600: Everyone Ends Up at Crab
15 Aug 2024The latest iPhone and Mac Mini rumors, “new” “content” for the Vision Pro, and Apple’s latest attack on creators.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: 🎉 Happy 600 Episodes, ATP! 🎉
- Follow-up:
- Vista-fication of macOS
- Is the problem really the UI? (via Nathanial Cohen)
- What if it’s actually about domestic abuse?
- The alerts will now be monthly
- How gas stations make money (via David)
- Gurman news dump
- iPhone 16 camera button
- Advantages of a plastic Apple Watch SE
- iPhone 17 Slim won’t fold
- Apple sends checks for butterfly keyboards
- Vision Pro updates
- Vista-fication of macOS
- The M4 Mac mini will be very mini
- Apple vs. Patreon
- Post-show: John uses a Meta Quest
- Members-only ATP Overtime: 2023 Mac sales as per CIRP
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Chapters
- 600! 🎉
- Mac permission alerts 🖼️
- Profit centers for gas stations
- Sponsor: 1Password XAM
- Latest iPhone, Watch rumors
- Vision Pro content updates
- Sponsor: Tailscale
- Mac Mini getting minier
- Apple needs more money
- Ending theme
- John’s Quest experience
600! 🎉
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is our 600th episode. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John crap! I didn’t even realize. I cannot believe Casey didn’t know this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I completely forgot. You really didn’t know? No, well, I knew, like, a few days ago, and I just hadn’t thought about it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey since then. Oh, man. Mr. Anniversary. Geez. I know. I have fallen down on the job.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Genuinely, I am gobsmacked, because I completely forgot that that was today. Holy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey crap. 600 episodes. How? I mean, it’s not our 600th.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s our 600 and something, because we have, like, like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John we did the special interview episode, and of course there’s all the member specials and so on and so forth. Even just in the main
⏹️ ▶️ John feed, because we did that interview special separately, we already passed 600. But anyway, it is the 600th
⏹️ ▶️ John numbered episode of ATP. John’s gonna, John. I’m just saying, like I said, what we’re celebrating is the
⏹️ ▶️ John roundness of the number that’s in front of the title and not necessarily the number of things that we have made.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, well, I will just say, in my typical fashion, I know I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say this a lot, but I really mean it, and I think it’s worth saying again, since we’re on 600. We are so very thankful for anyone who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is listening to our voices right now. I won’t belabor it because it may be too much, but anyone who is listening
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to us, anyone who’s a member, anyone who’s ever listened to us in the past, we thank you so very much for being here for 600 episodes. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was something like the 13th of March, thereabouts, in 2013, that this all officially got started. I forget the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey date off the top of my head. And here we are, 11 years later and change, and we are 600
⏹️ ▶️ Casey episodes in, and it has genuinely been, and hopefully will continue to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a very long time. One of the coolest things I’ve done in my whole life is getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to spend a bunch of time with you two and all of our wonderful listeners. And thank you for being here. It really means a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a perfect place to start. If you’re a new listener, episode 600, jump right in. Yeah, it’s a nice round number.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Works for me. I do. I don’t want to sap on this too long. But it is really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco remarkable that we make a living talking to our friends about computers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s incredible. I never would have guessed that as a young person. I always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanted to be a radio DJ when I was a young teen and preteen, that was my dream job.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now you get to do it, only you just play Phish.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, yeah, basically. Which, I mean, if you would have told me that a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John number of years ago, that would have been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty hard to believe. To be a DJ is actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apparently, not a very good job. It’s apparently a brutal business and not a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great career to pursue, nor a very particularly achievable one, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these days as there’s basically no radio left. And I would never have made it as a DJ because I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have the right voice, I don’t know enough about music, I’m not cool enough. There’s so many reasons I would never have made it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a DJ. I don’t speak well enough, but to be able to literally make a living
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talking to my friends in radio form and BSing about computers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s very special to me. So thank you, everybody.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, couldn’t agree more. We are incredibly lucky and incredibly thankful. And as a part
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the Relay 10 festivities that were last month, a lot was said from Mike
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Steven about how it’s really impressive to have a creative endeavor that has lasted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as long as Relay has. And we are a touch older than Relay, actually a little bit more than a year older than Relay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s really incredible that the three of us don’t hate each other. So I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very proud of that fact And I’m very, very thankful for both of you. And again, for all of our listeners. John, any sappy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey moments that you would like to contribute? Or shall I move right along to follow up?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, for people who don’t know and want to go back, if you listen to episode 400, which was a weird
⏹️ ▶️ John anniversary, but still a round number in front of the title, I gave my pitch of what I thought we were doing here at ATP,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I feel like I still feel the same way. So if you want to hear me say, what is ATP? What do you think it
⏹️ ▶️ John is? What do you think you’re doing here? My description is in episode 400, if you want to go back and check it out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Standard Syracuse response to sentimentality is a citation and follow-up.
⏹️ ▶️ John know, dry. Don’t repeat yourself. It’s good programming practice.
Mac permission alerts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, enough navel-gazing. Let’s do some follow-up. That’s what the people are here for. So, we have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a series of several pieces of feedback with regard to the macOS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey permissions alerts to set the stage here. It became public,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clear, whatever, in the last week or two that starting with, what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is it, Sequoia? I can never keep the version number straight anymore, as we learned in a past episode.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey With Sequoia, it will nag you every single week to let you you know, oh, something could be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recording your screen a week later. Oh, something could be recording your screen. We cool? We good? So Nathaniel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cohen writes with regard to that, I think by far the bigger problem than the alert rate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the alert UI. The alerts pop up in the rather crappy notification UI. There’s no history, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s no centralized view over the alert decision making that’s required.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A stream of randomly arriving requirements for user decisions can simply never meet the needed security
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and privacy objectives of the permission system. Also regarding migration of permission grants to a new system,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I personally hope there’s an option to turn this off. I want to revisit these prior decisions. Better still, I’d like a nice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey UI to centralize the decision-making with as much information as possible about what the thing is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that needs permission.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so Apple would probably say, well, we’ve already got a centralized thing. If you go to system settings and you go to like security
⏹️ ▶️ John and privacy or whatever, look, there’s all the permissions. And like many things in system settings, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John that that presentation of this information is inadequate and not particularly well
⏹️ ▶️ John organized, right? This is something that always annoys me about notifications. I always wish
⏹️ ▶️ John on all Apple devices that any notification that ever came in and that I dismissed and did something with
⏹️ ▶️ John ended up in a log somewhere where I can go through the history. Oh, you got this notification at this time and then at this time
⏹️ ▶️ John you took this action on it, right? Not forever, don’t keep a log forever, but keep a log for 24 hours or something because
⏹️ ▶️ John it kind of annoys me that there’s no one place I can go to see. Show me all the notifications, the
⏹️ ▶️ John ones that are pending, and the ones that I’ve dealt with within the last N hours, right? Just so I can get an overview.
⏹️ ▶️ John Permissions is the same deal. What I think, and this will be related to the
⏹️ ▶️ John next question, so I’ll just say it here instead of waiting till then. What I think is missing is
⏹️ ▶️ John a, essentially something that Google provides in its web interface in some fashion or another,
⏹️ ▶️ John like a security checkup, where you go to this place and say, tell me what the deal is with security in my system.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it shouldn’t be organized by permission the way things are now, like show me all
⏹️ ▶️ John the things with full disk access, show me all the things with that. It should be sort of organized with an acknowledgement
⏹️ ▶️ John of which things are more troublesome, right? So screen recording would be
⏹️ ▶️ John near the top and something, I don’t know, I can’t think of another permission, I have to open the thing, but something that’s less severe
⏹️ ▶️ John would be towards the bottom, right? Things, everything wouldn’t be exactly as, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John equal, like they wouldn’t all be equally important to you. Like, I don’t know, let’s see.
⏹️ ▶️ John Scrolling, scrolling. See, they’re not in the prior order, so I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John one that’s like, you know, not particularly, like media and Apple Music maybe would be
⏹️ ▶️ John towards the bottom, right? Or motion is fitness, whereas like camera, microphone, and screen recording would be
⏹️ ▶️ John near the top, right? Or reminders would be lower than contacts maybe and calendar.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, some sort of like centralized report in a nice UI that has organized the information
⏹️ ▶️ John for you and said, just so you know, here are the seven applications that
⏹️ ▶️ John can record your screen or have microphone access or cameras or whatever that have been installed in the last whatever months
⏹️ ▶️ John or that permissions have changed in the last, like a report screen. Like some, hey, they could use AI to
⏹️ ▶️ John do it. Some kind of way of organizing the information like a human
⏹️ ▶️ John would do to give you a one-page report that says, here’s what you need to know about your system. Here’s what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ John on on it. And it’s not like it would be asking you to do anything. At this point, it’s just saying, I just want you to know here’s the summary, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And what would show up on the summary is applications that you just installed that you gave screen permission to,
⏹️ ▶️ John some kind of time next to everything. This has had screen recording permission for this amount of time. Three new things
⏹️ ▶️ John have gone into the microphone category. And it would be great if you could pick the things that you cared about more. Like, again,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not just a historical list, not just a thing subdivided by app or subdivided
⏹️ ▶️ John by a permission, but like a report. And then people could go to that report
⏹️ ▶️ John whenever they felt like, I’m worried something is off on my system, or I just want to check
⏹️ ▶️ John in. Now, maybe people would never check in, and they’d be like, I made these decisions once, and I’m fine with all
⏹️ ▶️ John the decisions I made, and I’m sure everything’s great. But if you’re not sure, or you can’t remember, or in this
⏹️ ▶️ John instance, like in something that people, when they set up a new system, they want to wipe all the permissions and do them all over again,
⏹️ ▶️ John or even if they do migrate them, they want to say, now’s a good time, I’m setting up my new computer, I want to go get a security
⏹️ ▶️ John checkup, a security report. And things you can put in that report, Like Apple has a lot of information they
⏹️ ▶️ John could leverage in their report. Something that they’re so hesitant to do, we’ve talked about this for years for the App Store, is
⏹️ ▶️ John any kind of acknowledgement of like Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know they’re not all Apple in the Mac App Store or whatever, right? Are applications
⏹️ ▶️ John that have more eyes on them, more users and a better reputation than some random
⏹️ ▶️ John application that just came out last month from a developer that has never made another application for the Mac. You know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John And as far as systems concern, that’s never communicated. So any kind of security report
⏹️ ▶️ John could take that into effect. What is the average rating of this thing on the app store? How long has it been out?
⏹️ ▶️ John What version number is it on? Is this a bundle ID that Apple knows about? Maybe Apple could have an internal ranking
⏹️ ▶️ John of bundle IDs based on trustworthiness, right? And I’m sure the security people are flipping out and saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John no, that’s the worst thing you could possibly do. Everything has to be exactly equally untrusted everywhere, but that’s not how humans work. The goal of
⏹️ ▶️ John this stream would be to say, We want a human to look at this and have
⏹️ ▶️ John it be like the front page news of their security system. With ways to drill down and see all this stuff, obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t get rid of the full report or whatever, and tell them you’re not seeing everything here, we’re just trying to give you
⏹️ ▶️ John a top level view. But without that, you’re left with people saying, well, that dialogue came and went and I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John remember what I put on it, and either you’re gonna nag me every single week, or a different interval, as we’ll see
⏹️ ▶️ John in a bit, about every application that I ever said yes to, or you’re relying on me to go into system settings
⏹️ ▶️ John click into these 50 categories one after the other and scroll through the list and say yes, no, no, yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s looking over every single item that you’ve ever approved. And really what you care about are the ones that are,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, recent or suspicious or have severe provisions or that you
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t ever say allow this forever and ever, right? That’s that’s what I think the system needs.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I know I’m asking for a lot here. It’s like, well, we barely just got the new system settings. Now you want this whole new giant thing, like we’re getting
⏹️ ▶️ John a new separate passwords app, which is presumably a nicer place to look at passwords than system settings. I think we
⏹️ ▶️ John need the same thing for privacy and security.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, it all adds up to me. And certainly the way it is right now, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can understand how they got there. You know, oh, let’s look at all the things that relate to location. Let’s look at all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the things that relate to screen recording. But I don’t know, it’s just it’s not necessarily what I want.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Or really, in a perfect world, you know, you could say, give me all the stuff for this app, which actually can’t you do that now that I say that out
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they have a bunch of different ways to slice and dice it. But again, what they present to people is one particular
⏹️ ▶️ John view that is totally flat and is organized by permission, which is a valid way to organize them. It’s not a bad
⏹️ ▶️ John way, right? But there are other ways to organize it. But like I said, what we really need for actually humans to have a fighting chance is something
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s organized more like a front page of a newspaper. I can’t think of a better analogy. I’m old, sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In any case, we got a lot of feedback. And I’m slightly embarrassed and a little frustrated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey myself that I didn’t think about this. But we got a lot of feedback about, well, Well, why? Why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are we getting nagged constantly? And several people wrote in. In this case, an anonymous person
⏹️ ▶️ Casey writes, I have a friend who has survived horrible domestic abuse. Her spouse controlled every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey aspect of her life, including installing software on her computer without her knowledge, keeping track of her passwords through key
⏹️ ▶️ Casey loggers and spyware and so forth. She was able to escape and then survived several
⏹️ ▶️ Casey attempts at her life. Perhaps these are the scenarios that Apple is trying to bring
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to light. This is a really great point that, again, I wish I had thought of and I’m embarrassed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I didn’t. I don’t have a great answer for this because on the one side,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like we should be able to say, no, never, never talk to me about this ever again. But on the other side, then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that means other people could. And I feel like I, Jason was talking about this somewhere. It might’ve been the Six Colors podcast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t recall exactly where it was. And, you know, at some point, his,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jason’s point was, you know, at some point you can’t protect everyone from everything, but still,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I, I, I, I don’t know what I think about this. You know, I don’t, I don’t, I certainly don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people in this scenario to be put in harm’s way, but I don’t know what the right balance is.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, what you want to do in this situation. So this is kind of like trying to, you know, use, uh, copy protection to stop
⏹️ ▶️ John people from copying a DVD that they have to be able to watch the movie on. Like in these domestic abuse scenarios, very
⏹️ ▶️ John often the abuser has access as the person, you know what what I mean? So
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re basically trying to make it so the person you want to empower is not empowered
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s not actually them logged into their account. You know what I mean? Right? And that’s a very difficult
⏹️ ▶️ John situation. And that type of situation, I think what you have to do is I mean, what I suggested maybe is insufficient or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you have to give the user tools to empower them.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you would say, well, okay, but if you give them those tools, the abuser also has those tools, but you have to make tools
⏹️ ▶️ John that are not useful to the abuser. So that, for example, that front page sort of summary of what you should
⏹️ ▶️ John know that’s significant and recent about the security of your account, that’s not useful
⏹️ ▶️ John to the abuser. Viewing that doesn’t help them, right? But it does help the victim. You
⏹️ ▶️ John know what I mean? It does help the person who is being abused. Every time they feel unsafe or unsure
⏹️ ▶️ John about what’s going on, I need to go do a security check-in. I need to check what has changed
⏹️ ▶️ John since last time I did a check-in. I need to see what’s important that I need to be notified about. Because even the weekly thing, like
⏹️ ▶️ John this is the problem when someone has control of like your account, even like the weekly check-in, an abuser
⏹️ ▶️ John will just turn off that permission, turn it back on, get the weekly, get the immediately get re-prompted
⏹️ ▶️ John and say allow and know that they have a week before they have to do that dance again, right? That’s, it’s, the nature
⏹️ ▶️ John of abuse is insidious. Like when you’re in a situation where someone has that kind of control over your life,
⏹️ ▶️ John your computing life or your life or otherwise, it’s very difficult to
⏹️ ▶️ John make the system, to lock down the system sufficiently because they will always find a way in. Because in the end, the person
⏹️ ▶️ John who’s being abused has to have a way in to use the computer, right? So you have to give that person tools. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ John a check-in type thing is a tool. A lockdown mode is a tool. Like Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John has a couple lockdown modes and like the iOS where it’s like certain features are just essentially disabled entirely, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And again, the abuser could re-enable them and do they have that special password for lockdown mode or whatever. But you have to give tools.
⏹️ ▶️ John You have to give tools that are not useful to an abuser. And I think reports or surfacing
⏹️ ▶️ John information that’s important or reviewing information that has already gone by, here are the things you did approve and
⏹️ ▶️ John when, right? With dates and everything on them. That is useful to someone who’s worried about an abuse
⏹️ ▶️ John situation. It is not useful to an abuser.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s just, it’s a tough balance to strike. And you know, I’m not sure what the right answer is, to be honest with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you. We hinted at this earlier. Apparently, Sequoia will now prompt you monthly, not weekly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for screen recording permissions. This was reported 9-5 Mac, among other places.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In macOS Sequoia Beta 6, you can choose to quote allow for one month quote.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s, it’s kind of hard to tell from the betas because people, I guess they could set the date forward or whatever. And this is not in 15.1,
⏹️ ▶️ John by the way, or else I would have tested it because that’s the beta that I have installed because I wanted to see the Apple intelligence stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though I still can’t because that waitlist thing seems to do nothing. Anyway if you click allow for
⏹️ ▶️ John one month after the one month is up, what happens? Does it give you one last chance? And then you say
⏹️ ▶️ John allow forever or does it just prompt you for a month again? Right. And we don’t know the answer to this. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing that everyone is railing against is repeatedly asking. I don’t think makes anybody any safer, does
⏹️ ▶️ John induce alert fatigue. Right. And it’s just plain annoying and
⏹️ ▶️ John insulting to the user that they can never be trusted to say allow forever. A better system would be to ask them a few
⏹️ ▶️ John times to be. Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure? And then eventually say allow forever and have the allow
⏹️ ▶️ John for other apps be extreme allow for every screen recording microphone and camera apps be extremely highlighted
⏹️ ▶️ John in the front page newspaper of like security check-in, like that never go away and just say like,
⏹️ ▶️ John these ones are gonna prompt monthly, hourly, weekly, daily, right? And these ones you’ve said allow forever
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know, like this, but I guess, I mean, Apple hasn’t really documented this yet. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John suppose you could say allow for one month and set your clock forward one month, but I’m always wary of doing that because I’m worried that
⏹️ ▶️ John the system is too clever and it knows that I did that and it’s not going to behave the way it would normally. But we’ll see, one month
⏹️ ▶️ John is definitely better than one week. in the last episode. It’s not that I object to even repeated prompting
⏹️ ▶️ John for things that are important, because I think that is good, but repeated too frequently
⏹️ ▶️ John is bad, and I even think repeated on a regular interval is also bad. It would be better
⏹️ ▶️ John to prompt two or three times and space them out a little bit and then give the final allow forever,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think there should be a power user way to say allow forever immediately for people who don’t want to be annoyed,
⏹️ ▶️ John because that will show up prominently in the security checkup report that does not exist yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, these are my suggestions. I’m not a security expert.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The current version of this dialogue, they’re trying to keep the decision they’ve made, which is these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco permissions will no longer be available forever. And they’re they’re trying to say, okay, well, a week, everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complained, how about a month. And that makes it a little less annoying, maybe about 4.3
⏹️ ▶️ Marco times less annoying, but it’s still extremely annoying. Because what this is saying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, no matter what, we’re not going to give you forever permission. And everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ve said about the possibility for various malware uses,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for domestic abuse and surveillance uses, those are all true, those are all real risks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But this is Apple kind of being mealy-mouthed about it. This is them saying, well, we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually want any apps to be doing that anymore, but we’re not going to have the courage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to remove those APIs completely. So we’re going to allow apps to do this, but basically create
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a massive support burden for them that kind of makes it impossible to really get anybody any traction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on this you know any any app is going to rely on these api’s to capture the screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s now just going to have a lot of problems you know getting new customers retaining customers retaining usage over time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like they’re just creating problems kind of halfway I say if you’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually have this strong of an opinion on whether apps should be allowed to capture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the full screen just remove the api’s completely just go all out either do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that or have it work for power users like I think if they’ve decided these APIs are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so dangerous and are being abused so much out in the wild that they aren’t even aren’t even going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to allow a permanent permission to be granted those APIs maybe shouldn’t exist anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean a lot of these things have to exist like being able to use the camera the microphone like they they advertise
⏹️ ▶️ John things they put things in their ads that show people with the Mac you know singing into it and recording stuff in GarageBand and I know I know
⏹️ ▶️ John GarageBand is a first party app, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John we can get rid of all these things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, no, I’m not saying all these things, I’m saying this particular thing. Yeah, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John so screen recording is like, that’s what we keep calling the permission, but it basically means can
⏹️ ▶️ John an application see anything on the screen that is not one of its own windows? And lots of applications
⏹️ ▶️ John need to do that to perform their functionality. I mean, screenshotting applications are an obvious one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but what is, so I’m sure you know this, John. So what is, so this dialogue, which is terribly written,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco says, app is requesting to bypass the system private window picker and directly access
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your screen. Now, I am a, I consider myself a Mac expert. I have no idea what that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco means. Is there an API that something like Zoom or Teams could use to say, like, share
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this window from this app to my call?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and I believe Zoom actually doesn’t use the system one. I mean, so this particular dialogue
⏹️ ▶️ John is trying to get people to use a new API. So this one, if you use the new API, you wouldn’t see this particular dialogue,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you’d still see a different one. You’d see the one that says, this app has screen recording permission. Do you wanna, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John so there’s two different versions of this dialogue. One is they’re using an older API that lets them capture the whole screen. And we wish they
⏹️ ▶️ John would use our new, like, you know, quote unquote, safe system mediated one, kind of like the
⏹️ ▶️ John PowerBox thing that does the open save dialogue, right? You invoke an open save dialogue on the Mac. And then there’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John an Apple framework that kicks in. And that Apple framework is allowed to like, see the whole disc, even when your disc doesn’t have full disc
⏹️ ▶️ John access and stuff like that, right? There’s a system picker for like, pick the window that you
⏹️ ▶️ John want to record with your recording application, and then we let you do that. And during the picking, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can see all the windows, but your app can’t see all the windows because you delegated to the picker, right? And that works
⏹️ ▶️ John for like Zoom, sharing your screen or whatever, but it doesn’t work as well for like a
⏹️ ▶️ John freeform, sort of like select a region of the screen to do like a screencast, like, you know, I don’t forget if
⏹️ ▶️ John ScreenFlow X or whatever can do this, but lots of screen shotting applications work like the Apple one, where you can
⏹️ ▶️ John pick any arbitrary region of the screen and record that region of the screen. And the system picker for
⏹️ ▶️ John Windows won’t work that way. I think the system picker might also let you pick regions. But anyway, there are other applications just wanna see things
⏹️ ▶️ John that are on the screen. Like I think applications that wanna do something graphically, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John Bartender does this, so there’s a lot of controversy behind it. But even like a window manager that wants to know where the borders of the windows
⏹️ ▶️ John are and draw things around them and know what the content of the window is so they can blur over it and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s lots of situations, or even like a color picker. If you don’t use a system color picker and you just wanna pick
⏹️ ▶️ John a color that’s on the screen somewhere. I think Maya, the big fancy 3D application, doesn’t use the
⏹️ ▶️ John system color picker. And you’d be like, well, they should just use the system color picker. But Maya is this massive cross-platform application
⏹️ ▶️ John that is not going to convert to AppKit or convert to the system color picker, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think there are legitimate reasons to not use the frameworks they want you to use.
⏹️ ▶️ John And also, even if you use those frameworks, you just get a different wording in this dialog box.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe you get a different icon, but you’re still subject to the same alerting type thing. Like as far as, again,
⏹️ ▶️ John as far as I know and as far as every single story I have read, there was even a story on like 9to5Mac that says, oh, this is just telling people the news
⏹️ ▶️ John you use newer APIs. But then there was an update to that thing that said, correction, there is no new set of
⏹️ ▶️ John APIs that you can use. The only hope we have is what we said in the last show, which is there is an entitlement that
⏹️ ▶️ John some people think will stop you from getting this if you were ever granted this entitlement by Apple. But we don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John if that’s true or not because Apple has not said anything one way or the other. So, I mean, maybe this is nothing, not
⏹️ ▶️ John a big deal and Apple will come up with a big communication and release notes and say, here’s the deal. Everybody should switch to new APIs
⏹️ ▶️ John and this will motivate them to do so. Or maybe they’ll just say nothing and developers will just figure it out when the OS ships and when they
⏹️ ▶️ John request that entitlement from Apple and see if they get a response. Oh, one more thing on this, by the way, though
⏹️ ▶️ John with the one month, like how annoying that is versus one week, this is another situation where centralization would come in handy.
⏹️ ▶️ John How about prompting me once a month, one time, and saying these eight applications
⏹️ ▶️ John have the ability to screenshot and have like, you know, toggle switches or check boxes next to them or whatever, instead
⏹️ ▶️ John of being prompted eight individual times once a month, like how many applications do you have on your system that
⏹️ ▶️ John have camera access, that have microphone access, that have screen recording? Like if every one of those things
⏹️ ▶️ John had some kind of check-in interval, some kind of decaying check-in interval with the possibility of giving permanent
⏹️ ▶️ John permission if you do it enough times or whatever, summary, put it all in one
⏹️ ▶️ John window, in one dialogue box. It doesn’t interrupt your other work or maybe on boot or whatever, as opposed
⏹️ ▶️ John to every single individual application having to ask once per whatever number of days
⏹️ ▶️ John forever and ever because that is even more annoying.
Profit centers for gas stations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving along, David writes in with regard to what’s the story with gas stations anyway?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So David writes, I worked for a time on the point of sale software for gas stations, and the sales data
⏹️ ▶️ Casey says that they’re basically in the business of selling just three things, alcohol, nicotine, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey soda. Everything else is just there to fill out the store, and it doesn’t amount to much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for their bottom line. Some of the higher end stores like Wawa or Quick Trip make a lot of money on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey their food, so there are exceptions. But your typical gas station only cares about those three things. Next
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time you’re at a gas station, take a look at what they’re advertising out front. I guarantee you it’s beer, cigarettes, or soda.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, this is, I have no reason to believe why this wouldn’t be true, but this is also true of lots
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of businesses. Like, for instance, most restaurants, the margins on food are very low
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the margins on drinks are very high. And so this is just this is kind of just true of lots
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Latest iPhone, Watch rumors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, we had a bit of a news dump from Mark Gurman, I guess Sunday, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey day it was a few days ago, and we’re going to pick it apart a little bit. It starts with the iPhone 16
⏹️ ▶️ Casey alleged camera button. So we’ve heard rumors for a while that there’s going to be a physical button,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess similar in spirit to the action button, but the way it’s been described
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that if you hold the phone in landscapes such that the lock button is high, you know, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up top, then there’ll be a button basically where your right index finger would be, where you would expect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it to be on a camera. So Mark Gurman writes, the new camera control on the right side of the phone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the iPhone 16 Pro models will operate like a button on a DSLR camera. Right, okay. Allowing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you to press in slightly to trigger autofocus. Oh, okay. A harder press will take the picture. Right, okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also swipe along the button to zoom in and out while shooting photos and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey videos. Well now you have my attention Mr. German. That sounds super cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’m surprised this wasn’t in the earlier reports because all the earlier reports showed this, the capture button that we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John discussed on many past episodes, as being pretty long, pretty like wide and like almost kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John the old like 5G millimeter wave like window thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John on the side of the thing just kind of much longer than a regular button. And that length is like, huh, I guess it’ll be real prominent.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’ll be easy to find for you to take your pictures. But duh, this makes perfect sense. If it’s also like a touch sensitive
⏹️ ▶️ John button, you can slide back and forth the zoom. That would be cool. Now that’s a little bit of an interface
⏹️ ▶️ John test there to do that well, because people’s fingers move around and you don’t want it accidentally
⏹️ ▶️ John zooming, like bumping out of exactly 1X to be like 1.1X or something because your finger moved or whatever. So I hope it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John implemented well. But that makes a lot of sense because, you know, on regular cameras, you have so
⏹️ ▶️ John many physical controls for controlling so many aspects of the camera process. And the shutter button
⏹️ ▶️ John usually only performs, you know, the half press to maybe initiate focus
⏹️ ▶️ John if you don’t do back button focusing or whatever. And then sometimes if certain cameras, there’s a thing, another
⏹️ ▶️ John thing you can do to zoom, or obviously you twist the lens to zoom. And on the phone, we just don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John the many buttons. Exciting to get the action button, and I think it will be cool to get this capture button,
⏹️ ▶️ John but we really are populating sides pretty quickly here, so you better make sure the button, you know, earns its keep
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think taking pictures, one of the most important physical things everybody does with their phone
⏹️ ▶️ John is exactly the reason you wanna have a big button. So the zooming sounds cool, I just hope it works without accidental input.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually have pretty high faith on Apple to do this well. So far, every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time there has been rumors of the iPhone either adding a button or changing the way a button
⏹️ ▶️ Marco works or things like that, we always kind of freak out, hmm, I don’t know if that’s gonna be all right and then they always release it and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s always fine or even good. So I have a feeling this will be probably very nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wonder if, oh, so if this thing says a swiping will do it, I wonder if
⏹️ ▶️ John it will be like press on the left and right edge to go plus and minus, because I’m thinking about how this button will interact
⏹️ ▶️ John with cases. I like if it really is a kind of a flat button and you have a big cutout
⏹️ ▶️ John for it, will you be able to shove your finger into that cutout enough to feel like you’re swiping
⏹️ ▶️ John it well? You know what I’m saying? It may actually add a prominence to those cases that don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John cut out a hole in the side for the buttons, but rather have like a, like
⏹️ ▶️ John the case doesn’t come up to the screen, you know what I mean? Like they have a cutout that extends all the way to the top of the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John So there’s just the thing on the back. Maybe those cases will become more prominent. It definitely throws a monkey wrench into all
⏹️ ▶️ John of the case designs, because kind of like the action button where people were guessing, should we double this button?
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, like my case has its own volume buttons that press the real volume buttons, right? Should
⏹️ ▶️ John we try to do that with this? Or is that not possible because it’s capacitive? Should we make a cutout? If we make a cutout,
⏹️ ▶️ John how big is big enough? Can we make just a hole in the side or do we have to remove the side in that area
⏹️ ▶️ John entirely for the button to work? And will that not protect that part of the phone? It’s gonna be tricky.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe this is like a part of a grand scheme by Apple to reduce the amount
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of times people use cases, thereby increasing the amount of time people break their phones to now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boost AppleCare services revenue. Oh my
⏹️ ▶️ John word. That was in the design for a longevity thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Do you add buttons
⏹️ ▶️ John to the phone to make people not wear cases so they break more often? Answer, no. That was a joke, people. It
⏹️ ▶️ John wasn’t in there. I just want to make sure some listener says,
⏹️ ▶️ John wasn’t in the document.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Continuing from Mark Gurman, there’s talk of the Apple Watch SE.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Gurman writes, I’m told that the move to plastic for the Apple Watch SE will lower production costs. The aluminum
⏹️ ▶️ Casey case for the SE costs Apple about $5 a unit. The plastic shell likely will be about half that, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey told. advantage of plastic. The material allows for bolder colors, imagine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, than aluminum and is probably more kid-friendly.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure if it does allow for bolder colors. You can make aluminum pretty bold as evidenced by the IMAX. The back of the
⏹️ ▶️ John IMAX are incredibly bold. Apple doesn’t allow for bold colors, that’s true. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like you can do that. But anyway, I like the numbers on this. We talked about the plastic
⏹️ ▶️ John watch a while ago, like how can you remove costs from the watch? What can you do? How much do those cases cost? Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently it doesn’t cost Apple that much. $5 a unit. Now granted, that’s their cost or whatever after spending
⏹️ ▶️ John a bazillion dollars on those machining things that machine the aluminum, but still. And I guess that doesn’t also involve,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, the finishing steps or whatever, but half that. So you’ve saved $2.50,
⏹️ ▶️ John which probably translates into like $10 of price or whatever, depending on how they… what the margins
⏹️ ▶️ John are on each individual piece. That’s not a lot of money. I’d have to think that the advantages of plastic
⏹️ ▶️ John are yes, I guess it costs a little bit less and every little bit counts if you’re trying to make a low-priced phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I just think it’s more sort of lightweight being the main thing and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John more durable and resilient to damage for a phone that might be used for a watch that
⏹️ ▶️ John might be used by a kid. But I don’t think this is necessarily a kid-focused
⏹️ ▶️ John device. I think adults who want a lightweight watch will also find this appealing, especially if it
⏹️ ▶️ John comes in bold colors.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It might end up being kind of a segmentation strategy also, though. Like, I think maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple is selling too many SEs and they want to sell more of the higher models to, like, adults who actually want something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that looks nice. And maybe this is a way to say, this is the kind of, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kid or less mature version of the watch. I don’t know. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plastic in general has a lot of advantages, like Jon was mentioning, like weight is a huge advantage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of plastic. Certainly being able to bang it around without too much damage is also a pretty good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco advantage. So there are lots of other reasons why I would actually like to see more plastic options
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in general for just like devices being lighter and more durable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and nicer in certain ways. I think this is probably gonna make this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look like a lower end product than it actually is, which might be an intentional segmentation move.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ll see. The iPhone 17 slim will not fold. German
⏹️ ▶️ Casey writes that the slimmer entry will be just a step towards something better. Eventually Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will want to squeeze the power of a pro model into the smaller design. That feat will likely take until at least 2027 to achieve.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I also expect Apple to produce a foldable iPhone, but all signs internally point to a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey foldable iPad being just as big of a priority. That means we may still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see a tablet version come sooner.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if we didn’t make this as clear last time, we talked about the iPhone slim and the fold and everything, that the idea that the slim is the
⏹️ ▶️ John fold was a combination of rumors by a bunch of people essentially speculating. There was
⏹️ ▶️ John no rumor behind that. What we have rumors for is Apple’s working on a folding phone, Apple’s working on a slim phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John vague timelines, and increasing details about both of them. And so combining them is a fun thing to do,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it wasn’t based on someone saying, we know this for a fact, the slim is the fold. And as Marco said, when we talked about this,
⏹️ ▶️ John the most likely thing is this is just a slim iPhone, which is fine, right? This is German, not flat
⏹️ ▶️ John out saying, the slim is not foldable, but he basically says, this is the slim, and by the way, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John also a foldable phone. And by saying, there’s also a foldable phone, after telling us about the slim, it’s basically saying to me,
⏹️ ▶️ John the slim is not folding, which was the most likely scenario anyway. So if you hate folding phones and didn’t want the slim to be folding,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you’re good. Good deal. And then the foldable iPad type thing is, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, rumors of Apple working on foldable things
⏹️ ▶️ John been multiple years long, right? And even the foldable iPad one, it’s the type of thing where
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re like, okay, it’s foldable and it’s iPad size, but is it an iPad? Or is it a foldable MacBook?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or is it neither one of those things? That’s the type of thing you can’t find out from like leaks in, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen manufacturers, you know, supply chain.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or is that just the foldable iPhone that when unfolded is kind of iPad-like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in its capabilities. That I think is probably more likely. Because if you look at what folding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phones are, we talked about it a little bit before, there’s the flip-up kind that looks like an old flip phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I don’t think is super compelling long-term or here to stay for very long. Then there’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of book opening kind, and I think that kind, Google just released a new one in their event
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that every other tech thing we’ll talk about this week, and we almost certainly will not. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that seems to have some legs in that those are still pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco specialized, very high end, very high priced phones, but the people who have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them love them. And we were kind of saying similar things about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like big phones, you know, quote phablets back before iPhones got bigger, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the people who bought really big phones back before all phones were really big, you know, we thought they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look kind of ridiculous and they were big and expensive, but the people who bought them loved them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’m kind of getting similar feelings from people now who actually use folding, you know, book-style
⏹️ ▶️ Marco folding Android phones. They like them a lot, and that’s some real capability there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think there is some traction behind that idea, enough that Apple should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably be looking very seriously at it, and it’s good to hear that by all accounts they are. You know, we’ll see where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it goes. There’s still a lot of challenges to be solved, but it seems like the market is buying them anyway, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if things don’t have perfect solutions, it seems like the market doesn’t care because the utility is so high.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the prices are also so high. It’s kind of like if you want the super expensive, I think some of these phones go for like $2,400,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think there was one that I was looking at today, because the most expensive thing on the phone is the screen, and this
⏹️ ▶️ John has, the fancy ones have two screens, one that you can see when it’s folded and one that you can see when it’s unfolded,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the one you see when it’s unfolded is twice as big as the one you see when it’s folded. And so if you’re gonna increase,
⏹️ ▶️ John if we’re talking about using plastic to decrease the cost of the Apple Watch SE, well, if you wanna increase the cost of a phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John add more screens and add more bigger screens, right? That’s an easy way to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And remember, because these things fold, they try to be as thin as possible. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re losing some battery space because you have case, you know, you have like case, battery, case,
⏹️ ▶️ John case, battery, case, instead of case, battery, case, I don’t know. That’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I know it doesn’t work audio wise, visualize it in your head.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s, you’re losing space for a battery of the foldable phone. I definitely feel like if you
⏹️ ▶️ John fast forward many years as screen technology and battery technology advance, especially if there’s a battery
⏹️ ▶️ John technology breakthrough like solid state batteries become affordable or whatever. And as screens presumably
⏹️ ▶️ John become less expensive when we sort of start maxing out human perception with screen technology and just start making
⏹️ ▶️ John it cheaper which we haven’t quite done yet, but we’re getting there. Then at that
⏹️ ▶️ John point, you could get a phone that’s like a 15 pro, but also folds.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s the exact same thing. same size, same weight, same battery life, maybe even better battery life with solid state batteries.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, better quality screen that you’re looking at. Oh, but by the way, if you pry it open inside, it’s a screen that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John twice as big. Technology will eventually exist to do that economically. It doesn’t exist today. Today,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re thicker and they have worse battery life and they cost $2,400 or $2,000 or whatever. But
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, if Apple wants to get there eventually, they should start experimenting with folding phones and figuring out which form factor do people like.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, they have all the market research of all the folding Android phones that have been out for years and years to look at and
⏹️ ▶️ John to decide which one they think has shown that there is a form factor that
⏹️ ▶️ John makes the most sense for Apple. And I’m sure that’s what they’re experimenting with. And all the stories we keep reading about it are like Apple’s obsessed
⏹️ ▶️ John with making the crease not noticeable because when you do have a folding screen, you know, OLEDs are flexible,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the substrate they’re on can crease. And even when it’s open, you can kind of both see
⏹️ ▶️ John and kind of feel where the crease is and Apple doesn’t like that. So they’re working on that problem. How can we minimize
⏹️ ▶️ John or eliminate the crease? Good luck, Apple. It’s a tough problem, but yeah, they are
⏹️ ▶️ John definitely late to the game of folding phones, and it sounds like they’re not going to have anything for a few years yet, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I look forward to seeing what they have to offer because I think, like I said, I think eventually, not in two or three years, but
⏹️ ▶️ John in 10, 15, 20 years, the tech will have advanced to the point where foldable phones
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have most of the downsides that they have today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, I hope Apple gets to that game sooner rather than later because again, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the market is, it’s not that everyone’s going to convert to folding phones, but if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple doesn’t offer one in the next few years, they will start to lose power users. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, again, like talk to people who actually use these things, not gadget reviewers, talk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to actual people who actually own foldable phones if you can find one, they’re not that common, but they love
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. They will never go back. That’s how good they are. When you have that kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of product, I really do think Apple really should be taking it very seriously. And again, by all accounts, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounds rumor-wise, it sounds like they are taking it seriously. But I hope they don’t wait until,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, they can do the perfect thing if it means waiting too long. And well, when in the meantime,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone else is shipping things that are decent enough and getting tons and tons of, you know, user
⏹️ ▶️ Marco goodwill and building habits and, you know, losing power users to a different operating system.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what they did with the Vision Pro though. So maybe we’ll get to that in a little bit. Is it? Yeah, because they
⏹️ ▶️ John used like, don’t wait until you’ve got the perfect thing. Everyone else has headsets, you should ship one too. And they did, and yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey well, anyway.
Vision Pro content updates
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, we have some Vision Pro updates. First of all, there’s apparently, I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even realize this until I saw it in the show notes, there’s a Lake Wrangler environment.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is reading off of Mac rumors. Apple has released a new environment for Apple Vision Pro called Lake
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wrangler, which is close to Oslo in Norway. This release follows Apple’s announcements that the Bora Bora
⏹️ ▶️ Casey environment will be included in Vision OS 2 later this year. Its arrival will complete the current environments
⏹️ ▶️ Casey menu, making all 13 listed options fulfilled and usable. I have downloaded both
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or I’m on the Vision OS beta and I have downloaded the Wrangler Environment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as well as the Bora Bora one. They’re both really great. I like them a lot Moving along
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there is there will slash our slash are going to be new Apple immersive video
⏹️ ▶️ Casey series films concerts and more So reading from Apple newsroom
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple’s releasing all new series and films, Capture and Apple Immersive Video, that will debut exclusively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the Apple Vision Pro. Surprise, surprise. Apple Immersive Video is a remarkable storytelling format that leverages
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 3D video recorded in 8K with 180 degree field of view and spatial audio to transport viewers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the center of the action. Boundless, a new series that invites viewers to experience once in a lifetime trips
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from wherever they are, premieres July 18 with hot air balloons. I have watched that, it was good, it’s like 10 minutes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was good, it was interesting, And it’s cool to see, you know, the perspective of a hot air balloon. I’ve never ridden in one. Now I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sorta kind of have. It’s only 10 minutes. I think, I think that’s right. I watched that one a couple of weeks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago and my memory’s garbage, so I might have that wrong,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything I’ve seen is about 10 minutes. Um, the next installment of wildlife, the nature documentary
⏹️ ▶️ Casey series, it brings viewers up close to some of the most charismatic creatures, creatures on the planet from years in August.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I actually just about an hour or two ago watched episode number two, uh, which was about elephants.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Elephants are adorable, man. They’re so cute. And there’s some baby elephants. They’re so we see it’s so cute. Oh my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey word I’d like to come back to that in a couple minutes. Let me go through the rest of this list
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Elevated an aerial travel series that whisks viewers around iconic vistas from staggering heights will launch in September
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this sounds a lot to me like almost a frozen goodness like Soren from Disney World and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Disney’s California Adventure, I think or maybe it’s Disneyland Anyways, it’s a ride where you kind of fly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey around through various landmarks And if it’s like that, I’m here for it because I love frozen. I said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey frozen again. I love so And then later this year special performances featuring the world’s biggest artists starting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with an immersive experience from the weekend. That sounds very cool the first scripted Apple immersive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey short film Submerged a behind the scenes and on the court view of the 2024 NBA
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All-Star weekend and big waves big wave Surfing the first installment of a new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sports series with Red Bull sports series with Red Bull you say Even though Max Verstappen is evil, I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love to see some F1 stuff. So I’d like to briefly go back to the wildlife thing. So like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I said, I watched the elephant thing, which was, you know, a video which was about 10 minutes, give or take a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I watched it a couple hours ago. The Vision Pro, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey still something that doesn’t have a strong place in my life. I find
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that more often than not when I pick it up, the battery’s dead, because I haven’t used it in a while and it’s eventually discharged
⏹️ ▶️ Casey itself. But over the last week or so, I’ve had a few occasions to use it and this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wildlife video is one of them. And I got to tell you, I don’t know if I could justify $3,500 to just watch these 10-minute
⏹️ ▶️ Casey videos, but if you happen to have one or if you got one secondhand on eBay, because I saw a report like a week or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two ago where they’re selling for like half price on eBay right now, you know, something like $1,500,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is still a staggering amount of money, but more understandable for the sorts of things that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you probably would do with a Vision Pro. But these immersive videos, they are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unlike anything I have seen before. And I know that, John, you and I particularly went around and around the axle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trying to discuss the difference between an immersive video and just a 3D video. To briefly recap,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a 3D video is when you’re looking at something that doesn’t move, but it has depth to it. By that I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you move your head, you’re still looking at a rectangle, right? The rectangle is where the motion is. But there’s depth
⏹️ ▶️ Casey within that rectangle. An immersive video is where as you pan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your head left and right or tilt it up and down, your perspective changes because it’s like watching
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an IMAX movie or something like that. So you’re looking around and changing the things that you can see.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this elephant video is one of the many examples that we just talked about, but it is really, really good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And part of what makes it so great is that they let you linger on each shot. If
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you recall, we complained about the soccer highlight reel because it was like, new, new, new, new.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey constantly, the camera’s constantly moving. And so you’re always trying to get yourself situated where you are on the pitch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey field, whatever. It was very frustrating with these are not like that. These are very well done. And the, and the immersive,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the spatial audio is also very well done. So, you know, if one of the, they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey zookeepers, but one of the wildlife people is, you know, say directly in front of you and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talking, but if you tilt your head to the left, then you, you hear the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey audio move to be entirely in your right ear because that’s the ear that’s closest to the person
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talking. It’s really, really well done. And I had such an eerie,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey funny moment when I was watching the elephant thing. It was roughly halfway through the video. So it’s like five
⏹️ ▶️ Casey minutes in and we were, you’re in a field or in a, in a elephant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey habitat, you know, where they’re trying to, um, you know, like care for baby elephants and whatnot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And of course this is in somewhere in Africa, I think Ghana, if I’m not mistaken. And at one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point, a bug, like a mosquito or a fly or something like that, flew
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the camera such that it was just above the camera. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was one of those things where it would, if it was real, it would have like hit you right in the forehead.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so it flies at the camera and I think it might’ve like pinged off, you know, just above the camera so you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can see that kind of like bounces. And I noticed that I shook my head left and right a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to flick it off my skin. The fly that was in the video,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just naturally didn’t even think twice about it and kind of shook my head a little bit so it would fly away and get off
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of me. And that’s such a silly kind of dumb thing, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how real this stuff can feel in just in the span of a few minutes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And as much as it’s kind of funny and silly to slag on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Vision Pro, that is such a good illustration of how real
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it can feel. And I’d like to briefly bring up one other thing. I know I haven’t given you guys a chance to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talk about any of this. But earlier this week, just on a lark, myself,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey James Thompson, Jason Snell, and Mike Hurley all got on an immersive or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spatial FaceTime call. That’s what it is. So there was four of us, and we were basically arranged
⏹️ ▶️ Casey such that I was sitting across from Jason, Mike was to my right and then James was to my left.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we had like a half an hour, 45 minute or something like that FaceTime call. And it is not the same as hanging out with your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey friends. I mean, I still smile from ear to ear when I think about when the three of us were back together
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in San Jose and got to see each other for the first time in five years. It’s not the same as that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but golly, if it didn’t feel pretty close, like it is, it really does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey elevate the experience and make you feel not like you’re with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your friends, but it feels really close. And I think also part of that is because the personas
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have gotten way better in the beta. They’re not perfect, but they’re way better. And so all of that is to say,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Vision Pro is still kind of goofy and it’s still just hilariously expensive. And it’s still not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something that I reach for all the time, but I do feel like the locomotive is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey starting to, you know, pick up some speed. It’s slowly picking up speed, but it’s picking up speed. and we’re starting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to see Apple really start to care. And I’m starting to get excited about where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this platform is going in the future.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope you’re right. I really, really do. I don’t think this is enough evidence yet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple really is like, you know, putting them, like getting the machine going. Like what this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, is more promises and samples of future things that might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be good. But here we are, like almost seven months into this product and we have so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little content for it still. If Apple wants to make this take off, they have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco step on the gas in a substantially bigger way than what we’ve seen so far.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What we have from them now, from these new promises, is just that, promises
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and teasers and things that might be good. I don’t think this is evidence of enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet. When next January rolls around and the Vision Pro will have been out for one whole year,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re gonna look back and say, What did Apple do in this entire year of this new platform?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think it’s still gonna be a pretty short list. And then we’re gonna be able to look back and say, oh, what about other people?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What did other people do with the Vision Pro? What apps exist for it? What streaming services exist for it? Who else has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made content for it? And I think that’s gonna be an even shorter list. And I know you’re gonna talk about apps in a second, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re just not seeing, like if you extrapolate out the lines of like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here’s how much is available for this, here’s how much traction this is getting, here’s how many customers are buying it, those lines,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if you extrapolate them out, you know, a year or two down the road, they’re still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very, very low. We need to see this. This is great, but we need to see a lot more than this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And it’s funny you bring all this up because the other thing we wanted to talk about with regard to Vision Pro is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apparently according to nine to five Mac, there are more than 2,500 native apps for the Apple Vision Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s not focus on the fact that there’s probably millions for iOS, but there’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or it’s certainly many, many, many, many, many thousands, but but Hey, there’s at least 2,500 for vision
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pro and that’s better than none.
⏹️ ▶️ John You should look at what the, the app store curve was for a number of apps over time. Obviously I think the, the app store went
⏹️ ▶️ John better than this, but 2,500 is more than I would have guessed. Right. And obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John every app is not created equal. It’d be better if they had a Netflix app or whatever, but you know, like there’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John since this is a chicken an egg situation and Apple controls both the chickens and the eggs because they make the Vision Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John and also they are making content. They can kind of decide how to resolve that. You could
⏹️ ▶️ John argue that it might be better for them to plan for content release,
⏹️ ▶️ John first party content release for the Vision Pro to accelerate around the time they release the lower cost one because that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John solving one side of this equation. Oh, people, you know, third parties don’t want to make content until we sell a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John Vision Pros and obviously we’re not able to sell a lot of these $3,500 ones. So
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s release the cheaper one. Hope that sells better. Hope that will spur third parties from going. Like if Apple went
⏹️ ▶️ John all in and spent gobs, just spent like Apple TV Plus kind of money to make content
⏹️ ▶️ John for the relatively tiny number of people who bought the $3,500 headset, that may not be the best use
⏹️ ▶️ John of their time unless all that content is evergreen, right? So no live sports or no, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John Olympics coverage or anything like that because there’s just not a big enough audience for that. So they may be holding back and say, if we’re gonna be spending
⏹️ ▶️ John money for Vision Pro stuff, let’s plan to spend it so that the content comes out after
⏹️ ▶️ John the low cost headset, which who knows when that could be. But anyway, if the Vision Pro had launched in the US
⏹️ ▶️ John and all the things that we just read had launched at the same time as the Vision Pro, we’d be like, okay, good start
⏹️ ▶️ John for a new platform. But given that it’s been in a seven month wait, it’s a problem. And as people pointed out in the chat room, it’s been seven months for
⏹️ ▶️ John us, but it just came out in other places in the world. So it’s a little bit of a sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John staggered launch here. I continue to think that if Apple is committed this platform that the slow and steady
⏹️ ▶️ John approach is a reasonable one, even though it is, as I keep repeating, very frustrating for the people who spent $3,500 on this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also like Apple is not like intentionally slow playing this. They’re pushing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it hard. Like I’ve I have gotten three different calls from App Store from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Store business reps trying to sell me a Vision Pro. By the way, I already own a Vision
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro, which I bought from the Apple store, but hey, I have like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the business reps are pushing it hard. The developer relations staff is pushing it very,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very hard. Like they are pushing hard for people to adopt it with their apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and for customers to buy it. They’re pushing very hard. So they’re not intentionally holding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back. This is what they have. This is all they have. There’s not going to be, I don’t think, some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco future where all of a sudden a flood of a a bunch of stuff comes out that they were just holding back artificially.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not holding it back, but they didn’t budget for it, right? Like, so they’re trying to sell you a $3,500 headset that you already bought,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But that’s different than essentially putting money, you know, like an Apple TV Plus. Content, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Putting money to produce video content, paying someone to produce these, you know, record the weekend
⏹️ ▶️ John singing, paying the NBA to do the All-Star things. You know, like that’s production
⏹️ ▶️ John budget, right? And you can choose how much of that you wanna make. When they launched Apple TV Plus, they spent millions and millions of dollars to make
⏹️ ▶️ John TV shows and movies and all that stuff and get Tom Hanks to be in a movie and get Jennifer Aniston to be in the TV show.
⏹️ ▶️ John And right now they’re cutting those budgets on all of those things because a lot of people are, right? But they can choose when
⏹️ ▶️ John and how to spend money on content for this thing. And they are spending money for content, but they’re not spending
⏹️ ▶️ John Tom Hanks movie money, right? Which by the way, that movie didn’t do well with Apple TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John you never know quite what’s gonna hit, especially with the creative content, but that’s what they could be, not holding back, but saying
⏹️ ▶️ John when we have our schedule for how much money we’re gonna spend on content and when that content will be available, let’s plan
⏹️ ▶️ John for the best, biggest amount of content to come at a point after we think we have a chance of selling
⏹️ ▶️ John more of these. Now, maybe in the beginning, like I said before, maybe they thought they would sell way more than they have, but they couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have thought they were gonna sell more than the screens they could get, and that was capped at like a million, and so that’s like a half a million
⏹️ ▶️ John Vision Pros worldwide, and it seems like they might not even reach that, so the plan for year one of this thing
⏹️ ▶️ John couldn’t possibly have been for content that would not make sense when the total possible viewership
⏹️ ▶️ John is half a million people, right? And what you’re seeing, I think, is content that makes sense for a maximum possible viewership
⏹️ ▶️ John of half a million people. That’s what everything we’ve read off here, that makes sense to me, right? And again, if they wanted
⏹️ ▶️ John to, they could have done something evergreen, you know, an immersive movie with Tom Hanks in it. Because that
⏹️ ▶️ John movie, you know, you can watch it next year and it’ll still be good. It doesn’t age out, right? But live sports
⏹️ ▶️ John ages out, concerts, debatable, little demo reels probably age out because
⏹️ ▶️ John there’ll be more impressive stuff. I don’t know, like we’re not inside Apple, I don’t know what the strategies are, but I look at this from the outside and I think, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is not great for people who bought one and it’s not great that Apple couldn’t sell them at $3,500, but
⏹️ ▶️ John the strategy makes sense to me, given what we know about what they released, how it sold
⏹️ ▶️ John and the rumors of what’s in the pipeline. Again, frustrating, but it makes sense to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I guess that’s true. I just, I feel like for a company with effectively infinite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey money, you would think that they would wanna just throw a big old pile of money at this problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and fix it and have people say, oh my gosh, you would not believe how cool it is to see, I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say The Weeknd’s concert or whatever the case may be. And I’m just a little disappointed that they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey haven’t done more, but you’re right. I mean, the numbers do bear that maybe this is the right amount of content.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I bet they do think maybe one of these hits and will give us a hint about where to really put
⏹️ ▶️ John that money for like the one that, you know, the content that’s gonna come out timed with the cheaper one, right? Is it gonna be concerts?
⏹️ ▶️ John Is it gonna be sports? Is it gonna be that short film? Like the things you let off, They’re covering a lot of different bases. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not all just, let’s take you in a hot air balloon. They’ve got music, they’ve got sports, they’ve got narrative
⏹️ ▶️ John movie, which is the first thing I’ve seen announced, right? And of course they have the whole app story, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think they know which of those things is going to be the most compelling to people. What’s
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna make them spend $1,500 on the next headset? Which one of these things will appeal to them?
⏹️ ▶️ John And where should we put our money? Should we just do tons and tons of concerts and ignore everything else? Or should we do all live sports?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I think this will help them figure it out, presuming they have viewership numbers on these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but again, timing’s important here. You said they have music, they have sports. No, they don’t. They are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco promising to maybe sometime in the future have like one music concert, have one sports weekend.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, we need, this all makes sense for them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they didn’t need to convince people to buy this, and if they didn’t need to keep people happy
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, they don’t need to keep you happy if you did buy it because they already got your money. But yeah, this is
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff that’s, you know, I mean, first of all, this announcement, this announcement was from July and already some of the things
⏹️ ▶️ John that they announced did come out on the dates they said they would. So I believe that they’re actually going to release all this stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John when they say they will, because it’s not that much stuff. It’s a small amount of stuff. But I think you are basically a test audience.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyone who has these things and is still actually using it in any way, you are the test audience to see
⏹️ ▶️ John how engaged are you with these things that they release. And even though it’s a tiny test audience,
⏹️ ▶️ John they should be able to tell from that which of these things is more appealing. And
⏹️ ▶️ John which of these things do people tell their friends about? Their friends go, I don’t suggest you buy this $3,500
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, but man, you should check out this concert. It was really cool, or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Or you should check out
⏹️ ▶️ John the sporting events, right? We’ll see. I still think this is a slow
⏹️ ▶️ John burn here. And in terms of like, oh, be great, they just spent tons of money. Well, a company’s not going to spend tons of money on a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s not even sure it’s worth spending a ton of money on. Like, like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s up to the hardware to sell and then to motivate them to make the content. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John up for the content to, you know, like it’s a, it’s a give and take, right? You can’t just say, okay, well, when I’m budgeting
⏹️ ▶️ John all the money we have, yes, granted, Apple has, you know, effectively infinite money. What you can do with that money,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can do a lot of different things, right? Uh, for example, getting out of China takes a huge amount of money and
⏹️ ▶️ John time, and maybe a better use of your time than spending $300 million on content for 150,000 people who use
⏹️ ▶️ John their vision pros every day. Right. So, you know, baby steps.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll see again, frustrating to the people who own them. But so far, it
⏹️ ▶️ John makes me think Apple is just being patient with this. Now, the fear is always the home pod
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Are they being patient with the home pod or they just not care about it? Several years and we’re like, OK, well, they don’t really care about it. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, we’ll see how it works out for Vision Pro. Right now, I think they’re just being patient.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How many people right now do you think use Vision Pro regularly total in the entire market?
⏹️ ▶️ John 150,000 was my guess. You think 150,000 people use Vision
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regularly? Yeah, that’s my guess. Out of like maybe 300,000
⏹️ ▶️ John sold, so half of them, right? I would estimate more like maybe 20,000.
⏹️ ▶️ John Only Apple knows, I’m just guessing. Like I don’t even own one myself, so I could not tell you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. I, the thing is for me, I do turn
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to it from time to time and there are very specific times that I think it’s extremely useful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have because I have no self for self-respect. I’m happy to use it on a plane or a train. We’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talked about that many times. Uh, and it is phenomenal. It is utterly phenomenal to just be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey immersed in a movie and the plane or the train that you’re on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey effectively doesn’t exist. Like it is amazing. this spatial FaceTime I was talking about was super cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do really enjoy watching the immersive video. Unfortunately, once you see it, you’ve mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seen it, and there’s a sum total of what, like an hour of immersive video on the entire platform, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s cool. So, and then what if, the Marvel app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slash interactive storytelling thing, I actually have only done the first 10 or 20 minutes of it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because then I got busy and then forgot about it. But the 10 or 20 minutes, despite me sounding blase
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about it, was actually extremely cool. Um, so there are times when I, I turned to the vision pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in, and there are times when I’m glad I have one. I wouldn’t say I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey always glad I have one though. And that’s the tough thing, but I don’t, I don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to count it out quite yet. Even though it’s definitely. It’s definitely,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was going to say an ailing platform. I think that’s a little dramatic. It’s, it’s not a platform that’s really, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s really hit its stride yet. But I can squint and I can see several
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different ways in which it could.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope it does, honestly. I really hope it does. Because they do have some great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco engineering in it. There are some really cool ideas. There’s a lot of potential. There’s also a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge number of big mistakes they made. And I think they have botched the launch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in really sad and impressive fashion. And so there is something to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco save here, but they have to save it in order to save it. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we need to see action and potential changes here and there and in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both the product and in the ecosystem that they need to jumpstart. And so until we start seeing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like significant moves in those areas, it’s hard to see it as anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other than a flop. And honestly, really, I honestly genuinely think like John said 150,000 people, he thinks regularly use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. I honestly think that might be off by a factor of 10. Like that’s how it seems like, like, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, granted, this is not like a platform that you see people using, you know, outside very much because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not made for that. But like, I’ve seen more Cybertrucks in real life than I’ve seen Vision Bros.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like that’s saying something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Cybertrucks you
⏹️ ▶️ John And by the way, you said they were pushing this thing hard. If they were really pushing this thing hard, they’d be giving it to developers
⏹️ ▶️ John They’d be giving it no strings attached. be saying, you don’t have to make an app, but here, we’ll just give you one. And
⏹️ ▶️ John think about it. That’s how you actually push things hard. The fact that they’re not doing that shows that a they’re Apple because they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John ever give things away. And be that they’re still kind of like, we’ll just take it slow and steady.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because, I mean, honestly, they should have been giving them away. That’s one good way like give it away
⏹️ ▶️ John to the good developers, again, using Apple’s knowledge of which developers you think make quality the applications
⏹️ ▶️ John and entrust them with free, essentially dev kits, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But that hasn’t been the Apple way for a variety of cultural reasons that don’t make a lot of sense.
⏹️ ▶️ John if you ever see Apple doing that, for Apple, I would say it’s a sign of desperation. For any other company, I’d say it’s just good
⏹️ ▶️ John business, but Apple is so culturally against that type of thing. It’s like, we’ll make it
⏹️ ▶️ John so good, you’ll pay. You’ll pay for it yourself. You’ll wanna make apps for it. It’s like, okay, well, if you can pull that off, great,
⏹️ ▶️ John thumbs up. But if you can’t pull that off, about giving them away?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, like, it wouldn’t even have to be for free. Just, if, even if they just had, like, a developer purchase program, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve done before, like, in very small ways, but they, if they had a developer purchase program where, like, a developer of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, a reasonably established app could buy one for, like, half price
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or, you know, something like that, like, get them in the hands of developers who would appreciate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the discount and therefore overlook some of the math behind the market and actually get apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out there. But ultimately, even that, I think that would help a lot, but what would help even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more is content and not only making a ton of content themselves for it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but also maybe making moves to repair relationships with third-party content
⏹️ ▶️ Marco providers that would be important for it, like the big streaming services, like YouTube,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Netflix, get those apps on there, but doing that’s gonna require relationship work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I think Apple is allergic to even trying to do.
Sponsor: Tailscale
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This week we are sponsored by Tailscale. So you might’ve heard of Tailscale
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a server on a Linode instance on the East Coast. You have a digital ocean droplet on the West Coast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You have a home lab where you have a bunch to different servers in the Midwest. And you have a phone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and an iPad, and you want all of these devices to talk to each other privately and securely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and quickly. Well, you could stand up your own VPN, which is kind of a pain in the butt, and I’ve done that in the past, and it’s
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey even though the internet in London was very sus, despite that, I was still able to contact
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my Synology at home. I was able to talk to all my other servers as though I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey still sitting in my house. And that means, among other things, that I had my pie
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hole with me wherever I went, which was critical because the networking was so crummy when I was
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Mac Mini getting minier
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do some topics and first thing we have to talk about is that apparently the Mac 4 Mini will be really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mini. So this is from Bloomberg. Apple is planning a new version of the Mac Mini that will be its
⏹️ ▶️ Casey smallest desktop computer yet. This is the first major change in the Mac Mini’s form factor in 14 years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So a mere three years before we started this program. That’s when it was changed last.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The device will be far smaller than its predecessor, approaching the size of an Apple TV set-top box.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Despite the smaller overall design, the new Mac Mini will maybe taller than the current version. Today’s model is about 1.4
⏹️ ▶️ Casey inches high. The updated edition will still feature an aluminum shell though. Apple’s tested models
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with at least three USB-C ports on the back of the Mini in addition to an area for plugging in the power cable and an HDMI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey port for connecting the device to TV sets and monitors. People involved in the development of the new Mac Mini say it’s essentially an iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro in a small box. That’s cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I wish we had a little bit more information about this. My first question is obviously internal power supply or not because
⏹️ ▶️ John you can make it real small if you put the power supply in a brick But that hasn’t been Apple’s way. The Apple TV is really
⏹️ ▶️ John small and it has an internal power supply and it’s pretty cool I think there’s no reason they can’t keep it
⏹️ ▶️ John with internal power supply And I like the idea of the mini being redone.
⏹️ ▶️ John But my question for this is for a desktop computer This is not a portable
⏹️ ▶️ John as far as I know. There’s no rumors of this having a battery or anything like that for a desktop computer
⏹️ ▶️ John what is the smaller size by you? I agree that the current mini is too big. Like we all made fun of it when the M1 Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John mini came out and people cracked it open and half the box was empty because they just use the same box from the Intel one and this
⏹️ ▶️ John giant monster overpowered like ridiculous power supply. There was like two or three times
⏹️ ▶️ John as much power as it needed but you know, they’re just saving money. You have the existing case, but they did it with all the M1s, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, devices that use the existing cases. Makes sense. And it makes sense that they would shrink it. But Apple TV size,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s getting to the point now where I feel like the cords are gonna pull it off the desk because they weigh too much, you know
⏹️ ▶️ John what I mean? With like, I’m all for a smaller Mac mini, but I hope, I don’t think the size of Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ John is necessary, right? Just, you know, half the size of the current one, I guess that sounds about right, but when I picture
⏹️ ▶️ John an Apple TV size thing, and that’s my Mac mini, I know it seems weird at that point, like maybe make it magnetically
⏹️ ▶️ John attached to the back of the studio display or something, like a little moray, whatever, like the little sucker fish
⏹️ ▶️ John things, I don’t know what they’re called. but hey, you know, once every decade and
⏹️ ▶️ John a half, it’s time to change the Mac Mini. I think it’s on the same schedule as the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope they don’t lose too many of the ports. Like, you know, the rumor is, you know, possibly three USB-Cs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope it’s at least that, because the Mac Mini is really good for ports for its size. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope they don’t lose too many ports. Because again, like, you know, so to make it smaller,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I think it serves multiple angles. One is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smaller will have less stuff in it, it will have fewer ports, it will be a cost savings for them. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making it smaller will probably be a lot cheaper and they will make a higher margin on it. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, good for them, they need more money. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that’s- You can fit
⏹️ ▶️ John more of them on a shipping container, you know what I mean? Like all the shipping costs, the packaging costs, like everything
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s in, and it’s called the Mac Mini, like it’s in the name. This is the one they make small. I’m you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, I don’t begrudge them making smaller. They should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of course right so you know number one reason to make it smaller. They will save money whether they will pass it along to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us. Well, they won’t but they will save money. Okay, but also when you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at the Apple Silicon Series IMAX, you know, the the new slim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco colorful ones. Those were desktops that got people excited about a desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the first time in a pretty long time because they were interesting and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cool and they took it in a different direction that like that kind of got people’s attention
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again and it didn’t revolutionize the world desktops but it took this one desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that already existed and made it cooler and made people like it again and made it get into the news
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and kind of capture people’s attention again. That will happen if they make a very tiny Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mini that will happen to a smaller degree but that will happen for the Mac So that’s a reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as well. And then I think finally, I think a lot of Mac minis end up being used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in places where space is at a premium. Things like data centers. If you have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco server rack where you have a bunch of Mac minis and some kind of custom mount or something, that will actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a substantial upgrade for you to be able to fit more of them in a rack.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Especially presumably as they’re continuing to be very power efficient and everything like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be a lot better with internal power supply as John said so I hope it does keep that and I think it probably will. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you look at how the Mac Mini is used like it’s used in a bunch of different ways and most of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those ways would either benefit or be neutral if it got smaller.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only way that would really kill it I think would be if it starts needing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dongles for everything that it wouldn’t I mean it’s not gonna kill the product but that would start reducing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the the utility of it in certain ways. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if it thermal throttled a lot too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, oh yeah, if it thermal throttles, that will too. So what I’m hoping they don’t compromise on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is thermal throttling, good one. I hope it’s still an internal power supply. And again, looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at how many of them are being used in like kind of utility or data center roles, I hope it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still has an ethernet port. That’s, that would be a big one. And the Apple TV does offer
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV has got an HDMI port, internal power supply, ethernet port, like there’s no reason
⏹️ ▶️ John it couldn’t have all these things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And not, well, before we get a bunch of feedback, not all of them have an HD, or excuse me, an ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ John Not the cheap, well, not the cheap Apple TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yes. Right, exactly. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, so if they can retain as many ports as they can, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ethernet, and internal power, then it still retains its utility
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for most of the ways that they are actually used. So I hope that’s what this is. and if they can make it smaller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while retaining that utility, that’s great. If they cut too much from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to make it smaller, I think that’s the wrong move, but we’ll see. So far again, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far there, the recent history of the Mac mini has been, you know, it doesn’t get frequent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco updates. It never has, it never will, but when they have updated it recently, it has been pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. So I hope they continue that, that pattern.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t think that there’s a need for the Mac Mini to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey particularly smaller, but I love the idea of it. Again, as both of you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said, assuming we don’t lose Ethernet, assuming we don’t lose at least a decent number of ports, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me, I could totally lose the USB-A ports. I know not everyone would agree, but for me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’d be fine. I would also not want an external power supply. I concur with both of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you that I think an internal power supply is part of what makes It’s so wonderful, but I thought it would be great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wouldn’t necessarily upgrade specifically because it’s so small, but I would at least be enticed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do it because why wouldn’t you? Oh, and thermal throttling. I agree with you, John, that if it has to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey aggressively thermal throttle, that would not be great either. But, you know, the Mac mini,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would never want that to be my only computer for various reasons about the way I work
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with computers. But I really love the Mac mini because it is so darn flexible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It can be like a little server. It can be, it could be your only computer if you want it to be. It could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be a server that’s co-located somewhere. You know, there’s any number of things that can do. It can kind of be all things to all people.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And if it can get physically smaller, sure, man, why not? I think that sounds really great. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m here for this. I don’t know if I would buy one, but I certainly love the idea. Assuming it’s not Compromise City.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s by the way, the Apple TV also has Gigabit Ethernet.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like there is a interesting convergence happening between the Mac Mini hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John and the Apple TV hardware, right? Like at a certain point, especially if the Mac Mini is Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ John sized, the Mac Mini is like an Apple TV with a better SoC,
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially, and Ethernet port and USB ports rather, like
⏹️ ▶️ John two rounded rectangles, One’s aluminum, one’s plastic, with a power plug,
⏹️ ▶️ John ethernet, HDMI, and then some USB-Cs on the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mini. Like, they both have Apple Silicon in them. Like, is it just, is a
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Mini of that size just like the world’s most powerful Apple TV that doesn’t run tvOS? And
⏹️ ▶️ John is the Apple TV 4K slowly becoming kind of like the DTK was, like a
⏹️ ▶️ John slow Mac Mini that doesn’t have expansion other than HDMI and ethernet?
⏹️ ▶️ John Remember the days when the Apple TV was a thing that ran Mac OS, right? Before it ran TV OS or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. There is, like we talk about the platform convergence or lack thereof between iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John and Mac. But what is it about TV OS that couldn’t just be an app
⏹️ ▶️ John that ran on a Mac mini? Because once it gets to be that small, Marco was saying like people put their Mac minis in weird places. It
⏹️ ▶️ John used to be that people would put their Mac minis on their, next to their TVs before streaming boxes existed, before the Apple TV existed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because you could, you know, run a Plex server on it, connected to your TV, so on and so forth. And you’d want it to be small because it’d have to be with
⏹️ ▶️ John your TV junk, right? That’s why the Apple TV is very small and unobtrusive. And like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not saying these things are going to converge, like the Apple TV has a thread radio and presumably the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John mini won’t, or will it? We’ll see. But at a certain point, Apple making two puck-sized
⏹️ ▶️ John things with Apple Silicon SOCs in them at two different prices just starts to look like a
⏹️ ▶️ John wider range of Apple TV powers, if it wasn’t for the OS difference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I mean, first of all, the OS difference is substantial. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John second of all-
⏹️ ▶️ John What part of the OS couldn’t just be an app? Like, you launch the tvOS app, and it just runs everything you
⏹️ ▶️ John see there. It’s a full screen app. It takes over everything. It answers to the remote. You know what I mean? I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think there’s any. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there’s some part of tvOS that’s specifically tailored to have some sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John real time feeding of it. But I feel like everything it’s doing is so within the power of the SoC, like it’s so
⏹️ ▶️ John not a big deal to the SoC, that this could all just be an app.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it’s not that different in terms of technical grunt. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more about massive differences in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco realities of hooking it up, managing it, the capabilities it has. So for instance, try to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco configure a Mac never connecting a keyboard to it. It can be difficult. There’s all sorts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of just little details. If it was a Mac, it would have complexities X, Y, and Z. And anybody who’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever tried to use a Mac as a TV computer, you’ve run into these complexities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before. You know this, like you know that it’s fairly different. Also, I would say like, you know, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple TV costs 150 bucks. The Mac mini costs like six to 800 for a basic one.
⏹️ ▶️ John it has way more RAM and way more SSD space. Yeah, it’s just, it’s a super,
⏹️ ▶️ John super high end. But the only thing is they’re both Apple, so then they both have RAM, they both run the same base OS, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John You could have a Mac OS, you know, boot into essentially like Addy’s or whatever, you know, thing that works through
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just, the hardware at the very least is converging, if not the software. And the software is close enough
⏹️ ▶️ John to each other that they could really have one thing that did both of them. I’m not saying they should combine them. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John they should probably remain separate, but it’s very interesting that they are, what is it, carcinogenation?
⏹️ ▶️ John I probably pronounced it wrong, where so many different animals on Earth have essentially evolved into
⏹️ ▶️ John crab shapes independently along different lines. they’re not actually related to each other evolutionarily,
⏹️ ▶️ John but everyone’s ends up at crab. Well, maybe everyone ends up at Apple TV or Mac mini,
⏹️ ▶️ John whichever one you decide is the standard bearer for the rounded rectangle puck shape.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, we’ll see what happens, but like I said, I’m excited for this.
Apple needs more money
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So there’s been some big news this week. I’m in a good mood. I really don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be in a bad mood, but we got to talk about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We don’t have to listen. We don’t have to actually talk about this that much if we don’t want to, because I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also in a good mood. We talk about the Mac mini. It’s fun. We like do we really have to talk about Apple being a jerk again? Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I say this as somebody who I love, you know, my career that I’ve made in part by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco calling on Apple when they’ve been jerks. Apple’s being a jerk to Patreon again. More App Store BS again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is doing horrible things again with the App Store commissions again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do we actually have to really drill it in again how just terrible this whole thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is and how much they’re ruining the reputation, especially among creators? My God, what a terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco move. Apple’s modern business model is to shake everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down as much as possible. Half their profit is coming from making great products,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the other half of their profit is about to come from shaking everyone down. I hope we can continue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to celebrate the former, and I hope the latter is not forever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it sounds like you already did talk about it, but I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco have a slightly different
⏹️ ▶️ John take on this. Like, well, let’s just say what the story is first.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was going to say, let’s set the stage here. All right. So, Patreon put up a blog post, I think it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was yesterday as we record, it was early in the week. But anyways, reading bits and pieces from the blog post, as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we first announced last year, and we’ll link to their original blog post about this, Apple’s requiring that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Patreon use their in-app purchasing system and remove all other billing systems from the Patreon iOS app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by November 2024. Again, this is Patreon’s own blog post. This has two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey major consequences for creators. Number one, Apple will be applying their 30% App Store fee to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all new memberships purchased in the Patreon iOS app, in addition to anything bought in your Patreon shop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Number two, any creator currently on first of the month or per creation billing plans. We’ll have to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey switch over to subscription billing to continue to earning in the iOS app because that’s the only billing type apples
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in app purchase system supports. So a Patreon, just in case you’re not aware, I presume all of you are, but just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in case, Patreon is a way that you can say, Hey, you’re like, let’s say ATP was on Patreon.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’re not, but let’s say we were, we could say, you know, Hey, every time we release an episode, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pledge to give us a dollar, $10, a hundred dollars, whatever the case may be. Or you could say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every month on the first of the month, you’re going to give us, you know, eight bucks or whatever the case may be.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can do all this through the page on this website. And that isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a possible in iOS in the iOS app store. So now going back to the blog post.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple’s fee will not impact your existing members. It will only affect new memberships purchased in the iOS app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from November onward, we’ve been working closely with creators to figure out the best way to help you avoid earnings disruptions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stemming from Apple’s 30% App Store fee. Based on creator feedback, we’ve built an optional tool
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that can automatically increase your prices only in the iOS app to offset the cost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Apple’s fee. This way you’ll continue to earn at least the same amount per membership as you do on all other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey platforms. Apple’s in-app purchase system, on the other hand, only supports Patreon subscription billing model.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, so there’s a thread about this on, uh, on MassDON, which I’d like to come back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to if that’s okay. But continuing on with the blog post, Apple’s also made it clear that if creators
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Patreon continue to use unsupported billing methods or disable transactions in their iOS app, we will be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at risk of having the entire app removed from their app store. Are you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, are we surprised? Is any part of this surprising?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the surprising thing is that it lasted this long. Apple’s entire business model is, again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco selling products and then secondarily, which is assumed to be matching them in revenue,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or in profit rather, shaking down as many people as possible. Apple makes a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money from hardware and a lot of money from rents. That’s what this is. And so they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are going, like this is a pattern they’ve been doing for a long time. They’re basically scrounging around the couch cushions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of every possible app that’s in the app store. Apple has made a consistent effort to go and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see where can we squeeze more money that we haven’t been able to squeeze or that we haven’t squeezed before, they haven’t tried to squeeze
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before. and they are basically hunting around the App Store, looking around saying, hey, looks like you’re making some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money. We need a piece of that. And they build a big stick. So this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a pattern they’ve been doing for a long time. And it’s not necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that somebody was breaking the rules and they go catch them. Usually it’s, which is I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the case here, usually it’s kind of a vague edge of the rules where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something has been okay for a while and Apple suddenly decides that’s not okay anymore. And you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some money and we need the money. So therefore, we’re gonna reinterpret
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or change this rule to now include you. So please, business that we had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really no role in creating, you need to now give us your money because we need it more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than you do, obviously.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so there’s this thread on Mastodon from Sidria, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sidria writes, it’s not clear to me why it would allow Patreon take 5% above and beyond payment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey processing when I can just get subscription service from PayPal for the price of payment processing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, God, let me tell you, you do not want to use PayPal for subscriptions. Trust
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me, I did that before. Look, I’m not a huge fan of Patreon. It’s fine. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I would I wouldn’t use it myself. But my God, you do not want to use PayPal for this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If those are your two choices, pick Patreon. Trust me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So continuing from Sudhiria, what I am here for is the buy creation model. If you don’t offer me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, then I can get what you’re selling for much cheaper elsewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So, uh, my take on this, uh, Mark has already covered a little bit is that like
⏹️ ▶️ John the rules in the app store for what Apple wants a percentage of
⏹️ ▶️ John are arbitrary, kind of, um, Apple has changed them over the years. If there
⏹️ ▶️ John has ever been any kind of a thing that they’ve stated to try to tell you what what they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to charge for. They’ve said, we wanna charge for digital things. We don’t charge for physical things. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of edge cases in gray areas. During the pandemic, people were given like yoga sessions
⏹️ ▶️ John and they were doing them over the computer instead of in person. And Apple’s like, is that a digital good? Is
⏹️ ▶️ John that a physical one? Maybe we need money from those yoga people, right? Patreon
⏹️ ▶️ John is kind of, I mean, it’s not so much in a gray area except that like Apple didn’t charge them
⏹️ ▶️ John originally and they’re really big and important. novels like, just let him be because it’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John a physical thing like, oh, people are trying to fund a cooler and the cooler gets made. Well, that’s Kickstarter.
⏹️ ▶️ John Patreon is like you’re going to you’re going to make a new painting every month and they’re going to pay
⏹️ ▶️ John you to do it because they’re like your patrons, patron of the arts or whatever, like Patreon. You could have people pay for anything, literally
⏹️ ▶️ John anything, right? Some of that stuff happens in the physical world. Some of it happens in digital. Some of it’s like neither.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is that a digital thing? I don’t know. But if you squint, you could say, OK, I can see
⏹️ ▶️ John how Apple’s somewhat consistent rule of digital things we want
⏹️ ▶️ John to cut off would eventually come for Patreon and say, well, you’re kind of like a digital thing or you’re more towards
⏹️ ▶️ John digital things, so you want to cut of your stuff, right? But that’s just how Apple frames it. And I really think that’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of like a back solving. I like, well, what are we already getting money from that we care about? Let’s just say that’s our rule, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John What actually makes sense and what a lot of the feedback about Patreon has been discussing
⏹️ ▶️ John is, I’m going to link it for the 17th time in the show, my Art of the Possible post on Hypercritical, where it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple acts as if applying business terms to people
⏹️ ▶️ John will make them reshape their businesses to fit the cut that Apple wants.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if Apple says, we want 30% of this business, and the business says, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a 30% for you, like, this is a low margin business that every cent is already accounted for by various
⏹️ ▶️ John people in the value chain. There’s not another 30 cents for 30% for you or 15% or 5% or
⏹️ ▶️ John any percent, right? Like, we pay these percentages and everyone gets these percentages
⏹️ ▶️ John for doing the jobs they’re doing. And there’s just no money left for you. And Apple’s like, we’ll just change the shape of your entire
⏹️ ▶️ John industry and or business to make it so that this percentage is available to us because that’s the way it should
⏹️ ▶️ John be. And what I wrote in this blog post is like, Look, Apple, you can try that. But if it turns out that those businesses
⏹️ ▶️ John cannot or will not reshape themselves to provide your fee, then you just miss out on those. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the example that I’ve seen coming up during this whole kerfuffle is the one that has been coming up for years and came up when
⏹️ ▶️ John it was actually relevant, which eBooks, right? You’ve got authors, publishers,
⏹️ ▶️ John resellers like Amazon, a established royalty and fee structure from publishers
⏹️ ▶️ John to resellers and retailers and everything. I was in that business. I know where all the percentages
⏹️ ▶️ John go. They’re all accounted for, right? And yes, the author kind of gets screwed and they don’t get as much money as you think There’s a lot of businesses
⏹️ ▶️ John that are like that, like the music industry. But anyway, setting that aside, there’s not another 30 or 15% hanging around
⏹️ ▶️ John for the maker of the phone that you bought the song. That’s not part of the value chain.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple’s like, we think we should be. And Amazon was like, okay, well then you just can’t buy eBooks on the Kindle app on iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John because there’s not like, if you let us do it without giving you a cut, we’ll put it in the app. It’ll be great for your users. Everyone would love
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Apple’s like, no, you can’t put it in the app unless you give us X percent, right? And that percent is not
⏹️ ▶️ John available. and how many decades or years has it been? That percentage is not becoming available. That
⏹️ ▶️ John business has not reshaped itself to fit Apple’s desire to get that fee. Patreon is a similar
⏹️ ▶️ John model. Patreon, you know, connects people who wanna pay for a thing with someone who wants to get paid for
⏹️ ▶️ John doing it. Whatever that
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, whether you wanna pay them per painting they make or on a monthly basis or whatever it
⏹️ ▶️ John is and whatever they’re gonna do, that’s between you, that’s between the patrons and the person who has the Patreon.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Patreon is the platform that enables that to happen. And Patreon takes a cut for being the platform
⏹️ ▶️ John that makes that happen. And if you look at, we’ll put a link into Patreon’s like fees. Their fees have a range.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like if you got into Patreon like really early, like, you know, when Patreon first launched, Patreon
⏹️ ▶️ John would take 5%. And then the current ones anywhere, are anywhere from 8 to 12%.
⏹️ ▶️ John And those are the fees, and they charge for payment processing and currency conversion. And you know, there’s fees, fees,
⏹️ ▶️ John fees, right? But the point is, if you add up all of Patreon’s fees in the worst case scenario, like, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, for the privilege of me doing this thing, for letting people sign up to give you money, for collecting the money from them,
⏹️ ▶️ John for then paying you out for the money that they gave you, for me doing all of that, Patreon takes this percent.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that percent, I think universally, is less than 30. So
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple wants a bigger cut of Patreon’s business than Patreon takes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Patreon is the business that connects people and people who do things and people who want to pay them
⏹️ ▶️ John for it, right? Apple says, yeah, but we make the phone and the OS
⏹️ ▶️ John where the app is that people use your service through. And so we want a bigger cut,
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes substantially like three times bigger cut than you get because
⏹️ ▶️ John we think we provide three times the value that you, the actual platform does.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can understand Patreon saying, there’s not really room in our business for someone
⏹️ ▶️ John to make three times as much as we do on every transaction, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John A lot of people are mad at Patreon right now because some people are like, well, Patreon, rather than saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John okay, we’re gonna give Apple, it’s 30%. And by the way, it’s 30% because Patreon is a huge company.
⏹️ ▶️ John Each individual person who has a thing on Patreon, they may be making pennies, right? They’re making not
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of money. Don’t they qualify for the small business, blah, blah, blah? Well, Patreon does not qualify
⏹️ ▶️ John for the small business, blah, blah, blah, because they make more than whatever, a million dollars or whatever. So Patreon has to pay the big amount,
⏹️ ▶️ John not the small business program amount, which kind of sucks, whatever. Anyway, a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ John are saying, Patreon, how about you just get your app out of the app store? You have a website, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John how a lot of people use Patreon, is the app so important that you’re going to give Apple 30%
⏹️ ▶️ John and then basically give an automated way to pass that 30% cost onto
⏹️ ▶️ John the customers who pay on Patreon, right? So that’s what they’re saying, like, hey, people who are
⏹️ ▶️ John on Patreon, you can just basically raise the rates of all of your subscribers by 30%
⏹️ ▶️ John if they use the iOS app, and then you’ll get the same amount. It’s like, yeah, but every single person who plays for a Patreon
⏹️ ▶️ John is gonna be paying 30% more, and that 30% is gonna be going to Apple. And if you told them, hey, we’re going to,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know you subscribe to this Patreon for this person, we’re gonna raise your prices 30%, but if
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t want that to happen, don’t use the iOS app, I bet they would go, fine, I won’t use the iOS app, I can go to patreon.com.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know where the website is. This website does not require the phone to exist. It works fine
⏹️ ▶️ John on the web. The web is the platform nobody owns. I don’t think I want to give 30% of my money to Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like if you told someone I’m paying $5 a month and he said, okay, you know, 8% is going to Patreon
⏹️ ▶️ John and the whole rest is going to, no, sorry, 30% is going to Apple. Wait, what? 8% goes to Patreon, 30% goes to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John and the rest goes to the person I’m paying? Why is 30% going to Apple? It’s like, well, if you do it through the web, they don’t get anything, which
⏹️ ▶️ John by the way, you probably can’t even tell them unless you’re in the EU. But anyway, people are mad at Patreon, saying, Patreon, why are
⏹️ ▶️ John you doing this? Especially the people like that thing you read from the thread I’m messing on, it’s like, the reason I use Patreon is because I can
⏹️ ▶️ John let people pay me for every sculpture that I make. If I don’t make a sculpture, I don’t get paid. Every sculpture I make, this person pledged
⏹️ ▶️ John to pay me $1, right? So I put out a new sculpture, I say, here’s the new sculpture, and I get $1, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John In-app purchase doesn’t support that, right? Or paying, even something as simple as
⏹️ ▶️ John paying on the first of the month, you’re like, oh, monthly subscriptions exist, but they don’t all start in the first of the month. So some people
⏹️ ▶️ John have patrons who say, on the first of every month, I will collect $1 from you because that’s what you pledged for whatever it is that I do.
⏹️ ▶️ John but Apple doesn’t support that with an app purchase. So Patreon’s saying not only will we pass along the 30% cost if you want
⏹️ ▶️ John us to or not, and then you can just pay the 30%, we don’t care who pays it or whatever, but we’re eliminating
⏹️ ▶️ John those other two things where you get paid for every sculpture you make and you get paid on the first of the month. Because iOS and
⏹️ ▶️ John app purchase doesn’t support that, we’re just going to eliminate that for anyone who uses the iOS app. Only people who use the web
⏹️ ▶️ John can do that. And then furthermore, we won’t even provide an option in the app that says,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t wanna use the app to do this stuff, I’ll do it all on the web. I still wanna have the app so I can look at stuff, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t wanna use it to pay. Because if we did that, Apple said, apparently, they’ll take the app off the app store.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think there’s plenty of blame to go around, but this is, I think, just another example
⏹️ ▶️ John of a business that Apple wants to insert themselves into that just doesn’t have that much money laying around for them.
⏹️ ▶️ John The users don’t wanna supply it, Patreon doesn’t wanna supply it. It’s not as if they’re taking 30% of Patreon’s cut, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John taking 30% of the whole price. If you pledge $1 a month, 30 cents of that goes to Apple, right? And whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John percent goes to Patreon, and then the rest, you know, goes to
⏹️ ▶️ John the person you’re actually trying to pay. Apple simply can’t insert itself into
⏹️ ▶️ John certain businesses because they’re already established and the cut is already, you know, everyone has decided that the
⏹️ ▶️ John distribution of money on that is acceptable to all involved. And when Apple power shoots in and say,
⏹️ ▶️ John we want a fairly large percentage, sometimes we want the second largest percentage because
⏹️ ▶️ John the person who owns the Patreon is getting the largest amount still. and then Apple second and then Patreon a
⏹️ ▶️ John distant third, that just doesn’t make sense to people. It doesn’t make sense to the people who have businesses on Patreon. It doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John make sense to the people paying for it. And honestly, I don’t even know how it makes sense to Apple because I don’t feel like Patreon
⏹️ ▶️ John is gonna be making them as much money as like in-app purchases on Subway Surfers or whatever. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s yet another, you know, it’s kind of like wish-casting. Wouldn’t it be great if 30%
⏹️ ▶️ John of this existing business could go to us? Yeah, we all have that feeling, but lots of business. I can look at all sorts of businesses and say, wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John it be great if, like, How much of a percentage of Patreon’s business should the internet service
⏹️ ▶️ John providers have? How much should the cellular companies have? All those facilitate the transactions that are taking
⏹️ ▶️ John place. Arguably the internet service providers, Patreon couldn’t exist without them. Shouldn’t they get like 15%? And
⏹️ ▶️ John if you start doing that and saying everybody along the chain is gonna get some big percent that they’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John boost their stock price and their earnings reports or whatever, it doesn’t work, it’s not sustainable.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s not enough money to go around to have like, okay, we’re connecting, We’re connecting people who make
⏹️ ▶️ John things and people who want to pay for it. Unfortunately, kind of like the music business,
⏹️ ▶️ John you pay $1 and 3 cents of that dollar gets to the person you wanted to pay. And the rest goes to
⏹️ ▶️ John millions of different middle parties that have somehow found their way into this business and that you have to pay because they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John monopolies and duopolies. And that I think is the real story here is
⏹️ ▶️ John how much room is there in a given, especially established business for
⏹️ ▶️ John new parties to come in. Even if they’re part of the value chain, and Apple is part of the value chain, even if they’re part of the value chain,
⏹️ ▶️ John how much place is there for them to come in and to demand money for the things that take place there? I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, at this point, I’m kind of surprised that Apple doesn’t say, well, if you use Safari, when you go to patreon.com, we get 30%.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you use Chrome, we don’t get it. But if you use Safari, we get 30%, because we’re facilitating that transaction by having a web
⏹️ ▶️ John browser that we make. And they are facilitating it, but most people have decided that
⏹️ ▶️ John the web browser maker doesn’t deserve 30%. but I guess the phone maker does because of in-app
⏹️ ▶️ John purchase. It’s frustrating. It’s frustrating on all sides
⏹️ ▶️ John here. People are mad at Patreon. People are mad at Apple. People who are on Patreon are mad
⏹️ ▶️ John that they have to figure out some other alternative. A lot of these shenanigans, this is not the reason we do this,
⏹️ ▶️ John but because we’re just a bunch of programming nerds, but people were asking in the chat room, don’t you guys use Patreon? Don’t you use Memberful?
⏹️ ▶️ John We are in the privileged position not to have to do that because we’re software developers. So Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John wrote the system that we use. We do use a third party thing. We use Stripe, which is a payment processor, which is an extremely difficult
⏹️ ▶️ John thing to do. But guess what? Stripe doesn’t charge 30% yet. It
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco charges like 3%. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John they charge what payment processors charge. And Patreon probably uses Stripe behind the scenes. And Patreon
⏹️ ▶️ John charges for payment processing. And I get they probably make a little profit. And the rest of that money goes to their actual payment
⏹️ ▶️ John processor, which honestly is probably Stripe. But not everyone is going to write their own
⏹️ ▶️ John membership program. I would not recommend it, in fact. I don’t think Marco would recommend it. No, we can do it because we’re a bunch of nerd programmers
⏹️ ▶️ John and a nerd podcast. And no, we’re not gonna start a competing business with Patreon because that’s not what we want to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s, when businesses like Patreon
⏹️ ▶️ John end up taking more and more of the money and at this point, like not taking more of it, but like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple takes more of the money and Patreon allows you to pass it on to your customers or to pay it yourself. It just makes the people who are
⏹️ ▶️ John stranded there, people who can’t and don’t want to write their own membership systems, Like that’s why I use Patreon.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t write my own membership system. That’s why Patreon exists. And all of a sudden prices are going up 30%
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’m getting none of that. That’s not a good feeling for anybody. And honestly, I really, you know, Guru
⏹️ ▶️ John wrote about this today. Like people are saying, hey, Patreon, just pull yourself out of the app store. That’s what it’s come to right
⏹️ ▶️ John now is that people are so against Apple-ness that they’re saying, look, these companies should just
⏹️ ▶️ John not be in the app store. It’s not worth it. Like that’s what people always say. Well, if you don’t think Apple’s cut is worth
⏹️ ▶️ John it, take your app out of the app store. And now finally we’re getting a concrete scenario in an app that people are familiar with saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, pull the Patreon app. It is not an essential part of the Patreon process. And maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John Patreon knows something that we don’t. Maybe they know that that is their biggest sales funnel. If they pulled the app, they would go out of business.
⏹️ ▶️ John In which case maybe Apple does deserve some percentage of it or whatever. But honestly, we’re never gonna find out until
⏹️ ▶️ John someone tests that theory because I feel like the web is a perfectly reasonable,
⏹️ ▶️ John we don’t have an app. We don’t have an iOS app with an app purchase. We just have a website, atp.ifm.com. Every single
⏹️ ▶️ John one of our members went through that website to join. None of them went through an iOS app. There is no iOS app
⏹️ ▶️ John you can use to join our membership program. It’s only on the web, and yet somehow people find it
⏹️ ▶️ John and join. It’s a miracle.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope the government steps in and breaks Apple of its addiction to extortion. Like, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what this is. Apple’s business model is hardware and extortion. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a terrible place to be. They are clearly incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shameless about it and incredibly addicted to this revenue. This is exactly the role
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that government regulation plays when a large
⏹️ ▶️ Marco monopolist, which Apple, I know we can argue about the definition of that, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the role they take here is the role of a monopolist. And when a monopolist starts having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco undue influence over large areas of commerce that become damaging to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an entire market, that’s when government regulation steps in to regulate that monopolist
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to force them to behave differently in certain ways to protect the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco health of the entire market. There is no question that Apple has reached that status, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple is abusing that monopoly power to extract things via extortion to extract
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more money from lots of businesses out there. It is incredibly damaging to everyone, including Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long-term strategy. Again, I question Tim Cook’s long-term strategy here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do not think he is a good CEO anymore. I think his role in the company
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has run its course. I think he has done all the good he’s going to do,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s time for a different strategy. It really is. There we go. Mark
⏹️ ▶️ John bingo cards. I know, yes, of course.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I need my own sound effect for this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John effect. We’re on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Mark will call us for Apple executives to be fired.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But where does this end? What is the strategy here exactly? The strategy here is begging for regulation.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think it’s extortion, but like, if you want to see what Apple’s model was, like I mentioned the music labels, the music
⏹️ ▶️ John labels have established a business where essentially this is the case, that the middle party
⏹️ ▶️ John gets most of the money and the artist gets like the smallest amount. And to some
⏹️ ▶️ John degree, the movie industry has done that a little bit, at least they have some unions there to push back against or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John There are existing businesses that are shaped like that. And I bet Apple looks at the music industry and says, wow,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is amazing. Music industry takes most of the money and whatever pennies are left go to the artist
⏹️ ▶️ John and the most successful artists are still millionaires, but the music labels are billionaires
⏹️ ▶️ John and obviously digital music and streaming and all other stuff has sort of put a dent in that business. But that’s a business
⏹️ ▶️ John model that a business person could look at and say, wow, that’s great. We should have that for us. But I don’t think you
⏹️ ▶️ John can retroactively make that happen. Like Patreon is not a new website or concept. It’s been around
⏹️ ▶️ John for a long time and the percentages are what they are and they have competition in this area. and
⏹️ ▶️ John the money is distributed the way it’s distributed. And part of the way these services work is they try to tell creators,
⏹️ ▶️ John come to us, to our site. We have the best features, people like to use our site, and
⏹️ ▶️ John we won’t take as much of your money as the competitor. But Apple’s not competing on that ground.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re just saying there’s an existing business, and if you squint, it looks like a digital thing. And we say
⏹️ ▶️ John we get a part of all digital stuff that goes through our phone, and we’ve been able to do that because a lot of the things on our phone
⏹️ ▶️ John started from zero, and they arrived on our phone, And then that purchase made them tons of money or whatever, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But existing businesses aren’t already shaped like that. And they’re coming in saying, make room for us, make room for us.
⏹️ ▶️ John And even though there are businesses that are worse, like the record labels, Apple can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John butt their way into that either and say, by the way, we want 30% of every single thing. They were like, obviously, they already sell digital
⏹️ ▶️ John music and do streaming and do all this stuff or whatever. But like, so maybe it’s not a great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John analogy. I was going to say, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve already butted their way into that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, but they did that. They innovated their way into that by saying, find a way to sell your music in a way that people will buy it. And they did
⏹️ ▶️ John it with the iTunes store and then streaming. In most cases, streaming the labels are still getting most of the money. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple taking the large chunk of the money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there. Right. Although I think Spotify would have some dispute with the term competing. They were into that because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was also a little bit of unfair competition with that. But admittedly, like, yes, they did largely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get into that via competition that was partially fair.
⏹️ ▶️ John And also the artists were already getting screwed there, right? Seriously getting screwed, right? And so they continue to
⏹️ ▶️ John get screwed. It’s terrible, right? But here, arguably, the people who use Patreon are like, they’re okay
⏹️ ▶️ John with this deal. They’re like, I give Patreon 8% and it’s well worth it because I can’t, I’m not a programmer, I can’t write
⏹️ ▶️ John my own Patreon website, right? I want the people who give me money to have the least friction possible
⏹️ ▶️ John and people know how to use Patreon or whatever similar website you’re using. And for that, I give them 8%
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s well worth it to me. 38% going, not going to me,
⏹️ ▶️ John starts to be a different deal, right? And again, you can say, well, that’s just through
⏹️ ▶️ John the iOS app, they can continue doing it through the web. I don’t know what the funnels look like. Maybe Apple is calculating
⏹️ ▶️ John that they are such an important funnel, and I keep using that term, but it’s like, basically, where do users come from to
⏹️ ▶️ John pay you money? Do most of them come through the iOS app? Do most of them come through the website?
⏹️ ▶️ John What is the split, right? If iOS is such an important platform for making Patreon money that they feel like they can’t leave,
⏹️ ▶️ John then maybe Apple is calculating that they can take this cut. And apparently, Patreon
⏹️ ▶️ John is not pulling their app and they’re saying, yes, we are going to do this and prices are just going to go up from everybody.
⏹️ ▶️ John And what this should make people think is getting back to what Marco was saying, do we want to live
⏹️ ▶️ John in a world where the, you know, Android iOS duopoly
⏹️ ▶️ John has a stranglehold on the distribution of any service that uses your phone?
⏹️ ▶️ John And they are able to take that percentage because they are the funnel because
⏹️ ▶️ John they are a duopoly, right? It’s like, well, Apple is the funnel. The Apple gives you all your customers. You should pay them percentage. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple gives us all our customers because there is no other way to get your app on the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John in front of people’s faces other than progressive web apps, which Apple continues to fight against a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s why, like, it’s not like they’re they’re the funnel because they do such a great job there, except for in the
⏹️ ▶️ John EU. There are the exclusive way to put apps on people’s phones. Right
⏹️ ▶️ John and Android than the Google Play Store. They’re not exclusive, but they are the vast majority, right? That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the the root of this is that they have you know they can command those prices because they are the funnel because they
⏹️ ▶️ John are essentially a duopoly and Striking at the heart of that is not saying Apple can’t charge patreon money.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s saying Why should Apple be the exclusive distributor of apps and it gets back to the whole you
⏹️ ▶️ John DMA thing or whatever? So that’s this is the period of turmoil that we are in right in the EU
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway way, governments are trying to break the exclusivity of
⏹️ ▶️ John distribution that is the root of all this stuff over here in the US. We’re mostly just
⏹️ ▶️ John being sad that Patreon is going to be charging a lot more money and none of that money is going to be going to occur to the creators.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you know, Patreon pulling the app or making Patreon
⏹️ ▶️ John competitors that don’t use the app store or whatever, all of those are just kind of like hacking away at the leaves.
⏹️ ▶️ John The root of this whole problem is the Android iOS duopoly. And maybe the
⏹️ ▶️ John Department of Justice is gonna help with that, but we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, honestly, like what, I mean, why stop at Patreon? Like, you know, how about, what if a church has an app? You wanna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take, why don’t you, why don’t you take 30% of a church’s donations? What about different charities and nonprofits?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can you just take 30% of all their income too, if they happen to have apps? I mean, again, why, why stop
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you’re talking about like, you know, the Apple does make judgments about, you know, we choose not
⏹️ ▶️ John to take this money, even though we technically could, we choose not to, because it’s a nice thing to do, like with nonprofits
⏹️ ▶️ John Kind of them. But that is still, the root of that problem there is still Apple gets
⏹️ ▶️ John to decide. No, there’s no other influences on that. No competitor that can make
⏹️ ▶️ John different decisions to put pressure on Apple other than Android. So Apple and Android kind of do the similar things,
⏹️ ▶️ John which we’ll talk about probably next week. There’s some, another fun example of Apple and Android doing very similar things,
⏹️ ▶️ John because they’re essentially a duopoly. And there’s no other way to get on phones. And phones are used
⏹️ ▶️ John by everybody. And it’s, you know, I mean, every time this happens, people bring up the web and just go,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, just throw salt over their shoulder or whatever and say like,
⏹️ ▶️ John thank God the web exists because if it didn’t exist, Apple would never allow it to exist.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, the web, the platform nobody owns, not even Google even, most of the times it seems like they do, is
⏹️ ▶️ John the one sort of side door to this whole process for now. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the duopoly is so strong that they could say, hey, anything you buy using Safari, we get 30 percent.
⏹️ ▶️ John They haven’t tried that yet because you buy so many things through there. But Apple likes to pretend you live in a world where it’s only possible to
⏹️ ▶️ John ever give anyone money using a native app. It’s not true. You can go to a.fm on your phone
⏹️ ▶️ John and buy a membership from us. And Apple does not get a cut of that, even though you use your phone to do it. Isn’t that wild?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not wild. You used to be able to do it with computers that Apple would make and you could buy things through them. Apple got no cut of it. and somehow
⏹️ ▶️ John the world didn’t collapse and Apple didn’t go out of business.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s suppose we’re in an alternate universe where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the anti-steering rule doesn’t exist. And yes, I know the EU is basically that alternate universe,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but just bear with me here. Let’s say that Patreon could worldwide just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say, hey, these are the prices if you would like to use Apple’s in-app purchase system,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but if you’d like to see other pricing, go to the web, here’s a link.
⏹️ ▶️ John What’s the other pricing? You tell them the other price or get
⏹️ ▶️ John less by clicking on this web link.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this is the price on our website. Here’s a link to get there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No argument, but my point is, even if you weren’t allowed to show the price, I still feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like we would say, man, this is kind of dumb, but whatever. If people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to save a little money, they’ll go to the web, the link’s right there. And even better, you know, if Apple actually had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to, what’s the word I’m looking for? Compete, there it is. If Apple had to compete for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the business, and then in that case, you could say, you know, Oh, you can pay a 30%
⏹️ ▶️ Casey premium to use an app purchase, or you can, you know, not pay that and go to the web. Here’s the link. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like if that escape hatch was there, I would be a 10th as grumpy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as I am right now. But because there, Patreon isn’t allowed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that escape hatch because of Apple’s bullsh** rules that are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of their many, then there’s no escape patch. And so now Patreon’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screwed and Patreon being screwed, like that sucks because, you know, I feel for them,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but the people I really feel for, for, which is what you two have also been saying is the creators. These are people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who are just trying to eke out a living, not different than us. You know, they’re just trying to eke out a living,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing something creative. And they’re trying to get rewarded for their efforts, which again, is not unreasonable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and yet because of Apple, all these creators are potentially going to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screwed and that’s just, that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t grasp what Apple’s going for here. Like intellectually,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and maybe, I guess this is probably where it stops. I just need to shut up. But intellectually I get, they just want more money.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’re a corporation that just wants more money and it’s as simple as that. And I get that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I can’t help but feel like, especially in the last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey year or so, Apple has been trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get as many own goals as they did during the aforementioned butterfly keyboard era. And actually, I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say it’s worse now, because if you didn’t want a butterfly keyboard, you just don’t buy a laptop. But here, what are you gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do? Not use an iPhone? Like, yes, I guess you could go to Android, but so many people are not gonna do that. And honestly, in Android,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey land is basically the same thing. So I just, why, why,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why is, is it worth it to you for everyone to hate you? Is this money from Patreon worth
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it to you for all these creators to say, you know what, apple, because they’re a bunch of assholes anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, is this really worth it? Apple is this worth it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And. It’s easy for me to say, but I don’t think it is. I don’t think it’s worth
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. And I think what Apple isn’t realizing is they’re doing damage, possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey irreparable damage to their brand. And as much as I hate your brand, I hate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of referring to them that way, but it’s true, people are looking at Apple and unequivocally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying they’re the baddies now, and that’s just too
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad. And I don’t know, I don’t want to be that person that’s wishing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the glory days of the years of, you know, years past. Uh, but I can’t help but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wonder if that’s how, who I’ve become when it comes to Apple. And I think Marco, it was you that said earlier this very episode,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, their hardware is incredible and you know what, a lot of their software is too, but their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey policies are just awful and getting worse with every day. And I don’t really care
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whose fault it is. To be honest, I don’t care if it’s Phil’s. I don’t care if it’s Tim’s. I don’t care if it’s Eddie’s. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey care whose it is. It’s just gross and it’s unnecessary
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I hate it. And I guess I should do a little introspection about why I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so worked up about what a corporation does, but it just stinks and I really wish they would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey choose different options. But anyway, now that my rant is over, I, again, I come back to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if the, if the anti-steering rule wasn’t there, if Patreon was allowed to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say, go look at the website or, you know, or again, if Apple had to compete, if the App Store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had to compete with the web, then I feel like this would be a, not a nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey burger, but it would be much less of a big deal. But because of Apple’s absolutely absurd rules,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here we are. And it just sucks.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s part of like, it’s part of a sort of, we always think like, what is Apple thinking? Like, do they have a different view on the
⏹️ ▶️ John inside? Part of what lets you know what you can charge for
⏹️ ▶️ John the things that you make is competition, right? So like if you make a thing and you think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John worth X and you set the price way too high, you’ll find that out because people will buy competing products instead of yours.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know what I mean? Or if you have an array of services and boy, this one isn’t selling well, but this one’s selling like gangbusters.
⏹️ ▶️ John And in fact, we raised the price on the popular one, and people are still buying it. People must really want that, right? There has to
⏹️ ▶️ John be competition for you to learn what part of the value that I’m providing do people want to pay
⏹️ ▶️ John for, right? And what part do they think is not worth paying for? And I think Apple, for whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John reason, inside the company, doesn’t like they don’t not for whatever reason, but because they
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have that feedback, they don’t realize what part of the things they’re providing are valuable and what
⏹️ ▶️ John aren’t. They just think like, we make the platform, and because they can make any rules they want, the
⏹️ ▶️ John only feedback they get is like the most extreme of like someone pulls, Patreon pulls their app from the store. Like that’s literally
⏹️ ▶️ John like the grumbling they get or whatever, like, ah, they’ll still pay it. Obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John the IP that we’re providing is worth the percent we’re getting, and they grumble or whatever, but they keep paying it. And it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John your feedback mechanism can’t be If they don’t literally stop doing business with us entirely,
⏹️ ▶️ John it must be fine. And so they think, like, our role in that Patreon transaction is worth 30%.
⏹️ ▶️ John And no one from the customers to Patreon says, Apple, are you kidding me? Patreon’s percentage
⏹️ ▶️ John isn’t even 30% from using Patreon. Right? There’s no way yours is, right? And again,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can argue how much of that is the ISP, how much of that is the company that assembled the phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John how much of that is the cellular network, and like, they don’t get cuts of all of that stuff, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple says, well, we charge this amount and people pay it, so we must be worth it. It’s like, no, you’re not in a market
⏹️ ▶️ John that lets you know if what you’re doing is worth it because you don’t actually have competition, partially because of
⏹️ ▶️ John rules that you made that says people can’t even show that, hey, you could get this for 30% less on the web.
⏹️ ▶️ John Suddenly, if people saw that option, like, wow, people are choosing in-app purchases way less than they
⏹️ ▶️ John used to when they see they can get it for 30% off somewhere else. Because people buy things on the web all the time, I swear
⏹️ ▶️ John to you. On your own phone, it happens. And so in the absence of that, of competition,
⏹️ ▶️ John it makes it so they can’t tell. They can’t, I find it hard to believe. It’s like, surely they know, right? But it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John increasingly become my theory that they’re able to maintain the fiction
⏹️ ▶️ John that these percentages are appropriate because they think that’s how much value they’re providing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they don’t realize that, or they haven’t internalized that it’s because,
⏹️ ▶️ John they have captives, that it’s not a competitive market, that it’s duopoly, and that they set these incredibly anti-competitive rules.
⏹️ ▶️ John And maybe they’ll figure that out from the EU. But in our long discussion of EU stuff, and there’ll be more
⏹️ ▶️ John of it, I’m sorry, everyone, not on this episode, but in the future, because it continues to roll on. Even then, they’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ John we will comply in a way to make sure that we get all the money that we were getting before, and it’s just more complicated. And that also
⏹️ ▶️ John prevents true competition. And that also prevents them from realizing what part of,
⏹️ ▶️ John how valuable is what we’re providing? I bet tons of people would pay more than payment processing fees to
⏹️ ▶️ John use in that purchase. But more than payment processing fees, and 30% or even 15%, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John still a gap there. What is the gap? We’ll never know unless Apple exposes its services to competition.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you can see this company is offering these terms. Apple is offering these terms and they’re all
⏹️ ▶️ John on the same phone and they all have the same access and let’s see which business, you know, compete, have some competition.
⏹️ ▶️ John Then the water will find its level and everyone will figure out how much we can charge
⏹️ ▶️ John for which services and which services people want and which services people don’t want.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you think people would be, including me, would be so worked up if there were no steering, anti-steering
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clause? Like if they could just link out to patreon.com, do you think people would be so upset?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, because like Patreon probably wouldn’t have used an app purchase to begin with, because their business is so sensitive to
⏹️ ▶️ John the cut that anyone takes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco To be clear, Patreon doesn’t use an app purchase. They literally, like Patreon already has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their own user base. They’ve already gotten from their own efforts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the efforts of the creators that use it mostly. But they use the native app. Yeah, but like, so they already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aren’t using in-app purchase. Apple is saying you have to start using in-app purchase
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and of course then pay us by using it. But when we chose Stripe for our payment processing for our membership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system, the reason why Stripe only charges 3% is because there is competition in that market.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we could have chosen any payment processor. And in the future, if Stripe says, hey, you know what, we’re going to actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco start charging you you 30% instead of 3%. We can say, okay, see you later. And we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would switch because it’s a competitive market. We can do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you, the ATP member, hopefully would not notice that because you don’t care what a payment processor is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well, they would know because they have to re-enter their credit card details. But
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, the whole point is you’d still go to ATP.fm. slash join. You wouldn’t go to a different place. You’d still have the
⏹️ ▶️ John same membership account. You would have to make a new membership account. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you would- Yeah, you wouldn’t have started listening to a different podcast entirely. Like- You wouldn’t have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use an Android phone. Like- There will be many, many differences, but that’s a competitive market. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ultimately, again, this is the role of government. I know why Apple is not going to do this, because Apple does not show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco concern for long-term strategy right now. Whether you agree with me that that’s Tim Cook’s problem and he should maybe go,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s up to you. But right now, look at where the company is. They currently make their biggest revenue driver
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from deals that are very likely to and probably very easy to strike down by government regulation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So there’s significant risk there, plus risk in China, hello.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a lot of risk in Apple’s current financial situation. Whether you think that’s good or not,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from their point of view, it is the role of government to protect markets and the health of markets.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And in this case, Apple is literally extorting an entire market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they keep expanding the extortion into and it has grown to a size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now that governments should and are stepping in to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regulate. And it’s just a matter of time and I can’t wait for that time. And again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I say this as an Apple developer who will continue to use In-App Purchase and pay the percent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in my app because it is worth it to me to continue paying that percentage for my app.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that should not be the only option and I certainly would not suggest that every business
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out there that happens to be used on a phone sometimes, you know, needs to give Apple 30% and have it be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the only option like that’s, that’s nuts.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you were Patreon, and you launched your app with your own payment processing and Apple just let you do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you have that established for a number of years, then they offered you in app purchase,
⏹️ ▶️ John you probably like now I’m good. Because you because you already implemented and it’s a much lower percentage, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s kind of the situation Patreon is in where like well, Apple finally came for Patreon seems like it should have come from earlier.
⏹️ ▶️ John It makes perfect sense, but they didn’t. And so they’ve had years of doing this all themselves. They already wrote that code. Maybe their
⏹️ ▶️ John code isn’t as good as in-app purchase. Maybe it isn’t as smooth. Maybe they don’t get to use like, I mean, hell, they could use Apple Pay if they wanted.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if they do, but either way. If you had already done that in your app, you’re saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John okay, I’ll just keep using in-app purchase because it’s worth it to me. Because without it, you’d have to write your own version of that, and that would be a pain. But what if you already
⏹️ ▶️ John wrote that? What if you already use Stripe on your back end and wrote your own in-app purchase loan and you’ve been using it for 10
⏹️ ▶️ John years? Then Apple comes, how about paying us 30% for a better version of what you wrote yourself? And you’d be like,
⏹️ ▶️ John is it better though? And I’ve already written it myself and 30%, no thanks. And then Apple would say,
⏹️ ▶️ John how about if we don’t give you an option? And we kick you off the store. Now do you like it? And you’d be like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and we actually have, there actually is a parallel to this. Apple Podcasts and premium podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco support. So Apple Podcasts in, you know, a couple of years ago, long support for paid podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you could like, you could have people, as a podcaster, You could have your listeners buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your premium podcast directly in Apple Podcasts. Apple, of course, takes 30%. And as a podcaster,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could choose to do that. However, you are not currently required to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, what if Apple made a new policy to say, hey, now that since we have such a large percentage of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the podcast player market, if your podcast offers a paid membership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco program, you now have to offer it through our service or we will kick your podcast off of Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Podcasts. That’s where this is going. If you follow the company
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and its ridiculous entitlements and extortion pattern to its next inclusion,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s the kind of thing they will keep doing. And again, they have very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strong power in the podcast market. They have, by most measurements, well over 50% of the client base.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so they could do stuff like that. That is what monopolies can do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it is not in the interests of the market overall that monopolies be allowed to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do that. and that’s why we have regulation. So I hope our regulation begins to work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you to our sponsors this week, Tailscale and One Password Extended Access Management. Thanks to our members
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash join where you can use our payment processor and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we only get charged something like 3% and you can join and you can hear our exclusive content and our other membership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco perks. One of the member perks is ATP overtime. This is a bonus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco topic that we do every week and it’s exclusive for members. ATP overtime this week is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be about the breakdown of Mac sales by family
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was recently published by a CIRP research. We’re going to see kind of talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the, you know, what percentage of Macs are, you know, different product lines and what that means. That’s going to be in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ATP overtime this week. Join at ATP FM slash join. Thank you very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much. We’ll talk to you next week. week
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental John didn’t do any research, Margo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey wouldn’t let him Cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco find the show notes at atp.fm And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into Mastodon, you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Auntie Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse It’s accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean to Accidental, check podcast so long
John’s Quest experience
⏹️ ▶️ John We were talking about headsets and VR stuff. And even though I did the 30 minute Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John Vision Pro demo, that is basically the extent of my VR headset experience. Until now,
⏹️ ▶️ John on my summer vacation this year, my brother brought along the headset that he and
⏹️ ▶️ John his kids use. It was a Quest, what is the most
⏹️ ▶️ John Quest? I think it was the Quest 3. I don’t know. It was one of the MetaQuest headsets, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And I got to use it for a little while. and it was honestly a much more,
⏹️ ▶️ John it was exactly what I expected. I mean, maybe it’s because I use Vision Pro, right? And you know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not like I don’t know what VR headsets are, but I felt like Vision Pro, I had all the wow factor. I go back to that
⏹️ ▶️ John episode where I was talking about my experience. It was extremely impressive and really affecting in a way
⏹️ ▶️ John that the Quest wasn’t, again, maybe because I’ve already used the Vision Pro, but what was
⏹️ ▶️ John I doing on the Quest? Well, honestly, I was mostly playing games. I was playing Beat
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what everybody does with these things. I was playing whatever those other demo type things are. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it really just reinforced things that it would have told you intellectually with actual
⏹️ ▶️ John experience. Hand controllers, guess what? They’re really good for games. Everybody knew this. I’ve said this many
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco times. Now I’ve used
⏹️ ▶️ John one. Yep, hand controllers. They’re really good for games. Beat Saber, pretty fun. Motion sickness
⏹️ ▶️ John is a thing. Like, much profound to tell you. Obviously I’m personally
⏹️ ▶️ John very susceptible to motion sickness. And honestly, I’m surprised I did as well as I did in the Quest.
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t feel like the lower resolution and lesser frame rate
⏹️ ▶️ John in the Quest compared to the Vision Pro affected my motion sickness. I think it would get just as motion sick if I was
⏹️ ▶️ John playing Beat Saber in Vision Pro. Is Beat Saber available for Vision Pro without the hand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s like a different rhythm game that is, I forget the name of it, but it’s not Beat Saber.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, Beat Saber is a cool game. There’s a reason people like it. I thought it was cool, I thought it was fun. I enjoyed how
⏹️ ▶️ John responsive the hand controllers were. They’ve got buttons on them. It seems to know where my hands are. I could do really fast
⏹️ ▶️ John motions. I felt like it was mostly fair. On the other hand, I played, forgive me, I don’t remember the names of all these things,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there was table tennis, essentially, in there. Some kind of table tennis type game. And that was not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco felt like the table tennis- Isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the one that Jason likes? I like it. The 11 table tennis? Where you’re in a loft, it’s like somebody’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bedroom playing table
⏹️ ▶️ John tennis. Yeah, I mean, I’m sure all table tennis games look the same, but I’m sure it was that one, because I’m sure it’s like comes with some game pack
⏹️ ▶️ John or comes with a headset or something, right? I felt, so I do have some experience playing motion control table tennis,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And I have experience playing real table tennis. And I felt like the Quest table tennis
⏹️ ▶️ John did not accurately represent how I was swimming, like swinging it. Like I would
⏹️ ▶️ John miss the ball entirely. And I’m like, there’s just no way I missed that ball entirely. And it was only for certain motions at certain
⏹️ ▶️ John higher speeds. Blame the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco controller, John. That was totally controller’s fault. I didn’t miss. No, no. The computer’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It was it was motion.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was losing motion tracking essentially, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I say this because my the
⏹️ ▶️ John best experience that I’ve had playing table tennis with motion controllers is the I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t remember what’s called PlayStation what was it called motion? Maybe you know the PlayStation controllers that have like
⏹️ ▶️ John a pink light up ping-pong ball on top of them They’re like a black stick with a light up ping-pong ball. Whatever. That
⏹️ ▶️ John was called for. I believe the PlayStation 3 Anyway, they had
⏹️ ▶️ John like a I think Rockstar or made it or maybe maybe I’m thinking of Xbox Anyway, someone made a
⏹️ ▶️ John table tennis game with those motion controls. And those motion controls are very primitive. They were essentially gyros,
⏹️ ▶️ John accelerometers, and a light-up ball that a camera that was sitting on your TV, the camera
⏹️ ▶️ John would see the light-up ball, and that was way more fair in terms of, look, if you miss the ball, you miss the ball,
⏹️ ▶️ John but if you hit it, it will register the hit. And the Quest one, it got flummoxed
⏹️ ▶️ John too easily. It got flummoxed in a way that I thought Beat Saber would get flummoxed, but Beat Saber never did,
⏹️ ▶️ John And I don’t know what the difference is. Maybe it’s a beat saber, like they’re more like larger motions and less like
⏹️ ▶️ John less space critical because the blocks are so big and beat saber or whatever. Or maybe beat saber just like has a
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of client side prediction thing where it’ll be like, oh, we’ll just say you hit it. It’s fine. But yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I was missing stuff in table tennis that I was like, there’s no way that I missed that. It felt disconnected. Whereas
⏹️ ▶️ John the only comparison I have for Vision Pro is people have said that they have successfully played real table
⏹️ ▶️ John tennis with pass through on And they were impressed at that work as a demo of like, look how good pass through is. I can play
⏹️ ▶️ John real physical table tennis with someone who’s across from me and I’m wearing Vision Pro and I’m using pass through to do it. That
⏹️ ▶️ John was a great demo of how good, how low latency, how non distorted pass through is that they wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John miss the ball because it was all warped or whatever. But I have to say, table tennis really did show the
⏹️ ▶️ John limitations of the quest. But Beat Saber on the quest, it’s like Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John you could have this. You’ve got the technology for this, but you don’t have our what can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John be too expensive, you know, hand controller things, and you know, just
⏹️ ▶️ John get the Beat Saber, send the Beat Saber people a bunch of free dev kits and pay them $100 million and have them have a Beat
⏹️ ▶️ John Saber and Vision Pro, it’s ridiculous. Anyway, I enjoyed it. It was not the same as the Vision Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it definitely showed me something, again, that we all already knew. People buy these things and they play games in them
⏹️ ▶️ John because they don’t cost $3,500. Right? I mean, Marco’s son has one. Not
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of people have them. The PSVR2 has not caught on that great either on
⏹️ ▶️ John a gaming platform, but that is a use case that is proven
⏹️ ▶️ John in the market for some amount of people. And I came away from it saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John Quest, pretty good way to play Beat Saber. I don’t know, it’s not profound, I just wanna
⏹️ ▶️ John say that like, this is, I’m dipping my toe more into the VR waters and it
⏹️ ▶️ John just reinforced everything I already thought about what VR headsets can be good for and
⏹️ ▶️ John the money that Apple’s leaving on the table by stubbornly refusing to do certain things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, when you use the Quest 3, you really see, wow, this thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for quote only 500 bucks, that’s a really good product compared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the Vision Pro. It doesn’t do everything the same way, of course. It doesn’t have as high resolution
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screens. It doesn’t have certain specs don’t match. but for like a seventh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the price, it’s a surprisingly good product overall.
⏹️ ▶️ John Another great compromise is setting aside, obviously, that it’s plastic instead of aluminum and it felt fairly lightweight or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wore my glasses inside it. Oh. Why? Because it’s not mine. This is not fitted to me. I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have the right headset size. This is the one that like my nephews and my brother use. A very
⏹️ ▶️ John wide range from like, you know, six years old to essentially my age, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Different head sizes or whatever. It doesn’t have special lenses. I didn’t have to get anything measured. I put my glasses
⏹️ ▶️ John on and I put it over my head. And was it comfortable and awesome? No, but it was fine. You know what
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean? Like this is the kind of sort of utilitarian, you just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you just do what it takes to get the job done, make the thing big enough for people to wear their glasses inside it. It’s not as good as the Vision
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro. It doesn’t look as good, it’s not as comfortable, but boy, is it so much easier for me to just pick up, put my glasses on, put
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing on my head, and then go to town.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and it worked, right? Like it was fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, you could see how low resolution screen was, but anyway, I’m just saying, it was so much
⏹️ ▶️ John lower friction than if he had brought a Vision Pro with him, which he doesn’t have, by the way. And I’m pretty good at Beat Saber.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I bet everyone thinks they’re good at Beat Saber, because I think the game is tuned to make you feel like you’re good at it, because it’s actually pretty easy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, when you ramp up the difficulty, you’re like, oh no, I’m not good at Beat Saber.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, it’s like Rock
⏹️ ▶️ John Band, but no, I was never good at Rock Band, I’m pretty good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at Beat Saber. Yeah, like once you start adding in like the different motions, where okay, you can poke it and twist it and bop it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s like it gets really complicated very quickly and you’re like, oh no, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought I was good at this. I was just playing on easy mode.