catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).

566: Using It Is Wearing It Out

19 Dec 2023

We have invented a new podcast episode. You sometimes need a stylus, parts of it are accurate, it’s occasionally smart, and boy, have we patented it!

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Transcribed using Whisper large_v2 (transcription) + WAV2VEC2_ASR_LARGE_LV60K_960H (alignment) + Pyannote (speaker diaritization).

Chapters

  1. Intro
  2. Gift memberships!
  3. iPhone OLED burn-in
  4. Stolen Device Protection
  5. EU battery-law exceptions
  6. Vexed+
  7. Required Reasons API
  8. More on stolen devices
  9. ATP Membership
  10. Apple to “pause” Watch sales
  11. Adobe 💸 Figma
  12. Old TestFlight builds leaked
  13. ATP Membership
  14. #askatp: How to run old OS X versions
  15. #askneutral: EV requirements
  16. #askatp: How’s Callsheet going?
  17. Ending theme
  18. Post-show

Intro

⏹️ ▶️ John Your OLED screen will last longer if you do not turn it on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Unlike batteries, which will not

⏹️ ▶️ John Come up with a better speaking of batteries You gotta come up with a better system for like when the power goes out I have to wander all around my house

⏹️ ▶️ John dealing with each UPS It’s just I wish I know like the USB

⏹️ ▶️ John connecting thing to your Mac that it’ll shut itself down But I never trust that I do it myself You know what? I mean? Because I’m always just afraid

⏹️ ▶️ John it’ll be like review these terminal windows and then it won’t shut it down or whatever So just

⏹️ ▶️ John shut everything down the old-fashioned way. You have too many UPSs. And then

⏹️ ▶️ John when the power comes back on, I have to remember that even if I don’t want to turn these things back on, I

⏹️ ▶️ John have to activate that UPS because it has a router attached to it. And if

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you don’t have

⏹️ ▶️ John that router on, nothing works in the house.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sounds like a lot of work. Why don’t you just get laptops everywhere?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, right? Yeah, my laptops are plugged into UPS, too. Dсыл pää providers are law enforcement, e-commerce, compliance,

⏹️ ▶️ John and e-mail.

Gift memberships!

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do we want to talk about some gift memberships, John? Do you want me to do the pitch? Do you want to do the pitch?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey How do you want to

⏹️ ▶️ John handle this? I have a moment of pause because I could do it, but I kind of want to hear what

⏹️ ▶️ John you would do just as a form of entertainment.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco All right.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh my God.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Here we go, kids. It buckle up. It’s time to talk gift membership. So, uh, our friend,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my friend and yours, John Syracuse, my best, worst friend, worst, best friend. I always get it wrong. I’m sorry, Merlin.

⏹️ ▶️ John You got it wrong twice. So there you go. Wait, wait, what’s the right one then? Worst friend.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like best friend, but the word best has been replaced with worst. No. For humor

⏹️ ▶️ Casey value. No, no, no, because that’s semi-aggressively negative. And I thought

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John he was more… That’s what it is.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t make it up.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is the Casey version. The Casey version is recalling… I’m trying to make a reference to another show, but making it nicer.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco exactly. A

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John little more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco friendly

⏹️ ▶️ John version. We’ll chalk it up to niceness and not poor memory.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Slash ineptitude. So yeah, my worst, best, best, worst friend, John Syracuse, a copyright 2023 Casey

⏹️ ▶️ Casey List. Anyways, uh, he has put in a genuinely large amount of work

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I put in a slightly more, more than zero amounts of work in making

⏹️ ▶️ Casey gift memberships, a thing on our website and our membership system. So if you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a nerd in your life. That probably is listening to this. I don’t know how this is going to work, but Hey,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you have a nerd in your life, that might be interested in our plucky little, uh, Apple related show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and maybe they’re a little bit too frugal, or as I would call myself, cheap to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pay for a membership. You can pay for a month or even a year of membership. You can go to etp.fm slash gift.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can gift this person a membership. Now we never, ever, ever tell them that they have been gifted a membership.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is on you, in part because we’re lazy and didn’t have the time to do it, but mostly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey because we wanted you to be in control of how you message that whole thing. You can print something out, you can just send them an email,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can drop a random link in an iMessage conversation. I wouldn’t recommend using Beeper, but you can give it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a shot. But nevertheless, one way or another, you can go to atp.fm slash gift to gift

⏹️ ▶️ Casey someone a membership. Now, a couple of quick points of order. You need to create an account with us that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is free for reasons in order to gift a membership. You can immediately delete that account afterwards

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you so desire, or you can sign up for yourself. You can stack gift memberships

⏹️ ▶️ Casey because John did not do the bare minimum of work. You can stack them, so if you are lucky enough to receive

⏹️ ▶️ Casey several gift memberships, they will stack such that when one runs out, the next one will begin,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you may not have to pay for a long time, which would be super fun. But yeah, atp.fm slash

⏹️ ▶️ Casey gift, it is all right there. John has written an FAQ for you to read. There’s all sorts of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wonderful and fun stuff that you can check out, atp.fm slash gift. The time is running out. We are recording

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this, I believe it’s the 18th. I don’t even know. I’m all over the place. Yes, it’s Monday the 18th, which we record this, these gifts

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are ready instantly. So you could be, if you are the kind to celebrate Christmas,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you could be doing this on Christmas morning if necessary, and, you know, write a very unusual URL

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope and say, hey, Merry Christmas to you. So go check out hp.fm

⏹️ ▶️ Casey slash gift. John, anything to add?

⏹️ ▶️ John John Giesinke That was everything I dreamed it would be, Casey. Casey Shepard

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’m so happy for

⏹️ ▶️ John us. John Giesinke Classic Casey-less promotion. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The

⏹️ ▶️ John only thing I would add is the way it works is if you’re listening to this and you want a gift membership,

⏹️ ▶️ John just text somebody who you think is going to give it to you and say, hey, if you’re looking for something to get

⏹️ ▶️ John me for the holidays, atp.fm slash gift, you have to deliver the URL

⏹️ ▶️ John to them and then they buy it for you. That’s how the system works. They’re not going to be listening to the show. How would they ever listen to

⏹️ ▶️ John the show? They don’t know about the show. All they need to know is that this is a fun gift that you would like. who’s listening

⏹️ ▶️ John now, give somebody else the URL. They’ll get the hint.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is the equivalent of like leaving the catalog open on the table with the thing you want circled and dog-eared.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Exactly.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this, I gotta say, like, you know, as somebody who I listen to a lot of podcasts for which I am paying

⏹️ ▶️ Marco members or Patreon supporters or whatever. And so that is one of the, it is a great gift to give somebody because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco taking something that you’re already doing in your life and making it a bit nicer is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a fantastic gift, especially if it’s the kind of thing that like the person probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would not have spent the money on it themselves for whatever reason, but you can make this thing nicer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for them. Like that’s that is always the best kind of gift. Like you buy somebody like a really good tool for some for some hobby they’re doing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or or you like, you know, upgrade something for them that you know, they would really appreciate that they wouldn’t necessarily

⏹️ ▶️ Marco spend the money on or you know, or something like that. That’s like the category of great gifts in my opinion.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this is exactly in that category. Like if for someone who likes the show, if they’re on a member and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you buy the membership, like that just makes the show better for them. So that’s it’s a wonderful thing. Whenever there’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a podcast I listen to that has a paid version, I almost always get it. And I’m always happier

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with it because I honestly I don’t like having to skip ads if I don’t have to. I’d rather just have them not be there.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And any kind of bonus stuff that comes along with it is very helpful.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. give a gift to you, to your friend,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to your loved one. And by doing it through us, you’re giving a gift to us too. So, hey, thanks. But anyways,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, check it out, and we appreciate it.

iPhone OLED burn-in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do some follow-up. We have a handful of people that have written in with regard to an Ask ATP

⏹️ ▶️ Casey last week about Apple devices and OLED burn-in. We start with David Jim

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Curcio. I hope I got that right. I actually did have burn-in issues on my iPhone XS.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had it plugged in and on a stand at work, using it as an always-on display before that was a feature. And fuzzy versions of the battery,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wi-Fi strength, and clock became permanent fixtures on my screen. This is, I think, effectively

⏹️ ▶️ Casey nightmare fuel for John Syracuse.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you said. That’s just

⏹️ ▶️ John how burn-in works. And by the way, the reason they were fuzzy, we didn’t mention this last week, but in the long list

⏹️ ▶️ John of burn-in mitigation techniques that OLED screens use are something that I believe plasma

⏹️ ▶️ John screens also use, which is like they shift the image a little bit from side to side. So it’s not always on

⏹️ ▶️ John at the same place. I don’t know if the XS did this, but I believe the current ones do it as well. So I always

⏹️ ▶️ John question the value of that feature. And by the way, modern TVs, in case you’re worried

⏹️ ▶️ John that you’re going to be losing parts of the picture, which you did back in the battle days of plasma. Modern TVs over provision

⏹️ ▶️ John the pixel. So even when they pixel shifted, you aren’t losing any pixels. They’re just shifting the image around

⏹️ ▶️ John and not lighting up some pixels on one side. The good modern TVs do that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, so like the so so the physical panel is actually larger than the picture by a little bit to

⏹️ ▶️ John buy a little bit. Yeah, too, because it used to be in the plasma days like you do that. You know, they have these various calibration tests where

⏹️ ▶️ John it will show you like this. You should be able to see this rectangle and put a thin rectangle around the whole screen. Right.

⏹️ ▶️ John And you’d know if you had like the the what do you call it the over scan thing on you’d be like Oh, I can’t see the rectangle.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s screwed up So you fix the over scan feature but the pixel shift or pixel orbiter thing it would cut off

⏹️ ▶️ John one of the borders But then when it shifted to like the left you wouldn’t see the left border anymore Cuz it would be like a one pixel line. It would

⏹️ ▶️ John be shifted off the edge now I believe all the good one all the good OLED TVs have enough pixels to move it

⏹️ ▶️ John around I think they do that on most like computer monitors. I don’t know if the iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ John does it it’s a very difficult thing to find out because they tend not to list it. They will list the pixel shift feature

⏹️ ▶️ John under some branded name, but they won’t always say, oh, and also we over provisioned by seven pixels on all edges to

⏹️ ▶️ John handle this. Pixels are so small now on retina displays, it’s hard to tell, but on TVs, you can think you can actually see

⏹️ ▶️ John this if you look up real close.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I think it’s important to point out too, like, you know, this instance of burning on a 10S,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as David said, who wrote it in, like this was kind of creating an always on situation. Plugged

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in and on a stand at work, using it as an always on display before there was a feature. So what this means is,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, cause with the iPhone, you can tell it to never sleep the screen. Like that’s a setting that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have access to. Any phone can be left on all the time. I don’t recommend this for lots of reasons,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but this is, again, this is what happened here. And so this kind of shows like, you know, like when always

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on came out as a feature, some people were like, wait, why can’t they have this like added

⏹️ ▶️ Marco via software to the older models? One of the technical reasons why they might not have wanted to do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that and might not have been able to do that, is because they knew when launching the 14 Pro,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they knew this was going to be a feature of it. And so they were able to make decisions with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly what specs the OLED panel had, what kind of OLED it was, how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was gonna be driven, within what range it was gonna be driven. And they were able to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco launch this feature knowing what the hardware was going to be for it, slash pick the hardware

⏹️ ▶️ Marco knowing this feature was going to be important for them, so that they could have a panel that could

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get more use this way without having burn-in become a problem. Whereas on the older phones,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that wasn’t necessarily possible. As time goes on, like, you know, components change, types of OLEDs change,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and different ones have different tolerances for this. So, you know, the modern ones where they actually launched this feature,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, in mind with these hardware panels, can usually take it a lot better.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, and getting back to my point about the pixel orbiting and my doubt about the feature, Like imagine

⏹️ ▶️ John you’ve got a rectangle that’s your little battery, pretend that it’s always full, it’s just a white rectangle, orbiting it by a few

⏹️ ▶️ John pixels, like shifting it over and up and left and right by a few pixels, all that’s gonna do is make

⏹️ ▶️ John a slightly less burned in halo around the burned in rectangle. Like you’re not

⏹️ ▶️ John actually stopping burning, you’re just trying to spread it around by a tiny little bit.

⏹️ ▶️ John So I’ve never been a fan of that feature. I’m like, I don’t think this helps me. Like having

⏹️ ▶️ John a fuzzy burned in rectangle for my battery instead of a crisp one, it’s the rectangle is still

⏹️ ▶️ John there, but you know that people do what they can.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jameson Weiss writes, I am currently using an iPhone 14 Pro that shows no signs of burn-in,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but my previous phone, an iPhone 11 Pro, did show noticeable burn-in around the mini bar icons.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could very faintly, but noticeably see the ghost of the battery icon and the clock in the wifi symbol.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Keith writes, my Apple Watch Series 5 and iPhone 13 Pro Max both have OLED burn-in. The watch has the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey complications burned in and the phone has the status bar burned in. So it’s apparently on the watch

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as well. And then an anonymous person writes, Apple store technicians have a diagnostic that will

⏹️ ▶️ Casey check and tell us if the device has developed a display profile. The display

⏹️ ▶️ Casey profile helps mitigate through software OLED burn-in. When we do repairs, such as a rear system or mid system

⏹️ ▶️ Casey replacement, we must run an additional diagnostic during repair. This test involves connecting the customer’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey original rear or mid system and the repaired device to a Mac, which then allows us to transfer the display profile.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We do these steps because the display itself does not have the components to store the display profile, it is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey instead stored on the main logic board. When this display profile test was first introduced, we originally had to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey replace the whole device when it was flagged because we did not have the tools to perform the display profile

⏹️ ▶️ Casey transfer. But now we perform this repair daily. I personally have seen a display show burn-in before

⏹️ ▶️ Casey performing this display profile transfer diagnostic. Anecdotally, always-on display has not led

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to an increase in these display profile transfers that I’ve noticed. instances of noticeable burn-in have also

⏹️ ▶️ Casey been very rare.

⏹️ ▶️ John This is what I was talking about last week with burn-in mitigation. Basically, if you don’t drive every single pixel

⏹️ ▶️ John on the display to the maximum amount, you have a little bit of headroom. So, if the displays get worn out and they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit more dim, the display can compensate by sending, essentially, more electricity to

⏹️ ▶️ John that pixel to make it the same brightness as its neighbors. Televisions do this through a series of sort

⏹️ ▶️ John of, again, they have branded names for everything in televisions but like they do

⏹️ ▶️ John these cycles when the display is turned off. I’m not quite sure how but they do. But when your television is turned

⏹️ ▶️ John off, if you have a modern OLED television, at some regular interval it does some test to essentially recalibrate

⏹️ ▶️ John itself to make sure all the pixels are the same brightness. Every single individual subpixel, right? So if you’ve worn

⏹️ ▶️ John out the red sub, one particular red subpixel is not as bright as its neighbor, they can figure that out

⏹️ ▶️ John somehow and they will give that red subpixel a little bit more electricity than its neighbor basically trying to even it out.

⏹️ ▶️ John The rtings.com burn-in test they’ve been running for years actually ran into this recently because the tests

⏹️ ▶️ John that they were doing didn’t allow certain brands to run their sort of display

⏹️ ▶️ John update cycle thing because like they all they all cycle based on like oh you have to be idle for this amount of time

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever and they were just running the the screens just you know 24 hours a day or something

⏹️ ▶️ John close to it so it never got to run the compensation cycle so it looked like the burn in was awful. But then once they figured

⏹️ ▶️ John that out, once they figured out how to detect when it’s running the cycle, they let it run its cycle and it was a dramatic difference.

⏹️ ▶️ John And so what this Apple store technician is telling us is basically that, but for

⏹️ ▶️ John iPhones, that the iPhone also can figure out, oh, you’ve worn out these pixels and now we

⏹️ ▶️ John need to drive them a little bit harder. And that display profile, I imagine it’s like a big map of like, hey, for

⏹️ ▶️ John every single sub pixel on the display, does it need a little bit more juice than its neighbors and

⏹️ ▶️ John how much more. And the fact that they used to just chuck the whole phone or eventually recycle it or whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ John because they couldn’t just transfer the profile, which is just, it’s just data, right? It’s just, they couldn’t transfer. It’s like, well,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, we have to give you an all new phone because there’s no way I can transfer this stuff. It’s good that they’ve introduced

⏹️ ▶️ John the ability to transfer it. But, uh, yeah, that’s, uh, that’s part of how you make OLEDs quote

⏹️ ▶️ John unquote, not burn in. You’re still wearing out the pixels as every time it’s like vinyl Casey, every

⏹️ ▶️ John time you use it, you’re wearing it out a little bit. using it is wearing it out. There is no way to use it

⏹️ ▶️ John without wearing it out. Every time your screen is on, you are degrading the organic compounds in those OLED pixels.

⏹️ ▶️ John But if you weren’t driving them at the maximum amount, you’ve got a little bit of headroom and the display can figure it

⏹️ ▶️ John out and compensate for it.

Stolen Device Protection

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s talk stolen device protection in the 17.3 beta. Russell Quinn

⏹️ ▶️ Casey writes, trusted locations is kind of, let me get some context here, I’m sorry. So, one of the things that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’ve said is you have an hour delay when you go to do

⏹️ ▶️ Casey certain operations, like changing your Apple ID password, except if you’re at a trusted

⏹️ ▶️ Casey location, which is allegedly like work and home. So, Russell Quinn writes, trusted

⏹️ ▶️ Casey locations is kind of flawed because most people will have those very addresses, home and work, in their contacts app,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right there in the My Card at the top. If your phone is swiped in a bar, etc., there’s a reasonable chance

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you’re not that far from home. Russell is implying then that, you know, the thief could go

⏹️ ▶️ Casey drive or train or what have you to your house or your work as quickly as possible and hopefully

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for them change your Apple ID password before

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have the chance to lock all of this using iCloud on another device. So

⏹️ ▶️ John we didn’t have this in here, but there was some other feedback from I guess someone who’s used the beta that these these locations

⏹️ ▶️ John these trusted location things are configurable. It’s not like it demands to be home and work and

⏹️ ▶️ John it just pulls them from your address book or something. And I think they’re either there either is

⏹️ ▶️ John some kind of lock on those locations or maybe the person was saying there should be

⏹️ ▶️ John a lock, meaning like if someone gets your phone that they can’t see or change those locations or whatever. but I’m not

⏹️ ▶️ John quite sure how that’d be possible once they have your phone and your passcode, but we’ll see how this works out. For the people who are very paranoid,

⏹️ ▶️ John I assume what you can do is just say there are no trusted locations. I always have to wait an hour, so then you eliminate this whole

⏹️ ▶️ John issue. But asking people to make the security and

⏹️ ▶️ John convenience trade-off is always dangerous, because they’ll always pick convenience, right? You kind of, if you

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t sort of default them to having at least their home be a safe location,

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not gonna add it themselves. They’re like, why would I make my life more difficult? Or they wouldn’t, you know, maybe someone

⏹️ ▶️ John would convince them to do it, but the first time they had to, to, uh, you know, wait an hour, uh, they would get rid of it as

⏹️ ▶️ John soon as possible. So, you know, interested to see how this shakes out when they actually ship this feature

⏹️ ▶️ John and what the actual effect is based on the defaults they choose.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Richard Harris also made an interesting point. You described a scenario where if my phone

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and its passcode have been stolen while I am out, but I have enabled stolen device protection, I can use someone else’s web browser

⏹️ ▶️ Casey within an hour to log into iCloud.com and find or wipe my phone. However, with two factor on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my iCloud account, I cannot log into iCloud.com from an untrusted browser without also

⏹️ ▶️ Casey entering the six digits that are sent to my trusted device, which in this case was just stolen. Since most people should have two

⏹️ ▶️ Casey factor enabled on their iCloud account and most people do not leave the house carrying their iPad or laptop, even if they have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey such devices, how does the new stolen device protection feature help in the most frequently cited scenarios?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t have a good answer for this other than if you have, like say one password or something

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that, you could potentially log into your one password account on the web. However, that also requires

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a very, very large GWT looking thing, which I certainly do not have memorized

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and would also be stored in a one password on a trusted device, which presumably has just been stolen.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I don’t have a good answer for this.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, that’s why we were talking about whether one hour is the right amount of time because there are solutions to this, okay?

⏹️ ▶️ John So obviously, if you’re within an hour of your house and you can get back at your house. And if you’re like us and have more than one Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John device, like you don’t need your phone, you can use a Mac that is a trusted device or other ways

⏹️ ▶️ John to get into it. Also, there are backup codes. I don’t know if a backup code will be sufficient on its own

⏹️ ▶️ John because I haven’t actually tried this, but it is a thing that exists where you can get backup codes to sort of recover if

⏹️ ▶️ John all else fails. And you should have those printed out and stored in a physically secure location that hopefully you can

⏹️ ▶️ John get to within an hour. And then the final thing is, again, if you can actually

⏹️ ▶️ John get home, you can sign in from one of your Macs that is already able to sign

⏹️ ▶️ John into iCloud without going through the two-factor stuff because it’s always signed in because you know. Yeah, so

⏹️ ▶️ John again, I’m interested to see how Apple pitches this. The idea is that if your phone

⏹️ ▶️ John is stolen and you have that hour timer starts, hopefully you can do something within

⏹️ ▶️ John that hour to get yourself in. Obviously you can’t do anything if you don’t have a phone and you’re alone. You have to find somebody

⏹️ ▶️ John else who’s gonna let you use their web browser or whatever. But if they do, depending on how nerdy you are, There are various

⏹️ ▶️ John scenarios you can imagine, like using some sort of a web VPN

⏹️ ▶️ John interface to get into your house and remotely control a computer that’s already signed into your iCloud account, and yada, yada,

⏹️ ▶️ John yada. Backup code seems like the most regular person friendly, but

⏹️ ▶️ John even that’s tough. Like what you would do is you’d have those codes printed out, you’d have them in your wallet somewhere.

⏹️ ▶️ John You would not label them. That’s a little security tip. Don’t say, these are my Apple ID backup codes. Just

⏹️ ▶️ John put them on a piece of paper. You know what they are. them in some pocket of your wallet that you don’t frequently use. Make sure it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John waterproof and the ink is not going to smear or whatever. And then worst case scenario you can, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John find a browser and log in. Again, I don’t know if the backup code all by itself is sufficient. It might also require a two-factor.

⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s, you know, one hour is what I think the time is in 17.3 beta.

⏹️ ▶️ John Having that time be configurable might be interesting for people who care, but again,

⏹️ ▶️ John when you ask people to choose between security and convenience, maybe things don’t come out the the way you want. So we’ll see how it goes.

⏹️ ▶️ John Again, this is beta, it hasn’t yet shipped.

EU battery-law exceptions

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Mathos Woolard writes, one thing to note in the EU’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey removable battery legislation is that they explicitly carve out exceptions for devices that have a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey high level of water resistance. So maybe batteries don’t have to be so easily removable?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Question mark?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don’t think any of this stuff is finalized. I do wonder if Apple isn’t currently at that high level

⏹️ ▶️ John of resistance, if they wouldn’t make sure they’re at the water resistance just so they

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco don’t have to do

⏹️ ▶️ John the battery thing. Uh, yeah, again, we’ll see how. We’ll see what actually comes out of this

⏹️ ▶️ John as a law or guideline or whatever when they’re done.

Vexed+

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Skeen Harshly writes, that is a great name, my word. It

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is absolutely, I’m sorry, John Syracuse is absolutely correct about Vexed, and the best part

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is someone ported it to iOS as Vexed Plus. This was John’s beloved Palm OS game,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and apparently you can get it on your iOS device, so that’s cool.

⏹️ ▶️ John I immediately snagged that, although one thing I noticed, this is the part of any kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of retro type gaming thing. I got it on my iPhone, I’m like, hey, it’s the same level as I remember,

⏹️ ▶️ John and it looks a little different on your iPhone or whatever, and then I realized, oh, it feels totally different when I’m swiping

⏹️ ▶️ John the blocks with my finger than using a stylus. And I know that sounds dumb, right? But it’s just like, what is my memory of playing

⏹️ ▶️ John Vexed? Apparently, a big part of my memory of playing Vexed is pushing little blocks with a stylus.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sorry. I mean, I gotta say, like, having playing with my PalmPilot, like having

⏹️ ▶️ Marco played hearts and stuff on it now in my Mealborn game. Not a PalmPilot. Whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco My

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Palm OS device

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John was. On my Nintendo.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was released after the Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000 models, but not that much after. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so a big part of the feel of what, like, you know, what gives me the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco nostalgia and the feel of it is the feel of having that stylus and tapping those little things on the screen. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco something that we don’t have anymore, really. Like, you know, you kind of have it with the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Pencil on the iPad, but not really. Like, it’s a-

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Screen doesn’t squish.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s a very different feeling. And what we have now is generally better

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for almost every way. Like, it’s generally much better now. And I’m not saying we should go back to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. And if you try an old, resistive, you know, squished screen like this,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you will almost certainly think it’s worse. But it is different. And so if you play these same games

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a touch screen or with a mouse, they are different and it doesn’t feel the same. So if what you’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking for is the nostalgia of how it used to feel to use a, excuse me, Palm

⏹️ ▶️ Marco OS device, not a Palm Pilot, John. If you’re looking for that feel,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re not gonna get it right with any kind of emulation with a touch screen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a mouse pointer.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it was kind of, you know, so the idea of direct manipulation, I’ve talked about this in many past shows, but like

⏹️ ▶️ John moving a block, in VEX basically you have these little blocks and they’re actually very small on the screen. They’re much smaller than they would be

⏹️ ▶️ John to be good touch targets. Moving that block with the stylus on a Palm device

⏹️ ▶️ John Feels like direct manipulation. You feel like, especially since the screen squishes, you feel like you’re shoving the block off because there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John gravity on the screen. So if you shove the block off of another block, it just falls down, right? You feel like you’re directly

⏹️ ▶️ John manipulating the block with your little prod, right? When you play on the iOS version,

⏹️ ▶️ John which is a faithful port, first of all, your finger entirely covers the block

⏹️ ▶️ John and maybe a little bit of some of its neighbors because the blocks are again, they’re not 44 points. They’re much smaller than that,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? You can’t really see what you’re doing. And when you slide with your finger, Yeah, it pushes the block over, but by

⏹️ ▶️ John the time you lift your finger up so you can see the screen again, the block has already basically fallen. It doesn’t feel like

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re directly manipulating it. It feels almost like you’re swiping on the screen in the vague area of the block,

⏹️ ▶️ John and then a block goes down. It is much less satisfying.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey But I

⏹️ ▶️ John would still say, I mean, no one’s gonna buy a Palm on eBay so they can play this game. So definitely check out the game.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s free. I don’t know. I buy iOS apps without thinking about it. It’s either free or extremely

⏹️ ▶️ John cheap. but check it out because it is a fun puzzle game. It is very much like every puzzle

⏹️ ▶️ John game you’ve ever seen. Like, oh, it’s a little bit like Tetris, a little bit like Bejeweled, a little bit like this, but it’s not exactly like any of them.

⏹️ ▶️ John And the levels are very clever and they do a good job of teaching you the mechanics. You should check it out and go through

⏹️ ▶️ John the first 10 levels or something. Have some fun.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, I tried installing it on my Palm 5X and it crashed. So I’ll have to figure out maybe I had like the wrong

⏹️ ▶️ Marco version or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John maybe I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco had like, I think I might’ve had too new of a version because you know, with the Palm devices,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like you went from the super simple 160 by 160 monochrome and then gray scale

⏹️ ▶️ Marco screens over the following years, you went to higher resolution screens, much faster processors,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco color screens, and various different OS and networking upgrades

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff like that. And so a lot of the like kind of high-end Palm OS games

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are really made for those later systems and they don’t necessarily work on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my Palm 5X running OS, whatever it is. So I gotta maybe find an old version.

Required Reasons API

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s talk about Apple’s required reasons thing for certain

⏹️ ▶️ Casey APIs. This blew up, I want to say two, three months ago. They decided that for certain

⏹️ ▶️ Casey APIs, a lot of which I think made sense, but some of which particularly user defaults was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey quite surprising. User defaults is the thing that most app developers use to store

⏹️ ▶️ Casey preferences for their app or apps and things of that nature. They were saying it was very, very

⏹️ ▶️ Casey scary what Apple was not really threatening, but saying they were going to do that, oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re going to have to provide reasons for using user defaults, and it’s going to be big and scary. And since every freaking

⏹️ ▶️ Casey app uses user defaults, it seemed a bit silly. So apparently, Apple’s updated

⏹️ ▶️ Casey its required reasons thing for using certain APIs. And user defaults has new reasons.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It has three of them with very odd code names. The first one, declare this reason to, or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess this is why you would use it, declare this reason to access user defaults to read and write information that is only accessible

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the apps, app extensions, and app clips that are members of the same app group as the app itself. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in other words, stuff that you write that only you and your apps can touch.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The next one, declare this reason if your third-party SDK is providing a wrapper function around

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the user defaults APIs for the app to use, and you only access user defaults APIs when

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the app calls your wrapper function. This reason may only be declared by third-party SDKs. This reason may

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not be declared if your third-party SDK was primarily to wrap the required reason APIs.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So jump in, fellas, if I’ve got this wrong, but I guess if I were to vend a framework

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or a facade in front of user defaults, then I could claim this to explain why I’m using user

⏹️ ▶️ Casey defaults. Is that about what this sounds like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco to you?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I believe it’s saying you can’t claim this. So the way I interpret this is,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you make a library that happens to allow user default access as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of some other kind of… kind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John of ancillary function than yes?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like if the SDK had its own settings, for example.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yes. It

⏹️ ▶️ John has some persistent state that’s part of the SDK that it stores, and it wants to store them in your app’s

⏹️ ▶️ John user defaults because it’s running within your app.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, but if you happen to make like Swift defaults as your library name, and it’s really just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John a thin

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wrapper around user defaults without much other purpose, I think they’re saying you can’t use this code for that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, I’m not sure about that. What they say is if your SDK was created primarily to wrap required

⏹️ ▶️ John reason APIs, not necessarily this API, user defaults, but you can’t use it as like a API laundering.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco essentially you make an SDK, and it’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ John call through this SDK and we’ll get any other required reason APIs. It’s interesting. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John the first one that Casey read was the one that I was complaining about back before I realized this doesn’t apply to Mac apps

⏹️ ▶️ John yet. Was that, hey, App Groups, it’s an Apple concept. Everyone uses it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Having a shared user defaults in my App Groups is a huge use case. So finally they addressed that, so that’s great.

⏹️ ▶️ John The third party one, I really didn’t expect them to do, but I guess it’s been so long and they’ve gotten so much feedback

⏹️ ▶️ John that they realize a lot of people are in this situation and they use a third party SDK. That SDK has some setting

⏹️ ▶️ John somewhere that it persists and it’s gonna persist them in your apps user defaults. Cause that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John like, where else would it put them? So they have to allow that. I think this bottom part is,

⏹️ ▶️ John I guess, preventing it from being an API laundering thing. Maybe it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John a third party SDK for just wrapping user defaults. I don’t see why that would be banned,

⏹️ ▶️ John but reading this language, it makes it seem like it would be.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s like, well,

⏹️ ▶️ John it only exists, it’s a library, a convenience library around user defaults. But what are you using

⏹️ ▶️ John it for? To read and write your own apps user defaults. Like that’s not laundering anything. You could have done that

⏹️ ▶️ John yourself, you’re just using a library for it. That’s why I think the part where it says, create a permally to wrap

⏹️ ▶️ John required reason APIs, not specifically the user defaults API, any of the

⏹️ ▶️ John other API’s that are on the list that you have to have reasons for it. We’re just listing the ones for user defaults, because it was the most

⏹️ ▶️ John egregious one in the original list of API’s because everybody’s app uses it.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it was so restrictive that you just couldn’t do basic app things. So they’re addressing that here.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And when when this first was announced, I believe, early like in the late summer, early fall,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when we did talk about it, and I believe I said the same point, then. So I’ll be quick this time, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we don’t usually know like the level of trickery

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and scammyness that apps try to pull off to try to track people and do creepy stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so whenever we see stuff like this from Apple, like some kind of weird new privacy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or security requirement that it seems like it shouldn’t be necessary or it seems like unnecessarily

⏹️ ▶️ Marco persnickety. the reason is this has been abused

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or is being abused for some kind of creepy thing and we just don’t necessarily know about it or can’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco quite figure out how could this be abused. So in this case, I’m sure they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco added these things carefully with their inscrutable numbers.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Why are these numbered the way they are? I don’t know. But whatever the reason is behind this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco obtuse requirement they’re creating here, it is probably because it was actively

⏹️ ▶️ Marco being exploited in the wild. So every single word of this, like every little clause,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every condition, every exclusion, I guarantee you it was because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody was being tricky with this stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then finally, declare this reason to access user defaults and read the blah blah blah key to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey retrieve the managed app configuration set by MDM, mobile device management, or to set the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yada yada yada key to store feedback information to be queried over MDM as described in the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Mobile Device Management Protocol reference documentation.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so these reasons, I mean, again, we’re just focusing on user defaults. We’ll put a link in the show notes to all the new reasons, but there

⏹️ ▶️ John are a ton of them. And it’s been a while since we talked about this, but this just shows how thorough Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John has been in making sure that all the use cases that they

⏹️ ▶️ John got feedback about are addressed. So just plain old user defaults. There’s the one thing that

⏹️ ▶️ John I thought of, which is just obvious, app groups, right? Then there’s a third-party SDK thing, which we didn’t even discuss last time. Then

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s the MDM thing, which we definitely didn’t discuss this time, but you can just see, you can say, oh, you look at that, oh, I

⏹️ ▶️ John see how that could affect people. Oh, I see how that could, you know, how many people have their own

⏹️ ▶️ John apps that they distribute over MDM to their corporate devices that are owned by their company? And they’re like, well, our thing

⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t work anymore because we access user defaults and we do it through the MDM thing. And no

⏹️ ▶️ John one who doesn’t have an MDM distributed app is thinking of that, but so many apps out there do that. So this, Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John took a long time to come up with this list, but it seems like they’ve addressed a lot of stuff. Now I’m sure there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John still stuff that they missed, but this is a much bigger expansion than I thought they would have. Again, look

⏹️ ▶️ John at the full list. This is just user defaults, but like I expected maybe, maybe they’d allow

⏹️ ▶️ John app groups, but they added much more above and beyond that. So I hope this is now at

⏹️ ▶️ John the level where, let’s say 98% of the apps fit within it. It’s still, I don’t think

⏹️ ▶️ John they’ve changed anything about the strictness of it. I think there’s some kind of timeline of like, well, it’ll be advisory for a while,

⏹️ ▶️ John but then eventually they’ll require it. but Apple’s usually pretty good about not coming

⏹️ ▶️ John up with a new set of requirements and making it mandatory on day one and just destroying their entire Apple ecosystem.

⏹️ ▶️ John They’ll, you know, do it slowly and hopefully get to the point where everybody’s on board. And again,

⏹️ ▶️ John crossing my fingers, this still does not apply to Mac apps. I hope it never does. Please Apple, leave the Mac alone. What

⏹️ ▶️ John the deck were you doing,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mike? I can’t remember the rest of Doburil’s choice.

More on stolen devices

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also, real-time follow-up from who? Someone in the chat I’ve already lost where it was.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey MTZ Federico pointed out that if you don’t have an iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or other Apple device to use Find My, you can use Find Devices on iCloud.com.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey When you sign in, you might be asked to enter a verification code sent to a trusted device. If you lost your only trusted

⏹️ ▶️ Casey device or otherwise can’t get the code, select the Find Devices button instead of entering a code. I don’t really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know what that means and I don’t have the ability to research it right a second, but apparently they have a plan for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you if you are in that situation. And this does not seem to indicate that you need a backup

⏹️ ▶️ Casey code. So I’m not really sure what the situation is here, but it’s apparently been at least considered.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. These are all things we never want to find out. And unlike restoring from your backups, you can’t,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not easy to safely rehearse this. Like I wouldn’t like, if it’s, if you rehearse it and you find a problem with your system, guess

⏹️ ▶️ John what? You just intentionally lock yourself out of your own app ID forever. So don’t maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John test this to the limit, but I guess, you know, it’s up to Apple to try to communicate this to people and

⏹️ ▶️ John say, here’s what you need to do to be safe. Right now it’s not entirely clear.

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Apple to “pause” Watch sales

⏹️ ▶️ Casey A lot of stuff happened today. Um, generally speaking, there’s a little inside

⏹️ ▶️ Casey baseball, but generally speaking, the morning that we record ATP, I like to go somewhere else to work. You

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, oftentimes it’s, you know, the grocery store that I like Wegmans, or maybe it’ll be a library or something. And I’ll sit

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there and I’ll read through all the links and make sure and watch all the videos and make sure I know what the heck it is I’m going to talk about that night.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I typically do that, you know, from like eight, eight in the morning until roughly lunchtime. And then at that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey point, I consider myself having done the research and job well done. Pat on the back for me. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey all sorts of stuff broke today. And so I’m shooting from the hip a little bit at this point, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey here we go. And let’s start with what happened at something like nine o’clock in the morning Eastern

⏹️ ▶️ Casey time. It was broken, I think, specifically to 9to5Mac, or at least in part

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to 9to5Mac. But 9to5Mac wrote that Apple is pausing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sales of the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple watch ultra two in the United

⏹️ ▶️ Casey States due to a patent dispute. And there had been rumblings about this in the past. I don’t think we ever talked about it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the show, but in short, there is a company whose name I don’t have in front of me, but I believe

⏹️ ▶️ Casey begins with an M that has patents on, uh, on how to do blood oxygen detection.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And they have claimed that Apple is infringing on those patents. And I guess

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s going through the courts and that’s not going as quick as this company wants. So they appealed to some other

⏹️ ▶️ Casey jurisdiction or organization, the international trade commission. There you go. That has said, okay,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, we agree with you other companies. So we’re going to tell Apple, they have to pause sales of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the devices that infringe on these patents, which is basically the series nine and ultra two.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey For now, as we sit here on Monday, the 18th, they can still sell them through other

⏹️ ▶️ Casey retailers. So like Amazon and Best Buy, for example, um, they, they can still sell

⏹️ ▶️ Casey these devices, but it is possible that around Christmas time, they will also not be able to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sell these devices. So it’s a big mess and I’m surprised it’s gotten this far. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t even know what to make of this.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, this is why we really haven’t covered it on the show yet. As far as I am concerned is like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s weird patent claims against companies all the time. And then they settle and then it goes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco nowhere and it’s fine. Like someone pays some money and the lawyers make most of it. and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in, you know, like all use of patents, it’s just a tax on everybody and it doesn’t really protect

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anybody from anything. And the lawyers make out with all the money, the end, congratulations, that’s the US patent system.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, a lot of good there, promoting innovation, good job everyone. So normally these cases,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, they breeze through the news and they don’t go anywhere because they get settled out and you never hear about them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco again. So when this stuff started with Massimo’s, the company, when

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it started, you know, and them making claims against the Apple Watch, I think they’ve been making claims against the Apple Watch for years now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Again, we just thought, at least I just thought, well, it’s gonna fizzle out and get settled or something. Like that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s gonna be going to happen and that’s it. And so to have us be at the point now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where Apple has announced that like, as possibly as early as next

⏹️ ▶️ Marco week, they might have to stop selling their two flagship models of Apple Watch,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco leaving only the Apple Watch SE in the current lineup. that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco substantially different news than we usually hear like that that’s a big deal I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco guessing it won’t actually get that far or if it does get that far it will be a fairly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco brief shutdown of sales. You got to figure like Apple is is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pulling out all the stops to try to get this you know resolved in some way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you also know that Apple is I don’t think Apple is super willing to give

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on threats of patent litigation like this. I don’t think they’re going to just say, all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right Massimo, here’s a whole bunch of money. We’re going to license your patents and give you whatever you want. I don’t see

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it ending that way necessarily. What’s probably going to happen is they’re going

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to try to get around it with some kind of technicality and then there will be more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lawsuits and it’ll prolong stuff and it’ll just kick the can down the road further. That kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing can be successful for years. So, that’s probably what’s going to happen here,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but in the meantime, if they actually go through with this, because what they said so far is basically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they think they’ll have to go through with this. If they actually have to go through with this and actually have to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stop selling most Apple Watches in the US for a while,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever that, you know, and it, look, it could be a week. I’m guessing if it happens at all, it’s going to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very brief. It would surprise me if it was more than a week. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ll see what happens. Stranger stuff has happened, I guess, in tech. But it will kind of be interesting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as tech enthusiasts and as a tech podcast, it will be interesting to see if it does happen because this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of thing pretty much never happens in our world. At least it doesn’t make it up to the level of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco being visible to consumers like this. So this could be interesting.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so Apple released a statement about this And you can see the glimmer

⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple’s potential strategy, because you would think Apple’s statement about this would be all about how,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, usually Apple statements are, here’s the thing we’re doing. So first of all, this one’s weird, because it says,

⏹️ ▶️ John here’s the thing that we might have to do in the future if everything continues the way it’s going, which

⏹️ ▶️ John is weird, right? You know, so they’re like, but the very first sentence of the statement

⏹️ ▶️ John kind of hints at what they’re going for. It says, this is from Apple’s statement. First sentence, a presidential

⏹️ ▶️ John review period is in progress regarding an order from the International Trade Commission, blah, blah, blah, blah,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? So it starts by saying, hey, there’s a thing that’s under review by the president.

⏹️ ▶️ John And if nothing changes, and if their review period goes through and we have to do all this stuff, we’re gonna do

⏹️ ▶️ John these things, right? It’s like, you know, what Apple says, Apple is preemptively taking

⏹️ ▶️ John steps to comply should the ruling stand, right? So what does that

⏹️ ▶️ John even mean? I mean, I guess you could like, well get ready to stop selling stuff. I guess there may be, there’s something they need to

⏹️ ▶️ John do, but why issue a statement about, just so you guys know, there is

⏹️ ▶️ John a presidential review period and unless things go our way, unless someone

⏹️ ▶️ John says, changes their mind, we’re gonna have stop selling Apple Watches. Convenient for Apple, by the way, that they had to stop

⏹️ ▶️ John selling them essentially on December 24th and 25th. So they get all their holiday sales, but

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey they don’t really get any post holiday sales.

⏹️ ▶️ John And of course, Amazon and Best Buy and stuff can sell through their inventory or whatever. So

⏹️ ▶️ John the interpretation of the statement is basically Apple announcing to the world slash president

⏹️ ▶️ John saying, you wouldn’t want us to stop selling Apple watches, would you? Cause it’s kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of a popular product and we’re kind of a popular company. And if you don’t do something, Mr. President,

⏹️ ▶️ John we’re going to have to stop selling Apple watches. Doesn’t that sound terrible for you? So

⏹️ ▶️ John just we’re putting out this public statement. I mean, everybody involved knows this, right? but Apple puts

⏹️ ▶️ John out a public statement that says to the world, and we’re talking about it on this podcast,

⏹️ ▶️ John something that everyone involved in this issue, the review board, the two companies,

⏹️ ▶️ John everyone already knows that, but Apple is kind of putting it out in the world to put pressure on the president

⏹️ ▶️ John to overturn this or to whatever they have the ability to do, this review period

⏹️ ▶️ John of saying, either you let it stand or you like counteract it in some way. And I think Apple is hoping

⏹️ ▶️ John that the president will say, oh, don’t stop Apple from selling the Apple Watch, they’re a big important company and they make a lot of money.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not quite sure how the system works. I don’t pay too much attention to patent law. I’m not a lawyer. I hate patents with a passion.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure that gambit is going to work, especially because Apple put out the statement. If Apple wanted to

⏹️ ▶️ John do this, they should be working back channels, not running to the press, because that never helps.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, you can assume they probably have tried that already.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Right, but this is like the last

⏹️ ▶️ John ditch thing of saying, hey, world, we’re going to have to stop selling Apple watches for dumb patent reasons. And this kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of is related to yesterday, yesterday’s last episode, we were saying that Apple is a US company,

⏹️ ▶️ John and they are subject to US laws. And sometimes there are those laws that they don’t like, like laws about

⏹️ ▶️ John handing things over to the government, or in this case, patent laws, Apple patents everything, because as a big

⏹️ ▶️ John company, they have to it’s a it’s the system we have is you have to participate in it, you don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John get to be the size of Apple. If you don’t patent everything under the sun, a lot of the times you’re patenting all

⏹️ ▶️ John this bogus stuff. And so you can use it as defense against other people using their bogus patents against you and this

⏹️ ▶️ John war of mutually assured destruction, which is totally pointless and stifles innovation and the only people

⏹️ ▶️ John that makes happy are lawyers. It’s terrible, but it is the system that we currently have. And Apple sure

⏹️ ▶️ John as hell participates in that system. It’s kind of, you know, a bummer for Apple in this case, it seems like they don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John have enough patents to retaliate against Massimo and Massimo is playing hardball and not being

⏹️ ▶️ John bought off at the price Apple thinks is reasonable. So it’s a game of chicken now. It’s like, Do you

⏹️ ▶️ John do you people and the government of the US really want Apple to stop selling its two flagship

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple watches indefinitely because of some company you’ve never heard of with some super dumb patent? You don’t want that

⏹️ ▶️ John to happen, do you? And Apple is not currently lobbying for reforming patent law. And I’m not sure

⏹️ ▶️ John if they even would, because again, Apple participates so much in the system that it’s hard to know whether they like it

⏹️ ▶️ John or not. But they have to participate in the system. It would be great if they lobbied for, you know, reform

⏹️ ▶️ John on software patents and reform on patents in general. That is an uphill battle with lots of forces

⏹️ ▶️ John going in the other direction. It doesn’t seem like Apple has much appetite for that. So here we are, they’re just out

⏹️ ▶️ John there saying, I know we have a stupid system and we tried to settle our way out of this.

⏹️ ▶️ John Now we’re doing making a last ditch sort of plea to

⏹️ ▶️ John anyone who can overturn this to say, how about just let’s not do it in this case? I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know how that’s gonna work. One thing I think is pretty sure, Apple will not stop

⏹️ ▶️ John selling its flagship Apple Watches for very long. I mean, worst case scenario, Apple just buys

⏹️ ▶️ John the company. Like Apple can solve this problem with money. They just don’t want to. Whatever Massimo

⏹️ ▶️ John wants, they don’t want to pay it. But believe me, Apple can pay it. Whatever the amount is, Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John can pay it and will eventually pay it if this goes on long enough. So Massimo is, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John betting that they can just drag this out to get a little bit more money. But in the end, Apple’s not gonna spend a year

⏹️ ▶️ John not selling its two flagship Apple Watches. they’re going to pay whatever it takes to make this go away eventually. But they’re going to

⏹️ ▶️ John try everything else first. And this is one of those things.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, that’s the racket of patents. It’s just extortion. I mean, that’s,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, promoting innovation with patents. What you’re really doing is creating legal

⏹️ ▶️ Marco methods of extortion. And again, it’s one of the many

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John reasons.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it makes it so that only the richest companies can even participate, because it’s impossible, as we’ve discussed in the past shows, It’s impossible

⏹️ ▶️ John to make any technology product without infringing tons and tons of patents that you can’t afford to license. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John that is not, you know, the purpose of the patents is supposed to be for whatever the quote is from the relevant law of like

⏹️ ▶️ John the encouragement of the whatever arts or whatever. And it does the exact opposite. It makes it so the only way

⏹️ ▶️ John that you as a small company can have a tech product is if you get lucky and hide. Because, and

⏹️ ▶️ John the big companies violate so many patents, but they also acquire tons of patents to retaliate against

⏹️ ▶️ John anyone. And then you have patent trolls who are like, like, ha, we don’t make anything, so you can’t retaliate against us. And it’s just, it is the worst

⏹️ ▶️ John system. And here we have, hopefully this will motivate some patent reform or maybe give

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple an appetite for it. Because again, Apple participates so heavily in the system that I can imagine within

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, there are sections of the company that think, oh, patents are great. We just, you know, our patents are super important. Remember when Steve Jobs was

⏹️ ▶️ John up there with the iPhone? Oh boy, have we patented it, right? They always sound great when

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you’re on the side of like

⏹️ ▶️ John using your patents to beat down other people. It’s not so great when it goes the other direction. The whole point

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is- And look at how well that worked for them. Like it didn’t even work that well for them in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John the end of the day. No, it

⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t work, it’ll never work. It’s because everything is stupid and everyone, all the big companies acquire tons of these really dumb patents

⏹️ ▶️ John and they make it like, Apple licensed the one-click patent, do you remember that? Amazon had, for kids that don’t know,

⏹️ ▶️ John apple, amazon.com, the place that used to sell books online and now sells everything, patented

⏹️ ▶️ John the ability to buy something with a single click. Yep. Which, if that sounds dumb to you, welcome to patents.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And I believe Apple licensed it

⏹️ ▶️ John for like the iTunes store or whatever, right? Because that’s the way it works. It’s like, how many dumb patents do you have?

⏹️ ▶️ John How many dumb patents? That’s why patent cross-licensing agreements happen. I think Apple did a big cross-licensing agreement

⏹️ ▶️ John with Microsoft. It’s like, look, we have tons of dumb patents, and so do you. How about we just agree that I can use

⏹️ ▶️ John all your patents and you can use all mine, so at least we can ignore each other and just worry about

⏹️ ▶️ John the other people who are constantly suing us for patents and stuff? And we don’t have time for an

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco entire show about why patents

⏹️ ▶️ John are dumb. And I’m sure people disagree with us. I’ve seen many past episodes where this has been discussed, including a couple

⏹️ ▶️ John on my old Hypercritical podcast. Our position has not changed since then. And especially,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think, the entire Apple ecosystem got a taste of it with the, what was the round that came

⏹️ ▶️ John through and swiped a bunch of developers we know? Some stupid thing about audio playing or something.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, that was a different one. That was something like Home Audio, something like that. The EFF struck that one down, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think. No, Lodsis was, it was some kind of, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it was an in-app purchase thing. I forget what the details were. Thank God it actually never hit me, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it hit a bunch of people close to me. Like a whole bunch of people you all know.

⏹️ ▶️ John And the small developers like had to pay for it. And it really is like extortion because they

⏹️ ▶️ John come to you and they say, look, we can destroy your company with this. So pay us all the money you can afford

⏹️ ▶️ John to pay us because they want to get money. They don’t want to destroy the company because they destroy a company to get nothing. So they basically say, how much

⏹️ ▶️ John can you afford to pay us? Like how much money do you have in your wallet? Just give us all of that, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John And so for smaller developers who don’t have a lot of their money, they’ll say, okay, well, just tell us how much is in your bank account,

⏹️ ▶️ John and we won’t charge you any more than that. That’s the shakedown of these things. With a big company, obviously

⏹️ ▶️ John they can’t do it with Apple, because Apple has billions of dollars. They’re not going to get all of that, right? But for the small developers,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like there’s a flat fee. Everyone has to pay $2 million. No, because no small developers can pay that. But if you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John a small individual developer, they still want your money. So can you pay us $30,000? And

⏹️ ▶️ John people would do it just to make it. But you can’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco afford to fight it. Yeah, because the alternative is, all right, then you can try to hire a lawyer for $100,000. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the, that’s again, it’s extortion. It’s just the mob, but legal. Like it’s, it’s exactly like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, hey, it’d be a shame if that building burned down, you pay us for protection money. It’s that, it’s just that, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco legal. Like, that’s what I mean, the patent, it’s so, now we’re getting all mad, but like, that is so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco dysfunctional and proud. It’s one of those, it’s one of those wonderful stories that we tell people, oh yeah, well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s, you can be an individual inventor in your garage and come up with a great million dollar idea and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco patent it, And the reality is so far from that. That is not how it works at

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all. Like the only people who have patents are fools and assholes.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s it. Because to get a patent, if you are an individual to get a patent that is actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like properly written, properly filed, and has any chance of at all, maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco being enforceable, it costs tens of thousands of dollars just to file a patent.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So how many individual inventors in their garage are going to have tens of thousands of dollars

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to pay a lawyer and file everything and get it all written up and get it done. And then once you actually, if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually get that patent granted to you, that doesn’t prevent everyone from using it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That just gives you a tool that you can use to sue people who use it. Guess what? That takes more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco money. So the only people who can actually get a patent and then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco afford to try to enforce it against somebody are people with tons of money

⏹️ ▶️ Marco already and And chances are, it won’t really stop a big company

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from stealing the idea and using it because big companies, guess what they have? More money and more lawyers and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more time than you. And I know this is kind of making the case for Massimo, but that’s the reality. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you are a small inventor and you think a patent’s gonna protect you, it won’t. It just will cost you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tons of money, and then at the end of the day, it still won’t protect you. So that’s the fool side

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it. And then there’s the asshole side of it. It’s people who actually intend

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to deploy this thing against unsuspecting people. Because here’s the thing, patents

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are allegedly required to be novel and to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not some kind of solution that a layperson would have just kind of come up with on their own in the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco field. So this is the argument against many software patents. Many people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco end up allegedly violating patents accidentally because the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing that is patented just became kind of common sense to anybody who was in that field. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so if you’re writing an app and you have a certain problem you’re trying to solve with some algorithm or some technique,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you might just come up with that on your own. The reality is that’s how most invention works and simultaneous invention

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a real thing, kind of destroys the whole myth the patent system is based on. But anyway, setting all that aside

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the moment, most patent infringement in most of tech

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is done accidentally and unknowingly because so much has been patented

⏹️ ▶️ Marco by people who are just opportunistic thieves and vultures who want to be parasites on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the world and want to shake people down for money because they think, well, I’m gonna stake

⏹️ ▶️ Marco out my claim and get these patents and these things and then everyone has to pay me when they do them. There are many ways

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to go through this life and I try very very hard to be the total opposite of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that kind of asshole and I hope most of you out there make the same choice. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so So the patent system doesn’t work the way anyone thinks it does. The only people who benefit are lawyers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and giant companies. And here’s a patent fight that is between

⏹️ ▶️ Marco two giant companies who are both trying to extract as much money out of the other as possible. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these views that I hold on patents and that John holds on patents are not super rare views

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the tech business especially. Most of the tech business doesn’t like patents. And so there

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is no way that Apple is going to be amenable to any solution

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that requires them to pay Massimo for every Apple watch they make, which is probably what Massimo is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco asking them to do. And probably a lot. Because Apple doesn’t want to be stuck with that forever.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Patents last a very long time. I believe it’s something like 20 or 30 years, depending on whatever it’s in.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Patents last a long time. So Apple does not want to be paying this company for every single Apple watch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they make, some dollar amount for an idea that Apple thinks they don’t deserve to have exclusivity

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on. Apple is very, very principled. We know that. We saw how hard they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fought against Epic, which maybe we’ll get to that a little bit. But we saw

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the principled stand they take about protecting what they believe is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco theirs in the App Store, and the taxes they charge to developers in the App Store, and the gatekeeper fees

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they charge. They feel so strongly that But a lot of times

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Apple, they’re a very opinionated company, a very principled company, and usually that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a very good thing. You know with stuff like this, they’re not going to just say, fine, we’ll give you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco five bucks per Apple Watch or whatever. They’re not going to say that because they are probably so mad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that this company even thinks they deserve five bucks from each Apple Watch because Apple probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thinks they invented this stuff or this stuff is common sense or it shouldn’t have been patented

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever. Because again, that’s how patents work. They’re all BS. So I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see Apple being necessarily willing to solve this problem with money if the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco solution with money involves, we’ll give you five bucks for every Apple Watch we sell for the next 15 years.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, they would never do that. They would just buy the company

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at that point. Maybe, but then, but what does the company want them to pay? Because Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably hates this company and they would rather probably bury this company

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in in lawsuits for years than to actually buy them like because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re again. They’re a principled company. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John saying by the company jokingly because they wouldn’t actually sell an apple wouldn’t offer to buy them. But what I’m saying is that money can solve this

⏹️ ▶️ John problem in many ways.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, yeah, no way, but they won’t there’s no way they would

⏹️ ▶️ John sign up for that protection racket where where they pay that, you know, if they license the patent, they would

⏹️ ▶️ John do it the way they license all their patents, which is like we just want to be done with you. We never want to see you again, kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of like what they did with arm, not that it’s adversarial, but like getting the architecture license, whatever that

⏹️ ▶️ John license is, it seems like they can now can do what they want with arm without worrying about that

⏹️ ▶️ John anymore. Same thing with the cross license patent agreements. Like they just want this to be over and go away

⏹️ ▶️ John and whatever reason Massimo is playing hard ball and they haven’t agreed on a price. But I feel like they have to because there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John no way they’re going to stop selling the Apple watch, right? They’re going to figure it out. I mean, not for a long time. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe they’ll do it for a week or a month or whatever to put political pressure on, but they’re not going to forego an entire year

⏹️ ▶️ John worth of Apple Watch Ultra sales.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, what do you think about patents, gentlemen? Not a fan. Not a big fan. No.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. I think we have time to keep on keeping on, so let’s talk about the next breaking piece

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of news from earlier today.

Adobe 💸 Figma

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Adobe is giving up on their 20 billion with a bubba B

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a dollar acquisition of Figma. They, the two of them have decided that there is no chance this is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to get through regulators in the UK and the U S so the heck with it, we’re going to part ways. Oh, and apparently

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Adobe owes Figma a billion dollars in termination fees. Whoopsie dupsies.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, I can’t say this is terribly surprising to me. And, and I honestly don’t know a whole bunch about,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, either company, cause I’ve never really used Adobe stuff and I’ve never had the occasion to use and use

⏹️ ▶️ John Figma. Never used Adobe stuff?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not really, not not in any regularity. I never touched Photoshop

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John with an acrobat

⏹️ ▶️ John back in your PC.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, okay. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s fair. I didn’t think about that. Yeah, that’s true. But anyways, yeah, so apparently they’re breaking up and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a billion dollars to Figma, you know, you may pass go and you may collect a billion dollars.

⏹️ ▶️ John It seems so weird that they had such a big breakup fee in one, but always look like a risky thing. Because Adobe,

⏹️ ▶️ John despite Casey not using it as a pretty well known company with a couple of products you might’ve heard of like Photoshop, they

⏹️ ▶️ John are the big dog in the markets that they participated in. Adobe has

⏹️ ▶️ John gobbled up a bunch of its competitors in the past, either gobbled up or defeated or both its competitors

⏹️ ▶️ John being the bigger and bigger dog. And Figma was the first company in a long time to start giving

⏹️ ▶️ John Adobe a run for its money. So Adobe trying to acquire them, you have to,

⏹️ ▶️ John everyone involved has to know, boy, this might be tough to get past regulators because in general, if

⏹️ ▶️ John a company like Adobe started out as being an important

⏹️ ▶️ John company in their market and just grew and grew and ate their competitors and grew and ate and defeated their competitors

⏹️ ▶️ John and grew and ate and defeated their competitors and then wants to buy the one company that

⏹️ ▶️ John has challenged them in ages for 20 billion, you’re gonna look askance at that and say, this probably doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John seem like it would make for a healthier market. And so they put a $1 billion breakup

⏹️ ▶️ John fee in there. And as Daniel Jockett pointed out earlier today, I think Figma

⏹️ ▶️ John has like a thousand employees. So that $1 billion

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco breakup

⏹️ ▶️ John fee in theory, you could give a million dollars to every Figma

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco employee, which of course is

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey not what’s going to happen,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? Because that’s not how capitalism works. But

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey like, can you imagine though

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that would be unreal? I know it will never happen. I’m not arguing it will never happen, but can you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey imagine if any one of these, what did you say? A thousand people rank

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John and file employees.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can you imagine if just you, you know, they snap their fingers, Thanos style, but then all of a sudden everyone’s a billionaire,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey excuse me, a millionaire, that would be unreal. What a cool story that would be. Unfortunately,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’ll never

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John happen.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I think they all stood to make a lot more in their Adobe stock or whatever they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey going to get as part of the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco deal. So this is, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, obviously, yeah, all this money is going to go. A few people are going to make a lot of money with this breakup fee. And most

⏹️ ▶️ John of the employees are going to make nothing, I would assume, because that’s the way capitalism works. But yeah, that’s a big

⏹️ ▶️ John breakup fee for a deal that if you had to place odds on, it would be difficult to know which side to

⏹️ ▶️ John bet. I’m glad they went against not knowing the details, but my general inclination is

⏹️ ▶️ John competition is good and the market that Adobe’s in needs more competition, not less,

⏹️ ▶️ John and I have used Adobe and I have used Figma, and I do see how they compete with each other. They

⏹️ ▶️ John also are slightly complementary because they come at things in a different way, and the places where Adobe’s strong

⏹️ ▶️ John is not where Figma is strong. But the whole point is people were using Figma instead of the equivalent

⏹️ ▶️ John or non-equivalent, non-existing Adobe tools, And that’s why

⏹️ ▶️ John the market was shifting a little bit. It was like, hey, Figma has something that Adobe doesn’t. It’s a competition. They weren’t making a Photoshop

⏹️ ▶️ John replacement that was better than Photoshop. They were coming at it from a different angle, really focusing on collaboration

⏹️ ▶️ John and focusing on the use cases that for the modern world, that were, you know, lots of Adobe products were

⏹️ ▶️ John created before the web existed. So that really colors their lineage and their feature set.

⏹️ ▶️ John And Figma is totally focused on a, you know, world where we’re all connected and collaborating on things.

⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, my my instinctual inclination when any of these huge mergers come is let’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John do that. Oh, let’s just let them go on their own. And Figma is not.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think Figma can exist on its own. People like, oh, who’s going to buy Figma now? I don’t like the idea

⏹️ ▶️ John that the only reason a company exists is to get bought by a larger company. I know that’s a big thing. And there’s some there’s a hemming

⏹️ ▶️ John hawing about this, like, oh, if they don’t let this deal come through, how are startups going to get funded? Because the only way startups get funded

⏹️ ▶️ John is they assume they’ll eventually get bought by the bigger company. It’s like, that’s not healthy. If the whole purpose of making a startup

⏹️ ▶️ John is to eventually be acquired by the bigger company, all you do is feeding people and ideas into the bigger

⏹️ ▶️ John company that just keeps getting bigger and bigger. You can actually make a competing company that

⏹️ ▶️ John makes a profit and pays employees and makes a product and improves it. Like lots of the companies

⏹️ ▶️ John that are around today started that way. If they weren’t, like every single company that we talk about on this show

⏹️ ▶️ John would all be owned by IBM or something and there’d just be one company that’s called IBM and it owns the former Microsoft and it owns the former

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple that owns the former Atari, that owns the former everybody because they just buy everything. Like, hey, what’s wrong with that? I feel

⏹️ ▶️ John like that’s the current environment.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I bet

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they would make really great products.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, which is like the, like whatever the big companies are that exist now, it’s like, well, no other

⏹️ ▶️ John companies can exist except for these ones. And from now on, the only thing you can do is make a startup

⏹️ ▶️ John that you hope will be acquired by one of them. I think the last big one that appeared, I would assume we would say like Facebook and Google were the last

⏹️ ▶️ John two big ones to appear. And now it’s like, this is it, this is the set. and your

⏹️ ▶️ John company’s just gonna get acquired by the stupid abbreviations they have for it. I forget what

⏹️ ▶️ John it is, like FAMP or whatever. It’s like Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft,

⏹️ ▶️ John Adobe. There’s just these big companies in each of their markets that are so dominant,

⏹️ ▶️ John they stop them from buying everybody, right? And if Figma can’t make it on its own, it’s like, oh, we invested

⏹️ ▶️ John so much money, the only reason we’ve been able to make this good product is because we’re not viable as a standalone business.

⏹️ ▶️ John Our only purpose is to be acquired. Well, that’s a bad business plan. Don’t do that. Being acquired, fine. Maybe that can happen.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a fine way to exit for certain companies. But if you grow to the size of Figma, where the biggest company

⏹️ ▶️ John wants to buy you for 20 billion, you probably have a viable business on your own. At least I hope you do. You’ve got a thousand

⏹️ ▶️ John employees. Someone wants to buy you for 20 billion. You can’t make money. You can’t figure out how to be a profitable standalone company. You have

⏹️ ▶️ John to be acquired. Or is it because your investors are like, well, the only way we get our big payday is if you get acquired. Ugh,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s more distasteful side effects of our economic system. So I don’t,

⏹️ ▶️ John again, I’m not being gleeful saying because they get these Figma employees, you know, they’re working

⏹️ ▶️ John within the system we have. And part of the system we have is one of the big payoffs you might get from working at this company is

⏹️ ▶️ John you might get acquired and you might make out like a bandit, right? And I just, I don’t begrudge them that. I don’t, I think

⏹️ ▶️ John they deserve that as much as anyone deserves anything, but it’s another example of working within a system that I think is bad.

⏹️ ▶️ John And we all have to work within it because it’s a system that we have, but I really wish we would work to change

⏹️ ▶️ John that system. And part of the system, like it or not, are regulators that sometimes say that

⏹️ ▶️ John a big company can’t buy some other company. And in this case, it was the UK and the EU instead of the US.

⏹️ ▶️ John But that’s also part of the system. It’s also part of the risk of being an employee and hoping

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re going to get bought out by a bigger company. That merger may be stopped by regulators.

⏹️ ▶️ John In this case, I am not sad that it was stopped.

Old TestFlight builds leaked

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, then the last piece of breaking news from earlier today is that data

⏹️ ▶️ Casey from TestFlight servers from 2012 to 2015. So this is before

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple certainly took ownership. I think it was before Apple even said they were

⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to buy TestFlight, or it was before all that happened, I believe.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, TestFlight used to be a separate company, like a little startup. It was much more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco limited and much harder to use, but it was pretty useful at the time.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, definitely. Very well put. Anyways, there’s a bunch of data that maybe has been leaked. I’m not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure that leak is really the right classification here. Uncovered? Uncovered

⏹️ ▶️ Casey might be a better word for it. Thank you. But anyways, a bunch of data, like terabytes worth of data has been

⏹️ ▶️ Casey exposed or uncovered, like Marco had said, from test flight servers back

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the 2012 to 2015 era. And so we’re not entirely sure how this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey came to be. We’re not even entirely sure if this was recent, but certainly it’s become a bit of a brouhaha over the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey last 24 hours. Yeah, a lot of old builds, a lot of old data

⏹️ ▶️ Casey coming to light. It appears that this may relate to Amazon

⏹️ ▶️ Casey S3 buckets that were not properly protected, maybe.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the fourth hard problem in computer science, is properly protecting S3 buckets, right? Right.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think the deal with this, again, this story just broke this morning. I think the deal with this is that this data dump has existed

⏹️ ▶️ John for like a decade and people are just rediscovering it because people have short memories. And it’s like, it’s in archive.org,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? Regardless of when this leaked, how old the leak it is, how much we forgot about

⏹️ ▶️ John it and are rediscovering it 10 years later because we all have short memories. It’s not great.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s out there, right? It’s not the source code for these things, it’s binary. So what you upload to TestFlight is a,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, build of your app that you’re testing on people’s devices. It’s not the final one, probably, that

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re going to send the app store. Maybe, you know, it might be if you, if they just had that build works, but it’s all the in-between

⏹️ ▶️ John builds that you send. And so their binaries or maybe in some cases, bit code, if Apple watch was around back then,

⏹️ ▶️ John um, for tons of stuff and people are sort of digging through

⏹️ ▶️ John this giant archive of binaries, trying to see if there’s any useful, uh, the link we’ll put in the show notes is from Euro

⏹️ ▶️ John gamer. It’s because it’s like, look at these prototypes of games that never shipped because you know, They developed them,

⏹️ ▶️ John they put them out on test flight, they decided they’re never going to ship them So if you want to find some weird unreleased game

⏹️ ▶️ John Including some unreleased Flappy Bird variant because that’s what people at Eurogram are excited about

⏹️ ▶️ John I guess You could dig through this, but this is the difficulty of You know,

⏹️ ▶️ John leaving stuff unprotected on the internet and then when it makes its way into archive.org Apparently it’s hard to get rid

⏹️ ▶️ John of it Even ten years later if this really is a leak from or a people say it’s not a leak It’s it was

⏹️ ▶️ John they just crawled it either way Anyway, TestFlight didn’t intend for this to be

⏹️ ▶️ John in archive.org, and yet it is in archive.org because archive.org crawled the TestFlight

⏹️ ▶️ John site and followed links and eventually found all this stuff and slurped it all up, and now it’s there. It would

⏹️ ▶️ John be great if Apple slash TestFlight could say, hey archive.org, can you remove all that

⏹️ ▶️ John because we don’t own all that intellectual property and neither do you, so it probably shouldn’t be in archive.org

⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s basically it’s builds of every- did you use TestFlight in that year range? Did you upload an app?

⏹️ ▶️ John You’re probably in this data dump, right? And you probably don’t want it there. I mean, maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s irrelevant, maybe you don’t care. Maybe it’s a build of an app that’s long dead or it’s useless to everybody because it only runs on all

⏹️ ▶️ John OSs or whatever. It’s weird, but it’s also

⏹️ ▶️ John a cautionary tale. Check your S3 bucket permissions. And this sounds dumb,

⏹️ ▶️ John but like, if you like Amazon doesn’t make this that easy and they’ve worked on it over the

⏹️ ▶️ John years to try to make it more obvious when you screw this up. There are whole companies

⏹️ ▶️ John that part of their product is they will go over your stuff in AWS and make sure you haven’t done something boneheaded and

⏹️ ▶️ John yet it happens all the time. Someone has an S3 bucket, which for people to

⏹️ ▶️ John know it’s just a place on the internet where you can store files. There’s lots of imitators

⏹️ ▶️ John and they accidentally make it accessible to everybody. And it’s like, how would they not notice this? You don’t notice it

⏹️ ▶️ John because you can’t really get anything out of it unless you sort of know the file name. So it’s security

⏹️ ▶️ John through obscurity, especially if they don’t allow it, like essentially directory listing to use web parlance. Like you can’t,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you can set the permission. So, oh, nobody can iterate over the contents. You can’t list what’s here. But

⏹️ ▶️ John if you know the file name, you can make a request for it and you’ll get it, right? And the file names are really big and obscure.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s like, well, you know, you wouldn’t notice that it’s publicly accessible because no one would be making those requests.

⏹️ ▶️ John But if you have a crawler, and especially if that crawler is seated with like, it knows that you use like the app ID

⏹️ ▶️ John as the file name, and it has a bunch of app IDs from elsewhere, then the crawler can just go through and try

⏹️ ▶️ John all those app IDs. The whole point is your S3 bucket shouldn’t be publicly accessible.

⏹️ ▶️ John It shouldn’t, random person on the internet should not be able to pull a file from it if it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John supposed to be publicly accessible. There should be some authentication where you have to be allowed to get that

⏹️ ▶️ John file like because you’re the developer of the file and that’s how you can get it, but doing that can be a little bit annoying.

⏹️ ▶️ John And especially with the efficiencies of S3 where you really don’t want them to go through your server, to bounce off your server, you want

⏹️ ▶️ John to go directly to S3, because that’s one of the wonderful things about S3 is that it’s available everywhere, and it’s close by, and

⏹️ ▶️ John blah, blah, blah. People take a shortcut, and they say, well,

⏹️ ▶️ John no one’s gonna guess this URL anyway. We’ll just make the bucket publicly accessible. Or they accidentally make it publicly accessible, but again,

⏹️ ▶️ John they never realize it’s publicly accessible, because it seems like you can’t get anything from it without knowing how to get to it, but

⏹️ ▶️ John especially automated computer crawlers, they’ll just follow links. They don’t know which ones they’re quote-unquote supposed to or not supposed

⏹️ ▶️ John to follow, so if they find an in, they’ll just go and crawl and scrape and pull everything out of there and it

⏹️ ▶️ John ends up in archive.org.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, in all fairness, if you set up a new S3 bucket today,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they make you jump through many hoops to make it publicly accessible. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Amazon has learned, like, wow, people mess this up a lot.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is now so complicated and convoluted to make any part of an S3 bucket

⏹️ ▶️ Marco publicly accessible. So it’s better

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John now.

⏹️ ▶️ John People are motivated to do it because they’re like, my app’s not working, I keep getting an error on S3. And they’re like, they just bash AWS

⏹️ ▶️ John until the error stops. Like, oh, done, now the error’s gone.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m not sure what

⏹️ ▶️ John I did, but now I’m not getting any more errors pulling from S3, so I guess everything’s fine. And then, you know, fast forward 10

⏹️ ▶️ John years and someone has scraped everything out of their bucket and it’s in archive.org.

ATP Membership

⏹️ ▶️ Marco As mentioned earlier, we are supported exclusively this episode by

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ATP members. Please consider becoming a member today at ATP.FM.

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whenever we offer the ATP store, whenever we have those time-ranged sales that we bother

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you about in the main show, you usually members will get a special code that will apply to everything in that sale

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that will give them 15% off. So it’s a net little extra bonus, uh, with membership there. So anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco check it out. ATP dot FM slash join. It’s about eight bucks a month and it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the best way to support the show. You know, the ad market goes up and down that’s life,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, but members are there, they are consistent and they have really helped us out a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot this last year as the ad market has been not so great. So thank

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you so much to members who are out there for some reason if you’re hearing this. If you’re not, please consider

⏹️ ▶️ Marco becoming a member today, atp.fm.com. Thank you so much for your consideration

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and back to the show.

#askatp: How to run old OS X versions

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s do some ask ATP and Tom Bullock writes, what’s the best way in 2023 to run an old

⏹️ ▶️ Casey version of OS 10, for example, tiger. I don’t know,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be honest with you. I know that Apple has a, a bit of sample code and I think he

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Rambo might’ve put something together where you can like use whatever the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John hypervisor is.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Virtualization framework.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And you can very, very cheaply and reasonably easily

⏹️ ▶️ Casey create and run a virtual machine. I dabbled with this briefly, like six months or a year ago, and it was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty good. I would assume that the right answer is something like VMware

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fusion or Parallels, but I honestly don’t know. I think, John, you might be the best

⏹️ ▶️ Casey person to answer this question.

⏹️ ▶️ John Best is the trickiest part here. Yeah, best for what? What is the best way in 2023? well,

⏹️ ▶️ John getting back to our discussion about Palm devices, the best way is to use an old Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ John Cause that will give you the authentic experience of what it was really like. For that definition, if that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John your definition of best, that’s gonna be the best. You need like a CRT, you need

⏹️ ▶️ John a blue and white G3, you need, that’s one definition of best.

⏹️ ▶️ John But I’m assuming that’s not what this person wants to know. People wanna run it

⏹️ ▶️ John without getting an old computer we’re dealing with all of that hassle. Here’s the problem though. All of the virtualization

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff that Apple offers so far doesn’t let you sign into an Apple ID, which maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John back in Tiger isn’t that big of a deal, but as the versions advance, not being able to sign into an Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John ID puts really cramps your ability to do

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff with it. Like if you want to, if you’re there, cause you’re like, I want to try it all the old apps and see how they work. And it’s like, Oh, I can’t

⏹️ ▶️ John do this cause I have to sign into an Apple ID or I can’t use a sync thing or whatever. You don’t care about that. then yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John any virtualization thing will work there. The reason people have made these virtualization apps

⏹️ ▶️ John is because Apple has a framework for virtualization. And if you can put a fairly thin app wrapper around

⏹️ ▶️ John that, the framework does all the virtualization stuff. You just have to deal with like making a nice UI and

⏹️ ▶️ John letting people set things up and install or whatever. So that’s why you see a lot of these hanging around. VMware,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think still uses its own virtualization framework from way back in the day. That will probably

⏹️ ▶️ John be more straightforward and more supported. Even with VMware, there are limitations.

⏹️ ▶️ John I have VMware and I have old versions of Mac OS X here hanging around for

⏹️ ▶️ John some old software and some curiosity. And it’s not, not everything works. Like if you

⏹️ ▶️ John expect it to be just like if you had pulled out that old Mac, it’s not going to be. I’m not sure if it has the same Apple IDM

⏹️ ▶️ John limitations, but definitely the graphics acceleration, especially on old versions, super jank. Either

⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t exist at all or it exists, but it doesn’t work the way you expect it to, or it seems slow. And

⏹️ ▶️ John if you like, sometimes they’re all, they all click they’re in safe mode where there’s like no transparency and everything’s really slow.

⏹️ ▶️ John You have to figure out how to enable the GPU acceleration. It’s not straightforward. So

⏹️ ▶️ John the reason I mentioned the hardware thing is that really is the best. You’ll get as much as you can possibly

⏹️ ▶️ John get. And even then, referencing what Marko was talking about last episode, there

⏹️ ▶️ John may be issues with, you know, TLS and SSL versions, which mean that you can’t

⏹️ ▶️ John use the web browsers. you won’t be able to really use it like it was back in the day because

⏹️ ▶️ John the world has moved on. But the closest you can get it with hardware, everything else is gonna be in compromise.

⏹️ ▶️ John So it really depends on what specifically you wanna do. If you just wanna run some specific app and it doesn’t need your app ID,

⏹️ ▶️ John and doesn’t need to do any weird networking that’s not gonna work because of TLS upgrades, then yeah, any VM solution

⏹️ ▶️ John will work. I liked VMware, I still use it. I think they’re going into a subscription model

⏹️ ▶️ John soon. So if you wanna get the last sort of licensed version that you can buy and use until it breaks,

⏹️ ▶️ John run and get VMware Fusion now. Or otherwise, look at all the various virtualization projects,

⏹️ ▶️ John but realize you’re always going to be taking some kind of hit in functionality, which is a shame. Until,

⏹️ ▶️ John fast forward a decade or two, kind of like we run classic Mac OS, you’ll be able

⏹️ ▶️ John to run Tiger in a web browser using some JavaScript thing. But

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco we’re not there yet.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, I mean, do the virtualization apps, to the best of my knowledge, none

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them will provide architecture emulation, right? So the idea is, for an old enough

⏹️ ▶️ Marco version of Mac OS, if you are, say, running on a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Silicon MacBook Pro or whatever, you’re not gonna be able to run something that could only run

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Intel or PowerPC. So you’re going to need something that can emulate those processors,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and in addition to virtualization of the underlying OS. And I don’t- Yeah, I was trying, I don’t think a VMware would do that for you.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Does anything do that on Apple Silicon? I don’t think we have that yet. I could be wrong, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the big solutions, including anything that uses Apple’s virtualization framework, they don’t virtualize

⏹️ ▶️ Marco x86 emulation on Apple Silicon Macs. So you can’t run an Intel

⏹️ ▶️ Marco OS using Apple’s virtualization framework on Apple Silicon.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so VMware is, I mean, I guess I’m still stuck in the Intel world thinking, oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John VMware will just run natively on your Intel thing, but if you don’t have an Intel Mac, yeah. And the virtualization thing does not

⏹️ ▶️ John exist for Intel Macs. It’s an arm only thing, but that doesn’t stop you. There’s tons of, before Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John came out with their virtualization framework, there are free ones. What is that? VirtualBox is another free one.

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s one other free one I’m forgetting. VMware is just a fancy, oh, there’s Parallels, which is another commercial one.

⏹️ ▶️ John But like I said, all those options have some, I’ve used all of them at one point or another on Intel Macs and they

⏹️ ▶️ John all have weirdness about them, every single one. There’s no one of them that’s gonna be like running it on hardware.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, licensing is weird too. Like a lot of the old OSs, you legally aren’t supposed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to virtualize them or aren’t allowed to virtualize them or you have to like find some pirate installer or whatever. That

⏹️ ▶️ Marco could be both a pain in the butt and not entirely legal if you need that for like some kind of compliance

⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason. So again, like old hardware, as John said, the only major downside

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of old hardware besides like having to have this physical thing that you’re running, which can be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco physically cumbersome. I wouldn’t say it’s expensive, it’s not. because old old

⏹️ ▶️ Marco PC hardware is very inexpensive because nobody wants it. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it can be a pain in the butt to like get stuff on and off of it. Like, you know, the advantage of virtualizing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on your own computer is that usually the virtualization intermediate software will

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have some convenient ways to like share files back and forth between the two, between like your computer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the emulated computer or whatever. When you’re dealing with physical hardware, it becomes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot more manual of a process. You have to do things like, you know, maybe transfer stuff with USB drives

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and deal with, you know, the realities of that situation and stuff like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Networking can, as John said, networking can be tricky, especially if it involves any kind of modern security requirements,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like browsing the web at all can be very difficult on old computers. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is a bit of a pain in the butt to kind of integrate an old computer into

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your environment for whatever reason you need to be running it. but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you kind of save a whole bunch of possible butt pains by not dealing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with virtualization or emulation or anything like that. So you’re kind of trading some butt pain for different butt pain.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, it’s not like a classic Mac OS. It’s like anything that can run Mac OS X has USB,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? And so thumb drives, that’ll like, you can, an HFS plus thumb drive will

⏹️ ▶️ John work and even when you run Mac OS X, it’ll also run in any modern Mac. So it’s way better than classic where you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John like, what the hell is this AppleTalk thing How

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco do I deal with that?

⏹️ ▶️ John Or you have to install an extension to get TCP IP, and you gotta figure out how to connect to the internet.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, or you have to figure out floppy disk formats somehow.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Good luck.

⏹️ ▶️ John Get a USB floppy drive, plug it into your Mac, see how that works. Ay yi yi.

#askneutral: EV requirements

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Rankari Anand writes, I was looking at the current

⏹️ ▶️ Casey set of EVs and they all seem very unappealing for one reason or another. So I decided to put together

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a list of my requirements. I will read these. This is a lot.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t think you should be surprised that you can’t find anything that fits all of these. But anyway, the requirements are as follows.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No full glass roof, a sunroof that can open, physical button HVAC controls while you’re

⏹️ ▶️ Casey out. At this point, you might as well give up. Physical buttons for or lever for the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey gear selector and no motorized controls for the gear selector. Not sure what that means,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I’ll go with it. Physical button seat adjustment controls, radar adaptive cruise control, car

⏹️ ▶️ Casey play, preferably have a speedometer in front of the driver, not in the center screen. And the center

⏹️ ▶️ Casey screen must not be safety critical. In other words, the car should be fully operational even if the center screen dies.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey How is this the future? How is this the future that we have built ourselves?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, first of all, this all sounds very reasonable in theory, but second of all, like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if you just say, not even just EVs, what new cars satisfy this?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not that many of them, I don’t think.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah. I mean, the new Golf R, for example, which I know is, I believe, no, it’s the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey manual transmission that’s dying. But anyways, the new Golf R doesn’t meet all of these, if I’m not mistaken.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s tough to find a car that would meet all these, you know, even not an EV, but especially an EV.

⏹️ ▶️ John The reason I put this in here is because We’ll get to his final question is, what requirements do you have for your next

⏹️ ▶️ John cars? You can have a list like this, but you’ve kind of got to sort it by priority and decide

⏹️ ▶️ John where you’re going to accept because you’re never going to get all of them. Like I think, I’m pretty sure there are,

⏹️ ▶️ John if there’s any car that satisfies all these, you don’t want it. It’s probably not a good car. It’s probably a car that you, because

⏹️ ▶️ John you didn’t list things like, how many people fit in it? Like

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I feel like that is

⏹️ ▶️ John a bigger req, do you need to fit six people or do you need two? They’re like, if you say,

⏹️ ▶️ John okay,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco we got a car that fits. You need a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of space for luggage.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we got a car that fits this, but it has a driver’s seat, a passenger seat, and no backseat of any kind.

⏹️ ▶️ John Does that work for you? He’s like, no, I’ve got five people in my family, right? That should probably be a higher priority than

⏹️ ▶️ John no full glass roof, I’m just saying. So you’ve got to prioritize. But the reason I think this is a

⏹️ ▶️ John fascinating question, there was a story we had that’s probably buried in the show notes, maybe it’ll come up again at some point,

⏹️ ▶️ John about how customer satisfaction with their new cars has been

⏹️ ▶️ John declining, mostly blaming infotainment. And we’ve talked about this in the past,

⏹️ ▶️ John how everyone who’s making an electric vehicle feels the need to do stupid

⏹️ ▶️ John things that are appealing in the showroom, but that people hate once they get the car

⏹️ ▶️ John home. And I was hoping that would be like something that would

⏹️ ▶️ John only happen in the beginning of the age of EVs. Like we’ve talked about how and why it was probably a good

⏹️ ▶️ John idea for Tesla to do these things in the beginning, because you want the car to seem cool and futury, but we’re well

⏹️ ▶️ John past that now. EVs are not entirely mainstream,

⏹️ ▶️ John but the only things keeping them out of the mainstream is their price, right? They’re not exotic

⏹️ ▶️ John and weird. I see EVs all the time. Most of the ones I see are not Teslas.

⏹️ ▶️ John So there’s no reason that every single company that makes an EV needs to do this, but they do do it. And

⏹️ ▶️ John I think the reason they do it is like, well, EVs aren’t new, but this is our first EV. It’s like, I don’t care

⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s your first EV. EVs have been out for what, a decade or whatever? Like, they’re very common

⏹️ ▶️ John now. I know you’re super proud of your first EV, but think twice before you, for example,

⏹️ ▶️ John decide to make the door handles crappy. Every single EV company is doing that.

⏹️ ▶️ John We’ve got an EV. The door handles better be annoying and harder to use and break

⏹️ ▶️ John more often. Why? Because EV. And if you say anything about aerodynamics,

⏹️ ▶️ John I will hit you with my little cartoon hammer and say, no, no, that’s not why you’re doing this. Admit it.

⏹️ ▶️ John You can make flush door handles that are not stupid.

⏹️ ▶️ John But they don’t. They make them all stupid. It’s like, it’s okay for Tesla to do that. Only Tesla, Tesla’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the only company that gets a buy to do that. Because they were first, and they had to be cool and computer-y, and

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s their brand. That shouldn’t be your brand, Volkswagen. Just make door handles that work.

⏹️ ▶️ John People just wanna pull the handle and open the door, and they want it to happen every time, and it would be nice if it still worked when it

⏹️ ▶️ John was like an ice storm or something. Stop making them electronic. Stop making them stupid. Same thing

⏹️ ▶️ John goes for everything else inside the car with the HVAC controls. Oh, you want to address your side view mirrors? Have fun

⏹️ ▶️ John navigating the touchscreen. No, stop it. Removing stalks from the steering wheel, stop

⏹️ ▶️ John all of that. But people who are making EVs are doing this. And it’s kind of

⏹️ ▶️ John like the Apple Silicon things, like how many years does it take from conception to the shipping of things, like seven years or whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? The cars that we’re seeing now, What I hope is that every one of these car companies has learned A,

⏹️ ▶️ John no more piano black plastic, and B, stop putting everything on screens. But the problem

⏹️ ▶️ John is there’s a countervailing force here because the countervailing force is part of the reason that Tesla continues to do this. It’s cheaper

⏹️ ▶️ John to put them on the screens.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And so

⏹️ ▶️ John despite how much people hate them, it’s basically like, look, if we all do this, if we all make

⏹️ ▶️ John our cars worse, what are they gonna do? They’re not gonna go to a competitor. So let’s all just do it. Let’s all reap

⏹️ ▶️ John the savings. Let’s just have one screen and no buttons. And it sucks for everybody, but if all cars are

⏹️ ▶️ John like this, we’ll be fine. It’s not that all cars are like this, but EVs, among EVs, there is a lot

⏹️ ▶️ John of sameness. Outside of EVs, there are still a few companies that now are bragging

⏹️ ▶️ John in their press thing, saying, if you’ll notice, we have physical controls for HVAC,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? And that’s a selling point to them. They’re using it as a selling point. Can you imagine in our

⏹️ ▶️ John childhood saying, so you’re telling me you have buttons to change the fan speed, that’s great.

⏹️ ▶️ John Is

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that a bullet point in your brochure? Because

⏹️ ▶️ John every car has that. It’s like, well, in the dark future, not every car will have that, and

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll make you use a touchscreen. Oh, and the other thing I’ll throw under the bus is it gets like, and

⏹️ ▶️ John Mercedes is doing stuff like the thing we were talking about before. Oh, don’t worry, we don’t have touch

⏹️ ▶️ John controls. That would be, that’s not good. We need physical feedback. So what we have instead is like on the steering

⏹️ ▶️ John wheel, instead of having touch controls, because you’ll swipe those accidentally and you’ll activate stuff. No, our things,

⏹️ ▶️ John our buttons, you press them and they physically move in. It’s not even haptic, they physically move in and out. But what they

⏹️ ▶️ John do is they make a giant piano black plastic panel with six glyphs

⏹️ ▶️ John on it for six different functions. And when you press any one of those buttons, the entire

⏹️ ▶️ John panel moves in with a creak and a plastic creak and some tilt. And the entire

⏹️ ▶️ John panel moves out. Rather than making six individual buttons, it’s essentially one big button with capacitive sensors

⏹️ ▶️ John to know where on the big giant button your finger was when you pressed it. and they think this is better

⏹️ ▶️ John than making six buttons. Land Rover did that on my Defender. It’s not better.

⏹️ ▶️ John Everyone is doing it because it’s cheaper to make one giant button with capacitive controls than to make six individual buttons,

⏹️ ▶️ John and it is so, so bad. So we all just have to hang in there

⏹️ ▶️ John and yell and scream as much about this as possible and try to find the one car

⏹️ ▶️ John company that you, that like pick one of these things that’s the most important to you. Like my thing is like, I don’t think I

⏹️ ▶️ John can buy a car with stupid door handles. And I think physical HVAC. Those would maybe my top two priorities.

⏹️ ▶️ John But you can only do what you can do. If in the end, there’s no car that has those two things, then I just have

⏹️ ▶️ John to buy what I have to buy. But we just have to make it through this terrible phase and come out the other side. Or we just need

⏹️ ▶️ John some brave car company to say, no, we’re gonna design the interior of our cars to be useful

⏹️ ▶️ John and not to be inexpensive and look, let’s say in the showroom. But we were in a dark,

⏹️ ▶️ John dark period for cars. And I thought we’d be out of it by now, right? I thought this was gonna happen. First few generations

⏹️ ▶️ John of EVs are gonna be like this. People are gonna snap out of it. They’re not snapping out of it. Or if they have, we haven’t seen the fruits of that

⏹️ ▶️ John labor yet. They’re getting worse. Brand new cars, like Volvo’s new line of cars. Here’s our new EVs. We

⏹️ ▶️ John made EVs before. Like we have Polestar and everything. We’re experienced. We’ve done this before. This isn’t even our first radio.

⏹️ ▶️ John Our new EV, no rear windscreen. Like no rear window at

⏹️ ▶️ John all. We’ll just put a camera there. No Volvo, stop. What are you doing? Maybe that’s the Polestar.

⏹️ ▶️ John I forget which one it is. No screen in front of you. You’re just a center screen, like the Model 3. It’s like, have we learned

⏹️ ▶️ John nothing? Where are you going? What, like, it’s so terrible. So I feel

⏹️ ▶️ John for this person, I understand the frustration, but the pickings out there are so slim

⏹️ ▶️ John and there are so many bad ideas and I would have more confidence they would go away if they weren’t all

⏹️ ▶️ John less expensive. That’s the reality. Less expensive in your $80,000 car, we got to save the 5 cents. We

⏹️ ▶️ John can’t have six individual buttons in your steering wheel.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that’s one of the most profound and impactful changes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that technology has seen in my lifetime. It used to be,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not that long ago, maybe 15 years ago,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John screens

⏹️ ▶️ Marco were very expensive. Just in general, any kind of screen technology.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Growing up, screens were very expensive. That’s why you’d have early computers that plugged into your TV.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because most people would have a TV, but you wouldn’t necessarily have the money to buy a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco separate computer monitor, so you’d plug everything into your TV or whatever. And then later on, cars,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for most of cars’ existence, couldn’t have bitmap screens.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They had dials and lights, and occasionally, once you got into

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 80s and 90s and stuff, you could have little LCD segment displays and stuff. Remember

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Buick

⏹️ ▶️ John that had a little, I think it was a Buick that had a CRT in the dashboard? I think we’ve talked about it before. Yeah. Someone did put a CRT

⏹️ ▶️ John in a car in case you were wondering if that ever happened. It was a monochrome CRT, I believe, but it was

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco there. Terrible, super

⏹️ ▶️ John terrible.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but so like, you know, screens were expensive. And so there was always so much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco effort put into trying to do whatever you could without a screen, like without having a screen.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like when, like even my first BMW that I got in like 2009 or 10 or whatever that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was, the screen that would have given me the navigation

⏹️ ▶️ Marco system was like a $5,000 option. So I didn’t take it. So it just had like, you know, the little like LCD

⏹️ ▶️ Marco segment display on the radio, and that was it. The reason it didn’t have all these features

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was because screens were expensive. And only in like the last, again, like 15 years

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe, that has flipped over, so that now, screens cost

⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing. Relatively speaking, like screens are so cheap now, that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes, a screen is still more expensive than a button, but a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen might actually be less expensive than 25 buttons

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all of their associated wiring and all of their service over the course of the vehicle’s warranty

⏹️ ▶️ Marco period. Like, if one of those buttons flakes out, then they’ve got to replace it. Like, once you factor in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the total cost of having all these buttons and stocks and everything that need to be like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, manufactured, assembled, installed, maintained, wired, you know, tested all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that stuff. It actually is now cheaper in a lot of cases to just put everything in software

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the touch screen. And the idea of that to tell someone 15 years ago that cars,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cars, it’s cheaper for cars to have a giant screen, a giant color,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco high resolution touch screen like that. That’s cheaper than having like 15 buttons.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes actually in some cases when you factor in certain things yes it actually is.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway going back to the actual question I would I would suggest

⏹️ ▶️ Marco despite everything we just said you can get used to a lot of things that you that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you might not think so you know things that are important about a car

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are things like can it fit my family can it fit the stuff we have to do can it fit my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco garage or whatever like you know physical like large physical characteristics of it are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco important is it physically capable of fitting in my life and handling

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the tasks that I wanted to handle is it you know is it an EV or not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is is it fuel efficient or not like the big questions like that those all matter a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff like whether you have to move your seat with physical controls or or things on a touchscreen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that matters a lot less so So what I would suggest is, you know, shift

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your priority list. You know, these, a lot of these are like nice to haves, but maybe not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco requirements. Because what you, what you will find is that if you’re willing to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bend on a few of these kind of more superficial or less, less important things,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, how often do you move your seat? If you move it every day, well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then how often, how often you move it or how, how you move it matters a lot. If you are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mostly the only driver of your car, and you don’t move your seat that often, it matters a lot

⏹️ ▶️ John less. And by the way, with all this technology, speaking of moving your seats and stuff, memory seats, the

⏹️ ▶️ John feature that’s been around since the late 70s, early 80s, still, still car companies

⏹️ ▶️ John are stingy about doing that. And sometimes when they do it, they only have two positions because they can’t store the extra three kilobytes

⏹️ ▶️ John of memory. It’s insane. And if you mentioned

⏹️ ▶️ John seat movement, if you move the seat, you’re probably also moving the mirrors. If you get one of these EVs where to

⏹️ ▶️ John adjust the side view mirrors and the seat, you have to use the touchscreen, and it doesn’t have seat memory,

⏹️ ▶️ John or it has enough seat memory for two people, but not three, and you have three people using the car, if every time you get

⏹️ ▶️ John in the car, you are swiping around on a touchscreen to adjust both your mirrors and the seat,

⏹️ ▶️ John you are going to be hating life, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And so when I say

⏹️ ▶️ John prioritizing features, figure out, like, if I had to prioritize them, it would be like, what

⏹️ ▶️ John things do you do most often? And changing seats, you know, again, like Mark said, It may be something you never do or something you

⏹️ ▶️ John do almost every time you get in the car because it’s a shared car, for example, among two or three people. So think

⏹️ ▶️ John more about turn signals and less about the hood release.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like- Stuff you use a lot.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, turn signals, changing gears, those are things you use a lot.

⏹️ ▶️ John I would weight them way more heavily. And door handles. Every time you get in the car, use door handles. Or maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t. Maybe you have your phone in your pocket and the door automatically pops open. but like, you know, because that’s,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, things you can get used to, but think about the thing you’re gonna be using every time. Because as annoying as it is

⏹️ ▶️ John to use the touchscreen to open the glove box on a Tesla, you’re gonna open the glove box way less often than you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John going to signal turns, unless you’re a BMW driver.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but also, you know, like to play a little bit of devil’s advocate here, like, you know, some of these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco requirements are things that you could get used to if they weren’t satisfied, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of them you can’t. So for instance, if you really want a sunroof and the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco car doesn’t have a sunroof, you’re never gonna get used to that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, can confirm, because that’s where I am right

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John now. Or if

⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t want a sunroof and it’s the headliner, it’s always gonna hit the headliner. You’re not gonna shrink that fast.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like if you want radar adaptive cruise control and if your car

⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t have that, you’re never gonna get used to it not having it. Like you’ll just always not have it. Whereas

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like if you say you want physical HVAC control buttons, you could actually get used to the screen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just fine. You know, it wouldn’t, it might not be as ideal, but like, so that’s like a little bit of a squishy requirement.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What I would suggest is if there’s an EV that you think you want,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or I might like, but it fails one of those like preferential things like physical buttons for HVAC controls or something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that. Like I would suggest go test drive it, or even if you can rent one for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a few days because a lot of that stuff, you’d be surprised how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco quickly you get used to it and it isn’t a big deal. This is what Tesla people have been telling everyone else forever.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just try it like rent one for a weekend or something like try it and you’ll see

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of the stuff you think is a big deal is not a big deal. Whereas a lot of the stuff that you might

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not have thought of might be a bigger deal than you think. Like I hate most Tesla door handles. Like as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco John was saying, like the door handles on Tesla’s are really annoying. All of them. Every model Tesla

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has differently annoying door handles. Even the new Cybertruck, which we haven’t talked about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and probably won’t. They found another way to have annoying stupid door handles. That is, if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything, Tesla’s most innovative department might be the department that makes annoyingly bad door handles. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John really important for the Cybertruck to be aerodynamic, Marco. You understand. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, they just keep finding new creative ways to make bad annoying door handles.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, you know, that like to me, the door handles

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are worse on Teslas than the lack of certain physical controls. Because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the lack of physical controls, like a lot of that you just get used to within the first day or two of driving the car. And it just isn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as big of a deal as you think beforehand.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, but no. So let’s take an example. Aaron’s XC90,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that has the HVAC controls on the center screen. I am

⏹️ ▶️ Casey used to it. So you are correct, but it is objectively

⏹️ ▶️ Casey crappier not to have physical controls. You know what I mean? So it’s not that you’re wrong because you do get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey used to it, but just because you’re used to it doesn’t mean it’s superior. Not having a gauge

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cluster in a model three is crappy. Like I I’m sorry, Tesla people.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s crappy. It’s not an improvement. Oh, but you can see the two inches

⏹️ ▶️ Casey above your hood, but I don’t care. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco worse. You’re totally right on that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Actually, although on that front, a lot of the recent trend of the couple of car makers

⏹️ ▶️ John has been to still have the instrument cluster in front of you, but to make it a very slim,

⏹️ ▶️ John low profile ones, you get the benefit of, oh, you have better visibility over the hood, but we’ve

⏹️ ▶️ John shrunk everything down. Didn’t the Prius do that 1,000 years ago? Oh, the Prius also had the offset

⏹️ ▶️ John one, I believe.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Toyota

⏹️ ▶️ John used to say, oh, it’s better for your eyes because they’re focusing farther away. It’s like, yeah, it’s six inches farther.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Civic do one of those too, like around 2004 or so? I don’t think so.

⏹️ ▶️ John Civic has always had an instrument cluster, I believe.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can tell you for sure the Mustang Mach-E does that. It has a very small display. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey your gauge cluster that has the bare minimum of, of useful and usable information,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but that’s all you really need. And it’s a little slimline display right where you expect it to be.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s, I was going to say it’s perfect. That may be a bit dramatic, but it’s really good.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then they have the hilariously large center touchscreen thing where you would expect it to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey be. But at least you have some amount of gauges in the center. Like I know you can get used to it. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I heard you say, Marco, that, you know, you’re on team Casey for this gauge cluster thing. But like to talk to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Tesla zealots, you can get used to the center screen. I’m not saying you can’t get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey used to it, but it’s objectively worse. It’s just worse.

⏹️ ▶️ John The mirror adjustments is another example. I think of this every time I adjust it because we do have shared cars in

⏹️ ▶️ John my family. Every time I adjust the side mirrors, they’re powered, because we have the luxury of powered side mirrors, because

⏹️ ▶️ John they used to not be, you used to have to reach over and do them, and it was really annoying. Kids, ask your parents.

⏹️ ▶️ John But I adjust them without looking anywhere with my eyes, except for at the

⏹️ ▶️ John mirrors. You can’t do that with a touchscreen. You have to look at the touchscreen to navigate, and then

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe if you’re lucky, you have swipe controls on your steering wheel to do the adjustments once you’ve navigated, but literally, because they’re physical controls,

⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re always in the same place, and I can feel them in the dark, I don’t have to look at them at all. I can and do routinely

⏹️ ▶️ John adjust the mirrors without looking anywhere except for at the mirrors. That is a better experience than

⏹️ ▶️ John using a touchscreen. And I don’t want them to save the $5 that it would take to save on all the wiring

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. I’d rather have those controls there. So when I saw like the latest Volvo coming out with nothing on the door panel, including

⏹️ ▶️ John no window up down switches, no mirror adjustment switches, like no, no Volvo. There should be something on that

⏹️ ▶️ John door. There’s a reason people put controls on the door because that’s a convenient place for your left hand to be

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco when you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John adjusting the mirrors. And if you’re, you know, just, I don’t, I want to take those people and

⏹️ ▶️ John shake them. Like there’s no excuse to be doing this for a 2024 model to have a door card with literally nothing

⏹️ ▶️ John on it, except for an electronic door release to get out. Bad.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. So I, I think you guys are broadly correct though, that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you need to have some amount of prior prioritization here. And I think that some things will be

⏹️ ▶️ Casey must haves and some things are want to haves. And, you know, you’re never going to get used to, as you had said,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, or maybe it was John, one of you said you’re never going to get used to not having a sunroof. I can confirm because that’s where I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey am. But you can get used to having on-screen HVAC controls. They

⏹️ ▶️ Casey still suck, but you can get used to it. And eventually, you’re going to have to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey compromise. That being said, I haven’t driven my parents’ Chevy,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was it Bolt or Volta? I always get it wrong, Bolt, in a couple of months now. But I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey think it may actually meet all of these requirements. Now, the problem though

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that most people who buy an EV want to look fancy and cool and hip. And a Chevy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Bolt does not look fancy nor cool nor hip, but it is a stunningly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey good EV given the price that it costs. Like I’m grading on a curve here, I’ll be the first to tell you.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it is stunningly good for what it is, and I think it might actually meet

⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of these requirements. For me, we haven’t bought

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cars since 2018 and I have no current plan to replace either

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of our cars. But for me, I absolutely will not buy a car without

⏹️ ▶️ Casey CarPlay and basically everything else is malleable. I vastly prefer

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cars with a sunroof, but I bought one without because all told

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was the best option I had. Like I am a devout sunroof person. As much as

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John hates sunroofs, or sunroofs, whatever, I love them. It kills

⏹️ ▶️ Casey me that my car does not have a sunroof. But eventually, you’re going to have to compromise. That’s the way this works.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so for me, the only thing I can think of that I literally will not compromise on is car play,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a close second probably being I really dislike front-wheel drive a lot, a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey lot, a lot. And so it would take a lot for me to get into a front-wheel drive car. I would probably

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cave on that if I absolutely had to, but it would take a lot. If I were to buy a car today,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would probably buy the Kia EV6 GT preferably,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is very odd looking. I’ve heard very crummy things about Hyundai and Kia

⏹️ ▶️ Casey dealers, so I might hate that car if I were to buy it today, but that’s probably what I would get. Or they just came out with,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what is it, the Ioniq 5? No, Ioniq 6. There’s a Hyundai version of the Kia EV6. I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey forget what it is or maybe there’s something that was just announced

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the square lights everywhere. It looks like pixels.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yes, but there was a really cool.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey They just announced a new one that’s like a direct competitor to the V6 and for the life me, I can’t remember what

⏹️ ▶️ Casey exactly it’s called. But nonetheless, I would probably buy one of those because it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey seems to fit all of my preferences. Note, I did not say requirements.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It seems to fit all my preferences the best. The chat room is saying the Ionic six. probably, no,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Ionic 6 is ugly as sin. I don’t know. It’s something else. They have like an N-line, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey think they call it, which is like their hot rod version of their, maybe it is the, uh, the Ionic 5.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t recall. It doesn’t really matter. But anyways, I’d buy one of those. And again, you’re just going to have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to compromise. That’s the way this works. You’re going to have, or, or in some cases spend like a quarter billion

⏹️ ▶️ Casey dollars on, you know, a Porsche Taycan or Taycan or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I was

⏹️ ▶️ John about to say, how about your seating situations? Because maybe the only one that that fits your requirements is $200,000 Porsche.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, honestly, I’m pretty sure TIFF’s I3 fits this requirement list perfectly.

⏹️ ▶️ John People don’t know what their requirement lists are until they see the I3 and say, oh, I didn’t have not but ugly on my

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey list. There you go.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I mean, but Marco, you make a good point that if you want an EV that actually

⏹️ ▶️ Casey works reasonably well for regular people, you’re probably going to want to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey look at, I know BMW and budget probably don’t belong in the same sentence, probably going to want to look

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at a budget EV like the i3, which is not exactly budget, but kind of in that spirit,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or the Chevy Bolt, or something along those lines, because they are not fancy or trendy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or hip or cool or whatever, but they do cross off or they do check all the checkboxes.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So what’s more important to you, getting all of these things on your very long list or looking cool?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s for you to decide.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and not even just necessarily looking cool, but like when you think I want to buy in EV, what you typically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think of is the big names in EV. So you think Tesla, you think like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the models that you’ve seen, either where the whole company is only an EV company, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tesla and Rivian or Lucid or whatever, or you think of like the car models

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that were launched as electric models, like conceptually from the makers and all of those are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco electric. And when you look at either the all electric kind of tech forward companies or those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like EV statement models from other companies, those tend

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be the most aggressive in their efforts to be futuristic,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get away from a lot of the stuff that we’re saying we actually tend to want. Because a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of the clean, minimal design that takes away all the buttons that we like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of that is an effort to be futuristic and to be a statement. What will probably give you better luck

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not only necessarily going with budget models, but going with models of cars

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that were not always electric. So from companies that have made gas cars forever, like, you know, get like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the electric, you know, BMW 3 series or whatever, like, you know, like the,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the, the electric versions of cars that car makers are now like reluctantly making,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco being drag kicking, screaming into EVs. Those actually will probably give you more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of your list if what you’re looking for is is basically an old style car, which is what this basically is. That will give you more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that than the cool concept car from the tech company.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, Mercedes really screwed that up by not going to be a Noyura, but instead deciding to make an entire

⏹️ ▶️ John parallel line of cars for their EVs. BMW said, we’re going to make a 5 Series. You can get an electric

⏹️ ▶️ John and not electric, right? Mercedes says, you can get S-Class. Or we have this whole other line

⏹️ ▶️ John over here, the EQ S. Not the same car.

⏹️ ▶️ John You want an E-Class or do you want an EQ-E?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Not confusing at all.

⏹️ ▶️ John Let me tell you, the EQ line, the interiors of the cars is way dumber. Way dumber.

⏹️ ▶️ John And the bad thing about BMW is, yes, it’s true that the interiors will be similar

⏹️ ▶️ John between the electronic and regular, but the regular cars have gotten dumber too. So yeah, it’s tough. But

⏹️ ▶️ John at least the door handle should be semi-normal. And by the way, I was just looking at a picture of the Ioniq 6, which I do think is the one you were thinking of, Casey.

⏹️ ▶️ John Stupid door handles, what a surprise.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yes, it does.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Ioniq 6 is ugly as sin

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John if you ask me. It’s a sedan.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what you’re talking about, a four-door sedan,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John right?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, it’s not. I’m talking about their hatch.

⏹️ ▶️ John I know the EV6 is not really a sedan. It’s a short squat crossover with bad headroom.

⏹️ ▶️ John Great, love it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, and the one that I said looks cool is the Ioniq 5. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s the Ioniq 5N. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John the 5N. I think that’s the one with the fake EV gear shifts. People are loving that. They basically

⏹️ ▶️ John make the EV engine go, vrr, vrr,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco vrr, vrr, vrr,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John vrr, vrr, vrr, vrr, vrr, vrr, vrr, for no friggin’

⏹️ ▶️ John reason. It’s so stupid. They interrupt power when you do the fake shifts. This is great. This is a car with, I believe, one fixed

⏹️ ▶️ John gear ratio. And when you hit the little flabby paddle, they were intentionally interrupt power to the

⏹️ ▶️ John electric engine to make you feel like you’re shifting. People love it apparently. Talk about skeuomorphism.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m guessing that lasts two model years and then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John discontinued. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’ll last until everybody who remembers what that’s imitating is dead.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Marco last until everyone tries it and realizes, oh, actually it’s just better to turn this off.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, people try it and they love it. They love it because they’re people who know what that is. Like they, because it doesn’t really,

⏹️ ▶️ John you can do a convincing job of pretending to be an internal combustion engine when you have like all the torque all the time. You just

⏹️ ▶️ John interrupt it in ways that, you know, they make the sounds, they do all the things. And everybody who tries it, they’re like, I thought this would be so

⏹️ ▶️ John dumb, but I’m having so much fun. But those people will eventually die and then we’ll be rid of this. But unfortunately we are also those

⏹️ ▶️ John people, so we’ll also be dead. I’m not. You are, you know what that’s imitating.

⏹️ ▶️ John You know about gear shifts.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I know what it’s imitating, but I ran away screaming from it once I found electric vehicles, because they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco better.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but if you tried it, you’d be like, I admit this is fun. It’s basically a video game. It’s a dumb video game.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say one other thing though like you know in the in the trade-off between You know old-style

⏹️ ▶️ Marco controls in in like a car that was started out as a gas car was later made electric

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Versus a car that was like electric from the start or a company that made electric cars from the start

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What you are losing by sticking with like the old classic car model from the old

⏹️ ▶️ Marco car company even after it has become an EV, you don’t usually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get some of the really nice interesting like techie features of the pure EV

⏹️ ▶️ Marco companies like Tesla and Rivian for all of their shortcomings especially in not supporting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco carplay but anyway for all the shortcomings like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the like I mentioned a few months back I really missed dog

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mode when I had Tesla’s for a while and then I had to get the land rover for my sand

⏹️ ▶️ Marco permit and I really missed dog mode which is a thing where you could like leave your

⏹️ ▶️ Marco car and tap two buttons in the screen and it keeps the climate control running so if you have to leave your dog in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the car and go into a store your dog doesn’t freeze or overheat and and it shows on the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen like my dog is fine here’s the temperature so nobody like breaks into your car to free your dog either this is a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco feature that I assumed would be on any EV and it’s just not it’s it’s on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost none of them there’s a whole bunch of those features where yeah it seems like kind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of goofy stuff that you know usually Tesla will be the first ones to come up with a lot of this stuff and it seems goofy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it seems like why don’t anybody ever use that and then you use it and like oh that’s actually really nice all cars

⏹️ ▶️ Marco should have this feature and a lot of the like you know the the newer companies

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are tech focused and very you know EV you know native like it’s mostly Tesla and Rivian

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they tend to have way nicer features like that and way more of them and the old car companies

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that have more old style approaches, less integration, less software control over their own

⏹️ ▶️ Marco vehicles, less ability to run over the air updates because they’re tying together a million different things from a million different providers,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff like that. The older companies tend not to have many

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of those tech forward or clever new features. So it’s a trade off you’re making. If you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to stick with the old style controls and physicality and everything, that’s great,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you will be missing out on a lot of that new fun tech stuff that EVs do offer from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the overly minimalist companies.

#askatp: How’s Callsheet going?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alright, moving on. Josiah Katz writes, How’s CallSheet going?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, breaking news as of today, doing really freaking great because our friends, well, because our

⏹️ ▶️ Casey friends at Upgrade, spoiler alert, have awarded CallSheet an Upgradey, which I was very, very

⏹️ ▶️ Casey excited to hear. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco congratulations.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Well, thank you. Look at that timing.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I know. Perfect, right? I didn’t even put this in the show notes. I think this was John that put the topic in there.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But yeah, Jason had sent me a message saying in so many words, You really need to listen

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the beginning of Upgrade, which I did with the family, actually. We all listened to it together for the very

⏹️ ▶️ Casey first time, and the kids were extremely excited, which was very cool. So, yeah, that was very

⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of them. So check out Upgrade this week. But no, CallShot’s doing well. I’m very

⏹️ ▶️ Casey honored. I’m genuinely quite honored to have received an Upgrade-y. And as

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mike had said on the show, there were other opportunities where if this was just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m going to give this to my friend. They could have done this before, but it seems like I genuinely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey earned this one, which I’m quite happy about. But it’s been going well. Development

⏹️ ▶️ Casey has slowed a little bit because life has been getting quite busy as it has for basically everyone in this time of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey year. But releases are still happening. In fact, just a couple hours ago, a release just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey finished a one-week rollout earlier this evening. There’s definitely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of stuff I want to do, which is in contrast to most of my other apps, where there were things I wanted to do,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but you know, if I get to it, I get to it. If I don’t, I don’t, I have a laundry list of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey things that I desire to do, um, to call a two and four call sheet. My

⏹️ ▶️ Casey first priority list as I call it is only one item, but let’s see the,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there are 44 other items that I have noted as things I would like to do now.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey A lot of these, you know, some of these are small, some of these are investigations, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of these are features. And I feel like for the most part,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I’ve gotten most of the low hanging fruit. There’s a couple of exceptions there, but I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Casey gotten most of the low hanging fruit. So I’m pretty happy with that. And I feel like the app is in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a pretty good spot. There’s definitely ways I want to enhance and expand, but it’s in a pretty

⏹️ ▶️ Casey good state. And with regard to money, it’s done pretty well.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s not, it is not done as I tried,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just tried to start seven sentences all at the same time. So, um, if, if you look at how much time

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it took me to write call sheet, which was around about six months as a broad estimate,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if this was the only income I had, I don’t think I earned six

⏹️ ▶️ Casey months worth of income from it. If that makes sense. Like if, if I hadn’t been doing call sheet and instead was like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing independent consulting at, you know, roughly independent consulting rates. Uh, I, I would have,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would have lost money, but. It’s in the ballpark now,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is really freaking great. And what’s incredibly great is that in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey theory, I’ll be getting another payment of a lot of this money, you know, hopefully

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a large portion of this money will come again next year and that, that my friends

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is incredibly empowering and incredibly cool. So, you know, my hope is,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as I continue to add features and fix bugs and so on and so forth, hopefully that will encourage people not to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey abandon their subscriptions. It will hopefully encourage people to go ahead and tell, tell

⏹️ ▶️ Casey their friends about it and hopefully their friends and family and whatnot will subscribe. And, you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, hopefully over time, this becomes another item in the, you know, financial quiver,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you will. Uh, which is really important to me because as much as I am so lucky for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I do and I’m so lucky that I’m able to put a roof over our heads and food on the table doing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, you know, it’s still scary. You know, if Marco or John drop dead tomorrow,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey God help us and God help me. That would be a really big financial issue for me. I mean, leaving aside the fact

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’d be devastated that one of my dearest friends has had something happen, it would be a real financial problem.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so hopefully over time, you know, all three of us, and I think Marco has done a very good job of this, but he had a pretty big

⏹️ ▶️ Casey headstart, but you know, we all diversify and have other means of income. And so now this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a this is move the needle on the family income, which is exactly what I had hoped

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and what I what I had dreamed would happen. So yeah, I mean, if there’s anything you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey two want to ask, I’m happy to entertain questions. But in short, it’s been going really well. And I’m riding a real big high

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right now, on account of the upgrade. So I’m in a good spot.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s awesome. First of all, the upgrade is a huge deal. That is awesome. I’ve been around long

⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough. I’ve had enough success in my app career that I’ve gotten a decent

⏹️ ▶️ Marco number of awards from blogs and podcasts and everything. It matters every

⏹️ ▶️ Marco single time. It never stops feeling cool. It never stops being a huge honor.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I absolutely love it. I’m secretly hoping that when I release my big rewrite

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for next year sometime, I’m hoping to get awards for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that as well. That matters a lot, and it’s always a big deal.

⏹️ ▶️ John You’re not getting an upgrade either.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I have lifetime achievement,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John so I can’t. He’s got a

⏹️ ▶️ John lifetime achievement award, so you are

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco ineligible. Yeah, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think I can get a Mac Stories award for the rewrite, I think. I don’t know. There’s going to be a lot of competition.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What I would really want is an ADA, but we’ll see. Yeah, I hear that. That’s my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco white whale. I want an ADA so badly.

⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like the idea, I don’t really feel like the ADA has been devalued through no fault of the people who’ve awarded. Congratulations

⏹️ ▶️ John to all of them. But I feel like sometimes, it’s kind of like the Oscars. Sometimes you question the judgment of the academy,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know what I mean?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t say they’ve been devalued, but they have shifted over time with different priorities.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s, first of all, I think that actually gives me a chance because in the original definition of the ADAs, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stood no chance. Because I’m not that great of a designer. All right, you just hope you’re using whatever API

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s

⏹️ ▶️ John promoting that year.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but I think I’m leaning so heavily into Apple’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new stuff, like with SF Symbols and SwiftUI. I think I have a better chance

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than ever. That might not be enough of a chance, but it’s certainly a better chance than ever, so

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll see. It’s an honor just to be nominated.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It actually, it genuinely is. It really honestly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John is.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it is. If you think, especially on iOS, how many iOS apps are released every year? It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John worse than the Oscars. It’s just like, you get like a one in two million chance.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but also like the kind of app that used to win ADAs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t really exist anymore. Like nobody makes that kind of app anymore. So if they were trying to give out ADAs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for just that style of app, they wouldn’t have enough candidates every year. So that at least,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least enough good ones. Um, so you know, it had to shift over time and the app market is constantly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco shifting, but yeah, honestly, that is my white whale. I, I am going to keep trying until I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco win one and it might never happen, but that like, if I ever do just know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that will mean a tremendous amount to me, like that, that will be like, that will make my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco year, that will make my decade. I want one so badly, but we’ll see.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Again, I never think I have that great a chance. You can just probably buy an old

⏹️ ▶️ John one on eBay. It’s not the same, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco could

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John totally, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not the same, you know.

⏹️ ▶️ John We were just talking about people selling Eddie Awards, you guys don’t remember this, but back in the day when,

⏹️ ▶️ John was it Mac user? Yeah, the magazine would sell the little, or maybe it’s Macworld.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, it’s Macworld,

⏹️ ▶️ John I have one. The big statues with the person holding up the Mac SE over their head.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Which, by the way, that is the coolest award I’ve gotten, I think. I got one for Instapaper.

⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, those are available on eBay now for going for a lot of money, apparently. So you may be able

⏹️ ▶️ John to get an ADA Cube eventually when someone dies and their estate puts it up on eBay. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I don’t want someone else’s ADA Cube on my desk. I want one that I was issued. That I… You

⏹️ ▶️ Marco take what you can get. We’ll see. If I get desperate enough, maybe. But no.

⏹️ ▶️ John The old ones had batteries in them, right, to light up or whatever. So I wonder if that battery will still be good in 20 years.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that was actually user replaceable. And now we’ve come full circle, baby.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, wasn’t there an iFixit tear? Somebody actually did like a battery replacement guide.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think half as a joke, but it was actually real. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Anyway, so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all this is to say, Casey, winning an upgrade is a huge deal and that’s awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, it really, really is. And you know, for me, I don’t know if you and I have ever met,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, But I have a wee bout of imposter syndrome and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco so,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but yeah, I know. Right. And, and so for, for me, I mean, all, all kidding aside for me to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey have, have won an award for my work. And you know, I, I absolutely had help

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on, on the app, but it’s still my work. And, and that is a tremendous

⏹️ ▶️ Casey compliment. It’s a tremendous honor. And it’s, it’s a little bit

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of, it’s, it’s a, It’s a way for me to convince the nastier subconscious,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my, you know, or the nastier subconscious part of my brain that no, when you really do try

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hard, you actually can make this work, you know? And even though I do believe that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the most part, as with every, as with everyone, but especially with me, a lot of times I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like I’m faking it and you know, I’m going to be found out tomorrow that I’m a big dummy and so on and so forth.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I mean, hell, listen to the first two years of this program. And I think my confidence,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the degree that it existed at all, was not what it is now. And so for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey me to have this tangible, to a degree, evidence that when I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey try hard and I do something difficult, I can succeed, that’s a really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey incredible compliment and a really incredible feeling. And it really helps me feel better about doing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the job that I do. And so I’m extremely thankful for it. Yeah, I didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey put this topic in the show notes, but it was extremely fortuitous timing. So thank you, John.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not out here doing it for the awards. I do it for the money, and I get neither. I’m sorry, Womp Womp.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you so much to our members who were the exclusive supporters of this episode. You can join

⏹️ ▶️ Marco us at atv.fm slash join, and we will talk to you next week.

Ending theme

⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco begin 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,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental And you can find the show

⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into

⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, Auntie Marco Harmon,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to

⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, check podcast so

⏹️ ▶️ John long.

Post-show

⏹️ ▶️ John What was your Eddie award for?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Was it Overcast? Instapaper.

⏹️ ▶️ John Instapaper,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. Yeah, Instapaper was early enough in the App Store that I got a whole

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bunch of awards for things that don’t exist anymore.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco they’re different categories. That’s the other

⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Unlike the Oscars, the Eddie, the Eddie award, the ADA categories

⏹️ ▶️ John have really changed from year to year, just depending on whatever Apple feels like doing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Of course, yeah, because again, the app market is so different. Right now, how many

⏹️ ▶️ Marco indie developers are there that are crafting pixel perfect UI today?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s not that many left.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, there are still ones out there. That’s why it’s so kind of fun when somebody wins and you’re like, not only does that

⏹️ ▶️ John app show off the API Apple wants you to use and does all the things right, but it also is pixel perfect

⏹️ ▶️ John and beautiful. They do exist, they’re just more rare than they used to be.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. But the thing is, there are so few of them left that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple probably doesn’t have a lot to choose from for the ADAs each year for that kind of thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why, how many years went by with this? I think they did like no Mac apps got ADAs for a bunch of years.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly, because how many awesome new Mac apps are being released every year?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John That

⏹️ ▶️ John aren’t web views.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not a huge number, unfortunately. And so I wonder too, how,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s always a question of what they’re gonna try to promote with the ADAs. And so this year, I’m sure anything good

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Vision OS is gonna be substantially looked at. But it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John always, they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco talk about other stuff, like there’s always diversity and inclusion metrics,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s fun metrics, there’s games. All the game categories

⏹️ ▶️ John they have, do you see all the game categories this past year? Or whatever, no,

⏹️ ▶️ John that was like the App Store Awards.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was the best of the App Store, right? Which is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John different.

⏹️ ▶️ John But even those, I look at those awards and I can’t figure out how they pick, how

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple picks game of the year. because it’s not the same way that, for example, a gaming

⏹️ ▶️ John website would pick its game of the year. I feel like gaming websites are picking which they think is

⏹️ ▶️ John the best game and Apple is using something else. Not that the games that win aren’t good games,

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re all good games, right? There’s a lot of good games out there, but why this game? I

⏹️ ▶️ John think it’s like, I think Apple will pick, for example, I think one of the games, they’ll pick a game

⏹️ ▶️ John that is only made for iOS and is a good game over a game that is better, but it’s not a

⏹️ ▶️ John great port for iOS. You know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I mean? Well, of course, because that’s what they’re picking. They’re not picking the best game in the entire games industry. They’re picking the best game on their platforms.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I know. But they’ll have a game on their platform that’s a better game, and it was ported to iOS. But the port

⏹️ ▶️ John is only OK. But in the end, once you’re into the game and playing the game, the game is better.

⏹️ ▶️ John But this game was made exclusively for iOS and uses all of Apple’s APIs and isn’t available on other platforms.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it gets the award. It’s the platform taxing their awards. It’s kind of hard to take them seriously when it comes to games.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but again, I think they’re looking for different things too. Like what you look for in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a game for, if you’re like a gaming website that covers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the major AAA games of the world, that’s a very different audience with very different priorities and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very different games than what succeeds on iPhones for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people. It’s so different, it’s a radically different market. And Apple has different

⏹️ ▶️ Marco incentives of course as well, because they are, you don’t usually get a whole bunch of like, you know, game of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the year awards, like from Nintendo or from Sony. In this case,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple is the platform. So of course they’re gonna have not only different priorities, but different incentives. You know, so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, of course they’re gonna prefer games that are, you know, exclusive to them and show off their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff really well and take advantage of any initiative they wanna push. You know, games that are in Apple Arcade or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco games that are like cross platform that, you know, work on your Apple TV also or whatever. Like, of course they’re gonna push that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff harder. That’s the nature of them being the platform owner also issuing awards.

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