572: Cryptofarts and Copyright Infringement
01 Feb 2024Apple’s EU DMA compliance and our excitement for the Vision Pro.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- Vision Pro talk begins next week; some good reviews for now:
- YouTube API (via Alex Chan)
- Console hardware margins in the App Store & consoles
- Customer ownership
- Stolen Device Protection & device repairs (via Niru Maheswaranathan)
- European eye prescriptions (via René Schätzl)
- Apple’s EU DMA compliance
- Ask ATP:
- Do we ever go mono on our AirPods? (via Darin Kelkhoff)
- Are there any apps we’d make if there weren’t already ♾️ takes on that app? (via Aaron Thomas)
- What settings do we use for Apple Music? (via Christian Kent)
- Post-show: Casey is amped about his forthcoming Mac monitor
- Ensemble to pull individual windows into visionOS
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Chapters
- Vision Pro week… sorta
- YouTube API quotas
- App Store vs. game consoles
- Owning the customer
- Repairs & Stolen Device Protection
- European eyeglass prescriptions
- Sponsor: AdBlock Pro
- Apple’s DMA compliance
- Sponsor: Green Chef (code ATP)
- #askatp: One AirPod?
- #askatp: App/game ideas
- #askatp: Apple Music settings
- Ending theme
- Casey’s excited
Vision Pro week… sorta
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Happy Vision Pro Week! Sort
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, here’s the thing, I would love to talk about the Vision Pro, because now all the press reviews and embargoes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are lifted, and the press reviews are all out, and everyone who got pre-release access got to tell everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they thought, and show everyone and everything, and because we didn’t, we can’t. So, even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco though Casey and I had lab experience, we still can’t talk about that, I think maybe ever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so we just have to wait until we can actually have our vision pros, which is this weekend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true. Even though we all three of us agreed not to talk about it, I would like to say that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we genuinely did not get to have any experience with personas or anything like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I probably am not even supposed to say that much, but I say that to indicate that any of what I’m about to say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not informed by the lab, because I genuinely have no experience with the whole persona thing. Everyone seems to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be slagging on two different persona-related things. the eyesight,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is the thing where it shows your eyes out the front of the display, or at the front
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the goggles, such that-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re doing an amazing job of not talking about the Vision Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I know, that’s exactly what I, yeah, I know. It’s my fault this time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s the first time for everything. Everyone’s slagging on the eyesight, both in the terms of, you know, seeing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the wearer’s eyes on the front of the headset, and the whole persona
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing, where you’re like a fake version of you in FaceTime, and in all the other places where you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would normally use front-facing camera on like a phone or an iPad. I have zero real-world experience with this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hand to God. I really don’t have any experience with this. I’ve seen why,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I see and understand why everyone is slagging on it, but to me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think it’s that bad. I’m very curious to see what I think when I actually have one that I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use in front of me in person because it’s not great. Like I’m not trying to sit here and say it looks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fantastic and it looks photorealistic or anything like that. But I like the idea of those
⏹️ ▶️ Casey around me being able to tell if I’m looking at them or paying zero attention to them or whatever the case may be.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I like the idea of having some mechanism of representing myself that’s not me emoji.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey While I’m on like a FaceTime call, which not to say that I expect to do this often, but just you know, when in the occasion that I do need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a front facing camera, I like the approach they’ve taken it is a little bit uncanny valley. I’m not trying to say it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perfect by any means, but everyone seems to like, really hate it. You know, there were a bunch of reviews
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here. I’ll tie it into what we were supposed to be talking about. There are a bunch of reviews, video reviews and text reviews that came out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it was John put a bunch in the show notes and I concur with John’s list. Neelay Patel at The Verge.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I personally think if you’re gonna choose just one that’s the one I would choose, but also excellent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are Joanna Stearns at The Wall Street Journal. Brian Tong, who I’d not previously heard of, maybe I’ve been living under a rock.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey He did a very long, like hour-long review on YouTube, which is very thorough if you’re wanting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something more along those lines. And And then Gruber obviously had his written review, which was excellent as well. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and MKBHD has posted as of just an hour or two ago, I think, has posted a,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an unboxing, which was interesting, but more importantly, a like, here’s what the Vision Pro is. It isn’t a review.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a, here’s, let me tell you about what it is. It’s more like a tour.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I liked MKBHD’s video. I haven’t read, I haven’t read and seen all of these yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But obviously, as Casey said, we aren’t allowed to tell you about the Vision Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re wondering what we’re going to talk about on this week’s show, you know, unfortunate timing. Obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John the DMA stuff, EU DMA stuff came out after we had recorded last week’s episode.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, for people who don’t know, we record our show on Wednesdays because Apple usually announces
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff on Tuesdays. But you don’t want them all. Sometimes they announce something on,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, a Thursday and we miss it. So that’s what happened. And it’s just as well, because like you guys said, you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have your vision pros yet. They’re coming in a few days. Regular customers don’t have them yet, although I do know someone
⏹️ ▶️ John whose delivery date was one day earlier than it’s supposed to arrive. So maybe you might get lucky and get a day
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, we’re in-store pickup for both of us, I believe. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John okay, well, you’re not getting it early then, I guess. Nope. But yeah, so that’s, we’re gonna be talking about the
⏹️ ▶️ John EU DMA stuff that a bunch of other people talked about last week, if their podcast recording allowed for it. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John next week, when two out of the three of us have Vision Pros, we will talk a ton
⏹️ ▶️ John about it then. But for now, these reviews will tide you over.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And while we can’t tell you anything that we think about the Vision Pro, I can tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you that I would recommend Neil Patel’s review with the Verge.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, same.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In particular, like Casey, I think if you’re only going to watch one, I’d say watch that one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is very thorough. It covers all of the major areas of different uses for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. And I think he he seemed to be very fair about both what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cool, what’s not, what has potential for the future, maybe what doesn’t have so much potential
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the future, some of the things about it that are really weird or really different or takes some getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used to, and some of the things about it that are really nice and really cool and really immersive. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would strongly recommend Neelay Patel’s review of The Verge, either video or the written one. I actually, I read the written
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one first and then I watched the video and I found that I didn’t really need to do both.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I would suggest reading the written one if you pick only one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree. But anyway, I bring all this up mostly to point to all these different reviews and whatnot,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but also to say I’m really excited about a few things with Vision Pro, and maybe we’ll talk about that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey later, but I’m excited and interested to see what I think of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eyesight and personas for me, you know, like once I have them and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see them in person, or to the degree that you can see a persona in person. I’m very curious
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I don’t feel like it’s nearly as bad as everyone else seems to think it is. And so it very well could be next week
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when we record I’ll laugh at this moment and say, oh, how wrong I was. But sitting here now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it’s reasonable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You realize like the three of us are going to have to do a FaceTime call with me and you as personas and John is the unfortunate,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like only one who’s not. But the persona videos I’ve seen so far of people doing their FaceTime calls
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the personas, I do not like looking at them. It like bothers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me on a deep level.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is the common opinion and I mean, again, I don’t think they’re great, but as somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the chat said, you know, all of these YouTubers were immediately recognizable as who they were, which I think is an accomplishment.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s not perfect. It’s not great, but I don’t think it’s as bad as everyone else seems to think. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just, it kind of, they kind of creep me out. Like they make me feel uneasy. Like I, I look, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ll see what, when we get these and we’ll see how, you know, because this feature is in beta, we’ll see how it develops over time. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my, my initial opinion, which I am not sure is going to change that much anytime soon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is if I’m gonna be on a FaceTime call with you I’d rather you take your headset off and actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a FaceTime call and if you’re gonna be your fake persona, I think I’d rather just have a phone call at that point.
YouTube API quotas
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alex Chan writes, I’ve also been programming against the YouTube API
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recently and run into the same quota issues that John had described last week and the week before. I don’t think John is doing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something daft. The quota isn’t 10,000 requests. It’s 10,000 quote unquote quota units.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A single request can use many units. There’s a table of quota costs in YouTube’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey documentation, which we’ll link in the show notes. I don’t know if that fully accounts for you burning through your quota so quickly, but maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s a clue in the right direction. And I don’t know if it was Alex or John, but somebody pointed out that costs, uh, some example
⏹️ ▶️ Casey costs, listing a playlist is one quota unit. Updating a video is 50 quota units
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and inserting a video or perhaps inserting something into a video. I’m not sure is 1,600 quota units. Yeah. And
⏹️ ▶️ John this does account for it. Uh, because when I, the video update thing is like if I’m updating the description,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, we have over 500 videos and if each of them costs 50 and I update all of them, uh, you burn
⏹️ ▶️ John through your quota real quick. In fact, I’m routinely going way over my quota, relying on the fact that
⏹️ ▶️ John most API systems that have a quota are essentially eventually consistent and
⏹️ ▶️ John you can blow past your quota briefly before the system realizes you’ve passed it and caps
⏹️ ▶️ John you. So that’s what I had been doing. So that explains it. It’s kind of cruddy, but that explains it. Although
⏹️ ▶️ John eventually Google did get back to me and they approved my request for
⏹️ ▶️ John many more requests or many more, what are these called, quota units. So now instead of 10,000, I have 100,000. I
⏹️ ▶️ John probably should ask for a million. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because I’m already done with the development of
⏹️ ▶️ John the script. So as predicted, this was all pointless, but the more you know, it’s quoted units, not
App Store vs. game consoles
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John I’m assuming it’s John and not Marco that wrote this App Store versus game consoles.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tell me about this
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is I’m I’m I guess for the third show in a row hitting the same point because people keep bringing
⏹️ ▶️ John up topics that are related to it the whole idea of
⏹️ ▶️ John developer dissatisfaction with Apple and comparing that to Other developers
⏹️ ▶️ John who develop for other platforms that are kind of similar to the App Store and what their satisfaction is like
⏹️ ▶️ John And we brought up game consoles and I said it might seem unfair to you that companies that develop for game consoles
⏹️ ▶️ John seem to be more okay with the deal than a lot of app store developers are
⏹️ ▶️ John And many people wrote in To tell us that well, that’s because the game
⏹️ ▶️ John console manufacturers sell their hardware at a loss And so they need the profit from the games
⏹️ ▶️ John to make up for the fact that they’re selling their hardware at a loss And I have two things to say for that first
⏹️ ▶️ John talk to Nintendo They don’t play that game at least not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey as much as the
⏹️ ▶️ John other companies do Nintendo tends to want to either break even or actually make a profit on a target where
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty much all the time And even the other console makers eventually start breaking even
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to profit on their consoles and during the lifetime of the things But that’s besides the point because the second thing is
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t actually matter Like what the reason is unless
⏹️ ▶️ John that reason is convincing to developers and I have to tell you that that app store developers who are angry about
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, A, they already know about game consoles and how the world works over there, and B, it does not convince them to
⏹️ ▶️ John not be resentful of Apple. And that’s the whole deal here.
⏹️ ▶️ John Most of the time, trying to explain to somebody who thinks they’re getting a not great deal
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t change their mind. Usually because you’re not providing them with any new information. For example,
⏹️ ▶️ John they would say, yeah, I know game consoles are so to the loss. Yeah, I know that, you know, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John what they would say to you, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about giving Apple 15 or 30% or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you have to work with the people and the opinions they have, even though if they quote unquote
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t make sense to you or you think there’s some reason otherwise. That’s the situation Apple is in. That
⏹️ ▶️ John is the fundamental issue at hand here. Apple thinks that there are very good
⏹️ ▶️ John reasons for them to get what they want and game developers and App Store developers disagree.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s where they are. I don’t think at this point any amount of explaining why is
⏹️ ▶️ John going to change either party’s opinion.
Owning the customer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then tell me about who owns the customer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is something we talked about last time. Well, why would somebody do this? This was back before the DMA stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John We were talking about the external links to payment methods. Why would anybody want to do that? And I said, well, one of the reasons is ownership of the customer, as we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John discussed many times in the past. And I talked about reasons why you might want to own the customer, because then you get the customer
⏹️ ▶️ John information, which may be lucrative to you. But I, once again, neglected to mention something
⏹️ ▶️ John that we had mentioned for many, many years in the past. So I’ll reiterate it again. There are other reasons that you might want to own the customer
⏹️ ▶️ John that are not related to getting their information and selling it. For example, one thing we’ve discussed many
⏹️ ▶️ John times is that developers in the app store cannot issue refunds. Only Apple can.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you own the customer, you are now empowered to issue refunds because you took their payment,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can give their payment back to them. That is not something that developers can currently do. Same thing with
⏹️ ▶️ John support. If a customer is having a problem, there’s no way for
⏹️ ▶️ John you to connect the dots for them in the generic app store relationship because they’re Apple’s customer, not yours.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could put an email address on your website, you can have a contact form, you can do all that, but there’s a limited amount of stuff that you can
⏹️ ▶️ John do. Whereas if you own the customer, you can provide better support. Giving them a refund yourself
⏹️ ▶️ John is one example of better support. And then also, if the thing you’re providing,
⏹️ ▶️ John that application or service or combination of them, if it’s on more than one platform, you’re on iOS, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John on Android, you’re on PC, you’re on Mac, right? you can provide a unified experience
⏹️ ▶️ John if you own the customer, because you can say, well, pay me one price and I’ll give you it on all these platforms. And
⏹️ ▶️ John there are ways to do that with the App Store to try to figure out if they’ve made a purchase in another
⏹️ ▶️ John platform and to give them the App Store thing and vice versa. But it’s so much easier if you have one
⏹️ ▶️ John unified account and one unified payment system because you own the customer. So there are
⏹️ ▶️ John legitimate non-nefarious reasons why you might wanna own the customer. And like I said, we’re talking about the external
⏹️ ▶️ John payment things. That is the only benefit that you’re getting given the set of rules that Apple had
⏹️ ▶️ John provided because you’re not paying Apple any less money. You’re enduring much more hassle than you were before.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is much more difficult. You have to allow Apple to audit you, and in exchange, the one and
⏹️ ▶️ John only thing you get is customer ownership.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, that being said, though, there are certain businesses where Apple’s payment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system either doesn’t have a feature that you need to do that kind of business, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco literally doesn’t allow it. So for instance, if you wanted to say, have a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different payment plans for your in-app purchase for your service, whatever your app service is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re selling, and the top one, if they paid $100 a year, you sent them a free t-shirt.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can’t do that with in-app purchase. In-app purchase can’t be used for any kind of physical goods so you literally just aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do that. Or upgrade pricing is another great example. Like, you wanna do upgrade pricing? You own the customer, you control the
⏹️ ▶️ John payment system, you know what they paid, you know they own version 1.0, you can give them upgrade pricing for 2.0.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly, and there’s so many little, even just implementation details. Like I have talked before,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back when I had the idea forever ago and have continued to have it like once
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a year and then quickly talk myself out of it, of like, hey, why don’t I make some kind of like overcast premium thing that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like pools money together and then pays the podcast that you listen to, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do that, you have to know exactly how much money you got from each person,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not how much money they were charged, you can figure that out, how much money you received
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from them, which becomes very tricky when you’re dealing with foreign currency exchange rates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or any kind of credit card chargeback or refund situation. So that kind of thing, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you build your own system, you can maybe do that a lot better. With Apple’s system, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fairly impossible to know, like, did I actually receive that $7.75 from this person in this month or not?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because, and that’s by the way, that’s why Spotify and YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ Marco premium and all these things, that’s why they all do the big pool of money approach where like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your $10 a month doesn’t get split up between your artists that you listen to. Your $10 a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco month goes into the giant pool of money and then the giant pool of money gets split up based on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much money there actually is in that pool and then how many total plays there were in that entire month, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco creates all sorts of weird, you know, opportunities for fraud and things like that, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s just much easier. So like, again, there are conditions like that where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s system just might not support what you wanna do, even if you are, you know, tolerant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Apple’s fees. So that’s what’s interesting about using, you know, other payment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco options, is it’s not just I’m trying to get away with, you know, giving Apple less or no money,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that’s a big part of it, but there’s also legitimate reasons why you might want to do that.
Repairs & Stolen Device Protection
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Niru Maheswaranathan writes, I recently stopped by an Apple store to repair a cracked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone screen. Like any security conscious iOS user, I had stolen device protection turned on. The technician asked me as part of the regular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey repair process to turn off Find My. When I went to do this, however, stolen device protection kicked in and forced me to wait an hour
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to turn Find My off. There wasn’t anything the technician could do to help. I ended up leaving, turning stolen device
⏹️ ▶️ Casey protection off, and then coming back to complete the repair. I presume that Niru means that they went home or what have you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Although it makes sense, I was still surprised that stolen device protection kicked in when turning off Find My. Given how it can be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tricky for folks to schedule time to make it to the Apple Store, it’s worth keeping in mind that you might want to turn off stolen device protection
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at least an hour before your appointment. That is interesting. I get exactly why all this happened, but it’s interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John It totally makes sense. You don’t want someone to be able to turn off Find My. That’s kind of an
⏹️ ▶️ John important feature, especially if your phone is stolen. So yeah, remember when you put that delay in, that delay applies
⏹️ ▶️ John to you too, although it doesn’t apply if you’re in one of your safe locations. So if you do it
⏹️ ▶️ John at home, maybe you don’t have to wait an hour, so just do it at home before you leave for the Apple Store. And I believe in the upcoming
⏹️ ▶️ John new version of iOS, I think 17.4, they’re gonna have a setting where if you don’t wanna have safe locations, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can turn that off. So it’s up to you to decide how much inconvenience do you want in your life.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and this is probably the kind of thing, we were speculating when they introduced stolen device protection recently, we were saying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, why don’t they just enable this by default for everyone? And maybe this kind of thing is, maybe this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is part of the reason why that maybe they figured this would cause too many support headaches or whatever else. Cause that’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anytime you’re looking at like, why something in iOS is a little bit insecure, maybe, for instance, why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can you reset your Apple ID password with just your passcode to a phone? Which is the whole root of this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem. And the answer often to those questions is, it turns out in real life,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people forget this stuff all the time and they need support to help them through this problem all the time. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that’s probably one of the reasons why this is off by default.
European eyeglass prescriptions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Rene Schatzel writes in Europe, or at least in UK and Germany, the opticians in the store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are usually equipped to measure your eyesight, and essentially as part of the service of buying new glasses, they do just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this beforehand for free. They are specifically trained for that, though, as part of their apprenticeship.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Obviously, you can also go to the ophthalmologist to get a prescription if you want, but it’s not obligatory.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Zeiss actually sells a rather smallish device that measures your eyesight automatically. It takes about 10 seconds per eye. Obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having one of those in the Apple Store for your Vision Pro fitting would provide a perfect service experience. We’ll see what happens
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when they come across the pond.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is one data point lending credence to the idea that there is no actual medical reason
⏹️ ▶️ John for it to be as difficult as it is to deal with eye prescriptions here in the U.S.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I’m still waiting for ophthalmologists or optometrists to tell me otherwise. But right now it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John like in other countries you can just walk in, they’ll measure your eyes, you get a prescription and you’re done. But in this country, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John is a stickler for having a real prescription from a licensed optometrists or ophthalmologists
⏹️ ▶️ John before you can get your vision pro.
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Apple’s DMA compliance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We were talking before the show about how best to approach this. And what we’re talking about is the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple, uh, European union DMA, which is that digital markets act, uh, compliance and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple needs to be compliant with the digital markets act by I think early March, if I’m not mistaken, and late
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last week they announced how they’re going to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And just to review the digital markets act is what the name kind of says, uh, In Europe, they had decided
⏹️ ▶️ John that the market for digital goods, like the App Store and Google Store and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John were insufficiently competitive. There were a small number of companies with too much power that was
⏹️ ▶️ John stifling competition and innovation. The EU decided they wanted to
⏹️ ▶️ John change that. And so they passed the Digital Markets Act. And they said big companies like Apple, who have
⏹️ ▶️ John App Stores, need to comply with it. And so this is Apple’s response of saying, here’s what we’re going to do to comply
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. So I think what I’m going to try to do, and all three of us have agreed with each other, famous
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last words, to just let me plow through, we’ll see how it goes. But what I’m going to try to do is John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has done us all a service and kind of summarized what Apple has said.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, this is different than I think reality, which we will get to. But I’m going to try to get through,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here’s what Apple says is going to happen and they’re going to do, and then we’ll pick it apart afterwards.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think the reason we’re going through what Apple says is Apple has the way Apple presents.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is also interesting, like their attempt to say, here’s the deal. Here’s what we’re doing. The subcategories
⏹️ ▶️ John they break it down into what each individual bullet point actually is. And as we’ll get to
⏹️ ▶️ John eventually, like the stuff that we actually care about and the stuff that is most relevant for the DMA is kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John hidden in this giant stew of stuff, but they are actually making a lot of changes. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John to start, we’ll go through what Apple says they’re doing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so without further ado, for iOS, this is only iOS, not iPad, not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Vision, nothing else. For iOS, they’re saying that- And only in the EU. Thank you, yes, and only in the EU.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There are going to be new options for distributing iOS apps on alternative app marketplaces. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think of this as app stores not run by Apple, but they’ve understandably, and I think reasonably, used the term app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey marketplaces. This includes APIs that enable developers to offer their iOS apps for download from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the alternative app marketplaces. There’s new frameworks and APIs for creating alternative app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey marketplaces on iOS. It’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know they’re not saying App Store because they trademarked App Store and they call theirs App Store. So I understand why.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My god, this is cumbersome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is. So this enables marketplace developers to install apps and manage updates on behalf
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of other developers from their dedicated marketplace app. There are new frameworks and APIs for alternative
⏹️ ▶️ Casey browser engines. So this is instead of WebKit. Let me back up even a step further.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There are other quote unquote web browsers on iOS today. But in order to actually convert
⏹️ ▶️ Casey HTML, CSS and JavaScript and what have you into something that you see on screen, you have to use the same rendering
⏹️ ▶️ Casey engine as Safari, which is called WebKit. And now what Apple is saying in the future, in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey EU on iOS, you’ll be able to use browsers that legitimately use their own rendering engines.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What’s the Chrome one, I’m drawing a blank. Blink. So anyway, so you could have Chrome in the EU,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey starting in March-ish, you could have Chrome running its own Blink rendering engine, in theory.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So new frameworks and APIs for alternative browser engines, interoperability that enables authorized developers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to use browser engines other than WebKit for browser apps, and apps with in-app browsing experiences. New
⏹️ ▶️ Casey APIs to enable contactless payments in the EEA. What is that?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey European Economic Area. Thank you. There we go. This includes new APIs enabling developers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to use NFC technology in their banking wallet apps throughout the, oh, that’s right there, I didn’t read far enough, European Economic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Area. So instead of using Apple Pay, you could use the same hardware to do some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other payment scheme.
⏹️ ▶️ John by the way, as we go through these bullet points, don’t think that Apple is doing any of these things out of the goodness of their heart. Every single
⏹️ ▶️ John one of them is some specific thing that’s part of the DMA. So this one, for example, about the contactless payments,
⏹️ ▶️ John people, companies have been complaining in Europe for ages that Apple essentially didn’t allow access to
⏹️ ▶️ John the NFC hardware, like direct access to the hardware that was in the phones to do contactless payments.
⏹️ ▶️ John You had to use Apple Pay or whatever. So they said, okay, well, we’ll just pass a thing that says Apple, you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John stop people from doing that. We want you to provide access to that. And that’s this. Same thing with the browser engines.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There are expanded default app controls. This lets users select and manage an app marketplace and or contactless
⏹️ ▶️ Casey payment app as their defaults and settings and adds a new way to choose a default web browser. Interoperability
⏹️ ▶️ Casey request form. This I think is fascinating, but we’re not gonna talk about it right now. Let’s developers submit requests
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for interoperability with iPhone and iOS hardware and software features. So you can ask Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hey, I would like to be able to do whatever, and they will inevitably deny you, I’m sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Safari user choice screen provides users additional ways to choose default web browser from a list of options.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so this was, this were all the iOS changes, right? This is a lot of changes. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John these are one bullet point, like, oh, alternative browser engines. You might think that’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John like a policy change. Okay, developer, you can do a thing, but it’s not. Like if you click
⏹️ ▶️ John through on these things and look at the API they added, like browser kit engine, it’s extensive
⏹️ ▶️ John plumbing to essentially allow third parties to do what WebKit does on iOS,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? These are non-trivial APIs that they’re exposing and adding. So this is
⏹️ ▶️ John actually a fairly large amount of work, especially since Apple seems to have wanted to do it in
⏹️ ▶️ John the safest way possible. So rather than just saying, fine, do whatever you want browser engines, that
⏹️ ▶️ John would, Apple doesn’t wanna do that. It would be less work for them, but they don’t wanna do that. So they said, here’s a new API. Same thing
⏹️ ▶️ John with like the marketplace kick. That’s like a new API for making third-party marketplaces. These are big,
⏹️ ▶️ John featureful, new frameworks that are surely filled with bugs, cause they’re 1.0 to comply with this.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so, you know, and these, all these iOS changes, I’m pretty sure every single one we read, all this is just
⏹️ ▶️ John EU only. So this is a large amount of work for only a fraction of the planet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. Now there’s app store changes, which as far as I know are still only in the EU and still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey only for iOS, but either way, app store changes. New options for using alternative payment service providers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So within a developer’s app to process payments for digital goods and services. So hypothetically you could use like Stripe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something like that, while still being an app within the app store. There are new options for processing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey payments via link out to purchase, where users can complete a transaction for digital goods and services on the developer’s external web
⏹️ ▶️ Casey page. Developers can include information in their App Store apps to inform EU users of promotions, discounts,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and other deals available outside of their app when presenting a link out. So this is very similar to what’s going on in America, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a little bit more features, it seems. Analytics. And this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe, is going to be applicable worldwide. Actually, yes, it is. So this is not just the EU. Expanded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey developer app analytics provides developers with additional and enhanced metrics with more than 50 new reports from the iOS and App
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Store worldwide in areas like engagement, commerce, app usage, and more. Additionally, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a new user data portability API to request and transfer app store account data lets developers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of apps, map marketplaces, request user authorization to retrieve and import new data about their usage of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the app store. Then things get really interesting. Business terms. Now we’re back to EU only.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey New business terms are available for apps in the EU to reflect the DMA’s requirements for alternative distribution
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and payment processing. Apple is also sharing new business terms for apps in the EU. Developers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a choice to remain on Apple’s existing terms or adopt new terms that reflect the new capabilities. We’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey surely going to spend just a couple of minutes on that in a moment. There are also terms for alternative distribution
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and payments in the EU. There is reduced commission. So iOS apps on the App
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Store will pay a reduced commission of either 10 percent for the vast majority of developers and for subscriptions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after their first year or 17% on transactions for digital goods and services,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey regardless of the payment processing system selected. So they’re just making it cheaper, is apparently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what they’re saying here, anyway. There’s a payment processing fee. iOS apps on the App Store can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use the App Store’s payment processing for an additional 3% fee. So suddenly, that 10, 17 has now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey become 13, 20. Developers can use a payment service provider within their app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or link users to a website to process payments for no additional fee from Apple. So if you want to use Stripe, you’ll save 3%,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which you’ll presumably be giving to Stripe. This is where it gets really dodgy, and we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost done. We’re doing a great job. I’m proud of all three of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco us. Core technology fee.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m very proud of you. I’m not kidding. I’m very proud of you. Core technology fee. For very high volume iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apps distributed from the App Store and or in alternative app marketplaces, developers will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pay 50 cents. Is that true for euros? Half a euro. 50 euro cents. 50 euro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cents. So half a euro. For each first annual install, per year, over a one million threshold.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Under the new business terms for EU apps, Apple estimates that less than 1% of developers would pay a core
⏹️ ▶️ Casey technology fee on their EU apps. Developers of alternative app marketplaces will pay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the core technology fee for every first annual install of their app marketplace, including installs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that occur before one million. So for regular schmoes like the three of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us, it starts on a million and one people or installs. The million and first person
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the first one you pay for. Right. Whereas for app marketplaces, it starts with one. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there seems to be a lot of confusion, including with me, as to whether or not updates count as installs. So we’ll talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that in a minute. They do. All right. Before we get to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the discussion, is there anything else in summary? Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John no. We have one more thing here, which is the marketplace requirements.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey OK, thank you. That’s what I was asking. OK. So marketplace requirements. To qualify for the marketplace entitlement,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You must be enrolled in the Apple Developer Program as an organization incorporated, domiciled, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or registered in the European Union, or have a subsidiary legal entity incorporated, domiciled,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and or registered in the EU that’s listed in App Store Connect. The location associated with your legal entity
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is listed in your Apple Developer account. You must also provide Apple a standby letter of credit from an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A-rated financial institution of a million euros to establish adequate financial
⏹️ ▶️ Casey means in order to guarantee support for your developers and users. and there’s other stuff. Additionally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey third-party marketplace apps will not be allowed in the App Store. To install one, you’ll need to go to the web. Safari will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be able to install the third-party marketplace app after you agree to a scare sheet. And perhaps maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey third-party browsers too after they call the same system scare sheet, who knows? But that’s the story. And very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey briefly, there is a fee calculator, which I’m sure we’ll talk about in a minute, that helps you allegedly talk about, figure out how much you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, so what we’ve gotten done reading here is essentially a condensed
⏹️ ▶️ John summary of what Apple released. And this happened like Thursday last week, you know, unfortunately after we recorded.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I can tell you that we were all discussing it amongst ourselves, all the Apple nerds and people with tech podcasts and
⏹️ ▶️ John websites and stuff. And I was amazed at how difficult it was
⏹️ ▶️ John to understand. And the fee calculator that Casey
⏹️ ▶️ John mentioned, you’re like, oh, it’s hard to understand, but whatever your questions are, I’m sure you can just go to the fee calculator
⏹️ ▶️ John and click a bunch of buttons, kind of like you do in AWS to figure out, okay, but like, what about in this scenario? How much would I pay?
⏹️ ▶️ John What about in this area? How much would I pay? And let me tell you, the fee calculator does not answer almost any of those questions.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we got all this information, we tried to figure out what they meant, and it took
⏹️ ▶️ John like the entire community of I think pretty smart people who’ve been following Apple for decades,
⏹️ ▶️ John at least 24 hours to get a handle on this. And so like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you just heard us read all that and you’re like, but wait, what does this mean? Like, so like, what’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John deal? Is it, is this good? Is this bad? You can be forgiven for not, for
⏹️ ▶️ John not being able to answer that question. And I don’t know if Apple is intentionally making it difficult to understand
⏹️ ▶️ John because that doesn’t make sense to me. We’re gonna figure it out. We did, as we’ll see in a second, figure out what the deal
⏹️ ▶️ John is. I think it just did a really poor job of communicating it. And that fee calculator is the thing that annoys me the
⏹️ ▶️ John most, because the whole point of you putting that there is like, we know it’s complicated, but if you
⏹️ ▶️ John have some scenario in your mind, just use this webpage and it will give you the answer. And it absolutely does not.
⏹️ ▶️ John You cannot answer tons of really good, important questions about the system using the fee calculator.
⏹️ ▶️ John But thankfully, we all as a community figured it out. Gruber had a great summary on his website, which we
⏹️ ▶️ John will link. And I think it is probably the most condensed version of what,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, what does all that mean? And there’s a lot of stuff in there that we went through. It’s like, okay, I kind of understand that, but it’s not a big deal.
⏹️ ▶️ John But in the middle there, where Casey was talking about business terms in the EU, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the heart of it, and that’s what Gruber is summarizing here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I don’t think Apple has made this like artificially complicated and hard to understand.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What they’re doing, first of all, is responding and attempting to comply with a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very large piece of legislation. Like the DMA is huge. There are tons of provisions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in it. There’s tons of little details they have to comply with. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their submission of how they’re gonna do this is kind of inherently gonna be fairly complicated,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just at all. Even if they did it in the most generous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way possible, it would still be fairly complicated. But also, again, this is Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and this is the App Store. And it goes further than the App Store, of course. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are only doing what they need to to comply with this, and no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more than that. for the most part, and so, if the law says you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do this, this, and this, they’re not gonna make some general solution that’s gonna make it easier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to explain. They’re gonna say, fine, we’re going to do exactly that, that, and that, in the most minimal way possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, that’s, again, why this is a lot. There’s a lot to digest here, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re gonna make sure that they don’t give away a cent more than they have to, and so that’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, why some of this is complicated. But, again, I don’t think it’s artificially so.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they just didn’t do a good job communicating though. Because like, go ahead, starting
⏹️ ▶️ John Gruber summary because Gruber summary makes sense. And you say, oh, that’s what all that stuff you just read means.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now I get it. And this summary we have in here and it’s linked on it, it’s on his website is longer than his
⏹️ ▶️ John original summary. When he was, you know, working on this, it started off being 14 lines
⏹️ ▶️ John of text, like 14 not complete lines, 14 bullet point lines of text. It was
⏹️ ▶️ John less than a quarter of a page of text. and Apple released pages upon pages upon pages of text
⏹️ ▶️ John and all of us scratching our heads for an entire day trying to figure out what the heck they were talking about.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so Gruber summary. Number one, these are your choices.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is the business terms. You’re like, wait, but if I have an app, like what’s the deal? I have an app in the EU.
⏹️ ▶️ John What is the deal? What are the choices? And this is essentially the flow chart, the choose your own adventure.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you want to sell an app in the EU. Here are your choices.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Number one, you can stay in the app store under the current pre-DMA rules exclusively.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Developers that take this option are not permitted to use any of the new business terms available in the EU, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new iOS platform options for the EU, such as alternative browser engines, are allowed,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because they are required to be allowed. Again, none of the goodness of Apple’s heart. Right,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because nothing business-related changes under this option, the existing worldwide rules apply for paid apps, subscriptions, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in-app purchases, including the 30 or 15% commission to Apple, and a requirement that apps exclusively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use Apple’s App Store payment system. The core technology fee, that’s that half euro thing that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we keep dancing around, is not collected because the business terms haven’t changed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, and just, so that’s choice number one. Choice number one is whatever the pill color that
⏹️ ▶️ John I always forget. Like take this pill and you’ll stay in the matrix and nothing changes, right? It’s like, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the easiest to understand option. Even though Apple is doing all this stuff, they’re still saying, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John all this stuff that we’re doing, If you don’t understand it or don’t want it or don’t like it, you can keep
⏹️ ▶️ John things exactly as they are, which is the option that Apple would prefer that you take.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. So that’s number one. Option two, you can opt into the new EU rules
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and all sub options which we’ll go through available under this choice require paying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the core technology fee, that’s the half euro thing, for each app with over a million downloads
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the EU. So sub bullet number one, After opting into the new EU
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rules, developers can choose to remain in the App Store and use Apple’s App Store payment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey system at 20% and 13% commission, plus the core technology fee paid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Apple automatically. Or they can use a custom in-app payment system, like Stripe,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at 17% and 10% so that’s a decrease of 3% both ways, percent commission,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the CTF is paid, the core technology fee is paid to Apple by hand, if you will.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Or they can use external links from inside apps to the web for payments and subscriptions, which is still 17% or 10%, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they still have to pay the core technology fee to Apple by hand. The latter two options,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey using your own payment system or linking out to the web, those are similar to the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things that happened in the US last week. They announced last week external payment link entitlement policy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey regarding the developers obligation to track these payments, report sales to Apple monthly, and submit to audits by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple to ensure compliance.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so this was like, so this is the fork that we took in the road was keep everything the same as they are. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John the other, the other choice the other major fork you can take is you get the new EU rules. Now, once you have the new
⏹️ ▶️ John EU rules what Casey just read is okay. Okay, so you’ve got the new EU rules. Next choice is
⏹️ ▶️ John under the new EU rules do you want to still be in the app store? And that’s what he read here. It’s like, okay, if you’re still
⏹️ ▶️ John in the app store you have a choice. Stay in the app store, use Apple stuff. Stay in the app store is use a different payment process. Stay in the
⏹️ ▶️ John app store to just link out to a payment thing. Those are the rules. And notice, if you
⏹️ ▶️ John choose the new EU rules and you wanna stay in the app store, every option under staying in the app
⏹️ ▶️ John store under the new EU rules is different than if you had not chosen the new EU rules and stayed under the
⏹️ ▶️ John app store, right? So if you’re like, well, I’ve just decided I’m gonna stay in the app store. That’s not your top level choice.
⏹️ ▶️ John Your top level choice is keep everything the same as it was or take these new EU rules.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you take the new year rules, you can still be in the app store, but the deal is different. In particular,
⏹️ ▶️ John as Gruber notes, Every single one of the options under the new rules adds the core technology fee
⏹️ ▶️ John to all the different things you can do. And of course you have new options because under the EU rules, if you stay
⏹️ ▶️ John in the App Store, you can do things like use an entirely different payment processor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there’s also a couple of asterisks on that too. Like for instance, if you choose to opt into the new EU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rules for an app, you can never change back for that app. Yep. So that’s a big thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s down at the bottom of the thing. So anyway, that was if you want, you take new EU rules, you stay
⏹️ ▶️ John in the App Store. Now it’s you take the new e-rules, and what’s the next option, Casey?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So then you can distribute apps in one or more third-party marketplaces. You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have no option to use the Apple App Store payment processing, because the apps aren’t coming from the App Store.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The only money due to Apple is the core technology fee. There’s no commission percentage on in-app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey transactions or links to the web. It isn’t. You’re on your own. It’s the Wild West. You just got to pay us a half
⏹️ ▶️ Casey euro for the million and first, and so on, user, and install, and so on, and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Which actually, this is actually, I think, pretty surprising.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So yes, if you totally bail out of the app store, and if you are only distributing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your app in a third-party app store, I’m not going to say app marketplaces,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so third-party app store, then you only pay the course technology fee. You only pay that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco half euro per user after a million. So that’s actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, surprisingly reasonable in context of what Apple even would consider
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing. I would have guessed that they would have done that whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco submit to us your financial reports and pay us a commission kind of thing on this. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think that was allowed in the text of the DMA, essentially. Probably not. I think that
⏹️ ▶️ John they were forced to. That’s kind of, we’ll talk about in a little bit, the reason the CDF exists is I think the option that
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re describing, even Apple didn’t think They could pretend that that’s complying. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So yeah, so that’s basically the story.
⏹️ ▶️ John you forgot the exclusivity part. Options one and two are exclusive. Options one and two being,
⏹️ ▶️ John do you want to stay in the app store and do everything the same way it is now? Or do you want to opt into the new EU rules? And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what Marco was talking about before. Once you make that choice, it’s irrevocable. Apple says developers
⏹️ ▶️ John who adopt the new business terms at any time will not be able to switch back to Apple’s existing business
⏹️ ▶️ John terms through the EU apps. So say you opt into the new EU rules and you’re like, ah, turns out it was a mistake. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John we don’t like this new system. We want to go back. Apple says, nope. It’s a one-way door.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you decide you want to use the new EU rules, whether you’re under the new EU rules in the App Store or whether you’re under the new
⏹️ ▶️ John EU rules outside the App Store, there’s no going back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is that. So I don’t know. When I first read all this, it seemed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey super reasonable to me, surprisingly reasonable to me. And then some people started doing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Wait, this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Europe. I believe you mean the maths.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sorry. Yes. This is the EU after all. So they did the maths.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Actually, I guess the UK is not in the EU anymore. So you can say whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s right. I don’t know if they say maths in any other countries.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey See? This is why I said mathematics, you big jerk. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Should have let it slide. Go ahead.
⏹️ ▶️ John actually, yeah. Before, there’s one more minor point of the things that Apple described.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like this is the flowchart that Apple didn’t provide that I have drawn here in the notes that isn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John in Gruber summary, but it’s implied by Gruber summary. And there’s a little bit more to know here. What is the flow?
⏹️ ▶️ John What is the process diagram of like, you got all these rules, you can opt into this rule, opt into that rule, but say you are a developer,
⏹️ ▶️ John regardless of which path you chose on this little choose your own adventure, option one, option two, you rules, not you rules,
⏹️ ▶️ John app store, not app store, whatever. How does this all work? And the way it works, if you just have an
⏹️ ▶️ John app, is you’re a developer and you have an app. Everybody, no matter what rule
⏹️ ▶️ John you choose, you take your app and you send it to Apple. But you don’t send
⏹️ ▶️ John it directly to the people who review apps right now for the app store. Instead, you send it to this
⏹️ ▶️ John new process, which I don’t know what Apple calls it. I just call it the Apple review in this diagram.
⏹️ ▶️ John But this is a new process that is a very tiny subset of app
⏹️ ▶️ John review. You will send your app to Apple, presumably through Xcode, and Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John will look at your app and they will do a bunch of checks. And this is the list from Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John for the checks. They’re calling it notarization for iOS. Although I feel like it’s a little bit more
⏹️ ▶️ John than that because they’ve used it. Yes. Anyway, they will check for accuracy. Apps must accurately
⏹️ ▶️ John represent the developer capabilities and cost to users. Functionalities, binaries must be reviewable free from serious
⏹️ ▶️ John bugs and crashes, blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, does it work? The apps cannot manipulate software or hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John in ways that negatively impact the user experience. Safety, apps cannot promote physical harm of the user or public.
⏹️ ▶️ John Security, apps cannot enable distribution of malware or suspicious unwanted software that cannot download executable code,
⏹️ ▶️ John read outside the container, or direct users to lower the security of their system or device. Apps must also provide transparency
⏹️ ▶️ John to allow user consent to enable any party to access the system or device or reconfigure the system or software.
⏹️ ▶️ John And privacy, apps cannot collect, transmit, or transmit private sensitive data without a user’s knowledge
⏹️ ▶️ John in a manner contrary to the stated purpose of the software, right? And it kind of implied in all of this is you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John use private APIs, right? So this is way less than app store review. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is like, just does your app work? Is it not a super obvious
⏹️ ▶️ John scam? Does it not use private APIs? Every single app under these
⏹️ ▶️ John rules goes through this phase, this very limited, very strict phase. Importantly,
⏹️ ▶️ John they don’t care what’s in your app. Is your app filled with porn? Is it a Nintendo
⏹️ ▶️ John emulator? Does it have pictures of Star Wars characters all over it that you didn’t license,
⏹️ ▶️ John this phase does not care. It just wants to know, does it crash? Does it run? Does it do what it say it does?
⏹️ ▶️ John Does it not use private APIs, which I think is a pretty big one. Does it not steal people’s data? Does it not direct them to
⏹️ ▶️ John lower the security of their iPhone? That’s all they’re checking for. Every single app will go through this, presumably
⏹️ ▶️ John the ones that go to the app store as well, because the app every was doing this stuff anyway. Then after you clear that
⏹️ ▶️ John phase, then there’s a fork in the road and says, okay, well, were you submitting this to the app store or were you submitting
⏹️ ▶️ John this to a third party marketplace? And if you submit it to a third party marketplace, the third party marketplace
⏹️ ▶️ John receives the apps that are in it from Apple. Developers don’t submit their
⏹️ ▶️ John apps directly to a third party marketplace. And we’ll get to like, you know, who would make a third party marketplace
⏹️ ▶️ John and why. It still goes through Apple. So if you’re making a third party marketplace, you’re getting a funnel of app submissions
⏹️ ▶️ John from Apple because by the time you get them, Apple has done all these checks to make sure it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not super duper terrible. So if you’re wondering like, this takes Apple out of
⏹️ ▶️ John the equation and now they’re no longer a bottleneck for there’s still everything still has to go through Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah which is interesting I mean that this again is not how I would have guessed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this would be done and again like you know a part of this probably a big part of this is you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple still wants to have some form of app review obviously the DMA and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever related legislation there might be in Europe the DMA is going to limit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they can review and what they can prohibit in this way. So yes, they’re allowed to interfere,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically, with third-party app stores and say, well, you still can’t have a virus in there, or you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still can’t have stuff that’s misleading users, but they can’t say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like you can’t have porn or, as John was saying, certain copyright issues. And I was thinking,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too, all of the cryptocurrency scam apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and scam companies, because they’re all scams.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was going to say cryptocurrency scam, that’s redundant, isn’t it? Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I think a lot of crypto stuff would go through because it doesn’t technically violate any of these things, even though like.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s what I’m saying. That’s somebody else who might want to use this. Because like, you know, Apple’s had a lot of rules
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around certain types of content that they found either objectionable or just too dangerous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or messy to deal with. Things like porn, you know, crypto stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or real money gambling.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, real money gambling, certain political apps. Like there are certain things that Apple just has not allowed in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco App Store, just kind of, you know, content based decisions. And it seems like under the DMA
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there through the third party marketplace process, they don’t seem like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re either allowed or even interested in policing that kind of thing. Cause it’s kind of out of their hands
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at that point. But they are allowed to, at least so far, you know, we’ll see what the European commission
⏹️ ▶️ Marco says, you know, if they go back on any of this stuff, but they see, it seems like they are allowed to at least do basic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco functionality checks of, you know, basic, you know, representation and security matters.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s written right into the DMA. The DMA essentially has language that says, you’re, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, just because we’re telling you you have to have third-party app stores, that doesn’t mean you can’t check
⏹️ ▶️ John for, like, very basic, you know, there’s a whole bunch of language, I think it might be lower in the notes, so we’ll get to eventually, it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John to ensure the integrity of the platform, like, you don’t want someone to download an app that’s going to fry their phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John or steal all their data, like, that is written into the, because remember, This is the EU, the same body that
⏹️ ▶️ John added all those annoying cookie restrictions. So they’re on board with trying to do these safety things,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they explicitly say Apple’s ought to do it. And at the top when I said, what is the DMA?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the European Union thinking there is insufficient competition in the market for
⏹️ ▶️ John digital goods and apps in the app store, and they think there should be more of it. I think that is the,
⏹️ ▶️ John when looking at this giant list of rules before you get into the nitty It’s worth considering,
⏹️ ▶️ John does the DMA accomplish that goal? Assuming what Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ John put forward here is compliant, which remains to be seen, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John in one way it does. And we were just touching on that with this, with this, the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple review process that they do a minimal number of checks, right? Because previously
⏹️ ▶️ John before the DMA, there were certain kinds of apps that you just could not get on
⏹️ ▶️ John your iPhone unless you were like a developer, did some weird enterprise thing or whatever, right? Because Apple didn’t want them, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Under the DMA, even under Apple’s rules, there are kinds of apps that can now
⏹️ ▶️ John get on your phone through a regular third-party app store that couldn’t get there before. Whether that’s porn
⏹️ ▶️ John apps or gambling apps or Nintendo emulators or just, you know, there’s so many
⏹️ ▶️ John kinds of apps that Apple just doesn’t want. Oh, that’s too much like an Apple app. I don’t like that because it looks too much like Springboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John the number of different kinds of apps that Apple does not allow on the App Store is vast.
⏹️ ▶️ John You might not know about them or think about them because they don’t get through, right? And if you don’t see some story about
⏹️ ▶️ John it, you don’t know that someone was thinking of making an app like X and it got rejected for some reason that doesn’t make any sense to you.
⏹️ ▶️ John All we know is there are apps that previously couldn’t get through that under this new plan will
⏹️ ▶️ John be able to. So that is one thing the DMA was trying to do, which is like, hey, it seems unfair that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple gets to decide what kinds of apps are even allowed. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not just porn and bad things like that. It’s like I said, it’s apps that like Apple decides, you know, have a picture
⏹️ ▶️ John of an iPhone in them or mention iOS or look too much like springboard
⏹️ ▶️ John or like, or look too much like an app store or just so many things that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple doesn’t allow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s all just gonna be like crypto farts and copyright infringement.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco But I mean, it’s gonna be a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of that, but anyway, this provides that. The second thing of like, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John we don’t think there’s enough competition in the marketplace. The complaint that we often talk about in the show is developers
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like Apple takes too big of a cut of the money that is made through
⏹️ ▶️ John the App Store. They feel like Apple deserves maybe some, but they don’t think the
⏹️ ▶️ John amount that they’re giving to Apple seems like too much for what they’re getting in return. And we’ve discussed this a million times, whether they’re right or wrong about
⏹️ ▶️ John that. That’s how they feel. And that is the second leg of this thing. Does the DMA
⏹️ ▶️ John and these rules complying with it allow, address that in any
⏹️ ▶️ John way. And I think, to spoil my opinion that we’ll get into the nitty gritty details of,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that it doesn’t. I think that Apple has cleverly designed these rules such
⏹️ ▶️ John that it is not a clear-cut financial win to do this. And if that was
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the goals of like, there should be a way where you can get apps on the iPhone and pay Apple a lot less money,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think overall this provides that. In some cases, yes. In some cases, massively no.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. And we’ll talk about who’s going to even run a third party marketplace, because if nobody runs a third party marketplace,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is moot, right? For both of these things. And I think Apple has done a pretty good job of making
⏹️ ▶️ John sure that financially speaking, it’s not a clear win to go
⏹️ ▶️ John with the EU rules. And that, I think, is the biggest knock against
⏹️ ▶️ John their compliance, because you can say, OK, well, they are allowing apps that they weren’t allowed before. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can see a path for them to get through to users. I see that happening here, but that
⏹️ ▶️ John is only one complaint that people had one aspect of competition The other aspect is Apple’s taking too much
⏹️ ▶️ John money and Apple’s like no matter what you do No matter where you go You will always be paying
⏹️ ▶️ John us the same amount of money you are now or more and no matter what laws you pass We’re smarter than
⏹️ ▶️ John you and we will make sure that we get The same amount of money we’re getting
⏹️ ▶️ John now or more and that I think is the absolute worst part of this thing and you may be reading and you say,
⏹️ ▶️ John what do you mean? Their cuts are lower and yeah, the CTF thing, but it’s only over a million. How are they paying more money?
⏹️ ▶️ John And you know, from the week that the story has been going on, people have been starting to do the math. And in some cases, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can make more money. In other cases, you will be paying Apple literally billions of dollars
⏹️ ▶️ John a year for the privilege of distributing a free app.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that I think is, what I think will ultimately happen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with this is not a lot. Because, again, Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as John said, Apple’s very good at making sure they keep making money. They are very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good at that. And the same amount of money or more. Exactly. And yeah, there might be certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps where that won’t be the case for where they can figure out if they can squeeze a bit more money out by doing these new terms.
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the one, speaking of that, that’s the one loophole that Apple left here. And it’s not really a loophole, but I think it’s weird and perverse.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s strange to me that Apple didn’t think of it. If you look at the rules, Gerber’s rules, not the fee calculator,
⏹️ ▶️ John It may occur to you that if you sell a paid upfront app through a third-party app store,
⏹️ ▶️ John you pay Apple nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You also earn nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the thing. The Apple is so sure that paid upfront apps are just a dud,
⏹️ ▶️ John like a relic of the past that no one will ever do, that they left it open. So say you do a
⏹️ ▶️ John paid upfront app that costs $20. That 50% CTF fee, you’re like, I’m making $20
⏹️ ▶️ John pure profit, minus 3% for my payment processor, minus 50 cents for Apple, who cares? And Apple’s like-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever the third party app marketplace is going to charge you, which is not nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, but like, whatever. Like the whole point of the third party ad marketplace is like, in theory, they’d be competitive with Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but like, but that’s a loophole. And the reason that’s there, I have to assume, is like Marco said, nobody buys paid
⏹️ ▶️ John up front apps. And I do wonder if this is compliant
⏹️ ▶️ John and goes through in any way, if this will be like a perverse incentive to say, everything old is new again,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey pay up front apps for $10. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you’d be like, why is this happening? And it’s like, well, the rules that Apple laid out allow
⏹️ ▶️ John that to be a way to safely make money. It always has been a way to safely make money, just no one ever
⏹️ ▶️ John wants to do it. That’s why it has essentially become almost extinct on the App Store. Not extinct, I mean, I know there are apps that
⏹️ ▶️ John are out there that do that, but it was so much less popular than it was in the beginning. Everything is free within
⏹️ ▶️ John App Purchase, and the CTF makes free within App Purchase a potentially bankrupting thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John because just to be clear why everyone is against the CTF. For the CTF,
⏹️ ▶️ John after you’re million and first user, you pay 50 cents for every install per year,
⏹️ ▶️ John no matter what that person does with your app. And if your app is free to download and that person never makes a purchase, you’re paying 50% for
⏹️ ▶️ John them year after year. If they leave it on their home screen, and if you do more than one software update per year,
⏹️ ▶️ John that update counts it as an install, and you are just paying 50 euro cents
⏹️ ▶️ John per user, per install year after year after year. So you better hope the
⏹️ ▶️ John value of your customer is more than 50 cents per year. And if you have
⏹️ ▶️ John a free app where you don’t sell anything or you have a free app with a conversion rate of in-app purchase that is too
⏹️ ▶️ John low to provide that, you are just bleeding money left and right. So all these big companies that have, you know, hundreds of millions
⏹️ ▶️ John of customers in the EU for a free app, that adds up to millions
⏹️ ▶️ John or billions of dollars, which may be worth it for these big rich companies. But if you are a small developer
⏹️ ▶️ John and you have a, you know, say your widget Smith and your app goes viral and millions of people download
⏹️ ▶️ John your app and you get like a 1% conversion rate and you’re like, Oh, now I have to, is that 1%
⏹️ ▶️ John conversion rate equal average out to 50 Euro cents per user? Because if it doesn’t, I am now in the red for my
⏹️ ▶️ John incredibly successful app, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John poison pill.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m not the first to use the term poison pill, but it is such a poison pill. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the one side, you gotta give Apple credit. Like, it’s slimy, but they made it work, and they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey presented it in a reasonably not slimy way, insofar as it seemed like a good deal,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for which I guess it’s even more slimy, right? But it seemed like a good deal at first, and then the more you eat into it, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more you’re like, ooh, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John If I have more than a million users, surely I’m making money, it’s like. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, that’s not users, that’s installs. Like, how many apps do you have in your phone that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco install? Yeah, exactly, not
⏹️ ▶️ John install. It’s like, someone installed it and left it on their home screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or if it installed directly to the app library. Like, you’ll never see it again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, I’m just thinking like on my own phone, I probably have over a hundred apps on there that I installed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at some point in the past and don’t actively use.
⏹️ ▶️ John And auto updates is on by default
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, if those developers release at least one update per year, which let’s be honest, if your app is actively
⏹️ ▶️ John maintained, you’re releasing at least one update per year every year. You’re costing that person 50
⏹️ ▶️ John Euro cents year after year, and you never use their app, you’re never gonna buy anything in it, it was a free download. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John the current model of the app store where the popular apps are free to download and they have in-app purchase,
⏹️ ▶️ John that model, the CTF makes that model incredibly dangerous or
⏹️ ▶️ John known incredibly costly for the big apps, the Facebook, Spotify, you know, all these apps that
⏹️ ▶️ John are free to download and have a free way to use them, and they are distributed in the millions,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s gonna cost those companies so much money if they want to be at third party app store. And one of the things I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not entirely clear about is, let’s say Facebook decides they want to accept the EU rules
⏹️ ▶️ John and distribute to a third party marketplace and pay 50% per install. Facebook can eat that cost because
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ll pay $500 million per year, every year to Apple, it’s whatever, they’ll do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because in exchange, they get more information about the user or they
⏹️ ▶️ John customer or whatever they want to do. Um, but if they do that,
⏹️ ▶️ John do they have to remove Facebook from the regular app store? We already know they can’t go back to the old rules.
⏹️ ▶️ John Can they have the app in both places? Uh, do they have to start a new subsidiary to do this, to isolate
⏹️ ▶️ John the actual meta from this thing? And in that case, they could, they not use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is there just like a new, like Facebook EU app? Like, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. Like, or can they use the Facebook name? Like, can you have all these people are talking about like, well, I’ll just make
⏹️ ▶️ John a new legal entity to do this. so I don’t have to worry about it? Or is Apple going to frown upon that?
⏹️ ▶️ John This gets back to the whole idea that Apple is the bottleneck for all of this stuff. And although they’ve said they’re not gonna stop
⏹️ ▶️ John certain kinds of apps, what they might stop is, oh, I can see that you incorporated a new legal entity to try to skirt
⏹️ ▶️ John our rules about you not being able to have your cake and eat it too. So remains to be seen if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also one, as I’ve talked about in the past before we knew what Apple was gonna do here, I’ve mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how there was this kind of doomsday scenario I really hoped wouldn’t happen. as a developer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is I was really hoping that Facebook wouldn’t say, you know what, once we have third
⏹️ ▶️ Marco party app stores or side loading, I was thinking, you know, Facebook would say, all right, we’re gonna pull our apps from the app store.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, these apps that have billions of users around the world that everyone has to have on their phone. You know, the actual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Facebook app, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, like these are like their core apps that have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just billions of users. And I was afraid Facebook would say, all right, we’re gonna make our own app store.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our apps will be exclusive to our app store, therefore everybody will install our app store. And then all of a sudden
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have a very, very powerful third-party app store that would start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interfering with the market in ways that would kind of force me as a developer probably to play ball with them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that was my doomsday scenario, I really didn’t want that to happen. It seems like the way Apple has implemented this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so first of all, I can strongly recommend, speaking of Casey saying poison pill, the episode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Upgrade that came out a couple days ago, which I believe was titled Poison Pill, Jason went through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of these details on there, and there were some details that he had that I didn’t know. So for instance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on this point, on the third-party app store point, what Jason reported was that there was a clause in here, which I haven’t had time to verify,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but there’s a clause that if you run a third-party app store you can’t just run it for your own company’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps, which is a pretty huge clause. So what that means is Facebook can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco run their own app store that just has their apps in it. Now, I have no doubt if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Facebook is going to, you know, do something, do a move here, I have no doubt that they could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do something, because you know, what maybe a lot of non-developers might not know is that Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a huge source of app install ads. Many apps that get installed on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many phones across the world get installed through Facebook ads in some form. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Facebook would have a pretty strong incentive to build some kind of integrated system where you can have, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you pay Facebook to advertise your app, Facebook hosts your app, or through the third-party marketplace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system here, Facebook then can directly install your app directly from a user
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tapping an ad or whatever else. There are reasons why Facebook might wanna build a larger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco store system here. Fortunately, for my goal of having that not happen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the core technology fee will mostly kill that because the economics of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it are so rough. Because first of all, the store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco itself, like the, whatever, you know, if you make a third party app store, that is an app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that pays the CTF on every install, even below a million. So.
⏹️ ▶️ John And how much money does your third party app store make?
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to make 50% per installed instance of your app store for every single user who has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love that none of us know what 50 Euro cents are called. Like we just keep saying different things. We’ll just say half Euro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I guess. If we say 50 cents, it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it’s not 50 cents.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It’s 50 Euro cents.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do they call it that? Probably not.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, but that’s what I’m calling it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, like so suppose Facebook did this. They’re gonna pay 50 Euro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cents. Euro cents, it’s fine. They’re gonna pay a half Euro for every installation of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Facebook app store. Then they’re also, because they have so many users, they’re also gonna be way past a million.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they have a half Euro for the app store app itself. Then another half Euro for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco each of their installed apps on everyone’s phone, that’s gonna add up to quite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bit. And all of this would only be usable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the EU. So it’s not that they could do this worldwide and pull their apps from all of the App
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Store stuff. Like, they would do all this and jump through all these hoops and pay all these fees
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only for something that works in the EU. So that’s like, I can’t imagine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is going to be used by pretty much anybody like huge, and like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the big tech companies, like the big worldwide tech companies, I can’t really see doing this. What I foresee
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happening here is the EU will have a couple of third-party
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app stores that are gonna be filled mostly with porn and crypto and stuff like that, that is just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not allowed in the regular app store. And the economics of it won’t be that beneficial
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to almost anyone, except Apple. And that’ll be
⏹️ ▶️ John fine. And I don’t even know if those app stores will be sustainable though. Like I’m trying to think of who’s, like
⏹️ ▶️ John we asked about who’s gonna run the third, who’s gonna use that linking, third-party linking payment thing we talked about before the DMA.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it was like, the only benefit was ownership to the customer and some flexibility there. But this one’s even worse because
⏹️ ▶️ John like, lots of people may think, I wanna run a third-party app store in the EU. But then you look
⏹️ ▶️ John at what’s involved. First of all, you need a million euro line of credit, which is no problem for any big company.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you’re just an individual user who thinks you wanna have your own app store, that’s an immediate
⏹️ ▶️ John barrier to entry. And then what you just said before, Mark, like Apple’s rules say,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t just have an app store and like, okay, but the only apps allowed in the app store are my apps. You can’t do that. You essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John have to make an app store that allows submissions from anybody who wants to submit. Now, I’m sure there
⏹️ ▶️ John are loopholes in there because you could say, okay, well, I’ll be just like the Apple app store
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’ll allow submissions from anybody, but have you seen my set of rules? It’s even more Byzantine
⏹️ ▶️ John than the real app store. And I can reject things for any reason because I decided that you’ve concluded a rectangle that
⏹️ ▶️ John is shaped like my grandma’s house and oh, there’s clause 13.3.1. If any rectangle
⏹️ ▶️ John is shaped like a grandma’s house, I’m rejecting your app. Like, I don’t think Apple can police the rules that each
⏹️ ▶️ John app store provides, but you can’t say like from day one, sorry, we’re not accepting
⏹️ ▶️ John submissions. You have to accept and process a submission. So now you are opening the doors to accept
⏹️ ▶️ John and process submissions, even if you’re rejecting them based on lots of stuff. So if you think you’re like an
⏹️ ▶️ John individual developer who goes around a store, Are you ready to accept and review app submissions? Maybe no one will
⏹️ ▶️ John submit to you. Maybe a million people will submit to you. Now you’re on the hook to do a lot of complicated stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And of course you have to pay 50 euro cents for every single person who installs your app. And then you have to decide
⏹️ ▶️ John how much of a cut am I going to take? Am I going to take 30% like Apple does? Am I gonna demand 70%? Am I gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John demand 1%? Like what are the rules of your app store? Oh, now you have to hold all the accounting for dealing with those
⏹️ ▶️ John rules. And are you gonna have your own payment processing as part of like, building a third
⏹️ ▶️ John party app store, a third party marketplace on Apple’s parlance is non-trivial and it’s very
⏹️ ▶️ John expensive to have one at all. So it eliminates
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of people from doing it, right? And then if you want your app store to be attractive, I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like the whole point of this is you have to offer something better than what the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s app store does. Because otherwise, why would people go to you? Maybe the better thing is, hey, I’ll let you have porn apps, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But presumably one of the better things is I’ll take less money than Apple. That’s the whole point of one big
⏹️ ▶️ John aspect of the competition. If you have third party app stores, A, they’ll allow apps that Apple wouldn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John and B, they’ll take less money from you. And so now you have to do that. So now you’re already in a
⏹️ ▶️ John financially disadvantaged situation. You’re following the rules set by Apple who runs their own app store,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they set the rules up so that they know it’s gonna be really hard for you to compete with them, but you
⏹️ ▶️ John have to compete with them, otherwise your store isn’t attractive at all. Good luck making money there. And that’s why,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the only people this probably makes sense for are companies that can eat this. Like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John Facebook will say, all right, so we’re gonna pay half a billion dollars to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John every year in perpetuity to have our own app store, but it’s worth it to us because
⏹️ ▶️ John we have those click-through ads and now we can track who bought the thing, or it’s more important for us to
⏹️ ▶️ John own the customer, like whatever, they have some strategic reason where it makes sense. But the reason is not,
⏹️ ▶️ John boy, we’re gonna make so much money off this meta app store in the EU, you’re probably like directly,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re probably not. It’s probably going to be a cost center and you’re going to make it up in other parts of your business and it’s strategic to you.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s still not entirely clear to me whether if if meta did that, whether they could no longer have any of their
⏹️ ▶️ John apps in the plain old app store in the EU.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think that’s the case. I think they’re allowed to have both, but they might have to be separate
⏹️ ▶️ John But they but they have to pay the CTF on the ones that are in the plain app store because once they accept the EU rules, this is another in case
⏹️ ▶️ John it wasn’t clear from before. Once you accept the EU rules, even your apps that are in the Apple App Store are
⏹️ ▶️ John subject to the core technology fee.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, wait a minute. I don’t think I knew, so it isn’t per app? Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John basically, if you have an app in the App Store and you accept the EU rules, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pay the CTF. Oh, well, let’s clarify that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Because I was- It is, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John right up here. So, you know, option number two, you accept the EU rules and you remain in the App Store, all the options
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, no, but I’m saying like, could Facebook have the Facebook app for the rest of the world that stays the same,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but then Facebook EU over here.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh yeah, this is just within the EU. I’m saying within the EU. Could you have the, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John living in the EU and you launch the Apple App Store, you see the Facebook app. You’re living in the EU and you launch the Meta
⏹️ ▶️ John App Store, you see the Facebook app. Can the Facebook app be in both places as viewed by somebody in the EU?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I believe it has to be a different, I think it has to be a different bundle ID even, but we’ll see. And that’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, so what I expect to happen here, and by the way too, like your breakdown of the economics of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the third-party app stores, like two points in that. First of all, the CTF kills those economics.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So for everybody, for the app store owner itself, and for each individual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco developer, like if I wanted to submit my app to a third party app store in the EU,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all, again, I know they’re gonna charge me something because the only reason people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to run app stores is to make the same cut themselves. Like why do you think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Epic is pushing so hard against Apple? Epic runs their own game store and they take a percentage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all the sales in it. So of course, like, they just want it for themselves.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why, well, it’s not that they want the cut of other people’s, they just don’t wanna have to pay Apple. So for example, when Apple distributes his
⏹️ ▶️ John own apps through the App Store, it doesn’t pay itself 30%. You know, or if it did, it wouldn’t make, it doesn’t make any sense, right? That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John why the idea of an Epic App Store that only sells Epic apps, Epic loves that, because like, sure, we’ll pay ourselves 90%.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll pay ourselves 100%. Like, it doesn’t matter, they’re their own apps, it’s their own company, and that’s why Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ John in the rules oh, so you wanna have an App Store? you can’t just have your own apps in there, essentially as a way to avoid
⏹️ ▶️ John paying anything. Because like we run the app store, so we don’t have to pay ourselves. That’s the advantage that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has. They run the app store. They don’t have to pay 30% of all their, you know. So Apple has made it so that
⏹️ ▶️ John that is not an attractive thing to do. Like, no, you have to accept submissions. And you’re like, do I really want to run
⏹️ ▶️ John an app store to deal with other people’s apps? I don’t want other people’s apps. I just want to pay less. And then if you
⏹️ ▶️ John just want to pay less, you may be out there saying, okay, I’m not going to run my own app store. I’ll just wait to see the sea
⏹️ ▶️ John of third party app stores that pop up and I’ll pick the one that has the lowest rate. And what we’re trying to say is there’s not going to be
⏹️ ▶️ John a sea of third party app stores because running a third party app store is not a great deal. And if any
⏹️ ▶️ John do exist, they’re probably going to be similar or worse deals than Apple for everybody involved,
⏹️ ▶️ John which I feel like is not in the spirit of the DMA, which is trying to increase
⏹️ ▶️ John competition. Again, the only thing I feel like the DMA is successfully accomplishing, if this is
⏹️ ▶️ John deemed to be compliant, is apps that you couldn’t get before, now you can get in the EU. Everything else is
⏹️ ▶️ John just such a mess that it is not helping anybody.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s the key. Because even, again, as a developer, why would I submit my app to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a third-party app store? Because again, that means I’m going to start eating the CTF for my app.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John economics. Forever and ever. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it ruins economics in the EU for me, because it’s a free app. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t change back. Yeah, so the economics of it are terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only reason, you’re right, the only reason is if my app type or business model or whatever, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something inherent about my app is just not allowed in Apple’s app store.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you somehow think you can get 50 cents of value per customer per year, more than 50% of value
⏹️ ▶️ John per customer per year, because you have to be pretty confident. Plus whatever you’re paying the app store. Yeah, you
⏹️ ▶️ John have to be pretty confident that you can do that, or you’re just so confident that you’re never gonna be above a million users
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever. Yeah, so that’s why I think like this is, Apple has crafted this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ingeniously so that no one will use it, basically. Like it’s going to be a very like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, specialized thing that almost no one’s going to use. And you’re not going to hear because then the other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing too is like, suppose you suppose somebody makes a third party app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco store, they go, they jump through the hoops, they actually create one, then they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually get developers to put their apps in it. And everyone somehow pays for the CTF and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything else going along with this, you still have no users for that app store.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How does that get off the ground?
⏹️ ▶️ John And the more users you get, it’s 50 cents for every single one of those users starting from user number
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey idea of like, I really
⏹️ ▶️ John need, I’m running a third-party app store. I need every single person on earth to install my, oh no, I don’t, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really don’t want that. Yeah, exactly. The economics of it make no sense for any party
⏹️ ▶️ Marco involved except Apple. Apple’s gonna keep making their money, of course, And no developer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, barring apps that are just not allowed, no developer would or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should enter this into this agreement. And no one’s going to want to run the stores either.
⏹️ ▶️ John I do think it is significant that Apple, everything still goes through Apple, even though what they’ve said they’re going
⏹️ ▶️ John to do is, you know, like, OK, well, they said they said they’ll essentially allow things through except
⏹️ ▶️ John for safety or whatever. The fact that there is a decision point, the fact that everything still flows through Apple opens the door
⏹️ ▶️ John to so much abuse of Apple just deciding, oh, we’re not sure when we’re going
⏹️ ▶️ John to get to that app. We’re really backed up right now.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, yeah, we found
⏹️ ▶️ John something we think is a safety concern. Like, you know, the spirit of the DMA, the idea
⏹️ ▶️ John that there shouldn’t be this small number of companies with such outsized control, Apple still has all
⏹️ ▶️ John that control. They’re just saying, we won’t use it in the same way as we did before. We’ll only do the things
⏹️ ▶️ John that you allow in the DMA. We’re just checking for safety and stuff. And sometimes you might get a little backed up.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, we might have a concern. Oh, because what’s the recourse? If Apple rejects it at that
⏹️ ▶️ John app review phase before it gets to the third-party app store, Apple’s gonna be like, oh, we thought there was
⏹️ ▶️ John a safety concern or it falls under this letter thing. How long does it take to get that
⏹️ ▶️ John resolved? What is the mechanism to get that resolved? It is like, you’re not cutting
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple out of this. You’re just basically scolding them and saying, no, you let through more
⏹️ ▶️ John apps than you did before. And
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Apple says, OK,
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess we will. And if we don’t, something will happen. And that’s, speaking
⏹️ ▶️ John of all this, like, does this comply? We keep referring to that. This is the somewhat delicious irony, although not so delicious
⏹️ ▶️ John if it turns out that they’re compliant. Apple has to submit this and say, OK, we saw your DMA.
⏹️ ▶️ John Here’s what we’re going to do to comply with it. And Apple did all this development and made all these frameworks and wrote up all this documentation
⏹️ ▶️ John and did all this stuff. But Apple doesn’t know whether the thing they’re proposing is
⏹️ ▶️ John actually going to be deemed compliant. They only find that out after submitting it, which is exactly how every
⏹️ ▶️ John developer feels when they spend a year developing an application and they have no idea if it’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John get in the App Store until they submit it. I was reminded of this today when I was looking at the Tapestry Kickstarter
⏹️ ▶️ John from the folks at Icon Factory, sort of like a grand unified timeline of all things accessible
⏹️ ▶️ John on the net. We should put a link to it in the show notes. In the risk section on the Kickstarter page, their
⏹️ ▶️ John number one risk, I believe, is we don’t know if Apple will allow this on the App Store. That is everybody’s
⏹️ ▶️ John number one risk. How many, we’ve talked about before, how many people just choose not to develop an application
⏹️ ▶️ John because they were afraid that Apple won’t accept it? And is there a way to get pre-clearance from Apple?
⏹️ ▶️ John Can you talk to Apple and say, hey, before we spend a year and millions of dollars developing this app, can you just tell us whether
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ll accept it on the App Store? And Apple’s answer is, develop it, submit it to us, and we’ll see. And that’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John the EU’s thing here too. It’s like, here’s the rules, comply with them.
⏹️ ▶️ John and submit to us and we’ll tell you whether you complied or not. I don’t know what the consequences are if they’re not compliant,
⏹️ ▶️ John do they just send it back to Apple and they keep going back and forth? But anyway, Apple is in the same situation
⏹️ ▶️ John as developers. They’re not sure if this is going to comply. If you says this does comply, I think they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John doing a good job because I feel like this does not comply with the spirit of what the DMA is trying to accomplish
⏹️ ▶️ John in the way that it does. But if it doesn’t comply, I don’t know what the rest of the process is. But it’s it is. I do
⏹️ ▶️ John enjoy the fact that Apple is in the same situation as we are. Of course, the difference is that they have a whole jillion dollars and we don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, honestly, like again, because I really don’t want third-party app stores
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or side-loading on iOS for lots of reasons, I’m actually on one level kind of glad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple has found a way to cheat their way into this so that they maintain all the control. Because like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, some of the things I was worried about with, for instance, Facebook having less controlled access
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the hardware and software on so many people’s phones, The way Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wedged themselves into this kind of like half app review process, even for apps that do this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that’s, that’s good to try to help prevent, you know, bad actors like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Facebook from, from doing the bad things that they do.
⏹️ ▶️ John In the DMA, it says that platform holders are allowed to do these
⏹️ ▶️ John minimum things to essentially protect the integrity of the platform.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m glad overall, I’m glad that Apple has found a way to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seemingly still do a pretty thorough job of protecting the basics of the platform and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco user experience and security and things like that. One kind of downside to this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco though is like, now I feel like they will be able to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep their current anti-competitive behavior everywhere, including in the EU,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and maybe even get worse, more severe at it because now they can point to this and say, look, if you don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, we gave you an escape hatch.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. If you don’t like it, try one of these third party things. Oh, there aren’t any. I don’t know why that happened.
⏹️ ▶️ John There aren’t any except for the porn store.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly. I mean, this, this is why regulation is so difficult because,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, they identified a real problem. I, you know, I think the, the EU was right to look into this as a problem,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the regulation they created, I, you know, has a lot of loophole potential,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as evidenced by what Apple was able to do here. And as a result, the customer outcome,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think will be that much better. And in some ways, it could get worse, because now they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can even ramp up the abuses in their store that everybody will still be using. So it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s tough to get regulation right. And in this case, like it’s hard to point to this and call this a victory.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, we’ll see. We’ll see if it’s complying because I pulled out some I was trying to look at the DMA text to see if there’s anything that is clearly
⏹️ ▶️ John not compliant. And the DMA tries in a wishy-washy kind of way to avoid a situation
⏹️ ▶️ John where someone complies with the letter, but then essentially the outcome is that no one
⏹️ ▶️ John would ever want to have a third party marketplace, for example. So here’s some text from the DMA. We’ll put a link in the show notes to this exact
⏹️ ▶️ John passage. The gatekeeper, Apple is the gatekeeper here because they run the App Store in this example, right? The
⏹️ ▶️ John gatekeeper shall apply fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory general conditions
⏹️ ▶️ John of access for business users to its software application stores, online search engines, and
⏹️ ▶️ John online social networking services listed in the designated decision pursuant to blah, blah, blah, blah. So they try
⏹️ ▶️ John to basically say, look, you can’t just say, oh, you can have a third-party app store, but if you want
⏹️ ▶️ John to get a third-party app store, you have to pay us $100 billion. That doesn’t pass the DMA. So they say fair, reasonable,
⏹️ ▶️ John non-discriminatory conditions, blah, blah, blah. The question is, are the financial terms
⏹️ ▶️ John set out by Apple, fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory. They’re probably pretty much non-discriminatory, although you might
⏹️ ▶️ John say the million dollar line of credit is slightly discriminatory, right? But by carefully
⏹️ ▶️ John calibrating the terms to look more or less like the same deal as Apple, you could say,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, it’s fair and reasonable because it’s kind of the same deal that we have, but if your goal
⏹️ ▶️ John with DMA is to foster competition, if the only way anyone can have an app store is
⏹️ ▶️ John to essentially match Apple’s terms in terms of the finances, that’s not an option. developers,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, I want to, you know, you want, you want his competition to say, Hey, here’s somebody offering to take less of my
⏹️ ▶️ John money than Apple. I’m going to go with them. And Apple set out the rules to say, yeah, it’s going to be pretty much impossible for you to take less
⏹️ ▶️ John money than we do. In fact, you’ll probably have to take more, but it’s fair and reasonable because it’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of like what we’re doing, right? It’s not, it’s not a hundred billion dollars. It’s not like, you know, like for
⏹️ ▶️ John example, to, to have a third party app store, there is an entitlement you need to get. And Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John gives that entitlement, presumably in a fair, reasonable, non discriminatory manner, and you just need a million euro
⏹️ ▶️ John line of credit, and so on and so forth. I think they probably passed this bar, but that’s the fault of the
⏹️ ▶️ John DMA. Again, if the goal of the DMA was let apps exist that couldn’t exist before, and allow
⏹️ ▶️ John there to be financial competition, allow people to compete by saying
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re going to give you a better deal than Apple, that is the only form of financial competition
⏹️ ▶️ John that is valid or reasonable is we’re going to give you a better deal, better terms,
⏹️ ▶️ John different financial arrangement, we’ll take a smaller cut, we’ll have a different way that we make money from
⏹️ ▶️ John you. Like that is competition. And Apple is trying so hard to say, we will
⏹️ ▶️ John not allow competition along that axis at all. And I kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of blame the DMA if they decide this is compliant, then the DMA was very poorly written because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not accomplishing its goal.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s interesting. I read a blog post from, what was it, Steven Sinovsky,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it was very long. It made some interesting points, and we’ll put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a link in the shout-outs, but some of the stuff that was said was, look, this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like in Marco since, you know, it’s been so long since you’ve had a real job, you probably don’t remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this, but if you go to a boss and you say, hey, I’ve got option A,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it sucks because of one, two, and three, and And I’ve got option B, and that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sucks because of four, five, and six. You’re the boss. What
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do you want me to do? Which one of these do you want me to do? And most bosses will say,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, well, let’s do option C, which eliminates bad thing one and two and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad thing five and six. And it’s no, that’s not how this works.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s what the DMA is kind of requesting is, I want something that’s open, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it still needs to be super secure and you need to consider users’ privacy. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that might be possible, but it’s not easy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And, and Sanovsky’s post in large part was saying, look, I think, and I think this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a very American point of view, and I mostly share it to be honest with you. But, you know, Stephen’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point was, look, this kind of already a solved problem. Apple is trading
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on, we have a very discriminant, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey approach to doing things. We, we don’t allow everything in the store. We are very upfront. I mean, whether
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or not you agree with the terms or if you think the terms are fair, is I guess what I should say. They’re very upfront
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the terms. And I don’t think anyone can really debate that. Apple has said from the beginning, this, these are the terms, this is how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you play in our playground. And that is the Apple way. If you don’t like those terms,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or you don’t want to play in that playground,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s why Android exists. And you can play in their playground. And they counterbalance each other in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey same way that Windows and Mac OS did years
⏹️ ▶️ John DMA applies to Android as well, obviously.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yes, yes, yes. But I mean, just in terms of like the stereotypical open versus close. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know it’s much more complicated than that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco for the purposes-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a lot of asterisks on that open.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There is. But nevertheless, the idea is, look, it is comparatively easier to do the things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you want to do in Google world, where you can sideload, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then it is in the Apple world, where you can’t sideload. And it’s just, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tough. And Apple’s kind of in everyone, but Apple’s in a no-win scenario. And so, you know, to quote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from his blog post, in the over 60 pages of the DMA, there’s a little mention of privacy, seven times, security,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nine times, performance, three times, reliability, once, battery life, none, or accessibility, just three times.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that is where Apple finds itself today. It was told essentially to create a new iPhone release that is as good as your old one for your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey existing customers, but do all these things that run counter to every lesson and experience that you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had over decades, everything you’ve designed and architected, everything you promised customers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you would deliver. That truly sucks.
⏹️ ▶️ John I agree with him a little bit here
⏹️ ▶️ John that the way that the DMAA written puts them in a difficult situation, but two things in that. One, the whole point
⏹️ ▶️ John is the EU decided that, unlike the US, they decided, we want there to be
⏹️ ▶️ John more competition, we’re gonna force you to do it. And it seems unfair to us, especially if you don’t think there’s a thing that, but they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John already decided that. So that whole idea of like, but like, we are, it’s already fine. Like you can always pick Android. The EU said,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, that’s not fine with us. Right, so you can disagree with them, but they already decided that. Once they have decided that and they’ve made
⏹️ ▶️ John the DMA, them trying to decide along what access they’ll allow competition,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s almost, I almost wish they had reversed it. Where right now, yeah, you can get new kinds of apps, which
⏹️ ▶️ John potentially induces all the problems that Marco doesn’t want, and all the points that Sinofsky’s making of like,
⏹️ ▶️ John what about battery life performance reliability? Like you’re essentially compromising the iPhone platform by allowing other people
⏹️ ▶️ John to get their apps on it, apps that wouldn’t fly on the app store that could make the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John a worse platform, right? And the flip side of that is, okay, but what about the financial terms? And I kind of wish
⏹️ ▶️ John they had said, the financial terms are the more important thing to us. Allow
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple to maintain similar level of control over, you know, battery life performance,
⏹️ ▶️ John security, all that stuff or whatever, but just structure it such that there’s a way
⏹️ ▶️ John for competing app stores to exist that take a lower cut of the money, right? Because the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that the brand promise of the iPhone has nothing to do with how much developers pay, right? That
⏹️ ▶️ John is not the brand promise of the iPhone. It has entirely to do with the safety of the apps, how much you
⏹️ ▶️ John can trust them, all that things. That level of trust does not require
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple to take any specific percentage from developers, right? Steve Jobs rolled out the iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ John He was like, we’re just trying to, or the app store, rather, a year after the iPhone, or whatever it was. And he’s like, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John just trying to break even on the app store. He actually said that on stage or something to that effect. It’s like, it’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not getting that. Do you think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he believed it? I don’t, I’m guessing even he knew it was a profit center. But,
⏹️ ▶️ John but, but either way, the whole point is, um, that’s not part of the brand promise. That financial arrangement
⏹️ ▶️ John between Apple and developers, that specific cut, how much money that Apple makes from it is not part of the brand
⏹️ ▶️ John promise or the user experience of the iPhone. It is a background thing that is financially important to developers
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple, but users don’t even know that Apple doesn’t make all the apps. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not part of the promise. Everything else is part of the promise. What kind of apps are available? How secure are they? Has someone
⏹️ ▶️ John checked them for something? Arguably, Apple has not been fulfilling that brand promise in the app store itself with all the casino games for children
⏹️ ▶️ John and the scam apps. That’s a separate argument. But you can imagine a different version of the
⏹️ ▶️ John DMA that essentially would make Sanofsky happy to say, we’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, we’re not going to force you to break the brand promise of your phone. What we are gonna force you to do is allow
⏹️ ▶️ John competition on the business terms that developers get. And the DMA does not do that at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John Instead it says, we’ll allow a bunch of porn and copyright violations, but don’t worry Apple, you’ll still get
⏹️ ▶️ John your cut. And that is not, to Marco’s point, it’s not satisfactory to anybody because even
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re in favor of third-party app stores, you’d be like, no, not like that. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I want the iPhone to continue to be good. I just want there to be financial competition
⏹️ ▶️ John about, you know, in the marketplaces. And that’s not what the DMA is doing. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s really sucky. Like, Sanofsky spent so long essentially being angry about the fact that Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John was forced to make their operating system worse to satisfy the EU. And Apple is now being forced
⏹️ ▶️ John to make their platform worse to satisfy the EU. But it’s all because of this fight over Apple, like
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple and the EU saying, it’s so important to us that we continue to make money off the App Store. It’s like, it’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ John you make money off the phones. Apple could break even, could actually literally break even on the
⏹️ ▶️ John App Store and still be making tons of money on the iPhone. It is a profitable platform
⏹️ ▶️ John without any App Store income whatsoever, but they will not give that up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. I don’t know. I don’t have too much to add. I don’t wanna be,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t, I feel like the spirit to a degree of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what the EU is trying to do, you know, make it better for their citizens, like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, I think that they come to it from a decent place, but just like you said, John, I think the execution from the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey EU has been subpar or naive maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they’re just, they’re barking up the wrong trees. I couldn’t agree more with what you said about let’s change
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the business agreements. leave the platform alone. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, I don’t know a lot of people, maybe I’m living in a bubble, but I don’t know a lot of people that are like, man, all I want in the world is to be able
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to use blink on my iPhone. Like that’s not a problem I feel like a lot of people have. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, it just, this seems like a whole much, much ado about nothing to me and I,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I, it’s just unnecessary in so many ways.
⏹️ ▶️ John I kind of do like the browser engine and stuff like that. And, um, and by the way, there’s as a point down lower that’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think part of the DMA thing, but it’s like, it’s essentially a hedge to appease
⏹️ ▶️ John some other companies of them allowing like streaming games. Like previously Apple had said, hey, you can’t put an app on the
⏹️ ▶️ John app store that when you launch it, it has a bunch of streaming games that you like sell or give access to or whatever, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple’s changing the rules around that for worldwide, not just the EU that now you can have a single
⏹️ ▶️ John app and inside of that can be a whole library of streaming games because before Apple said that’s too
⏹️ ▶️ John much like an app store, We wanted to allow that, but now they’re doing it specifically for streaming apps, mostly to satisfy Microsoft and other
⏹️ ▶️ John companies that they want on their side during all of this. Stuff like that, stuff like allowing browser engines and
⏹️ ▶️ John allowing streaming games and other stuff. Like there are things that Apple could give on that I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think will hurt Apple. And they’re just so, they drag their feet on it so much.
⏹️ ▶️ John The browser engine thing, especially what they’ve done with browser kit, technically impressive because you may not be aware, but like to
⏹️ ▶️ John allow a different browser engine, Safari on iOS does things so that iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John apps are not allowed to do. Spawning multiple processes, having multiple threads, doing
⏹️ ▶️ John all, like they do all sorts of stuff with just the process architecture and what the app
⏹️ ▶️ John is doing in the background and how many things are running and are allowed to remain alive and not get killed off, like
⏹️ ▶️ John to implement all the various web standards that regular apps are not allowed to do. And they’re, you know, sandboxed
⏹️ ▶️ John in the right way so they’re not security holes. Whatever it’s called, Browser Engine Kit, or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing is that allows third party engines, is a complicated framework that allows third parties
⏹️ ▶️ John to implement a web rendering engine, quote unquote, the right way, the way Apple does
⏹️ ▶️ John it, the safe way. I think that’s great. I think that’s the thing they could have done at any time.
⏹️ ▶️ John They just never had any motivation to do it until they were essentially forced to do it. But things like that,
⏹️ ▶️ John I give a thumbs up. That doesn’t break the brand promise. That preserves the brand promise, because Apple’s saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John we found a way to safely have browser engines on iOS. And you can do it too. In
⏹️ ▶️ John fact, Blink is based on WebKit anyway, so it’s not that different, right? Stuff like that, I give a thumbs up.
⏹️ ▶️ John The streaming game thing, it’s like, Apple, just, it’s not, it’s no skin off your back if they do
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Honestly, I don’t, you know, like, let it happen, take your cut of it. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John let, it’s not, that’s again, not breaking the brand promise. I don’t think people are gonna be confused, like, what is this?
⏹️ ▶️ John A game store inside a game? Like people will figure it out. It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John Roblox is allowed to do it because they have quote unquote experiences, not games. Like no one is fooled.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everyone can figure it out. Stuff like that should have been happening forever. And it getting tied
⏹️ ▶️ John up in all of this is basically like, I don’t know, it’s a happy
⏹️ ▶️ John accident. It’s a nice that they’re being forced to do it, but almost everything else having to do with this is
⏹️ ▶️ John unrelated to that and is like essentially asking to Sonofsky’s point Apple to break their brand promise
⏹️ ▶️ John by making the iPhone a more dangerous and worse platform in the hopes of providing
⏹️ ▶️ John a more competitive marketplace, but don’t worry, Apple’s gonna make sure that doesn’t happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a lot. We should also mention that the official release, like the very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey broad, I think it was like on the Apple homepage or whatever release about this, was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the crankiest piece of PR or news release from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a company that I have seen in a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It was- And Tenegate was probably crankier.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true, but this was close, man. This was angry. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought, I thought they did a pretty good job. People, people, I mean, it could have been worse, like, because I think what
⏹️ ▶️ John they were saying was true. They’re like, look, we’re being forced to do this. We’re doing it in the best
⏹️ ▶️ John way we can. And all of their, their language was like, here’s how we’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John it to minimize the damage to our brand promise. I know I keep saying brand promise.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a marketing term, essentially saying the iPhone, it’s a place where it’s safe to install apps and the apps probably
⏹️ ▶️ John aren’t scams. Again, see all the asterisks about how Apple does that in the App Store. Like, and there’s one place
⏹️ ▶️ John to get everything and everything’s simple and it all goes through Apple and you get refunds from Apple. Like that is the brand promise of the iPhone. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the EU is saying, you must right now break that promise. And Apple’s like, here’s how we’re minimizing
⏹️ ▶️ John the damage. Then we’ve decided to do it this way because this was the best possible
⏹️ ▶️ John way we figured out to do this while still being compliant. Everything they say is like, this is
⏹️ ▶️ John bad, but we’re trying to make it as less bad as we possibly
⏹️ ▶️ John can. And that’s why it sounds cranky because they don’t sound happy about any of this. They’re not bragging about any of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John The only thing they’re bragging about is we think this is the least bad
⏹️ ▶️ John option. When just paragraph after paragraph of like, and here’s how we’re trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to mitigate this damage. And again, they never actually address the actual point, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is like, hey, how about allowing competition along the axis of business terms? like no that’s not a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Rest assured we’re not doing that. But within these other realms, here’s how we’re minimizing the damage.
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#askatp: One AirPod?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Darren Kelkoff writes, with AirPods Pro or Amateur, which, very well done, as John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey still prefers, do you guys always wear them in both ears or do you ever do a single ear?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you go single ears, is it always the same side or do you alternate? I suppose that for some folks, charge level could play
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a role here, but I find myself to never be low on AirPod charge, probably because the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey super sad noise they play when they do get low is conditioning to never let it happen. I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually talking to a friend of mine, Sam, about this recently. And Sam has kids who are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bit older than mine, actually roughly your kids’ age, John, just a little bit younger than yours,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe. And he was saying that both of his kids, they pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much always have one AirPod in. May or may not be playing anything, but it’s almost like a aesthetic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey choice at this point, which I found very fascinating. But to actually answer the question. For me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will use two AirPods when I am either by myself or doing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something where I’m not expected to be talked to, you know, nobody’s going to be talking to me, like maybe I’m exercising or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that. But if there’s ever a situation where I think someone might be talking to me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even though the transparency mode does work pretty well, I typically will go one AirPod only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I alternate which side depending on, you know, is the TV that the kids are watching on my left-hand side,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then I’ll put the left one in. Am I in bed? Well, I sleep on the right-hand side of the bed if I’m on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my back, and so I’ll put my right AirPod in if I’m listening to something, but I want to leave the left ear available
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Aaron to talk to me or whatever the case may be. So I do all of the above,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I will do it all situationally. Marco, let’s talk about how you use your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AirPods, and then, John, you can wrap this up, please.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I use both of my AirPods Pros or neither of them. I don’t do the one-in,
⏹️ ▶️ John The only time I do one ear is, as was alluded to in the question, if the battery in one of them is bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John And this happens to me a surprising amount. Why does it happen? I don’t know. Sometimes I put both my AirPods in the case and one of
⏹️ ▶️ John them doesn’t charge. And oh, you’ve got grit or dirt in your case. Make sure the contacts are clean. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John tried so many things. It’s just sometimes, sometimes I take my AirPods out, one of them is 100% and one of them goes
⏹️ ▶️ John do do do do do do. It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco super sad sound they play when they don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John battery. And when that happens to me, I put the sad one back in the case where for some reason it charges
⏹️ ▶️ John in the exact same case. Now it’s charging. And I use the one until the other one
⏹️ ▶️ John is charged up a little bit. And when I do it, I, well, you don’t have a choice if the
⏹️ ▶️ John battery is low on one, that’s the one I have to put back in the charging case. But if I did have a choice,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would put the right one in. But yeah, but I want both of them in most of the time.
#askatp: App/game ideas
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron Thomas writes, are there any types of apps that you would have considered creating, if not for an oversaturation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the App Store market? For example, camera app with manual controls, to-do checklists, journals, et cetera.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sub-question, if you were to develop a game, what type of game would you make? For me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have thought about doing a to-do app and or a shopping app. Both of these, I feel like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even though I found options for both that I like, there are things that I would have maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey done differently. But A, the things that I found that I like, Anylist for shopping
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apps and DUE for to-do lists. Those are close enough to what I want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it’s not like compelling me to do something different. And even if I wanted to do something different,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s such a saturated market that I don’t think I would touch it. Since we started with Marco first, let’s go John
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wait, Casey, you don’t have a game idea? Oh, no.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, like maybe, I don’t wanna spoil it for people who haven’t heard it, There’s a members
⏹️ ▶️ John only special episode where I talk about an app I was considering making. And one of the reasons I have
⏹️ ▶️ John not made that app is due to oversaturation in the app store market. Uh, I think a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot of the ideas I have for apps, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John are rejected not because of oversaturation in the market, but just because what I said before, either fear
⏹️ ▶️ John that it wouldn’t be accepted or sure knowledge that it would be accepted. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John that I think is my personal biggest turn, especially since one of my passions is
⏹️ ▶️ John system extension type applications on the Mac. And I don’t sell enough copies of anything
⏹️ ▶️ John to sell outside the app store, just to deal with the hassle of accepting payments on my
⏹️ ▶️ John own or whatever. So I’m kind of stuck in the Mac app store for any of my small
⏹️ ▶️ John apps, right? And the Mac app store disallows private API usage,
⏹️ ▶️ John for example, and tons of useful kinds of applications that exist
⏹️ ▶️ John already. Sometimes they’re in saturated markets. The door is closed to me because
⏹️ ▶️ John if I wanted to make them, I’d either have to make them free or I would have to sell them outside the Mac App Store,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is a fixed cost hurdle that I must
⏹️ ▶️ John overcome to get a system up that does that. And I don’t think I would ever sell enough copies to make it worthwhile.
⏹️ ▶️ John As for developing a game, I know enough about game development to know that I should never do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because game development is a lot harder than you think it is. If you’re a programmer, you think game development is writing a
⏹️ ▶️ John cool game engine, when game development is actually like writing an essay. It’s the creative content
⏹️ ▶️ John of the game that takes all the time, talent, energy, money.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why AAA video games cost hundreds of millions of dollars. That money is not spent on the
⏹️ ▶️ John people who are writing the game engine. 20 people are writing the game engine, or maybe 100 people, but a thousand
⏹️ ▶️ John people are making content for the game. And that’s what makes the game good, the content.
⏹️ ▶️ John What happens in the game? How does the gameplay work? Where are the different levels? Like that
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff takes so much longer than you think it does. And it is so much harder than you think it is. Like, great, and now I
⏹️ ▶️ John have an engine. All I gotta do is make some levels and I’ll be done with my game. You haven’t even started making your game.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll just make some levels. Really, will you? Making some levels. If it was that easy, everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John would be a millionaire game developer. That is the hard part, not the programming part of it, which is sad
⏹️ ▶️ John news for lots of developers who wanna make a game and they think, as long as I get a cool
⏹️ ▶️ John game engine, I’ll be ready to go. You are not. You are not ready to go. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey to go anymore
⏹️ ▶️ John than if you say, I’m gonna manufacture a film camera and you manufacture the world’s greatest film
⏹️ ▶️ John camera. You’re like, now I’m ready for my Oscar. It’s like, no, now you have to make your movie. Like, I’ll just shoot some stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John and then I’ll have a movie. That’s the hard part. Making the movie is the hard part. Making the camera is not the hard part.
⏹️ ▶️ John Making the movie is. Lots of people have really good cameras. Not a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ John win an Oscar for their movies. So, no, I have not considered making a game because I know I am not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not quite as negative on the idea of making a game as John is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe you’re better at it than I am. I just know it’s a skill that I don’t have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I guess technically I’ve already shipped a game in the Overcast Watch app, but it’s not much of one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I wouldn’t shy away from making a game because I don’t think I could do it. I would shy away
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from a game is I wouldn’t think it would be very fun. One of the biggest challenges
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of game development, from the very little bit of it that I understand, is that you actually end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up putting a decent amount of work into a game before you really know whether it’s even fun or not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if it’s not very fun, it’s kind of hard to recover from that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I don’t like developing that way, where there’s so much up front before you even know is this concept
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even a good idea or not. But the bigger problem why I wouldn’t make a game,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I have a couple of ideas here and there that I’ve had over the years. I’ve never been super motivated to make them, in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part, because I’m not that much of a gamer. And so I’d be the worst person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to try to make a game. Like, believe me, we know this from the world of podcasts, because there are so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many people who have tried to bring it into the world of podcasts over the years, who don’t really like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcasts that much. But they smelled money or opportunity, and like, ooh, I hear a podcaster bait, let’s bring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it into that market. We see the results of that. It’s people who make crappy podcasts and crappy podcast apps. Like that’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s people who are in it for the wrong reasons. If I made a game,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I would be in it for wrong reasons also, because I’m just, I’m not that much of a gamer, and so. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John no, but if you made a game, you’d be making a game that you had an interest in. Like that’s the good thing about games. Like if you want to minimize all the
⏹️ ▶️ John things that I said, let’s say for example, you want to bypass a lot of that. Make a Solitaire game. I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s an oversaturated market, but you don’t have to come up with the game. Solitaire already exists. You don’t have to make levels. You don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have to make content. You just have to make the engine that runs Solitaire and maybe do one or two vaguely
⏹️ ▶️ John innovative things and you’ve made a Solitaire game. And maybe you have an itch because you’re like, I’ve tried all the Solitaire games but they never
⏹️ ▶️ John do this one thing that I’m interested in. And so you make a Solitaire game. Like there are ways to make a game
⏹️ ▶️ John without having to spend years making content or even have to make any kind of levels or anything like that. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if that’s your passion, you know, like you have some idea for a game. You’re like, oh, I’m not much of a gamer. But clearly
⏹️ ▶️ John there are some things that you think this would be fun to do. And I haven’t seen anything else out there like that. You could make that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if it is a game idea that either is based on something that already exists, like Solitaire,
⏹️ ▶️ John or is simple enough that you don’t have to be an excellent level designer and make enough content
⏹️ ▶️ John to satisfy users or whatever, it is possible to, as just a plain programmer who’s not a game
⏹️ ▶️ John designer, to come up with an idea that sort of hits that sweet spot. And I think you would be interested in it, even
⏹️ ▶️ John though you’re not a gamer, because you would have had, like you had this idea for a game, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you could be successful in that. It’s just, you really have to be careful with what you pick.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yeah, that’s a good point.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Plus, I thought you were gonna say total annihilation or whatever it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I don’t have the skill to make anything like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is probably a game you should not try to make. Because that does have a lot of content.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, a lot of content. And I mean, that’s a whole RTS. First of all, the RTS genre appears not to exist
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anymore, which is very sad to me. Oh, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sure it exists. Everything is out there in some sub-community.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, didn’t they all become Dota’s or whatever those things are? it became all, they basically turned into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco RPGs, which is a, it’s a totally fine game genre but it’s not one that I’m interested
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in at all. Whereas RTSs were wonderful. Anyway, so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the other half of the question of like, are there any other types of apps I’ve considered creating if not for an oversaturation of the market,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t really have any massively strong ideas of things I want to create at the moment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are not just overcast. But one idea that I’ve been percolating in my head is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically a music listening app specifically optimized for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco jam band concerts. I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John gonna say it’s a fish app. Yeah, basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the problem is, I have lots of ideas on how I could do this well in a way that would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco please me. And the problem is the market for it would just be so small.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because there already are lots of alternative music players on iOS. So that market is there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that would be pretty crowded to try to break into. And what I would wanna do with my app would be more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like optimized for how you select what to play and how it is displayed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the app and things like that if you have a large collection of jam band concerts like I do. But again, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco market for that’s gonna be like 10 people. So I don’t know if I’m ever going to make it just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the amount of work it would take to make that is way higher than the value
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even I would probably get out of it. and there just is not enough of an audience for that. So it’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not really a question of oversaturation as much as insufficient demand.
⏹️ ▶️ John What about audio editor? Do you consider that oversaturated or does that just seem like too much work?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, breaking into people’s professional workflows is very difficult. If it was the only thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was working on, I think I could make that happen. And again, it wouldn’t have a big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco market, but I could at least make a decent one. But it’s so much work to make a decent one that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think I could do it while juggling almost anything else in my life.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you think that market is oversaturated? On the Mac specifically, obviously we’re not talking about Windows, it’s gonna be like a Windows. On the Mac specifically,
⏹️ ▶️ John there is like Adobe Audition, there’s whatever that free one is, Audacity, I think. Yep.
⏹️ ▶️ John There is Logic, obviously.
⏹️ ▶️ John Reaper. The one that Snell uses, what is that one called? Ferrite. Ferrite, Ferrite, yeah. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think it’s oversaturated, but there are a lot of big competitors. Adobe is a big competitor,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is a big competitor, and there’s also, like the ferrite, there are some indie
⏹️ ▶️ John lower, you know, there’s some competition kind of at your level as well. So I wouldn’t say it’s oversaturated,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s not like it’s clear, they’ll be like, oh, finally, a Mac audio editor, I’ve been waiting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and also like, you know, what people want in an audio editor is all over the map,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there’s lots of different directions that it’s going. Like for instance, there’s all these, there’s these like, these things like Descript,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these text-based ones where they transcribe the audio and then you kind of edit the text. So there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the, and some of them are web-based, some of them are native, some of them are iOS only, some of them are Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s kind of all over the place. There’s a lot of options. And because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco professional tools, one of the reasons why pro tools like Logic and like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pro tools and like Photoshop and things like that, one of the reasons why they tend to be large
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and bloated is that everyone has some different need for their workflow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or their situation.
⏹️ ▶️ John That would happen with your Jamban app too, by the way. If you made that, everyone would be like, I love your app, but can you add this feature? Can you add that? And
⏹️ ▶️ John these would all be the same Phish fans, but the union of all their feature requests, like I’ll buy your
⏹️ ▶️ John app as soon as you add my two features. So many, they would want so many features, just the Phish fans
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. So anything where you’re serving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody’s workflow needs, somebody’s workflow needs like an audio editor, you’re gonna have very, very strong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pressure to make the app very broad, to just add a whole bunch of features to satisfy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh, well, my company would buy 15 licenses of your app if only you added
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this one little change over here.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, digital watermarking for more efficient dynamic ad insertion, you’d be like, what?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because even if you’re making like a podcast-focused audio editor, what does the market for podcast-focused
⏹️ ▶️ John audio editors look like. It’s not people with shows like ours. It’s everybody else and the things they want out of a podcast focused
⏹️ ▶️ John audio editor, you are not going to be enthusiastic about giving them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. It’s Yeah, because the people who would buy it would mostly be, you know, like the big podcast production studios and like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re not gonna buy my app
⏹️ ▶️ John has to work with avid or whatever, like they have workflows that are alien.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, they’re gonna use like all the highest end stuff with their staff of 60 people producing a podcast like they’re,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re not going to use my little indie Mac app. It’s optimized for making shows like this.
⏹️ ▶️ John We need collaborative editing of the podcast by seven people simultaneously through the web.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly. So yeah, so that’s one of the many reasons why I’m still working on Overcast.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco First of all, I like working on Overcast, and I’m not really feeling any pressure to stop doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. But also, I don’t really have any other better ideas right now that I’d rather
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be doing. So I’m going to keep doing this for a while.
#askatp: Apple Music settings
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Christian Kent writes, what audio settings do you use on Apple Music? And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it has a bunch of options here and I’m happy to read them off, but where am I looking to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey answer this question? Cause I genuinely have no idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John Go to the support article, it’s linked there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did, but that didn’t talk about, it talked about like EQ and I didn’t see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John anything else.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is the music app on the Mac. You can see the equalizer thing. I think that’s where a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot of these things are.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think so. This is like spatialized
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco stereo. all iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I thought this was all iOS stuff. But so anyway, so Christian writes spatialized stereo off or fixed or head
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tracked sound enhancer, off or fit or 50% or high 100% sound enhance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sound equalizer offer a preset or a personal one. Dolby Atmos automatic are always on or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off high quality 256 or a lack 2448 or a lack 24192 lossless via
⏹️ ▶️ Casey headphone cable or AirPod Pro slash max wireless. So I mean, to the to the ones that I can answer because I know the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey answer. I do not spatialize stereo. I do use Dolby Atmos when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey possible. I don’t even know where to look for the sound enhancer and equalizer. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think I cranked up the Apple Music streaming quality and Spotify streaming quality to whatever the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey max was. And I typically use AirPod Pros. So those are my answers. I don’t think that’s gonna be satisfying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Christian, but I don’t know where to look for these.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I’m even more boring than that. Like, on iOS, I have everything sets the defaults except spatialized
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stereo which I have set to off because I believe the default is kind of the automatic thing and I hate I hated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it very much. So I turn off all of these enhancements on iOS and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the main reasons why first of all like my iOS listening setup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is almost always either my car or AirPods Pro and in both of those cases
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we are not talking about audiophile grade setups we’re talking about decent consumer level stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but not audiophile grade setups. And that’s what my phone is for. At my desk,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do have an audiophile grade setup. What I don’t believe in though, is all this lossless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high bit rate or high sample rate stuff. I would challenge anybody out there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you have any way to set up a blind test between your lossless option
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and decent compression, like 256k bits or higher, I would challenge you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be able to tell the difference. I really don’t think you can. Now, if it makes you happy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to turn on your lossless audio and crank all these settings up and be like, playing at 24, 192, which your ears cannot tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the difference, if it makes you happy to do that, fine. No harm done.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But you won’t hear the difference between that and regular bit rate, high quality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compressed stuff. You won’t hear that difference. So I don’t turn that kind of stuff on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think what matters a lot in your sound quality is the mix of what you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are listening to, which you have very little control over because it simply comes from the record companies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, you know, the mix matters a lot, the recording matters a lot, and the transducers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the headphones or speakers that you’re listening on, matter a lot. And everything else matters very,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very little or not at all. So, you know, some of these options, things like Dolby
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Atmos, that’s actually selecting a different mix if available. So it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might sound better, but it’s not really because of the Atmos, it’s because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re listening to a different mix. Spatialized stereo is messing with the mix.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it might sound better. If it sounds better to you, great. It does not sound better to me. Same thing with sound
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enhancer and sound equalizer. These are also just various ways to have the phone mess with the mix.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Listen to what pleases you. But for me, what I generally like is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less processing on the audio, not more. So I tend to listen to things as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flat as possible. No EQ, no processing, no spatialization.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And Atmos, if available, maybe, but most of what I listen to is not available, so it’s kind of a moot point.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I do the spatialized stereo off, because I also hate that. I hate the head track one,
⏹️ ▶️ John I hate the fixed one, I hate it all. The John Syracuse story. Right, that’s an
⏹️ ▶️ John example of the phone, or whatever, or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, taking the audio and changing it in a way that it hopes will be more pleasing to you. All right, so
⏹️ ▶️ John somebody, you know, made a song and they mixed it and they recorded it and they put it down and the phone is like, on its way
⏹️ ▶️ John out, we’re going to do something different with it. And whatever it’s doing with it, I do not like, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t find it pleasing. So always leave that off. Sound Enhancer and Equalizer.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Sound Enhancer is off, unless it’s on by default. But this brings
⏹️ ▶️ John me to like Equalizer brings me to the next thing, which is the the only thing that I do on my phone
⏹️ ▶️ John specifically to mess with the sound on its way out. And it is based on a process that I performed
⏹️ ▶️ John on this show a year ago or two years ago or whatever it was, where we
⏹️ ▶️ John found these apps that you can find on the app store, mostly not scammy, but
⏹️ ▶️ John not particularly high quality apps that will play a series of tones for
⏹️ ▶️ John you and ask you if you heard them. Do you remember when we did this? Like the hearing test?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah. I remember that this was a thing And I think I still have the app on one of my home screens cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve been meaning to do it for literally years. Where is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that? I made one of these
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there’s a bunch of apps on the app store that will do this, but essentially what they’ll do is they’ll, they’re not great apps
⏹️ ▶️ John I found. They don’t like, you want it to be like a, you know a good app that’s like, now you’re playing a tone. Do you hear it? Do you not
⏹️ ▶️ John hear it? Anyway, it’s like a hearing test where they play a series of tones to test what kind of frequencies
⏹️ ▶️ John you can hear. And if you’re an older person as in older than 20, you should try this
⏹️ ▶️ John because as you, as you age past that you’re 20s, you start losing hearing and
⏹️ ▶️ John in different frequencies, right? And the result of this is a profile of here are the
⏹️ ▶️ John frequencies you can hear and how well you can hear them. And you can make iOS supports
⏹️ ▶️ John using that profile for all of its audio playback. You can say, I did, I use this janky
⏹️ ▶️ John app and it came up with a profile for me. Now iOS, please use this profile. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially like an equalizer setting, but it’s based on how well each one of your ears hears
⏹️ ▶️ John certain frequencies. So I enabled that way back then, and it’s still enabled.
⏹️ ▶️ John As far as I’m aware, all audio that comes out of my phone to go to whatever, gets passed
⏹️ ▶️ John through that. And what that’s trying to do is saying, okay, you have trouble in your left ear, you can only hear
⏹️ ▶️ John like 95% of this frequency. So I’m gonna boost that frequency to hopefully get
⏹️ ▶️ John it to the level that it should be, the 100% that everyone else hears.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I enabled that years ago, and I was surprised to see when I looked up to answer this question that it is still enabled.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like, what you want, it’s kind of like doing like parametric EQ for like home theater setup. What you want
⏹️ ▶️ John is to like, okay, phone, make it so my old person ears hear closer
⏹️ ▶️ John to what a young person’s ears. But it can’t solve everything. If you just can’t hear this frequency because you’re too old and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John too high, boosting the volume of like, you know, 18,000, you know, Hertz is not going to help you
⏹️ ▶️ John if you just literally can’t hear it, right? It’s only so much it can do. But I feel like when I
⏹️ ▶️ John did the before and after, I’m like, yeah, I think that that is an improvement. So
⏹️ ▶️ John that is the only thing that I’m aware of that my phone is doing to mess with the sound.
⏹️ ▶️ John Within the individual apps, I will use Marco’s voice boost feature on podcasts that have
⏹️ ▶️ John bad audio mixes. Oh yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, and I, you know, you can do it on, it’s a per podcast setting. I can say this podcast, they don’t know how to mix their audio,
⏹️ ▶️ John turn on voice boost. But that’s just within Overcast. Voice boost doesn’t apply when I’m playing songs in
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Music, right? In terms of the quality, I’m like Marco, as long as it is not
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, an ancient MP3 from the 90s. It has a reasonable bit rate. I don’t care about lossless.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t care about 24 bit, 192 kilohertz. My ears are too old to hear that. My audio equipment is not good
⏹️ ▶️ John enough. Half the time I’m listening on AirPods, third
⏹️ ▶️ John gen, like forget it, you know, 24 bit, 192 kilohertz. No, my AirPods, it makes no, it’s pointless.
⏹️ ▶️ John Same thing with like lossless via cable and no, I don’t care about any of that. So in
⏹️ ▶️ John general, I don’t want the phone missing with my audio with the one exception being that thing. And I kind of wish Apple would build
⏹️ ▶️ John that into iOS. Like maybe it is, maybe there’s some accessibility setting where it will take you through
⏹️ ▶️ John the hearing test, build your personal hearing profile, and then just apply
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Because when I tried to reproduce this a little while ago, I’m like, what was that? I was just like, okay, so what was
⏹️ ▶️ John that app called? I can never remember the names and you search on the app store.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mimi hearing test is the one that we had suggested years ago that I think a listener suggested to
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I downloaded a bunch of them. I’m like, was this the app that I used? They’re all not that great. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes they’re even hard to use. Like you have to be in a really quiet place and you have to use, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, whatever headphones you’re gonna be using. You’re like, am I not hearing this because my AirPods are too bad? Should I use better headphones
⏹️ ▶️ John or should I use the headphones I’m gonna be listening on? It is a fraught process that I think I did an
⏹️ ▶️ John okay job of. many years ago, so I’m keeping the profile enabled, but I really wish I had more actionable advice
⏹️ ▶️ John for all of the people who are, again, older than their 20s listening to this, who may be wondering what frequencies
⏹️ ▶️ John they can no longer hear as well, and they wanna build themselves a profile. And
⏹️ ▶️ John my answer is that Apple should add that in iOS 18 to be something that everybody can do through an interface that’s nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you to our sponsors this week, Green Chef and AdBlock Pro, and thank you to our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco members who support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash join. and we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even mean to begin
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental John
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accidental, oh it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ John show notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-E-R
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental, they didn’t mean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Accidental, tech podcast so
Casey’s excited
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I was watching all these video reviews and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am excited to get my vision Pro on Friday and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Use it as a Mac monitor
⏹️ ▶️ John About that. Can you tell me I saw some of the reviews they were like, oh and you get a Mac monitor and they rattled Off
⏹️ ▶️ John the resolution. I’m like, wait a second. Is that resolution? Do you know like the virtual
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac screen? What is the resolution in? in both points and pixels?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I understand this, but it’s one of those things where my understanding is hazy and I will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably not verbalize it well, but let me give it a shot. So let me set a little more context. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was thinking about this a few days back before all the reviews had come out. And it occurred to me that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first of all, I think we had all been thinking the same thing, that it could be neat to have your laptop,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I presume this works with the desktop, although I don’t know. I think MKBHD made passing mention that it does. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyways, say you have a laptop because that’s what I’m used to and because laptops are superior. Am I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, Marco? So anyways, you have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you’re either at home but you’re not at your desk or perhaps you don’t have a second
⏹️ ▶️ Casey monitor at your desk or whatever the case may be, or maybe you’re remote and you would like to have a bigger
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screen. Well, what you can do is you can, using the Vision Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you’re all on the same iCloud ID and whatnot, you can literally just look at your laptop screen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and above your laptop screen in the virtual world, there’ll be a connect button.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you cast your eyes onto the connect button, you pinch and you wait for a few moments and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey suddenly the physical real world laptop screen goes dark. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there is, I think it’s powered by the same like VNC++ if you will, that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new and I think the most recent release of Mac OS. But anyways, one way or another, a virtual
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screen appears within the Vision Pro world. And then,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we’ll talk about resolution and stuff in a second, but you can use your Mac, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, with the Mac’s keyboard, the Mac’s mouse on this virtual screen in your Vision Pro world. And then presumably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can put the native Slack and the native messages and the native Safari and the native this and that in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like an array all around your Mac screen. And additionally, you can make that Mac screen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 50 feet tall if you want. And all of that is possible because you’re living in this virtual space. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wrote a blog post about this a few days back. And what occurred to me, which was, I think, the more interesting thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that obviously people at Apple seem to have thought about, but I hadn’t thought about is, okay, that’s all well and good, but,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, I’ve understood that typing on the vision pro is challenging.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, and so, and so it occurred to me, it would be nice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I could use Universal Control, which is the same technology where you can control an iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s sitting next to your computer. If I could use Universal Control to say, cast my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eyes at the Vision OS Slack. So I’m not running Slack on my computer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in this hypothetical, I’m running it within the Vision Pro adjacent to my computer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screen, but it’s the native Vision OS, Vision Pro Slack. Well, if I cast my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eyes over there, can I clickety clack and type on the physical Mac keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that that is sitting in front of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and have it appear within slack. And if I can just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chef’s kiss just perfect. That would be amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yes, you can. You’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey demos of it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, at the time I wrote the blog post, I hadn’t. But now and this is what I bring this why I bring this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up is now we’ve seen the demos and there I don’t recall any one video that did a particularly satisfying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey job of it. But most of them, at least in passing said, oh, and you can slide your mouse over, which
⏹️ ▶️ John MKBHD’s video did a good job of showing this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true, that’s fair. And so anyway, you can slide your mouse over if you so desire, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you get like an, or excuse me, an iPad style mouse.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is something we were thinking about a while back. We’re like, well, surely you can’t have a mouse cursor just floating in the middle of nowhere. And you
⏹️ ▶️ John like the mouse cursor is never going to appear like just randomly like floating,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it will appear within the windows of either, obviously your Mac where the mouse cursor
⏹️ ▶️ John lives, but also within the, I don’t know what you call them, the windows of a native Vision
⏹️ ▶️ John OS app, that is the only place the cursor will appear. And when it’s there, it looks like an iPad cursor with
⏹️ ▶️ John a little translucent circle. When you pull it out of there, it does not pop off and just be free
⏹️ ▶️ John floating. It always has to go to, okay, it’s on your Mac screen, it’s in your Vision OS thing or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that I thought was a good way to solve this because you really do not want that cursor to be like, where is it? Is it
⏹️ ▶️ John up on the ceiling? it down on the floor, it’s always going to be on one of the windows.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And so in this theoretical world, I could be at the line
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again, leaving aside the, Oh my God, this guy, can you believe this guy? Leaving that aside? And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey big asterisk. I could hypothetically be at a library or Wegmans or what have you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and or on a plane. And I have my computer open and I connect to the computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so now the computer screen goes black. Nobody can see what the computer’s doing except me and I have a 10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey foot wide screen in front of me littered all around it with different vision OS windows
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I can control all of them via either by eyes, the keyboard, the mouse or a combination
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there of the three of them. Now, john coming all the way back to your question, well, what resolution
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that? And what was interesting was, I had I had heard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the keynote that it’s a 4k screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what Apple kept saying.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And Apple’s been consistent about that, but if you read, I’m pretty sure it was in Nele’s written review
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the Verge. Apparently what it is, is that the Mac is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey broadcasting, for lack of a better word, a 5K display. So the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac thinks it’s connected to a 5K display, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what’s actually getting sent to the Vision Pro is a down-sampled 4K version of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John And when you
⏹️ ▶️ John say 4K though, what is the resolution in pixels? That’s what I’m getting at.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because it wasn’t, I heard everyone banning around 2560 by 1440, which is the 1X version of 5K. Right, that’s what I was getting at.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like 2560 by 1440 pixels is not 4K. 2560 by 1440 points is also not 4K.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s bigger than 4K. Yeah, that’s 5K.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like, okay, but like the virtual screen, like what,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, essentially if you pull it real close to you, like fat bits, get it real close and like
⏹️ ▶️ John look at a single pixel in photo, a single retina pixel in some app that lets you do that. Like, like how many
⏹️ ▶️ John retina pixels across is that thing? Cause obviously you can make it bigger and smaller, but you’re not adding
⏹️ ▶️ John pixels when you do that. You’re just literally making all the pixels bigger.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and by the way, and I would argue that if you’re doing pixel level work,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Vision Pro is the wrong tool for that job because nothing about the Vision Pro is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pixel perfect. It’s, it is, the whole thing is like free floating. Everything’s fluid.
⏹️ ▶️ John but the good thing about Vision Pro is you can literally shove it up to your face. So the pixels
⏹️ ▶️ John get really big. And then it’s like fat bits, but it’s like literally putting your face close to the monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ John We don’t wanna do that because it’s uncomfortable and you’ll get nose grease on your monitor. But with Vision Pro, none of those things are a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you can shove the screen right at your face. Rather than using like, you know, option scroll wheel in Photoshop
⏹️ ▶️ John to zoom in Photoshop, you can zoom in Vision OS by literally pulling that window closer to you until
⏹️ ▶️ John the individual pixels are the size of tennis balls. And then you could, if you wanted, look at them with your eyes,
⏹️ ▶️ John or more likely you’re just gonna use your mouse or your trackpad. And now your targets with your mouse or your trackpad
⏹️ ▶️ John are seven inches across for each pixel.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, do you not use the accessibility zoom thing where you hold down Control and scroll on your Macs?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh no, I do. Oh, I do all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like that’s, I enable that on all my Macs and I use it constantly. Constantly.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, but like, but within graphics apps, like when I’m in Photoshop, this drives me nuts in Photoshop. Adobe, if
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re out there listening, for those that don’t know, if you’re using Photoshop, one of the shortcuts they have is instead
⏹️ ▶️ John of control scroll wheel, which is what I have the accessibility thing bound to, which just takes the images on your screen
⏹️ ▶️ John and blows it up. Like it doesn’t add any more pixels, it gets blurry, you know, whatever. That’s great and everyone should enable
⏹️ ▶️ John that. It’s an amazing feature as your eyes get older, right? But in Photoshop, if you hold down the option key and hit
⏹️ ▶️ John your scroll wheel or swipe or whatever on your mouse or two finger swipe on a track pad, it will zoom
⏹️ ▶️ John within Photoshop, as in it will change the magnification of the pixel-based image that you’re seeing. So instead
⏹️ ▶️ John of being 100%, it’ll be 200%, 3%. So the images on your screen are getting bigger,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re just zooming in Photoshop. And I wish, I wish so badly that when I did that,
⏹️ ▶️ John it zoom centered on where my cursor is, but it doesn’t. It just zooms
⏹️ ▶️ John based on how the, essentially the crop of your current view is showing like it’s centered.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because often there’s a little section I wanna zoom in on, and I’ll put my cursor over it, and I’ll hold down option,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’ll swipe my scroll wheel, And that part that I wanted to go, we’ll go flying off the edge of the crop area because
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t zoom where my cursor is. But anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so reading from the Verge, there’s a lot of very complicated display scaling going on behind the scenes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here. But the easiest way to think about it is that you’re basically getting a 27 inch retina display like you’d find on an iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or a studio display. Well, an older iMac or studio display. Your Mac thinks it’s connected to a 5K display
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a resolution of 5120 by 2880. And it runs macOS at a two to one logical resolution of 2560 by 1440, just like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a 5K display. You can pick other resolutions, but the device warns you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they’ll be lower quality. That virtual display is then streamed as a 4K, here you go, John, 3560 by 2880
⏹️ ▶️ Casey video to the Vision Pro, where you can just make it as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey big as you want. The upshot of all this is that 4K content runs at native 4K resolution. It has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the pixels to do it, just like on an iMac, but you have a grand total of 2560 by 1440, I guess, points to place Windows
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in, regardless of how big you make the Mac display in space, and you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not seeing a pixel perfect 5K image. So that says to me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Mac again, is rendering everything at a pixel doubled 5K, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s streaming, if you will, a video stream. I don’t think that’s literally how it works. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John Plus. Yes. I wonder if that’s like an M2 limitation. I do wonder, excuse me, do wonder why they chose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it could just be like the bandwidth of that stream. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, whatever they’re doing to have super low latency
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen sharing, I’m sure there is some kind of upper bound to what the resolution
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they’re sending can actually be while still keeping it that low latency and that reliable over whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wireless connection it’s using.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so I am super stoked for this. I genuinely think if I can get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over myself, which is a humongous if, if I can get over myself, you know, just today
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I went to Wegmans because I typically like to go somewhere on Wednesday mornings, as I think I’ve said before, to do my research for ATP and prep
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for it and whatnot. And I can do that just fine without having a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey silly thing strapped to my face, but it would be so much nicer if I had this silly thing strapped to my face.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And uh, and so, yeah, I’m, I’m really excited to try this. And I hope I can build up the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey self-confidence to do this outside of the house, which I’m not sure if I can, but I’m so, so excited.
⏹️ ▶️ John If we don’t mention this, people are going to send it to us. I’m hoping I’m saving us here. Uh, there is an app that
⏹️ ▶️ John someone put up, I think it’s on GitHub, that will essentially allow you to take Windows
⏹️ ▶️ John from your Mac, individual Windows, and make them appear as floating independent Vision OS
⏹️ ▶️ John Windows in Vision OS. I forget what that app is, but we’ll try to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. I have it, I have it. It’s called Ensemble. I have no idea the mechanism by which this works,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but yes, I’m aware of this as being a
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and we’re getting to the point of the resolution and how this app works versus how Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John thing works, I think the limiting factor is going to end up being like, or what is your bandwidth
⏹️ ▶️ John and latency between Vision OS, which is not connected in any physical way to your
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac, like it’s radios, right? We know that trying to drive
⏹️ ▶️ John very large number of pixels with low latency without any quality loss requires
⏹️ ▶️ John a very fast bus. For years, having external retina 5K display, it was
⏹️ ▶️ John difficult because none of the display buses that were available were up to the task. The one in the 5K iMac was split
⏹️ ▶️ John into two, right? Obviously we have displaced stream compression and you could
⏹️ ▶️ John do H.264 encoding or H.265 encoding to it, but then you have problems with latency and quality. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so that I feel like is the limiting factor here, whatever Ensemble is doing, it’s like, well, I just want it to be good enough.
⏹️ ▶️ John But already the Apple thing, which is only one Mac at a time and one screen on that one Mac at
⏹️ ▶️ John a time, even that is not the full resolution that is actually being rendered at, presumably
⏹️ ▶️ John for bandwidth and latency related reasons. Would it be cool
⏹️ ▶️ John if you could hook up your Mac with a wire to Vision Pro and essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John using the Vision Pro as the world’s fanciest display for your Mac with
⏹️ ▶️ John less quality loss and more bandwidth to have more screens? Yes, that would definitely be cool. Maybe a future version
⏹️ ▶️ John will do that wirelessly, we’ll see. But right now I feel like that is one limitation to keep
⏹️ ▶️ John in mind and to Marco’s point, If you’re doing something where it’s really important for you to be able to see those
⏹️ ▶️ John retina with hairlines, you’re probably not gonna be able to see them in Vision OS
⏹️ ▶️ John to start because you’re not even seeing the 5K resolution that the Mac is rendering
⏹️ ▶️ John at. You’re seeing a squished down version of that. And then on top of that, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John compression algorithm or latency, I’m not entirely sure it is 100%
⏹️ ▶️ John quality all the time, at least dynamically. Maybe it stabilizes to 100% quality, but in motion,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know how they can produce a zero latency pixel perfect image of even a 4K screen wirelessly,
⏹️ ▶️ John but maybe I’m not doing the math right. But anyway, it’s something considering. But I do think the ability to pull
⏹️ ▶️ John the virtual window close to your real nose, I guess,
⏹️ ▶️ John without getting nose grease on it, is a potential advantage for doing pixel precise work
⏹️ ▶️ John with an input method that is less precise than a mouse. Or with a mouse, because again, like to your point Casey,
⏹️ ▶️ John You can use your Mac trackpad or mouse and your Mac keyboard as input devices
⏹️ ▶️ John in Vision OS apps. It’ll look like an iPad cursor, but you do have that precision.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Don’t forget too, by the way, like, you know, for all that display, you know, compression of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having the Mac render itself to the 5K, then having it compressed down to 4K, then having it apply some kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of lossy compression algorithm to actually make it enough data to, you know, to work over the connection, then being displayed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in Vision OS window on 4K displays where the Vision OS window you’re looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at is not taking up the full display.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it is if you pull it close to your nose. And if you pull it real close to your nose, you’re using more than 4K for an eighth of the display.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but I’m saying like the physical displays inside the Vision Pro are themselves only about 4K
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, but if the display is, if you’re only seeing a tiny corner of the display, you’re using
⏹️ ▶️ John all 4K pixels in that one eyeball to show 1 16th of the virtual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, anyway, regardless, There are so many layers of compression and loss
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here, and interpolation, and skewing potentially. There
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are so many layers of processing going on with these pixels. That’s why I’m saying this is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pixel-precise device. It is not designed for that in any way, because it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just doing so many little tricks here and there. Like, well, we’re going to take this image here, and blur it over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here, and composite it over here, and render this over here, and then project it onto your eyes with this thing, this lens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and this angle, like there’s so much going on there. This is not a pixel perfect work device.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s fine. There’s lots of other things that we’ll be able to do, but that’s not one of
⏹️ ▶️ John them. David Chavez asked in the chat room, is it actually possible to pull the virtual Mac screen so close to you
⏹️ ▶️ John that you’re only seeing a tiny portion of it? I assume so, I don’t know. I’ve never tried it. And I didn’t see anyone
⏹️ ▶️ John in any of the demo videos tried either because they always like, they always demonstrate, look, you just grab the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John on the bottom of the window and you move the window farther and closer. And what they end up doing is moving it from four feet to
⏹️ ▶️ John five feet, to three feet, to four feet, but they never go, I’m gonna just pull this thing up, as you know, like, so
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s totally filling your field of view. It’s gotta be possible because you can leave the window, like the idea, Gruber’s
⏹️ ▶️ John talking about this in his review, I think. If you arrange all your windows around you, and you get up out of your seat,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you walk to another room, the windows stay in the room where you were when you were sitting in the chair,
⏹️ ▶️ John until and unless you hit that button to recenter them around yourself. So when you get up from your desk
⏹️ ▶️ John and start walking forward, I assume you’ll get closer and closer and closer to that one window that was in front of you or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John and eventually you’ll walk right through it. And right before you walk right through it, if it is at eye
⏹️ ▶️ John level, it has to be filling your field of view, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because you can play with that in the simulator, like, because, like, you can take, like, your PS5 controller with the simulator
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and, like, kind of walk around the windows. They start to fade away as you get too close, though, I think. I haven’t done it in a while.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, that may be the thing. Maybe they, like, you can’t actually get that close to them because they become so transparent, you can’t see anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe that. I think that happens. I can’t pull it up right now, but I think that’s what happened.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’ll be interesting things to see. But yeah, the other thing that I have not actually gotten an
⏹️ ▶️ John inclusive answer is like, oh, it’s more than 4K for each eyeball. And people think they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to see a 4K display. It’s like, well, not unless it fills every pixel of that display, which it probably won’t because it’s not even the right
⏹️ ▶️ John aspect ratio to begin with.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t even know if it can. I don’t even know if the OS allows a window to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco project one-to-one onto the output pixels.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yeah. You know, like I said, because maybe you can’t zoom it that far because it comes translucent. But the thing I never got the answer
⏹️ ▶️ John to is, does having a more than 4K display for each eye offer you more
⏹️ ▶️ John effective resolution than having a single display
⏹️ ▶️ John in front of you, not in a headset, that has as many pixels as one of the eyeballs? You know what I mean? Like, do you get more resolution
⏹️ ▶️ John from each eye having 4K pixels than two eyes looking at a real 4K screen? And I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. There could be some weird interpolation tricks you could do maybe, but I don’t, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. I mean, it seems to me that you should, especially when things are in motion, because they’re seeing two different images,
⏹️ ▶️ John but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m just not thinking it through. Anyway, yeah, limitations like the window fading
⏹️ ▶️ John are considerations that have to do with Vision OS that may prevent you from ever getting close
⏹️ ▶️ John enough, ever being able to see the window in an opaque manner, filling your field