541: Make a Little Maze
29 Jun 2023Varifocal displays, Reddit and Apollo, modular laptops, camera bags, and the emotional roller-coaster of owning AirPods.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: 🗣️ New Member’s Special Just Dropped 🗣️
- Follow-up:
- With regard to the “real-time OS” and the roles of the R1
- Vision Pro and vision
- Vision Pro limits
- Conflicting opinions about Safelite (via Allan Davis & anonymous)
- On fixing a bug for one developer (via Gui Rambo)
- SwiftUI for the Mac (via Gui Rambo & Clarko)
- Solid-state cooling (via Alex)
- Apollo’s shutdown approach
#askatp:- What do we think about the Framework laptop? (via David Hadley)
- How do the photo permissions in iOS really work? (via Zach Frechette)
- How do we carry our cameras? (via Stephen Collins)
Sponsored by:
- Meh: Daily deals & community for the cynical consumer.
Become a member for ad-free episodes and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- ATP Tier List: Every iPhone
- What’s in the R1 chip
- VAC & varifocal displays
- Vision Pro movement limits
- Follow-up: Windshield replacements
- Follow-up: Bugfix for one developer
- SwiftUI Mac control styles
- AirJet cooling in a mini-PC
- Sponsor: Meh
- Reddit, Apollo, and the App Store
- ATP Membership
- #askatp: Modular laptops
- #askatp: Photo-library app access
- #askatp: Camera bags
- Ending theme
- John’s AirPods
ATP Tier List: Every iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have some news for those of you who are members, our beloved members.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you’re not a member, you can go to http.fm slash join. We have released another member special.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would call this monthly, but we’re not terribly good about being consistent about that, but our roughly monthly member
⏹️ ▶️ Casey special. Our sometimes member specials. Our sometimes member specials that we do accidentally. Ding.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, anyway, so we did a tier list and we discussed this on the episode, but John, would you give
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us a brief overview of what a tier list is and what it is that we were ranking.
⏹️ ▶️ John We were supposed to have links in the show notes to explain what that is and now we do, so good news. Of course, you can only see the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes if you’re a member. But anyway, it’s a tier list in the style of, from video game culture that has spread
⏹️ ▶️ John elsewhere. You put things into different ranks, usually with like letter grades, where A, B, C, D,
⏹️ ▶️ John E, or A, B, C, D, E. Sometimes you have E.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where. Oh God, let me tell you, by the way, for whatever, it’s just a little side note here. You know, so my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kids in school and we get the elementary school report cards. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have you seen a recent elementary school report card? And do the grades make any sense to you?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I think Declan’s on letters now, but I believe in kindergarten and first grade, it was like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one through four or something like that. It was very unusual.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So our report card, first of all, it’s in trimesters, not semesters or quarters, because why be normal?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we have these three columns, and within this, not only on the same side,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But even like within the same section of it, they alternate, they seemingly switch between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a letter system that is not ABCDF. They even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use like C is one of the letters used, but it’s it’s good. It’s not like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it’s very confusing and then within the same section, they’ll use numbers for certain things. But it’s not even one, two,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three. It’s like four, five, six. Like it it’s I swear I don’t understand like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every time we get a report card. It’s it’s like alright, So here’s music. How’d you do music?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, you got a four, an R, and a tomato. OK, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know what this means. Anyway, so yes, tier lists.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They make more sense than school report cards these days.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’ll see that when you get to high school and start approaching college stuff, you’ll also find out that
⏹️ ▶️ John high schools across this great country of ours also have no consistency and are completely wild.
⏹️ ▶️ John So pity the poor college admissions people have to somehow make sense of what these things mean
⏹️ ▶️ John on their transcripts. Anyway, tier lists, we’ll put the links in these show notes. I’ll make sure
⏹️ ▶️ John we get them into the regular show notes here. There’s a Wikipedia page on it and there’s a Know Your Meme page. Apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John has origins in fighting games. And as you would imagine, A is good, it’s better
⏹️ ▶️ John than B and C. But there’s also an S tier, which is above A. Sometimes they do pluses and minuses, like S plus
⏹️ ▶️ John S minus, A plus A minus. Anyway, we did a very traditional one with S at the top and then A
⏹️ ▶️ John through D and then F for failing. And what did we rank? Every iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John that has been released at the time of recording. Indeed. Not counting color variants or size variants, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know what I mean? No, no, well, no, size variants we did. No, I mean like, uh, storage size. Oh, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. And that actually did come up in some, I’m not going to spoil it for people, but one of the phones, one of the complaints people
⏹️ ▶️ John had who listened to the episode about the phones is like, yeah, I kind of agree with your rating of the phone, except if you consider that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple sold it with way too little storage for too long, Which we didn’t consider, but you know, it’s hard to factor that in. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John we ranked the iPhones, and there’s actually a video version if you want to see the tier
⏹️ ▶️ John list as we drag things up into it, because that’s how it works. The tier list starts empty, and you grab something and
⏹️ ▶️ John you say, where does this go? Is this an A, is it a B, is it a C, is it an S? And you drag it in there, and then you start laying the
⏹️ ▶️ John things in until it’s entirely filled, and you can watch that beautiful process happen with a
⏹️ ▶️ John link that is in the show notes. But you can only get to those show notes if you are a member, go to atp.fm slash
⏹️ ▶️ John join if you want to see us rank phones. And by the way, we thought, oh, it’s a tier list. How many phones are there? There’s not that many phones. We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John just chuck them in the grid and we’ll be done. You’ll be shocked to know that it took us a really long time because we argued about a lot of phones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Us? No. Also, there are more phones than you think. Like, you know, because at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s like one phone a year. And then as you get into more recent years, it’s like, oh, they released four
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phones every year for like the last four or five years. There’s a lot of options, it turns out. Yep,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it turns out. But it took us something like 90 minutes, give or take a little bit. It was a lot of fun. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost murdered my co-hosts, I don’t know, only three or four times. So I consider that a personal and moral victory.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So yeah, it went well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say, if you think we occasionally argue about something in the regular show, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rate of argument per minute was way higher in this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than it is in a regular show.
⏹️ ▶️ John We take our work very seriously. We’re not just gonna chuck these things up into the grid and go, okay, whatever, just chuck it in there. Any place
⏹️ ▶️ John is fine. No, we wanted to get it right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And chances are, whatever you think about the iPhones, chances are you will agree that we didn’t get it right. Because nobody will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that we got everything right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John There’s too many
⏹️ ▶️ John variables. The odds of you matching us exactly are slim. We don’t even think we got it right, because
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco couldn’t agree. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John but we had to come to a consensus. We had to come to an often grudging consensus, which is different
⏹️ ▶️ John than us doing it individually. We had to be beaten down into giving up. No
⏹️ ▶️ John People will see what they see.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so as we said before, atp.fm slash join. It was a lot of fun.
What’s in the R1 chip
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do some follow-up. This is from Anonymous with regard to the R1
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chip. Anonymous writes, in a past episode, Marco speculated about the R1 chip running a real-time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey OS. The R1 chip does not have any significant amounts of CPU computational
⏹️ ▶️ Casey resources. The R1 contains a SEP or secure enclave processor,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some very small simple in-order CPU cores to handle DMAing the sensor data directly into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the M2, camera ISPs or image signal processors, MIPI or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mobile industry processor interface, a standardized interface for connecting peripherals and sensors, a display
⏹️ ▶️ Casey image warping engine, and a couple of leap audio DSP engines like the AirPods have.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The real-time stuff mentioned in the WWDC keynote is in addition to the… how do you pronounce this? Is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it XNU? Is it Schnew? I don’t know. The XNU, Darwin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Kernel Scheduler. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, a Darwin kernel scheduler on an M2.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What we’ve heard about here and there, and what they, I believe, went into even in the State of the Union about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Vision OS and how it’s broken up, is that modern Apple ARM chips
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have the ability to run multiple OSs in parallel. And I don’t know whether it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco technically virtualization or some other technique, but it’s something like that at least. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the things that it is running is a real-time OS alongside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Vision OS main core or…
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not what this feedback is saying. The feedback is saying is they just modified the new whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John schedule, the Darwin kernel schedule. That XNU kernel is in all of our devices.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s in every Mac, in every iPad, in every iPhone, in every Apple TV, in every HomePod.
⏹️ ▶️ John That, the Darwin kernel is in there, right? And that handles scheduling, right? They just made a change
⏹️ ▶️ John to Darwin scheduling to have, I’m assuming, a new kind of scheduling, which is, so you schedule all the stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John with your preemptive multitasking according to priorities and whatever, like the way the operating system does. But there are
⏹️ ▶️ John some extensions, apparently, for the kernel that runs on the M2 and Vision OS. As I said, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John another kind of scheduling, which is, I don’t care what the hell else is going on. This is going to get this amount of CPU time
⏹️ ▶️ John on schedule no matter what else is happening. And so that’s what I think. I don’t think it’s running two different
⏹️ ▶️ John OSes or slicing them. Even if the ARM processor is capable of that, at least from what this feedback says,
⏹️ ▶️ John is simply a modification of the scheduler to give it a, because this has been true of many
⏹️ ▶️ John Unix operating systems in the past, that is one of the scheduling priorities like hard real time. Like, oh, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can schedule this stuff according to your normal scheduling algorithm, but always leave x number
⏹️ ▶️ John of scheduling spots for these things if they happen to be available. And if they are available, they get that spot no matter what. And there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a limited number of them. And they have to finish in a certain amount of time, and so on and so forth. That’s my interpretation of this feedback.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think that sounds right based on how it’s worded. And that would kind of make sense. But I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the technical detail of it is, I guess, different. But I think the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco result is the same, which is kind of exactly what we were talking about with the requirement for CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco controlling gauge clusters of like, you need some kind of real-time component,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether it’s a full OS or whether it’s a part of your OS. There has to be a real-time guaranteed component
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to control that kind of thing. And so based on how they described Vision OS architecture in one of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the videos, it seems like that is how Vision OS is built. There is this real-time component that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco runs probably all the room displaying stuff that uses the R1
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for various things, but the actual execution of the OS code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not happening on the R1. It seems that the R1 is not a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one-to-one computational peer to the M2, but rather an accelerator chip
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, you know, similar to other, you know, specialty accelerator chips we’ve seen in various hardware in the past.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Which is interesting to know, and that kind of suggests that the R1 is maybe not as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco large or sophisticated of a deal as we might have originally assumed, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that probably won’t be upgraded super frequently maybe, and might be easily broken up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from, you know, the M2 or whatever else. So it’s, this is probably a good news in sense that the R1 is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not as probably like big and expensive and hot as we would have guessed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it sounds like an I.O. chip basically. I mean it does more than that because obviously it processes stuff, but its job is to get
⏹️ ▶️ John everything from the sensor to the, as I say, DMA it into the M2, which is direct memory access where it just
⏹️ ▶️ John shoves the data somewhere where the M2 can get it real easily. The M2 doesn’t have to do anything. The data just appears there on a schedule, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And it handles all the sensors. And I imagine the R1 will have to be upgraded when the sensors get
⏹️ ▶️ John upgraded. they bump up the cameras and suddenly the image signal processor can’t handle it, right? Or if they have it come
⏹️ ▶️ John with a better algorithm for doing the de-warping or whatever, but in the absence of that kind of upgrade you can just
⏹️ ▶️ John keep that R1 just keeps doing its job. It’s a very fancy I O processor that lets
⏹️ ▶️ John the M2 not have to deal with that stuff and the whole DMA thing is like, okay, well then how does M2 get access to that information?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just in this place where the M2 can get to it real fast and it’s just there and the M2 is like, oh, there it is for me. The
⏹️ ▶️ John fact that it’s not actually running a separate operating system, at least according to this feedback as far as we could tell,
⏹️ ▶️ John does mean that if you panic the kernel, everything stops. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John the real-time stuff doesn’t get, nothing gets scheduled. Like this is the one and only kernel, right? And so it’s not like you have the
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of isolation that you need again in a car or something where the systems really are separate and you can crash the infotainment, but the
⏹️ ▶️ John speedometer keeps showing the speed. This one, if you, when you kernel panic it, it’s game
⏹️ ▶️ John over for everything. Again, as far as we can tell from this, not particularly detailed feedback, when we get these
⏹️ ▶️ John things, we’ll find out because they’ll crash. And when they crash, we’ll be like, Oh, did it crash in such a way that everything goes away?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, even on your Mac, sometimes things can crash and like, oh, well, you know, this app is beachballed,
⏹️ ▶️ John but these other ones still work. Or like, I can’t do any I.O., but
⏹️ ▶️ John anything that doesn’t do I.O. still works, right? Like the various subsystems of the operating system can get hosed because they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John often run by these separate processes or whatever. But if the kernel goes down, everything goes down. So, you know, once people get
⏹️ ▶️ John dev kits, because those will probably be crashy or the real thing, then we’ll kind of find out how much work Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ John done to sort of make this bulletproof. But as we discussed in past shows, if this entire
⏹️ ▶️ John thing crashes, it’s not the end of the world. Like, it’s just you just pick it off off your face. Like, you’re not going to crash into a tree
⏹️ ▶️ John because of it. I don’t think they would have done it would have bent over backwards too far to
⏹️ ▶️ John make sure, like under all circumstances, that you can still see the outside world through the air thing. Of course, they never want it to go all
⏹️ ▶️ John dark in your head, because that would be scary and stuff. But I think they’ll just do that the way they normally do it, which is, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John when’s the last time your phone kernel panicked? It doesn’t happen that often. They’re able to make this operating system stable enough
⏹️ ▶️ John that normally what’s going to happen is your app’s going to crash. Or maybe, you know, even like the quote unquote
⏹️ ▶️ John entire user space would crash, which happens on a phone occasionally, especially with beta OSes, but the kernel doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John crash. It just reboots the user space. The kernel is running fine the whole time. So if the kernel and the real time stuff are running the camera
⏹️ ▶️ John things, maybe that will stay up. We’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sure enough. Let’s…
VAC & varifocal displays
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s talk about Vision Pro Vision. Let’s talk about foveated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rendering, computational blur, and VAC, and all sorts of fun stuff. So James
⏹️ ▶️ John Before we go to that, before we start James’s thread, because that one top line item was a reminder to me to talk about these things.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the, was it a virgin’s accommodation conflict thing where
⏹️ ▶️ John you have the expectation that you’re the squishy process of focusing it corresponds
⏹️ ▶️ John to a particular vergence angle of your eyes and if there’s a mismatch between
⏹️ ▶️ John them it feels weird that’s the VAC thing that we’ve been talking about and we’re talking about ways to
⏹️ ▶️ John ways to deal with that like you know if this headset like as it appears to be the case has a single
⏹️ ▶️ John focal distance for the entire headset even if you look at something that’s real close to you in the headset something as far away in the headset
⏹️ ▶️ John the accommodation distance is always the same like because it’s just one screen it’s just a one flat screen
⏹️ ▶️ John and yes there are lenses and stuff in front of it but if the lenses don’t move the lenses inside the thing if the lenses don’t move
⏹️ ▶️ John the the virtual you know the screen that you’re focusing your eyes on is always going to be the same
⏹️ ▶️ John eye-squish distance from you so what could they do to change that some people suggested
⏹️ ▶️ John that foveated rendering would help here foveated rendering is where you’re rendering something
⏹️ ▶️ John on the screen but you only render in detail the part where you know the people are looking,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And that is mostly a feature that is used for like
⏹️ ▶️ John 3D games where it’s really expensive to render like the whole 3D scene. Like say you have some game
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can run it on 4K on a powerful gaming PC, but if you don’t have a really good GPU, it only
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe gets 30 frames per second. That’s not great for a headset, right? Now imagine you have to run two 4K screens,
⏹️ ▶️ John each showing slightly different views. You have to render twice as much. Oh, now I’m down to 15 frames per second. That’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John fast enough. What am I gonna do? I have to run two separate 4K screens on an M2 with just a plain
⏹️ ▶️ John old M2, not an M2 Pro or M2 Max. How am I gonna handle that? Well, one way to deal with that is, in a
⏹️ ▶️ John headset you have the advantage of knowing where the person is looking. So you can tell the GPU, don’t render the whole
⏹️ ▶️ John 4K scene for each eye. Just render in detail the part where we know they’re looking. And then everything
⏹️ ▶️ John else, render like a half-assed version. Right? Lower a polygon
⏹️ ▶️ John count, don’t use the good textures. Like, that’s foveated rendering. And that is really, That’s, you know, people
⏹️ ▶️ John have been doing that headsets for a long time. It’s a really great way to get better frame rates for something where it’s computationally
⏹️ ▶️ John expensive to render the whole scene. You’re taking advantage of the fact that you know where they’re looking. Does not
⏹️ ▶️ John help with VAC because first of all, it doesn’t change the focal distance at all. Even though you may be, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the other parts that where you’re not looking may be quote-unquote blurry, they’re blurry in the sense that like if you render a game
⏹️ ▶️ John with like a lower poly count or with lower quality textures or lower resolution, they’re blurry
⏹️ ▶️ John in that way. But they’re not blurry in terms of oh, there are different eye squish distance from you Like you you looking at your finger and in
⏹️ ▶️ John front of your face and you’re looking at you know, the horizon They’re not blurry in that way. And that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John the other suggestion people said What about portrait mode? But they do computational blur where if you look at the coffee table inside
⏹️ ▶️ John the headset they could computationally blur the distant wall That’s behind you So then the coffee table would be clear
⏹️ ▶️ John and the wall far away would be blurry and we don’t have to worry about VAC anymore But no again
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like looking at that on your phone screen The eye squish distance as you look at a portrait mode picture on your front screen
⏹️ ▶️ John never changes, right? Yes, the black background behind someone in portrait mode looks quote-unquote blurry
⏹️ ▶️ John But your eyes continue to focus on you know a foot and a half from your nose Like they do not change their
⏹️ ▶️ John focal distance that you know when you see something blurry in a photo it’s either simulating or legitimately
⏹️ ▶️ John showing what a lens saw at that time and The lens sees some
⏹️ ▶️ John things that are sharp and some things that are blurry, but when you’re looking at the picture in terms of focusing on the pixels on
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen, the whole plane of the screen is the same focal distance from you, more or less.
⏹️ ▶️ John So they can’t use computational blur. Foveated rendering does not help. None of those things are
⏹️ ▶️ John going to help with VAC. But that’s where we get to James O’Loughlin,
⏹️ ▶️ John how do you pronounce that? I think so. Thread on Mastodon that pointed us to a couple of examples of
⏹️ ▶️ John things that actually would solve this problem, unlike foveated rendering or computational blur.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Apple Vision Pro has no solution for vergence accommodation conflict. No software solution is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey invented to my knowledge by anyone. It would have to be a hardware solution. Meta has shared many prototypes and research
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on this problem. All solutions require various display mechanics and optics. Search, for example, for very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey focal Oculus. And I did that, and that’s what’s in the show notes here. Indeed. Eye tracking is table
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stakes for any solution. Magically, one had two focal planes on its displays and used eye tracking to switch between the two.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey O-NDS-VAC can cause eye strain if dense visual elements are placed too close to a person.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The UI, for example, or reading a book after a few minutes, not sure how long it’ll take for various people, will cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eye strain. MetaQuest Pro is the closest thing to a dev kit available now for the Apple Vision Pro. Good prototyping
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tool, serious about Vision OS development, in James’s opinion, but you need to obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recognize the constraints of the MetaQuest Pro and Apple Vision Pro and work within them. Obviously, this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey requires Unreal or Unity dev experience to prototype for it to make sense.
⏹️ ▶️ John So here is the some of the things they mentioned. Oculus’s very focal lenses.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re exactly what they sound like. They’re little lenses inside the headset that
⏹️ ▶️ John move so that you can actually change the focal distance depending on presumably depending on where you’re looking. So when you look
⏹️ ▶️ John at the coffee table the little lenses move so that your eye squish has to change so you can focus on the coffee
⏹️ ▶️ John table because it’s closer to you. And when you look at the distant wall the little lenses move again. So here are a couple
⏹️ ▶️ John excerpts from from the thing we’ll link in the show notes. This is from 2019, so it’s kind of old. It’s Michael Abrash,
⏹️ ▶️ John whose name you might recognize from id Software fame, working on Doom and Quake and all that stuff. I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John he came over to Oculus when Facebook bought them and John Carmack was there. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John that whole group of people. Apparently he was still there in 2019. So this says, Michael Abrash, Facebook’s reality
⏹️ ▶️ John lab chief scientist discussed two newer versions of the Half Dome prototype. Half Dome is the name of their prototype headset
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Revealed last year which use moving lenses to sharpen focus Half-dome 2 is
⏹️ ▶️ John a smaller and lighter version of that the varifocal system uses voice coil accurate actuators Which
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t pronounce it’s those those things that are inside like lenses for big cameras voice call things and also I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John they Move the heads and hard drives as well and Flexure hinge arrays.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what those are compared to the original half-dome The parts are quieter and have less friction and a more durable. So this is half-dome 2
⏹️ ▶️ John is the second version It’s like we found a way to move the little lenses back and forth faster and quieter with less power
⏹️ ▶️ John similar to the advancement that you’ve seen in big lenses that go on cameras where they have to move your lens elements back and forth
⏹️ ▶️ John quickly and quietly. In Half Dome 3 the varifocal system ditches moving mechanical parts for
⏹️ ▶️ John an electronic version which is a big contributing factor in making Half Dome 3 even smaller than the other prototypes while eliminating
⏹️ ▶️ John noise and vibrations. It packs a new type of liquid crystal lens made from thin alternating stacks
⏹️ ▶️ John of two flat optical elements, polarization dependent lenses or PDLs, and switchable
⏹️ ▶️ John half wave plates. I don’t know what these things are but What they’re trying to say is there’s a solid state component
⏹️ ▶️ John that lets you change focus without having to actually move lens elements I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John you know again I’m not sure how it does that but like we’re crystal displays and all those little things, you know Bend light in various ways so it can make some sense
⏹️ ▶️ John Continuing by stacking the series of PDLs and switchable half dome Half-wave plates on top of each other
⏹️ ▶️ John were able to achieve smooth very smooth Very focal that lets you comfortably and seamlessly adjust your focus in the headset
⏹️ ▶️ John with six liquid liquid crystal lenses is the system can cycle through 64 focal planes. The number doubles
⏹️ ▶️ John with each additional lens for smooth transitions, right? So this whole thing, and you mentioned it before, the 64 different focal
⏹️ ▶️ John planes, that’s better than one focal plane, but the granularity, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know what the granularity of the human eye is, how many different focal planes can you focus on, but I bet it’s more than 64. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John if you put a paper where you can just see it and then move it an inch and then move another inch and then move another inch, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John get a lot of different focal distances with your eye squish, but I’m sure it’s not infinite. So that
⏹️ ▶️ John is a super interesting example of what people are trying to do to solve this problem, albeit
⏹️ ▶️ John in the prototype thing. Starting with, hey, let’s just have a bunch of lenses and move them and let’s make them move faster
⏹️ ▶️ John and quieter. And can we do it with no moving parts? Yes, but now we only have 64 different positions.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s also an open question of how many different positions did you have when you were moving the lens? Is it more than 64, depending on how far
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s moving? And anyway, so that’s real cool. And the other thing that was mentioned is this company
⏹️ ▶️ John whose name by all accounts be pronounced C-real because the name of the company is capital C,
⏹️ ▶️ John capital R, lowercase E-A-L.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh no, I kept pronouncing it Cereal in my head.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, C-real, it’s the thing about display stuff. I was like, ooh, see things that are real. Makes perfect sense. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I watched one video and the guy who works for the company called it Creel. I’m like, come on, guys.
⏹️ ▶️ John Creel? Are you kidding me? How is it not Cereal? I know, it’s unbelievable. The
⏹️ ▶️ John guy said Creel. Why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the R capitalized then? I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re going to tell me is that it’s pronounced jif not gif and that can’t be right.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, C-Real, I’m just like Letterboxd Dave, I’m never going to say Creel,
⏹️ ▶️ John has this thing on their technology page that we’ll link, it says, our unique light field display technology reconstructs
⏹️ ▶️ John light as it exists in the real world. By removing the fixed focal plane and projecting true 3D images
⏹️ ▶️ John with actual focal depth, virtual objects can be blended with reality at any distance without individual
⏹️ ▶️ John conflict. So this is a true AR lens. They have like a pair of glasses that you put on your face They’re clear glasses and they project
⏹️ ▶️ John light through those glasses into your eyeball While you’re also looking at the room through those
⏹️ ▶️ John glasses and I watched their little explanation video several times and for the life of me I cannot figure
⏹️ ▶️ John out what they’re saying they’re doing but the number 64 may come up again because it looked
⏹️ ▶️ John like they had like an 8x8 grid of things and they like they project a whole bunch of different images that enter
⏹️ ▶️ John your eye at different angles and And then like there’s there’s they just basically they project
⏹️ ▶️ John all focal distance. It seems like they project all focal distances at the same time. And then, you know, they have like they had an example
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, you’re looking at a hummingbird that’s going to land on your finger. But then you’re looking at like the, you know, the virtual screen that’s 10
⏹️ ▶️ John feet away. Those are the two different focal distances. You just choose what you want to look at. You want to look at the hummingbird.
⏹️ ▶️ John Focus your eyes on the hummingbird, just like if it was there in real life. If you want to look at the screen across the room, focus your eyes on the
⏹️ ▶️ John screen across the room, just like if it was there in real life. No moving parts, no like
⏹️ ▶️ John figuring out where you’re looking, no eye tracking whatsoever. It’s just they produced, they call it the light
⏹️ ▶️ John field. And I’ve seen a lot of things about these light fields where they put all… Just like when you’re looking in the real world. When you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John looking at your room in the real world, the room doesn’t know where you’re looking. All the light
⏹️ ▶️ John from the room is just coming into your eyes at a million different angles. And you, by focusing your
⏹️ ▶️ John eye, by squishing the little lens element in your eye, you’re able to choose which part of the room is in focus. And yes, your
⏹️ ▶️ John virgins also, you know, virgins to deal with the binocular vision. So you’re not seeing double or seeing like overlapping
⏹️ ▶️ John images. That’s what virgins does for you. And the accommodation of squishing lenses focuses whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John light that you want to be in sharp focus on the back of your retina. And that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John they say their light field display does, although it did show like an eight by eight grid of things. So maybe it also has 64 different focal planes.
⏹️ ▶️ John But so there is a preview of potential future technologies for Apple Vision Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John version two after the CEO, after Tim Cook has a 20 year reign and decides
⏹️ ▶️ John he wanted to take another run at AR goggles because the first one failed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow. Spoiler alert for 20 years
⏹️ ▶️ John No, we don’t know how it’s going to turn out. But anybody, like if this is a successful product, eventually technologies like the ones
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re seeing here are inevitable because it’s the next step in making it more natural. Whether
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s actually AR where you’re looking through a pair of glasses, which we always talk about and you just can’t really do that well at this point,
⏹️ ▶️ John or simply a headset with a variable focus distance, because that feels
⏹️ ▶️ John more real, and it feels a lot less like you’re looking at a screen inside the headset, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John what we’re doing right now.
Vision Pro movement limits
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Vision Pro limits. The Vision Pro safe area is limited to a 10 by 10 foot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey square for VR experiences. Apple says, when you start a fully immersive experience, Vision OS defines a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey system boundary that extends 1 and 1⁄2 meters from the initial position of the person’s head. If the head moves outside
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of that zone, the system automatically stops the immersive experience and turns on the external video again. This
⏹️ ▶️ Casey features an assistant to help prevent someone from colliding with objects.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you thought you were going to be like, oh, I’m on top of Mount Hood. I’m going to walk around. You’re not. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John they showed that in the demo of like, oh, that’s the breakthrough type of thing. But like, Apple could choose to have this environment
⏹️ ▶️ John like, essentially, move with you. You would, you know, so you’d walk two feet forward, and you’d be two feet forward in the Mount
⏹️ ▶️ John Hood space. But it would still keep projecting Mount Hood around you. And for safety reasons, apparently, the first version
⏹️ ▶️ John of Vision OS, when you’re in a VR experience, which means you can’t see any of the outside world, you’re allowed
⏹️ ▶️ John to sit there and be in any expansive environment you want. But you’ve only got basically five feet in
⏹️ ▶️ John any direction before your head pops out of that virtual square. And they say, ah, you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John gone too far. And that makes sense. Because again, I talked about it in the keynote, they did not
⏹️ ▶️ John show people moving around much with this. The only thing they ever showed anyone mobile at all was the guy
⏹️ ▶️ John taking video of his daughter’s birthday. And that was different than being entirely in VR. So
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re very conservative to start.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Additionally, Apple Vision Pro is a speed limit and travel mode is required for use on flights.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is from Nine to Find Back. Oh, shoot, I forgot to mention the prior link, which we will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have in the show notes to 95 Mac talking about the Vision Pro safe area. There
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is an embed in that of 12 minutes of VR fails, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is probably not the nicest thing for me to laugh at, but this is people like, you know, punching TVs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and falling into walls. I apparently am a terrible human and I thought it was hilarious. So don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sleep on that. Anyways, and we’ll put a link directly to that video in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now My Balls by Casey List. Yeah, right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Apple Vision Pro has a speed limit and travel mode is required for use on flights. Internal Vision OS code seen by 9to5Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey suggests that the Apple Vision Pro will limit its functionality or even stop working entirely when the user is moving
⏹️ ▶️ Casey too fast. The system has alerts that tell the person wearing the headset that they’re, quote, moving at unsafe speeds,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quote. Is that written by Nader? Ralph Nader? Is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Another alert message found in the Vision OS code warns the user, quote, virtual content has been temporarily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hidden until you return to a safe speed, quote. The system may act as a protection so that users don’t try to interact
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with Vision Pro while driving a car, for example. Vision OS also has a travel mode designed to let users interact
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the device even on a plane. Quote, if you’re on an airplane, you’ll need to keep travel mode on to continue using your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Vision Pro, a message reads. However, based on the Vision OS code, the inputs when using travel mode will be limited,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the user must remain stationary for it to work.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t worry about that. We’re packed in like VL on those planes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, right. And this is, you know, these, both of these, you know, the safe area and the, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, speed limit and airplane mode. You got to figure like when Apple releases
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a new product, the level of scrutiny on them is massive. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the level of like, you know, the number of people out there who are going to try to generate a bad PR
⏹️ ▶️ Marco story or who will amplify a bad PR story if one exists is also massive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they have to be really careful that whatever they release,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s not going to be some story a week later that some idiot like got themselves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco killed doing something really stupid with it or worse, you know, and so These
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these are very clearly like, you know The 10 by 10 feet for VR experience that’s because if they didn’t do that and somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco walked into their TV Instead of being in Casey’s video they would just sue You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and if if somebody stupidly put one of these on while driving a car and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they crashed and killed somebody they would also sue Apple like you know it’s not about Apple being sued it’s also
⏹️ ▶️ John right thing to do like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you’re right
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah they are under more scrutiny but I feel like the people making these decisions weren’t first and foremost thinking like lawyers
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re mostly just thinking like good people but yes additionally of course if you know there is there is
⏹️ ▶️ John a increased scrutiny and anything Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does right like you know if you look at like all the all the hoops they jump through with air tags to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make sure that they can’t be used very effectively as stalking devices.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they didn’t get that quite right on the first try either, and they’re still trying. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and you look around the rest of the industry, you can buy a GPS tracker for like $20 that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t do any of those safety things. The whole industry is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco filled with devices that are easily used for terrible purposes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And those companies get along just fine, but Apple can’t do that. They are way too big. They have way too much scrutiny
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on them. And frankly, they care too much about doing the right thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Those companies change their names every five minutes anyway. They do, yeah. It’s impossible to have any scrutiny on them. As soon as you
⏹️ ▶️ John scrutinize them, they disappear and a new company pops up with a different set of consonants.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, so yeah, Apple is going to be more conservative because A,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they do think it’s the right thing to do and that’s probably correct, but also B, they have to be because they have so much scrutiny
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on everything they do. So they’re gonna do everything they can to make absolutely sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the Vision Pro is very difficult to impossible to use in really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stupid, harmful ways.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and like I said before, I suspect, although I don’t know because I haven’t tried it and I don’t think anybody has,
⏹️ ▶️ John there are pretty severe limitations on the sensor distances that are useful with
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing. So, you know, how far does LiDAR go? How, you know, is there anything,
⏹️ ▶️ John is there a fallback when the LiDAR can’t reach anymore? There’s little LiDAR sprayer things, you can try them on the iPad. Like, they don’t reach to infinity.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not gonna travel a city block, right? They’re not useful at a certain distance. Does it fall back
⏹️ ▶️ John to camera? How far does the camera go? How much image processing are going to go? This device does not have
⏹️ ▶️ John any awareness of its surroundings beyond some reasonable limit based on the sensors that are in it, because it’s not designed to.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not designed for you to get on the back of a horse and go riding off into the, you know, it’s not, I don’t think it’s designed for you
⏹️ ▶️ John to be out on a city street walking around. There’s just too much stuff happening. It’s designed to be used the way Apple showed
⏹️ ▶️ John it being used, which does not involve a lot of motion and involves a lot of fairly simple controlled
⏹️ ▶️ John environments. And so everything about this product is trying to tell you, this is how you
⏹️ ▶️ John should and must use it because it’s just, you know, it can’t make sense of the world outside
⏹️ ▶️ John of a bubble that its sensor range extends to. And unlike something like a driver assistance in
⏹️ ▶️ John a car, its sensor range is probably not that big and doesn’t have to be for the
⏹️ ▶️ John job it’s being sold to do.
Follow-up: Windshield replacements
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We got some feedback, semi-conflicting feedback, about my, well, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron’s Volvo windshield. Alan D. writes, before becoming an iOS developer, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was very heavily involved in the automotive windscreen trade, working
⏹️ ▶️ John for- Let me pause here for a second. There’s a reason I bolded that. We always talk about how we say, if we talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey anything on this show, there’ll be some
⏹️ ▶️ John listener who’s an expert in the field. I feel like it’s just trolling us now. I was an iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John developer, but I was also heavily involved in the automotive windscreen. one is it’s like, fine,
⏹️ ▶️ John listen to the show. And I know a lot about windscreens on a right end. But like, but you know, before
⏹️ ▶️ John becoming an iOS developer, I just now everything’s going to be like, I work at Apple now. But previously,
⏹️ ▶️ John I was a master chef. And let me tell you, we have not only do we have listener in every
⏹️ ▶️ John industry on every topic that we’re ever going to talk about, but also a bunch of them are also now currently like Apple employees or
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS developers. Anyway, I just thought that was fascinating.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I would just like to build on that by saying, that’s freaking awesome. And I’m very proud
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of all of us, I really am. So Alan, before becoming an iOS developer, I was heavily involved in the automotive windscreen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trade, working for Belron. They own SafeLite Auto Glass for over 15 years. Casey mentioned that he didn’t get an OEM windscreen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey made by Volvo as the main problem with this windscreen. This is a common mistake made by a lot of customers who assume that Volvo, BMW, and Audi, etc.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all make the windscreens that go into their car, where in fact the manufacturer simply outsources to the cheapest manufacturer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then get them to apply the relevant logo during the process. If you look at the many different brands of cars, depending on the year of manufacture,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’ll see the glass is made by lots of different companies with the car logo next to it. It is better to look for a windscreen made by a competent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey manufacturer than simply look for the car logo.
⏹️ ▶️ John Another pause here. We’ve talked about this on the show before in our various neutral segments with a little car door noise.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I know from the car rebuilding channels, the categories of things that you can buy
⏹️ ▶️ John for your car are OE, which is original equipment, which is if you have a Honda car,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can go to the Honda parts dealer and they will sell you a genuine Honda, whatever it is. Of course,
⏹️ ▶️ John car manufacturers don’t make all those parts. They have parts companies that make them for you. Maybe Bosch makes
⏹️ ▶️ John some sensor for them or makes the windscreens or like this. Every company, tires
⏹️ ▶️ John are made by, well, the tires are actually branded by the companies that made them, but every single part of your car, chances are good, unless
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like an integral part of their engine, but even then, are made by some other manufacturer, but they’re made for
⏹️ ▶️ John Honda, for BMW. The OE ones will have a BMW name or logo
⏹️ ▶️ John on them. Honda ones will say Honda on them very often, right? Then you have OEM, which is original equipment
⏹️ ▶️ John manufacturer They’re not OE But they’re the exact same part often the company
⏹️ ▶️ John will make the part as I said on a past show like so make a part For BMW. Here’s a BMW quote-unquote BMW water
⏹️ ▶️ John pump, but it’s made by some company that makes these things, right? When you buy it OEM one,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s cheaper and two it’s often the exact same part But they file off the BMW that’s stamped into the metal
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s literally the same part But they don’t even make two different ones one with the BMW stamped one with not
⏹️ ▶️ John they file off the BMW and say oh now This is this is OEM because it’s from the original equipment manufacturer
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s not the original BMW equipment because we filed off the BMW normally They just make them without the logo right
⏹️ ▶️ John and then finally there’s third party Which is this will fit in your BMW and theory will do
⏹️ ▶️ John the job of the water pump But it is not made by the company that made the water pumps for BMW and by the way often BMW
⏹️ ▶️ John will source water pumps from two or three different companies for the same car generation, so it’s not even just one. And it certainly
⏹️ ▶️ John is an OE with the actual BMW logo on it. So I think that’s what that Alan is trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to say here, that when you get a windshield, yes, of course, these companies don’t make their own windshields, they buy them from somebody, but you can
⏹️ ▶️ John get an OE one, which is going to have a Volvo logo on it, whatever. You can get an OEM one, which is made by the
⏹️ ▶️ John exact same company that made the OE one, but it doesn’t have a Volvo logo on it. And then you can get one
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s third party that will fit on your Volvo, but is not made by by the company that makes windscreens
⏹️ ▶️ John for this car for Volvo.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, and I think the first of the two windshields we had put in the car is a third-party one, or was a third-party
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one. And I can tell you for a fact, my lived experience, as they say, is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the heads-up display was blurry when projected onto that windshield. I don’t recall
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who manufactured what the deal was, but it was not a windshield stamped with the Volvo logo.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We now have a windshield stamped with the Volvo logo, And hey, guess what? The heads-up display works perfectly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I don’t know how Alan wants to justify that. I don’t know what the head canon is for that, but
⏹️ ▶️ John did you see, now you have more feedback on this, but did you see the other feedback was saying that a lot of it could also be calibration issues,
⏹️ ▶️ John regardless of who manufactured the windscreen? You know what I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean? Yeah, but again, I find that pretty skeptical, or I’m pretty skeptical about that, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also when the Safelite, the first time they tried to replace the windshield, somebody came out and was like, oh, this isn’t the right windshield. It doesn’t work with heads-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey display. And then they just turned around and left. So, I mean, obviously I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but all I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do know is that a third party windshield went in, it didn’t work with the HUD, and then a first
⏹️ ▶️ Casey party, or either OE or OEM windshield went in, and I guess it was OE, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s Volvo stamped on it, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, something with Volvo on it now works, and that’s what matters. Then Alan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey continues, Casey recommended that listeners take their car to the dealership, windscreen replacement. This is a huge mistake. So a person
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with hammer says, oh, look, you should find
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John nails everywhere. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in all my years of experience, The dealers do not have specialist tools and chemicals needed to change windscreen. The dealer nearly always calls
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a third party to come in and change windscreen. And you will have no say in who is doing the work. It is often the cheapest company they can find. The dealer then adds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a markup and passes this on to the insurance company.” I get that, but I can tell you that when I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speaking to my local Volvo dealer, they said, oh, we have a specific guy. I guess, technically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speaking, it could have been someone they brought in, but the implication from the way they were saying it was…
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s absolutely somebody they brought in.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That was not the implication I had, based on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco way they were talking.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I know a guy. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no, that’s my point is that they have it was the way they spoke of it is that they had a specific Employee
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that did this sort of work because they said like he was out a certain day or something like that But it’s typically in I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know. It doesn’t matter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco But anyways, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounds like they know a guy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But and again like the sales the particular Volvo dealer that we work with like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the sales department I probably made this speech before but sales department was a bunch of sleazeballs at the time we bought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco bought a car dealer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, no, but it was real bad insofar as like we were talking to a guy that’s the salesperson
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I and I would Aaron would ask a question and he would look at her
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Listen to her question and then look at me to answer the question. It was very bad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it was super gross, but we got a great deal in the car. So that’s all that matters, right? Anyway, we also had anonymous
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feedback From a former safe flight tech 32 years worth who says I am
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saddened to hear it took three trips to fix But I’m not surprised they continued on later if you get a tech that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cares about the quality of their work and you then you Have nothing to worry about it’s just that those folks are few and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey far between See if like gives their text raises or cuts their pay according to four metrics They keep on you your speed and efficiency
⏹️ ▶️ Casey damage control and wiper sales I’m dumbing it down, but that’s the gist of it and I gotta tell you that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sounds more like my experience Who knows?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah the one that didn’t make into the notes here was someone talking about calibration is specifically with Volvo and saying that like
⏹️ ▶️ John some of these these cars have a calibration they’ll do while you’re driving.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s allegedly what the Volvo one is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, but they don’t have the ability to write that calibration. The
⏹️ ▶️ John stored calibration is write protected. So the next time you power off and power on the car, it goes back to the stored calibration, and it’s off
⏹️ ▶️ John again until you drive a little bit. And if you go to the Volvo dealer, the Volvo dealer has the computer to
⏹️ ▶️ John override the write protect to calibrate it either live or stationary, get the new calibration values
⏹️ ▶️ John written to the stored value, and then you not have to worry about it losing calibration when you disconnect the battery or whatever. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like most of the magic with the dealer here is in the tools used to make
⏹️ ▶️ John your car happy with the windshield setting aside that potentially, yes, if you just bought one that doesn’t work with it as a display period, cause it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John totally the wrong one. It doesn’t have whatever, it doesn’t have the reflective properties that are required, but if
⏹️ ▶️ John just blurry, it could just be that this one ended up a slightly, you know, three millimeters, different distance, and they just needed
⏹️ ▶️ John to calibrate it, but they didn’t have the tools to count. Because if you think about it, if you’re, if you’re safe light or whatever, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not gonna have the tools to talk to the computer of every single car to do the calibration. All that calibration stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John is lots of little setups and things and you have to like, they can’t do that for every car in the world. So that’s, I feel like the value
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re getting the dealer is. If there are tools to configure and calibrate and override the right protection
⏹️ ▶️ John and, you know, put a little test pattern or whatever they have to do to do the calibration,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ll have it at the Volvo dealer because they service Volvos. But Safe Flight is not going to have one for every car making model in
⏹️ ▶️ John year for the past, you know, 50 years to be able to, They’ll have the windshields for it because they can just order it, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John they won’t have the calibration tools. And that’s my theory on this whole thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I agree with you, but it stands to reason that they should, right? Because this is what they do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a living. It’s Tom Cruise. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think their work is, like you noted, I think their work is changing. I think it used to be just replace the glass,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey right? And now it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, what? Heads up display, cameras, sensors? Like, it’s a new world. I bet they will either
⏹️ ▶️ John adapt or die, because, yeah, it’s becoming their job. Pretty soon, every new car will have of some crap
⏹️ ▶️ John that needs to see through or reflect on the windshield and say, well, it’s got to figure out how they’re gonna deal with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. Exactly. Well, the other funny thing about this, this is already going on too long, I’m sorry, but the other funny thing about this was when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was filling out like the, oh, I need a new windshield and they asked, okay, what’s your car?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I could have provided the VIN, but I didn’t have it handy. And so I said, oh, you know, it’s a 2017 Volvo XC90. And they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey asked, does it have heated seats? Which I think was their indication whether or not it had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a particular package, but I wish that they had been a little more specific Because I think that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they did not know these Volvo, or the option packages well enough to ask the appropriate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey questions to discern the fact that I had a heads up display. So, I mean, it is what it is. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, it’s funny to me that this is conflicting feedback from somebody who worked for the parent company
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Safelite and someone who allegedly worked for Safelite themselves.
Follow-up: Bugfix for one developer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, quickly moving on. We were talking several weeks ago now before WWDC about fixing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bug for only one developer. Do you guys remember what the context was for that? I forget why we were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John talking. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John they were saying, someone, their feedback was, why would Apple bother fixing your bug? You’re not an important
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey them. Oh, is this the shaky window one? Or is it something
⏹️ ▶️ John else? Wouldn’t they pay more attention to like Adobe or Microsoft or whatever?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John yes. Sorry. And my
⏹️ ▶️ John explanation was that even if it’s a bug found by a dinky developer, that same bug could affect the important developers or Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sorry about that. Yes. So thank you. So Guy Rambeau from the show wrote, when Apple released Mac OS Monterey, it broke
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something very specific in core Bluetooth that I’m pretty sure only affected my app. I filed a feedback
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and got a lab appointment and they fixed it during the beta cycle. This is a counterpoint to the idea that they’d never prioritize a report from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a small developer.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s the other part of it is like when you’re talking about Apple, you’re thinking like this giant monolithic thing, but the individuals
⏹️ ▶️ John who work on the team that does Bluetooth probably really want to know if there’s a bug affecting Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re not thinking like, oh, I’m the big corporate Apple. I have to I have to Balance the priorities
⏹️ ▶️ John and no they’re just on the Bluetooth team So if you go to a lab with the people who are on the Bluetooth team and you show them a blog in the
⏹️ ▶️ John Bluetooth Stack they’re gonna fix it because that’s what programmers do and they’re not their mind is not clouded by
⏹️ ▶️ John giant strategic visions of how Resources have to be allocated across the entire organization. They just want to fix the Bluetooth stack And
⏹️ ▶️ John yes, maybe they’re overworked and I’d have to you know Do something else for this release and so they can’t get to it but for low-level
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff like that, chances are good the Bluetooth team isn’t overburdened by having to make a bunch of widgets for the new version
SwiftUI Mac control styles
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so then more from Guy. This is with regard to SwiftUI on the Mac. SwiftUI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does suck on the Mac if you’re writing an iOS app and expecting it to work on the Mac. If you’re making a Mac app,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s fantastic, especially if you know enough AppKit to be dangerous. Paraphrasing Guy, SwiftUI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uses iPad controls only for Catalyst. For pure Mac OS apps, SwiftUI renders as AppKit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then we also got some feedback from Clarkeo via Mastodon. We’ll put a link in the show notes. SwiftUI isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey responsible for what you dislike about system settings. By default, SwiftUI uses the AppKit widgets. You have to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey opt in to different styles, which system settings has done. And then you can quibble about those styles for sure, but this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is about the designers, not the technology. So Clarke has a couple of screenshots, again, link in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s a form style grouped in a toggle style switch. And if you set those
⏹️ ▶️ Casey appropriately, you can get the difference between what you would expect to see, which is the kind of Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey idioms, if you will, and the god awful system settings stuff, which is more iOS style.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you can see those pictures in the show notes. It’s pretty, pretty stark.
⏹️ ▶️ John I replied to this on Mastodon. I had two things to say about it. First, I didn’t say this to Mastodon, but this is
⏹️ ▶️ John definitely true. SwiftUI on the Mac is not a wonderful, beautiful
⏹️ ▶️ John garden as it’s described here. Witness my continuing weeks of trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to debug. One of the most basic things for SwiftUI on the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John with AppKit, which is the ability to show SwiftUI view literally anywhere in an AppKit
⏹️ ▶️ John app. And that’s, you know, a bug with that basic functionality is what I’m currently fighting with. So forgive me
⏹️ ▶️ John if I don’t think that SwiftUI on the Mac is a paradise. But the second thing is, yes, there are the different
⏹️ ▶️ John interface styles. So it’s not like, oh, you don’t blame SwiftUI for system settings, SwiftUI can do it the other way
⏹️ ▶️ John too. Here’s the thing, Apple made system settings. They are choosing to use the
⏹️ ▶️ John ugly, worse, crappier, like, you know, interface style and not the AppKit controls.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they’re choosing that with each new thing that they make. So regardless of if it can show
⏹️ ▶️ John the app kit controls in that style, Apple seems to be saying, no, no, no, this is the way you write Mac apps
⏹️ ▶️ John now. They gotta look like this garbage. And that’s what we’re complaining about. It’s not like we’re blaming SwiftUI. We’re saying
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple wants to use SwiftUI and this is the new thing and Apple is using
⏹️ ▶️ John it. So it’s a pretty strong hint that Apple’s saying, hey, this is the way. Yes, it still supports the old
⏹️ ▶️ John way, but that’s only because we hadn’t finished this new way. And now that the new way is done, please do it like this So none of your pop-up buttons
⏹️ ▶️ John have any borders and all the labels are really far away for the controls and the checkboxes become Toggle switches for some stupid
⏹️ ▶️ John reason and that’s what we’re mad about so There are plenty of things to blame SwiftUI for
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac But this I’m blaming on the whole sort of Apple’s new way to
⏹️ ▶️ John write Mac apps They think this is the way Mac apps should look and behave and I disagree because I think it’s bad and ugly
AirJet cooling in a mini-PC
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Alex writes you talked about the air jet solid state cooling system on a past episode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This was quite a while ago now now it’s in a mini PC and there’s a link to a mastodon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey post This is the thing that looks kind of like a PCMCAA card, but it’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not literally but effectively a fan You know, it will suck in warm air and blow it out the other end
⏹️ ▶️ Casey using like a vibrating membrane or something like that
⏹️ ▶️ John Not a vibrating membrane. It’s like it’s like the little it’s like a solid state thing It’s like silicon things. You remember
⏹️ ▶️ John the, what is it they called? Mark will remember this, the digital linear projector. What were those?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it was like a microchip and had a bunch of little reflective surfaces on it that can move based on
⏹️ ▶️ John applying electricity to the things behind it, but they’re really, really, really tiny. And this is like that. It’s a bunch of little
⏹️ ▶️ John tiny silicon things that move and sort of swoosh the air along through this
⏹️ ▶️ John tiny narrow channel. We put a video on it last time, but you can watch this thing. It’s like air comes out of this box
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s, quote unquote, no moving parts in the box. There is, there’s moving parts, but they’re really small, so they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John hard to see. Um, it’s still kind of cool.
Sponsor: Meh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Meh.com. M-E-H.com.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Meh.com. And what I like about this, this is one of my favorite sites on the internet and I’ll tell you why.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So what it is, basically, is a store that sells one really great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco deal a day. So you go there every day and you see what are they selling today and it’s usually some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like deeply discounted kind of close out price on actually pretty good stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’ve actually bought a few things from there myself. They often even have Apple stuff. Oftentimes it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, like kind of an outgoing model or like accessories or things like that. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had great deals on watch bands recently, like Apple watch bands that were amazing deals. So there’s really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great deals on them. But they actually cater not only to people who want what they’re selling,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they also cater to people who don’t want what they’re selling every day and are just kind of there to read
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the site or to join the community or comment on stuff. Because what they do, it isn’t just like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an Amazon sales page per day or whatever, it is a full write-up in a great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco style. It’s very amusing, it doesn’t take itself seriously, and they are really good writers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there. And so it’s just like a fun sales pitch every day for whatever they’re selling,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and this has earned them a community full of geeks, people like us, friendly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people. And so for everything they sell, they have this funny write-up, the community, they might have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a ridiculous song or a goofy poll, all for people not only who are buying the thing, but even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who just show up who don’t wanna buy the thing. Because Meh knows that you’re not gonna buy everything they’re selling.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they focus on making it a great place to hang out, so you actually go back there and read it every day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they largely succeed at that. And I find it so fun, I love this site. So check out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco meh.com, M-E-H.com slash A-T-P. Use that link so they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know you came from here. Meh.com slash A-T-P. Whether you wanna buy anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or not, It’s a fun read, it’s a great site. Check it out, meh.com slash ATP.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you so much to Meh for sponsoring our show.
Reddit, Apollo, and the App Store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we should talk at least briefly. There’s a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of development with regard to Apollo and its unfortunate shutdown.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Quick chief summarizer and chief summary. Reddit looked at Twitter and said, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that thing that you did with the third party devs that was super evil and really, really not cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That looked awesome. We want to do that too. So they said to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty much all their third-party devs, hey, we’re going to charge you literally millions of dollars,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we’re going to do that in like two weeks. So Apollo is shutting down. There’s a bunch of other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey equivalent apps that are shutting down. And apparently, Apollo is following
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the footsteps of our other beloved apps, TweetBot and Twitterific, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is doing the, hey, you can choose to get your refund, but would you like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to not get your refund? Which is what I, I actually went and updated Apollo
⏹️ ▶️ Casey earlier with the expectation that I would see that prompt and would immediately say, no, I do not need my money back,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it didn’t prompt me. So I don’t know if maybe I didn’t grab it. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I did the same thing. Yeah, maybe, maybe I think expired. I don’t know, but I updated for the same reason.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe you weren’t on an annual plan.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s what it was. I think I did a one-time purchase. You’re right. Cause I think I did the like $70, like super mega
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one-time purchasing. I think that’s what it is. Good call, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A few things to know here. You know, so first of all, you know, we didn’t talk about the Reddit thing yet because none of us are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco super into that community, so we don’t really know much about it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey besides. I thought we,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco about it? I thought we talked
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it. No, we never actually
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh. That’s why I kind of object to Casey’s summary, which is not particularly accurate. But go on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, no, all right, fine, screw it. Let’s dig
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco into it, man. All right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so yeah, all right, let’s go back. All right, so Reddit’s being a jerk. No, so, you know, looking at the Reddit situation,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, because, again, huge disclaimer that none of us are heavy Reddit users. So we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not really in that community. So it’s hard to judge the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nitty gritty specifics of it. But if you look at the behavior of Reddit’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CEO, Steve Huffman is his name? I believe that’s right. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Again, this is not part of my world really, so I didn’t really know him. But it’s hard for me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to think less of him than I think right now. Because the way he has conducted it, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they’ve chosen to do in broad strokes is Reddit has decided
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fairly recently, like in the last few months, they decided we’re gonna start charging money for API access.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And look, it’s their company, that is their prerogative to do. They can choose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have an API or not. They can choose the terms with which that API is used.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it is their prerogative, just like it is Twitter’s prerogative to set pricing or limitations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on their API or to say, you know what, we don’t even want this kind of app to use our API at all. or they can say,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hey, we’re not even gonna have an API. I run an app with a web service and I choose specifically not to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a public API for lots of reasons. So that is their prerogative to choose that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to operate it as they see fit for their business and whatever. What makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this needlessly hostile and horrible are multiple factors.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Number one, as Casey said, like the pricing that they chose to set
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was pretty high and basically makes third-party apps impossible. Now, again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is their prerogative. They can do that. But there’s, like with many things, with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Twitter’s horrible new owner, there’s a good way to do things, and then there’s a jerk way to do things. And you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can make these exact same decisions and do them in a better way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with more notice, better transitional opportunities or terms or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just warning or something. There are better ways to do it. And at every step of the way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Reddit’s CEO has chosen seemingly the most hostile and worst option for both
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the company and for him personally. Like, when you look at the dynamic here, you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a large company, Reddit, you know, this billion dollar company that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to IPO apparently, that’s been around forever. And, you know, it’s a big thing, it’s a big entity,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, lots of power, lots of money behind that. going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to battle with this one independent app developer, this individual guy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Christian Selig, who’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like- Who’s the one? There’s like a handful of them that they’re doing battle with. All the people who make the popular third-party clients.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Well, yes, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey particular-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But in particular. Like, he has lobbed personal attacks in public against
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Christian Selig as a person. Like, he has attacked his integrity, he’s lobbed accusations, like
⏹️ ▶️ John accusations. He did the same thing about a couple other developers to as soon as the other developers pop their apps, whoever does the riff
⏹️ ▶️ John app, he said a bunch of stuff about him that also wasn’t true. So he’s equal opportunity jerk.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But the best part of this, though, is that it turns out that Christian in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you’ve you should watch or listen to I think, did he do it on video? He did a video Christian did a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey video with somebody. And he did an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John episode. That’s what he was. Thank you. He was also on
⏹️ ▶️ John the talk show recently.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that that was the other thing I was gonna bring up. Both Both of them are excellent. Quinn did a fantastic job. Gruber did a fantastic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey job. They’re both worth watching, despite the fact that they cover similar territory, or listening, or whatever. But the best
⏹️ ▶️ Casey part is, in Canada, my limited understanding is, which is where Christian is based, it is single-party consent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to record a phone call. So if Christian says you can record this phone call, you can record that phone call. And he recorded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all these phone calls with Reddit where they claimed that he did a bunch of really sleazy, Christian
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did a bunch of really sleazy, gross stuff. Well, guess what, baby? He has receipts. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he posted little snippets where it clearly debunks these just utter bullshit claims that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Reddit is making. It’s just gross. I don’t know how Christian is as kind and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey upbeat as he is, I guess, hashtag Canada, but I would be so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mad. I am mad and it doesn’t even happen to me. Of the three of us, I am the heaviest user of Reddit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I am at best a light Reddit user and I am furious about all this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t believe how gross Reddit has been through the whole thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and if you look at, you know, obviously we’re much closer with Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We follow Apple, we comment on all their stuff. So we’ve seen over time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there have been many stories in the press about some dispute between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple and an app developer, often, you know, over maybe some kind of app rejection or something,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or some kind of terms thing, or some kind of, you know, alleged problem and Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never punches down. Apple almost never comments
⏹️ ▶️ Marco publicly about these reports and if they do they never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco punch down. Now I have heard through various back channels occasionally that a version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the story that’s in the public is not the full story and that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple actually had good reasons to do what they do like this has happened before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and yet even in that case even in the case where a developer is trashing them all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the press and Apple could kind of you know exonerate themselves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in some way by saying something publicly even then they don’t because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are run by adults who and and they’re a big company and they know like that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be like punching down and that would that would not be good for multiple reasons
⏹️ ▶️ John and not just yeah not just a punching down thing it’s bad at PR,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re, the way you do it is they’re consistent. And so their consistent wall of not saying anything
⏹️ ▶️ John as much as it frustrates us, doesn’t allow you to interpret their saying nothing as an admission of guilt
⏹️ ▶️ John or not. And so again, if you have a third party developer who’s lying about Apple saying, Apple did
⏹️ ▶️ John this to me and they did that to me and Apple knows for a fact that that’s not true, Apple will continue to say
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing because they have nothing to gain by refuting. Part of it is because they have all the power. If they don’t want your thing in the
⏹️ ▶️ John store, it’s not gonna be on the store. Maybe if you’re super big and important, like you’re epic and you’re in a big
⏹️ ▶️ John lawsuit about them, then people get on the witness stand and get deposed
⏹️ ▶️ John for illegal proceedings. And maybe even Tim Cook would comment in public, but that is like the last resort.
⏹️ ▶️ John But for an individual dinky developer who wants to lie through their teeth that Apple did this, that, and the other thing, and Apple knows it’s not true, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John never gonna say anything because that’s called disciplined PR. But the human inclination, of course, is,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, but I know that’s not true and I’m gonna go back out. And whatever toddlers are running Reddit cannot resist
⏹️ ▶️ John the urge to do that, and so they do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and frankly, again, I don’t follow Reddit. I don’t know anything about Steve Huffman, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way he has handled this in the PR sense, again, setting aside the business
⏹️ ▶️ Marco question of whether they should charge for their API and how much they should charge, and there’s a whole other thing with how they treat moderators,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is horrendous. There’s such a mess on their plate right now, entirely of their own doing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But just seeing how Steve Huffman has handled public comments about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the situation and about actually lobbying accusations against these individual developers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he is not fit to run a company of that size. That is, it’s so grossly unprofessional.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In addition to him clearly being a huge jerk, I mean, that’s obvious, he’s definitely a huge jerk and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco definitely, I mean, I would say a liar. Like, it’s hard to candy coat that, like when you see, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s literally just blatantly lying. But just his handling of the PR just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shows he is totally unqualified and incapable and inappropriate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to run a company of that size.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I tend to agree with you. And the funny thing is, so a lot of, I think some of this was just,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ooh, let’s get angry about something. But I think it started from a good place. And a lot of subreddits,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basically communities within Reddit, decided, oh, we’re gonna protest all these charges. And I think that was in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no small part because the unpaid labor of Reddit, the moderators of all these communities, use these third-party
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apps to continue to moderate these communities. And this is unpaid work that benefits the communities,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but also benefits Reddit. And the moderators are losing these tools as part
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the collateral damage of these decisions. So a lot of subreddits decided
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to shut down effectively for a few days. And I haven’t kept my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thumb on the pulse as to what ended up coming of that, but it sounds like nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, I think nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then some of them decided to be funny and or snarky. I think the F1
⏹️ ▶️ Casey subreddit decided to mark themselves as not safe for work, which isn’t really true. And they came
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up with a somewhat cockamamie but also believable excuse that, oh, racing is dangerous, blah, blah, blah. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the reason they did that was because Reddit doesn’t put advertising on not safe for work subreddits. So now they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seemingly cutting off, you know, some of Reddit’s revenue. A lot of these communities are still dark.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’re basically not public at all. You can’t really-
⏹️ ▶️ John this if you try to Google for something and get a Reddit result. Exactly. Which happened to me many, many, many times in the past week.
⏹️ ▶️ John Google still has the cached versions of them, but it just shows you how many times you don’t realize that one of the results you click on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is Reddit. Exactly. And so a lot of these subreddits are still dark, as far as I know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And actually, breaking news that I noticed literally as we’re recording, so Reddit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has come in and basically said, which we did know already, said to some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of these communities, Look, if your moderators are going to keep this community dark, we will put in new moderators.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We will ask for volunteers to be new moderators, which I get why they’re doing it, but that’s super sleazy,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey super gross, and so then breaking today…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, again, just unwise. I think one thing that has become
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very clear with this whole drama is that Reddit thinks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are much more important than their community is, and the community showed them otherwise.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And by the way, good for them. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, the strength of the Reddit community and the Reddit moderators that they’ve shown during
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all this is impressive. It is really quite something. And Reddit, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco company, I think was caught totally off guard. And again, if they had a capable leader in place, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never would have even gotten to this point. Again, even if they decided we should charge for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our API and this is what we should charge for our API. Like, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could achieve the same result on not that different of a timeline with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same terms, the same pricing, even with having apps probably shut down. They could have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco achieved the same result in such a better way if they just handled it better and if they just weren’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flaming the fire at every step they could rather than taking the easy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nicer approach or the better PR approach or just the more mature adult approach.
⏹️ ▶️ John that topic, in terms of the actual terms of the deal, this is actually something that we’ve talked
⏹️ ▶️ John about a lot on the show over the years, mostly in the context of Apple. Often I end up
⏹️ ▶️ John comparing it to the gaming industry. But like when we talk about the App Store, right,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the deposition and what the various people who are on the stand for Apple would say about the App Store and how they view the value
⏹️ ▶️ John proposition. This is a little bit of an epidemic, even among the best companies
⏹️ ▶️ John where There’ll be some company that we usually talk about in terms of a platform, like
⏹️ ▶️ John gaming companies have platforms, so the game console, Apple has platforms, right? But also in Reddit, you know, they have a community,
⏹️ ▶️ John a relationship with a bunch of other people or entities that are not the company
⏹️ ▶️ John that forms the whole. So Apple makes a platform, third party developers make apps for it,
⏹️ ▶️ John that forms the whole of the product. You get a phone, Apple puts a bunch of stuff on the phone, you can get third party apps, game
⏹️ ▶️ John consoles, somebody makes them, they’re first party games, but they’re also third party games. Reddit, they put up a website,
⏹️ ▶️ John they run the servers, but then it’s a system where other people can come in and make communities and run their communities. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John using Reddit software, they’re using Reddit server, they’re both getting benefits from that thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And the problem a lot of these big companies have been having lately is the people who are in
⏹️ ▶️ John charge of them have started to miscalculate
⏹️ ▶️ John what that relationship is really like, always in the same way. The way they always do it is they think
⏹️ ▶️ John that they are more important than they really are. So if your Apple what you think is basically
⏹️ ▶️ John you should just even be lucky that we’re letting you put apps on our thing. You know you your app wouldn’t even exist
⏹️ ▶️ John if we didn’t make this platform. Therefore we are clearly entitled to
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey all of the money
⏹️ ▶️ John not all the money but like
⏹️ ▶️ John part of it and what we’re entitled to what we think we’re entitled and if you’re going to come here and say that we shouldn’t get
⏹️ ▶️ John that much money, you’re wrong because you don’t understand the value we’re bringing, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not only that, how dare you question our value? How dare you think that our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco customers are your customers? How dare you think that you bring anything to this table at all?
⏹️ ▶️ John Practically speaking, Apple does have all the power. They can just kick you out of the app store, right? And because they have that
⏹️ ▶️ John power, it starts to convince them that they are responsible for more of the value
⏹️ ▶️ John than they actually are, or whether you think it’s they actually are. Basically, what it ends up with, the companies that run these things
⏹️ ▶️ John up in a situation where their picture of their participation in the value thing
⏹️ ▶️ John stops matching the other people’s picture of their participation
⏹️ ▶️ John in the value thing. So Apple thinks it’s worth X and the app developers think Apple is worth X minus two
⏹️ ▶️ John and they have a disagreement. And as they start to spread from each other, there are different different conceptions of what
⏹️ ▶️ John the value deal is here. They get farther and farther apart and that causes tension and
⏹️ ▶️ John unhappiness on both sides, right? Twitter, same type of deal. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John you can go through it, people will list off all the things. They’re like, well, you know, you wouldn’t have a subreddit
⏹️ ▶️ John if Reddit didn’t exist, but Reddit wouldn’t exist if people didn’t add content. And all those moderators are working free, and Reddit, a website
⏹️ ▶️ John that nobody uses, has no value whatsoever, and every piece of value that Reddit has is because people went there, but people wouldn’t have gone
⏹️ ▶️ John there if Reddit didn’t make it and you go back and forth and back and forth. Here’s the deal. All that matters is,
⏹️ ▶️ John is there agreement? Is there some kind, even if it’s just like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John an agreement where everybody’s a little bit dissatisfied between how the value is divided. And this
⏹️ ▶️ John gets to things like, oh, okay, we wanna start charging for an API, right? All right, so
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to make sure that when you enter into that thing, that your idea of how much
⏹️ ▶️ John value that you’re providing and how much value the third parties are providing match each
⏹️ ▶️ John other. And they have to match in all the ways. They have to match in sort of like what we feel, but they also have to match in like what we can
⏹️ ▶️ John afford. Like we talked about this with Apple, like the e-book store, right? The ebook industry, publishers,
⏹️ ▶️ John authors, that whole cluster over there that existed before the internet, doesn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John room to give 30% of a book sale to Apple. The percentages of sales for books,
⏹️ ▶️ John of like where they go to the author, the publisher, that’s already all divided up. There is not another 30% hanging around
⏹️ ▶️ John to give to Apple. Apple doesn’t have to pay itself 30% for its iBook store, but if Amazon wanted to sell
⏹️ ▶️ John Kindle books through, you know, according to Apple’s rules, through the App Store in their app,
⏹️ ▶️ John they would have to give Apple 30%. that 30% just doesn’t exist. So
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s why you can’t buy Kindle books inside the Kindle app on the thing. Apple refuses to change the rules, but
⏹️ ▶️ John like that, those things aren’t compatible, right? So with Reddit, they’re saying, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John we can charge this much for the API. And they’re probably thinking, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John all the app developer has to do is increase the price of its app by the amount that we say. And this is an economic situation.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we’re like, they’re like, but we don’t have that flexibility. If we raise our prices like that, the number of people who pay for our app will
⏹️ ▶️ John drop to 1% of what it was. And it doesn’t really matter what would actually happen. All that matters is what people
⏹️ ▶️ John think would happen. So Apollo is shutting down rather than raising its prices 10 times, right? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John he is calculating, whether correctly or incorrectly, that he can’t sustain that price.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you charge me this much and I pass that on to my customers, my customers are gonna flee
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’m not gonna have a business. So I’m preemptively saying that I don’t have a viable business. And that shows
⏹️ ▶️ John that Reddit in making this decision of how the value is going to be a portion in their community, miscalculated.
⏹️ ▶️ John It has offered something. Here is our API pricing. And that is not
⏹️ ▶️ John palatable or acceptable or reasonable to the people who make the apps. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if Reddit wants third-party applications, they should have rethought that. If they don’t want third-party applications,
⏹️ ▶️ John good job. You did it. You scared them all away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, not even that. It’s like bad jobs. I think clearly they don’t want third-party applications.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you can do it in a way you’re saving face. like we didn’t say you’re banned, we just set the prices. And if you didn’t like the prices,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They executed this so poorly
⏹️ ▶️ John on every level. But they think their API is worth that much. Their calculation
⏹️ ▶️ John was, this is how valuable we think we are. Previously, we were giving it away for free because we were so magnanimous. But
⏹️ ▶️ John now when we look at the overall picture of the ecosystem, here’s what we think our value is as the API provider. Therefore, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John how much we’re charging. And you can say whether they’re right or wrong about that. their right or wrongness
⏹️ ▶️ John depends entirely on, well, what does the other side of this think? Like, did the third parties agree
⏹️ ▶️ John with you that you’re worth that much? If they agreed, they would pay it. But if they disagreed, they’re not gonna pay it
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’ve failed to come to an agreement. And we talked about this with Apple and app developers and game developers because
⏹️ ▶️ John the game console makers are incredibly evil and cutthroat and draconian and just have
⏹️ ▶️ John like a reputation that would make Apple blush, right? They are not nice to people. They want control of everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Nintendo used to make you pay them to manufacture your cartridges. You couldn’t manufacture themselves. You had to pay Nintendo
⏹️ ▶️ John to do it and they would charge an arm and a leg. They’re just insane deals. But through all of this, the game
⏹️ ▶️ John consoles always knew that for us to be continuing to be in this industry,
⏹️ ▶️ John we have to make nice with the game developers somehow. We can be bitter enemies, but we
⏹️ ▶️ John have to find a way to come to an agreement. Whatever that deal is, you’ll be a launch thing. We’ll make a special
⏹️ ▶️ John version of the Xbox with your game branded on it. You’ll be a bundle tie-in. If you make this game
⏹️ ▶️ John for us, we’ll give you this many millions of extra dollars. Like it’s a business, right? And they figure
⏹️ ▶️ John out business deals and they, and more importantly, they try not to miscalculate what their value is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Can we go to this game company and say, hey, if you want to be in the next PlayStation, not only are we not going to pay
⏹️ ▶️ John you anything, but you have to pay us a hundred million dollars. And then we’re going to let you put your game there. And they go, oh, sup, see you later. And suddenly
⏹️ ▶️ John be like, whoa, we miscalculated, right? What’s happening is the people who run these companies, Apple to a lesser degree, because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s sort of a more of a slow motion disaster, but like Twitter and Reddit
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey in particular,
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter and Reddit in particular are run by people who massively miscalculate
⏹️ ▶️ John their value portion of the whole and then act
⏹️ ▶️ John based on that miscalculation with disastrous results, right? Again, it doesn’t even matter if they’re right
⏹️ ▶️ John or wrong. All that matters is what the other side of this equation thinks if you’re right or wrong, because
⏹️ ▶️ John you need to get agreement with them. And this is what frustrates me so much. It’s like business 101, right? It doesn’t actually
⏹️ ▶️ John matter if your product is worth or not worth this. It only matters if people are willing to buy it. And you could say, oh, it’s dumb
⏹️ ▶️ John that they’re not willing to buy it. But if they’re not willing to buy it, you have to do something different. And just the red
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, I mean, Elon Musk is just a jerk. Who cares, whatever. But the red thing, it seems like they truly believe that if we just hold strong
⏹️ ▶️ John and do strike breaking, we’re gonna be like Reagan and I’m gonna fire all the air traffic controllers.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s like, you’re taking the wrong lessons from history here, people. And they’re just doubling down on it because they’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is how we want it to be. It’s like if you wanna have a business with no third party clients and all the people who traditionally
⏹️ ▶️ John use Reddit scared away, like I don’t know what you’re gonna have left after that, but if you wanted to like
⏹️ ▶️ John not totally destroy the value that you had established in Reddit, you’re doing a
⏹️ ▶️ John lousy job of it. And I find it incredibly frustrating. This is slightly different than the, you’re gonna have to bleep
⏹️ ▶️ John this, the inshortification thing, which I’ll try to find a link for. I think that’s subtly different. This is much more of just
⏹️ ▶️ John the simple case of thinking you are, of misreading
⏹️ ▶️ John the room, as we would say, of thinking that you are, your relationship with your third parties in your communities
⏹️ ▶️ John is different than it is. And maybe you don’t realize over the years your opinions have drifted apart. Or maybe this guy
⏹️ ▶️ John became CEO because his pitch to everyone else in the company was like, we’ve been giving this API away for free.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you realize how much value we’re giving away? We just got to turn on this money spigot and we’ll all be rich boys.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they miscalculated. And it’s just and also the jerk on top of that and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. But like, I still feel like even if they did it in the nice way, one year sun setting period,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, easy, ease people out. Give people some like people established clients
⏹️ ▶️ John like Apollo would have two years to do it. And, you know, even if they did the nicest way possible, the bottom line
⏹️ ▶️ John is at the end of that kind of Twitter style when they, you know, before they killed the API, Twitter before Elon
⏹️ ▶️ John basically stopped allowing third party clients, but allowed existing ones to continue to sell a fixed
⏹️ ▶️ John number of things. Still, they changed the shape of their business. They changed it in a way that was worse for a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of people and a lot of people didn’t like. And that is either an intentional plan that they
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t want a service for people who have third party clients, or they didn’t realize what they were doing. They thought,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, it’ll just be like it is now, except for we won’t have this problem. You know, there’ll be no downsides. The upsides will be we
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have to worry about that and we can show ads to everybody. And there’s no downsides and there absolutely are downsides. And I feel like Reddit’s
⏹️ ▶️ John doing the same thing where they feel like we can start changing the API, Everything else will be the same. Everybody will love us. All our
⏹️ ▶️ John reds will have lots of activity. We’ll just make more money. And that’s not, they shouldn’t have thought that’s how it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John going to work. That’s not how it has worked. And I really just wish all these people, well, with the exception of Elon, because
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no helping him, could just sit down and like learn to share like kindergarten style and learn how
⏹️ ▶️ John like in any kind of relationship or negotiation, you have to come to some kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John consensus or agreement to find a mutually beneficial solution. You can’t win by stamping
⏹️ ▶️ John your foot and saying, This is what I want. I’m never changing it. I’m doubling, tripling, quadrupling
⏹️ ▶️ John down, even those aren’t things. And if you defy me, I will kick you all out
⏹️ ▶️ John and replace you with, I guess, people who want to be moderators in a situation where
⏹️ ▶️ John the company is going to tubes like this. Very frustrating. And I’m not I’m not a ready heavy Reddit user either,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it frustrates me to see people making such obviously bad decisions.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it reminds me a lot of Apple, where they miscalculate their value proposition
⏹️ ▶️ John with the third party. And it has led to like years at this point, we up to a decade of just unfortunate,
⏹️ ▶️ John unnecessary tension between Apple and developers where there should be,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, a more mutually beneficial arrangement where people aren’t quite as unhappy as they are right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s just too bad in my limited understanding, or in I might have this wrong. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if, if Christian and the other third party app developers had time to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work with, they might’ve been able to make this a tenable situation,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but the problem is, is that Reddit is going to crank up the fees from,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think either literally or effectively zero to literally millions of dollars in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey span of just a couple of weeks. And, you know, three, four weeks ago, Christian
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was still accepting, you know, reasonably priced subscriptions for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a price point of free. And so now he can’t float this literally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hundreds of thousands, if not millions, I guess, millions of dollars until he can start ratcheting up the prices
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on his existing customers. And it’s not the customer’s fault. They didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just that Reddit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has spontaneously decided to charge, you know, a 10 X or whatever, or effectively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey infinite more if it was free, more money, and they didn’t give Christian and the other app developers the time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to work with that. And Christian has been pretty clear in any of the communications that I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey read or listened to or what have you that if he was given the time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and if the fees were reasonable, he thinks he could have made this work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But because he was given no time and the fees are astronomical, he has no chance or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excuse me, no choice but to basically sunset the app. And so that’s actually why we were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey brought here originally was to talk about the plan for sunsetting the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app. Because there’s multiple problems with how that like so the main problem is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Reddit gave like a month notice for this massive change but Apollo like many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps sells annual subscriptions and the way Apple the same problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hit tweetbot and twitterific when twitter cut them off with very little notice but no notice actually they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just cut them off like So, you know, so same problem here, almost as bad as that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco At least Christian had a few weeks notice. But anyway, so the problem is when you buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a subscription from the App Store, when you buy a year subscription, Apple will pay that out to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco developer in full at their next payment, which is usually about a month, a month and a half away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you basically are being paid in advance for the whole subscription, or at least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all but like one month. if the value of the subscription disappears,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple has to refund those customers’ money. They don’t have it, it isn’t necessarily always a policy choice. There
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are certain legal requirements where in many countries and states, they have to do that. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this case, Apple basically has to refund the money and then will debit the developer’s account
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by whatever the value is of any unclaimed refunds. Now, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you explicitly opt out as the customer, then Apple does not need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to refund your money. But by default, they will refund your money for that subscription or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time is left on it. And that’s gonna put Christian in the red by hundreds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of thousands of dollars.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, his back of the envelope math says it’s a quarter million dollars that he’s going to basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and Apple will have to collect it from him. Like, they kind of have to do this. And so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, this is why a better way to do this by Reddit would have been give him
⏹️ ▶️ Marco six months or a year notice. And then then he could like, you know, stop selling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those subs immediately and then figure out, do I want to sell a more expensive plan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or do I want to shut down the app? Either way, that gives a lot more time to not be on the hook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for so many refunds all of a sudden. So anyway, and again, exact same problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happened to tap bots and and and Twitter.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why Apple has a plan for this, because they basically got to figure out how this is going to be handled with the Twitter clients.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now they’re just rerunning that same playbook and to the point where I think the like Apollo devs and other are talking
⏹️ ▶️ John to like the developers of the Twitter apps to say, hey, how did you handle this and how did it go for you and everything?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so two things. Number one, if you have Apollo and if you have ever paid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a subscription in Apollo, there’s an update that Christian issued today
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the App Store right now. Go check and see if you have this latest update and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will offer you if you have one of these subscriptions active that will be automatically refunded, it will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco offer you an opt-out screen. We suggest you opt-out. That’s the nice thing to do, and it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco help out a developer. Secondly, as a final farewell, Christian has added this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wallpaper pack. All these relationships with great designers that have made icons for Apollo over the years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So these awesome design resources you can buy as a fun little thing in the app. So I suggest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it might help him out. He didn’t ask us to say any of this, But you know, in this community, I like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to think we help each other out. And certainly, we did whatever we could for Icon Factory
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and TapBots, and I want to do the same thing here. Please, decline your refund if you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one, and please consider buying the wallpaper pack, or the tip jar is still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the app. You can leave, you can just, it’s a simple in-app purchase tip jar. Those don’t have to be refunded. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you go buy something in the tip jar, whatever amount you feel comfortable with, that could really help a really good developer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get out of a really crappy situation. And finally, I would urge Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to consider either an option or a requirement that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco annual subscriptions don’t get paid out all at once in advance. Now, you could say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that all of us who are getting paid these annual subs, like all of our individual businesses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and developers out there who are getting paid this, you could argue that we should properly account for that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and account for it over the time, and say, all right, well, we’re going to kind of keep this money in a reserve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just like take it out of this reserve and pay ourselves, you know, one month portion at a time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the duration of the subscription or whatever. Yes, you could. We should be doing that. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a kind of a wake up call for all of us who have annual subs in our apps that, oh, crap, we need to start accounting for this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that’s that’s a lot to expect a lot of people to even think of, let alone to do. So ideally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple would not pay us anything that has to be refunded. See, what normally happens with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco App Store payments is the delay between when somebody buys something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in your app or buys your app, and when Apple pays you out, it’s like a month and a half, which I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believe is long enough that they can be reasonably sure they’re not gonna have to refund it by that point.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they know that whatever money they pay out to developers on that month and a half timescale, if it’s not for something longer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than that time, like if it’s just for a quick in-app purchase or like a one month, month to month
⏹️ ▶️ Marco subscription, they know they’re not going to have to issue mass refunds for any of that stuff. So that’s why I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the Twitter thing caught them by surprise that I don’t think they even had a mechanism in place to get money back from
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I don’t know about that. My, uh, my app figures reports are often negative numbers. I mean, obviously I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John selling my daily total will be a negative number because obviously I’m not selling copies of my dinky applications.
⏹️ ▶️ John And sometimes the only thing that happens on a day is someone asks for a refund and then after the negative number, which is not a
⏹️ ▶️ John great feeling, but still Apple apparently does have a mechanism for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but you probably have never had a negative payout like, well, we’ll see. You know, give me time. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, so the point is, I think I think this caught Apple off guard as well. Like I think they didn’t expect to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to all of a sudden have a way for developers to pay them back a large sum of money. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also, you know, I think I hope that this has kind of woken them up to this being a problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as they allow purchases that have durations beyond their payout window by a large by a large
⏹️ ▶️ John And you think about how long the app store has been around. Like, it’s been around since 2008. It’s not a new phenomenon.
⏹️ ▶️ John And here in fairly short order, we have multiple instances of this, because it’s not the type of thing that would normally
⏹️ ▶️ John happen. You normally competently run sort of platforms and communities are run by people who
⏹️ ▶️ John understand, you know, the delicate balance and work to maintain
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And recently a bunch of people have not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey been working to
⏹️ ▶️ John maintain it. And I feel like Apple was caught by surprise because it doesn’t seem like, Like
⏹️ ▶️ John in any kind of sort of expected business scenario, stuff like this wouldn’t happen,
⏹️ ▶️ John except for like maybe extenuating circumstances or like a family-run business where somebody important dies
⏹️ ▶️ John and people are fighting over it succession style or whatever, but in general, like the fact that we made it from 2008 until now
⏹️ ▶️ John without this being a big issue, and then all of a sudden, I feel like this is an industry’s trend. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I wanna reiterate the same point I made 50 times, people in the chat room were saying, well, like, oh, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John he doesn’t have to worry, He doesn’t have to worry about that with Apollo because he could just start charging the new rate and that big refund, he would make that
⏹️ ▶️ John up in new customers anyway so it’s not a big deal. Again, it doesn’t actually matter if
⏹️ ▶️ John the API pricing actually is tenable or untenable with no notice.
⏹️ ▶️ John All that matters is what Christian thinks it is. That’s what business deals are like. You can argue
⏹️ ▶️ John all you want with somebody but if he thinks this is not going to work for his business and he thinks his
⏹️ ▶️ John only option is to shut down, he’s going to shut down and Reddit, That is your problem if you thought it was
⏹️ ▶️ John a good idea to have Apollo. If you didn’t, then fine, good. But if you did think it was, no
⏹️ ▶️ John amount of arguing to saying Christian could support this, like that’s the reality of business. It only
⏹️ ▶️ John matters what other people think and what you can convince them of. It doesn’t matter what the reality is. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John this pricing would work perfectly. And so anyone arguing that he’s doing this and he’s silly, he should
⏹️ ▶️ John just start charging and he would be fine, you could be totally right, but it doesn’t matter.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Doesn’t matter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, I would venture to say, chances are Christian knows more about his business than you random commenter do.
⏹️ ▶️ John not arguing one way or the other, it’s just that people always want to argue the point of like, they think they know
⏹️ ▶️ John and they think that Christian is wrong to do this. And it’s like, it doesn’t actually matter who’s right or wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John In a business relationship, you have to come to an agreement that you think is mutually beneficial, you may be totally wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John One or both parties may be totally wrong and it ends up not being mutually beneficial and somebody ends up getting screwed, but they have to think
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s okay to agree to it. My favorite one is what, was it Spyglass,
⏹️ ▶️ John who licensed the browser engine to Microsoft for Internet Explorer, and their deal
⏹️ ▶️ John was they get a percentage of all the sales, and then Microsoft gave away Internet Explorer for free, so whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John their percentage was of zero, they got zero. Microsoft was pretty good at making deals. But the thing is, when they made
⏹️ ▶️ John that deal, they thought it was good, they were wrong, but they made the deal, and then it’s a signed contract. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John just, you know, that’s the reality of the world, and I do think this trend is worrying, the fact that it’s happening
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot more recently.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well, and I think, you know, this, the reason why this exploded in this way, there’s obviously many factors here. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A, you know, obviously, you know, Reddit’s run by jerks and they’re apparently trying to IPO, whatever. But, you know, B,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re in an area of, like, the economy has gotten tougher for tech companies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, money is no longer free to borrow. Everyone is starting to look for returns and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look for profitability and everything. And so in that kind of environment, people start tightening their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco belts and people start looking for different, you know, hey, where can we scrounge up some more money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of whatever our resources are because maybe we’re having trouble hitting our quarterly numbers or whatever because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s hard economically right now. So you see companies like, hey, whatever we were giving away for free,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, we’re gonna stop doing that. Or hey, this thing that you pay money for, we’re gonna increase the price on that now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because that’s just part of what goes on when you have economic conditions like we have right now. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the combination of that along with Reddit apparently wanting to IPO or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t follow that too closely. And also the trend of increasing use of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco subscriptions to pay for apps. And I think that all has come together. That’s why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the app store hasn’t seen this like this, you know, that’s why this hasn’t come up in all this time. Because 20 years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago, 10 years ago, five years ago, we didn’t have a lot of apps monetizing by paying, you know, 10 bucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a year or whatever. Like that wasn’t as common of a thing back then. And it has become much more common in recent years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And now you have these, and also, you know, these apps were built on services that at the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they were built and first used, the services were generally friendly towards the concept of third-party
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps. That’s why many of them have APIs. And then that whole culture has shifted over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time and that, you know, very few companies are offering APIs anymore. Those that are are very restricted and tend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be like, you can’t just make a third-party client, you can like, you can add value to our platform, but you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take any or whatever, you know, so it’s much more like that. But anyway, so all this is to say, Please
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone, if you have Apollo, go get it, open it up, get the update, decline your refund if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you at all can, and I hope you can, and consider putting some money in the tip jar. And secondly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really urge Apple to consider a change to how subscriptions that are longer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than a month are paid out. I would love if Apple would take that accounting burden
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on themselves at their level, and say any subscription that’s priced longer than a month, we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will dole out your payments in monthly increments. And whether you have to have an opt out for that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like big companies, if they wanna do their own thing, fine, but that should be the default.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The default should be you are paid only one month worth of e-subscription every month
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until it expires. And the bar for that not happening to you should be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somewhat burdensome, some kind of paperwork or accounting requirement, or maybe they’re required to be a corporation rather
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than an LLC or an individual or something, like some other kind of paperwork barrier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that developers like me and Christian and Icon Factory and soon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco possibly Casey, aren’t all of a sudden thrust into hundreds of thousands of dollars
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of debt to Apple, if something we depend on all of a sudden goes away.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, here’s the thing, Apple, we pay you between 15 and 30%. Earn it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why we pay you 15 to 30%.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this attitude is exactly the type of thing that I was describing where Apple would have to take this new account, because you may be listening to this
⏹️ ▶️ John and disagree with Casey saying that they are earning it or they aren’t or whatever. And you may hear Marco saying, well, why don’t you just
⏹️ ▶️ John do the counter? Like you said, Marco, you should just do it or whatever. Here’s the deal. If you’re Apple and you run the platform, what
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to do the math on is, okay, we know there are people who are individual selling apps, like Christian selling Apollo,
⏹️ ▶️ John like Marco selling Overcast. They’re just one person. They’re not big companies, right? We could ask them to,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, require, you know, ask them to do the accounting on their end. They really should. They really should account for it this way. They’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make money. They can make money
⏹️ ▶️ John on the float in the meantime. That’s what I’m saying. We could say, hey, you should really do that. But will they do it?
⏹️ ▶️ John And if we think that we can scold them and tell them and have WBC sessions
⏹️ ▶️ John that teach you how to do basic accounting to spread the money out or whatever, will that actually work? And if it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John work and those developers end up shuttering their app, if that’s a result that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t want, what Apple has to say is, look, we know developers could avoid this by acting in a different way. But if they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John going to act in a different way and we can’t convince them to act in a different way and we don’t want Overcast to be
⏹️ ▶️ John shuttered or Casey’s app to get canned because all of a sudden they start changing for his API, is there something we
⏹️ ▶️ John as Apple could do to help our platform be successful as a whole? Like say,
⏹️ ▶️ John giving out the money a month at a time, which is more annoying for us, although we do get to keep the money on the floor, like Marco said or whatever, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it has upsides for us, but it is a change on our end that someone looking at this might say, why does Apple have to
⏹️ ▶️ John do that? Why don’t you just learn how to account for your stuff? It doesn’t matter who is right or who is wrong. It
⏹️ ▶️ John only matters what thing can you do as a platform owner that will lead to more future success and fewer
⏹️ ▶️ John things you don’t want to happen. And if you don’t want developers apps to get snuffed out of existence because the platform they were
⏹️ ▶️ John running on did something jerky, if you can do something to make that less likely and you’re Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John you should do it. And instead of spending all your time saying, we shouldn’t have to do that. Marco should just learn how to do basic accounting.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you want to have that attitude, you better hope that Marco learns to do basic accounting. But if he doesn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John and Marco’s app goes away and that’s not what you want it, like it’s so frustrating.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the same thing in politics, same things in relationships as do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? Like all
⏹️ ▶️ John the arguments I see around the Reddit things are people who just absolutely want to be right and don’t care anything about people being
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As a final note, before we move on, um, if you are interested in supporting Christian, you can do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the things that Marco was talking about, but also Christian makes pixel pals, uh, which is sort of kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like a Tamagotchi ish sort of thing. Uh, and, and I mean that in a good way. It’s pretty slick.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, It started as like a little thing in the blank area above, well not blank, you know what I mean? The kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of no man’s land in the area above the dynamic island, and now it’s its own
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app, and it’s very cute, and you can pick up Pixel Pals, we’ll put a link to the app store in the show notes, And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can check that out as well.
ATP Membership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are brought to you this week by you, ATP members.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Actually, probably not you, listener, who’s hearing this right now, because members don’t hear the ads in the show, and this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is gonna be marked as an ad. So members get an ad-free version of the show. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look, we love either way you listen to the show. If you wanna support us by listening to our ads, that’s a great way to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco support us. If you wanna support us by membership, that’s another great way to support us, maybe even greater, because membership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gets you some fun stuff too. For just eight bucks a month, You get the ad-free version of the show, you get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bootleg feed, which I’ll explain more later, and you get occasional fun bonus content and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco occasional discounts here and there, merchandise discounting here and there. Right now you’re currently getting access to Casey’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app, Beta Link, and Test Flight. So there’s all sorts of little fun stuff we throw in throughout the year for members.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The main thing though is that ad-free version of the show. That’s what most people sign up for and we find it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very well liked. We get good feedback on that and on the bootleg in particular. So the bootleg
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is our unedited live stream. So if you want to listen to this instead or as well, this is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unedited raw version of the show. It has nothing taken out. It has no, you know, also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no ads added in. And it’s kind of everything we record during the live stream. So it includes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being an end kind of discussion, side discussion here and there. Anything that we screw up that I would have edited out of the main show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stays in the bootleg. If you want to hear Casey swearing, that stays in the bootleg too. You want to hear us pick titles at the end, that stays in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bootleg. So that’s also a very fun thing. lot of our members choose to use. You can get all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this for just eight bucks a month. We have annual plans, we have different currencies available, but basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s eight bucks a month. So if you want to choose to listen to our show that way and support our show that way, we’d love to have you as a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco member. It’s a wonderful way to support the show and we hope you get some cool perks out of it as well. atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash join to join us as a member. If not, you want to keep listening this way, that’s cool too. We’d love you either way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Either way you support the show, but if If you want to become a member, atp.fm.com. Thank you
#askatp: Modular laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s do some Ask ATP. David Hadley writes, I’m curious what you think about the Framework laptop, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey claims to be a modular, upgradable, repairable, and e-waste reducing, in contrast to basically every other laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the market. It looks super interesting and it really appeals to the nerd in me. The big
⏹️ ▶️ Casey problem is no macOS. This is something that we one day, is this something one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey day we might see Apple do or maybe forced to do by regulators? So if you’re not following
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what the framework laptop is, it’s basically a laptop shell that you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey plug a bunch of components into. And you can change the motherboard reasonably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey easily, certainly a lot more easily than most laptops. It has a series of ports
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the side that whatever port is being exposed to the outside world,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it seems like basically internally all of them are just USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Casey devices. So there’s like a USB-C socket on the motherboard that you would plug maybe HDMI,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe USB-C, maybe one or two USB-As. And so you can kind of configure these laptops to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be whatever you want them to be. I think this is super cool. I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey never in a million years actually want one though because it’s one of those things where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey part of what makes a laptop, any laptop, not just an Apple laptop, but part of what makes a laptop so great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and allows them to be thin and light and whatnot is because there are no affordances for changing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey those thin light internals. And I totally get what the framework laptop is after. I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a very clever idea, and it seems, having never handled one, to be implemented well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but this is fixing problems that I don’t personally have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think if it ran Mac OS, we might have a different discussion, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ultimately, there is a cost of modularity, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it tends to come in bulk and physical complexity.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so at the same time, there are costs to Apple’s current approach of being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost entirely non-modular. Like, you know, a typical modern Apple laptop, you can replace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing. Like, you have no options. You can’t even do basic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco service, you know, to replace like, you know, a dead SSD or RAM stick or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like those things are all out of the question with any modern Apple stuff. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, first of all, I think the market has spoken that largely the market prefers things to be,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, nicer, you know, pre-made, you know, sealed up and less service
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ability over time. If that means they can get something like thinner and lighter and, and, you know, nicer looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything like that. But also, if you were to actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco add all the capability and complexity, the physical complexity to make these things more modular,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think what you’d end up with is a laptop that nobody buys. And that’s why these tend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be these kind of specialty enthusiast products. And even then, I think they have a hard time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco competing and lasting very long. But if I was more in the PC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world and not the Mac world, I would consider something like this maybe if I, if I had these kinds of needs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but, but again, like it seems like the companies like this give you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of different options to put together a laptop you don’t want, but ultimately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d rather just get the one I do want. And I think too many people think the same way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to let these companies last very long.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hear you. However, they have an expansion card. That’s an ethernet jack
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or ethernet port. How nice is that? and leave aside the fact that it’s a bulbous thing like it used to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in our college days that sticks out the side of the laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Does it have an ExaJet connector?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I wish it did. I know we’ve talked about that so many times on the show, but I wish it did. But I mean, it looks kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of gross. But you can have onboard ethernet, and I tell you what, if there’s one thing I wish my laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had, and I’m not kidding, I really do wish it had ethernet. I understand why it doesn’t, I get it. I’m not here to litigate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. I’m just saying I wish I had it. But you can get a microSD expansion card, you can get DisplayPort,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you can get an audio expansion card, which basically looks like a headphone jack. You can get USB-C,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey USB-A. You know, there’s all sorts of stuff you can plug in here, which again, I love the idea
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this. I just, I agree with what Marco said. You’re creating a laptop that no one will ever buy. John, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I cut you off. What was your opinion on this?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the economics of these things are pretty tricky because the reason
⏹️ ▶️ John why it is appealing for customers, whether they’re old fogies who remember the way things used to be, or whether they’re young people
⏹️ ▶️ John who can just understand the concepts. It’s like, okay, well I spent a lot of money for the laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John but if I decide I want to, you know, it doesn’t have enough memory, wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John it be great if I could add more memory to my existing laptop instead of buying an entirely new laptop? Because adding memory
⏹️ ▶️ John costs less than buying a new laptop. So that is giving me, by buying your product, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John getting more value out of it because I’m not forced to buy an entirely new laptop when
⏹️ ▶️ John something about this laptop doesn’t satisfy my needs. whether it’s a lateral move, like swapping these set of ports for that set
⏹️ ▶️ John of ports, or an upgrade, faster CPU, more RAM, whatever, better
⏹️ ▶️ John screen, whatever thing you wanna replace. Me as a customer says, I like that, I like not having to buy a new laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the product is more valuable to you, right? To the person selling you the product, though, that’s worse
⏹️ ▶️ John for them, because when you buy a new laptop, you give them much more money than if you just upgrade the RAM. That is assuming
⏹️ ▶️ John you even buy the RAM from them, which is a whole other issue of like, hey, can I buy third-party things into this, or can I only buy the proprietary
⏹️ ▶️ John modules from this company? But either way, the company says, well, okay, but if we can’t sell you a new laptop in three years, we’re just gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John sell you like a, you know, a hundred dollar RAM stick or something. That’s not good for us, cause we have
⏹️ ▶️ John to pay our employees and design the next one of these laptops or whatever. So the way companies like this
⏹️ ▶️ John square this, and there are lots of companies like this in the world, is if you’re gonna buy something that basically lasts longer, in
⏹️ ▶️ John this case, we’re saying it lasts longer because you can upgrade it, because technology marches on, but anything, a blender, a bicycle,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, whatever, you can buy one that will last you longer because it’s more durable,
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s more modular, both. It will cost you more money. And the reason it costs you more money
⏹️ ▶️ John is because you’re not going to buy another blender from this company because this one’s not gonna break in two years.
⏹️ ▶️ John So they have to get the money from you now. And they’re selling you what you agree is a more valuable blender or a more
⏹️ ▶️ John valuable bicycle because it will last you longer and you won’t have to buy a new bicycle. And in exchange for the value,
⏹️ ▶️ John you give them more money. And that chases you up the price scale until all of a sudden you’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I wanted to get this so I didn’t have to buy a new laptop, but now this one costs twice as much as a new MacBook Pro. I know that isn’t true
⏹️ ▶️ John of this framework thing, but I’m just saying just in general, when you make something modular and longer lasting,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re either gonna go out of business or you need to charge people more money for it, and you run up against these barriers pretty quickly. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John when technology fits with modularity, like when we’re using RAMs on sticks, Mark just said RAM
⏹️ ▶️ John sticks, there are no RAM sticks in Macs, of course, we all know this, right? There used to be RAM sticks, even in laptops, little tiny SO-DIMMs,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? When that was already part of the product, because that was the best and only way we
⏹️ ▶️ John had to make the product, it’s already modular. And so why not take advantage of that? And Apple used to sell RAM upgrades
⏹️ ▶️ John for their laptops and used to be able to upgrade the storage or whatever. But as technology marches on, and
⏹️ ▶️ John that is not an inherent part of the product, but you’d have to edit it in yourself, companies have to run the experiment.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hey, if we seal the battery into the bottom of the 17-inch laptop, will people still buy it?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or will they be like, hell no, I need to be able to replace the battery or if I’m on a flight and my battery runs out, want to swap in a second
⏹️ ▶️ John battery. Apple ran the experiment with whatever it was, the 17 inch power book, whatever it was. The answer
⏹️ ▶️ John was, customers were fine with it. It’s more annoying and they wish they could
⏹️ ▶️ John change the battery, but did they stop buying laptops? No, they did not. And then soon that happened to everything else. Same thing with phones,
⏹️ ▶️ John you used to be able to swap the phones in the back of your cell phones and people love to do, I ran out of battery, I can put a new one in or whatever. Cell
⏹️ ▶️ John phones stopped doing that. First, they made it harder to do it, then they just stopped doing it entirely, just like Apple. Did
⏹️ ▶️ John people stop buying cell phones? Did some company that made a cell phone with a
⏹️ ▶️ John changeable battery, did they come and sweep through the market and dominate? No, they did not. So people are voting with
⏹️ ▶️ John their wallets and with their feet and they’re saying, we like the advantages of simplicity,
⏹️ ▶️ John no grit that gets in there, you know, no snapping little shell that keeps coming
⏹️ ▶️ John off, no connector that gets wonky or whatever to seal the battery in, no, I can’t replace it. Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John it will eventually go bad and then I’ll buy a new phone. Customers are choosing that. So the only
⏹️ ▶️ John people who won’t choose that are the people who value the longevity and flexibility.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the only way to make money from those people is to charge a lot and then you get into a smaller, smaller market.
⏹️ ▶️ John The only thing that will change this is change in the incentives. One example would be
⏹️ ▶️ John a dystopian sci-fi scenario where we don’t have the resources for you to buy a new laptop every three years. So the
⏹️ ▶️ John only way that we can economically make laptops is to sell you one and you have to use it for 15 years with
⏹️ ▶️ John every component being modular. And then all of a sudden the math works out differently, because you can’t buy a new laptop every three years because there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not enough beryllium or whatever the hell element ends up we end up running out of in this dystopian sci-fi scenario. Or we’ve polluted
⏹️ ▶️ John the planet to the point where there are laws in place. That’s what the person says, like where regulators make this? No, regulators would never
⏹️ ▶️ John make them do this. We can’t even stop global warming. But anyway, in a hypothetical scenario where
⏹️ ▶️ John the external incentives change, suddenly the value proposition of this product changes entirely because
⏹️ ▶️ John the other thing isn’t an option anymore. But I think what we’ve learned is when the other thing is an option, that’s what people prefer.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the only way to stop it is to is for you and several billion of your friends to stop buying cell phones with
⏹️ ▶️ John sealed in batteries, then they’ll get changeable batteries. But if you don’t think you can convince people to do that, that’s why cell
⏹️ ▶️ John phones don’t have changeable batteries.
#askatp: Photo-library app access
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Zak Vachette writes, I’ve started to limit what apps I grant full photo library access to, but it comes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at a cost. It’s quite annoying to have to manually select new photos to include every time I want to, say,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey share a recent picture in Slack. When an app requests permission to access my photo library, what does it actually mean? Does it mean
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an employee at that company could browse my photos at will? Does it mean the app could scam my library for any information that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in there? Or is full access less permissive than it seems? So it’s been a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey year-ish since I’ve looked at this closely, but I ran into this for both Peek-a-View
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and for Masquerade. My recollection, which check my work
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on this because it’s fuzzy, is that full photo access basically means that you have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mostly unfettered access to the user’s photo library. Now, presumably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you would know one way or another if your entire photo library was being uploaded because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your internet usage would go up, your phone would probably get hot, et cetera, et cetera. But strictly speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that app can look whatever photo it wants whenever it wants. The advantage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey though, and it’s in most apps best interest not to go that approach because you have to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do a whole bunch of things and ask for permission in very, very scary ways to get full photo access
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where if you just do the, you know, this app can see these seven photos
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dance, an app can actually use that technique, and this this is what I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do in Masquerade, you can ask the system, I would like one photo, one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey photo only, please. And then you don’t have to do any of the scary permissions dialogues because you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are doing a, what is it, XPC call, a cross process, whatever, call, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basically says to Apple’s system, look, I don’t care what you do or how you do it, just give me a photo back,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey please. And then Apple is the one in charge of browsing through your photo library, presenting the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whole user interface and letting you pick which one you want. And you have, as an app developer, you have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no sight into that whatsoever. All you know is you get an image coming out the other end. And for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey most apps, that’s actually preferred. And I hear what Steven’s saying, that that’s kind of a pain in the butt.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know what Instagram does is the middle of the road thing, which is what I was describing, where it says,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey okay, you can have access to just these 12 photos. But the most convenient thing as an app developer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and as a user, in my opinion, is to do that one shot. And again, this is what Masquerade does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you want to check it out. just, hey, the user would like a photo, go get me a photo, please.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s, honestly, if you have a app that loads users’ photos, I would really look into that API
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it’s pretty good. But yeah, if you could do full access, that app developer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could be super shady and you’d be none the wiser. I don’t know, Marco, you haven’t run into this any, have you? No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t really work with photos. I do, so in the regular photo access, do you get the location
⏹️ ▶️ Marco info or does your app have to request location permission? Because I think the most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sensitive data in your photo library that would be the easiest to exploit in creepy ways would be the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco embedded location history. Because not only would you have a good idea of where their current location probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, but you would have their entire location history, which is obviously extremely sensitive data that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know would be exploited by ad companies as much as possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I understand what you’re asking, and I don’t know. And part of the reason I don’t know is because it’s never even crossed my mind to look
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I’m not a sleazeball. I would guess that with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey full access, you almost certainly get that data. Again, just a guess. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know. I would, I’m not really sure what would happen if I were to wager a guess for the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other modes. I would think maybe you do get that location data, but I cannot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stress enough that I really don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this reminds me more old man stuff of how far the computer industry
⏹️ ▶️ John has come from the early days of not naivete, but just like it was so much smaller.
⏹️ ▶️ John So many fewer people even had computers even before the Internet. Computer security and the things
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re just talking about just didn’t exist. Like even in the early Unix systems that were networked across the entire country
⏹️ ▶️ John with universities, you know, Telnet sent your passwords in plain text. TTIs,
⏹️ ▶️ John TTYs were world writable by like sometimes you could have accounts without passwords and people would do
⏹️ ▶️ John it routinely because it was just the honor system and everyone just be careful, right? and you just had to trust everybody because everyone was.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco literally like the first version of Instapaper. You could just, you could set no password. You could just have it be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blank and I didn’t care and nothing bad
⏹️ ▶️ John happened. You could do that on Mac OS. I think you can still do it on Mac OS. But like the defaults were just, everything was
⏹️ ▶️ John open, right? And over the years as the internet has become a thing and as the world has gone on the internet, every
⏹️ ▶️ John single computing platform has added things like this photo permissions that we’re talking about. But it all gets back to the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John This question is about what an app could do. If you give it full photo access, That app could upload
⏹️ ▶️ John every single one of your photos to its database,
⏹️ ▶️ John crawl through it to look for naked pictures of you and do whatever with them. And obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John what could you do to stop that? Well, if the country you’re in says it’s illegal, you could try to prove in a court of law that they did a thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John broke the law and then sue them or get them arrested or whatever. But you also have to first know that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John doing it because maybe they’re doing it behind your back and you have no idea. And it all gets down to the same thing back in the olden days, which is you
⏹️ ▶️ John have to trust the person who develops your application. Because every application, if it does something useful,
⏹️ ▶️ John could also do something nefarious. That is the nature of power. It is easier for it to have
⏹️ ▶️ John access to all your photos, but then you have to trust that the person who makes this app isn’t uploading all your photos looking for naked pictures of you
⏹️ ▶️ John or stealing your location data or whatever, right? And yes, it’s good that the OS has these barriers of saying you
⏹️ ▶️ John have to give it permission, maybe give it location permission, allow it to use the camera, allow it to record your screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John allow it to use the microphone, but you have to say yes to that for lots of apps to do
⏹️ ▶️ John their job. And at that point, you’re in exactly the same situation you were in the 60s where people are logging into Unix
⏹️ ▶️ John things and everything nothing everything’s running over the internet in plain text you have to trust
⏹️ ▶️ John the person or company that made this application that it is not doing something nefarious and that will
⏹️ ▶️ John never go away because in the end you want to do useful work for you with your data so you must
⏹️ ▶️ John give it access to your data and we don’t want to give it more access that it needs but sometimes the amount of access
⏹️ ▶️ John that it needs could be used in a terrible manner and that’s why you people and companies
⏹️ ▶️ John reputations matter. That’s why Apple’s reputation matters. That’s why if a company does something bad,
⏹️ ▶️ John it hurts its reputation and people will trust it less. If Apple was stealing all your photos and doing something,
⏹️ ▶️ John selling your location data to some ad company or whatever, that would make us like and trust Apple less. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if some, we’ve had apps in the iOS app store that were like stealing all your contacts was like Path
⏹️ ▶️ John was doing that or something before it was forbidden by the US before you had to ask for permission.
⏹️ ▶️ John And people found out about it and they thought less of that application. and stopped using it. And that is, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John that in the end, that is the system. So yes, lots of people get scared when they realize what
⏹️ ▶️ John this application quote unquote could do, but you have to think then, but
⏹️ ▶️ John application doing that? And if you think the application is stealing your photos, don’t use that app.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, this is why I used to be pretty cavalier about it for Facebook properties, including
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Instagram, I immediately went to limited access because I have zero faith that they’re not doing something gross.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But generally speaking, ever since the whole limited library thing became a thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I basically have chosen that whenever I can.
#askatp: Camera bags
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Stephen Collins writes, with all the discussions about cameras the past few weeks, this was written several weeks ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was wondering how you carry these cameras around. I realize that most normal people don’t need a bag for three cameras, six lenses,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and other assorted bits like cards and cables, but I was curious as to how you guys handle all of this. I know John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is taking a bunch of stuff to the beach. Are you all just using the standard one camera bags that I see everywhere
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and also own two of or is it something different? For me, this is going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey infuriate my co-hosts, I just chuck the camera and the lens in a lens bag. You know, in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John a little… Just chuck it
⏹️ ▶️ John right into your windshield. You put it on the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey dashboard. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco exactly it. It shatters it immediately.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s exactly what I do. Yeah, I just sit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on mine immediately. Right. I just chuck it into whatever bag I’m taking to the beach and call it good. And I haven’t yet had an issue,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey knock on wood. What is the correct answer, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I don’t know. Like, I don’t have a lot of experience with these things. I’ve tried to get a bunch of bags
⏹️ ▶️ John that are better than doing what you’re doing, which which is not hard. I think I talked about this when I got it
⏹️ ▶️ John on some episode that I’ll never be able to find again, but I did get like a, essentially it’s a backpack for holding
⏹️ ▶️ John camera junk. And it comes with a bunch of these little Velcro dividers. So you can sort of like, if you’re looking top down
⏹️ ▶️ John on it, you can make a little maze that exactly fits your cameras and your lenses in some scenario. It’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, I wasn’t gonna say like paying Tetris, which people are more familiar with, but it’s actually more like the inventory system in Resident Evil 4
⏹️ ▶️ John or something. Anyway, finding a way where these things fit in with a little Velcro. You think it wouldn’t work. You think Velcro
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t work. I think it’s kind of janky. It works surprisingly well. It’s kind of like a cheap version of making a custom
⏹️ ▶️ John bag where you have like foam inserts or whatever. Anyway, I use that instead of an actual backpack. I use
⏹️ ▶️ John this camera backpack and I endorse it. It could be better, but it’s pretty good for the price I
⏹️ ▶️ John paid for it. I’ll put a link to my backpack in the show notes. I think it’s called the Hex Ranger or something or other.
⏹️ ▶️ John I also have this holster thing for a single camera. It’s like a single kind of like holster style bag
⏹️ ▶️ John where like camera and it’s a long lens go into it. It’s kind of like a gun and a holster and it goes like a shoulder strap. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John good for a single camera. You can put a single camera in there with varying size lenses because the lens part is like an accordion
⏹️ ▶️ John that gets longer and shorter depending on how big you want it to be. I have one of those as well and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s pretty okay. But I- It’s like ringing
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey indoors. Look, I mean from John. You know
⏹️ ▶️ John how many camera bags, camera bags are like backpacks, like non-camera bag. Like there’s a million of them out there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Lots of companies make them and it’s really just what your personal preference is. I would say
⏹️ ▶️ John try to find one that you think you’ll like. you’re probably gonna have to make more than one try, unfortunately, because you may think you
⏹️ ▶️ John like something until you get it and you find out you’re wrong, but I would say get something. Something is better than nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would say that the amount of protection that you need is probably less than you think. When
⏹️ ▶️ John I first got this backpack, I was like, oh, those little divider things, they don’t seem too thick. And the walls of this,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s just a centimeter of this foam stuff. Unless you’re going to be,
⏹️ ▶️ John first, don’t take your backpack and throw it across the room onto the hard floor and don’t drop it from
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey three feet in the air. If you
⏹️ ▶️ John just treat your thing gently, anything better than like the thin single
⏹️ ▶️ John layer of canvas of like a Jansport backpack Like any amount of padding goes a long way and especially
⏹️ ▶️ John if things are packed in there, you know again Tetris or Resident Evil style where there’s not a lot of room for them to move and they’re all up
⏹️ ▶️ John against something squishy That’s pretty much all you need. Just be careful with your stuff But I don’t have any
⏹️ ▶️ John specific recommendations for things that I think are amazing I think these things that I have are better than what I was using
⏹️ ▶️ John before and I’m also not looking to replace them But I’m also not a professional photographer who’s constantly running
⏹️ ▶️ John around with my equipment So if
⏹️ ▶️ John want to go on vacation once a year something like these things will do fine for you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the thing like I’ve had I’ve had both like quote camera backpacks Like which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco similar what John was describing where you know? You had little inserts that you’d like you Velcro around to wrap around exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the stuff you used and be exactly the size you want like I’ve had both that and Regular backpacks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m currently kind of in the middle of those My current main backpack is the Peak Design Everyday,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which has been around for a few years now. I have the first version, the large size of it. And I love it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because one of the reasons why I’m always frustrated with backpacks is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most backpacks you have like some number of side pockets, inside pockets, outside pockets, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s like the main compartment in most backpacks that is just one tall compartment.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what happens is you lay it all out, you get all, I’m gonna solve this problem. I’m gonna have these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different arranged things in here, or maybe I’ll have a sub-bag inside my bag.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Then you put it on, and as soon as you put it on, all the stuff in the main compartment sinks to the bottom of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the main compartment. Everything is disorganized, and then you have all this wasted space up top, in this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gap, and then everything’s down below. What I like about the Peak Design Everyday, I think it’s key
⏹️ ▶️ Marco innovation, is that in the main inside compartment of the bag is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three of those Velcro things that form little shelves that you can move up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and down anywhere you want in the bag. And they have little foldy ends that you can like fold up one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco end of one to make like a long vertical compartment if you want to, but then have these little like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Velcro shelves at different heights in it. So it actually divides the main apartment height-wise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into different levels and you can move those around and make them bigger or smaller. So I usually operate with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like one big top level and then a couple of small ones at the bottom where I could stash stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think it was actually, I think it was designed to be a camera bag, and I guess you use it as a regular backpack that occasionally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco holds cameras, but because it was made to be a camera bag, it is a little thicker and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little more padded and a little more structured than most thin backpacks are. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would actually say, not only is a camera bag a good option for carrying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cameras, I think camera bags are the superior backpacks in general. Just as,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, camera backpacks tend to be the best backpacks, in my opinion, for my preferences and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my needs. Just because it’s carrying, maybe it isn’t always carrying a camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco per se, but it’s usually carrying electronics of other kinds. At least, you know, it’s at least carrying like a laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or an iPad or both. It’s probably carrying other, like a little electronic gear. Maybe it’s carrying like a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco portable game system or something or whatever. I’m bringing on whatever trip or carrying for the family or whatever it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So chances are, if you have any kind of electronics that you’re carrying in a bag, A camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bag is a good choice because they are made, they are designed to be padded and protective
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of electronics. And as John said, you don’t need a ton of protection, but it does help to have some.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m a big fan of using camera bags in general, even when they often don’t contain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a camera. And again, I can’t say enough good things about the Peak Design Every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Day and its system of these movable and removable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco horizontal, when you’re holding up the bag, horizontal shelf pieces that you can divide with the main compartment into.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No other bag that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve bought a lot of backpacks over the years. No other bag
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve ever seen has kept me happy for as long as this one has, and through as many different varied
⏹️ ▶️ Marco conditions as this one has. And it’s almost entirely down to those wonderful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco divider shelf things that you can move up and down. That way I don’t just have one giant main compartment where everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sinks to the bottom. So anyway, that being said, when I do carry my camera, to answer Stephen’s question here,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I do carry my camera, it is in this bag like everything else that I carry everywhere else.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you have a big bag or something, you can do it. Like, I think you only need to graduate to the thing that I have with all the little
⏹️ ▶️ John dividers and everything. If you’re in my situation where I have two cameras and multiple lenses, so I have two cameras,
⏹️ ▶️ John both of which have lenses on them, but then there are also multiple other lenses, that’s just too much stuff to be rattling
⏹️ ▶️ John around even with multiple compartments. Even with three compartments, there’s more than three things, and you don’t want to put things next to each
⏹️ ▶️ John other where they can bump into each other, right? So that’s when you know you’ve graduated to that. But before I was in that situation where I had two cameras
⏹️ ▶️ John and multiple lenses, I had a single camera bag where my camera would fit in there and like the one or two lenses would
⏹️ ▶️ John fit in there. And I would put that bag inside my boring regular laptop because the single camera bag
⏹️ ▶️ John had padding in it and the items were packed in there, Tetris style, like with padding between all of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I would close that bag and then I would put that bag inside my backpack. And same thing with the holster thing. The
⏹️ ▶️ John holster thing can fit inside another bag the holster is somewhat padded or whatever, you know. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John I, you know, don’t run out and buy this backpack that’s gonna fit all this gear, because you put your one lonely camera in there, especially if you don’t even have
⏹️ ▶️ John any lenses for it, or it’s not even an interchangeable lens camera, it’s a waste, right? That’s where you can, even if you have a single
⏹️ ▶️ John big camera like Marco does, with a big lens, if you have, you know, two or three of them, and you have two
⏹️ ▶️ John or three compartments in your Peak Design everyday backpack, you’re fine. But once you’re like, okay, well, whatever, but this lens,
⏹️ ▶️ John this lens, this lens, then you’re into Tetris Land, and that’s when you have to get the thing. So I wouldn’t, you know, don’t run out and buy
⏹️ ▶️ John something that fits way more equipment than you need. You’ll know when you can’t do it anymore. But in the meantime, like, especially if your
⏹️ ▶️ John camera comes with a bag, as a bunch of mine did, if your camera comes with a bag and your camera fits in there with its charger, with its
⏹️ ▶️ John lenses, with its thing, seal that bag up and then stick it inside another bag. Bag in a bag.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you so much to our sponsor this week, meh.com, and thank you to our members, especially,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash join. We
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have wonderful new member special out where we tier ranked all the iPhones to date. And that is it is so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much fun. You should really check out. Thank you so much again to members. You’re really you’re helping us out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot these days. So So thank you so much for that and we will talk to you all next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental. And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco T. Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they didn’t mean to Accidental, check
John’s AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, tell me what’s going on with your AirPods.
⏹️ ▶️ John They did me dirty. I don’t know what the right phrase is here. Yikes. You
⏹️ ▶️ John AirPods, sometimes you put them in your ears and one of them doesn’t make any
⏹️ ▶️ John sound. And then sometimes you got to put that one back in the case for a few seconds to make it happy. Have you familiar with this phenomenon?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t feel like I’ve run into it too frequently recently. But yes, I’m familiar with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have. AirPods are like the French chefs of electronics.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco God, they’re so good most of the time, but man are they unreliable. Sorry French
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey people, that’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, I just, I cannot, like, AirPod, between the last generation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AirPods Pro and this generation AirPods Pro, they are so buggy. The new ones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are less buggy than the old ones, but they’re still really buggy.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and so, because they’re like, you know what AirPods are like, they’re this tiny little plastic thing, Like you don’t know what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ John on inside there. What is the problem? Is it a software problem? Is it a hardware problem? There’s such tiny little components. Is
⏹️ ▶️ John some tiny little component like poorly soldered or like coming loose over time? Or is it
⏹️ ▶️ John everything in the hardware is working perfectly and it’s actually a software bug with the stupid Bluetooth stack and the connectivity. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John you can never tell. There is no way for you to debug this because it’s just there are two tiny little computers in your ears and you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John control anything about them. And it’s just like, you know, people will ask you if you’re a tech nerd in your life,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ll say, I put my AirPods in and one of them’s not making sound. What can I do about this? And like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to tell them like, nothing. Like you can do, here are these steps that you can do to make it work
⏹️ ▶️ John again. Why did it work again? I don’t know, I’ve just learned through trial and error that if you do these
⏹️ ▶️ John things, sometimes you can bring them back to life. But sometimes you can’t. Sometimes you got the AirPods Pro that make the crackling noise.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sometimes they just flat out die, right? It’s just a thing that happens. It’s not great, but AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ John are such an important part of my life that I, you know, I have to have AirPods.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that leads me to, you know, More recently, the other thing that happens sometimes is you’ll take them out of the case and you realize one of them just didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John charge in the case for some reason, even though it’s been there overnight. One of them
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey is 100%. One of them is- Oh yes, I’ve had that. And one of them is at 2%
⏹️ ▶️ John and it goes do do do in your ear or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, mine usually, it’s just dead. Like you take it out, you’re like, oh, why am I only hearing it in one ear?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John That’s weird. And one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them’s just dead.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, one’s just dead. Yeah, so anyway, I have AirPods 3 that I bought I think when they first came out.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they’ve been pretty good for me, but a couple of days ago, I took them out of the case One of them wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John making noise. But the other one was, and I remember someone came up to
⏹️ ▶️ John ask me something just as I put them in, and I reached for my right ear and I pinched it with the little pinchy thing. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s like that, it’s kind of like the feeling of walking onto an escalator that’s not running. You pinch the
⏹️ ▶️ John AirPod, and it’s so freaking dead that it doesn’t do the haptic feedback. And it feels
⏹️ ▶️ John just so wrong. Like you pinch it, and you’re like, what the hell? When I pinch this, I’m supposed to hear a
⏹️ ▶️ John little ch-chink in my ear, and the little, you know, and it doesn’t do that, that’s how dead it was, right? I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, I’ll put it back in the case or whatever, charge it, you know, whatever, go back to what I’m doing, try to pick them up, because I gotta
⏹️ ▶️ John have my AirPods in so I can listen to podcasts while I’m doing dishes and cleaning the kitchen, right? Obviously. It’s not like I’m gonna leave them and
⏹️ ▶️ John come back and I listened in one ear for a while, but that’s unsatisfying, so I went back, and I’m like, and then I’m looking, then I’m opening up
⏹️ ▶️ John the Bluetooth thing and looking at the charge level where it shows you, it was like left ear at 100%, right ear,
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t exist, no icon underneath it at all. It didn’t even show the little battery icon. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John to shorten this up, I spent three days trying to resurrect this sucker. Did all the things
⏹️ ▶️ John you do. Oh, forget this device. Try a different device. Try a different charger. Try a different AirPods case.
⏹️ ▶️ John Try a different wire. Try this, try that. Try hard resetting them. Try hard resetting the case. Try repairing
⏹️ ▶️ John with a different device. Just like, because I have, you know, this is not my first rodeo. I’ve messed with AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ John before. I tried it, I tried it. Every night they were always on a charger, on a different charger, making sure
⏹️ ▶️ John they, you know, come back to life. I’ll resurrect you, charge you 100%. Like whatever your problem is, come back to me, come back
⏹️ ▶️ John to me. Three days, three days, which both of which involved overnights
⏹️ ▶️ John in a different new ideal charging situation to really just resurrect this sucker for a good 12
⏹️ ▶️ John hours overnight, right? And the right one was just well and truly dead,
⏹️ ▶️ John just nothing. Like when you looked in the battery thing, it wouldn’t even show the little battery icon underneath it. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John not a peep from it, no noise, no sound, no haptic feedback, absolutely nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Then I go to the little Apple Sport app like are they still under warranty? And of course they’re not. Cause I think I just didn’t get
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Care Plus or whatever for them, right? Cause I had generally pretty good luck. My son
⏹️ ▶️ John has the same AirPods 3, he’s on his third pair.
⏹️ ▶️ John His like for the first one’s like totally lost base. The second one that one of the ears went super low volume
⏹️ ▶️ John and his were all under warranty repairs, but like just luck of the draw and I got unlucky, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t not have AirPods. So I ordered a new pair of AirPods 3. And of course I had to get my name on them because
⏹️ ▶️ John we have too many freaking AirPods in the house. I need to know which ones are mine. Did you get your Memoji? That’s so cool when you do that. I did
⏹️ ▶️ John not, I just got my name. I wish it was in all caps, but it is. Oh, that’s so boring. Well, it’s easy to
⏹️ ▶️ John tell and it makes it less desirable theft target, I suppose. Anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco See, I have my face on mine. That, I think that does the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know, but a lot of people look like you. All those Memojis have the same face shape anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I ordered new AirPods 3, you know, rather than, they couldn’t, they didn’t come immediately. I could have got them immediately. I could have
⏹️ ▶️ John just gone to an Apple store. I could have had them like that $9, like, you know, same day
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, but you can’t do that when you want the monogram. Then I did want the monogram. So I’m like, I’m going to have to go with
⏹️ ▶️ John that AirPods. I pulled out one of the kids’ old pair of AirPods because the last one, my daughter was using like the original
⏹️ ▶️ John AirPods and they were flaking out on her. And for like for Christmas, she got a new pair, right? Of AirPods 3,
⏹️ ▶️ John but her old one still works. So I was using them in the house, okay? So I ordered the new AirPods and you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the way that they got the monogram, the shipping, they’re on their way. As soon as this thing ships,
⏹️ ▶️ John the old AirPods start working again. Of course. Of
⏹️ ▶️ John Why did they start working again? I have no idea. I did nothing to them. I had written them off for dead. They
⏹️ ▶️ John weren’t even on a charger for crying out loud. They were just sitting in the case. Three days I spent doing
⏹️ ▶️ John everything I could think of and just never. It was not a peep. The thing gets shipped. I pick up the
⏹️ ▶️ John old ones, put them in my ear to see like they get. But no, they work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Neat. So can you return the monogrammed ones?
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s what I’m going to do. First, I can learn my lesson. I put a little reminder that’s going to go off probably tomorrow. Buy
⏹️ ▶️ John AppleCarePress for your new AirPods. And like, I hope they’ll let me do like the annual thing
⏹️ ▶️ John where it never expires. Cause basically I’m just on a subscription plan for AirPods. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey never, I can never not have, I just
⏹️ ▶️ John have, I’ll just keep paying Apple. And every time they die, I’m just going to bring them back to the Apple store and say, yep, they died
⏹️ ▶️ John again, give me a new pair. Yep, they died again, give me a new pair. Whatever I have to pay to make that happen. If it’s a reasonable like
⏹️ ▶️ John annual fee, I will pay that. I hope that’s the case, I don’t know. Do the AirPods have
⏹️ ▶️ John that thing? I know Macs do. Macs you can either like, you can buy like two years or whatever for a fixed amount, or you can just pay like annually or monthly
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever the hell it is forever. In hindsight, I probably should have gone out to a Mac Pro because Mac Pro is now out of
⏹️ ▶️ John warranty too. Don’t listen to me Mac Pro, you’re fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey But it’s out of warranty.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you know how scary it is to have a computer this expensive that’s out of warranty? Because I didn’t do the thing where you keep paying
⏹️ ▶️ John forever because it was so fricking expensive for the Mac Pro, right? I just did the few years, the two years, the three
⏹️ ▶️ John years, whatever it is, and it’s up now and I’m terrified something’s gonna go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wrong. Anyway, by the way, I cannot see any monthly option for the AppleCare for AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but anyway, two years is better than nothing. Because I don’t have faith that they’re gonna last the two years. And it’s a shame and I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know what the problem is. But like, and I don’t know why these came back to life. So my plan now, I guess,
⏹️ ▶️ John is to just spread my usage across these two. And one set will be my bedroom AirPods and one set
⏹️ ▶️ John will be my everywhere that’s not the bedroom AirPods. And then at least my usage will be spread out between
⏹️ ▶️ John them. I don’t know if that will make them both die faster or will that make them last twice as long, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not returning them. I’m disappointed in AirPod reliability, but this is just, you know, just an FYI
⏹️ ▶️ John for AirPods. I mean, maybe look into third-party ones like Sony and other companies make other things that go in your ears,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I like the Apple ones. I like the integration. I like how they feel in my ears. I like how they sound. I like the battery
⏹️ ▶️ John life. I like pretty much everything about them, although I do still miss the tapping, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John reliability has been hit or miss and I’ve had AirPods continuously since the very first pair.
⏹️ ▶️ John And my luck has been pretty good, but my kid’s luck has not been great. So that’s where I’m at, double
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AirPods. Honestly, I’ve been a double AirPods Pro person since the AirPods Pro came
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out. Because I, again, I also use them very heavily.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I use them every time I leave the house for like a dog walk or something. I stopped buying those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big full-size noise canceling headphones for planes and I use only AirPods Pros on planes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. And you kinda need two pairs sometimes to get through a very long flight.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I have two for various reasons, and I basically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one stays in the backpack all the time, and one is the regular usage one. And occasionally, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regular usage one, I will have forgotten to charge it, and so I’ll go to the backpack one for that dog walk or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I can tell you, it’s kind of a nice life. It is stupid, it is unnecessary,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it does come in handy sometimes. Like again, maybe my main ones are dead or what happens sometimes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe I am, you know, I’m on a trip and one of my other family members forgot their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AirPods at home, I have a spare one, I can let them use this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like that happened, you know, this kind of stuff happens. So it’s not, having an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco extra pair of AirPods in your life is not as ridiculous as it sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you will find ways to use it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Surprising opinion from Arcoda.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey very surprising.
⏹️ ▶️ John My AirPods are never, like the battery never runs out of my AirPods. Like I am, maybe because
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just very good about charging things, but like I use them so much. It would be as unheard of as me picking up my
⏹️ ▶️ John phone and not realizing the batteries. That just literally never happens. So I don’t know. I don’t have that hole in
⏹️ ▶️ John my life, but I do. I’m still trying to decide what to do. I mean, they’re sitting here at desk. They’re in the box. I literally
⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t opened them, but they have my name on them and I’m not returning them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You might be able to return them. You might want to look into it. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know. I could, but I’m just not going to. Just like, I now, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not like cheese graters. Like I don’t need to have 50 of these, but I had to, for
⏹️ ▶️ John three days, I was without AirPods using my daughter’s old janky pair. And they knew what the AirPods 3 do
⏹️ ▶️ John sound better than the AirPods 1. We said this when they came out, they still do. And I didn’t like it. I just, it’s an important
⏹️ ▶️ John part of my life. Like Marco said, I wear them anytime I’m doing something where
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just like mindless, you know, not mindless, like walking the dog, cleaning the kitchen, doing dishes, surprising
⏹️ ▶️ John amount of my time is spent, even when doing like workouts and stuff. I have the AirPods in and I’m listening to like podcasts or music and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re a really important part of my life and being without them is frustrating and so one way
⏹️ ▶️ John I can mitigate that is apparently to have more than one pair.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I can’t tell you like how much I use AirPods and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like how, just how incredibly good, like the regular ones never fit me but the AirPods Pro’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fit me great and just how incredibly good of a product the AirPods Pros Pro, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guess, how good of a product they are. Oh my God. Every time this comes up, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never gonna stop singing the praise of this product. I am such a headphone nerd. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have gone through so many over the years, so many like portable headphones, Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headphones, wired portable headphones, and the AirPods Pro made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me forget about all of them. And it made me totally stop looking at any kind of headphone that’s for anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other than at my desk. They are just that good. They are not only extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco convenient and practical and small and easy to bring anywhere, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also just sound really good. Like for what they are, for their size, for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they are, I mean, they blow the category out of the water like in how good they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound compared to their peers. So they are, it’s just a fantastic product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco despite all the bugs and despite that I’ve also had occasionally to have to replace one under
⏹️ ▶️ Marco warranty. And like, despite all of that, we tolerate all of that because they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I, when I dropped off Aaron’s car at Safe Flight for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the replacement, we had a first thing in the morning replacement. I didn’t want to sit down there for the two or three hours. It took them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to replace the windshield. So we dropped it off the night before. And for uninteresting reasons, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidentally left my AirPods Pro in the passenger side, like door handle grab area.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s like a little gully there. And so I was without for an evening, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could have handled, but like John, you know, I do the dishes. I occasionally go for walks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with either the dog or just as exercise. And I didn’t want to be without any sort of AirPods. So I resurrected
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my AirPods. I guess this is maybe two, whatever. It was the first
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time you could get them with a Qi charging case, I believe. So it’s not the AirPods Pro. It was the original
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AirPods or again, maybe the second generation in a Qi charging case and I resurrected
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them and I put them in and I only use them a couple of times and it was for podcasts and I didn’t do any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sort of like real AB testing or like back-to-back testing, I should say. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe I just forgot how to get a good fit with the original AirPods because I’m used to the more rubbery tips
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the AirPods Pro, but oh my word, did they sound like garbage compared to the AirPods Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I should probably, had I known we were going to talk about this, I I should have done a test again, but they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sounded not great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AirPods Pro, like Marco just said, and I’m on the original AirPods Pro, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really wanna get an AirPods Pro 2 or whatever they are, you know, the ones with the improved ANC and all that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel so guilty about it when I have AirPods Pro, whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one that work just fine right now. Now, then again, I didn’t go to California, you know, this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey month, so maybe I could or should repurpose some of
⏹️ ▶️ John excuse for all frivolous purchases
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey for the rest of the year. Yep, I absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am. I absolutely am.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t want to save it until early next year?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, well, we’ll see. But nonetheless, I cannot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey believe how much better the AirPods Pro sound. Again, this could be user error. It’s maybe that I just didn’t have a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco good feel. No, it’s not. But it’s not user error. They sound so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The AirPods Pros truly embarrass many other headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are both larger and more expensive than they are. Look, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to replace a full-size pair of desktop wired headphones. It’s not that good, but it is surprising.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For little earbuds that are little wireless things that stick in your ear and have noise cancellation,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they truly embarrass all of their peers that are directly comparable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then even headphones above their class, They embarrass many of them as well.