏹️ ▶️ John long to get everything together. Obviously, COVID, supply chain, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John But we went through a process over the course of several months, or I guess more than a year now, of
⏹️ ▶️ John sourcing materials and comparing to my original one and only chicken
⏹️ ▶️ John hat to try to make a reproduction of my personal chicken hat. Now, there are many caveats to this, OK?
⏹️ ▶️ John Many things to consider. For people who don’t know the story, my chicken hat is a winter hat that I really like. And I was musing
⏹️ ▶️ John on a show, apparently in 2021, that I just have this one hat. And if I lose this hat, I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John buy another one like it. And I never see anything like it in the store anymore. And there are multiple things that make
⏹️ ▶️ John this hat unique. Not to rehash everything I said there, but it’s kind of a weird shape. Dan has a post about it at Studio Neat.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll put a link to his blog post as well. You’ll see a picture of me wearing the hat. He says you can’t find hats
⏹️ ▶️ John of this shape. can find hats of this shape but you can’t find hats that are both this shape and also
⏹️ ▶️ John this construction constructed in this way of this material right I just never see anything like it and
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m always buying hats trying to be replacements this house I can’t do it so now you essentially made one of
⏹️ ▶️ John my own now my hat that’s like this my chicken hat is over 20 years old I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John put an exact date on it but I did find photos showing it’s at least 20 years old all right it’s been through
⏹️ ▶️ John the wash many times I’m sure it has changed size over over the course of 20 years
⏹️ ▶️ John going through the wash. How could it not, right? But that’s where we’re at, right? So we made
⏹️ ▶️ John a chicken hat reproduction that exactly matches the size, the current size
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco chicken hat. That’s all I’ve got to go
⏹️ ▶️ John off of. I have no idea how big this hat was when I started making
⏹️ ▶️ John 20 years of being stretched out, basically. Or shrinking in the dryer. I don’t know. All
⏹️ ▶️ John right, second thing, that my chicken hat is one size fits all. It says it right on the
⏹️ ▶️ John tag inside the hat. So I don’t have a small hat, a medium hat, a large hat. this hat was sold in whatever year I bought
⏹️ ▶️ John it as one size fits all. So the hat we made is one size fits all.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is exactly the same size. Like you can lay it, because I went through several prototypes. You can lay this hat
⏹️ ▶️ John down on top of my hat. They are exactly the same size.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is that good? Is that bad? I don’t know. Now, another thing, we went through materials
⏹️ ▶️ John and the students folks sent me many, many stacks of like filthy type materials from the same company that makes,
⏹️ ▶️ John we figured that Polar Tech made the material for my hat, so we were talking to Polar Tech to get their list of materials.
⏹️ ▶️ John Nobody makes exactly the same materials this hat is made of, which isn’t surprising since it was made more than 20 years
⏹️ ▶️ John ago, right? But we got as close as we could. But as close as we could is different
⏹️ ▶️ John than this hat in a couple of specific ways. One, it is definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John thinner than my hat, which I think for people who are considering buying this is a bonus because
⏹️ ▶️ John my hat is extremely thick and extremely hot and most people would not want to wear it because on a day that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not negative 20 degrees, you get hot and sweaty in it. So this one is thinner, but I think
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s an advantage. And the second thing is, my hat, after 20 years of going through the dryer, feels a little tight
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco This reproduction
⏹️ ▶️ John hat, which is exactly the same size when you lay them on top of each other, does not feel as tight because
⏹️ ▶️ John the material is not as thick, so it gives more. So I’m hoping it will fit more people with big heads. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know about people with small heads, I don’t know how much of this one’s gonna shrink. What will this hat look like in 20 years? I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John the best we could with the material we have, which is we’ve got the one hat and we reproduced it
⏹️ ▶️ John as closely as possible. I wish I had taken some better photos of like my hat and this hat laying on top of each other. The
⏹️ ▶️ John seams line up, the construction is the same way, every dimension is identical, and it is as
⏹️ ▶️ John close to the same material as we could get. I spared the world the exact matching of
⏹️ ▶️ John the color because my hat is kind of a forest green. I don’t know why it’s that color. I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John I even picked this hat. My dad might I’d originally bought and I could have stolen it from I don’t know why is my hat green?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know we could have made this one green But we didn’t wait so we had mercy on people who might consider buying this
⏹️ ▶️ John as a joke or whatever It is black the ATP chicken hat is black That goes with more stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John and it also matches our logo if we got a little a little tag on the side that has our logo on it, so There
⏹️ ▶️ John you go We didn’t know how many of these things we would sell as a joke or whatever Does
⏹️ ▶️ John anyone want to wear a chicken hat does anyone wear winter hats at all who knows? But
⏹️ ▶️ John we had to guess at how many we might sell, and then we had to calculate how many we would have to sell to make up, these
⏹️ ▶️ John are the type we buy ahead of time, right? So we have to sell a certain number of these even just to break even, so please,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re even remotely inclined to buy this hat, please do so we don’t lose money on them. We have to find out that no one in the world
⏹️ ▶️ John wants chicken hats.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Otherwise John will have to buy hundreds and hundreds of chicken hats.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, otherwise, yeah, I’ve now made hundreds of backup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hats. Which itself might be a fun bit for the show.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s true. The other on the flip side of that if everybody wants to get this because it’s funny joke and you could say hey
⏹️ ▶️ John look at My funny chicken hat they could all sell out by tomorrow and then sorry because we’re not you know Probably we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have the ability to make more of these instantaneously if they do sell out and there seems to be more demand Maybe we’ll do it next year, but
⏹️ ▶️ John probably this is a one-time thing So if you want an ATP chicken hat, I think they’re good hats. I think the chicken shape
⏹️ ▶️ John is a valuable shape I think it’s distinctive and I think this is a comfortable hat and it’s nice and I think again
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that it is thinner than my really, really thick hat is an advantage, not a disadvantage, because almost everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John who has ever seen or tried on my hat says, I could never wear this. It would be too hot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s the chicken hat. That is the chicken hat. I am genuinely so glad and thankful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Dan and the studio team were able to, we’re willing to reach out and deal with you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who must be the world’s worst client. I say that with love, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I got many different samples, but it but it was clear which direction we were going. That’s the other thing, when you’re comparing, like I get little
⏹️ ▶️ John fabric squares, right? When you’re comparing them, I’m comparing them to a 20 year old hat that’s been through the wash a million times.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not gonna be the same with a brand new fabric sample. I don’t know what these fabric samples are gonna look like after 20 years in the wash.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you just got to do the best you can. But there was some clear winners towards the end. It was down to, you know, one or two options
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think we picked the right one. So there you go, that’s the chicken hat. We also have an M2 shirt.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like the M1 shirt, but it has one more number on the front. The chip on the back
⏹️ ▶️ John the M2. It is not the M1 chip on the back. It’s the same as we’ve always done. We’ve got the horrendously expensive one
⏹️ ▶️ John with the chip on the back and the rainbow colors in the front that takes like eight printing passes to make. And then we have the monochrome
⏹️ ▶️ John one that is less expensive. And speaking of costs, last time we had a sale, we said that our price
⏹️ ▶️ John was going, our cost to us was going up in all these things because of, you know, who knows, whatever. But
⏹️ ▶️ John we were keeping the prices the same, but that probably wouldn’t continue. Well, this is the part where it doesn’t continue because we
⏹️ ▶️ John held the prices down on the last sale. I hope you enjoyed them. Now the price of pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John much everything is increased because the cost to us is increased. And we haven’t passed on all the cost to us. We have passed
⏹️ ▶️ John on some of it though. So we apologize for the high prices, but if we had kept the prices the same, there are
⏹️ ▶️ John some products in our lineup that we would literally be losing money on every one we sold. So we actually had to
⏹️ ▶️ John increase the prices. We know it sucks. You know, what can I tell you? It is what it is. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John why, you know, that’s why we do things like the monochrome shirt, because the monochrome shirt is less expensive than the other one, because we have to do fewer printing passes.
⏹️ ▶️ John So consider that if you want to save money. And of course we have our regular ATP shirt that we always have. We have the
⏹️ ▶️ John ATP hoodie, which is still fantastic. It’s kind of like the chicken hat. I kind of dread the day that the ATP hoodie
⏹️ ▶️ John goes away because I think they’re great. My kids really love them. It’s a great hoodie. And
⏹️ ▶️ John of course we’ve got the pint glass that we’re still selling through, believe it or not. Still got some pint glasses left over.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t understand how. I love the pint
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like my only glass that I regularly use at home. It’s so good. My family loves them. We ordered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey four more on the last sale, I think. Yeah, I think I have a total of like six or eight now because I got like two the first time,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey realized that was nowhere near enough, and then ordered another like, you know, four or six or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep, and then finally, the most exciting thing, the ATP mug with the red lining is back. Last time
⏹️ ▶️ John we had to get it with the gray lining because we literally couldn’t get the one with the red lining. And I think the gray lining looks nice too. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I hope everybody who wants to have a more chill mug got the gray lining ones last time, but the red ones, the red
⏹️ ▶️ John ones are back, and only the red ones. And again, these are the type of, the mugs are the type of thing
⏹️ ▶️ John where we have to guess how many we’re gonna sell and we buy them all ahead of time. So fingers crossed on the mugs. We’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ John mugs, we’ve got pint glasses, hoodies, T-shirts, and of course the chicken hat. So
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re, oh, this sale runs until Sunday, November 13th we try to do
⏹️ ▶️ John the sales early as possible to have a hope of getting shipments out before the holidays.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hopefully it will all work out. No guarantees, obviously, but we’re gonna do our best there.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you are listening to the show and you would like someone to buy you one of these things as
⏹️ ▶️ John a holiday present, you have to send them the URL. Like you can’t be subtle about it. The sale
⏹️ ▶️ John only runs until November 13th. You have to send the link and say, hey, you have three
⏹️ ▶️ John weeks to buy me something from this store, here’s what I want. You can’t be subtle about it. Don’t just hope your significant
⏹️ ▶️ John other is going to hear you listening to the podcast and say, oh, that’s a great idea. I should get one of those things. Just
⏹️ ▶️ John give them the link, right? Because people wanna know what they wanna buy for you. and if you want some of those weird nerdy stuff, they’re not gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John guess, they’re not gonna find it on their own. We have no SEO. Our only
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you. ATP.FM slash store.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also, John, if you wanted to save a little money, how would you go about doing
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, that’s right. I almost forgot about that. Thank you, Casey. If you are an ATP member, as always, you get 15%
⏹️ ▶️ John off everything in the store. If you’re not an ATP member, you can become an ATP member
⏹️ ▶️ John and get that 15% off, and it’s pretty easy due to the high prices of everything in the stupid store, to make
⏹️ ▶️ John up the cost of membership for one month in the savings that you get. So as always, you can do the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing where you become a member for one month, you get your 15% off,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you buy a bunch of t-shirts, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John when the month is over, you cancel your membership. We make it very easy to do that. It’s like the good services
⏹️ ▶️ John that use the iCloud subscribe page. It’s really easy to sign up, watch a last episode, and unsubscribe, and sign up again, and watch something,
⏹️ ▶️ John and unsubscribe. You can do that with ATP membership. We don’t recommend it, but it can be done.
⏹️ ▶️ John really easy to do. We know that people do it. So there it is. Don’t like if you’re honestly, if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to buy literally anything in the store, just become a member, get the discount. Like it’s it’s almost not worth it to,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, anyway, at top of the page, it has links to do all that stuff. 15% off for all members. And if
⏹️ ▶️ John you are a member, go to your member page, grab your coupon code and put it in the promo code field
⏹️ ▶️ John during checkout at the Cotton Bureau site and you will get 15% off. Yep.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Please, I beg you. This is the time where I have to make the speech And without fail,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every year somebody reaches out, Oh, you were right. You were right. So here’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing, especially if you’re looking for a chicken hat, a mug or a glass, because those
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things are there, there are a limited amount of them, but even for the shirts, you don’t want to miss
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out for the hoodie, you don’t want to miss out on the hoodie, it’s a freaking delightful hoodie. So if you’re not in a position
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to order right now at ATP.fm slash store, think about the next time you can. Maybe it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at your desk at work. If you’re going back to work, maybe it’s your desk at home. Maybe it’s once you get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the place you’re driving right now or walking or what have you, or bicycling,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think, envision, put yourself in that place. And think to yourself,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I need to treat myself and go to atp.fm slash store when I get to that place. You don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey need to stop walking, particularly if you’re in Manhattan, don’t stop walking, just go where you’re going. You don’t need to stop in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the middle of the road. You don’t even need to pull over necessarily, but envision the place you’re going and go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to atp.fm slash store and buy yourself a chicken hat or a mug or a glass
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or one of the shirts or hoodies or what have you. Do that. Make everyone happy. But and also remember to go to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey atp.fm slash join and join if you haven’t already. And unlike what John says,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have mine and Marco’s full permission to forget to cancel your membership.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is totally okay. We are okay with that. Marco and I, maybe not John, but Marco and I are okay with you forgetting
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not about forgetting to cancel. It’s about once you have the membership and you start listening to the show without ads, or you enjoyed
⏹️ ▶️ John the bootleg or something like that, or you hear the member special content with our three ATP
⏹️ ▶️ John movie club things, you’re like, hey, membership is actually kind of good. That’s why you keep doing it, because it provides value to you, is when
⏹️ ▶️ John you go back to the regular feed and it’s not as good anymore. So yeah, stay a member for that reason, I hope.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we will remind you just a couple more times and that’ll be that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we do structure these sales so we have three episodes where we can remind you. That’s how we arrange the dates,
⏹️ ▶️ John just FYI. And speaking of like not missing out on things, there’s missing out on the sale, which is like, oh, I
⏹️ ▶️ John forgot about the sale and now it’s over because you’re like on November 15th, you’re like, oh no, I missed it, right? But I can tell you
⏹️ ▶️ John inventory wise, the thing we have the least number of is the pint glasses and we are not ordering any more
⏹️ ▶️ John of them. So if you really want a pint glass, get that ASAP. The second least number of things we have
⏹️ ▶️ John are mugs and chicken hats. So if you were interested in mug, chicken hat, or pint glasses, just
⏹️ ▶️ John order it now so you don’t miss out. I’m not sure that we’re gonna sell out of all these things, but better safe than sorry. And the other ones
⏹️ ▶️ John are print on demand. We see how many we buy and then we print that many of them. So the only thing you have to worry about for the shirts
⏹️ ▶️ John and the hoodie is buying before the sale ends on November 13th.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Please and thank you.
Follow-up: Sonos sale
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do some follow-up. A couple episodes ago, I believe it was, I was going and waxing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey poetic about how much I love my new Sonos setup. And I got a Costco flyer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the physical snail mail, I think it was yesterday or the day before, where I noticed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that a couple of the items that I purchased are actually going to be on sale at Costco right after our sale ends, coincidentally.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Sonos Arc that I have, kind of, and I’ll explain in a second, is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to be on sale for $700, normally retails for $900. There
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a catch there, we’ll come back to that in a sec. The One SL, which is a speaker that you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use either singularly or in a stereo pair, but what I did is, and this is what Sonos often recommends,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is I use them as my rear speakers. Those are going down from $400 to $300. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one catch, all of these, the Arc and the One SL, it’s actually an Arc SL and a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One SL. SL, I don’t know what it actually stands for, but what it means in Sonos speak is it does not have any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sort of like microphone or voice recognition, which in some ways is a feature, not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bug. But I will say that Sonos’ voice control is really,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really good. And I think we spoke briefly about it an episode or two ago that it’s actually Gus Spring or whatever, what’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guy’s name from Breaking Bad? The-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actor who plays Gus Spring. I forget the actor’s name.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, same. But anyway, he does the voice, which is kind of funny. And it’s actually really, really good because as far as I’m aware, it’s all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey local on device. So it doesn’t do anything super complex, but in terms of like, you know, turn it up, turn it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey down, stop playback, join, such and such, et cetera, it’s really, really good. And I like having it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my ARC because I do not have the ARC SL, I have just the ARC. Again, SL means no voice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey control. But for what it’s worth, the ARC goes down 200 bucks, the One goes down 100 bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And actually, I believe that’s for a pair of Ones. I’m sorry, I didn’t say that earlier. So it’s two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the rear speakers goes from $400 to $300, and one of the sound bars goes from 900 to 700 if you happen to be near an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey American Costco. I just wanted you to be aware.
Follow-up: Fire safety on planes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then we got some fascinating feedback from Andrew Chase. Andrew is a pilot for a major American airline,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and he wanted to share some things. So he said, I want to share with you some things regarding personal electronic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey devices. The FAA and airlines started really evaluating the threat of battery fires once Samsung had their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone that was routinely catching fire. I don’t know how many, but there were several incidents as a result of defective
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Samsung devices. There have been other issues where devices have been either crushed by the seats or in the overhead bins.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The pilots on this particular airline Each have an 11-inch iPad Pro, and all of our flight
⏹️ ▶️ Casey attendants have large screen iPhones. Andrew couldn’t remember exactly which model. The threat is so great that we have to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey carry two thermal containment bags and fire-retardant gloves.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have one bag large enough to fit our iPads that we keep on the flight deck, and there’s another bag kept in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey passenger cabin that can hold up to a 17-inch laptop. And there’s a picture that has been attached
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that hopefully will be the chapter art in the MP3. I find this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fascinating. This is all, I’m sorry, I forgot to establish context. This is all with regard to,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t reach in between the seats to get your phone. Step aside and let the flight
⏹️ ▶️ Casey attendant handle it for you. Well, this is why, because these things, apparently there’s a real honest to goodness
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fear that something will catch on fire. I just found this absolutely fascinating.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I do wonder if people would be able to get to those materials in time, if it is a device that catches
⏹️ ▶️ John fire. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen like those videos online of what it looks like when a lithium ion battery goes up. It
⏹️ ▶️ John goes up fast and it goes up big. Uh, of course you need the gloves. Cause it’s not like you can grab this thing and put it
⏹️ ▶️ John in the, the fire bag or whatever it is. You first, you need the gloves, then you need the bag and then you need the wherewithal
⏹️ ▶️ John to grab this thing with the gloves. You’re like, Oh, so what? I have the gloves on. They protect me from the fire. Watch the videos.
⏹️ ▶️ John You probably don’t want to come with an arm’s length of something that’s going off like one of these things. Then you put it in the bag. Then presumably you
⏹️ ▶️ John seal up the bag, I guess, so the flames don’t shoot everywhere. Anyway, firearm planes, no good. Do not
Apple mouse-shape history
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can you tell me about Apple mouse shape history, please?
⏹️ ▶️ John I can, but first some real-time follow-up from someone in the chat room was asking, it’s hard to tell what the chicken hat might look like on someone’s
⏹️ ▶️ John head. In fact, if you’ve never experienced a hat like this, you might be wondering, how do I even wear it? Like, which direction does it face
⏹️ ▶️ John on my head? So if you go to the show notes for this episode, you can find the show notes at ATP.fm.
⏹️ ▶️ John You will see a link to the Studio Neat blog post about this collaboration. And in
⏹️ ▶️ John the Studio Neat blog post, it’s a picture of me wearing the hat. at some point in the fairly distant past. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not wearing this hat, I’m wearing my original hat. But as I said, this hat, if you lay it down
⏹️ ▶️ John on top of my original hat, exactly lines up in every feature. So the photo is
⏹️ ▶️ John accurate, just imagine the hat being not that color green and imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John me being a lot older than I am in that picture. All
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey right, tell me about mouse shapes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so this is about, Marco was talking about how he loves the current Apple Sushi mouse. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a high quality mouse and he likes the shape of it and he likes the features. And when I was listening back to the show, as
⏹️ ▶️ John I do, I was reminded of, I thought I’d even said this in the show, but I guess I didn’t. I was reminded of
⏹️ ▶️ John my various Apple mouse loves over the years, right? So the very first mouse I
⏹️ ▶️ John ever used was the mouse on the original Macintosh in 1984, which was basically a box
⏹️ ▶️ John with the corners knocked off the top edge. Extremely, I mean, extremely boxy.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was a box, right? And the contemporary mice
⏹️ ▶️ John and other systems were also similar. Like it was easier to make a box with a mouse ball and then a button on it or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it had some style, it had some panache. But I think that first mouse basically dictated
⏹️ ▶️ John how I would use a mouse for the rest of my life. Because it was a box, it’s got, you know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a rectangle, it’s got flat sides, right? And that’s why I grip the mouse with
⏹️ ▶️ John my thumb and my like pinky and ring finger on opposing sides
⏹️ ▶️ John of the mouse with two fingers on top of it, right? Because the flat sides let you do that. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John any mouse that does not have a flat side for me to grip in that way feels weird to me because that’s what I’m always trying to do. If you try
⏹️ ▶️ John to grab the Sushi Mouse from the sides with your thumb on one side and your pinky and ring
⏹️ ▶️ John finger on the other, it doesn’t work because the sides aren’t straight. The sides are very small. And if you actually do squeeze it, it like
⏹️ ▶️ John pushes the mouse upward. It’s not how you’re supposed to use that mouse. So that kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John cemented that. But the reason I brought this up is that was, you know, the mouse on the Mac 128 and the, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the original Macintosh, the 512, the Plus. But when the SE came out, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John changed the shape of the mouse, drastically changed the shape of the mouse. You look with the mouse and the SE, it looked
⏹️ ▶️ John like it was way lower profile. It still had flat sides and they’re still higher than the Sushi
⏹️ ▶️ John Mouse, but the top of it was like angled like a little ramp that, you know, leaned
⏹️ ▶️ John forward and it was a smaller ramp on the back. I don’t know, you can find some pictures of it online. But anyway, and I was
⏹️ ▶️ John like, whoa, what are you doing Apple? I liked your old mouse, it fit my hand well, and now you give me this really, it
⏹️ ▶️ John was almost like the Sushi Mouse, I was like, that’s so small and slight. And you know, in reality, it was huge compared to the Sushi Mouse,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it was a big change. And over the years, Apple has always, well, for the most part has made
⏹️ ▶️ John mice for its computers that are high quality. There were some exceptions up there with like the, what was that one with the little rollerball
⏹️ ▶️ John in it? It was like, what era was that? That was like the iMac G5 era maybe? That was not a good one.
⏹️ ▶️ John the original Mighty Mouse. Anyway, over the years, Apple has made a bunch of mice, but every, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know, I was gonna say every decade or two, or every five, 10 years, they would radically change
⏹️ ▶️ John their mouse. So there was the mouse on the SE, then the next big one was the
⏹️ ▶️ John ADB mouse that was very curved and everything. That mouse was great, loved it. It was still kind of low profile, but
⏹️ ▶️ John the shape was very comfortable, it looked modern, had a huge button on top of it, it was the whole front half of it was a button,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? There was the Puck mouse, nobody likes that. There was the Apology mouse, which I kind of liked,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though, again, it was still kind of low profile. There’s the Sushi mouse, like this, there was the Mighty mouse mixed in there.
⏹️ ▶️ John I bring this up because Marco loves the Sushi mouse. Someday, if Marco keeps on living,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s gonna change the mouse, and they’re probably gonna change it in a way that he doesn’t like. So I wanted to give some perspective
⏹️ ▶️ John from my history with Apple is that Apple makes high quality mice, but they don’t make the same mouse forever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when they change it, they tend to leave behind all the people who loved the previous one because the new one reflects the new
⏹️ ▶️ John thinking. And in the case of the hockey puck, they leave behind anyone because the hockey puck, I guess some people still
⏹️ ▶️ John like the hockey puck, but it was fatally flawed, let’s say. Even when they put a divot in the button
⏹️ ▶️ John so you could tell which direction it was facing. Nice job, Apple. So be aware. If you
⏹️ ▶️ John love your Apple mouse, maybe get as many of them as you can and hope they work with your computers for a long time. Kind of like people
⏹️ ▶️ John did with the Apple extended keyboard too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, the funny thing is, well, first of all, I don’t think it’s ever going to be difficult to find these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since everyone who’s ever bought an iMac probably has one in their closet unopened.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s so many of these lying around that people got as pack-ins for their desktops that they never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John But eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ll need, like we used to have the USB to ADB adapters that people will use the Apple Extended.
⏹️ ▶️ John Eventually you’re gonna need some kind of adapter to use these things with, especially since they’re Bluetooth, it
⏹️ ▶️ John would have to be some kind of software adapter or a Bluetooth dongle once the new version Bluetooth comes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not only are they Bluetooth, they’re lightning. And this is where like if they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they’re ever gonna kill off this mouse maybe it’ll be during the USB-C transition. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s that I think like I’m afraid because when they go to USB-C they they are presumably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to at some point during that transition update this mouse. Now that being said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s probably gonna be one of the last things they update. I mean they might never update it because I don’t think the EU is gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mandate that. We’ll get to that in a a little bit, but also I can imagine them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not wanting to really do much to make this change and possibly doing it in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most half-assed way possible, which would basically just be like, just keep the entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco existing design and just make the port USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of like. I think I’m gonna get a Qi charging. Like the mouse is definitely something that where you can do Qi charging and it makes way more sense to
⏹️ ▶️ John have a charging thing on the bottom when it’s Qi charging than it does to have a thing on the bottom when it’s USB-C or lightning.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But then there’s no pairing story, because you pair it by using the cable. Although I guess, I think there is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing where you can hold it down and blink it into Bluetooth mode or whatever. I think there’s probably some kind of override for that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, yeah. I don’t expect they’re gonna be touching this more than they have to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if they do, it is the wonderful combination of being both extremely common
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and widely hated. So there’s gonna be a ton of them for sale forever on eBay, totally unopened. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John problem there.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve got a bunch still in their original boxes in my attic because I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco never even take them out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly, yeah. There’s so many people like you who buy desktop Macs that come with these who don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever use them, because everyone except me hates them. So don’t worry,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got a huge supply.
⏹️ ▶️ John The other thing you have going for you is that Apple doesn’t pay much attention to the desktop
⏹️ ▶️ John Macs, witness our continued wait for the Mac Pro. So they’re not going to redesign the
⏹️ ▶️ John mouse as often as they did in the past because it used to be much more important to their product line. But now that
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ve gotten basically all laptop and some of their desktop computers don’t even come with the mouse like the Mac mini,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s pretty low down on the list. But I do think it will make a USB-C transition or a Qi transition because once they go
⏹️ ▶️ John all USB-C, they’re just gonna start knocking out the products one by one. Eventually,
⏹️ ▶️ John as lightning phases out, it will eventually be as hard to find as a 30 pin connector. And so they’re not gonna wanna keep selling
⏹️ ▶️ John a product with that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in it. I think I might, assuming that at some point in the future, I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use this mouse anymore and there’s no replacement that I like, which those are two pretty big assumptions,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but assuming that happens, I might just go to trackpad. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love having the direct manipulation scrolling on the mouse so much,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would imagine I would rather just go directly to double trackpad. Like, I already have tripod on the left
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I could just get a second one, it’d be more symmetric, but I miss all my Teflon mouse
⏹️ ▶️ John Stephen Hackett predictably has a good post that shows all the mice that I was just talking about. The original
⏹️ ▶️ John one, the one with the, it shows the one with the Apple IIc and the Lisa, which are kind of gross. Then there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the first ADB mouse, and then there’s the Apple Desktop Mouse 2, which I incorrectly said was the
⏹️ ▶️ John first Apple Desktop Mouse, but there was, the other one was ADB before that. There’s the cool black one that came
⏹️ ▶️ John with the Apple, no, the Apple, the Macintosh television. Man, I would love to get one of those black mice.
⏹️ ▶️ John Then there’s the Puck, the Apology Mouse, the Stupid Mighty Mouse, and the Sushi Mouse.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think there might’ve been some other ones in between there, but we’ll put that link in the show notes. It’s an excellent page for some good photos.
Sponsor: Backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are brought to you this week by Backblaze, unlimited computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco backup in the cloud for your Macs and PCs for just $7 a month
⏹️ ▶️ Marco per computer. It is so great having online backup. You know, I’ve tried online
⏹️ ▶️ Marco backup for a long time now, ever since it really became feasible. And I’ve tried, you know, any large
⏹️ ▶️ Marco option that’s out there, you name it, I’ve probably tried it. And Backblaze is the one that I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuck with the longest. It is the one I like the most. it is clearly the best one to me. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s lots of reasons for this, from simple things like the pricing is really good, what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you get for it is really good, there’s unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, no limits there, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever you can connect to your computer, even external drives that are plugged into your computer, it backs those up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also their app is really good, both the web app for if you need to do web restores for restoring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco files or accessing them, maybe you left your computer at home and you went on a trip and you gotta get a file off your computer, you can even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do that through the web restore and their client app that runs on my Macs. It’s really a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very good Mac app. It is, you don’t really notice it running because it is very respectful of your computer’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco resources. You know, it’s not like a resource hog. It doesn’t slaughter your battery or kill your internet connection or anything like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. There’s tons of fine grain controls in it if you need those. So it’s just a great app and cloud backup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is amazing because there’s so many hazards that if your only backup is either
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing, which is really terrible, or if it’s like an external drive in your office or in your home,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many risks can take out both your computer and that external drive at the same time, whether it’s environmental
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff like fire, floods, theft, or something like a power surge, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even just accidental deletion. There’s so much that can happen. Cloud backup is amazing, and Backblaze is the best cloud backup.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco See for yourself at backblaze.com slash ATP. You can get a 15-day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco free trial, all features enabled with no credit card required. So once again, backblaze.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash ATP. Thank you so much to Backblaze for backing up all my stuff and sponsoring our
Switchglass 2.0
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s talk about some stuff that you’ve been up to recently, Mr. Syracuse. So tell me about
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I didn’t think I was going to do this this year, but I just, you know, the timing more or less worked out.
⏹️ ▶️ John I had mentioned on the last show, we were talking about like, what we do with version control or whatever, that I was adding a major feature
⏹️ ▶️ John to my app and the branch I made for that feature kind of morphed into the 2.0 branch because I just kept adding
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. And so I was working on version two of my little app switcher thing switch glass
⏹️ ▶️ John and version two is kind of more or less ready around the time of the Ventura launch. And in fact, I had
⏹️ ▶️ John to change a bunch of code in it to deal with Ventura, which I might talk about it and I’ll talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John it now briefly, I guess. Anyway, the the big feature that I added was the number one requested
⏹️ ▶️ John feature was people wanted to be able to reorder stuff in the app switcher. They already
⏹️ ▶️ John had a bunch of different sort orders, you could sort alphabetically in reverse and by launch order, but they said, what if I just wanted to say, like
⏹️ ▶️ John I want Finder to be at the top, I want this to be on the bottom, whatever. So I added that feature.
⏹️ ▶️ John Adding that feature, as I alluded to on past episodes when we talked about our dev efforts, required me to bump the minimum
⏹️ ▶️ John OS version to Monterey, Mac OS 12 Monterey, because that
⏹️ ▶️ John app switch review is SwiftUI and the features for drag and drop that I needed from SwiftUI only run
⏹️ ▶️ John on Monterey or later. So it was a big bump in minimum system version, but honestly not that many people use my app anyway, So
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, who cares? I wish I could have kept it lower, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I couldn’t have and still actually had a reasonable drag and drop interface. And there’s so many
⏹️ ▶️ John SwiftUI bugs in old OSs anyway. I’m glad to be on something a little bit newer. So I kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of did it and pulled an app. And I was like, you know what? Ventura’s coming out soon. And if I just kind of say,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is my underscore, no new features, what is his little sign that he puts up? No, Mark, are you
⏹️ ▶️ John noticing? I think it’s no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey features. I know it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has a boat to represent shipping.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just like, this is the line. I’m not doing any more features. I’m just debugging from this point on. Even though I had
⏹️ ▶️ John more features in the queue, I said, this is it. Let me just cut it off here. I sent myself a pull
⏹️ ▶️ John request, Casey. Nice. It
⏹️ ▶️ John like something you should do alone. Yeah. Wow. And push it out to the store. And I didn’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John App Review was going to get to it in time. But lo and behold, on Venture launch day, both of my applications were
⏹️ ▶️ John ready with new versions. Front and center, the only thing I changed in it related to login items, which is,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll give a little summary here, when it turns out to be a thing, I’ll talk about it on another show. But anyway, Ventura has a new API
⏹️ ▶️ John for making applications register themselves to launch on login. There’s been a surprisingly
⏹️ ▶️ John sorted history of how apps do that on the Mac. You would think it’s such a simple feature, it’s just that one
⏹️ ▶️ John checkbox in the bottom of a bunch of apps you use, say, hey, do you want me to launch this app on login? And you check it, and you think that’s all there is to it.
⏹️ ▶️ John The way is they’ve done that, none of them are good. There’s a new way in Ventura, which is better than the
⏹️ ▶️ John past ones, but is buggy and has a bunch of caveats. Anyway, I put a bunch of stuff in my FAQ about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, don’t worry, because the second anybody updates to Ventura, you will get,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco remember, I forget which version it was, a couple of Mac OS versions ago when you had to approve permissions for a whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bunch of new things. The first launch experience of running that version was just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a wall of notifications from all your apps that all of a sudden needed a new permission that didn’t exist before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s what it is for Ventura with these launch things. the first time I launched, I have it on my laptop, the very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first time it launched with the final version, the entire right side of the screen was just filled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with like 14 of these notifications to approve these backgrounds.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it was all stuff I knew about, except for like one weird thing left over by some driver I installed forever ago. But it was like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, shell scripts I have to run, there’s Backblaze, Dropbox, you know, all this stuff, or not Dropbox, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maestro, my Dropbox client, like all the stuff that you want to run and expect to run,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it was like, yeah, you have to basically like be re-notified about everything. The good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing is that the default seems to be, if it was running before, let it keep running.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you don’t have to actually do anything besides like maybe review them if there’s any you want to turn off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and turn them off. And it is nice that there is this new method to do that. So I think it’s a good feature overall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because before like there were so many ways that things could be starting at startup or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco behind the scenes that were not apparent to the user and were very difficult for the user to
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the problem with this briefly with respect to my app is both of my apps have the
⏹️ ▶️ John option to launch on login because they’re the type of apps you run all the time. Front and center changes your window layering, you probably want that running all the
⏹️ ▶️ John time if you can use it at all. And switch glasses and app switcher, you probably want that running all the time, just like the dock is running all the time. So
⏹️ ▶️ John having them both launch on login makes tons of sense. That’s all they do, they launch on login. They’re just regular apps and instead
⏹️ ▶️ John of you having to double click them or launch them from the dock or whatever, you can get them to launch themselves, that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But because there is a new API to do that in Ventura, there was
⏹️ ▶️ John a series of old APIs on pre-Ventura systems, right? So I use the new API on Ventura,
⏹️ ▶️ John but because my apps run on older OSs, even Switch Glass that I had to bump up to Monterey, it runs
⏹️ ▶️ John on Monterey, and the Ventura APIs don’t exist on Monterey. So my app has to support the APIs
⏹️ ▶️ John that exist on Monterey, right? If your app uses the Monterey or
⏹️ ▶️ John earlier APIs, on Ventura, when you use the new API to say, hey, please launch
⏹️ ▶️ John me on login, Ventura files your app under a section in system settings
⏹️ ▶️ John that says, these apps are running in the background. My apps don’t run in the background. They
⏹️ ▶️ John have no way to run in the background. There’s nothing in them that runs in the background. They don’t have any kind of demons. They only run in the foreground.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like they’re just apps. You just double click them and they run. They can’t do anything when they’re not running, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John but because it uses an older API that it has to, it doesn’t use it, includes code for an older
⏹️ ▶️ John API, because it does that, on Ventura, it’s filed under this app runs in the background.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so now I have to brace myself for people sending me emails saying, why does your app run in the background?
⏹️ ▶️ John What kind of sneaky stuff is it doing? I have to say, it doesn’t run in the background. They’re gonna say, but the OS says it runs in the background.
⏹️ ▶️ John Look, let me send you a screenshot of system settings. Here’s your app listed in the apps that run in the background. They may perform tasks when they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not open, right? Like I assure you, my app cannot do anything when it is not running. I installed
⏹️ ▶️ John no launch DEP list. There’s no daemon, there’s no background server. I am not, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John run activity monitor, run PS, satisfy yourself. But then why is it showing? So
⏹️ ▶️ John I filed a feedback on this and it’s kind of frustrating. And that gets to your wall of notifications.
⏹️ ▶️ John Half of those notifications are gonna say, so-and-so application wants to run in the background. Sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John you will get a notification that says something wants to run in the background when all it wants to do is launch on login. but sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John it really does want to run something in the background. So when you go into system settings in, you know, whatever general login
⏹️ ▶️ John items and you see like the allow and background list or whatever, you can’t tell by looking at that list,
⏹️ ▶️ John which one of these things actually runs in the background versus which one of these things is just an application that supports
⏹️ ▶️ John a pre-venture OS that just wants to launch itself on login. There’s no way to tell. Most of them probably do
⏹️ ▶️ John run in the background, but only if you have experience to know like, oh, I understand this is an updater daemon that
⏹️ ▶️ John really does run in the background or this, you know, this thing does make a you know a launch agent
⏹️ ▶️ John with launchd but you’re not going to know that by looking at this list so anyway that’s why i had to have a fact add a fact
⏹️ ▶️ John item to both of my dinky little products that says hey why is your app listed as running in the background does it
⏹️ ▶️ John do anything in the background i have to say no it doesn’t i swear so that’s frustrating and then the second frustrating
⏹️ ▶️ John thing is maybe this is only true for people running development test flight builds or whatever but the new api inventory
⏹️ ▶️ John when it gets added to launch on login it’s very specific as in this
⏹️ ▶️ John specific app should launch on Login, which I think is good, but if you’re doing development and like when you
⏹️ ▶️ John run Xcode and it builds a version of your app and whatever that folder is like under, who didn’t drive data? Where
⏹️ ▶️ John does it put like a temporary like debug builds of your apps?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh God, it’s somewhere very deep. I never know, I always have to like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, debug print like with the path of the binary, like drag it out of the target area.
⏹️ ▶️ John dock, right? What? Oh, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I guess. Oh, well not for the simulator. Yeah, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not using Mac apps, sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s Mac apps, you can man click on that. But yeah, like when you’re running Xcode, it builds a copy of your app
⏹️ ▶️ John and it puts it somewhere. But it’s not like, even if you’re making a Mac app, it doesn’t put it in your applications folder. So
⏹️ ▶️ John when you run the dev build and you call the Venture API to launch this on login, I think what it’s doing is saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John okay, I’ll launch the application literally located at library developer Xcode, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’ll launch
⏹️ ▶️ John that at login, right? But the version of the application sitting in your application folder,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s also registered to launch and login. So I got into a situation where I had like three copies of Switch Class listed in my OpenIt
⏹️ ▶️ John login list. And by the way, the whole thing about allow in background, your app will also show up in the OpenIt login
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. So it does correctly show up there, but it also appears in the allow in the background list. So
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, I’ve been in situations where there are multiple copies of my apps listed
⏹️ ▶️ John in OpenIt login, and I think it’s because there literally are multiple copies of my apps running around on the disk.
⏹️ ▶️ John And unlike previous versions of macOS, this one tracks all of them and will send you a notification Every
⏹️ ▶️ John time you do a new build and you launch it, it’s like, oh, just so you know, this app that we’ve never seen before that just got built and run, it
⏹️ ▶️ John just registers itself to launch on login. And we wanted you to know about it with a notification. Fun. Yeah, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John super crappy. So anyway, my apps are updated. Switch Glass 2 is a free update for the five people who
⏹️ ▶️ John use it. I’m still having fun developing it. In fact, I just did a test flight build with a bunch of fun new
⏹️ ▶️ John features and people are finding fun new bugs. I’m enjoying test flight. It’s way better than trying to send people betas,
⏹️ ▶️ John test flight on the Mac. When it’s working and when App Store Connect working correctly is a real godsend.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I made a petition for new testers in my blog post about it. We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John put a link in the show notes to that post so you can read it. It’s only a couple of paragraphs. If you want to be a tester, you can send me an email
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’ll let you test it and you can find fun bugs and I’ll fix them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s the plan anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, one more thing related to the blog post. I put a mail to link like in the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that says, if you want to become a tester, let me know. And the words let me know are a link and they’re a mail to link. I said,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know what? Let me put a subject line on the mail to link. I know there’s a sort of convention
⏹️ ▶️ John for doing that. I’m not sure if it’s a real standard, but I’ve seen it done many different times and you know, whatever. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the URL of that link is mail, M-A-I-L-T-O colon, and then my email address,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then question mark subject equals, and then you type the subject line, right? And the subject line is
⏹️ ▶️ John switch glass test flight membership with spaces between the words, right? When you put
⏹️ ▶️ John spaces in the, you know, the href field of a link, You’re supposed to
⏹️ ▶️ John URL encode them with %20. Or I think you can do pluses. That might only be
⏹️ ▶️ John for the address bar. But anyway, %20, right? That’s the hexadecimal, the way you put
⏹️ ▶️ John hexadecimal codes or ASCII code points. That’s a space,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? Or you can use a plus and break half the clients out there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, so here’s the thing. I put %20 because it’s the right thing to do, and I make valid markup when I can,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? I immediately found out that every single person who who clicked that link
⏹️ ▶️ John was somehow using some kind of browser or system that has no idea what that is. And I got a bunch of email with the subject line,
⏹️ ▶️ John Switchglass percent 20, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John percent 20, membership percent 20. All right. And like literally not
⏹️ ▶️ John a single one was correct. I’m like, okay, I tested it myself by the way. Chrome on the Mac and Safari
⏹️ ▶️ John works fine. You get spaces, right? But whatever, maybe it’s the email client. I don’t know where the problem lies,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I was getting emails with percent 20s in subject line. I changed it to pluses. I just got emails with pluses in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, literally not a single email from any mail,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I think it’s probably the mail client that’s screwing it up, because I think like Safari and Chrome probably send it correctly, but the mail clients don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know that it’s, anyway. I had to change it to spaces, which is not valid, but apparently it’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John only way to get spaces, you know. So if you look at the markup, it says, A, H, ref, you know, blah, blah, blah, question mark,
⏹️ ▶️ John subject equals, switch glass, space, test flight, space, membership, and that works
⏹️ ▶️ John for, and now I’m getting all
⏹️ ▶️ John lines. It’s invalid, it’s invalid HTML, you can put spaces. It just, the web,
⏹️ ▶️ John you just can’t escape it. It just amazes me that this is not a new convention, the subject line and mail to links, what is that,
⏹️ ▶️ John from the 90s? And still, somehow there’s a broken link in this chain. Again, I think it’s the mail clients. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the mail clients are getting a URL and they are not correctly parsing the query string out of the URL part
⏹️ ▶️ John of it. They’re like, they’re not, obviously not decoding the percent 20s and not decoding the pluses.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of affairs. This is, so I mean, I’ll be the first one to admit when, you know, email is bad,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that’s much of the time, but I’ve never had this problem. Like, I use that convention frequently.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We even have it in our member panel, at api.ifm.com slash join. If you go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to your member panel at slash member, at the bottom there’s a link to contact us,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s a mail to link that includes not only spaces, but escaped colons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and parentheses, all percent encoded. And I get an email
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from that maybe a couple times a week, maybe three or four times a week. None
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them have ever had wrongly escaped things in them. It’s never happened.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it’s just small sample size, because I think only 10 people email me, but every single one of that 10 had percent surpluses.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was shocked. I was shocked. In this day and age, how could something? But there you have it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, that’s why the web is full of invalid things, because people learn through trial and error that if you want
⏹️ ▶️ John it to quote unquote work everywhere, you have to use invalid markup in some cases.
Sponsor: Memberful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are brought to you this week by Memberful, the easiest way to sell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco memberships to your audience. You can create sustainable recurring revenue,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and this is used by some of the biggest creators on the web. You know, if you’re looking to add membership to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your business, you want a solution that works with your existing technology so you can launch the new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco revenue stream without having to rebuild your entire tech stack. Memberful, in addition
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to tons of other great things about them, also seamlessly integrates with the tools you already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use. Tools like WordPress, MailChimp, Discord, and so many more. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever you wanna do by selling memberships, they probably support it. So they have, for instance, a popular option is members-only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcasts. They support that, of course. And it uses your existing podcast hosting if you want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to, so you can start earning more revenue with your current publishing workflow. So all this is super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco integrated with what you’re already using. If you need any help, they have a world-class support team ready to get you started,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep things optimized and simple, grow your revenue, and they align their goals with yours.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they are passionate about your success, they always give you access to a real human to help you achieve your goals if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to, and they let you retain full control and ownership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of your branding of everything, your audience, payments even going directly to your own Stripe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco account. You know, they’ve aligned themselves with you so you can focus on your business. They don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get in the way, they just wanna see you succeed and then everyone benefits. So see for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yourself at memberful.com slash ATP. You can get started for free
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with no credit card required. See what Memberful has to offer you. Really it is a great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way to sell memberships to your audience. See what they have to offer. Memberful.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash ATP for that free trial. Thank you so much to Memberful for sponsoring
Casey’s new iPad Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, I got a new treat today. Ooh. I went to Apple, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey local Apple store in Short Pump, and I got myself a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey picked up, yes, everyone thinks it’s so funny.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That also sounds like something you do when you’re alone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve been married a long time, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I went to the store and I got complimented on my M2 shirt, which just happened to be the top
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shirt in my pile when I got dressed this morning. And, or excuse me, not M2. I didn’t get a pre-release M2 shirt, M1. I was
⏹️ ▶️ John say, you don’t have an early copy of the M2
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, no, no, no. My apologies. My M1 shirt, somebody commented on it and said, nice shirt. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was very appreciative of that. And the person helping me was very kind. And they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey smiled and nodded very effectively when I told them about my podcast, which I’m sure they were so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excited to hear about. But they did a very good job of making me feel like they actually gave a crap.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway. You should listen to my podcast. It’s about computers. You would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey like it. I was totally that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guy. I was wearing my own shirt. It was so bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco It was terrible. Oh no.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey That’s why I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t wear the shirts out in public. Just in case I don’t want to be that guy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t care. I have no shame. I’m 40 now, man. I mean, so are you, but I’m 40 now. I don’t care.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But anyway, so I picked up my iPad Pro. I got to say, in general, If you live
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a place that is not like Boston or New York City
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you have one of the slower Apple stores like the one in Short Pump,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is pretty delightful going in and picking up your devices because you get them first
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing in the morning. You don’t have to stalk the UPS truck. It’s wonderful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And there’s almost never any big line. Like even on iPhone day, because if you recall, I did pick up for the first time in years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for these iPhones last month. And even then I waited like, I don’t know, 10 minutes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe, maybe, and I was in and out in five after I tried to get upsold on AppleCare
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and screen protectors and all the other various and sundry things Apple wants to make money off of, but that’s neither here nor there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For whatever it’s worth, by the way, sorry to interrupt here, I’ve had great experiences
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the Long Island Apple stores. Like, you know, the Westchester ones are pretty decent. The ones in the city
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are, you know, very crowded, very dense, you know, have to wait in line. It’s a little chaotic. The ones in Westchester
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are much nicer. The ones on Long Island have been honestly even better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m really surprised. And I think it’s mostly because there aren’t a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of nerds on Long Island. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they all are. I haven’t located
⏹️ ▶️ John What are you talking about? Oh, John’s
⏹️ ▶️ John John’s upset. Not a lot of nerds on Long Island. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco central. Where do they keep them? Where?
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re all too busy doing extra-credit activities so they look good on their college applications.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, they’re not in the Apple Store and so therefore they’re never crowded but they’re probably working at the Apple Store. Well, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s true because the staff has been great. Like, I’m actually… There’s two stores I go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to that are close to me on Long Island here and they’re both, so far, fantastic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And because there are no more nerds on Long Island who don’t already work at the Apple Stores,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s almost no one ever in there. And so you get… there’s tons of staff, very few customers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instant service. Like it’s been fantastic.
⏹️ ▶️ John And also you’re going there when people at work. I’m assuming it occurs to me that I have no idea where any Apple stores are on Long Island
⏹️ ▶️ John because I didn’t live there when Apple stores became a thing. So what
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco stores are you going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My primary one is the Walt Whitman mall one.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was going to say like Waltman was my first guess where where one would be, although I mean, I don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John relish going there, but I haven’t been in ages. But yeah, that’s you know, I ones in malls have the advantage that
⏹️ ▶️ John malls are dying. So there’s probably not a lot there except for like, you know, the Orange Julius and the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, Orange Julius. Yes. Oh, I
⏹️ ▶️ John love being an orange. Are they still in business? I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is weird walking through malls these days, though, because you walk past, like there’s, you know, most of the stores,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like there’s, there’s, you know, different kinds of malls, like Spirit Halloween
⏹️ ▶️ John is in most of the places, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because they always go and swoop in the, like, defunct stores and take over around Halloween time. You don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John about Spirit Halloween?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, there’s like cheap seasonal stores.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but anyway, no there’s, let me see, where’s the other one that I went to? The other one was in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Smith Haven, yeah that’s the other one. That mall is not in as good a shape, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Walt Whitman’s in really good shape. And so, and it’s all like, it’s internet brands. It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casper and Warby Parker, like it’s all like the podcast ad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brands that you hear, like they now have stores in upscale malls and that’s what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco taking all the mall stuff now. Anyway, it is weird though walking through a mall because even the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good malls are a shadow of what they once were and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are largely empty. It’s very strange.
⏹️ ▶️ John I bought my wedding ring at a jewelry store in Smithhaven Mall. Aw. I used to ride my bike there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You were very close. So yeah, so I picked up my iPad Pro. I did not get any accessories
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because my hope in theory was I could repurpose all the accessories for my 2018 iPad Pro, which is going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be retired. I had spoken briefly about, oh, maybe I’ll just cancel this, but because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m a big liar, I did not cancel this obviously. But I did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get it. I have not had a lot of time to play with it, but you know what? It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like a much better batteried, much faster, I guess,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guess, a much less scratched screen version of my 2018 iPad Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I put it in the 2018 or no, I guess it was 2020 Magic Keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey case and it fit no problem. In fact, if I recall correctly, when they came out with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last year’s iPad Pro, they said, oh, it’s not going to fit in the 2020 edition case. It’s not going to fit right. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they came out a few days later, a week later and was like, well, it’ll fit, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to be like not 100% perfect. Maybe I just don’t have the eye for it, but it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it fits perfectly, which is great. So, I’m using a Magic Keyboard, which I love. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pencil, you know, synced no problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wait, what about the camera hole? Oh, or did the Magic Keyboard come out late enough so that it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had the larger camera plateau of the M1 iPad?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Correct. Well, I don’t think it was an M1 at the time, but it was, the spirit of what you’re saying is correct.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That it had the big, big square hole.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, the A12Z iPad. The one that added the LiDAR sensor, right? That’s what…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, yeah, that fit no problem, all good. Pencil obviously works no problem, all good. And so I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dug out my old, my, what is it? The keyboard, not Folio, the thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s not a kickstand-y one, not the new kickstand-y one, but like the… It’s the Magic Folio keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, it is the, okay, thank you. The smart keyboard Folio? That’s the one I use.
⏹️ ▶️ John The smart, yeah, the smart Magic Folio keyboard Folio.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh God, it’s so bad. Anyway, but yes, that thing. So I busted that back out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I like what Gruber clarified. Magic means it has a trackpad, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that clarifies one whole section of it. It’s so clear, I don’t know why it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John obvious. Right, yeah. Trackpads are magic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco man, I was just thinking earlier as I was washing dishes, because that’s when I do my thinking.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wouldn’t it be amazing if Apple just had like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one iPad keyboard and one iPad cover that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could use on all of their 11-ish inch iPads and then I’m like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I instantly knew why they don’t do that like it because even after all this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time the iPad is still not designed for covers or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboards to attach to them very well you know if they were they would have to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sacrifices on like the physical shape in some way like maybe having like an attachment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slot, kind of like the way the Apple Watch straps slide into like a groove in the case.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If there was something like that, or some way for things to physically attach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco securely to an iPad without just magnetically sticking to the back.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, the magnets are pretty good though. I think they do, I like the magnets. I think they do a good job with getting
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t think I would like them because I used to have like on my original 9.7 inch Pro. Do you remember the cases that came, Apple cases
⏹️ ▶️ John for the 9.7 inch Pro, they actually like wrapped around the edges and hooked over the front. Those were great,
⏹️ ▶️ John very secure. I really love that. My son’s got that iPad now, although it’s kind of fun, it’s last legs. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the flat ones that, the sort of ice cream sandwich ones that go on the flat ones now, it doesn’t look
⏹️ ▶️ John like it should work, but they work pretty well. I think where things start to fall apart is the keyboard stuff, because
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just talking about the flat cases or whatever. But once you start putting in more heavyweight things in there or trying to construct
⏹️ ▶️ John a little precarious laptop out of it, That’s where you need like the
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently extremely expensive technology in the, well you should finish telling me the adjective things. Magic
⏹️ ▶️ John means it has a track lab, what does it mean when it costs 300 something dollars and has like this weird armature inside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it? Oh, that just means iPad keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, you know the one I’m talking about, it’s Casey’s one. The one that like holds the thing up. Is there a word in the product name that lets me know it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John that one or is it just the price?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, the price tells you very clearly, yeah. Yeah, no, it’s, and so as far as I can tell,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t, is magic ever used with folio? Or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are those mutually exclusive? Because I think folio means the old kind where it’s just like two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flat things that sandwich together, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John there’s usually-
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, folio is actually a word that means something. So I give them some leeway on that one. Like it makes some sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and there’s no trackpad with folio as far as I’m aware.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, slow down, slow down. You’re getting this all wrong. The magic keyboard folio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco is a $250 thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has a trackpad that is for the iPad. which by the way I did play with in store very briefly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was good. Oh, smart is what’s mutually exclusive from magic. All right, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it can either be smart or magic, and smart means it does not have a trackpad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Magic means it does and costs a bajillion dollars. Not that the smart ones are particularly inexpensive,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re just less insanely expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that again, makes no sense, because magic is not the opposite of smart and neither one says anything about trackpads.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I know. But anyway, it is, I would love to someday get to a point in Apple’s iPad lineup,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and obviously it’s all jumbled up right now and, you know, we discussed possibly why with supply chain and whatever, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would love to get to a point in Apple’s lineup where every new iPad doesn’t have its
⏹️ ▶️ Marco own completely different and incompatible set of accessories. Because if they’re going to have this lineup that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has many different models in it, obviously, you know, between the 11-ish inch size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco class and the 12.9 inch, yeah, you got to have a different keyboard for that because it’s a whole, it’s a very different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco size. But there are so many iPads now in the 11-ish inch range that are all almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same size. Like if they just made them all the same size and made them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all use the same frickin’ pencil and the same two or three keyboard options, you know, different price
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and complexity categories, that would be so nice. Because as it is right now, it’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco absurdly, um, I mean, it’s expensive for one, but I don’t think they would see that as a bad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. But it’s also just incredibly wasteful. Like there’s all the, like, you know, when I, when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I upgraded from my, my old A12X 2018 iPad, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco case you guys updated away from, to the M1 this past summer, I had to get a new keyboard cover because,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the old one didn’t, it wouldn’t fit the camera plateau of the new one. Oh yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, it felt, it felt dumb. Like why am I, like, there goes 180 bucks or whatever that like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I didn’t have to spend. And then I, and then what do I do with this keyboard? Like I, I tried to give it away to family members who, who still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had the old iPad. They didn’t need it. I ended up, it’s in a closet somewhere, I’ve forgotten exactly where,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and probably in two or three years, I’ll find it and throw it away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco waste, you know? And there’s so many situations like that where if they would stop changing the accessories
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every year for these iPads that change a few millimeters here and there, and the camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bump gets a little bit bigger, moves around, if they could design them in a more holistic and forward-looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way so that both the iPads and the accessories, design them both together to create a world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where there’s just like, there’s an iPad keyboard and there’s an iPad keyboard with trackpad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and those come in two sizes and that’s it. Like that would be amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now those keyboards and covers that attach though are in many respects wear items
⏹️ ▶️ John for iPads. Like that they’re not, they are the outside of the thing. They are going to wear
⏹️ ▶️ John down. They are going to degrade just like the brakes on your car and the oil in your engine, not
⏹️ ▶️ John your engine Marco, well one of your engines anyway. And so I think their useful lifetime
⏹️ ▶️ John is not great, which really argues on not being $300 items, because by the time you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John done with that iPad, if it has a nice long life, those accessories, if you actually use them, are pretty beat up.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think what they’ve currently done, like with the Pro lines, the flat-sided iPad Pros,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ve had some amount of accessory continuity, but I don’t think you can hope for accessory continuity
⏹️ ▶️ John any more, for any longer stretches than you get on the laptops, right? and
⏹️ ▶️ John other laptops have many accessories, but there are generational form factor changes and there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John no way that Apple is going to make an accessory or a form factor change with an eye towards
⏹️ ▶️ John making the same accessory work across generations like that. They just won’t. The cameras will change
⏹️ ▶️ John and move. They will decide it’s a different size, a different shape, has different accessories, different ports, different attachment things
⏹️ ▶️ John for the pencil. Like there’s no way that they’re going to have that continuity because, and you know, on
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone, occasionally they’ve had multiple years in a row where you could share accessories, but
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s about it. And the phone is probably the closest analog because why do they keep changing size and
⏹️ ▶️ John shape? Well, arguably the phone has even less reason to change size and shape because the possible forms,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the possible sizes for phones are much more narrow than an iPad, which goes from the mini
⏹️ ▶️ John to the 12.9 inch and could go even bigger than that. Like there’s plenty of room for a bigger iPad that we talk about all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the cameras move around, all the buttons move around. I don’t think you’re ever gonna see continuity in that area.
⏹️ ▶️ John It would be nice if they could at least have continuity of attachment point and then just have
⏹️ ▶️ John the cutouts be different or whatever, but I don’t know, I mean, if like, if you think
⏹️ ▶️ John of it like you don’t have continuity of keyboards across laptops, because when you buy a new laptop, it comes with its own new keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John that exactly fits that laptop, because they don’t detach. They’re not detachable, but because the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John is a floppy keyboard sold a la carte, you have to end up buying the accessories
⏹️ ▶️ John and you should count yourself lucky if like Casey, your accessory actually lasts through more than one device. But I don’t think,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, we’re not like we’re gonna reach a point where they say, well, we’re done with the cameras, we’re not gonna improve them anymore. And I also don’t think Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna do the thing where they say, let’s make a camera that’s massive that will hold us for the next 10 years, because that’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey To that end though, the magic keyboard, right? Not the Folio, but the magic keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the cantilever thing. Mine is definitely showing its age after just a couple of years. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t travel with my iPad, well, I shouldn’t say travel. I don’t bring my iPad everywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I use it probably daily and I will often bring it in like the car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something if I’m gonna be a passenger for a while. But it is definitely showing its age. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, some of the outer, I don’t know how to describe this, but like the outer thin layers kind of peeling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey away to show like the interior layer and some of the like edges in some spots. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, it is a rare item at, what is this like 350 bucks I paid for this? Something like that, whatever obscene
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 300, I think it’s like 300 and 350 for the two sizes. Wait till you find out how much brake pads cost.
⏹️ ▶️ John labor though, so still.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Especially if you drive a German car, let me tell you. But anyway, yeah, it’s 300 bucks. I think you are right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the car’s nationality make it drive faster and need more braking?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey parts more expensive. It makes the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey expensive. But I did play very briefly with Magic Keyboard Folio in the new iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 10th generation. I only spent just 30, 45 seconds with it, but I mean, it was nice. I liked it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t have too much to say about it. I agree that kickstands are not really my jam because I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do use my iPad on my lap, especially in the car, but not exclusively in the car. Kind of a lot, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kickstands are not a great fit for that. I do like the kind of tearability of this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new Magic Keyboard Folio, where you can just kind of like tear the iPad off of it, and the keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is kind of left behind, and you still have the kickstand attached. But honestly, it’s not particularly hard to get the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out of the Magic Keyboard, the cantilevered Magic Keyboard. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think this is for me, obviously, but if you’re a folio,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kickstand-y kind of person, then it’s nice. But yeah, my new iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I like it. It is not a revolutionary change from the 2018 model, which I knew.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One of the things I like about it is that it does have 5G and much faster cellular, because I am
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a huge fan, as I think we covered last week, huge fan of cellular iPads. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am looking forward to being able to use this on my beloved, don’t call it a park bench, but picnic table,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and hypothetically get my ridiculously fast speeds. I was very flummoxed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a moment as I was doing the transfer from one iPad to the other, because it wouldn’t let me just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey port the cellular account. And I was like, what? And it said that it was there,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it was grayed out. Like I couldn’t import it from the old iPad. The new one, what? Oh, oh right, this has an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actual physical SIM. How quickly we forget what physical SIMs are. So I just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had a brain fart and I didn’t even remember it. It is a little weird though,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this M2 equipped iPad Pro is on paper kind of sort of more powerful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than the MacBook Pro I’m talking to you on right now. I looked up Geekbench scores. I only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spent a moment on this, but I found a Geekbench score that I think is for an equivalent of my M1 Max
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MacBook Pro. Single-core score, 1337, elite. Multi-core, 10155. So 1,337, 10,155.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey On the M2 MacBook Air, because I couldn’t find one on the iPad Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M2 MacBook Air, which hypothetically should be the same, single-core is 1,930, so a change of about 44%,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I did that math right. So it’s 1930 instead of 1337. Multi-core score is down a bit though,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 8926 instead of 10155. So in single core anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this iPad is faster than my computer, even though iPadOS is crippling it in every measurable way,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but that’s neither here nor there. That’s a weird feeling. I’m not sure how I feel about that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but nevertheless, it’s fast. I like it. The transfer process was a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bit wonky, but all in all, it worked mostly okay. One of the things that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really love about Apple, just love this is that there are times when there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a spinner. And that’s it. It’s just spinning.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a progress bar. I don’t have any feedback, no sort of log or anything I can look at.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Just nope, just spinning.
⏹️ ▶️ John You should count yourself lucky to have a spinner because the ailment that I see in a lot of Apple’s UIs, they do
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing that I’ve been conditioned by years as a web developer never to do, which is you
⏹️ ▶️ John do something to go to the next step in a process to click a button, tap a link, enter something in a field
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, and before you get to the point where it shows a spinner or any kind of progress,
⏹️ ▶️ John there is this long period of time where all the controls on the screen that you were on are still perfectly
⏹️ ▶️ John active, still sitting there. That button that you pressed, it may have even highlighted when you pressed it. It could be a button that says
⏹️ ▶️ John next, continue, save, update, whatever it is that you think you did, you pressed it,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe if you’re lucky you saw it highlight when you pressed it, and And there’s this period of time where the page is just staring
⏹️ ▶️ John at you going like, yeah, here I am on the screen that you just think you, thought you interacted with, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Nothing on the screen, absolutely nothing. And then six seconds later, oh, a spinner
⏹️ ▶️ John appears. It’s like, that is the worst, because I understand, maybe it’s like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a lag or a server thing or whatever, but like the, because on the web, you’re accustomed to the idea that you
⏹️ ▶️ John are distant from your user, you must provide immediate feedback that says, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t hit, you know, disable the submit button, like cover the screen with something immediately.
⏹️ ▶️ John Client side, let them know that you have successfully performed an operation that
⏹️ ▶️ John we are then going to do something about. You don’t have to click anymore. Don’t try to interact with the screen anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re done with this screen. You have to communicate that immediately, not in a way that requires you to get
⏹️ ▶️ John a response from our server before you do that. I cannot count the number of things I’ve done with Apple, including things like buying
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff or whatever, where you interact with the screen and then it just sits there staring at you looking
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly like it did before you interacted with it. And you’re like, okay, did that
⏹️ ▶️ John work? Should I press it? Oh, a spinner, okay. The worst, the
⏹️ ▶️ John worst Apple. There should be, Apple University, there should be, I know that’s not what the Apple University is about, but there
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco should be an Apple University that
⏹️ ▶️ John reminds people of the basic rules of user interface. Let the user know immediately that they have successfully
⏹️ ▶️ John done the thing and do not let them attempt to do anything else. I’m smart enough not to go back and start
⏹️ ▶️ John stabbing at the screen, but how many people are just like, oh, did that work? Let me press it again, let me press it again.
⏹️ ▶️ John Disable the buttons, cover the screen, put something up immediately. Anyway, rant over.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, so I was at the stage, enter iPad passcode, you know, and it says the passcode you used to unlock this iPad will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also be used to access save passwords and other sensitive data you store in iCloud. So I entered it and the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey next or continue or done whatever button in the upper right hand corner of this like window turned into a spinner
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. I have no idea
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what’s happening. It would be super cool, Apple, if you could give me any amount of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feedback as to whether or not this is progressing. So eventually, I mash down on the lock
⏹️ ▶️ Casey button and it puts up a little alert saying, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, you haven’t done setting up. You haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey finished setting up. What do you want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John to do? How long
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was eventually? I don’t know. I think I had like five minutes maybe. And maybe it was spinning.
⏹️ ▶️ John knows? I feel like the amount of time that you wait an indeterminate spinner is sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s always based on your estimation of how long you think this should take and also
⏹️ ▶️ John Your estimation of the what are the consequences if I interrupt this in the middle and it’s great
⏹️ ▶️ John setting up iPad consequences don’t seem that bad. You haven’t actually done anything yet It’s not filled with your stuff yet or even if you
⏹️ ▶️ John can always redo it So you might have not much patience there But there are other operations or you’re like I’m literally gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John let this sit overnight because if it screws up, you know I’m gonna have a real problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, no, I couldn’t agree more. But please Apple, I know you’re allergic to providing any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sort of, I don’t know, useful friggin’ feedback about what’s going on, but it would be nice if, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, maybe you could give us a little bit of feedback other than it’s spinning.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s spinning. It’s spinning. Like, come on, please. At least you got the spinner.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true. So anyway, so what I ended up doing was shutting it down, restarting it, And to Apple’s credit, everything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey came up. And when I went to settings, it was like, oh, you’re not finished setting up your iPad. Let’s continue where you left off. And
⏹️ ▶️ John by not finished setting up, it means you haven’t signed up for Apple Arcade yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, true. But the most annoying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John thing, and it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco actually did. Just more ads.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So the most annoying thing about it though, in my personal opinion, is TestFlight apps, which maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is like a, this is a it’s fine for Marco Merlin, whatever sort of thing. But TestFlight apps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t do any sort of auto downloading. Like TestFlight itself auto downloads, then you have to go in and like download them all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And on the iPad anyway, it didn’t put them back in the location, the icons back in locations I wanted the icons,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, from the last iPad. I think it might’ve done that properly on the phone, I don’t recall, but that was really frustrating.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’d really like it if Apple could fix that. The time estimated gate for the transfer was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey under-promised and over-delivered, so I was happy about that. It took me about an hour and change, I think, something along those lines.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But all in all, it’s nice. The hover thing is cool. I mean, I don’t know if it’s really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing much for me, but it’s neat that it works and that it, you know, when you’re using the pencils,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like kind of like a pointer, it feels very similar to basically the same in fact, as having
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the point, you know, the mouse pointer or cursor or whatever, the mouse pointer, you know, jiggling around the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screen, which is neat. I like it when you’re writing a note, you can see a little dot for where you’re about to start
⏹️ ▶️ Casey writing in notes. Yeah, I like it. There’s nothing about this that has revolutionized my world
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yet, but I am happy to have a four year newer battery. I’m happy to have a four year less,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, damaged screen, not that I dropped it or anything. It’s just the other one has a lot of scratches. I’m happy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have 5G, so far so good. And I’m genuinely very, very happy that the old accessories
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do indeed, though they’re the ones I care about anyway, do indeed still work with this, which was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a welcome change. I mean, I knew that was supposed to be the case, but it’s not the way it often is. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m pretty happy about that. So, so far I would say, if you’re coming off a 2018 or newer model, eh, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do you want to spend a whole bunch of money or do you not? But if you’re coming off of something older or perhaps not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an iPad Pro, heck yeah, man, go for it. That’s good stuff.
Sponsor: Kolide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are brought to you this week by collide. Collide is an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco endpoint security solution that uses the most powerful untapped resource in IT and users.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When you’re trying to achieve security goals, whether for a third party audit or your own compliance standards, conventional
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wisdom is to treat every device like Fort Knox. Old school device management tools like MDMs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco force disruptive agents onto employee devices that slow performance down and treat privacy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as an afterthought. That way of doing things turns IT admins and end users into enemies of each other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it creates its own security problems because users turn to shadow IT just to do their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco jobs. Collide does things differently. Instead of forcing changes on users,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Collide sends them security recommendations via Slack. Collide will automatically notify your team
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when their devices are insecure and give them step-by-step instructions on how to solve the problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By reaching out to employees via a friendly slack DM and educating them about company policies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco collide can help you build a culture in which everyone contributes to security because everyone understands how and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why to do it. For it admins collide provides a single dashboard lets you monitor the security
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of your entire fleet, whether they’re running on Mac, Windows or Linux. You can see at a glance which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco employees have their disks encrypted, have their OS up to date password manager installed, making it easy to prove
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compliance to your auditors, customers and and leadership. So that’s collide user centered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cross platform endpoint security for teams that slack. You can meet your compliance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco goals by putting users first visit collide.com slash ATP to find
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out how if you follow that link, they’ll hook you up with a goodie bag including a t shirt just for activating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a free trial. That’s collide k o l i d e.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash ATP. Thank you so much to Collide for sponsoring our show.
macOS Ventura
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s talk about Ventura 16.1, iPadOS 16.1, and so on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really, really, really want to talk about stage manager, but let’s save that for a moment. Did you know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey system preferences on Ventura is a hot frigging mess? Oh my God. Why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t anyone say anything about this?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s terrible. I think you mean system settings.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh yeah. Whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, it is bad. doesn’t look good. I don’t think it functions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well. I think there are there are decent bones here and I think it could get better but oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is not good right now. Do not want.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah I’ve only used it briefly. So you know we were saying earlier about how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know the login items thing has changed. There are areas of it that are better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know there is new functionality. There is old functionality that has been that has been improved. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of the ways that you had to give permissions for certain things earlier or like approve kernel extensions, stuff like that. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way in the old system preferences app was a disaster. Anything that had like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lock on the bottom of the screen, you had to like first notice that, unlock it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John You know like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there were so many things about the old settings app, the old system preferences app rather, that were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible and that needed to be improved. And so this is not to say that we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should necessarily, you know, keep it the same forever the way it used to be. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new settings app is just a really cheap and crappy feeling.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey it feels like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco web view. It feels like a non-native app. It feels like something that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we would make fun of. Web views are resizable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh yeah. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it, it just, it does not feel like a high quality app. It does not fit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in with the system at all. It is like all the little dumb little like iOS switches that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have to now control with a mouse awkwardly like Apple has been arguing for years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco touch interfaces and computer like desktop laptop interfaces
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are different and it’s best to design them differently and optimize for their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco respective inputs and and input methods I guess all that logic went out the window because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now they’ve brought over like iOS switch controls and stuff that that make no sense on the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the name of I guess consistency but I I think it’s more like they don’t have any more engineers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco working inside of Apple who know AppKit. And so they’re forced to use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of this like Swift UI. So I don’t know, but whatever it is, they’ve changed this major part
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the Mac. Like the settings app is a major part of the Mac. Alongside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of the good they have done with the additional functionality and the rethinking of some of the crappier areas of the old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system preferences app, alongside of that, they’ve wrapped this all in this pretty terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco UI. Both the technical bones of it, I think are really kind of sloppy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and more importantly, the UI design of it. Technical bugs you can improve over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. The whole UI paradigm and the UI design of it are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just terrible. And they just feel crappy. They don’t feel like you’re using a Mac. It feels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you’re using a Samsung-made web app that’s made to look, or like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Remember when the iPhone first came out and it was the hot thing? People made these WordPress themes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would make your WordPress blog appear like an iPhone app when viewed in mobile Safari. Remember
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those? And they were horrible. Like you’d
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey let you know. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fake table views and the whole rigmarole.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and like fake navigation bars. So it would be like skinned like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an iOS app in your WordPress blog when viewed in mobile Safari back forever ago, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But you’d use it as a user and it just felt like a crappy webpage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version of an iOS interface, not like the real thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like that’s insulting to webpages because if I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco had given this job, hey, we
⏹️ ▶️ John have system preferences, it’s a mess, we need it to be redesigned. Give that to any web designer.
⏹️ ▶️ John They will design something better than this because they’ll understand the job. They’ll know they have to make
⏹️ ▶️ John it responsive, they’ll make it work well in the allotted space. Maybe if you make the window wider,
⏹️ ▶️ John it will, you know, expand into that place. There’s the state of the art of web design could
⏹️ ▶️ John tackle this problem. It is basically an information architecture problem, which is a discipline
⏹️ ▶️ John that maybe by a different name, you know, maybe they call it is under the umbrella of UX these days. But I used to be a big thing
⏹️ ▶️ John back in the early days of the web. And the problem was, oh, we’ve got this big company, we got to make a website. How do
⏹️ ▶️ John we make that? How do we organize that and make it tractable, and able to serve the user’s
⏹️ ▶️ John needs? Because when someone comes to our website, they probably want to accomplish Do they want to find out what the hours of a restaurant
⏹️ ▶️ John is? Do they want to download the menu? Do they want to find out where the locations of our stores are? Do they want to shop for something
⏹️ ▶️ John and buy it? Do they want to find out information about our products? Like, do they want to find a contact address? Like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just information architecture. I’m faced with an entire website for like a big company, web designers would
⏹️ ▶️ John come in and they would figure out how do we organize this information? How do we present it to people in a way that
⏹️ ▶️ John they can navigate it, that they understand where they are, that they can find what they want and accomplish their
⏹️ ▶️ John task. That is a you know, I mean, it’s not the web is not the place where all those disciplines
⏹️ ▶️ John came out But it is the most recent and most closely analogous problem to organizing system settings
⏹️ ▶️ John when I look at this I say any half decent web designer would have done better at this forget about the technologies behind
⏹️ ▶️ John it Well, I think if you did it as a web view would still be nicer than this But what they wouldn’t do is make it a fixed
⏹️ ▶️ John size to pain master detail thing with multiple levels of hidden hierarchy That within each
⏹️ ▶️ John thing pops up additional windows on top of everything that look incredibly janky
⏹️ ▶️ John There are places in this thing where there’s like, you have to know that the little eye in a circle next to something is actually a button that leads
⏹️ ▶️ John you to more settings in a pop-up window that displays over the top of things. And there’s also
⏹️ ▶️ John a button called options and there’s also a little button with three dots on it and a downward facing arrow all
⏹️ ▶️ John on the same screen. What is this? Have they ever seen a computer before? No one on the web would do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John No one would ever put those controls on the web because nobody has any idea what they are. It is such
⏹️ ▶️ John a mess. It makes me so angry. And this is setting aside any bugs. of like, oh, it doesn’t display properly
⏹️ ▶️ John and something is truncated or whatever. This just, I mean, I’m getting angry about this because
⏹️ ▶️ John like during the whole time, it’s like, oh, it’s just a beta, it’ll get better, you’ll see whatever. And I held my tongue, cause let’s see what it looks
⏹️ ▶️ John like. But in the end, the, like you said, Marco, the bones of this thing, they’re wrong,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re bad. And you know, comparing it to the web is like, seriously, this is a web design task.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not that tricky. It’s not as big as a big corporate website, but that’s, it could, it should have been tackled in that way. And when
⏹️ ▶️ John I look at this, I think about Windows, which I have limited experience with, but you know, anyone who’s used
⏹️ ▶️ John Windows had seen the various runs that Microsoft has taken at re-imagining and reorganizing
⏹️ ▶️ John their system settings from Windows 7 to Windows 8 to Windows 10. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not gonna particularly endorse the approaches that they’ve taken, but every single one of those
⏹️ ▶️ John approaches to redesigning settings in Windows is more thoughtful and better
⏹️ ▶️ John executed than system settings in Ventura. And when I’m saying something in Windows was not like,
⏹️ ▶️ John not necessarily better, but more thoughtful and better executed. When I look at settings in Windows 10,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can understand how they arrived at this, how they put their minds together, the meetings
⏹️ ▶️ John they had, they said, here’s what we have to organize, here’s the things that most people do, how can we put that in a UI? And I know
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s working because I have no idea where anything is in Windows and I can navigate it to get my job done. It annoys me because
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it is a wrapper over the real settings that are underneath and you got to click properties to get to the thing you really
⏹️ ▶️ John want down in some UI from 1995, like I’m not endorsing the Windows approach, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John clear that it was better thought out than this. Cause this is like, this strikes me as something where they had
⏹️ ▶️ John too small of a team and not the right people on this team. Because what you needed, not that you needed web designers,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you needed information architects and UI designers. And then secondarily,
⏹️ ▶️ John a very good tech team to actually do the hard work. And I don’t want to describe the tech, and the hard work of actually
⏹️ ▶️ John making a new UI all these very technical things under the covers because they didn’t change all the underlying stuff but
⏹️ ▶️ John they have to put a new UI and all that’s a huge task. They accomplished that task but the
⏹️ ▶️ John UI they put on top looks like an afterthought and it makes me angry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah it’s just it looks bad, it feels bad, it does not look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or feel anything like anything else on the Mac nor should it like nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else on the Mac should look like that. Don’t copy this in your app. Yeah please don’t and and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope this isn’t the direction Apple’s bringing their other apps but but like you know even that’s but that’s an interesting question like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the Apple apps on the platform their preferences windows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look like the old system preferences are they going to go through all of their apps and redo all their preferences
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to look like system settings now I hope not but it’s also weird that they’re different now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I just Apple is so rapidly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco losing the ability to make Mac software. And it’s very concerning for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco company that makes the most and the most important Mac software. Like it’s been a long time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since they made a great Mac app, let’s be honest, but I mean this is another level
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of willfully throwing away the things that make a Mac good. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not to say that you can never update those things and change those things with changing times. You can and you should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they should and they have and and not all the changes have been good, but at least they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have moved the Mac forward over time. But I don’t know how anybody can look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at this and say this is good. The only defenses I’ve ever heard about it were people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who play whataboutism by pointing out flaws in the old system preferences app, which again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those are valid. There are tons of flaws in the old system preferences app that could be made better and should be
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and it could use an overhaul. It needed an overhaul. I’m not saying it’s not an overhaul. It absolutely needs to be overhauled, And
⏹️ ▶️ John all of the things that, any complaint that you hear, like, oh, I can’t find anything, like, there’s always gonna be unfamiliarity when you
⏹️ ▶️ John have an overhaul, but the old one needed an overhaul. It’s just not this overhaul. It needed a better
⏹️ ▶️ John overhaul, an overhaul that was better thought out. In some ways, this, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it constrained itself too much to the old style, in particular, the fixed size window, and just
⏹️ ▶️ John like that, that seems to dictate the whole, like, I can picture in my head the designery, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John dribble style mock-up of like what a real modern system performance would be like. Jason Snell talked about it in
⏹️ ▶️ John a few of his articles. We’ll put links in the show notes of like, imagine if this had been like, even if it had
⏹️ ▶️ John just been as good as a decent iPad port of a phone app where it becomes a three column view or you have an actual
⏹️ ▶️ John hierarchy where things are organized better, where when you get to the leaf nodes, they look reasonably well
⏹️ ▶️ John thought out instead of the weirdest jumble of controls you’ve ever seen in your entire life. I wish I should find the ones with
⏹️ ▶️ John the little I and the like the I and the options button, all the other things like, you look at this and
⏹️ ▶️ John as a Mac user, as a web user, as an iOS user, you have no idea what to control, where it might lead
⏹️ ▶️ John to. I don’t know, I just caused it to crash by clicking around in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco There are some works too, but whatever. Like, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just, it’s baffling to me that the things that are in the detail pane,
⏹️ ▶️ John that they think that is a Mac UI. I don’t know what it is. It’s not even a good webpage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, you’re right. Like, I guess, comparing it to a webpage earlier, and what I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really saying was, it’s like those old iOS themes of WordPress, which were terrible,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like it’s like the Mac UI version of that. Like it’s trying to look like a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco UI, sort of, and also trying to look like an iPad UI, sort of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s doing a terrible job at both of those things, and it ends
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up looking and feeling and working horribly. And it feels like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, like it’s like those old WordPress themes. It feels like, or like, you know, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever have like some crappy Linux window manager thing that tries to theme itself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to look like a Mac. It’s not even that good. It’s worse than those. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a terrible imitation UI. Samsung makes better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco UIs now than that. And Samsung rips off Apple’s style better than that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Why? Like how? How this shipped?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Who approved this? Like how? Okay, have a project in the company to reduce
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the system preferences app. Yeah, it was getting old. But who approved this design
⏹️ ▶️ Marco direction? And who made the call, presumably maybe this spring sometime,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to say we’re going to get this shipped in this release? Because neither of those things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should have happened. This design should never have gotten past initial review, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whoever’s above that, maybe it’s Federighi, should never have said this is ready to ship in this version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the OS. Neither of those like those are two massive failures at probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty high levels in the company again this keeps happening
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I oh what’s going on over there like you know I try to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cut them slack and I and I I try to make sure we always celebrate all the good stuff that’s going out of the going out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the company because there’s a lot of it but man the same problems keep happening like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s going on and is anything are they learning are they trying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get bedroom? Do they even think it’s a problem? I don’t know the answer to any of those is yes.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just put the little screenshot of my little friend that I was describing in
⏹️ ▶️ John our Slack channel if you want to take a look at it. For those at home, if you want to take a look at it, if you have Ventura,
⏹️ ▶️ John go to the network thing. It’s the third item down on the sidebar. Then
⏹️ ▶️ John scroll to the bottom and you get this friendly fellow just peeking at you over there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a three dot drop down?
⏹️ ▶️ John So like, yeah, so what the iOS and the web convention is three dots means like a menu
⏹️ ▶️ John with more stuff and that can’t kind of came from the phone where there’s not a lot of room on the phone and if you want to indicate like there was the
⏹️ ▶️ John Hamburger thing with three lines and variations on that to say there’s a menu but also the three dots It’s a convention we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John familiar with from the phones where space is constrained I am on a 6k display and
⏹️ ▶️ John this window can’t get any bigger than it is and at the very bottom There is three dots and also a downward-facing Chevron
⏹️ ▶️ John and that is not a Mac control I don’t know what that
⏹️ ▶️ John Can you guess what’s under that without clicking on it? It’s the network thing. And you see network and it shows, it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John a linear list of items that are making very poor use of the space, each of which has a chevron on the right, because of course there’s multiple
⏹️ ▶️ John layers of hierarchy in this window that can’t get any wider, right? With no animations between
⏹️ ▶️ John them. And then at the very, very bottom, next to the help question mark, there is three buttons and a chevron. A lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of things in this, you’re helped by knowledge of the old system preferences, because basically
⏹️ ▶️ John look, if you knew something exists in the old system preferences and you’re pretty sure it still exists here, but you don’t see it where you
⏹️ ▶️ John expect, try clicking all the secret buttons. Click all the little eyes, click all the little chevrons, and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John at the very bottom, there’s a thing lurking that has three dots and a downward facing arrow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or maybe there’s an advanced button, or maybe there’s an option button. Or maybe there’s all three of those in a single pane.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cool. Yeah, so system preferences, it’s bad. System
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey settings, not preferences. It’s really annoying me because
⏹️ ▶️ John as we’ve been complaining in Slacks and everything about this, I’m so used to writing sysprefs. It’s the shorter way, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-Y-S space P-R-E-F-S. But I can’t say syssets. P-R-E-F-S. Syssettings.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s like, when I complained about it, it makes me type more. Just, you know, I’m not enjoying it. By the way, that’s one
⏹️ ▶️ John of the most important updates. And when you’re updating a Mac app for Ventura, you gotta change all your preferences menu
⏹️ ▶️ John items to say settings, which I did. They say preferences when you run it on
⏹️ ▶️ John pre-Ventura systems, which is another, you know, you have to be careful to do that. And so you have to change all your help text. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John great writing the help text that says, go to the menu and select settings or preferences. And you have to explain which OS’s
⏹️ ▶️ John those apply to. Every time you mentioned in help text what menu adding people have to go to, you gotta write, do this little dance.
Stage Manager
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know what else is lots of fun? Watching the spectacular ways in which stage manager breaks on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey both iPad and on Mac OS. Again, did anyone, why didn’t anyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say that this is a mess? Because holy frigging crap, this is a mess.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like it’s way more stable on Mac OS. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s more interesting and useful for me anyway on iPad OS, but It is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unusable on iPadOS. Like it is so, so bad. It’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad on iPad. And on the Mac, I don’t care for it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it mostly works. I don’t, I don’t know. It’s like, so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think part of the problem is I’m a devout Spaces user, as we’ve talked about a few times recently. I really like using Spaces.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think Spaces are great. I like having different Spaces, and even in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some cases, like having one or two full screen apps in a space. I am a heavy, heavy spaces user.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is why I could never get away from the magic mouse or now the magic track pad,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I need those gestures, you know, two fingers swipe and the magic mouse, three fingers on the track pad in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey order to go between spaces. It’s just part of how I work. I feel like stage manager
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is like a crappy version of spaces or, and that’s probably unfair
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because maybe it’s a spaces for a different purpose, but from my point of view, it’s like a crappy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey version of spaces. On the Mac, I tend to have one space on the UltraFine,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so on my accessory monitor, I have one space that’s maybe two-thirds Slack and one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey third messages, tiled. So they’re both, they’re not literally full screen, but they’re in full
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screen mode, tiled two-thirds and one-third. And when I have Stage Manager turned on,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey When I swiped to that space, messages, the first party
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app would be black for a beat, and then the UI would show up. Swipe away,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey come back, black. Oh, there it is, which was not annoying at all. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then the multi-monitor support in general on macOS seemed really, really wonky. I don’t know. It just,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it didn’t seem right to me. Things that were happening on the left-hand monitor would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey occasionally affect the right-hand monitor, but then occasionally they wouldn’t. It was super weird. On iPadOS,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forget specifically what I was doing, but I think I was trying to share something in a share sheet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then send it as a text message or an iMessage and type
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into that iMessage and the keyboard was not within the window of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the message window or something like that, or the on-screen keyboard was totally out of whack.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Or maybe- There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of on-screen keyboard bugs in iPadOS 16.1. I thought it was just the betas,
⏹️ ▶️ John but now I’m pretty sure I’m on the release. I removed the beta profile and it says there’s no new updates or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And lots of people have been reporting situations where they’re on their iPad and they’re supposed to be able to use the keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John to enter text into the thing, and it doesn’t work. And some people were saying they would see a flash or it would
⏹️ ▶️ John like appear and disappear. My bug is you put the insertion point in a text field and no
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard appears in any orientation, just none. There’s no way out of it. The only way out of it
⏹️ ▶️ John is to leave the app or restart the iPad, and that’s not great. That’s like, it’s like trying to use
⏹️ ▶️ John your Mac and all of a sudden someone steals your keyboard and won’t give you another one. Because, you know, I suppose I could try to find a Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard to connect to my iPad to enter text, but if I’m in the middle of doing something and the keyboard literally won’t come up, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a pretty frustrating bug in a shipping OS.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So stage manager, all the rumors were true. It’s a mess. System settings,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the rumors were true. It’s a mess.
Shared Photo Libraries
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I haven’t yet tried photos, shared photos, the photo shared library,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever it’s called, the shared photo library thing. I am very keen to try it, but I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gotten around to updating Aaron’s stuff yet. And that’s the whole purpose of this, is for Aaron to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey finally get to see all of the family’s photos in the same way you, John, would finally get to see all the family’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey photos, because I and Tina, or Tina and myself, are the keepers of the official family photo
⏹️ ▶️ Casey albums or photo libraries. So have you been playing with the shared library stuff yet?
⏹️ ▶️ John I certainly have. So first of all, we didn’t mention this, but on Ventura, like the word
⏹️ ▶️ John on the street is that it seems pretty good for an initial release. And as predicted on a past
⏹️ ▶️ John show, I knew I would not be able to like wait the appropriate amount of time to
⏹️ ▶️ John install this OS and start using because I’ve been waited for whatever is a decade and you know, 12 years, whatever for
⏹️ ▶️ John the shared library feature. So I installed Ventura on every single
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac in the house on day one. And I updated
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco all the phones, 16.1. I
⏹️ ▶️ John just went all in. I did massive amounts of backups first, but I went
⏹️ ▶️ John all in because I just, I want this feature and to get the benefit of this feature, you kind of have to update everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John because I didn’t want to like mix and match. And you know, so my experience so far
⏹️ ▶️ John having, it’s Wednesday, I installed Ventura and everything on Monday. everything’s been fine in terms
⏹️ ▶️ John of OS stability, compatibility, or whatever, all the complaints about system settings are like, it’s annoying, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ John things aren’t crashing, didn’t break a bunch of my software. It’s been very stable for me. For whatever that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John worth, three days experience on like five different Macs. I give it a thumbs up. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John did this because I wanted to use the photo shared library. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John I tried to be cautious about it. Like, so the first thing is now that it’s really real installed,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the first time I ever used my real Apple IDs and this whatever, my first decision I had to make was
⏹️ ▶️ John who will create the shared library? Will it be my wife who owns the current real
⏹️ ▶️ John family library or would it be me? I’m not sure what the correct move to do
⏹️ ▶️ John there is, but it’s kind of important because it’s difficult to change your mind on that in the future.
⏹️ ▶️ John Either way, we’re on like an iCloud family plan. We all share like the family. It’s not like a storage thing. We don’t have,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, individual store. I think it’s like all big one family, whatever, it’s the Apple One giant pool of storage thing. So
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s fine. I kind of regret having
⏹️ ▶️ John my wife’s Apple ID on the family library, because that means, as we discussed in the past episodes,
⏹️ ▶️ John I still have to log in as her on my Mac to do stuff, because Shared Photo Library
⏹️ ▶️ John does not share albums or book projects or slideshows or any of the other stuff that I work on. So I have to be
⏹️ ▶️ John in her library to mess with those things, because I’ve got years worth of those things in there, and I make new ones there.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s not like I can be logged into myself. I’m like, well, maybe if I own the shared library
⏹️ ▶️ John for whatever that’s worth, whatever quote unquote owning the shared library even means, maybe I can
⏹️ ▶️ John slowly transition the library to me. But in the end, I wimped out and I said, she’s gonna own the shared library. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure what owning means. Something I read probably on Six Colors from Snell said basically like
⏹️ ▶️ John the storage for photos in a shared library, like the iCloud storage, is attributed to
⏹️ ▶️ John whoever created the shared library. And again, not that it matters storage wise, but I figured I’ll just
⏹️ ▶️ John have her on it. So I created the shared library from her account. And then as I was gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John start cautiously playing with this feature, now that everybody’s updated, and
⏹️ ▶️ John it occurred to me something I hadn’t really thought about before. So my photo library is
⏹️ ▶️ John pushing a terabyte these days. It used to be on a 500 gig drive, it outgrew that, and now it’s pushing a terabyte.
⏹️ ▶️ John And both I and my wife’s Mac, we have four terabyte boot drives. and our four terabyte
⏹️ ▶️ John boot drives pretty much hold all of our stuff plus a complete copy
⏹️ ▶️ John of our photo library, right? And then with some room to spare, right? And I figured, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John if I go through this in my head and I make this shared photo library and I start
⏹️ ▶️ John moving essentially all of the photos for my wife’s, you know, photo library into the shared
⏹️ ▶️ John library, cause that’s the family thing. and I have
⏹️ ▶️ John photos set to download originals, that will mean that on my Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ John where currently if I log in as my wife, she’s got the full photo library with download original set,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll have a second copy of
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco every single one of those
⏹️ ▶️ John photos in my photo library. Because even though they’re the same photos on the
⏹️ ▶️ John cloud side, as far as my Mac is concerned, there are two users, me and my wife, who both have iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ John photo library turned on, who both have the option check to download originals. And it fits when it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John one terabyte of photos in my wife’s account. But when I, because on my Mac, I have a download originals
⏹️ ▶️ John from my photo library too. I think that counts for the shared photo library as well.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m like, I can’t actually fit two copies of my photo library on my Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ John on my boot drive. So I wasn’t sure what to do about that, but I figured, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, my photo library is not really used. Like the only thing that’s in my photo library that’s not in the family library,
⏹️ ▶️ John or things like when I take pictures of receipts or random, you know, things that
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not gonna keep, right? And there’s a lot of those, but pretty much everything else is a copy of in the
⏹️ ▶️ John big library. So I decided the only way I could deal with this is to change the option
⏹️ ▶️ John in photos on my account to be optimized storage instead of download originals. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John was hoping that would allow me not to blow through my storage. So that’s what I did. And then I started
⏹️ ▶️ John moving photos into it. So I went to her computer, you know, because I figured why not, instead of pushing back and forth on accounts on my computer, I
⏹️ ▶️ John went to her computer and I dragged, you know, the recent five
⏹️ ▶️ John or 10 photos into the shared library. And then I looked over at my computer and I saw them appear, I’m like, cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John Then I selected a hundred of them. And I said, you know, move to shared photo library.
⏹️ ▶️ John I got a message about like, some of these photos haven’t been saved. They have to be saved first before you can move them to the shared photo library.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like, what? Saved? They’re saving in the photos app on the Mac? What does that mean? Dalek
⏹️ ▶️ John had a button that said save. I’m like, I guess save? I had never seen that before. I’m testing with
⏹️ ▶️ John the betas. I hit save. Does it mean download? Her library has
⏹️ ▶️ John always been set to download originals. It has never not been set to that. Everything is downloaded. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know what, you know, anyway. So I hit save and then, you know, so the
⏹️ ▶️ John magic of photos on the Mac is, when you do anything, if there is
⏹️ ▶️ John any kind of progress indication, if you’re lucky, there will be one. And if it is there,
⏹️ ▶️ John it is cleverly hidden at the bottom of a large scrolling region. So the sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John detail view on photos is usually scrollable. If you scroll to the very, very bottom of that
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, if you’re lucky, you will see some completely inaccurate progress description there, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the most well-hidden progress indication and it lies and it doesn’t make any sense. And I, you know, I spent a lot of time with
⏹️ ▶️ John FSC usage and OSOF trying to figure out is anything literally doing anything? Like
⏹️ ▶️ John I wanna see, you know, I wanna see file system, system calls flying by and the photo library
⏹️ ▶️ John de-processed to let me know something is happening because that progress bar has not moved in hours. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.
⏹️ ▶️ John So eventually it let me, you know, put like a hundred photos in there. Then I went over and looked at my Mac and I saw the hundred photos appear. I’m like,
⏹️ ▶️ John hmm, all right. And so over the course of a few days, I got bolder and bolder
⏹️ ▶️ John and started selecting larger and larger collections of photos from her
⏹️ ▶️ John library. I had her set to show me just her personal library. I would select photos and I would either right click or click
⏹️ ▶️ John on the image menu and from either the right click context menu or the image menu in Mac photos,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would say move and photos to the shared photo library.
⏹️ ▶️ John As I kept doing that, I eventually got to the point where I was selecting thousands of photos.
⏹️ ▶️ John And once you select thousands of photos, whether you right click or you click the image menu in the menu bar,
⏹️ ▶️ John you get a beach ball. You
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco just got to power through that
⏹️ ▶️ John beach ball. You just have to let it spin for a little while because what it’s basically doing is figuring
⏹️ ▶️ John out, I guess, how many photos you’ve selected and maybe like pre-flighting them to say
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s unsaved changes or, honestly, I don’t know what it’s doing, but it blocks. It blocks
⏹️ ▶️ John hard, it beach balls. Does not mean that it’s broken, but you do have to wait.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then after you wait, be careful that you don’t sort of, you know, mouse off of that menu accidentally
⏹️ ▶️ John because you got to do the beach ball all over again
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey once that thing disappears. You know, it doesn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t redisplay. Yeah. And so I kept doing it in batches. And what you’ll see when I do it
⏹️ ▶️ John in batches is it will show the hidden progress bar, the progress at the bottom, kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John like fruit on the bottom yogurt from Danon. The progress at the bottom, you scroll all the way down there. And what it’ll say
⏹️ ▶️ John is eventually like five or 10 seconds after you perform the command, you’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John see a thing that says, moving 10 photos to shared library,
⏹️ ▶️ John moving 20 photos to shared library, moving through, it’s a number that counts up. It counts up
⏹️ ▶️ John and then eventually it starts counting down. So it’s going to count up to a number that is close to the number of photos you selected
⏹️ ▶️ John and then it will count down. The interesting thing is when you do the move command from the menu, about three seconds
⏹️ ▶️ John later, all of the pictures that you told to move disappear from your view. Oh, cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John They all disappear. You said to move them, right? I think they instantly
⏹️ ▶️ John appear in the shared view, but if you’re just looking at the three views you have is show me my
⏹️ ▶️ John personal library, show me my shared library, show me both. And I’m just in personal library because I’m winnowing
⏹️ ▶️ John down the personal library and it will tell you how many photos are in your personal library. I’m trying to drain that pool, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John they disappear immediately. After they disappear, at the bottom will be a progress thing that counts up and then counts
⏹️ ▶️ John back down. It’s pretty fast. The number tends to go in,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think in increments of like 100 or so, every few seconds. So it’s like, just go someplace else, do
⏹️ ▶️ John something and come back. While I was doing this, had photos running on my Mac and I would see how long
⏹️ ▶️ John does it take between the time they disappear there and the time they appear on my computer and that was pretty fast it was actually shockingly fast
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it was just the thumbnails or whatever but I had it set to download original so I did that over the course
⏹️ ▶️ John of the past few days if you look in the slack channel you’ll see my my end result
⏹️ ▶️ John here the graphic that I just put in this is the message that appears on my wife’s photos application
⏹️ ▶️ John now when you launch it and switch to personal personal
⏹️ ▶️ John library is empty. There are no photos or videos in your personal library. From
⏹️ ▶️ John the little person button in the toolbar, change your library view to the shared library to move photos and videos to the personal
⏹️ ▶️ John library. I drained 155,000 photos and videos out of her personal library and put them into the shared
⏹️ ▶️ John library. And the reason I did this is because
⏹️ ▶️ John as I thought about it, like I did it cautiously in small batches. The biggest batch I did was 30,000 photos.
⏹️ ▶️ John And honestly, I didn’t see much of a difference between doing 30,000 and 10,000. I didn’t have the guts to
⏹️ ▶️ John do any more than that. I tried to do 50,000 at one point, and it told me they were unsaved ones, and I backed away and
⏹️ ▶️ John went for smaller batches. The reason I went all in on this is because I have about 17
⏹️ ▶️ John complete backups of this photo library before Ventura that are all fresh and sitting in drawers and on drives
⏹️ ▶️ John and in Synologies in various places. And if this hoses my library, I want to
⏹️ ▶️ John be able to restore from one of those and not lose anything. So I need to go all in fast. I need to
⏹️ ▶️ John fail fast. Because I don’t wanna, if I did it slowly over the course of months and slowly move stuff in there, what I didn’t wanna
⏹️ ▶️ John find out was three months from now, all the library’s completely hosed and corrupted and you have to restore it from a backup that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like three months old, right? Or you’ve overwritten that backup with the corrupt Ventura backup, you know, in some cases.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m all in. In my library with the both view, it says 185,000 photos and videos.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I have to say that despite the beach
⏹️ ▶️ John balling and everything, shockingly fast. If you count like the amount of minutes it took
⏹️ ▶️ John to move 155,000 things, obviously it’s not moving the data. I know that because
⏹️ ▶️ John for one thing, I have Google Drive running on my wife’s computer that is uploading images or whatever. Google
⏹️ ▶️ John Drive didn’t make a peep during this. It did not see any new, any action going on in the
⏹️ ▶️ John photo library in terms of in the file system. So this process of moving them as you would expect is
⏹️ ▶️ John probably just doing a series of update statements on a SQLite database somewhere, right? it is not actually moving
⏹️ ▶️ John any photos. It’s probably not moving them in the cloud on their cloud storage. And it
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t seem like it’s moving them on my local disk either. If it was touching those photos at all in any way,
⏹️ ▶️ John this would have taken forever. But I moved the entire library in like probably 24 hours-ish
⏹️ ▶️ John like casually doing batches of five, 10, and eventually 20,000. And
⏹️ ▶️ John they appeared on my computer in my library so fast, it was shocking. I don’t even know how it’s doing it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if it’s downloaded them all yet. They appear on my phone as well. So I’m gonna give this
⏹️ ▶️ John feature, again, despite the beach balls and the terrible progress, all of which are pre-existing conditions, as they say in the insurance
⏹️ ▶️ John business, I’m gonna give this a thumbs up. I think it actually works. It didn’t hose my libraries. I never got
⏹️ ▶️ John any errors. There were various points where I had to be very patient, Casey, and wait much more than five seconds
⏹️ ▶️ John or five minutes to see anything. Because sometimes it says like saving or whatever, and it would say like uploading 20
⏹️ ▶️ John photos to iCloud. It’s like, what are you uploading to iCloud? just let it be like that. If you
⏹️ ▶️ John come back 15 minutes later and it still says uploading 20 photos to iCloud, just let it sit. Come back
⏹️ ▶️ John in a half an hour, that message will be gone and it will say moving 10,957 photos to shared library. It
⏹️ ▶️ John will eventually, hopefully get the job done. I have to say, I was surprised at how fast it was. All
⏹️ ▶️ John the testing that I had done with Ventura was with toy libraries with like 100 or so photos in it with fake Apple IDs.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is my real photo library with my real stuff in it and it went pretty fast. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John the one of the weird sort of side effects of having this situation is if
⏹️ ▶️ John I switch my wife’s view to her personal library, it has no photos in it. And because of the way the
⏹️ ▶️ John photos app works, like all the albums in the sidebar, they show you a little thumbnail.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, like a pixel, like I say you have an album with 50 pictures in it. It picks one of the pictures from the album and makes that the thumbnail.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know why it does that. They’re so small, you can’t see them anyway, right? But when you switch to personal library and there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing in the personal library, all of those thumbnails disappear. And we’re like, oh my God, did it erase all
⏹️ ▶️ John my albums? No, but when you’re in personal library view, if you click on that album, there’s nothing in it
⏹️ ▶️ John because your view is my personal library only and there’s nothing in the personal library. So when you click
⏹️ ▶️ John on any of your albums, like, oh my God, my albums, they’re all empty. There’s nothing in them, it’s all gone. You just switch to show either shared
⏹️ ▶️ John library or both and they come back. And doing that, switching those modes
⏹️ ▶️ John is very fast, but it also affects the sidebar, which I think is super weird. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John I know I switched to personal view, but the fact that it makes the whole sidebar flicker and change the icons, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t make me think all the photos are gone just because the right-hand side view is filtered.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can leave the thumbnails on, everything’s fine. Like it freaked me out in the beginning. I actually took screenshots of them, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John is it changing something? It’s not changing anything. It’s just your view of the system. So again, this is in my wife’s library.
⏹️ ▶️ John The albums are not shared as part of the shared library, but I’m logged in as my wife. Just, I’m just going to keep it on the both
⏹️ ▶️ John view, I suppose. And the final thing is you have the option of like, should it suggest to you
⏹️ ▶️ John when you should add stuff? You know, if you add things, if you’re with somebody else, or if you’re at your home, there’s a bunch of these options.
⏹️ ▶️ John Surprisingly, one of the options is not, as far as I can tell, the option to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, everything I take a picture of with my phone, put it in the shared library. That is not one of the options.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think there’s any way to do that, which is kind of disappointing, because that would be a nice option to have. But either way, once I found out that
⏹️ ▶️ John wasn’t an option, I said, I’ll just put it on manual. Because now what I’ll do instead of connecting
⏹️ ▶️ John my phone to my wife’s computer, using image capture to take things off of it because the photos application cannot
⏹️ ▶️ John handle how many photos are on my phone. I have to use image capture like Casey, like an animal.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, slow down, slow down. That’s not what I do. I used to do that like a year ago. What
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do now is I make a temporary bespoke photos library. You know, I do the like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what is it? Hold option and double click on the photos icon. Make a new library, do the import
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there and then immediately export to disk, and then I use image
⏹️ ▶️ Casey capture just for deletions purposes. Oh my
⏹️ ▶️ John God. The only reason I’m using image capture is because the photos lost the ability to correctly
⏹️ ▶️ John show the photos on my phone for whatever reason. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco use image capture
⏹️ ▶️ John to pull them. And the tricky part is knowing I have a smart folder that says like John’s phone
⏹️ ▶️ John that lets me know what is the last photo I imported from my camera? Because that lets me know which
⏹️ ▶️ John ones I have to pull now, right, like based on the timestamp and everything. It’s not to do any of that anymore. Now
⏹️ ▶️ John I just go look at my personal library and if there’s anything in my personal library that’s not in the shared library,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just in the personal library view, I just select the images that I want and I right click them and say move. And doing that
⏹️ ▶️ John for batches that are not 10,000 or 30,000 photos is actually pretty fast. And so that will be my new workflow.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll just manually move them over when I need to. Same thing with my wife’s thing. She has an empty personal library. As she fills that
⏹️ ▶️ John up, it’s real easy to go to personal library, select all, right click, move to shared photo library. Again, doing it
⏹️ ▶️ John with sane numbers of photos, really fast. Not, you know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John hopefully not gonna be a problem. So that’s my plan for the workflow. I don’t have a solution to the deduping situation.
⏹️ ▶️ John Ideally, you’d be able to do what I used to do with iTunes, which was never recommended, but I
⏹️ ▶️ John did it for years and it was fun. I used to have my iTunes music library in users shared music, users
⏹️ ▶️ John slash shared slash music, because the user shared director on macOS people don’t know, is a
⏹️ ▶️ John directory that comes with default permissions such that more than one user on the system can read from it, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John You have to mess with the permissions to actually make it read-writable by multiple people, but you can, you can use group permissions, blah, blah,
⏹️ ▶️ John blah. And I’d have my whole iTunes library there. So I could have multiple accounts pointing to the same iTunes library with only one
⏹️ ▶️ John copy of the music on the disc. This is back when my music collection was one of the bigger things on my disc, the good old days.
⏹️ ▶️ John Probably still true of Marco. But it would be nice if you could do that with photos, because
⏹️ ▶️ John if I wanted my photo library to not be optimized storage, but to be download originals, I would have two copies of
⏹️ ▶️ John every single photo. And that would be two terabytes of photos instead of one. And that is not insignificant. I
⏹️ ▶️ John would love it to be able to tell photos, hey, you know how these photos are the same in the storage backend,
⏹️ ▶️ John like in the cloud? You can make them the same on Mac too, but the permissions model really does not lend
⏹️ ▶️ John itself a lot of that. And it would be additional complexity and I kind of understand why they didn’t do it, especially in a version one. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna be all optimized storage over here. And my wife’s count as always will be download originals.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our sponsors this week, memberful, collide, and backblaze. And thanks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to our members who support us directly. You can join atp.fm slash join. And don’t forget
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you join you get a 15% off code for our ATP store right now. So don’t forget all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. And do forget to cancel at the end of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you everybody for listening. and we will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to begin Cause it was accidental, oh it was
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental John didn’t do any research, Marco and
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey wouldn’t let him Cause it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental And you can
⏹️ ▶️ John find the show notes at atp.fm And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-E-R
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean to So accidental. Tech Podcasts. I’ve been
Joanna Stern interviewed C-Fed, Joz
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We are not going to have the time to talk about all this ad-related kerfuffle in the App Store, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we will probably get to next week. But I did want to briefly talk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The good news, by the way, is that the ad thing is on fire right now, and Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco issuing statements and pausing things and everything. So it’s good that we’re going to save it for next week, because by the time next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week comes, it will probably be pretty different. And until then,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we can just kind of watch the fire burn.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, by next week, Elon Musk will own Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, God. Can we not? Oh, we’re never doing that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, Joanna Stern, whose coverage I really, really tend to like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did an interview with Federici and Joswiak, I guess in the last 48-ish hours.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this was posted over at the Wall Street Journal. And we’ll put a link in the show notes. The video
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is something like 35 minutes. And other than being extremely quiet, I don’t know if you guys noticed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, but the audio mix is very, very quiet, which was a little annoying. I use voice boost. Ah, imagine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. No, I thought the interview was okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, even though I really, really like Joanna Stern a lot, but I don’t think she set
⏹️ ▶️ Casey herself up for success with some of the things she asked because they could clearly be interpreted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as, tell me about what you’re gonna do in the future. Even if that’s not what she meant, it could have been interpreted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that way. And you know, if an Apple executive could interpret a question as, tell me what you’re doing in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the future, they’re going to clam up immediately, which is exactly what Jaws and Federici did. Sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I felt like they dodged questions. Actually, oftentimes I felt like they had dodged questions that they really didn’t need to dodge.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like at the end, I think it was the end. She said something like, what do you wish, I forget exactly what it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was, but like, what do you wish computers did that they don’t? And they were like, wow, and then that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey telling you about your future, our future plans, me, me, me. And it was, I don’t know, they were kind of being
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I think they
⏹️ ▶️ John should have dodged that one because there’s no way they can give an honest answer that and not reveal future Apple plans,
⏹️ ▶️ John which I think was the point of the question.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I disagree. I think if you look 10, 20, 30, 40 years out, you can talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey plenty of things that you might want a computer to do. That is no, that is not even a fart in the wind right now.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the cover. So when you’re talking to big wig Apple people, part of it is the
⏹️ ▶️ John experience with these specific big wig Apple people to know what things they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John answer and what things they want and what what things not to waste your time on. And that only comes from just like, seeing
⏹️ ▶️ John a million of these interviews, right? It’s still difficult to know on the day. But the other thing is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John talking to these people about anything, like literally anything they say is gonna end up in some clickbaity headline.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I feel for them. Like just look at the headlines that came out of this story. It is basically impossible for
⏹️ ▶️ John them to, again, an honest answer about like, 50 years in the future, I
⏹️ ▶️ John wish my computer would do this fantastical thing that Apple really isn’t actually working on. It’s not a glimmer in anyone’s
⏹️ ▶️ John eye an apple, but this is an idea. And the stories the next day would be apple planting on a holographic cube
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco whatever the hell they talk about.
⏹️ ▶️ John There is no way to give an honest answer and not get destroyed with the ridiculous headlines
⏹️ ▶️ John because they’re apple. So that’s why they’re so cagey and cranky because it’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s kind of like, they’ve just been burned so many times. And I think if you look at what they did in this
⏹️ ▶️ John interview, the main complaint that I think you’ve had, Casey, and other people had is like, that they didn’t seem to answer a lot of questions, they dodged stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And despite that, there are still ridiculous stories today that make huge logical
⏹️ ▶️ John leaps and mischaracterize what was said by the people. So it’s a rough situation for everybody. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a rough situation for the interviewer. And as the interviewee, it’s hard to be a good interviewee when
⏹️ ▶️ John you know no matter how little you say, it’s going to get misinterpreted.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree with all of that. But I don’t know. I think if you look at the Gruber
⏹️ ▶️ Casey interviews, oftentimes of these same two men, I think John does a far
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better job of riding the line of what are they willing or perhaps even excited to answer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and what are they just going to clam up and say, uh-uh. And I don’t think Joanna Stern did a particularly good job
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John of that. And— He’s
⏹️ ▶️ John better at it because he has much more experience and he knows Apple more and has been on the beat for longer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it’s kind of not a fair comparison. But
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I think Joanna—
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I would also say that they have very different goals and very different audiences, too. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, it’s not like, you know, Joanna Stern wasn’t doing an interview for for Daring Fireball readers and listeners.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like she was doing it for her audience, which is extremely different over at the Wall Street Journal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compared to our little nerdsphere here. And I think she has quite a lot of experience in this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco area and I think she knew exactly what she was doing, but that’s the kind of question that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco her audience wants her to ask.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe. I mean, people think they want you to ask that, but when you see the non-answers that they give, it’s like, was that a constructive use
⏹️ ▶️ John of time? Like I think the audience that wants it is also not satisfied because they didn’t get the answers. Lots of, you know, anytime
⏹️ ▶️ John you watch an interview with the easiest thing to do in an audience as an audience member, and I do it all the time, especially on subjects I know a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John about like Apple, is say, here’s the follow-up question I would have asked and why didn’t you ask it, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And there are many instances where that happened. Like the one that rang out the strongest for me was
⏹️ ▶️ John when they asked, I think it was asking Federighi about app tracking transparency and how like
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ve hurt your competitors and now you’re doing advertising and whatever. And Federighi gave this long
⏹️ ▶️ John answer that was like, when we were, you know, the reason we do all this privacy stuff, when, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John my team gets together, like, it’s the privacy team that is rolling this out. It is not, you know, we’re not doing
⏹️ ▶️ John this to make so we can make more service revenue. Like it’s a it’s a technology team, and we are focused
⏹️ ▶️ John on privacy for its own merits. And we have been for years and years, this is not a new thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And this specific project you’re talking about, was run by initiated by and brought to completion
⏹️ ▶️ John by the privacy team that is interested in privacy for all the the altruistic privacy reasons. So when
⏹️ ▶️ John I, Craig Federighi, read stories that Apple, the only reason Apple did that, uptracking transparency, is to screw Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ John and then so they can make the money on advertising. It’s ridiculous, because I know that’s not true, because I’m in charge of the software
⏹️ ▶️ John org and I know exactly how this feature came to be. And it sounds like a convincing answer. You can see his passion saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not twisting my mustache and saying, we’re going to be super evil and we’re going to go as Adderoo. This is driven
⏹️ ▶️ John by the privacy team and we care about privacy. I 100% believe that, right? The follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ John question is, you’re the head of software though. Apple is a big company.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s a team that’s responsible for running an ad business. They don’t work for you,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they are in the same company. And when that part of the company looks at the big picture, they say,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re doing all this privacy stuff. You know what? That gives us an advantage in advertising.
⏹️ ▶️ John You didn’t do it to help the advertising people, but they’re part of the same company and they sure as heck
⏹️ ▶️ John know what the consequences are going to be of app tracking transparency because it’s their job
⏹️ ▶️ John to make money from ads. And they are also part of Apple. So when someone says
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is rubbing their hands together at Facebook getting screwed because now they can make more ad revenue. No Craig
⏹️ ▶️ John Federighi and the privacy team. That’s not your motivation. But there’s a whole other part of the company
⏹️ ▶️ John whose job it is to make money from ads. And they know and understand and take advantage of all of this. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I when Federighi gets indignant, I can he can get indignant for himself and say, Don’t blame
⏹️ ▶️ John me, Craig Federighi for this, because I didn’t do a nasty thing. But it sounds like he’s defending Apple. And it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple writ large, sure as heck knows how this is going to impact Facebook, and is
⏹️ ▶️ John capitalizing on it. And you can’t like, wash your hands of it departmentally.
⏹️ ▶️ John And therefore say, you know, again, the follow up would be more, more, more concisely
⏹️ ▶️ John phrased. And that was like, Okay, that’s you. But what about the advertising team? What would they say if they over here and then
⏹️ ▶️ John you would have said, well, they’re not here. I’m here and I’m telling you what I think about it. Then I would say, well, Apple is bigger than
⏹️ ▶️ John just you. And then we move on to the next question, which is why interviews are hard. But anyway, I, it’s very easy
⏹️ ▶️ John to second guess what people say and what followups they do and don’t provide. But that’s just the nature of armchair
⏹️ ▶️ John quarterbacking. You’re like, yeah, I wouldn’t have thrown that pass or I would have, uh, I would have not done a running play in that scenario,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s easy to say while you sit on the couch eating your chips.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is true. But I think I’m selling Joanna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey short here. I think her choices of questions were not stellar, but I still think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Federighi and Joswiak stonewalled in times where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really don’t think it was necessary. And that’s just my opinion. But nevertheless, one of the few times that we actually got
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something interesting out of them was a discussion with regard to lightning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey versus USBC. And in so many words, why are you still bothering? Why are you still clinging to lightning?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why is this still a thing? And it was an interesting conversation that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lasted, you know, a couple of minutes long, particularly Jaws doing most of the talking. And there were a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of quotes that I wanted to call out from that. First of all, he said, the approach would have been better environmentally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like if we had stuck with light or if we can stick with lightning, and it would be better for our governments not to be so prescriptive,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I think both of those things are actually true. So even as someone who would like USB-C on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey his iPhone, I think it is probably environmentally better, potentially environmentally better, not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have a gazillion billions of lightning cables suddenly become obsolete.
⏹️ ▶️ John But debatable because the environmental advantage of USB-C is the sharing of infrastructure
⏹️ ▶️ John between devices that are not Apple devices and all the other devices in the world that are going to USB-C. So
⏹️ ▶️ John he has some point, but I really don’t think that the environmental angle is why they have stuck with lightning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Oh, certainly not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I think that’s an excuse, not the reason. I mean, because the environmental argument, while there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is some merit that like, okay, well, if they do change over to USBC, a whole bunch of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lightning cables over the next few years will go into the trash, that’s true. However, first of all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a large number of them would have gone to the trash during that same time period anyway because they are, as John said earlier, wear items.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But also, if we project outwards, like, okay, well, in the next X years, if we don’t switch,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just more and more and more lightning cables that are going to keep being produced, keep being bought,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep being potentially lost or wasted or whatever. Whereas if we switch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, then yeah, it’s temporarily painful, but over the long term, I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clearly better to reduce e-waste and better for the environment to not have these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two ongoing standards go indefinitely into the future. It’s way better and cleaner and more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco efficient and lots of different mechanisms to have one type of cable that you can use for everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and ignoring USB-C’s many asterisks on that but there’s one type of cable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can pretty much use for charging anything at least although
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you ever have one of those devices that it has a USB-C hole to accept power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it doesn’t support USB PD and so it’s oftentimes little cheap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things and so you have to you have to use one of those those like USB-A to C cables
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and plug it into a USB-A charger. But anyway, of course that exists, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, the environmental angle here is a good talking point, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn’t hold up to much critical thought and scrutiny. And I think, again, they are correct.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is a large installed base, and those cables are going to be thrown away in a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years. that that was going to happen anyway for most of them. And also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going forward, it’s better to rip the band-aid off now, have that short-term
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pain now, because it will make a better future.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, the shared infrastructure argument, I think you’d have to do the math on that to figure out how long it would take to make
⏹️ ▶️ John up for the sudden burst of truck lightning stuff. But I mean, to be fair to Joss, he didn’t lean
⏹️ ▶️ John on that too much. He threw it in as the talking point, but it’s not like he was using that as an excuse. I mean, he basically made the same
⏹️ ▶️ John arguments that we made when we’ve talked about this, which I I still believe is like having governments prescribe these specific technical
⏹️ ▶️ John solution is not something that has a good history of fostering innovation, let’s say.
⏹️ ▶️ John And in this case, it’s kind of Apple’s own fault for coming to this because I still truly believe
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple would eventually have either gone to USBC or gone to no wires
⏹️ ▶️ John at all on their own, but the timeline they were doing it on was not fast enough for the rest of the world. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so it’s like so many things with Apple, they were stubborn and took a little bit too long
⏹️ ▶️ John and ended up triggering an even worse government action that I don’t particularly agree with for reasons that we discussed on the last
⏹️ ▶️ John show. But in the end, the world will be a better place when Apple goes to USBC and everything, and Apple, it’s your
⏹️ ▶️ John own stupid fault for forcing it. So Jaws gave the exact same arguments that I think we all gave about, it’s not great for
⏹️ ▶️ John the government to dictate the technical specifics. And it’s clear that Apple does not want to be told
⏹️ ▶️ John to do this. And I think one of the most common clickbait headlines in this is,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, Jaws, yeah, Jaws React says that Apple is going to USBC, confirm
⏹️ ▶️ John the next iPhone will have USBC. He didn’t say that at all. Like, you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John listen to Apple people. Said, of course we will have to comply. There, as we’ve discussed, there are many ways that you
⏹️ ▶️ John can comply with that law. First of all, it doesn’t go into effect until 2024 or whatever, someone was saying in the chat
⏹️ ▶️ John room that it went through the past, the final hurdle. So it is really the law of the land. But as we discussed on a
⏹️ ▶️ John past show, with the timelines the way they are, it might be the 2024 iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John that has these changes in it. And second of all, you can comply by just getting rid of lightning and not replacing it with anything. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John also compliant. So headlines that confidently declare that Apple has confirmed that the next
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone will have USB-C, assumes facts, not evidence,
⏹️ ▶️ John as they say in court, right? And I think it probably will have USB-C, like the timelines
⏹️ ▶️ John look like the iPhone 15-ish or whatever. Again, thumbs up, USB-C iPhones, we’re all for it. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John good or whatever. But Apple doesn’t like to be forced to do things. And I don’t think either
⏹️ ▶️ John one of them gave up any information that didn’t already exist. Like, what are they going to say? Apple plans
⏹️ ▶️ John to break the law? I mean, I know that’s a common approach in the country these days, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John still not the move that Apple goes to. So yeah, they’re going to comply.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, but I also thought it was interesting Jaws’ response, which was in full.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Or I’m sorry, later on, I think she was talking about, or Joanna was asking, well, when,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Joss said the Europeans are dictating timing for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey European customers. I’m emphasizing this, not he, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that there, there is a reading of what he said that yes, Europeans
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will get SIM trays and USB-C where Americans or, you know, other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey areas of the world will stick with lightning because tough noogies. I’m not saying that is what’s going to happen, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is a way you could read this conversation.
⏹️ ▶️ John There are many ways to comply that do not conform to the fantastical headline that next
⏹️ ▶️ John year’s iPhone is gonna be USB-C for the entire world.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. I just thought that was fascinating. The rest of the talk was fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, for the record, I think something like that, they probably wouldn’t do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like an EU version of the iPhone that had USB-C maybe, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as discussed in a previous episode, like just somehow gets rid of or disables the lightning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco port. I don’t think they would do that. Like I think they would,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, you know, Jaws was reflecting the correct
⏹️ ▶️ Marco attitude for Apple’s thought on this, which is very clearly like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they really don’t like being told what to do by a government with their products. Like they really don’t like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the combination of Apple kind of spitefully, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco responding to that kind of thing, and also Jaws’ just personality, like his built-in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco attitude, which I think many people find quite a bit more off-putting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than he would probably like, or than Apple would probably like. But anyway, I think that’s just Jaws.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s also just Apple. Their attitude towards this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically, screw you. the same way their attitude towards all the various like, you know, App Store regulations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are going on in different countries and everything. You know, they don’t want to be told what to do, and they’re going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be quite spiteful about it. Even if, you know, the whole thing about, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cutting off your nose, spite your face, whatever, it’s like when a kid gets mad at you, and does something totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco against their own self-interest, just because they’re mad at you, you know? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s how Apple responds to being told what to do in ways they don’t appreciate,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s not being spiteful though. They’re grumbling about it, but they are going to do the thing. And I think, honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they’ll do the simpler thing, which is just USB-C everywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Probably. If
⏹️ ▶️ John they were doing the spiteful thing, what they would do is make their phones, they would do the thing with like a LED lighting
⏹️ ▶️ John port, but put a sticker over it. Like make their phones awkward and worse for everybody and confusing for the whole world. Like that would be the spiteful
⏹️ ▶️ John one. Cause that would hurt Apple, right? They would be cutting off their iPhone nose to spite their face, right? But they are
⏹️ ▶️ John annoyed about it. Oh, and speaking of attitude, Federighi had a, this is one of my favorite parts that
⏹️ ▶️ John Joanna read the one of the emails that was part of one of the
⏹️ ▶️ John probably the epic case or whatever. And it was a Federighi email. It was the email thread where they were discussing
⏹️ ▶️ John if iMessage on Android made sense. And Federighi had said something to the effect that
⏹️ ▶️ John he said, I’m worried that if we put iMessage on Android, all that’s going to do is remove one
⏹️ ▶️ John more barrier to parents getting their kids cheap Android phones,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? That essentially like we have some amount of market lock-in with iMessage because if a family
⏹️ ▶️ John wants to be able to message each other with a uniform interface with blue bubbles everywhere, they gotta get their kids’ iPhones. If we
⏹️ ▶️ John put iMessage on Android, isn’t that gonna knock that thing down? And Joanna
⏹️ ▶️ John asked him about that. And you could see like the, one of the
⏹️ ▶️ John rare times that you see the permeable barrier between
⏹️ ▶️ John public CFED public CFED and inside Apple CFED. If you look at the emails, inside Apple CFED
⏹️ ▶️ John and inside Apple other people, they say all the things that we say on these podcasts. They don’t say it in public, but they say
⏹️ ▶️ John it in their internal emails because they’re not dumb. Like we all know, like the discussions you have about like the pros and cons of iMessage and
⏹️ ▶️ John Android. What are they? We’ll just say them out loud on a podcast because we don’t work for Apple. But Apple executives
⏹️ ▶️ John never say it in public, but when they talk amongst themselves, they do say it. So here’s an obvious point made by executive inside, but because
⏹️ ▶️ John this is outside CFED and he is in a public interview, he didn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John address the substance of that thing. Like, hey, here’s an email that shows that you know
⏹️ ▶️ John that iMessage is a lock-in and that you’re saying one of the cons for us putting an iMessage on Android
⏹️ ▶️ John is that it’ll reduce that lock-in. Instead, he just gave a question, it’s like, oh, we didn’t feel like Apple could do anything great in the Android space, basically
⏹️ ▶️ John saying that we didn’t think we could, we’re in a position to be as big as WhatsApp and if we can’t do that,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s only really downsides. But he never really addressed this specific point of part
⏹️ ▶️ John of the reason Apple does what it does is because iMessage is a form of lock-in. Everybody knows that. It’s an obvious
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. It’s not like, oh, Apple admits. Like, everybody knows it’s lock-in. It’s obvious to anybody who knows anything
⏹️ ▶️ John about the technology market, but still, Apple executives, with their friendly face on, will not
⏹️ ▶️ John acknowledge the obvious truth that we all know. Because they know we know it, and I know they know it, and it’s like, it’s the unspoken
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Joanna tried to make him speak it, and he wouldn’t. He would just say, we didn’t feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like we could, and he said it in a roundabout way, we didn’t feel like we could essentially become the dominant messaging platform
⏹️ ▶️ John in any market. And so therefore, that upside didn’t exist. And then there are all these downsides,
⏹️ ▶️ John one of which you read. He didn’t even really say that. So I give her kudos for trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to get him to address that, because most of the time, CFED will be honest and give his real opinion. But here you could
⏹️ ▶️ John totally see him cordoning off the part of his brain that he employs to do basic strategic
⏹️ ▶️ John analysis of the competitive landscape inside Apple. That part is not allowed out when he’s
⏹️ ▶️ John doing a public interview for The Wall Street Journal.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, it’s probably worth half an hour of your time, but I wish
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was different. What are you going to do? I think Craig needs a haircut