567: macOS Uranus
26 Dec 2023John gives us all a special gift.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Running public sound
- Automixing
- Sound Devices Mix Pre-10 II
- Zoom F8n
- Zoom LiveTrak L8
- Reminder that gift memberships make for a great last-minute gift!
- Follow-up:
- iCloud.com login with only a password
- Apple Store experience (via Morgan Schönberger)
- More details via Ian Williamson
icloud.com/find- Joanna Stern’s prison interview
- Beeper → Beeped
- Virtualization options for macOS
- UTM was recommended by several, including Luke Channings and Glenn Brown
- Steve Troughton-Smith’s write-up
- Is Masimo a patent troll?
- The Verge article
- LA Times article from October
- Apple working on a software workaround?
- Against Intellectual Monopoly, by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine
- EVs that [allegedly] satisfy all of Rangachari Anand’s requirements
- Rick Gore really likes VAG
- Daphne Sakellarides suggests the Hyundai Kona
- Doug Spry reiterates Casey’s pick of the Chevy Bolt
- Thestrategery recommends the Mini Cooper SE
- Sam Abuelsamid
- Chevy Blazer EV
- On car controls
- Volkswagen reneges on all the crummy controls
- Sam Abuelsamid’s take
- iCloud.com login with only a password
- iPhone 16 “Capture Button”
- Next Apple Watch breaks band compatibility? 😱
- Google loses antitrust case to Epic
- Stratechery (Paywalled)
#askatp:- Do Nvidia & Apple mean different things by the word “core”? (via Ammar)
- If Apple really does make Siri better, will it land in existing HomePods? (via Ryan McDonough)
- A complete 🤬 trainwreck of a third
#askatp. No spoilers.
- Post-show Neutral: Marco’s adventure
Sponsored by:
- Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code ATP.
- Green Chef: The #1 meal kit for eating well. Use code 60atp to get 60% off, plus 20% off your next two months.
Become a member for ad-free episodes, member specials, and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- Last days of school
- Microphone automixers
- Gift memberships!
- Stolen devices & 2FA
- Beeper is beeped
- x86 virtualization options
- Sponsor: Green Chef (code 60atp)
- Masimo v. Apple
- Patents are stupid
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- EVs with traditional controls
- iPhone “capture button” rumor
- New Watch-band attachment?
- #askatp: NVIDIA vs. Apple “cores”
- #askatp: LLM-Siri on HomePods
- #askatp: “John’s question”
- Ending theme
- Neutral
Last days of school
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You may you may choose not to answer this question I will not be offended. Where are you right now are you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the beach or you somewhere else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah I’m at the beach.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And is everyone with you at this point
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah although tomorrow still a school day it’s so funny like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what you used of school Adam still school tomorrow today was the kids last day and I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at school all day volunteering so I am friggin exhausted so this is the moment where I say I’d
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love another short episode and you’ll look at the time stamp and see that we go for three and a half hours but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they still school tomorrow that’s just criminal.
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess I’ll have school tomorrow too. I thought I was a test tomorrow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh god, that’s cruel. Because in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many people will pull their kids out of school the day or two before Christmas break and so the schools
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually don’t schedule anything important on those days. Teachers usually know if you’re going to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a quarter of the class absent why bother scheduling a big thing. For Adam’s school, he’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, that’s it for the week. We’re just going to watch movies the next two days. classes and movie the next two days.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nice. And I’m like, here I am driving him all the way off the beach.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like this 45 minute drive before our house is ready. So it’s like, I’m driving him off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the beach every day. I’m driving you off for that, for two days
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of movies. I think that’s part
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of school is kind of the learning experience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of teachers need days off too. And sometimes you just got to put a movie on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it’s, look, it’s the day before break, like no one’s going to learn anything, no one’s going to do anything.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The teachers are cooked, to your point. Like they’re already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, they’re tired, they’re ready for their break too. And again, like if a quarter of the class
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is going to be pulled out anyway, you can’t really do much of academic importance.
⏹️ ▶️ John The quarter class isn’t going to be pulled out though because they’re very strict about making sure you have butts in seats
⏹️ ▶️ John and so the absence policy for parents pulling their kids out for vacations is getting stricter and stricter because school funding
⏹️ ▶️ John depends, at least in Massachusetts anyway, on those kids being in school. So they make it much harder.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I tell you what, so I mentioned a second ago that I volunteered, you know, at the school all day. The school, the kids
⏹️ ▶️ Casey school, has a program where, you know, father figures can come in and volunteer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And what that specifically means at each school is different, obviously. But for me, you know, I was running around
⏹️ ▶️ Casey helping out with various and sundry things, and this was the last day of school for the calendar year. And so all of the like holiday
⏹️ ▶️ Casey parties were today, the school wide, like holiday assembly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slash, um, not recital, but I can’t think of a better way to describe it was today.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And let me tell you, when you have several hundred kids from grade pre kindergarten
⏹️ ▶️ Casey through fifth grade. And they’re at their annual sing and ring emphasis
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on ring where they’re all carrying like a bell or sometimes many bells that they are ringing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then they’re playing music and they are, they are all singing to some degree of singing at decibel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey levels that I cannot describe. I almost pulled a Marco and put in my AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco well, my goodness,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s so loud in there. And their music teacher is a dear personal friend of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the family. She does an amazing job with it. But when you have that many itty bitty kids, there is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, there’s nothing you can do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. To be, to be clear, pulling a Marco means using AirPods as a hearing protection at a concert,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a rock concert. I would never in a million years do that at a kid, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey concert recital.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am absolutely exaggerating for the purposes of storytelling.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would, I would probably want to, because.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re all, as you said, like they’re very loud sometimes. So I actually think that some degree
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of hearing protection would not be like outrageous. I just wouldn’t, I’d just be way too self-conscious to actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I, again, I’m 90% full of garbage. I did think about it and desire for it, but I would,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like you said, I would never do it.
Microphone automixers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Although I do want to talk to you, Marco, another time about your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey soundboard for when you’re doing things remotely with microphones and stuff, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the poor music teacher is using an old soundboard that I think is on its last legs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so what I want to know, not right now, is what is the Marco solution to this problem?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then I would love the one-third of the cost, maybe quarter of the cost, public education
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco to this problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I was gonna say like the me solution is not gonna be on the educational budget.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco However, I’ll just give you the answer right now because why do this in the future? So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I use, like I run the sound at our village meetings here in our little town. And what I use for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is a sound devices MixPre 10-2. And the main reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why is there’s eight wireless mics, so I need eight inputs. And the biggest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason why is that it supports an auto mixer feature. you have a whole bunch of live mics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in one area, some kind of auto mixing is an incredible difference
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in how loud you can push things without feedback and how clear the recording and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever the PA sound is. It’s a massive difference to have an auto mixer because you have a whole bunch of mics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco near each other. If someone talks into one, they’re going to be picked up at quieter volumes at the other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nearby mics as well. So you figure if you have eight mics across a big table or in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in like a school play situation, you got like four or five kids on stage, all with mics, all near each other,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then what’s gonna happen is all of that like kind of cross feedback where your voice goes into everyone else’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mics, that just kind of raises the noise floor. And anytime the noise floor gets raised,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that means that then you can’t have the PA volume up too high without feedback starting to happen or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like that. And so what auto mixing does, when someone talks into one mic, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco signal gets the strongest, or whatever mic gets the strongest version of their voice, it like subtracts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that from the others. And there’s a couple of different techniques to do it. And if you look at almost all of the like nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high end mixer recorders out there, things like from like from zoom or from sound devices, the high end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones all have some kind of auto mixing feature available. Sound devices, you got to pay actual little bit of extra for it. For it’s like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plugin, um, zoom mixers like the F eight, like that kind of line,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those I believe come with it for free. And there’s, again, there’s a couple of different techniques. You can argue over which ones are better or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worse. It doesn’t really matter that much for my purposes. What matters a lot is whether I have that or not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in some form. And it just makes all the difference in the world. So, you know, depending on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their needs, I would say like, you know, the sound device stuff is very expensive. Maybe go for go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for one of the zoom recorders like the F8 or there’s like some I haven’t looked in a few months. There’s a whole bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of new options. Now, those tend to be very well priced for for the capabilities they offer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they have the auto mixer, which is a very very good feature. If they don’t need that, if they don’t need auto mixing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a whole bunch of like basically giant like what looks like mixing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco panels or mixing boards like they have all the big faders on them and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s what she has now and it’s not good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean you can get good ones they’re thousands of dollars like the ones in education budgets are generally not good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and actually Zoom I have my first attempt at running this the sound experience was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Zoom version of that it was a Zoom big flat like console mixer that was only a a few hundred
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bucks. It was not that expensive. It’s more limited in like its recording and mixing abilities, but it has a whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bunch of inputs and a big faders for all of them and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John And that works.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It works just fine. The quality is really pretty low. It’s a very lightweight,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plasticky build. It doesn’t have a lot of great features. It doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have auto mix. It depends on their needs and budget, how many channels they need, whether they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to spring for auto mixing in some form or not. That’s kind of where you’re landing on that, but,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey uh, it looks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like the zoom live track L eight. This looks like a more modern version of what she’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey currently using. And I don’t recall what the brand is of what she’s using. And it’s not her fault. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just to be completely clear, she’s working on a completely neutered budget because America. And I think the equipment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she, I don’t know if she even chose it. And if she did, it was many years ago. So this is not her fault at all,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but, uh, I, it occurred to me, like, I wonder, I’m sure Marco has a solution to this problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then I figured you might know enough to be able to give me a more realistic solution to the problem. Because what it boils
⏹️ ▶️ Casey down to is she needs like I would say she needs to get you know some sort of RCA or equivalent audio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in from like a computer or something along those lines. It doesn’t necessarily need to be RCA but something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And she needs a couple of mics like two maybe four tops maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then she needs XLR output to powered speakers like separately powered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco speakers. Honestly I’ll send her my I think it’s the L12 that I have it’s either the LE or the We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talk offline. I’ll just send her mine. I don’t use it anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sure you could definitely make her day if we can orchestrate that. So we’ll figure that out after the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope it still works. It’s been in my basement for a year and a half.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know what? Which basement? Because that means it’s covered in salt.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is not an outdoor rated mixer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh no. So it doesn’t work is what you’re saying.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but it’s in like the enclosed bike room. So it’s somewhat enclosed. May
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or may not come with some sand. Yeah, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fun thing is I actually know what you mean by that now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for uh… well you know that would be a tremendous gift and i’m not gonna hold you to it but it would be a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco good idea to do it Remind me tomorrow.
Gift memberships!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And another thing that would be a tremendous gift is if you would like to get the gift
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of ATP membership, which is the best, you should go to, or have a really a loved one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go to atp.fm slash gift, and you can have them buy you, or you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can buy for someone else, the gift of ATP membership. You can do it for a month, you can do it for a year. If the person
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re giving the gift to is already a member, John was smart enough to figure that out. What we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do is we’ll push off your renewal date and so on and so forth, such that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it will be after the gift is done. So far, this has gone very well. I am extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saddened to report that we have no bugs as far as I’m aware of, which means I’ve now cursed it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I shouldn’t put that energy in the world. But here we are. So yes, ATP dot FM slash gift, john,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything you would like to add?
⏹️ ▶️ John You got it all. Remember, you can buy these things instantly. So you’ve got right up until the whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John holiday you’re celebrating begins. You know, you can deliver them instantly. There’s no waiting. See,
Stolen devices & 2FA
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s start with the entire internet telling us and I say that as though
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m angry, but honestly, I probably would have done the same thing if I were the internet. The entire internet has told
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us, hey, here’s what happens when you log into iCloud.com, even with two factor,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because your phone is lost or something like that. We kind of opined about this during the show. And then I had some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey real time follow up that was surely way too late for most people who email just trying to help. It’s my fault
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should have looked into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco it. Yeah, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we were saying like, you know, based on the stolen device protection stuff. We were saying like, how do you log into iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from someone else’s, you know, computer or whatever. If you have 2FA enabled, how do you receive the 2FA code?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If your phone was just stolen?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, exactly right. So Morgan, what is the umlaut over the O? What sound is that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s like, but I’m probably wrong. Please don’t write it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay. So with that in mind, Morgan Schoenberger, Morgan Schoenberger.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That’s definitely not it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Morgan S. writes, when you log into iCloud.com from a web browser, you can access the Find My section
⏹️ ▶️ Casey without the need for your 2FA code. I use this quite regularly when I worked at the Apple store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we needed to disable Find My iPhone on customer devices for some services. You still need the Apple ID and password,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but not a 2FA code. So that’s good to know. Ian Williamson writes, logging into Find My on the web with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey only a password drops you into a very limited interface that lets you find, set to lost, and erase devices.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Attempting to break out of this interface to access other iCloud functionality does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then prompt you for multi-factor authentication. So that’s that’s extremely cool. I appreciate that. And then back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Morgan again. Morgan continues, you can also use the Find My app on another person’s iPhone. Find My,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then you go to Me, and then you scroll down and there’s Help a Friend, which then takes you to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iCloud.com. Find on the web. But still, that’s kind of helpful to know. And then a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrote in to remind us. I genuinely forgot about this, so this is a useful reminder. So if you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recall the way this is going to work in the new version of iOS that’s in beta now, so Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I are out at a bar, and my phone gets stolen. So the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey person who grabbed my phone can enter my password, and then they have to wait an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hour in order to actually commit the change. But the key that we missed on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show last week is that when stolen device protection is enabled, even when you’re at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a trusted location, you still need to do biometric authentication. So you either need to do touch ID or face
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ID. And I certainly dropped the ball on that last episode. I don’t think any of us remembered. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey true, I believe, not only at the time you try to change. So at the beginning of the hour, say my password, 12345,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gets changed by the thief. That’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco terrible password, man.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s the same password I use in my luggage.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so it gets, it’s changed from 12345 at the point in which the thief takes it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they can’t or they try to, they can’t commit that change until an hour later. And at that point, they need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my face or my fingerprint in order to actually commit it. So that’s one way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this is hopefully going to eliminate this whole thing as a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did I pretty much summarize that? Anything else we wanna add?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and that’s pretty good. You know, all this stuff, you know, not needing 2FA to reset or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to wipe a remote device if it’s lost, you know, having the help a friend link, you know, in the find
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my app, having all this stuff, you know, account for the real world here,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can tell like, yeah, Apple really has thought a lot about this. You know, it isn’t, they’re not just like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, quickly reacting, shooting from the hip, you know, they’re actually, they’re taking time to think about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the different avenues here, you know, vectors of attack, how you need to make things, you know, accessible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the real world, how, you know, how you can maximize regular people kind of being able
⏹️ ▶️ Marco find this stuff and being able to do this stuff in real world situations. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you know, having that the biometric authentication being required still after one hour thing, again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, what a clever solution that is. I’m very happy with this feature. You know, I,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still would like a little bit more control over something like, for instance, like, I think the the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco home and work exceptions or exemptions, I think that should be optional or and controllable to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some degree. One hour still feels a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less than what I would like the delay period to be, but I do admit that with the biometric re-authentication, that does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco change things quite a bit in its favor. So overall, this is a great feature.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really am very impressed with some of the cleverness of some of these details.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think it’s great. And the only thing I would really nitpick now that I think is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bigger deal than all these little wishlist items that I just said is I think this should be on by default.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey and yeah, that’s, that’s fair.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But again, like I’m sure they thought about that and maybe they’ll change it in the future. You know, I’m sure it’s going to be one of those steps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the, um, in like, you know, the, the walkthrough screen when you first boot up the new version. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco although that honestly, that’s great. Does not need more steps, but that’s separate. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but, um, you know, I think this, it looks like it’s fairly free
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of major downsides. And for something like that, that has such large security implications
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to people who might not necessarily think they have major security implications,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that’s the kind of thing that should probably be enabled by default.
⏹️ ▶️ John Paul Bateman The biometric auth doesn’t help with the one hour limit. If you think the one hour limit isn’t quite enough time
⏹️ ▶️ John for you to get to something like in general, that the time limit thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John What you’re worried about there is that when they have your phone plus your passcode,
⏹️ ▶️ John they can do a hell of a lot of damage without changing your Apple ID password. So the Apple ID password and changing things about
⏹️ ▶️ John your Apple ID, yeah, they won’t be able to do that because they need the second, you know, first or first and or
⏹️ ▶️ John second authentication. They need to wait a period of time. But while they’re waiting, they can go into your iCloud key chain
⏹️ ▶️ John and get all your bank account passwords and go onto the web and go like they
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco can do. No, no, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hold on, hold on. They can’t get keychain stuff because it’s also protected by biometric.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s not true on the current OS. I believe that’s one of the tweaks they’ve made for this. But I mean, look, there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a lot they can do. If you haven’t all seen it, Joanna Stern did a wonderful interview video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where she actually went to a prison. She went and found somebody who was in jail for doing this scheme
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at scale and interviewed him. And it was very interesting. And he was you know, most of the time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he doesn’t need to like shoulder surf the passcode. He just like kind of messes with the phone so it locks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and he’s like taking a shot and people will just tell him their passcode just to like help him out like, oh yeah, it’s one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two, three, four, five, like they’ll just tell him. And he was saying people put everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of their like passwords and details, they put them all in notes. He’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people put everything in notes, all their
⏹️ ▶️ John notes. But even if it’s not in notes, like that’s That’s that’s what I’m saying. The damage you can do with it with a phone with the passcode. Like what if they
⏹️ ▶️ John in their email client, if you’ve got access to their email account, how many people’s email clients like say using the Gmail
⏹️ ▶️ John email client, is that going to lock when stolen device protection has come out? No, you launch the Gmail client. You’re already logged in. You have access
⏹️ ▶️ John to the email. Now you can reset every one of that person’s passwords on their bank website or whatever. You know what I mean? It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, I think the email having the email and having their phone number for
⏹️ ▶️ John Exactly right. Which of those websites are probably going to use as the lowest common denominator, as we discussed before. So what I’m saying is that one
⏹️ ▶️ John hour time like the clock is ticking. Yes, your Apple ID is more protected with this, which is really important
⏹️ ▶️ John because then they can lock you out of like all your photos and all your purchases and all that stuff. But they can still do a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot of damage with your phone and your passcode. Even just your phone without your passcode, they can do a lot of damage if they’re having the
⏹️ ▶️ John phone and the passcode does even more damage. So I would say the clock is still ticking when this happens. It’s very important
⏹️ ▶️ John for you to get to a friend’s phone or some other device as fast as possible. And now you know what you can do to help
⏹️ ▶️ John with that. but don’t think that you have unlimited time because like, well, it doesn’t matter though, I’ll never be able to reset
⏹️ ▶️ John my Apple ID password because they don’t have my biometrics. That’s true, but they can do lots of bad things
⏹️ ▶️ John your phone so don’t wait.
Beeper is beeped
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s talk about Beeper. Beeper is beeped, I guess. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know. This is all breaking news as we record.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It took me a second.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They have all but given up on this. Eric Miglikovsky writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he is the co-founder of Beeper, each time the Beeper Mini goes quote unquote down or is made to be unreliable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey due to interference by Apple, interference by Apple, Beeper’s credibility takes a hit. You don’t say.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s unsustainable. As much as we want to fight for what we believe is a fantastic product that really should exist. The truth is that we can’t win a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cat and mouse game with the largest company on earth.
⏹️ ▶️ John We know, we know you can’t. Everybody knows you can’t. You knew you can’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why did you decide you were going to play a cat and mouse game with the largest company on earth? It’s like, it’s like somehow after two
⏹️ ▶️ John weeks of this, like, you know, we just realized we can’t play a game of cat and mouse
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey and technical
⏹️ ▶️ John things against largest company on earth. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we know. You don’t say. So Eric continues with our latest software release. We believe we’ve created something that Apple can tolerate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use here to tolerate existing. Uh-huh. Sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We do not have any current plans to respond if the solution is knocked offline. The iMessage connection software that powers Beeper Mini and Beeper Cloud
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is now 100% open source. Anyone wants to use it for anyone who wants to use it or continue development. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you try it. You see how easy it is. It’s really hard.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And as far as I understand, I apologize because I didn’t have time today to do as much research into this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as I would have liked, but I believe what they said is, hey, if you have a jailbroken iPhone, you can run the software on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John it. Keep reading.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John right there. I’m sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, nevermind. I’ll keep reading. My apologies.
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t have time to move your eyes down one line from where you stopped.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Correct. My brain is a mush. Apparently my brain is already on holiday break. Just watch some movies.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, right. It should watch some movies. Let’s start with Elf or maybe Claymation Christmas. So Mac Rumors has written up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in its latest efforts to keep the service afloat. Beeper will suggest that users get a hold of an old iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get iMessage working on their Android phone. Users will then be asked to install a free Beeper tool to generate an iMessage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey registration code that will reinstate the ability to register phone numbers on the service. The catch is that the iPhone must
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first be jailbroken and it must be kept plugged into power at home and connected to wifi for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey periodic registration re-requests. Cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you’ve got an iPhone already. And like, instead of using iMessage on that iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ John just jailbreak it and plug it in your house and keep it on the wifi. And then you can use an Android phone with iMessage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Again, I respect the hacker mindset of like trying to get this to work. That was really cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a technical level. they shouldn’t have told anybody about it. Or they should have just like, you know, released it open source and said,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hey, you know, do what you want with it, everybody. It’s been a fun story. This was never a business. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is, you know, as much as they’re ever going to, this is them throwing up their hands and saying, nevermind. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco honestly, I feel like the thing about like, oh, just get an old iPhone and jailbreak it. Like, if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to use iMessage that badly, just use an iPhone. Like, what are you doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Android if you’re dying to use iMessage that badly? I think the reality,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unfortunately, that most people covering tech devices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either rarely will point out or won’t point out, is that most people using Android in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the US are not the super technical, nerdy people who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are going to be able to do all this stuff. Yeah, there are some Android enthusiasts who that well describes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but most of the US Android buying market is lower
⏹️ ▶️ Marco end users or non-technical users. I know the rest of the world is different, but in the US is where it’s most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needed. And the reality is, you’re not gonna get your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uncle whose Android phone is screening all your group chats, you’re not gonna get him to go get an old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone and get all this working, that’s just not gonna happen. So I think if you are one of the people who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is actually thinking about going through all those hoops to set up and keep running
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an old iPhone that you will somehow jailbreak and keep jailbroken? I mean, look, that’s a project,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but is it really worth all that trouble? Just turn your iMessages blue.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t see that being worth it. If that matters that much to you, you should probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just use an iPhone. And all the people who are using Android as nerds, like from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the nerdy end of it, it probably doesn’t matter that much to them to jump through all these hoops. They’re using it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for reasons that are strong enough that they probably don’t even want to use iMessage this much. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think there’s a great role for this product to exist. I think it made a wonderful tech
⏹️ ▶️ Marco story of these last few weeks, and a few people enjoyed it maybe, but the roller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coaster ride is over.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree. Although, I just wanted to reiterate what you said a minute ago. I think as a technical
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exercise, this was fascinating and super cool. And I’m glad that they’ve open sourced it. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think anything will come of it, but I still think it’s cool that they’re contributing it back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to, you know, the, the, the, I can’t think of the word I’m looking for, not society, but the broader landscape for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lack of a better word. Um, but anyways, I, I think as a technical exercise, it’s extremely neat and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey applaud them from a technical level trying to accomplish this. But in reality, like, how did you think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this was going to end? You know, this is exactly what, what was always going to happen. In fact, you know, Stephen Hackett
⏹️ ▶️ Casey summarized, regardless of what you think about Apple’s control over I message, it’s clear this party is over.
x86 virtualization options
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, virtualization options for x86 only versions of Mac OS. We had talked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about this, I believe it was NASK ATP last week. And we had a few people write in with some feedback. The first
⏹️ ▶️ Casey person that I saw bring up UTM, which we’ll put a link in the show notes, was Luke Channings,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who writes UTM is a UI around, how do you pronounce this? It’s QEMU. I’m sure there’s some silly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m sure however you pronounce it is wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. It’s MySQL, not MySQL. Anyways, around QEMU. Bondi. QEMU,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s Bondi, not Bondi.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco literally, I always forget which one it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John actually is. Just do the opposite of
⏹️ ▶️ John you think you’re going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John But then it loops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around. It’s a recursive error.
⏹️ ▶️ John But every time you are very consistent in getting it wrong, so you just do the opposite.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the George Costanza method.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Don’t make me say the A word for rich. Anyways, the QEMU, that’s quite popular these days,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has hardware acceleration on Apple Silicon and does architecture emulation. Glenn Brown writes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as well, UTM can run natively on Apple’s hypervisor framework on ARM Macs, plus it can emulate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey x86, PowerPC, and a whole lot of other platforms. When using it with hypervisor framework on ARM Macs, you can enable the Rosetta
⏹️ ▶️ Casey x86 hardware extensions. VirtualBox, which a few people brought up as well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does not have an ARM Mac version yet. They had one in tech preview for a while, but it seems to have disappeared from their site.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then friend of the show, Steve Trout Smith writes, the best and most flexible answer, if you’re on Apple Silicon, is a separate machine running
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ESXi. and he has a blog post about it. It’s ideal if you can get your hands
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on a 2018 Mac mini as it requires the least amount of hacking around and lets you pass through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the native GPU to the VM. Also only Apple Silicon VMs have the issue with logging into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your Apple ID. You can use the app store, et cetera, on Intel versions in VMware to your heart’s content.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So what Steve is saying is get a different machine entirely, which can be a Mac mini, but there’s other options as well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where you run all this stuff on the other machine and you can like remote desktop or VNC or what have you into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them. And that is the most native experience with the least amount of hacking about, but there’s still some hacking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about required. So all sorts of options for you.
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Masimo v. Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s talk about the Massimo patent-related
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things that we spoke about last week. And the two of you got on a tear, which I was all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in on. I wish I had a bucket of popcorn that I could have consumed as I was listening to you guys.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I think all three of us got a little off the rails about the specifics of this particular case.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And a lot of people called us out on it, and justifiably so. And we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John read a couple
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey them. unjustified. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John justifiably so my butt. No.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wow. Let me grab that popcorn again because this is gonna get saucy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, I think we didn’t fully dive into the details of this case and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s bad on us which we’re about to correct. But also we were mostly railing against the patent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system as a whole and it and it deserves every part of the rant.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we were we were we were complaining a lot about the patent system and and Marco went off on
⏹️ ▶️ John a big tangent about patent trolls and everyone thought we were saying that Massimo
⏹️ ▶️ John is a patent troll. And I can understand why they might have got that impression because we did yell about patent trolls a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot and it was part of the same conversation but it was just hey and by the way a thing called the patent troll
⏹️ ▶️ John exists and here’s why they’re bad and here’s why the patent system is bad and so on. So the closest you can come to justifying this is something that Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John said where he was trying to say something that he characterized Massimo’s patents as
⏹️ ▶️ John being dumb patents in part of a conversation where we were calling patents done. But so that’s the question
⏹️ ▶️ John in the notes here is, is Mossimo a patent troll? And this first feedback item from Martin Romal
⏹️ ▶️ John says, I agree that the US patent system has many issues as a holder of 12 patents, most of them real,
⏹️ ▶️ John original ideas. But from what I’ve been reading,
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mossimo case is actually an example of how it should work. Here is the problem from my perspective with
⏹️ ▶️ John people understanding what I’m talking about. The idea that in the Mossimo case, they’re not a patent troll.
⏹️ ▶️ John their patents are good and real. And this is an example of how the system should work. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll reiterate, most people do not let this register with them because they assume I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t mean what I am saying. I don’t think any patents should exist
⏹️ ▶️ John for anything. So the idea that there’s such a thing as a patent that is the
⏹️ ▶️ John way it’s supposed to work, I personally disagree with. I think there is no patent
⏹️ ▶️ John that should be allowed to be had, because I don’t think you should have exclusive rights to an idea that you came up with. Like, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John my position, OK? Mine too. So if you say, well, but these patents,
⏹️ ▶️ John these are the ones that I think are valid, and these are the ones that are invalid. Now, given that, we do very often talk about very
⏹️ ▶️ John dumb patents, because it is possible to look at a patent and say, how dumb is this? And some of them are super duper dumb, and some of them are
⏹️ ▶️ John less dumb. And so you may think, but the less dumb ones, those are the ones of showing how it should work, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I disagree. I think that’s not how it should work. But I can understand the point of the thing, is
⏹️ ▶️ John saying, they’re not a patent. I agree that Massimo is almost certainly not a patent troll. They make real things.
⏹️ ▶️ John They have patents that people would consider not incredibly dumb. Although I will point out that as part of battling them
⏹️ ▶️ John in court, Apple has invalidated a whole bunch of their patents, which is inevitable because again, when
⏹️ ▶️ John these companies have a bunch of patents, inevitably many of them are incredibly dumb
⏹️ ▶️ John and able to be invalidated by companies with a lot of money and motivation to do so. And they invalidate them by
⏹️ ▶️ John saying, this doesn’t even meet the incredibly weak standards of patents that we have developed in this country. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so bad and so dumb that in court, I can show that this is an original idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was invented before. It’s obvious to people who are knowledgeable in the art. Like they can knock down these patents,
⏹️ ▶️ John even within our current system, which is so favorable to allowing you to patent any BS. But
⏹️ ▶️ John just so you understand where I’m coming from, there’s no such thing as the system,
⏹️ ▶️ John as a patent saying, this is one of those patents that’s working the way you think it should, because I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John anybody should have a patent for anything. You may disagree. That’s your opinion, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John where I’m coming from. That said, a patent troll is a company that doesn’t make anything
⏹️ ▶️ John or do anything. And that’s not Massimo. They make things and do things right, which is part of why Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t just swap them away entirely because they have actual products.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s why I think they’re coming to, you know, getting favorable decisions in these various forums
⏹️ ▶️ John that they’re they’re battling on. You know, they’re they’re not out there with just we bought this pile of patents. We
⏹️ ▶️ John want to extract money. And if they were, by the way, Apple would have just paid them off because they would have taken far
⏹️ ▶️ John less money. But Massimo is motivated by their righteousness of saying, we’re not just a patent troll.
⏹️ ▶️ John We didn’t just buy a bunch of patents from some dying company. We’re trying to extract money from them. We actually
⏹️ ▶️ John are trying to do important things. And Apple is stealing all of our ideas. And here are all our patents
⏹️ ▶️ John on them. And that’s why Massimo is essentially fighting this tooth and nail. But they feel justified
⏹️ ▶️ John because they feel they have been wronged.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s important to separate out like your concept of not you, John, you, the listener,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you, your concept of patents is correct. But, you know, it’s important to separate like our conception of patents
⏹️ ▶️ Marco versus what’s actually happened in this story. Obviously, you know, Massimo is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to to paint it a certain way. Apple’s trying to paint a certain way. What seems to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happened based on most of the reporting around this particular dispute is not necessarily,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, blatant patent infringement. It’s more poaching.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, so what seems to have happened is Massimo had a bunch of ability to detect blood
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oxygen through small gadgets. Apple apparently, you know, went to them and looked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around and was like, hmm, pretty cool, huh? And then stole all their people. They could
⏹️ ▶️ John then steal them. They offer them more money to come work for Apple, which is part of how our system works.
⏹️ ▶️ John And in fact, there have been companies that have gotten trouble for not doing that. When there was the no poaching agreement, I think between
⏹️ ▶️ John like Apple and Pixar. That’s an example of something that shouldn’t happen and is unfair because companies say, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, there was ILM and Pixar or whatever. Hey, don’t offer our employees more money to come work there. We’ll all agree
⏹️ ▶️ John that we won’t give our employees any raises above these levels. And that way, and we won’t, we agree we won’t put from each other.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is anti-competitive. That is anti-worker. Offering someone to double their salary and give them stock options
⏹️ ▶️ John and they come to work for you. That is the foundation of our competitive system for employees.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the way workers get more money because their skills are valuable and somebody wants them. Now, That said,
⏹️ ▶️ John having someone come work for you and bring with them all the trade secrets and everything from the previous company
⏹️ ▶️ John is, you know, at least frowned upon and you can imagine is ethically questionable and in some
⏹️ ▶️ John cases not legal. And patents are in the mix there because you can say, OK, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know things, but I think I can tell you, Apple, a way that you can do the thing that we did over there at Mossimo,
⏹️ ▶️ John but in a way that doesn’t technically violate Mossimo’s patents. And that’s when you get into this whole thing, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is, from my perspective, becomes less about morals and ethics
⏹️ ▶️ John and more about the legality of a system that I’ve already said I don’t agree with at all. So yes, you have to work within US laws
⏹️ ▶️ John and US laws have patents and if you can offer an employee twice the money and they get to work in a cool spaceship
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’ll come to your company and they will try to figure out a way to do the same thing
⏹️ ▶️ John Mossimo is doing without technically violating their patents, which I think are dumb and shouldn’t exist anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m mostly fine with that. The other thing I don’t think was clear last time is that
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not rooting for Apple here. I don’t think Apple is right or Massimo is right. It’s just two
⏹️ ▶️ John big companies, as we did last time, two big companies with piles of patents fighting each other to the
⏹️ ▶️ John death in the legal system, all using as the tool of that fighting a thing that I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think should even exist. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? It is a question for lawyers.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, as far as I’m concerned, neither one of them should have any patents because patents shouldn’t exist. But they do have them. And that is
⏹️ ▶️ John the law of the land. So they are battling it out. And is Apple shady for taking meetings and saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, we’re super interested in your company. Maybe we’ll even acquire you. Just tell us everything about your company. And then they go off and do the
⏹️ ▶️ John same thing. Yeah, that’s not great. That’s basically Sherlocking on a company level scale, but I have news for you. That’s what every
⏹️ ▶️ John big company does. And it’s crappy, but it’s one of the powers that big companies with a lot of money have. Think about it
⏹️ ▶️ John next time a big company wants to buy another company for $20 billion. Making bigger and more powerful companies
⏹️ ▶️ John tends to not make the landscape for competition better because they can
⏹️ ▶️ John come to you and say, let’s just have a meeting and you can sign these documents and tell us all about everything
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re doing and tell us how you’re doing it. And you know, and then maybe like, who knows where this will lead?
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe, you know, who knows? And anyway, they said, well, anyway, thanks for having other meetings. And they go off and do everything that your company
⏹️ ▶️ John did based on the knowledge you gave them in those meetings. Whereas you thought they were about to acquire you or something,
⏹️ ▶️ John that happens all the time and not just in the tech industry. And you could say, well, the small companies should be smarter. They
⏹️ ▶️ John should have like sign agreements that doesn’t let Apple do that or whatever, but then they won’t get
⏹️ ▶️ John the meeting, right? Like they want to have that meeting because they think maybe they’re gonna be acquired. And then they may be thinking, well, don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John worry. If they try to copy what we’re doing, it’s all protected by our patents. And then I have to fight that stupid patent battle. So this is
⏹️ ▶️ John not a battle where there is a righteous party and a wronged party. This is a battle
⏹️ ▶️ John where it’s a big company being kind of cruddy to a small company, but the legalities
⏹️ ▶️ John of the whole patent system are so weird that it’s not really, It’s not really easy to tell
⏹️ ▶️ John what will happen, because if you think what you think should sensibly happen is rarely what’s
⏹️ ▶️ John going to happen. And as for the stories in the press, obviously, depending on which side
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re hearing from, it can sound one side or the other. But I think we can all agree that in general cases with a
⏹️ ▶️ John very large company, a smaller company, the very large company is almost always kind of a bully, and Apple does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And honestly, keep in mind, we are only hearing the Massimo side of the story, really.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s not spreading in the press like their side of what happened. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John in court, Apple is giving their side of it. I mean, again, in court, Apple did invalidate a bunch of their patents, but they also lost
⏹️ ▶️ John on a couple of other ones. So we hear Apple side in court, but yeah, they’re not going to the press and trying to, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John counter the narrative from Massimo. But
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like it never 100%
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey believe everything Massimo
⏹️ ▶️ John is telling is what they’re describing is common practice in the industry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but keep it like here. You know, one thing I thought of is like this. This paints Apple as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically being, you know, super evil that like they went in there knowing they were going to steal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all their stuff and then, you know, drive them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John out of business or whatever. But
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the problem with patents, because Apple went in there knowing that they wanted their watches to check blocks.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that’s what Apple knew. But you’re like, oh, but they’re stealing our ideas. Was your idea to detect
⏹️ ▶️ John blood oxygen with a watch? Because we want to do that, too. And are you telling us, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I obviously that’s not what their patents are about, like specifically, but like the whole idea is Apple has a thing they want to do with their products.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s pretty much no way for Apple to do it without violating a whole bunch of dumb patents,
⏹️ ▶️ John many of which they then had to go fight to invalidate. So it’s not as if they’re like, we never would have thought
⏹️ ▶️ John to try to do this. They’re already trying to do it, right. And maybe if there’s some specific idea
⏹️ ▶️ John that they found out from those meetings that helped them, but like, again, if you’re coming from my perspective, where no one should have an exclusive right to
⏹️ ▶️ John an idea, that is fine. It’s just kind of questionable,
⏹️ ▶️ John like within the legal system to to have that meeting and to come away from it and just
⏹️ ▶️ John try to do it all on your own and poach all their employees and do all that stuff. It doesn’t feel good if you’re the smaller
⏹️ ▶️ John company because you’re in a you’re in a position of less power.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but also just like the characterization of Apple as like intentionally going in here to like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rob them. You know, let me let me present an alternative theory of what might have happened
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here. Apple wants to want to add this feature to their watch. They look around the landscape. They see this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco company has the ability to do it and a whole bunch of patents that are related to it. So Apple meets with them to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically investigate what should we do here? Maybe we should buy this company. Maybe we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should license their patents. Maybe we should have some kind of agreement with them. They go to this meeting and suppose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the company has really outrageous demands. And Apple looks around and is like, huh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they want some absurd price or some absurd terms, and we look around and we’re like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upon closer inspection, these patents don’t seem that strong. And what if we can just hire these 10 people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, because they’re the experts in the field. What if we just hire them for way less money than what this company wants us to pay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them and just develop our own version that goes around their patents? That, to me, if that’s how it went
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down, and again, we don’t know this, but if that’s how it went down, I don’t see Apple as being the evil
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bully in this situation. It is unfortunate on some level.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a little bit of a bully to get the meeting and to have them open up to you about all that stuff, because presumably
⏹️ ▶️ John they learned something in this meeting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, how much are they opening up? I mean, the whole point of patents you’re supposed to disclose everything about the invention. I know,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s more to it. Otherwise, what are they even talking about in the meeting? They’re not meetings to acquire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. No, my guess is they were meeting to basically look around and see, should we work together?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Otherwise, why would Massimo have taken the meeting? Haven’t they seen Pirates of the Silicon Valley?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. You kind of have to take the meeting because it might lead to some lucrative deal for your company. You can’t refuse
⏹️ ▶️ John the meeting because you’re afraid they’re going to go off
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, I don’t think they even got to the stage where anyone was demanding any kind of price. Is it just that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple comes away from it saying, I think we can do this without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them? Yeah. And honestly, I see nothing wrong with that.
⏹️ ▶️ John In the absence of intellectual property that I don’t agree with the existence of like patents, they should be
⏹️ ▶️ John able to do it without them. But having another company that has done it and has had
⏹️ ▶️ John some success kind of, you know, there is. I mean, how much information are they getting? It wasn’t public. I don’t know. Again, the patents
⏹️ ▶️ John themselves, the whole point is the patents are public. So that’s part of the whole patent system. Right. But I presume
⏹️ ▶️ John there are things they discussed in that meeting that are that are more they go beyond what is known from
⏹️ ▶️ John the public Patents, but but who knows we don’t we weren’t in those meetings again. They’ll hash it out in court I suppose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean honestly if if someone was disclosing secret information to Apple and these casual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John meetings or whatever But just think
⏹️ ▶️ John things you learned about like product development. What things do you have in development? What approaches have you found more promising because
⏹️ ▶️ John keep in mind things that are in patents don’t necessarily have to even work true Like that, that’s another thing about patents that’s stupid.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco can patent all sorts of BS.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can go find all sorts of patents for things that are nonsensical. So just because a patent exists, you don’t actually know,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, did you try this and it ended up being like a good idea and economically viable and it actually works the way you
⏹️ ▶️ John said it would? Or is it just an idea that you have? Again, I don’t know what went on in those meetings. But in general, I don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John the ideas of big companies jerking little companies around and
⏹️ ▶️ John squashing them or whatever. So at this point, I like, I understand, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the people who have these patents and Massimo or whatever, like I understand their feeling of righteousness because he’s, he’s ascribed to the ideas
⏹️ ▶️ John of patents. It seems like we did the work to figure all this out. We published our patent. And part of the system is you’re not supposed to steal
⏹️ ▶️ John our idea without paying us. And if they really buy into that system and you agree with it, they should have a feeling
⏹️ ▶️ John of righteousness as they battle it. I don’t share that feeling because I don’t think they actually have that right, but legally they
⏹️ ▶️ John do. So hash it out with the lawyers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Mark Hill continues, the description of Massimo just being a patent troll throws them in a bucket of bad actors, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably underplays the role that Apple played here. I think this Verge article described the situation well, in which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple behaved in a pretty predatory manner and for some reason has doubled down and sued Massimo.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am sure there’s much more to the story and loads of bad blood, but I feel the characterization of, quote, they are just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an evil patent troll, quote, is a bit unfair. I agree, but we
⏹️ ▶️ John did not make that characterization.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m pretty sure we didn’t make that characterization.
⏹️ ▶️ John I listen back and the worst thing you said, Marco, is you characterize their patents as being dumb at some point. And that’s the closest
⏹️ ▶️ John you came to claiming that they, you know, don’t, that they are a bad actor. But
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco patent trolls are just
⏹️ ▶️ John an entirely different beast, which is a company that makes nothing, collects patents and just shakes
⏹️ ▶️ John people down for money. That is not Massimo.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. There’s also an LA Times article from October, which I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t recall how it landed in the show notes, but I thought it was very interesting. quick snippets from that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with regard to Massimo’s CEO. He wants to stop Apple from delivering what he calls the kiss of death
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to more vulnerable companies, showing interest, whining and dining them and then stripping them for parts.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then separately, earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal spoke to two dozen executives, inventors and founders who feel like Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey delivered the same kiss of death. Kiani, the CEO, described the giant giving to Massimo.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then finally, the LA Times wrote, it requires an extremely powerful suspension of disbelief to not see pattern
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here to ignore how Apple’s wielding its power to get what it wants when it wants. Now, admittedly, I think this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey article had a point of view when it started, but it still was an interesting take
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the matter. And yeah, it does not paint Apple in a particularly flattering light, whether you think it’s fair or right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or whatnot. It’s certainly not a very sporting way of going
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, that’s true of big companies, big powerful companies do this, small companies all the time. And
⏹️ ▶️ John again, you may think, why are the small companies taking the meeting? is you have to because of the imbalance of power, because the possible
⏹️ ▶️ John upside, right? What are you going to do, turn down the meeting, say no, we refuse to talk to you about anything? That’s not going to help
⏹️ ▶️ John you. You have to take the chance, and so they do. It’s a power imbalance. Whenever there’s a power imbalance,
⏹️ ▶️ John even in a situation where the more powerful party is the most benevolent possible, they
⏹️ ▶️ John can accidentally do things that squish you because you’re just a tiny ant compared to them, which again, argues for
⏹️ ▶️ John not allowing unlimited accumulation of power in any market.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, also, how much of this really to do with the meetings. If Apple can hire away your key talent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at massive salaries, it doesn’t really matter whether they meet with you or not. If they want to do that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and if your key talent can just go to some other company and deliver the same values to them that they were delivering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to you, it’s unfortunate for the smaller company that can’t afford to match those salaries or whatever, but that’s just capitalism.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s just the value of good people. I don’t see Apple as being a wrongdoer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here, or some kind of bully, or some kind of of unscrupulous actor by being willing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to pay top talent top salaries to come work for Apple and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco develop their stuff there.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s not Apple’s rep, by the way. Apple does not have a reputation for paying people top salaries.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco They really don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John The opposite reputation is Apple’s salaries are actually a little bit lower than their competitors. And I think saying that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just capitalism is not as big a defense as you think it is. But either way, the opposite, like I said before,
⏹️ ▶️ John is companies colluding to not poach from each other. And that is worse for workers. So people should be
⏹️ ▶️ John paid what they’re worth. And if you have highly valuable skills that multiple companies want, and you go to the one that gives you the most
⏹️ ▶️ John money. That’s good for you. Like that gives a little bit more power to the individual workers
⏹️ ▶️ John so they can get some of the money instead of entirely being funneled to the people who run these giant companies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also, like if somebody can come to your company and develop similar technology as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they were doing for someone else that evades all of the first company’s patents, then I would say the first company’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco patents weren’t that strong.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, sometimes they do things in an even stupider way to avoid the patents. That’s why patents are so dumb because it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John wants to do the same thing and it’s like, well, we have to do it in a convoluted way to avoid this stupid patent, but we all want to get the same
⏹️ ▶️ John look. It’s just stupid. But yeah, there’s – how valuable are your skills
⏹️ ▶️ John to a particular company at a particular time will ebb and flow and so take advantage of it while you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Apple has said that they are developing a possible software workaround in response
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the forthcoming ban. And actually, as of today,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I believe it was, they have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco stopped selling.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. They’ve stopped selling the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2. And I think there’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to soon come a time that they will no longer be able to, or third parties like, you know, Amazon or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Best Buy or what have you, won’t be able to sell them either. Additionally, apparently they can’t, I think Apple either can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey import or can’t buy or do something related to parts for older Apple Watches. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey older Apple Watches cannot get repaired, which is a bit of a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the problem is like, it isn’t just the series nine and ultra two that have the allegedly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco patent infringing hardware. It’s every, it’s every Apple watch model that has a blood oxygen sensor, which I believe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is series six, seven and eight. Right. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s correct. I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I think that’s right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s all of the high end models since either the six or the seven. So if you have like a series
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seven that you’re bringing in for warranty repair, they might not be able to actually give you a replacement
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it because they can’t legally do that or they can’t get their hands on them or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, not a good look. Yeah, and by the way, the software workaround is not to disable the blood oxygen sensor. Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John believes that they can work around this in software by somehow doing something with the software that avoids the
⏹️ ▶️ John patents. Massimo does not believe this, to be clear. And I’m sure they’ll hash it out in court. Did the change that they
⏹️ ▶️ John make still violate the patent or not? It’s all very silly, but this is the system
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re working within. So I mean, yes, worst case, I suppose Apple could disable it, but
⏹️ ▶️ John that would be a giant class action lawsuit for selling a product based on blocks and sensor and then disabling that
⏹️ ▶️ John feature after the fact. And so, you know, Apple’s got to figure out a way to satisfy
⏹️ ▶️ John either the courts or Massimo to make this go away. And like I said last week, I believe
⏹️ ▶️ John they will in not too much time. Like there, I really don’t think they’re going to let this drag out for
⏹️ ▶️ John all of 2024. So sometime after the new year, I expect them to figure this out
⏹️ ▶️ John and issue a press release through gritted teeth that makes it all
⏹️ ▶️ John seem like everybody’s happy. Kind of like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Qualcomm thing. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if this was resolved before we actually publish this episode. We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John see, we’ll see. I mean, yeah, everyone does plays all the cards they have, but at a certain point, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John we have to get them to the table again and some money is gonna change hands.
Patents are stupid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anonymous writes that, uh, I’m an embedded controls technical
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lead at an automaker specifically on new technologies, a position that essentially requires a lot of interface
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the patent system. A big measure of my success is how many patents my name is on. Wolf
⏹️ ▶️ Casey figured I’d give this background before I say I agree with essentially everything you said about patents in this week’s really last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week’s episode. I have useless patents, obvious patents, patents on things that don’t work, patents on things that have been done since
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before I was born, and even patents patents on technologies for cars that would only work on specific non-Earth celestial
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bodies.” I’m not kidding. That is exactly what was written to us. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anonymous person continues, What I don’t have is any patents that feel like true contributions to the state of the art, let alone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything that would be worth actually defending. I once had a dilemma
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over whether we needed to speak with one of our suppliers about licensing patents on a project we were developing in-house,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as we knew they had substantial coverage in the area we were working in. I spoke with one of our intellectual property lawyers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about this and got the following paraphrased response. Quote, we might not provably infringe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on any of their patents in our implementation, and even if we did, it would be such a bad idea for them to sue us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we would never do it. Generally speaking, if you ever wonder whether something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you want to do is prevented by existing IP, just put that out of your mind and do it anyway. No one will complain,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and even if they did, the legal staff will make it go away without you ever hearing about it. End quote.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s all to say that big companies can basically get away with anything. As you folks said, everyone is constantly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey infringing on each other’s patents, and even if there isn’t a business reason to not complain, as in the case of my supplier,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any attempt to protect IP against large companies is an invitation for them to rain fire on you for all the things you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey plausibly infringing on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s your patent system at work, everyone. It’s a great system.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Working as designed, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, that is actually like, you’re thinking like, how does anyone get anything Like they just ignore
⏹️ ▶️ John it and put their fingers in yours and go la la la and hope the lawyers make it go away And that’s why part of the job of these
⏹️ ▶️ John big companies is to amass patent portfolio defensive patent portfolios So that they
⏹️ ▶️ John are prepared to do battle with anybody who comes at them for ip infringing and
⏹️ ▶️ John it really does take a particular instance of someone really feeling like
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, you know That they’ve been wrong that that that and justice has been visited upon
⏹️ ▶️ John them for them to burn time and money to do what Massimo is doing. So I feel like the people behind that suit obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John feel really wrong or whatever, but in the whole rest of the industry, everyone is just sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John working within this dumb system as best they can, pretending it doesn’t exist and hoping
⏹️ ▶️ John that they all have their giant stockpiles of IP nukes pointed at each other as such that no one will really make a
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EVs with traditional controls
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so moving on, we had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a fun conversation last week, again, from Ask ATP, with regard to EVs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that satisfy Ren Gachari Anand’s requirements. Again, I am so sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we had a lot of people write in with feedback. I don’t think either of us or any of us had the time to independently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey verify any of these claims. So, if these aren’t 100% accurate, please,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not our fault, I promise.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And to summarize, Rangachari’s requirements were mostly about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco physical controls for things like the HVAC system, having a sunroof that opens,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mostly about physical controls and physical shifter and that kind of stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. So Rick Gore wrote in the Audi e-tron line, perhaps the GT,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is basically a Porsche Taycan, the Audi Q4 e-tron or Q8 e-tron,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of those would potentially work. Again, I have not personally verified this. Also, all those
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are quite expensive. I don’t have numbers in front of me, but they are very, very expensive. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if that’s even in the ballpark for any normal person.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I guess, so normally when people are asking for vehicle recommendations,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they normally list things like price and form factor that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are looking for. And Regatari specified neither. So we don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they’re looking for a motorcycle or a semi truck. Like it could be anything at
⏹️ ▶️ John And by the way, I put all the pictures in the show notes for all of these, because when we were getting all these different suggestions I was trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to drive home that point. It’s like, look at all these different cars people are suggesting. But then once I put all the pictures in here, I remembered, oh yeah, every
⏹️ ▶️ John car looks like an SUV now.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah. That is
⏹️ ▶️ John true. Except for the e-tron, the GT rather.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way, I’ve seen an e-tron GT in person and they actually look very nice, I thought. Yeah, it’s a nice looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, better than the Taycan if memory serves, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it.
⏹️ ▶️ John know. It’s some parts, some parts of it are better, some parts of it are not as good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As it goes. Daphne Sacoola-Reedes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m going to go with that. I’m so sorry. They suggested the Hyundai Kona, which I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is available in the States, but I certainly believe to be available overseas. Doug Spry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reiterated my recommendation from last week, which I don’t know if Marco cut it or if people didn’t listen long enough.
⏹️ ▶️ John cut it. It was in there.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Okay, well. We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John just send feedback before they heard you say it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’re fair enough. The Chevy Bolt, which apparently just stopped production literally in the last week or two. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way to go, Chevy. But again, my parents have one. It’s really good. Then the strategy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recommended the Mini Cooper SE. Vivica recommended the Fiat 500 E La Prima,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the one model in trim level that’s available in Australia. So I don’t know if that’s helpful here or not. Not
⏹️ ▶️ John that she was not the one that’s available in the United States.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly. And then a friend of the show, Sam, a well-summed recommended three, and Sam actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey knows what he’s talking about because he works in the industry, not to imply that you all don’t, but we don’t. We definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t. Anyways, we definitely don’t. Sam suggested the Honda Prologue, the Acura ZDX,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I guess much to John’s chagrin, the Mercedes EQB.
⏹️ ▶️ John And this is another great thing about the EQ line. You may be thinking to yourself, wait a second, I thought it was like the EQS
⏹️ ▶️ John was like the S-class and the EQE was like the E-class and the EQB would be like the B-class, but this looks like an SUV.
⏹️ ▶️ John They make a car called the EQS And they make it in sedan and SUV versions, and they’re both called the EQS.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s madness. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know what they’re doing over there at Mercedes. And by the way, the Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX are actually GM EVs. Don’t be fooled.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And to be fair, seeing all these responses come in about all these EVs, I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that this list of requirements was going to be satisfied by one or two, maybe, at most. And no,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s tons. Did we ever find out if heartened is a word? The opposite of disheartened.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is a word. I don’t know why you keep doubting it, but I’m gonna cut you off there and say that I share your earlier
⏹️ ▶️ John expressed doubt that these things actually fulfill all the requirements. Because we got a lot of feedback of like, this
⏹️ ▶️ John fulfills all the requirements except it’s not an EV.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Right. So, this fulfills
⏹️ ▶️ John all the requirements except it doesn’t have a sunroof. Like people were very willing to say, yeah, but it fulfills the important
⏹️ ▶️ John ones, right? So I’m still not convinced that every single one of these fulfills all the requirements. Probably
⏹️ ▶️ John they fulfill all the requirements except for one or two. But without any prioritization, like, do you really care about
⏹️ ▶️ John the glass full glass roof or not? Like, but yeah, like the, so some of these, we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John get to more of this in a bit, but like a Honda in particular has been good about trying to retain
⏹️ ▶️ John physical controls on just its cars in general, as people have gone all touchscreen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, Honda, the leader in EVs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, I’m saying, but like for the, because this trend away from switches
⏹️ ▶️ John and storage screens is across all cars, it’s just more pronounced than EVs, right? So Honda actually has been holding the line
⏹️ ▶️ John And they’ve been getting good reviews for years by saying hey the new Civic and it’s got physical HVAC controls
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s not an EV, but they’ve been holding line But again, these two Hondas the Honda and the Acura
⏹️ ▶️ John are actually GM vehicles and their interior is filled with GM things It’s got GM stocks. It’s got
⏹️ ▶️ John a GM steering wheel Like it’s a GM car on the inside because Honda has really dropped the ball on EVs
⏹️ ▶️ John So they’ve essentially had to say GM can we sort of reskin one of your EVs
⏹️ ▶️ John for two of our brands? So we actually have something to offer and so they have but that also means that the interior of these
⏹️ ▶️ John looks like GM interiors and GM interiors have also not entirely gone all screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, and the other ones is like a Fiat 500 and a Mini Cooper are very different
⏹️ ▶️ John from our Mercedes Q8 e-tron in price, size, capacity, everything about
⏹️ ▶️ John them. I know they all look like tiny SUVs of varying sizes, but that is quite a range.
⏹️ ▶️ John So again, I feel like the criteria listed really do not allow anyone to narrow it
⏹️ ▶️ John down to anything sane. Because if you really are cross shopping a Q8 and a Fiat 500,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure how you’re shopping for cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, it is very heartening that there are this many options. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the not too distant past, if you were looking for a fully electric
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vehicle, you had three or four options in most markets. At most,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you really had very few options. Oftentimes, it was like one per size class.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So to have this many options that fit what I thought was going to be a very restrictive qualification
⏹️ ▶️ Marco list really says a lot about the EV market. We have a ton of EVs now. That’s wonderful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is a fantastic thing. Like I
⏹️ ▶️ John said last week, they’ve essentially gone mainstream in all ways except for price. And it’s the stupid cost of the battery that’s making that happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you can find them in all shapes and sizes across all makers, depending on
⏹️ ▶️ John how far along the curve they are. All the car makers say they’re gonna go all EV by some unspecified point in the
⏹️ ▶️ John future or they specify the point But we don’t really believe them, right? so that is definitely happening, but they’re all
⏹️ ▶️ John still pretty expensive just because the batteries are really expensive and Thus far especially
⏹️ ▶️ John in the US but less so in the rest of the world Companies have been reticent to say we will sell you a cheaper home with
⏹️ ▶️ John a smaller battery You’ve got the Nissan Leaf and a few other choices in the US But in general they’re like if you’re gonna sell in the US you better
⏹️ ▶️ John put a massive battery in there Otherwise Americans are gonna be too afraid of it and a massive battery costs large amounts
⏹️ ▶️ John of money So still no bargain basement EVs even though technically they could make one put a tiny little battery
⏹️ ▶️ John in it You can make a bargain basement EV that no mobile because it has 80 miles of range Exactly. No one in
⏹️ ▶️ John the US by the way I know in the rest of the world they sell them and you got the Honda and stuff like that Just it’s our own stupid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh As an aside, did you see I don’t think I sent this to you guys but there was a post that went
⏹️ ▶️ Casey around recently about the the Chevy Blazer EV
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John testing. That’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John same thing as the Honda Prologue and the Acura ZDX-Benz.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There you go. Well, I bring this up because of that. The Chevy Blazer EV was tested by someone, I’ll put a link in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They were testing it, they picked it up in like Ohio or something like that. I mean, who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would ever enter Ohio on purpose? Am I right, Marco? But anyways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Hey, I wouldn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John They picked it up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Ohio. Oh God, I’m so sorry. I’m just kidding. They picked it up in Ohio and drove
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to somewhere in Virginia, in rural Virginia, which is not Richmond before you two jerks jump on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me. But anyway, they drove to someone in rural Virginia and the car basically was completely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kaput. Now, this might have been, at least in part, Electrify America’s fault, but whatever happened,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the tester had it for literally like 28 hours and then they had to have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Blazer trailered back to Michigan so they could figure out what the hell happened to it. So not a good look.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s now Honda EVs as well. Hooray! Anyway, so speaking of physical
⏹️ ▶️ Casey touch controls, this broke in the last, I think this was just in the last few days as well, right? Volkswagen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey brings back physical buttons for all new cars. The Volkswagen ID2ALL, what a terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey name, concept car features a slightly updated interior with the most notable change being the return
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of physical buttons below the central touchscreen. According to the brand’s interior designer, Darius Witola,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this will be, quote, a new approach for all models, quote, based on recent feedback from customers,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey especially those in Europe who wanted more physical buttons. This is, this is my, this is my people right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here. I, I, I love this so much. I, I don’t understand.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t, I don’t understand a desire to have fewer physical buttons. And there are people out there who have that desire
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I don’t understand it. Like, I think for a lot of things, like take an average, you take
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it a Tesla, for example, I think it makes perfect sense to have things like dog mode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the touch screen. I don’t think you need a physical button for that. But it is bananas to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me that things you fiddle with a lot don’t have physical controls. Temperature,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey volume. Why do you have to have a
⏹️ ▶️ John forward or reverse gear.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey The forward or reverse gear. Yeah, that’s pretty important.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why do you have to have motors in the dashboard to point the air at you? Have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John a freaking lever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I didn’t mention that when I was talking about that. I was like, yeah, people just kept doing that. It’s like you can just grab the little
⏹️ ▶️ John thing and point it at you and it’s so much better. And that, in every possible, and that one, I have to say, even that
⏹️ ▶️ John one, they don’t save money on that one. Like, I know it’s more expensive to have physical switches often, but the motorized things
⏹️ ▶️ John have to be more expensive than just putting a little
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey handle on them. And so much more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey complicated too. It’s just, I don’t get it. I don’t get it.
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, yeah, we talked about it last time. You get like, there’s the futuristic thing. And then in many cases, it actually is cheaper.
⏹️ ▶️ John And as I said last week, I had hoped that people had gotten this lesson and I was disheartened to see
⏹️ ▶️ John the latest line of cars from a bunch of car makers. It’s like, here’s our second round of EVs and they make all the same mistakes.
⏹️ ▶️ John And as I said on the show last week, you know, kind of like Apple Silicon with the timelines
⏹️ ▶️ John being like seven years, maybe these were just designed before they took those lessons home. And here is Volkswagen
⏹️ ▶️ John saying, we’re gonna fix this. But what are they showing? A concept car. And they’re saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John in the future, all our new models will do this. But the times to develop cars
⏹️ ▶️ John are so long. Like the feedback loop is so long between sell a bunch of cars, have people
⏹️ ▶️ John tell you that you don’t have enough physical controls. that loops all the way back through corporate. And then it’s like, which
⏹️ ▶️ John car is in our pipeline now that we can actually make a change in at this point, right? It’s like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t change the models that are coming out next year. So maybe the ones after that. So that’s why we ended up with a whole bunch of 2024 models that
⏹️ ▶️ John still have no physical choice. And by the way, it’s every individual company that has to figure this out. And you know, it’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John like how long does it take to convince Apple that their laptops needed more ports, right, or that MagSafe should come back. It is a
⏹️ ▶️ John long cycle when it comes to hardware and especially with cars, but I am glad to see things going the other direction,
⏹️ ▶️ John but still not enough and still not fast enough for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Agreed. Then coming back to Sam Obalsamid, the complaints about touch controls from customers and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey safety experts, and that’s another thing, safety experts. Like you shouldn’t be looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the fucking touchscreen in order to change where the air is pushing on your face. Like you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shouldn’t have to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s such a difficult battle though, because of course the people who make the things say it’s not unsafe,
⏹️ ▶️ John And then the people who say it’s unsafe have to prove that it’s unsafe. And then it’s like, well, I don’t trust them because they’re biased.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s not, you can’t just say like, this seems like it’s less safe. You do actually have to
⏹️ ▶️ John test it. And testing it to the satisfaction of all is very difficult because the people doing the testing
⏹️ ▶️ John have a vested interest in one direction or the other. And so do the people who are making the cars. And so it is actually difficult
⏹️ ▶️ John to get, I mean, just think about things like seatbelts. How long did it take to figure out the seatbelts? Good,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? You would think that’s a slam dunk because we all believe it now, but it wasn’t. It took a long time
⏹️ ▶️ John with multiple parties battling over years and generations of people living and dying before we could finally
⏹️ ▶️ John get to the agreement of seatbelts good. And we did it all over again with airbags and anti-lock brakes
⏹️ ▶️ John and anything that costs more on the car. And so we’re going through that again with touchscreens.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. Anyway, let me repeat what Sam was trying to say before I interrupted him from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the past or whatever, however you want to put this. But anyway, Sam says, the complaints about touch controls
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from customers and safety experts are finally being heard by most automakers, except Tesla, which doesn’t actually care about either
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of those groups. Email Sam, not me, even though he’s right. Hyundai, which adopted a touch interface
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on many vehicles, just launched an updated version of the Tucson that ditches the system in favor of a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey return to physical controls. Other Hyundai models that use the same interface will probably get updated in the next year or so.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The new Santa Fe already has knobs and buttons for climate control and other features. GM’s new vehicles all retain
⏹️ ▶️ Casey physical controls. Even Lucid has physical controls for volume and climate control,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as it should be, as it should be.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that was one of the, speaking of Honda, that was one of the things back when everybody was going all touchscreen, Apple, or
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, Honda did this thing where they, like everything’s a touchscreen, but they shoved the knob just
⏹️ ▶️ John on the side of their touchscreen, and it looks so awkward and weird, but it was like some person with authority
⏹️ ▶️ John in Honda was like, I’m not letting, you can go as far as you want, but I’m not letting you get rid of
⏹️ ▶️ John the volume knob. And so they said, where are we gonna put it? There’s no place, just stick it on the side of the screen. It’s like a
⏹️ ▶️ John big touchscreen with just a physical knob just just sticking in the bezel. And for years it
⏹️ ▶️ John was like that. And I was like, you go person in Honda. Just keep holding that line. They’ll come back around your way.
⏹️ ▶️ John And hopefully it seems like it’s going the other direction now. So. Kudos to that person,
⏹️ ▶️ John that person and the person who put the sync button and messages for the Mac all those years ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Plus five internet points for both of you.
iPhone “capture button” rumor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, John, what is the iPhone 16 capture button? What’s going on here?
⏹️ ▶️ John Talked about this. I don’t know. Maybe it was when we’re doing the exit interview or something, or no, it was a question about the action
⏹️ ▶️ John button. And I had said at that time, you know, after we discussed the action button, like, you know, the rumors
⏹️ ▶️ John are that Apple is going to add another button to the, to the next iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s going to be below the power button where the millimeter wave antenna is. And I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think too much of it. Cause you know, I read a lot of rumors or whatever. But this rumor has been gaining
⏹️ ▶️ John steam. And so here now German has chimed in. He’s calling it the capture button. This is from
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Rumors, summarizing a German report. German says the iPhone 16 models will include a new dedicated
⏹️ ▶️ John button for taking video. In a recent early look at iPhone 16 prototypes, the capture button will
⏹️ ▶️ John be located on the bottom right side of the iPhone 16. It will replace the millimeter wave antenna on US phone models
⏹️ ▶️ John with millimeter wave antenna to be relocated to the left side of the device below the volume and action buttons.
⏹️ ▶️ John Non-US models do not have a millimeter wave antenna needs to be relocated. The capture button will be a capacitive button
⏹️ ▶️ John with haptic feedback rather than a mechanical button and is expected to include a force sensor that can recognize
⏹️ ▶️ John pressure. The capture button is coming to all four iPhone 16 models. So this is a combination
⏹️ ▶️ John of a bunch of rumors because you remember for the iPhone 15, there were rumors that the volume buttons would
⏹️ ▶️ John be haptic, like not actually moving it out, but instead just shake when you hit them. And we talked about that
⏹️ ▶️ John rumor for a while, but then there was another follow-up rumor that said, no, they’re not doing that. So here’s the haptic button coming back,
⏹️ ▶️ John only not for the volume buttons, or maybe it is for them, but that’s not what this rumor is about, but for a capture button
⏹️ ▶️ John with force sensitivity. So maybe the return of something like force touch, where if you press it, it does one thing, and if you press it
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit harder, it does a second thing. But like the real purpose of this button
⏹️ ▶️ John is what the name says, capture button. And boy,
⏹️ ▶️ John after so many years of Apple not really changing anything on the physical outside of the phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John to go to new connector, lightning replaced with USB-C, ring silence
⏹️ ▶️ John switch replaced with the action button. And then the very next year, and guess what we added another button?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not entirely against it, but I’m really wondering. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John sorry, I’m not wondering, okay. I’m not wondering why they’re doing this. I’m wondering if it is wise
⏹️ ▶️ John to do it. The reason they’re obviously doing it, if you look at the iPhone 16 rumors, is that
⏹️ ▶️ John they want the capture button to be a faster and easier way for people to capture video, including spatial video
⏹️ ▶️ John because all the iPhone 16s are gonna have two cameras that are lined up for spatial video instead of being on an Angle like
⏹️ ▶️ John they did with the the 15 Pro hasn’t like that But the plane 15 still has them on an angle kitty corner from each
⏹️ ▶️ John other. So on the 16 line Both the the 16 and the 16 Pro will have the two cameras
⏹️ ▶️ John lined up, you know for good for stereo You know vision not any farther apart, but at least they’ll be aligned
⏹️ ▶️ John And also the rumor is the 16 Pro will have a 48 pixel ultra wide wide. So we’ll have a 48
⏹️ ▶️ John megapixel main and a 48 megapixel ultra wide and they’ll be lined up. All this is to make
⏹️ ▶️ John more better spatial video and then you’ve got a dedicated button for it which presumably will bring
⏹️ ▶️ John up your the video app immediately without you having to futz with your phone and immediately start capturing
⏹️ ▶️ John that spatial video so you shouldn’t capture these precious moments that everyone will watch and their $3500 headset that they
⏹️ ▶️ John just bought. Right? That all like I see the vision there. I understand
⏹️ ▶️ John what they’re doing. But two things here. One, how many people are going to have a Vision
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro in 2024? Apple’s not even going to be able to make that many of them, even if they sell every single one that they make. They’re not even
⏹️ ▶️ John going to be able to manufacture that many. Two, if Apple’s really all in on spatial video, move the cameras
⏹️ ▶️ John farther apart. Like it’s the stereo, the stereo effect is not as impressive
⏹️ ▶️ John when the cameras are literally a centimeter from each other. Like it’s not, you know, the centers of the cameras
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, move them a little bit farther apart.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, I think if you’re gonna optimize the camera hardware for stereo capture, give us two 1X
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lenses. Like have that be the stereo.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know. We talked about that with, you could add a fourth camera, but apparently they’re not adding a fourth camera. So
⏹️ ▶️ John do you wanna lose the ultra wide? Then we talked about that too. Would you like to lose the ultra wide to have two 1Xs?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think most people will. Again, who is the spatial video for? You could argue it’s future-proofing. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, it looks like normal video to you, but eventually when you buy the Apple headset three years from now when it only costs $1,000,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ll be able to see all that spatial video that you queued up with your kids. I kind of get that, but I really, like
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m with Apple, I understand the thing, but then when they say, okay, we’re also adding a button, in the rumors it seems to
⏹️ ▶️ John be a pretty big button to the right side of the phone under the power button as a capture button.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why is the action button not a capture button? If people value capturing, wouldn’t they configure the
⏹️ ▶️ John action button to bring up the camera? Like, and the fact that it’s force sensitive makes me think they’ll be like,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has something in mind with that. Like, I’m not saying that the iPhone doesn’t need more buttons. In fact,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I said in a past show that it should have more buttons. I’m just not sure a really big button on the bottom
⏹️ ▶️ John of the phone below the power button dedicated to capture is how I would choose to add the next button to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, first of all, I wouldn’t read too much into the force sensitivity thing because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s probably just what works in cases. You know, cause you figure anything that’s, if it’s just like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco capacitive button, that’s gonna be a problem with every case if it’s on the side of the phone. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think it would be capacitive. I thought it would be like the iPhone 7 button. That wasn’t capacitive, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John It was force sensitive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s true, yeah. So presumably, the force sensitivity is just so they can add a button
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that doesn’t have moving parts that is also workable through cases.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you think it doesn’t mean that it will be able to, like they’ll use it to distinguish different levels of force, like you pressed hard and you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nope, I think it’s literally just the mechanism by which the button works through cases without having moving parts. And by the
⏹️ ▶️ John way, speaking of that, a slight gamer aside, I believe it was the PlayStation 2.
⏹️ ▶️ John I remember when it was announced, they said, and by the way, the controller has four sensitive buttons
⏹️ ▶️ John now. They each register, you know, a four pressure level from zero to 255 and like
⏹️ ▶️ John no game used that. I was not.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, I was gonna say like, did any game ever take advantage of that?
⏹️ ▶️ John They did, yes. I’m sure there were games that did, but it did not turn out to be a very important feature of the PS2, let’s just say that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think that continued through the PS3, 4, maybe even five. I don’t, I don’t know if and when they
⏹️ ▶️ John dropped it, but it, this is to the threat of like, do people like the idea
⏹️ ▶️ John of having something that they can press and then having something different happen when they press harder? We talked about force
⏹️ ▶️ John touch last episode. There are, there are proponents of that, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it isn’t, it’s thus far, it has not either caught on or sustained itself in the market in, in,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, in any product that has a force sensitive thing, like, you know, a tech product like a game console or a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean there are some like certain game controllers, I believe the original Xbox did this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where like the triggers would be like, you know, force sensitive, so like depending on how much you pulled and it was like
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh yeah, now every game console has that these days. They can tell how far you’ve put it, but it’s not how hard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, yeah, and it makes sense. Like, you know, a trigger button has a huge amount of travel so it makes sense
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could make that, you know, easily analog, whereas, you know, the top button of the controller where you just mash
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it harder or in this case, you know, the button inside your iPhone. Yeah, I don’t think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an idea that’s gonna stick
⏹️ ▶️ John You should try the PS5 controller, Marco, if you haven’t because the PS5 controller has motors that resist
⏹️ ▶️ John your pressing of the triggers. You have to, like, did you play the, what is it called, the chat room, the
⏹️ ▶️ John little game with the cute little robot, Astro’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Playroom? I’ve never played a PS5 game, no, but I have a PS5 controller on my desk.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, if you play Astro’s Playroom, you’ll play certain levels you can feel there are motors inside it that that push
⏹️ ▶️ John back against your fingers when you use the analog triggers which is kind of interesting if you haven’t felt it before and kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John fun although again most games don’t use it and then you spoke about travel distance it’s another thing fun thing that game consoles
⏹️ ▶️ John do especially the fancy controllers like the Xbox Elite controller I have what they have is a
⏹️ ▶️ John way for you to adjust that travel because in certain games you don’t want it like if you’re playing a game and you’re a sniper
⏹️ ▶️ John and you want to pull the trigger to fire the gun you don’t want to have to pull the trigger an entire centimeter so you
⏹️ ▶️ John can adjust it so it’s like essentially a hair trigger and you pull it like half a millimeter and it activates and
⏹️ ▶️ John that is a feature of fancy controllers. Just sort of negating the the you
⏹️ ▶️ John know the the supposed feature of having analog travel for like using it as a gas pedal on a racing game or something.
New Watch-band attachment?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. The other thing we need to talk about tonight is that apparently the next gen Apple watch is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again rumored to break compatibility with existing bands. So since the original
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple watch came out, there was only one real, uh, break in the cycle.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that was when, uh, actually was there ever? No, I guess that’s not true. Actually. I’m thinking of my break in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They changed the sizes of the watches, but the strap size has never changed. Although
⏹️ ▶️ John I will say they cheated a little bit in that various watch straps on various different
⏹️ ▶️ John sizes watches have at various times looked a little awkward in terms of how even
⏹️ ▶️ John just the first party Apple bands connect in to fit in with and extend from
⏹️ ▶️ John the bodies. I’ve seen some combos that I look at and say, technically that fits and you’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John forcing it or anything, but it looks weird.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, that’s that’s usually not a sizing issue. That’s usually just a a bad choice or a metal mismatch.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I’ve seen ones where I feel like, is that supposed to be like that? Like, it doesn’t look like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t look, I’m not gonna say it doesn’t look flush, but it doesn’t seem to like,
⏹️ ▶️ John just the part that goes into the little slot. I’ve seen situations with particular watch bands on particular
⏹️ ▶️ John watch models, or very often a very old watch band with a very new watch model, especially when they sort of change the shape of them
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit subtly, the little Airstream trailer changed shape. It doesn’t look like it meshes
⏹️ ▶️ John well. Like up close, I could see, I mean, Johnny Ive wouldn’t like it, he would say, that doesn’t look right. But technically,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ve all been compatible across the, as long as you get the size match, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the band size is. It’s like 38, 40, 41, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then like 42, 44, 45. Right, but when you buy the bands,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can buy them in small, medium, large, but that’s just the length. But do the watch bands also have to match
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the 41 versus 45
⏹️ ▶️ John thing? Yeah, they do. Yep.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I got myself confused when I was introducing this is that I went from the original big size
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for when all the watches changed to get bigger. I dropped down to the small size and that’s why for a second there I thought that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the watch bands had changed. It’s not that at all. It’s just that I had previously been getting the bigger size connector
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you know for the last several or a couple of watches at least I’ve been getting small size connector.
⏹️ ▶️ John But how does Apple characterize those by the way when they say the big size because again the big size one, the
⏹️ ▶️ John big size watches have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changed. They say 38, 40, 41 and 42, 44, 45. Like that, those are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the two like trios
⏹️ ▶️ John of sizes. Maybe that’s what I was seeing. Maybe I was seeing a band made for the smaller big watch used with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Probably, yes. Cause that would create a gap. You would notice that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But still that’s the correct band for it. If you look on the box, it says this fits these models and you have one of these models and
⏹️ ▶️ John it does actually fit. It just looks weird.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. I mean, to me, honestly, is going to tweak the Apple Watch band
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sizing. To me, the biggest sin of watch band sizing that they make is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the smaller size watch, the sport band is too wide. Like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actual band part of it, after that tapers down from the lugs, the actual width
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the band is way too wide for a watch that size.
⏹️ ▶️ John You mean you think it doesn’t look good?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, it’s a mismatch aesthetically.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, one way or another, it’s been reported nine to five Apple is once again said to be prepping for a big
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Watch change. According to a new rumor this week, the band connection system for the next generation Apple Watch has been completely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey redesigned. This means that all existing Apple Watch bands will be incompatible with the next generation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Watch. The rumor comes from Kosutami on social media, who has previously reported
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accurate information about Apple’s plans for future accessories. For example, the account shared several details about Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey switch from leather to fine woven accessories ahead of time. Bloomberg first reported on Apple’s plans to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey debut a major new Apple Watch 10 design, or is it X? Who knows? A few
⏹️ ▶️ Casey months ago in that report, Mark Gurman explained that Apple was exploring a change to the way the bands are attached
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the Apple Watch. The current system reportedly takes up a considerable amount of space inside the Apple Watch,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which Apple engineers believe could be better utilized by a bigger battery or other components. Gurman has described the new Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Watch band design as featuring a magnetic attachment system. That sounds horrifying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me until I tell you that I have been carrying my gigantic phone via a magnet-only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey popsocket for, what, two months now? And so far, so good.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right. Well, how big are the magnets on your popsocket?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s fair, too. That’s fair, too. They’re quite a bit bigger than they would be on a watch. But my point is you could potentially make it work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, also, keep in mind, magnets hold very strong in the, as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we previously discussed, the sandwich direction. bad at the sliding across themselves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco direction. So depending on how it’s engineered, it actually could be strong enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to, you know, to account for most problems. I do worry a little bit about the, you know, the lateral movement possibilities,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, dislodging them pretty easily.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, but that’s the easy thing to fix in a connector because they just have like prongs or teeth or other things that sort of like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, go in there. Like when I’m, when I’m, when I’m thinking of these rumors, I’m not thinking of MagSafe, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because MagSafe does not have any of those things. Although even MagSafe has a a recess in it that like if you were to try to
⏹️ ▶️ John actually push it exactly sideways, it would hit the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lips of the recess. Well, and keep in mind, like imagine, like imagine if if the MagSafe connector,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you couldn’t move it up and down to take it off, like if you if it had like a little channel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it fit into that was deeper, if it couldn’t move up and down, it would actually be a lot harder to disconnect it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it does have a little bit of channel. Yeah, it is recessed, but I’m thinking of like prongs or teeth or even things that could like clip
⏹️ ▶️ John into like little slots with little nubbins on them like like that. it wouldn’t entirely be the magnets. The magnets
⏹️ ▶️ John would be there as like maybe 50% of the attachment solution. But I’m not entirely sure what to
⏹️ ▶️ John make of these things. But I do, the things that make me think something like this is probably coming are a few. One, I agree with
⏹️ ▶️ John the idea that the current system takes up room in the watch. If you don’t think that, then look at the little naked watch body when
⏹️ ▶️ John you pull it out of the box and you realize, oh, this giant channel’s hollowed out here where there’s nothing in the watch. That is
⏹️ ▶️ John every square millimeter is precious on these things. So I think an attachment system that
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t do that, If they can find one, would be beneficial, and that is something that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John would pursue. And two, kind of like lightning and other things that Apple changes every once in a while, the current
⏹️ ▶️ John watch straps, Apple has maintained them and the basic design of the watch for what will be next year, about nine
⏹️ ▶️ John years. And a decade or so, I think is a good run for a watch attachment mechanism.
⏹️ ▶️ John What you hope is that the follow-up attachment mechanism is even better and not a terrible mistake or something,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I think this is a reasonable time to be thinking about in the next year or two.
⏹️ ▶️ John If we can do something better, now is it a reasonable time to do it? Because we were all nervous when the Apple Watch was developed,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, the new one come out, is it gonna invalidate all our bands? And they kept those bands around for close to a decade.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if they can come up with a way to do it without gigantic channels carved out of the thing, with
⏹️ ▶️ John the help of magnets and whatever other clever mechanism they have to attach, I think it
⏹️ ▶️ John could work. Now, one thing I will say about the existing mechanism is, what it has going for it
⏹️ ▶️ John is very straightforward and mechanical sturdiness. In this
⏹️ ▶️ John case, the yanking on the watch straps, if you took a watch strap and like just
⏹️ ▶️ John pull the two ends, that is where this thing does very well because it’s a fat thing inside a little channel.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the other direction, that’s the way you slide them in sideways, the tiniest, most delicate
⏹️ ▶️ John mechanisms, I’ve talked about this in videos before, how precise Apple has to be to make this, that little mechanism that makes
⏹️ ▶️ John this sort of click in when you slide that you have to press your little fingernail on the little button to get it out. That
⏹️ ▶️ John is the only thing stopping it from sliding side to side. That and the sort of static friction of being in that very tight channel.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it just goes to show that far as that attachment mechanism is concerned, the yanking
⏹️ ▶️ John on the straps thing, very, very strong, straightforward, nothing delicate or complicated about it. And the
⏹️ ▶️ John other direction, the finest piece of machinery you could possibly ever imagine, the tiniest little most
⏹️ ▶️ John delicate thing has been sufficient. So it seemed like the direction that they have
⏹️ ▶️ John to worry about is the yanking on the things direction and the side to side direction, they can
⏹️ ▶️ John do almost anything and it will be fine. Yeah, that’s fair. The existing one is so strong
⏹️ ▶️ John in that direction because it is a fat thing shoved into a skinny channel. It is the most brain dead thing. You know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you slide it in from the side. Like it’s like wood joinery. Like it’s just, it’s straightforward.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can look at it with your eye and understand how it works. And think of, have you heard any stories about
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple watches flying off people’s wrists and the straps failing or whatever? Like if straps do
⏹️ ▶️ John fail, I imagine they’re not failing at the attachment to the watch point that maybe they’re failing someplace else due to like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John some sort of problem with the strap. But like this strap design has been a home run. The
⏹️ ▶️ John straps that Apple sells have been really good. Even the third party straps that are presumably made to
⏹️ ▶️ John a less precise manner have been pretty good. Like we’ve had a lot of years of the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John Watch and no one is saying Apple strap attachment mechanism sucks and it falls apart. And the risk of making
⏹️ ▶️ John a new one, especially with magnets or anything that’s gonna have scare stories on it. You know, like, oh, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, we tried the new Apple Watch magnetic strap mechanism in this, you know, NASA G-Force
⏹️ ▶️ John simulator and it came off, right? Get ready for those. Like, so I feel for Apple if this
⏹️ ▶️ John is what they’re doing, but I’m also kind of excited about the idea of getting rid of those
⏹️ ▶️ John slots and maybe, you know, either putting in more battery or maybe making the watch slimmer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the, I mean, so first of all, I need to preface this rumor. this rumor has been circulating for something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like three years that there’s some major Apple Watch redesign Coming next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year or coming this year like and that’s been happening now for so long It’s almost like the year of Linux on the desktop
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, are you counting the flat side one that we think might have just been the ultra rumor?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe but but if so, I mean the ultra is nothing like that. So anyway, so the point is Apple watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s been a bunch of rumors about substantial Apple Watch redesigns coming and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve seemingly gone nowhere so far So either the Apple Watch rumor mill is comically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inaccurate, which has been the case so far, or they really have been working
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on something and it will be arriving soon. You know, like maybe they got the timing wrong or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but either way, either the Apple watch room is terrible or this, you know, there’s finally enough smoke behind this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fire that maybe it’ll actually happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John But there’s a third option, right? Either they got all the rumors wrong or they’re actually right. But the third option,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think, is just as likely as is all of those is they’re totally wrong about everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John but inevitably the Apple Watch will get a major redesign. And when that happens, they can try to claim that they’re right. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the nature of all products. Like especially things like the Apple Watch and the phone or whatever. Apple is conservative about changing them,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they do change them eventually. So
⏹️ ▶️ John a decade, like it’s going to happen, right? If the Apple Watch continues as a product long enough, it will get
⏹️ ▶️ John a major redesign. It is inevitable. And you can’t then retroactively claim, see all those rumors we had, we were right.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, maybe you were, and maybe you weren’t, But like, you know, it’s like predicting, you know, new Macs
⏹️ ▶️ John will be released. And then they release and like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you. Like, yeah, they keep getting released until they cancel the line. Like that’s the nature of the product. So, but again, with
⏹️ ▶️ John the 10 year timer, I said in the beginning of the Apple Watch, we’re all like, well, the next one looked totally different. Eventually we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like, no, they’re not gonna look different. They’re gonna look, it’s not like they didn’t change them. They did, but they all
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of look like, you know, the rounded little lozenges or whatever until the Ultra. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John the Ultra is a new shape for the Apple Watch. I think that will
⏹️ ▶️ John happen to the regular, I think there will be a new shape for the Apple Watch that will happen. And if you’re gonna make a new shape
⏹️ ▶️ John for the watch, that’s the time to rethink the strap. It could be kind of like various things that they’ve tried to do,
⏹️ ▶️ John that they look into alternate strap designs, they’ve been researching it for six years and they just can’t get
⏹️ ▶️ John anything that’s better. And so, you know what, we tried, we tried. Well, let’s regroup, think of a new idea. But in the meantime,
⏹️ ▶️ John when we have the redesigned Apple Watch same strap mechanism. That is a possibility
⏹️ ▶️ John as well. Cause I truly believe that Apple has been researching better straps. In fact, I think they were researching better straps
⏹️ ▶️ John before they shipped the first Apple Watch. They shipped the best strap that they came up with. It’s been a hit, everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John loves it, but they’re always looking for a way to do it better. It’s just not like from the outside, especially it’s not like
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s some obvious thing that they should do to make it better. It’s going to be difficult. And so with anything difficult,
⏹️ ▶️ John I am willing to believe that it’s taking them multiple years. I’m also willing to believe that it takes multiple years And they say, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John we couldn’t figure it out. Regroup again in a few more years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, the thing is like for them to, to make all existing straps incompatible,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is, that’s a big risk that they’re taking. There’s a big cost to that on lots of levels.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so if they’re actually going to do that, I trust that they probably have really good reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we’ll see. I mean, I would, I’m not looking forward to that because I have a large collection of Apple Watch straps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve accumulated over the years. And I don’t, I don’t want to have them all obsolete it very quickly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but at the same time I am a little bit excited to see like well if they’re going to go through that they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again they probably have good reasons they probably were able to improve things significantly like one other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco area besides the sport strap being too wide on the smaller watch that I would like to love to see aesthetically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that right now the combos that look good on Apple watches are partly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco restricted by the design of the current lug system where you can see a lot of of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strap like inside the watch from the sides like the part
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it that sticks into the watch you see the color whatever color the strap is you see that running into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the watch body for that you know whatever few millimeters that is that kind of restricts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what combinations look good and I think it looks a little bit inelegant if they could design
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a strap system where you don’t see the strap enter the watch anywhere except like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the the boundary of the case that would look nicer. Now that might have other downsides like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you wouldn’t have the lateral removal process so maybe that’s what the magnets are for who knows but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they can get rid of that side view of the of the side of the strap inside the watch body
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would open up more aesthetic possibilities but also maybe they just need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to change the system as part of a larger redesign to help the basic Apple watch look fresh again
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because you know the current the current non-ultra line of Apple watches, I think it looks good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall, like in totally absolute terms it looks good, but it is starting to look dated.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now watch watch fashion changes very slowly over time and they can keep selling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly this for a while and be fine, but they’re also in the tech business and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the tech business likes when things look new. See the iPhone and how we seem to demand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco case redesigns every roughly two to three years just to keep it looking fresh. The Apple Watch certainly suffers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from some of that. You know, people want their jewelry to look fresh and new sometimes and whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think the current line, the regular Apple Watch line could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use a redesign just to keep it fresh. Not to say there’s any massive problems with the current
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design because I don’t think there are really. Everything I mentioned so far has been small problems, not big problems.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But there is some need for them to keep this fresh in the long term.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so even just change for change’s sake. We hate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to say it as nerds because this shouldn’t be the case, but the reality is people like new looking things sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And just having like a new watch style is something they should do ever so often.
⏹️ ▶️ John And one other thing they could improve with the new strap attachment, aside from being able to the side thing is
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of the departure angle of the strap is kind of dictated by the angle of the slots because
⏹️ ▶️ John the slots themselves have a direction to them. And that angle. I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, the thing is, there is no one perfect angle given a watch size, given a strap, given a person wrist size.
⏹️ ▶️ John There is too many variables that can dictate how good something looks. And if they could come up with a
⏹️ ▶️ John strap attachment mechanism that was more flexible about the angle of departure from the watch, it would help
⏹️ ▶️ John it look better on a wider variety of risks. That’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s hard. But it’s but it’s possible. I mean, like, you know, regular watches with spring bars do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly like there is there, you know, for regular watches that don’t have extremely easily removable,
⏹️ ▶️ John swappable straps. There are lots of it’s like, oh, you just put it on a hinge and then it can depart at any angle that it wants. But that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John the system Apple has for their watches because their straps are very easily changeable. And so, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco although to be fair to the watch world, quick release spring bar bands are actually not really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any harder to swap than Apple watch bands.
⏹️ ▶️ John Really? I mean, I’ve never done it, so I couldn’t say it. But like I just the Apple watch ones are so easy. You can do it with the fingernail.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so there’s there’s a type called quick release spring bars that like they have basically like a little peg
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that sticks out straight down from the lug it kind of in like the three quarters across
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way of the watch band and you just like slide that little peg over with your fingernail and the whole thing pops out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it still uses a spring bar to poke through the two holes in your side but that little peg lets you pop it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out really quickly and easily it is almost Apple watch easy no magnets though
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no no magnets well you don’t generally speaking you don’t want introduce magnets unnecessarily to mechanical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watches. They don’t like that usually. They should use quartz crystals. They’re way more accurate. Oh my god.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also vinyl sounds better. Anyway, let’s do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John some… No! Quartz
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco accurate! They actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are! In this case, yeah. Quartz crystals are like the CD of the watch world.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I should have just kept my mouth shut.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re just making the wrong analogy with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, anyways, it sounds more warm, I tell you. All right, so let’s do some AskATP.
#askatp: NVIDIA vs. Apple “cores”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Amar writes, do NVIDIA and Apple mean different things when they say cores and M3 Max has 40 GPU cores
⏹️ ▶️ Casey while an RTX 4080 has 9728 CUDA cores? I have no freaking clue. John, what’s the deal?
⏹️ ▶️ John what do you think? The answer is yes, they do mean different things when they say cores. They mean very different
⏹️ ▶️ John things. I think you’ve amply demonstrated that 40 cores versus 9728.
⏹️ ▶️ John Boy, that 4080 must be way faster. And yes, it is way faster, but not that much faster.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so what you call a core and a GPU, it’s up to, part of it has to do with the architecture,
⏹️ ▶️ John but a lot of it is also marketing and what you decide counts as a core. And the way NVIDIA and Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John count is very different. And the things that NVIDIA is counting as cores are smaller and simpler than the things
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple is counting as cores. That’s it.
#askatp: LLM-Siri on HomePods
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ryan McDonough writes, with the rumor of Apple creating their own LLM to build a better Siri,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do you think this functionality will come to the existing HomePod mini range, or will this be a differentiator for the next release?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, it should go everywhere, but I think they’ll absolutely use it to get you to upgrade. Although, why
⏹️ ▶️ John do that? That would mean they would have to make a new HomePod.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is why I think this is an interesting question, because it’s like, well, okay, is the thing versus Apple making you upgrade versus not?
⏹️ ▶️ John And the other part of it, I think, are they doing inference on the hardware device? Because Apple has a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot of that recently was Apple paper that they published about how they found a way to do efficient
⏹️ ▶️ John inference in large language models on their own hardware, even when it doesn’t fit in RAM, stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the the hardware inside home pods is extremely wimpy, like power wise, like it’s it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John watch hardware, you know, or it’s or it’s older SOCs. And it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John all this combines in the whole lot of saying. And also Apple really doesn’t like updating that line particularly often.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I don’t know how to it’s like if it’s all server side, they don’t need technically to
⏹️ ▶️ John update the hardware. But would it be all server side? Because Apple’s big thing seems to be everyone assumes that thing is
⏹️ ▶️ John going to be, oh, we do a lot of stuff on device because we have amazing hardware. But home pods do not have amazing hardware. And by
⏹️ ▶️ John the way, if home pods did have to send it to a server to get answers, it’s not going to make them any faster. like sending
⏹️ ▶️ John Siri requests to a server makes it seem slow as well. So I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John if I had to bet on this, I would I would say new HomePod because the old ones don’t have beefy enough hardware, not because Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John wants to make you buy a new one, although of course they do. But new HomePod because the because the
⏹️ ▶️ John they wanted to be done in hardware. And that would mean Apple will be forced to actually make a new HomePod, which may
⏹️ ▶️ John mean that this is not coming to HomePods at all until they can do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And even then, like, I don’t see I can’t see Apple launching
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this new alleged Siri that’s LLM based doing inference server side.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just can’t see because we know a couple of things. Number one, Apple’s cheap.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Except when hiring people away from Massimo, otherwise they’re cheap. Number two, they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great at the existing server side infrastructure of Siri. And they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not super keen to run massive AI stuff server side.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They run services, but their services tend to do simpler things in the large, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive scale that they need to do them. You know, most of the hard computing crunching tasks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are done device side. We also know that device side, they are, as John mentioned, investing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco heavily in the AI side of device side inference, and also they make really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great device processors to do that. So So all of that suggests to me that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the vast majority, if not all, of Apple’s efforts with these new AI techniques are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most likely going to be running device side. And if they were to do all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Siri requests through this kind of thing server side, the scale of that would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so immense that not only would they probably not do it for just practicality and cost reasons,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but also we probably don’t want them trying that because I don’t think they would do a very good job, to be honest.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so here’s a question I don’t necessarily know the answer to. I don’t think any of us do.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s because I think there are certain things that you can do with large language models
⏹️ ▶️ John that require more computing resources that exist on any of Apple’s devices. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John that doesn’t mean that Apple is going to do those things with its LLMs. It could be that they have their LLMs, they
⏹️ ▶️ John train them up to do tasks that are simpler, that can run device side. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ John those are the rumors. We know Apple has strengths in this area. We know they have papers on this topic. We assume
⏹️ ▶️ John that they’re gonna leverage their strategic advantage, which is they have literally billions of SOCs with neural engines
⏹️ ▶️ John in them out there in the world. That’s what they should do. But that does mean that they can’t do
⏹️ ▶️ John certain things. Like I think there’s some stuff you can like type in the chat GPT or whatever, that it’s responding to your query,
⏹️ ▶️ John the amount of computing resources that are briefly marshaled to answer your question is
⏹️ ▶️ John larger than exists on your phone. And so if your phone was forced to do it, it would take an unacceptably long amount of time.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what you would consider unacceptable, but it would take longer. It would take longer than it does when it runs server side.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so I’m not sure how that’s gonna shake out because we don’t know what Apple’s plans are with its LLMs.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would assume they’re going to start conservative and maybe they’re going, I mean, what we all wish is just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John look, just make it do everything Siri does but actually work this time. But that, Siri does a large number
⏹️ ▶️ John of things. But I hope everything that Siri does is simple enough that an LLM could tackle it. or again, as we
⏹️ ▶️ John discussed in the past, if you just put an LM in front of the stupid Siri and had it figure out how
⏹️ ▶️ John to make Siri do what you actually asked for, that would be useful. But yeah, but HomePods
⏹️ ▶️ John have many things going against them. They do have weak hardware, Apple doesn’t like to update them.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple’s dedication to that entire product line has at various times been highly in question. So yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John Ryan, my guess is you’re probably gonna have to buy a new HomePod.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If they even make one that does this. I mean, keep in mind too, like whatever Apple’s gonna do with Siri,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re going to have also these different levels of, quote, Siri, what does Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean? Because many of Apple’s products have lower specced processors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the phones. You know, the phones have these cutting edge, and the Macs of course, you know, the phones and iPads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Macs, they have these massively performing cutting edge processors, these huge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco neural engines that can run really advanced models and stuff. They also sell Apple Watches,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Apple TVs and HomePods, all of which have Siri functionality.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now we saw in the Series 9, may it rest in peace until it’s for sale again, but we saw in the Series 9
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Ultra 2, they finally changed the SoC from a million years ago. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the things that you get with the new SoC is it does more Siri request processing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on device. Previous Apple Watches seem to do basically no Siri operations on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco device. It’s part of the reason why Siri on the watch before was so bad and had such a high
⏹️ ▶️ Marco failure rate and was so slow because it was doing everything by going to the server. Current
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Watch models at the high end are able to do some of that processing on-device. iPhones have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been doing a lot of on-device Siri work for a while now. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Watch, you can look at the HomePod and you can say, well, they’re going to have to put a higher-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco processor in there to be able to do that and maybe that’ll increase their costs. Okay, they might at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some point do that. I don’t think they will, but they might. But the watch is not a monetary problem. The watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like, there’s no cost they can apply here to build in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone class LLM execution into the Apple Watch of any similar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year because it’s a way smaller power envelope and everything like that. So they’re always gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to have tiers of Siri, of like, all right, we’re gonna do the full-blown LLM
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smart thing all on device on the phone. But then, what do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they do on the watch? What do they do on the Apple TV? Whatever the answer to that is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s probably the same thing that the HomePods will end up doing if they’re ever updated for this. So, I know I said a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco second ago that they’re gonna probably do everything on device, but it is kind of weird to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think like, well, they can’t do it on device on these much smaller processor products.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, maybe they will have to have some version of it that runs on servers as well. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they take every iPhone out of the picture and have the iPhones do everything or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost everything LLM based locally on the hardware, that might make it a much more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scalable service on the backend to serve only the smaller devices.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is a tug of war between their desire not to make a new HomePod and their desire to
⏹️ ▶️ John have the LLM PowerSeries on the HomePod. Because if you want it on the HomePod, they would write you to buy a new one,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that means they would have to make a new one. Yeah, so maybe like maybe it went out. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know what? We’re not making new home pod. Just send it all to the server. I know it will be slow, but tough luck. It’s got to be that way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the least of the HomePod’s problems.
#askatp: “John’s question”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then the final item for Ask ATP is from listener John. Listener John,
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not actually for me, but I wanted to hide the question from you two. I think now you need to
⏹️ ▶️ John hide all your browser windows so you don’t cheat. All right, hiding. All right. This is a question
⏹️ ▶️ John from Jim Callen, who says- Wait, do I have to hide Slack
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and other things that are just web views?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, just don’t cheat. No looking things up on the internet.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco OK, OK. It’s just going to be
⏹️ ▶️ John you and your wits, OK?
⏹️ ▶️ John So Jim Callen writes, can you name all the Mac OS version names in chronological order?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I saw this, and I immediately noped right out of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, as long as you didn’t research it, you’re fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s now before you, you can be thinking while I’m saying this, but before you say this, I’m going to say that I tried
⏹️ ▶️ John to do this straight up, no cheating, and could not. I almost did it, but I did
⏹️ ▶️ John not. So I’m going to be honest and say that I did not succeed. So I’m going to assume neither one of you is going to too, unless you cheat. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John God, no. But we’ll see how you do. And if you want, you can collaborate with each other to try to come up with a list together,
⏹️ ▶️ John or you could try to do it individually. But before that, I’m gonna say, my first question is, how many have there
⏹️ ▶️ John been, major releases only, not counting betas, not counting dev things, not counting point releases, how many major
⏹️ ▶️ John releases of Mac OS X have there been?
⏹️ ▶️ John Probably something like 17
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or 18, I don’t know. Are we gonna do like Price is Right
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey to going over? Yes, Price is Right
⏹️ ▶️ John rules. Marco wins, 20. Oh my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gosh, all right, now I’m already off to a bad start. Hard
⏹️ ▶️ John all right, so now let’s go from the top. Maybe you could do it together. What’s the first one? I’m gonna, and I’m going to demand
⏹️ ▶️ John version numbers and names because this just asks for version names.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I know, I know John has said in the past that it was kind of ironic that the first one had a fast cat name because it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so slow. So I’m gonna, it was like Puma or Cheetah. Was that one of the first ones? Jaguar? No, that, I think that was
⏹️ ▶️ John 10.0, you see, for people who don’t know, Marco and Casey did not come to the Mac until after the error they’re trying to remember.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that they’re at a disadvantage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, my first Mac had whatever was before Tiger. Was it Panther?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh man. All right, so I’m gonna say there’s like Cheetah, Jaguar, Panther, I think was 10.3. Wait,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re going too fast. Let’s just start with 10.0. What’s your
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco guess for 10.0?
⏹️ ▶️ John Geez, I’ll call that one Cheetah. You are right. Casey, did you have any idea on that one?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I was going to agree with Marco, but I don’t know if I would have come up with that prior to Marco having said so. And yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John it is the most hilarious name because it was the slowest version. And they called it Cheetah, they
⏹️ ▶️ John burned that name. Real fast, hilarious.
⏹️ ▶️ John 10.1, Puma, was that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of them? Yeah, because we’re not at Tiger yet. That was like three or four, maybe?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey four. Yeah, that sounds right to me. So I’ll go with Puma, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John good, see, you’re working together. 10.1 was indeed Puma.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, see 10.2, I know 10.3 was Panther. I don’t know what 10.2 was. Because we’re not, okay, yeah. Yeah. 10.2.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we’re not in the leopard and snow leopard era.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s no lion that I recall.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That’s later too. What other big cats are there? Ocelot?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t even know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll give you a hint. It would be something that we would have fun making fun of the pronunciation of.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know. Yeah, I’ve got nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Does the mispronounced word Jaguar mean anything to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, of course, Jaguar.
⏹️ ▶️ John like a Jag, but with a wire in it. Right. Instead of saying the word Jaguar, apparently in
⏹️ ▶️ John the West Coast, people say Jagwire. Like it says W-I-R-E at the end of it. But anyway, Steve Jobs said Jaguar.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was called Jaguar.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s 10.2. All right, 10.3, Panther. You’re so sure of that one. Why? Is that
⏹️ ▶️ John because it was on the Mac that you got? Yes. Is that correct? All
⏹️ ▶️ John yep. That is correct. All right, 10.4, Tiger.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think that’s right. You’re sure the Tiger,
⏹️ ▶️ John of the ones that was on machines that you bought? Yes, I had upgraded to Tiger, yeah. So 10.4 Tiger, 10.5
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Lion. There was a Lion? 10.5 was not Lion.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say, I don’t… crap.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Was there a Lion? Yes, it comes… and then Mountain Lion, but…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, right, right.
⏹️ ▶️ John Leopard, Leopard. Yes, 10.5 was Leopard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then Snow Leopard, I knew Snow Leopard was 10.6. Yeah, that’s right. There
⏹️ ▶️ John you go, you’re back solving, good job. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Alright, so 10.7 was Lion, that’s it. Because Snow Leopard was so great and Lion was so bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Then 10.8 was Mountain Lion. Now here 10.9, okay what the heck was after
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mountain Lion? They were still big cat names I think.
⏹️ ▶️ John What you should also do, and I found this was helping me as well, I didn’t actually need help until I got past the ones that I’d written reviews of
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously, but eventually when I did need help what I started trying to think of was WWDC posters.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco no I think, that doesn’t help me at all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think 10.9 was when they switched to California names and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think the first California name might have been Monterey Casey do you remember? Not even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco close oh geez all right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we still in Cats? Oh is it Catalina? Are we still
⏹️ ▶️ John in Cats John? I can tell you where you left off where you left off was 10.8 Mountain Line and now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah no there was stuff after
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that in mine. Yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I forget when they switched to California names.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No we’re not yet not yet but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John don’t know. I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John give you a hint and say this is when they switched to California names.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh okay I’m wrong. So what was the
⏹️ ▶️ John name? Try to think back to WWDC posters. Mavericks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, that wasn’t the first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was one of the first ones.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the first one almost made sense and it was very, like if you’re going to choose…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what, because Mavericks has the weird plural that no one knew about except for Californians.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, wasn’t it the one where they went on, they went out to get high in the Volkswagen bus?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s just all of California forever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John You’re thinking of Keynotes now
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of WWDC posters. I was thinking of the same thing about weed, remember weed?
⏹️ ▶️ John Now Marco was right, 10.9 Mavericks.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Don’t you remember the big
⏹️ ▶️ John poster with the wave? We were at the WWEC.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first one was Mavericks? Yeah, because it threw everyone off because it was not a cat and it had a weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plural thing. All right, so Mavericks and then so now we’re at 10.10 and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe that was Catalina.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was gonna say that but then I thought no that’s too soon.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh no, so you’re having the same problem. So when I named these I did obviously much better than you, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I did have this hole in my memory, and you’re in the hole now. You’re in what was my memory hole.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the hell was after Mavericks? Oh, man. Was that Monterey?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll give you a hint on this one. I’ll give you a hint on this one. It was the last Mac OS X review I wrote.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, yeah, that matters a lot to you. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John remember that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Right, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John We talked about it on the show when I stopped writing it, and also the version number. What version are we on? 10.10. Right, so that
⏹️ ▶️ John was a good stopping point for me, but what was that? And we’re in the California name so that narrows it down what was 1010
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m gonna say Catalina
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no I don’t think that and it’s not Catalina yet yeah but I can’t come up with what it is though
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll give you another hint it was another name that had a pair big sir
⏹️ ▶️ John what is the pair with that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh no I thought you meant a pair of words
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco names had pairs do you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh yeah there was like you know Tahoe and suburban or whatever I don’t know you
⏹️ ▶️ John named previous names with pears earlier
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco yeah I know I know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John what were the
⏹️ ▶️ John previous names of pears just so I know that you understand I just like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re so you know leopards no leper of that kind of thing
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco so I’m not here’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a set the next two coming up are pears
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do not give a crap about California geography and so they all just washed right over me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was it wasn’t it like the park and on the mountain Yosemite Yosemite that’s it Yosemite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and then there was and then was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then no and it wasn’t Big Sur inside of Yosemite isn’t that a mountain in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yosemite? Big Sur is not in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco No, you’re right though
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s the little it’s the moon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know no no no I think you’re right it’s the the big
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey right yes yes no it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that big peak inside Yosemite you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought the big peak was Big Sur
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey no it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Big Sur. Oh don’t you remember
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh it has some name like a like a butt Gosh, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can’t think of what it was called. I don’t know. Oh, the Californians are gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John angry at us. 1010 is Yosemite. Here is a pair. What’s another thing? What is Yosemite?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a national park.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. What’s in that park?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Some geysers and stuff? The thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the big mountain peak. What is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. If I knew, I would have told
⏹️ ▶️ John you. Well, can you name a Mac OS X version?
⏹️ ▶️ John Might’ve been named something that’s like a mountain name. Yeah, Big Sur.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that surf? Isn’t that where you surf? Is it? I don’t know. I thought Big Sur was where you surf.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m from Ohio. We didn’t learn these things in school.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t think of… I can picture the backdrop. I can picture it. I can’t think of the name of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll give you a hint. It’s two words. And the first one looks kind of Spanish. El Capitan.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I would never have gotten
⏹️ ▶️ John there. Yeah, Yosemite. And what version number was that? Yosemite was 10.10. What was
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco El Capitan? That’s 10.11.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, what’s next? All right. 1012 I think existed. 1012 existed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, because they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they started using the numbers with 13. So 1012. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey When do we get to Catalina?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, you live, you have these on your max, like we’re not in some obscure era that you don’t like it’s recent.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing is, I don’t care about California and geography. I just don’t. And so it meant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And like by this point too, like we at this point we are well into the iOS era where iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just has numbers every version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It makes a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of sense I like so like it and and they’re coming out every single year like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was one thing when I when I had my first Mac I could remember a leopard and tiger and everything and Panther
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because Those were only like every 18 months, you know, it was more spaced out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There was less other stuff that I was tracking in the world because there weren’t 17 platforms All
⏹️ ▶️ John right, so I’ll give you a hint on this next one. El Cap 1011 was your previous one,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? The next one is the first of a pair. Jeez.
⏹️ ▶️ John The pair should be easy, because it helps you group them together. What’s the next pair name?
⏹️ ▶️ John And you said the version was 1012. 1012 was what?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love that you think that the version number will somehow remind me what this is. Like, I knew Snow Leopard was 10.6,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and, you know, Tiger, I knew the early ones, but again. If you are a
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac OS dev, you would probably be more familiar with these version numbers because you’d have to be doing the if availables on them. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And every man, as a writer of frequent if available statements, I wish Apple would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco align all the numbers, just like just skip them all. So like next year is everything 18, like make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it Mac OS 18, make it watch OS 18, TV OS 18, like just line it all up. That would be great. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John yeah, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John What’s a pair? What’s a Mac OS version name pair? I think this is the last, is it the last pair?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think after this they went over to just numbers. No, but there’s still,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey was this? No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Ha! So, I’m glad you can’t even go to the about screen
⏹️ ▶️ John in your current Mac. We gotta get up to the current versions if you know what that is. But anyway, we’re still stuck on this pair. Do we use Monterey
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco oh, that’s true, Monterey.
⏹️ ▶️ John Name the previous pairs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Monterey and then Aquarium,
⏹️ ▶️ John name the previous pairs. Ha ha ha ha!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yosemite, El Cap. And I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John going to tell you that this pair is more like the first two pairs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, it’s like a different word. Sir and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, right. Good
⏹️ ▶️ John guess, Casey. Wrong,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco but good guess. That’s what I’m getting at.
⏹️ ▶️ John of the desktop backgrounds, maybe? The default desktop backgrounds you might have used?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got nothing. I’m tapped
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Catalina’s an island. Was there another island?
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re doing so well, Marcroix. I can’t believe you can’t dig this one out. You got to Liz Miles this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John What? What does that even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean? What does that even mean?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more stuff I don’t know. It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Scottish lady who can talk
⏹️ ▶️ John her way into knowing the answer to questions that she seemingly didn’t know the answer to. It is an amazing phenomenon.
⏹️ ▶️ John Listen to The Incomparable to hear it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t have that. Whatever talent she has, I don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey it. Hold on, what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do we have left? We have Sonoma left. I know that’s not this one, but we have it left.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ventura. Ventura. Shoot, what I just had, the island, Catalina.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. We still didn’t do Big Sur. There is a Big Sur, right? We didn’t do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yet. There is a Big Sur. Wait, I got to write this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John down. I’m already losing track. A lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of these things are like within the length of the show. Monterey? Oh, Monterey. Did we do Monterey?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. You have not gotten to any. Those are all names that you have said, but they are not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco this one. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we didn’t do Monterey. So is it like Monterey then Catalina? Because aren’t those related? I don’t know. They’re all California. No, that is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Oh, I was with you on that. That’s too bad. Would you like
⏹️ ▶️ John to give me a hint? Yes, please. The pairing is word and then modifier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John already. You told us that. All right, just want to, okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are terrible. Catalina and Dark
⏹️ ▶️ John Catalina? I’ll give you another hint, this is a bigger one. The word starts with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Snow Catalina. No, not the modifier, the word. It’s word and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Snow? No, we did that already. Yeah, we just did. No, we haven’t gotten a… Oh man, I got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing. Yeah, this is so bad. There’s been
⏹️ ▶️ John so many. We were running the show during these years. We talked about these OS releases at
⏹️ ▶️ John length on this very podcast, using their names the whole time. See, this is where your memory
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I did have a memory hole. Yours is
⏹️ ▶️ John At least I could name these, but I couldn’t like put them in the right order or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Anyway. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you’re the Mac guy. Like I, you know, I’m, I’m just a Mac guy.
⏹️ ▶️ John But we all talked about on the show. Okay, so I’ll give you the final hint here. The modifier.
⏹️ ▶️ John Can I say this without giving you the actual word? The modifier.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just have to give you the word. The modifier. I’ll give you a letter. The modifier begins with the letter H. So
⏹️ ▶️ John the word where it begins with an S and then it is HS. Snow
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, stop. HS,
⏹️ ▶️ John the snow doesn’t begin with an H. Ah. Ah. All right, well, I’m gonna tell you the modifier and you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco gonna get it. Sierra
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah. Oh, well done, well done.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sierra and Hi Sierra. And by the way, what version was Hi Sierra?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe, wasn’t that when they made it? Cause, okay, so. See, now it gets tricky, doesn’t it? We were at 10.11 before? Yeah, 10.11 is El Cap, 10.12 is
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and then I think they said Mac OS 13.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you’re wrong. That would have made sense. But it was 14. Of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John course it wouldn’t, they wouldn’t do that. Yes, that would totally
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey make sense. That’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John what they did. Oh my God. Oh, it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey This is embarrassing. They called
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it Mac OS 11. They did not. Oh God. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is so embarrassing. I’m an iOS developer. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know these things. Do you feel for Mac developers writing the availables now?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I feel for Mac developers on lots of fronts, but as an iOS developer, I have things very, very,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very easy compared to most Mac developers. is
⏹️ ▶️ John so bad. Sierra was 1012 and High Sierra was? 10…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was 11.0? God, I don’t know. 1013.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well if it’s that, why are you making a video? 1012 and 1013. Alright, so we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John done 1012 Sierra, 1013 High Sierra. Okay. What’s the next one? Jeez. Now are we… wait, was this Monterey?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasn’t moderate when they redesigned everything was that no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was an M when they redesigned everything and I hated the toolbar design, but I forget which M
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I mean like the look
⏹️ ▶️ John of the the UI that you’ve gone through many different looks of the UI
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco or maybe that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe that was Big sir. Oh god Okay So
⏹️ ▶️ John Let’s start with the version number. What came after 1013 macOS 14 and 14 I think. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Mac OS 11.0. Mac OS, did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you just say Mac OS 14? I did.
⏹️ ▶️ John we on now, Marcus? I don’t know. I think it’s 13. Is it 13?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, we’ll set that aside
⏹️ ▶️ John for now. All right. It was not 14. Was it 11.0? No. God! It wasn’t 10.14? In that case,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to say 10.14. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John right! 10.14. And what was 10.14 called? Was that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. Yeah, I agree. But you’re wrong. Oh my god.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco at Big Sur now?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John give you a hint.
⏹️ ▶️ John I believe it was CFed up on stage when he announced this name. It’s always CFed. Alright,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll give you another hint. Obviously we’re going through California things. I have to look this up to see if this hint is accurate.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my god. This is so bad. And you’ve done so much better than me and I’m embarrassed for both of us. I’m embarrassed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco imagining all the listeners just yelling at us right now.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I have to say that the listeners, if they’re honest with themselves, if you’re not a Mac developer, there’s no way you know these
⏹️ ▶️ John version numbers either because unless you’re like a kid and live through it, okay, I’m gonna say that, alright, here’s my hint on this one. This
⏹️ ▶️ John name, it’s a California name, like we’re still in the California zone here. It is more Inland
⏹️ ▶️ John than some of the other names. Like it’s more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Inland than Mavericks for sure. What’s the wine place? That was Sonoma.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re there now, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Alright, what is the current version of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sonoma? I don’t even, I can’t even tell you the current version. That’s how overwhelming these names always are to
⏹️ ▶️ John is not the current version.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my God. Alright, where do they make wine and stuff and they have farms?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll give you another hint. Think of the color tan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bejoma. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John What kind of geography is tan? Deserts. Can you name a desert in California?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right! Oh, good job! Good job!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to say, in all fairness, all of California is tan, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John yeah. But yes, okay, Mojave.
⏹️ ▶️ John 10.14 Mojave with a J. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forgot about Mojave
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John completely. Remember
⏹️ ▶️ John with the big desert slide? Remember the desert background?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, now that you’re saying it, I had totally forgotten that we had ever used that name.
⏹️ ▶️ John Alright, what comes after 10.14 Mojave? Okay, then…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are we at Catalina?
⏹️ ▶️ John version number do you think comes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m gonna keep guessing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Eventually I will
⏹️ ▶️ John be right. You always think that’s when they change to no, but no they didn’t. They did
⏹️ ▶️ John not. They just would not change. Oh my god. Alright. 10.13 would have been a great time
⏹️ ▶️ John to go to 13 and maybe the version numbers would be synced up now but they didn’t do that. They did 10.14. Mojave 10.15. And what is 10.15 called? Is that Catalina?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think we’re in Catalina
⏹️ ▶️ John It is Catalina. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ John Now. I mean this is like it’s like five years ago 10.15 Catalina
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then I think we had 11.0 big sir
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, now we’re coming into your
⏹️ ▶️ John your memory palace is working 11.0 big sir, which is not in Yosemite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, I look I’m sorry, California. You don’t know every detail about New York. It’s fine like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a big world all right So I’m gonna say then we have Mac OS 12.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wait, we got Big Sur, that was 12, right? 11 was Big Sur. 11 Big Sur. Okay, so was 12 Catalina?
⏹️ ▶️ John you already did Catalina.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco 10.15 was Catalina. 11 was Big Sur.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Did we do Monterey yet? No. You have not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Monterey yet. Alright, so I’m gonna say next is Monterey. That’s right, 12.0 Monterey, and now?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? Wasn’t there a V something? What are we on right now? Are we on 13? Mac OS 13 Viola? I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco was last year! I know! It was
⏹️ ▶️ John last year! Because I don’t… oh, gosh. It was the operating system on your computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I told you, Mac OS 13 Viola. It’s not Viola. Snow Sonoma!
⏹️ ▶️ John Wow, I did not predict this. I thought for sure that you wouldn’t know the old ones and then when you got up to
⏹️ ▶️ John recent times you’d be like, yeah, I can remember that. That was, that was,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh. Oh, wait, was it a V though? Do I have the V right?
⏹️ ▶️ John You do have the V right. What the heck was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it? With a V. Hold on, with a V.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac OS vanilla. I don’t, oh man. Mac OS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Vienna? Macaulay Clemton. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no. I don’t know. God, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know. That’s why this is so embarrassing and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John frustrating.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s when my window dragging bug started. What version was that?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you know very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well. Why are you doing Ventura? Ventura. Ventura. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John I talked about it so much on the show.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I said the name so many times. Goddammit,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John up. It’s Ventura. Just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey listen to me. Good grief. I finally got one on my own, like an adult.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now what comes after Ventura? Sonoma. And what version number is that? Fourteen.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we’re on present day. You did it. That was incredibly painful. I cannot believe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey please for for the love of all that is good and holy. Can we cut the set release?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco No, no, this is a mistake. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco holiday gift from us.
⏹️ ▶️ John I cannot believe that I can tell you when I did it. Obviously, zero through ten. I know was there reviews of
⏹️ ▶️ John right. And then I had this whole around Mojave Catalina
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, and Big Sur, it was just emptiness. And I knew those names, I’m like, when the hell did
⏹️ ▶️ John they come? And then I picked back up again with Monterey, Ventura, and Sonoma. So I found it very difficult. And
⏹️ ▶️ John then the numbering, I got tripped up the same way you did, Marco. I was like, when did they stop from the 10 point
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, and they just kept it on way longer than you think they did. Yeah. And yeah, it was ridiculous. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought that would be a fun thing to do, and it just goes to show how little people, attention
⏹️ ▶️ John people pay to these names anymore. But I think, Greg, if you’re listening, keep
⏹️ ▶️ John going with the names because I love them. They’re fanciful. If you want to come up with a new scheme instead of California place names, I’m all on bar
⏹️ ▶️ John with it. It’s one of the many things that makes Mac OS better than iOS.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you’re going to come up with a new scheme, align the numbers. That’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least give us some way that we can like align them in the if available statements.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cause like, cause the thing is like you always have to write the same pairings because the APIs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco across all the platforms change in the same way each year. So like, you know, like watch OS 10 matches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up with iOS 17 and TV OS, whatever, and Mac OS 14.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so you always have to write the same sequence. So if there’s, there can be some way of like, you know, OS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 2023s, like give us all the 2023 OSs, like if available 2023 OS platforms, then this function can run.
⏹️ ▶️ John as you know, or should know from web development, you should really be checking for capabilities and not version numbers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but that’s a lot harder in Swift. Like that’s much harder. You can do it, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot harder and doesn’t have as granular of control with a lot of this stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, that was long-ass ATP. But now you’ll never
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco forget these numbers again.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’ve already forgotten them. To hear the names.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I already forgot all of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah, me too. Just like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s Chidipuma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite,
⏹️ ▶️ John El Cap, sorry, I always say it that way, Sierra High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey,
⏹️ ▶️ John Ventura, and Sonoma. and they switched to the 11 numbering after 1015. Oh my God.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If we were the triumvirate or whatever, I’m probably using that word wrong, to come up with the naming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey scheme for future versions of macOS, what would we choose? What would be our naming scheme?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 18, 19, 20. No, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey no, okay, yes, yes, yes, I get that. The marketing names, not the- The marketing names. 18, 19, 20. What would you do? Boo,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s so boring. That is so boring. They do it for all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of their other OSes, it’s fine. Can you just can you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey play in the space with me, please?
⏹️ ▶️ John Here’s what I would do, Casey. I will play in the space with you because I’m not a sports like Marco. I would do animals.
⏹️ ▶️ John I liked the big cat names. But obviously, when you pick something limiting, like big cats, there were more big cats,
⏹️ ▶️ John by the way. They just not to use them. But I like the animal names. And I would be more expansive than saying it has
⏹️ ▶️ John to be cats or even just mammals or whatever, because there are so many cool animals, animals that look cool
⏹️ ▶️ John in marking materials and animals with names that sound cool. I would go back to animals.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know what I would do. What would I do?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about like elements that are related to like computing? So Silicon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the obvious example, but you know, other elements,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not where it’s not something like that. You know, Mac OS titanium. That is a cool ring to it. I think Mac OS Silicon
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. But then I get there like Einsteinium and stuff and it’s really like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean you don’t have to choose that one, John. You could.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I mean there, there are a bunch of cool element names, but you run out of them real quick I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, what about celestial bodies that are, that are easily named? I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, everyone’s waiting for Mac OS Uranus.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can that be the title? Please, dad, please, dad, please, please,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco please, please,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey please. That’s that’s I don’t know. I’m just curious if we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had any good idea. Marco, do you have anything you’d like to share? Do you want I’m surprised neither of you said some sort of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey BS New York geography or something like that, like all the islands that are or not
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s only a California thing that they think their place names are so awesome. All our our place names are, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of anglicized, mangled Native American names anyway. And that’s, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not holding out for Mac OS Hophog, although they did make the Hophog Win TV card. So who knows, there is some precedent.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Those were the best TV tuners. And I always, I owned, I think, one or two of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in my college years. And I always said Hoppage in my head because I had no idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John same. But I lived in Hophog, so I didn’t have that problem. And over my back fence when I lived in Hoppog was
⏹️ ▶️ John what we called the Hoppog Industrial Park and I would go through the dumpsters of the companies like the company that eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John would make Hoppog Wind TV and dig out all sorts of electronics like big speakers and stuff and printed circuit boards and wires.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The best thing about the Hoppage TV tuners is that they, as part of their name, had an exclamation point at the end like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yahoo. So it was Hoppage! Like, so I always felt like I really had to announce it. It’s not Hoppage! Just say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the name right. Well, at the time, you know, 17 or 18 year old me said Hoppage! Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John amazes me that A, they would pick a name like that that they knew would be difficult to pronounce, but B, if I had a company name
⏹️ ▶️ John that I knew was difficult to pronounce and I really wanted it because it had some meaning to me, the most prominent thing on
⏹️ ▶️ John the homepage of every piece of literature I put out would be a pronunciation guide. And yet they didn’t, so
⏹️ ▶️ John this is what happens. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get hoppage. Thank you so much to our sponsors this week for sitting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through that. They probably, the sponsors, I can’t imagine they would have gotten through that. Anyway, but they’re wonderful anyway. Squarespace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Green Chef. And thank you to our members who support us directly and maybe who also got through that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somehow on listening to our show. You can join us at atp.fm slash join.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John now the snow is falling, their kids are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s accidental, accidental, holiday fun
⏹️ ▶️ John time, holiday fun time. John’s gonna make snow angels, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John and Casey are gonna let him.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s accidental, accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse Angels, holiday fun time. And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes deep in Santa’s beard And follow
⏹️ ▶️ John them on Twitter for holiday fun time cheer
⏹️ ▶️ John A-C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S K-C-L-S-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-G
⏹️ ▶️ John Mongo, Armin, S-I-R-A-C
⏹️ ▶️ John USA Syrup Cuesa It’s an accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental Snowball fight It’s an
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, accidental holiday
Neutral
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I had a bit of an adventure earlier this evening
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I feel like you’re gonna want to know about.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh no, I don’t like where this is going at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I was driving back onto the beach tonight
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey and I really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t like where this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco is going at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And as I approach the cut in the dune that you drive through to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get from the beach to the side streets, I see says no vehicular traffic.
⏹️ ▶️ John only there was an app you could have checked for this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, right. So I had to turn around and go back to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the previous cut and cut in there earlier and then drive on more of the interior roads. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco turn around and promptly got stuck.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How did you do that? Well, turning around on a less trafficked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of the beach, like a closed cuts on ramp. Uh is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh there’s a lot of powdery loose sand at that point.
⏹️ ▶️ John Had you had you come to a stop? Had you come to a complete stop at the chain and then like how did you like reverse three-point turn? Like what
⏹️ ▶️ John is the maneuver you’re performing here?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did a three-point turn um because it at that point, the beach is pretty skinny. It wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quite enough room to do a big loop around um especially without stopping. Uh so I had to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do a three-point turn and I did a really bad job of it and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got myself extremely stuck in the sand.
⏹️ ▶️ John At what point in the turn did you get stuck?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess the third point? Like as I’m pulling in the other direction.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I was gonna make another California joke but I think people in other parts of the country might also call this a K turn.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh I guess that makes sense. All right anyway so so when I first got my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sand permit the other people who have stuck and I said I’m gonna see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I could never get stuck like I and I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John thought like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is I’m gonna get get the greatest vehicles that can do this I’m gonna have all my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gear in I had all my gear in the front I have the max tracks pro traction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boards I have all these different like ropes and stuff well
⏹️ ▶️ John wait a second once you once you’re using those aren’t you already stuck
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes and but I haven’t I I’ve used them only three or two times so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far to help about other people who were stuck. And they actually worked pretty well. If you’re not too, too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuck, they actually work quite nicely. But, so here I am,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do my three-point turn, and on the last point of it, I’m not going anywhere. And I made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a critical mistake. I hit the gas harder. Press harder on the gas, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then I realized, oh no.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John And by the way, on
⏹️ ▶️ John the topic of you’re like, I’m not gonna get stuck, and everyone gets stuck, I’m pretty sure there
⏹️ ▶️ John is no vehicle in existence that will not
⏹️ ▶️ John get stuck in enough loose enough sand. I say this, the only thing I can think of is maybe, you know that dump
⏹️ ▶️ John truck you always see in the books for kids that like the size of a seven story building, like at mines, you know that one?
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe that one, it’s not possible for it to get stuck in sand, but I think like an Abrams
⏹️ ▶️ John tank could get stuck in sand. Like there is no, like a monster truck could get stuck. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think there’s any vehicle with wheels that is of a reasonable size that cannot get stuck in sand
⏹️ ▶️ John under the right conditions, because that is the nature of sand. So don’t, because it moves
⏹️ ▶️ John out of the way and allows your vehicle to sink. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe someone knows that like actually this
⏹️ ▶️ John vehicle, there is a vehicle of a reasonable size that literally can never get stuck in sand. But I immediately went
⏹️ ▶️ John to like military vehicles with like tank trucks and stuff. No, they can get stuck in sand too. So, I mean, if there is one that exists,
⏹️ ▶️ John it would have to be something kind of like a tank or I guess hovercrafts don’t count.
⏹️ ▶️ John So don’t feel too bad because I think you are like, you know, it’s gonna happen. I mean, obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John driving skill and choices can help you a lot here, but your number was up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and this is why too, like, I mean, I do definitely blame myself in the fact that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve gotten too cocky with the Rivian because it has proven to be so insanely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco capable off-road in all other ways. Like, and look, and as before, the Land Rover Defender
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was an amazing off-road vehicle overall. The Rivian’s even better. Like it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fantastically good off-road. It is an amazing off-road vehicle. In addition to being an amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vehicle in pretty much every other way as well. I’m very happy with the Rivian. But it is in particular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a sand driving vehicle. It is fantastic. I’m very happy with it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I’ve gotten accustomed to being able to basically drive however I want on the sand.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’ll work itself out. You know, I don’t, you know, take crazy risks or anything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, I’m not like driving into the water or anything. But I’ve learned that I’ve gotten into the habit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of not really not really avoiding any sections of the beach sand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I figure out we ought to try through it it’s fine and that was that was my mistake in this case because this was a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very very like soft powdery deep section that’s because based
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we had a bunch of storms recently so it’s all everything’s all messed up so this is this is like a kind of newly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco soft and newly squishy section that was the wrong time to turn around. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, I got myself really stuck and I thought, okay, I’ve prepared for this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve watched all the videos from all the Australian off-roaders telling me how to do things. I have all this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gear, I know what to do, let me try to do it. So first thing I try to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just try like, you know, very slow backing out because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reverse seemed like the easier way to get out of what I was in. So I tried, you know, very slowly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying of make the wheels really crawl. Let me tell you, the Rivian is not good at this. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, other off-roaders have like a crawl mode or some kind of like sand creep mode.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s not an electronic mode that changes the throttle response to the pedal and is essentially the equivalent of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could not find one. So there is a soft sand drive mode, which is what I use when I’m on the sand.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it does not seem to do that. So there is, there is, I couldn’t find anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was like, I am stuck, get me out. Whereas other operators will have various techniques to do that. Some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them will like use the suspension like a trampoline almost and like kind of try to bounce you out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Some of them will have these creep modes that will try to slowly creep with all the wheels and slowly crawl you out. As
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far as I can tell, Rivian doesn’t have that. They could add it in software, I think, but they don’t. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tried just like, you know, slowly crawling the wheels out, no dice. I tried then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lowering the tire pressure on all the wheels even further. I was about to ask. Yeah, because,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve heard like you can basically just lower the tire pressure and probably just drive out carefully And I also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have had the max tracks boards, so I tried you know digging out I mean I was the problem was like it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco deep. I was like well and unfortunately Casey I did not take a picture because it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John dark And it was
⏹️ ▶️ John a we talked about this when you first were talking about me a sand thing when you do get stuck you need To document it, and you didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know it was dark, and it’s freezing as December
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I know that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John best part we wanted to see that the suffering Just like look how terrible this condition is. And by
⏹️ ▶️ John the way, I think when you were envisioning getting stuck, maybe you weren’t envisioning doing it
⏹️ ▶️ John with a 7,000 pound vehicle.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Possibly. Yeah. Yes. Certainly the weight of the Rivian is not that is the one downside
⏹️ ▶️ John helping you, especially when you’re trying to wedge things under the wheels.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, exactly. But it was just it was so deep and and it was it was deep enough that the Rivian
⏹️ ▶️ Marco itself was also complaining that there was something under it. Like it starts showing these alert messages
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like caution. There’s something under your vehicle, right? And it’s like, yeah, I know. there’s a lot of small things under under the vehicle actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but anyway so what the review will do if you if it is like if it thinks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you are like hitting something it just stops the vehicle and puts it in park so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco i’d be able to like you know creep the wheels a little bit or spin them a little bit and then it would just beep park and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even when it’s in the off-road sand mode so i’m like okay that’s that’s not great that that’s actively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fighting against me in addition to the lack of any kind of easy creep mode. And so anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a driver comes by, another driver comes by, and they’re like, the guy rolls into me, he’s like, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t help you, but do you want me to call for someone else to help you? Because you’re going to need help getting out of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And of course, I was like, thank you, but I actually, let me try first, you know, because I don’t want to like call
⏹️ ▶️ Marco someone, have them come all the way out here. Let me see if I can get out first. The guy’s like, all right, cool. And he leaves. Okay, Are you still
⏹️ ▶️ John Podcasting from your car? Let me just try. I refuse help. I think I can do it. I have a new idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That would be so amazing. I don’t want that for you and yet I want it for the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Alright, so next thing I try is I’m going to do the full blown MaxTracks experience. And by the way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you say, at this point, my efforts to get myself out have only made the problem worse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and now the bottom of the vehicle is resting on sand. So that’s really bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, that that is not good. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John like that’s as bad as it gets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That you really don’t want so I had the great idea. Hey, I was in the like standard ride height mode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the sand mode Normally has a higher ride height. So like let me try lifting
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah the 19 mile an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hour one yeah, so I hit the button to raise the suspension and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It says highest and it blinks for a little while and it’s like and then it’s then it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco claims to be done And I look down like I don’t think it looks any different in fact. I look pretty close to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the sand still So I’m like I don’t think that worked Anyway, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we start digging out tiff gets the shovel at Tiff and Adam are in the car I hope families in the car. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ John great. Yeah, of course that of course they would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, of course yeah And they didn’t take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pictures Yeah, I got one at the end. You’ll see anyway, so So to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the tip gets out she starts shoveling under one wheel I start going I’m like trying all my tricks of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I’m gonna wedge it under the wheel in this one way.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is why if you had more experience on the beach making sandcastles, this is where that would come in handy. If you’ve built those
⏹️ ▶️ John giant trenches to let the ocean come in, if you tried to build the moat to keep the ocean out, digging in
⏹️ ▶️ John suddenly those skills, a lifetime of skills, a childhood spent on the beach, now it’s time for those
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco skills to shine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know, right? And so if I had a lot of time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a lot of patience from my family and a lot of shovel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ability and it wasn’t so freezing because it’s again it’s December
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s cold so like Tiff and I are digging out and like our hands are frozen like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tiff like tore through her gloves like it was there’s sand everywhere like it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a disaster fortunately soon enough after that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the mayor drove by just coincidentally he he was going home and he’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he knows instantly like yeah, we’re going to need to get pulled out. So he turns his giant. I think he I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a suburban or something. He turns that whole thing around. I pull out my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my toe rope and my shackles and all that stuff. I got I got loops in the front, so tie it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up and he you know yanks me out and it took two seconds. I’m like yeah, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess like I yes I need help sometimes I need to ask for help sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it turns out like you know he pulled me out in you know three minutes of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco total time whereas you know I was freezing my butt off and freezing tips hands off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to shovel myself out so I think if again like if I had a lot more time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I had like if no one had come by and I had to get myself out I think with enough time and digging
⏹️ ▶️ John can just build a dig a tunnel to your house
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then drive the cards but it was I’m very glad I didn’t have to and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco certainly you know taking help from somebody driving by was the way to do it and this this kind of doubles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my commitment to be I’m very happy that I am equipped to be that person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I encounter someone else who stuff like I have enough gear that even if I encounter somebody who has no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gear no rope nothing like I can probably pull them out and so I like the idea that we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all help each other out here that’s It’s wonderful. It’s one of the best things about this community. But anyway, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got pulled out. And so anyway, so as I’m driving back, the car is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still saying, you know, 20 mile an hour limit. And so I could be it’s in the high suspension mode.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I try lowering the suspension back to the regular standard height so I can go faster because it’s kind of, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s kind of difficult to drive on the beach with that speed limit without, you know, being stuck where like in the roughs you’re already in, as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey was describing two weeks ago and so I tap the button to lower the suspension and just it just doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco respond like it just it does nothing the suspension stays at the high state I stay 20 miles an hour state whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay well I’m sure I’m sure all the crazy you know warnings about stuff being under the car and everything I’m sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have to like you know let the car recover maybe I have to like spray some sand out of somewhere with a hose or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something so I get back to the house in turtle mode and 20 mile
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an hour mode very slowly and Every time I turn I hear like rubbing. I’m like oh god
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like sand and sand is somewhere bad and like as ever as I’m turning It’s like chunking it off probably and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there a max track stop when you’re stuck in your wheel well No, I got them all back my front is now full of sand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, I got back to the house and I got a car and I noticed hmm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am much closer to the sidewalk than I usually am getting out of my car The car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought it was in the highest suspension suspension setting. Oh no. But you get out of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it and it looked like a low rider. The rubbing I was hearing was the tire rubbing against the wheel arch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh no! That’s not good. Oh that is not desirable. No.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I’m like uh this is not good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I you know park the car in front of my house, I go get the hose, I hose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything out of all the wheels and wheel wells and there is just massive quantities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of sand like stuck in all the wheels like the sidewalk looks hilarious after I move the car because like it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco covered in sand from having fallen off my car. I finally get everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out and you know during this process I’m out of the car you know hosing stuff out so the car is in park and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like turning itself on and off as I approach and go away with the proximity phone feature. Eventually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I get back in the car to go move it to its driveway. I tried tapping the suspension button to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know put it back and it says you know check for obstructions under the vehicle are there are is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it clear of obstructions now and I said yes and it said it was lowering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ride height and I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh I don’t think I want it to go any lower right because that would be crashing into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco itself there’s nowhere else for it to go lower so I was a little scared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but fortunately it raised it back to standard height so it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems to have worked it seems to have been some kind of weird software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco detection of the sand below it where I guess it like disabled the suspension
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in some ways to make it sink all the way down I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is that air suspension?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. I think there there is some way this could be maybe a bug or unintended behavior
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because like seeing how it drove off the beach in totally flat lowrider mode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no wonder I couldn’t get out if that’s how it got itself like when I tried to lift it and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t look like it was lifting. That’s because it wasn’t lifting. Had I been able to lift the suspension
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the way up, maybe it would have been easier to get it out. Or maybe you just would have dug yourself down another foot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it’s possible. Look, I’m not going to say I have the best technique in the world. This is the first time I ever got stuck. I’m not very good at it yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I will say, yeah, based on all of this and we’ll see tomorrow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I’m able to drive off the beach normally. I probably it seems like it was reset to normal condition again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And of course, I’m going to bring it to a car wash tomorrow and have everything really blasted out. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the Rivian is so far proving to be an amazing vehicle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to drive on the sand, but it was actually a pretty awful vehicle to get stuck in the sand with.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that seems to be something they could probably improve with software.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although I have to say, the air suspension was, the bladders were fully compressed.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would still not expect the front wheels to be scraping against the wheel wells. Like it’s a surprise
⏹️ ▶️ John to me that the suspension geometry is such that in fully compressed mode That
⏹️ ▶️ John it could have have that kind of failure mode where the wheels are rubbing Although I’m not entirely sure where they’re rubbing I would
⏹️ ▶️ John look at that and say have I done damage to the inside of my wheel wells with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean and I mean and you know It wasn’t a ton of rubbing and it was at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very low speeds for only a small number of turns so I don’t think it would have damaged anything permanently,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but But yeah, it was concerning to me that like, wow, it looks like the car is broken, basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But once I re-inflated it afterwards, it seems to be normal now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, so we’ll see. But yeah, overall, I got myself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuck for the very first time in the sand. I was not able to easily get myself out. I had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to rely on a wonderful tow from the mayor, which took two seconds and it made me instantly realize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is so much easier to have someone else help you than to try to do it yourself. And finally, the Rivian is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible vehicle when it gets stuck in the sand, but as long as it’s not getting stuck in the sand, it’s an amazing vehicle.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you don’t have anything to compare it to because you didn’t get stuck with the other vehicles. You know what I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean? That’s true, but I think it’s the computerized features of
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that it was going into park and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kept going into park and the suspension obviously did not behave correctly. So, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something went wrong there where it’s really not made it really was not designed to get yourself out of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that kind of thing very easily and sure probably I would have needed help anyway you know or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least it would have taken me a very long time to help myself out but it could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like they could if they made a few tweaks to the software this could be a lot less crappy
⏹️ ▶️ John I know this probably wouldn’t have helped you in your situation especially looking at the pictures and knowing the geography you’re dealing with but if you had
⏹️ ▶️ John a winch and something to attach it to you could pull yourself out but you didn’t have a winch and you wouldn’t know anything
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco anyway. Yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought about like when I was first equipping myself for off-road stuff I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought about getting a winch but first of all they are very expensive and very large.
⏹️ ▶️ John they an option on the Rivian? Could you get it from the factory?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think so no there was one for the Defender actually there was an option for that but but the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other thing is like for most places where you’re getting stuck anything you’d attach to would be too far away like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you’re looking at like you know. It’s for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forest where you have trees.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, exactly. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, here it might be like 200 feet away to the nearest thing you can attach to. So it
⏹️ ▶️ John probably wouldn’t be sturdy enough to pull a 7000 pound truck out of
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the house. So what
⏹️ ▶️ John are you going to attach it to that you can attach it to some some beach grass?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now they do. Well, they do have stuff you can like stick into the sand and then attach a winch to it to perform some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of anchor. But I don’t know. I mean, again, like you’re getting pretty esoteric at this point. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I got stuck once in two years, that’s not that crazy. The tow rope worked fantastically.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m glad you survived. So in the span of December, because it was December
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 1st that I almost destroyed your car, I believe. So this December has not,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it has been a December to remember for the Rivian for sure. Or a December it wants to forget.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, in all fairness though, like once we, you know, once we got off the beach with your experiment, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John got off the beach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with my stuff and the car had a chance to like reset itself, it did go back totally to normal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think you know when I spoke to somebody who advised like maybe I should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just bring it in just get everything checked out at some point just to make sure nothing’s wrong I think I’m going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably do that after the holidays. I think I’m going to bring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it in just like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that. I would suggest that. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s time for you to give them the feedback of the software changes they can make like not having the thing put itself into park when it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John afraid that you know that’s that’s the thing that dumb older dumber vehicles is like well they’ll let you
⏹️ ▶️ John flog them until you break them and this one is trying to protect itself, but in the process sort of like not letting you,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, do what you want. It’s kind of like the first bad versions of traction control that essentially made it impossible to go up
⏹️ ▶️ John hills in the winter. Yeah, because because the break it would apply the brakes and you would like I’m getting some progress
⏹️ ▶️ John up the hill and be like, Whoa, I feel a wheel slightly swipping. Let me apply the brakes and it would just come to a stop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I’m glad you survived. All of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you tell you what, man, I was cold.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like if I say to my kids, did you not have appropriate clothing for the weather? and what my kids would say
⏹️ ▶️ John is, I’m not gonna be outside, it doesn’t matter. And I bet that’s what you were thinking when you were driving home, but look, you were outside.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I always carry appropriate clothing for the weather in the car, because I always think, if I get stuck, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna have to be outside for a while. I better have like a hat and gloves and a good jacket. I had all those things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was wearing none of them, because at every single point, I thought I was only gonna be there for a minute.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you had the stuff and you didn’t put it on? Yep. As I see you in the picture, not wearing a coat, not wearing a hat,
⏹️ ▶️ John not wearing gloves.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s correct, because at every single point I thought, all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John right, I’m your moments from freedom. But yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’ll just be a second and I’ll just do this one thing and I’ll be able to
⏹️ ▶️ John when you took out the Max tracks. That would be the time to put on the coat and the hat. I think yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not going to take you a second at that point. Yeah, and the show when you get the shovels out and you’re like Shh,
⏹️ ▶️ John one more second. Just probably this shovel full will do it.