648: Part of the Movement
17 Jul 2025Jeff Williams’ retirement, Liquid Glass revisions, and our review of F1® The Movie. While supplies last. Terms apply.
Episode Description:
- Pre-Show: Live music & failed air conditioners
- 🗣️ New ATP Members Special: Tier List: Pizza Toppings
- Follow-up:
- Meta Hires Top Apple AI Models Executive
- SFSymbols 🤝🏻 Tahoe Folders
- Standard SFSymbol:
xattr -w 'com.apple.icon.folder#S' '{"sym":"camera.viewfinder"}' folder - Private SFSymbol:
xattr-w 'com.apple.icon.folder#S' '{"sym":"solar.system"}' folder - Random string:
xattr -w 'com.apple.icon.folder#S' '{"emoji": "HIMOM"}' folder - FB18022272: “summary” symbol missing in SF Symbols 7 developer beta
- Standard SFSymbol:
- Toolbars
- Safari
- Beta 1 image
- Beta 3 image
- The Guardian (good example for messing around with the toolbar)
- Terminal
- iOS 26 Beta 3
- Safari
- YouTube’s new player UI
- “Clear” iPhone mock-up was by Gavin Nelson in April 2025
- HDR controls in iOS 26 (via Gui Rambo)
- ✌️ out, Jeff Williams
- Casey ponders the purpose of AppleCare
- Post-show: John & Casey review F1
- Plumber Problem
- Guenther Steiner
- Brad Pitt drives a F1 car for the first time
- Vision Pro Brad Pitt ride-along (Vision Pro users, scroll down)
- Casey’s pinball machine
- Members-only ATP Overtime: 2020 Hindsight
Sponsored by:
- Notion: Your notes, docs, and projects in one space.
- Hello Fresh: America’s #1 meal kit.
Become a member for ATP Overtime, ad-free episodes, member specials, and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- DMB and a different bridge
- HVAC woes
- ATP Tier List: Pizza Toppings
- Big-money AI hires
- Sponsor: HelloFresh
- FireWire Doesn’tWork
- Tahoe folder symbols 🖼️
- Tahoe Safari toolbars 🖼️
- Tahoe Terminal tabs 🖼️
- Design drama & revision 🖼️
- YouTube’s fake-glass UI 🖼️
- Clear-iPhone follow-up
- HDR UI APIs
- Sponsor: Notion
- Jeff Williams retiring
- Casey’s bad AppleCare
- Ending theme
- F1® The Movie
DMB and a different bridge
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have something I want to discuss with you two. Uh, this is going to go badly for me because I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enthusiastic about something and excited and you two will ruin it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But hey, we only do that most of the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, actually I think Marco you’re going to be on my side on this one. Mostly. Um, I went
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to a concert last night
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let me just remind you once again, live music freaking rules. It’s so good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now you’re both going to hate that. I went to see the Dave Matthews band and that’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not going to hate that. I’m not the Dave Matthews hater.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, fair enough. Uh, but live music is so great. And there happens to be a, uh, a brand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new amphitheater thing at the river, uh, that runs through Richmond as you know, many
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bigger, well, big ish cities have rivers going through them in big cities as well. Uh, but this is a brand new amphitheater
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that just opened this summer and we went and saw the Dave Matthews band there and it was freaking great. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love live music, despite the fact that the, the one qualm I have with this particular amphitheater
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that it is an outdoor amphitheater right by the river, which is all well and good, in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Richmond, Virginia, where it’s approximately 9 million degrees and 9,000% humidity.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Other than that, though, it was excellent. I was wet by the time I got home, but it was very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good. And I know that, Marco, you’re not a Dave Matthews fan, and that’s fine. That’s no problem. But I think you will at least
⏹️ ▶️ Casey agree with me that live music is pretty freaking great. And I just wanted to repeat that to everyone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marc Thiessen Yes. And with the With the disclaimer that you did reference Dave Matthews Band and a river, and yes, we all know about the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh God. Oh, I didn’t even think about it. Thank you for getting ahead of that. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey need to hear it again. Oh God, I owe you one for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco With that disclaimer, I actually, okay, I really hate Dave Matthews Band. You’re right. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a live musical act that I was hating the whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. Like I love live music so much that I, while I have never been to a Dave Matthews
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Band show and I’m not really in a hurry to do that. I think if for some reason I would ever find myself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at a Dave Matthews Band show, I think I would have a fine time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey CW I think you would. I don’t think you would love it by any stretch, but I think you would be just fine, like you said. JS Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if it took, you know, influences from whatever everyone else was doing around around there to enjoy it.
HVAC woes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyways, but it was very, very hot, which is a problem that I think you and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. My air conditioning is broken. Now, our house is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all electric heat pumps for heat and AC. In the winter, the heat was broken. We have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two separate condensers. We have one upstairs and one downstairs. I first called service people out for the upstairs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m like, hey, heat’s broken. I got the space heaters out of the basement. Started using space heaters as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco backup heat. I was like, all right. holding for a little while, but like, you know, the heat’s broken. We need to fix this.”
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And, you know, had, had our, our plumber HVAC guy come out and all like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco winter and spring, he would come up periodically and say, I think I fixed it. You know, if we got him here at all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which was always a challenge. Um, but when he would eventually come after bothering him every single
⏹️ ▶️ Marco day. And now I am not an organized person for me to function at all in the world.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I rely on technology very heavily. If I am asked by somebody, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come to my house tomorrow at nine, there is no way I’m doing that unless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it goes into a calendar or reminder. Like there is no other way that’s happening.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And when I have calendar events, they have two alerts on them. They have one that’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an hour or multiple hours before, so I kind of know what’s coming. And then there’s another one like 15 minutes before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I know, okay, I gotta leave now. Because even that, If I don’t have those two alerts on my calendar entries,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they won’t happen. Like I won’t be there. Reminders, there’s always a time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they alert me. I will always tell the dingus, it’s something like, remind me tomorrow at 9 a.m.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Good, you know, this thing has to be done today. And when those alerts come up, if I can’t do it right then,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll snooze it for, you know, and I did recently ran some message on like the snooze options,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just hate them so much. Like what, like, you know, if you are snoozing something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at 1230 PM and it says, remind me this afternoon, what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does that mean? What, when is this afternoon? If you say,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the one I pictured, I think it was like 9 a.m. And one of the options was remind me in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco morning. Cool. Is that today or tomorrow? What time? That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John why I just edit the time manually. I don’t even bother with that. I just go to the reminder and change the time to be two hours
⏹️ ▶️ John later or whatever, exactly what I want. Cause I don’t know what it’s going to do. But on the notifications, you can’t do that. Some
⏹️ ▶️ John of all, it depends. But sometimes if you tap on the notification, it’ll take you to the edit thing. It’s different on iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John and the phone. I know you don’t care about iPad, but it annoys me that the iPad doesn’t work the same way the phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does. Oh no, the notification itself is like a landmine to me. Because I know if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I tap a notification, it’s gone. It will never come back up, it will never remind me again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and therefore I won’t do it. And I know the app, Dewe, it’s supposed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be better about this by like writing about stuff until it’s done. Constantly nagging you, yeah, that’s it’s selling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point. I actually wanna try that app because I still haven’t tried that app, but it sounds like I probably should. So thank you, Doofans.
⏹️ ▶️ John reminder to use Doofans. And then after that, you need to have Doofans remind
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you to never stop using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Remind me tomorrow at 9 a.m. Install DUE.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey To build on this, like Marco said, I either need to be reminded or it needs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be in a calendar. And that means it either needs to be in a calendar or it needs to be in the DUE
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app. I cannot say enough praises about it. It is the only way that I accomplish anything in my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey life. Between the calendar and that, I would be lost without them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And so anyway, this is how I function. Plumbers and HVAC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people in this area seem not to have gotten this memo.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is literally no way to get plumbers or HVAC people. For some reason, the electricians here are good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the plumbers and HVAC people, there is no way to get them to come fix your problem,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unless you talk to them that day. So you can call them and say, hey, I got this problem, can you take on the job?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they’ll be like, sure, I’ll be there tomorrow. But they won’t. You have to call them that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco morning and say, hey, are you coming today? And no matter what they say, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t really matter, they will either come within a couple hours or never.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so you have to keep calling. And I hate doing this, because I hate being annoying to people like that. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hate being the squeaky wheel. Unfortunately, being the squeaky wheel not only works, but when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dealing with this kind of person, it is often the only thing that works. So I kind of have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to force myself to be that person, which again, I find incredibly uncomfortable.
⏹️ ▶️ John We need to combine our workforces because I have a reliable plumber, but no reliable electrician. You have the
⏹️ ▶️ John opposite. So we need to just make a portal or something to send workers through.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, that would be amazing. So anyway, I had to eventually fire that plumber because it was like months were going by and nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was happening. So I hired somebody else. That was a few months ago. More
⏹️ ▶️ Marco months went by. I still, it’s still not fixed. So today I had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco another company come out for this time for like from the mainland. Like I’m like, all right, now I’m going to pay the big bucks to have the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mainland people like get on the ferry, pay for parking. It’s like, you know, hundreds of dollars just to get them here at all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they have to cover all that and all the time and everything. I’m like, all right, finally somebody.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got here today. They were, they beat me here. They’d already done the work. It was fixed for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco four hours. Oh no. So, I still don’t have working
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AC. I actually have no idea if they think they’re done. They just left in the middle of the day and,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, didn’t call me, didn’t tell me anything. Like, I don’t know, by the time I got here it was after hours, so I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had, you know. Anyway, all this is to say, I very much appreciate air conditioning. I’m not one of these people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who uses it, like, every single day, constantly, all summer long. I like to open the windows when it’s reasonable outside.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not so reasonable in New York right now. So this is not one of those times. But I definitely very much,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh, very much appreciate the technology of the heat pump when it is working. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now it is very much not working. I even tried on like chat GPT.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is there any way I can fix this myself? And like, no, yeah. Like the symptom is like, it blows cold air for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few hours and then it doesn’t blow cold air anymore. And it’s like, okay, well that’s, that can be a lot of different things. None of which I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can do myself. All of it’s like, you know, refilling the refrigerant and stuff like that. It’s like, they’re obviously it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff that like homeowners can do. So I’m just, just getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by. All right. Before we leave this topic, to be clear, are you soliciting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or even accepting feedback from people who are not HVAC professionals?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like if you have a theory, are you interested if you, the listener has a theory, Marco, are you interested
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here’s the thing. Uh, if you’re not an HVAC professional, no, sorry. I’m also not an HVAC professional.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have my own theories. I don’t need anyone else’s amateur theories. My entire life is my own amateur
⏹️ ▶️ Marco theories. I have plenty of those. If you’re a professional,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco please let me know. One thing I have found is that the people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who have tried to service it so far seem not to have the programmer debugging mindset.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So for instance, there’s two totally separate units. They’re only five years old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they failed in around the same way within a couple of months of each other. The second one seems to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco failed after the bad guy worked on them. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when the new people come in and they start saying, well, it must be your third-party thermostats.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m like, you know, I don’t think it’s that because they worked fine for five years, like they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were great for five years, and then all of a sudden they both break in a similar way around the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on? I don’t think that’s that. There’s like certain debugging
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things. It’s like, okay, if they both break in the exact same way, it is probably not like a random fluke.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, you know, the last guy replaced a couple of boards on them. It’s like, well, was that the problem?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Probably not. Like if you look at like debugging, like what’s most likely, is it likely that two different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bugs on two different systems came up at the, around the same time and they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t talk to each other? Like, I feel like this, the debugging mindset of a programmer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has not made it yet to the HVAC schools. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope this new company is just not done yet, and maybe I’ll have air conditioning over the next few days sometime, I really hope,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I’m sorry that you’re having HVAC issues. That would drive me absolutely batty, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would not be as chipper and chill as you are right now if I were going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey through that. So my apologies.
ATP Tier List: Pizza Toppings
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, the good news is you, your house may be warm enough that you might not need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to use the oven to cook pizzas.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey transition.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This was a hell of a train, a hell of a lift on that transition. I’m going to pat myself on the back right quick to congratulate myself.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, no, we, we bring up pizza because we have a new member special. This is a July member special. As a reminder,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you are a member, uh, which you can become a member by going to htp.fm slash join, uh, you can get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of stuff. You can get a discount on time limited merch stuff, which just happened
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a couple of months ago for WWDC. You can get a bootleg, which we put up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey minutes after we stopped talking, talking to each other each week. Uh, you can get an ad free version of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show and you can get one other thing, which is member specials, which we try to do once a month.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this month, John, you brought us a member special. What did we talk about?
⏹️ ▶️ John Talk about pizza toppings, but in our usual way, uh, that’s just too big of a topic to tackle
⏹️ ▶️ John in, uh, in just a member special, how are we going to narrow down? You’ll see how we narrowed
⏹️ ▶️ John it down and the potential for future, maybe tier lists or future other episodes
⏹️ ▶️ John related to this, but we took one swing at it here. ATP tier list, pizza toppings.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, I think it went pretty well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. I will say this was the least violent. I think that any of our tier lists have been,
⏹️ ▶️ John came up with the very controversial opinion that pizza is good. Who knew?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, I do mostly enjoy a violent tier list, and I do think it makes for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of exciting programming, but I was very happy for the three of us, especially me, that we had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a less violent one this time. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth listening to, mind you. There is still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some absolute freaking insanity in this episode, but I think we did pretty well in
⏹️ ▶️ John Although I will say the feedback has been very angry.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yes, that’s true. That’s true. But you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, take what you can get.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. So, ATP Tier List Pizza Toppings. It is available to members atp.fm.
Big-money AI hires
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do some follow-up. We talked about, I don’t know, it was the last week, couple of weeks ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We talked about how Meta is looking to hire AI people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and looking to pay them truly bananas amounts of money, just absolutely like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey star athlete levels of money, $100 million or whatever. And Bloomberg has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey released about a week ago, a little over a week ago, they said that Ruming Pang, a distinguished engineer manager
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in charge of the company’s Apple Foundation Models team is leaving Apple. Pang, who joined Apple from Alphabet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in 2021, is the latest big hire from Meta’s new super intelligence group. To secure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pang, Meta offered a package worth tens of millions of dollars
⏹️ ▶️ Casey per year. One more time with feeling, tens of millions of dollars per year, the people said.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey At Apple, Pang had been running the Apple Foundation Models team, or AFM, a roughly 100 person team responsible for the company’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey large language models, which underpin Apple Intelligence and other AI features on the company’s devices. Pang’s departure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could be the start of a string of exits from the AFM Group, with several engineers telling colleagues they’re planning to leave in the near future to Meta
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or elsewhere, the people said. Tom Gunter, a top deputy to Pang, left Apple last month.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Meta has also hired Wanzee Li, a researcher from OpenAI, and Anton Bakhtin,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who worked on Claude at AnthropicPBC, according to other people with knowledge of the matter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Later, excuse me, last month, it hired a slew of other OpenAI researchers.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the big story here is, you know, yes, we did talk about the ridiculous salaries, I think, in an overtime in an earlier
⏹️ ▶️ John episode, but in the main episode and, uh, uh, main part of the show in the past episode,
⏹️ ▶️ John we talked about how Apple was branching out to consider models from other companies, but still
⏹️ ▶️ John had its own in-house model group. And I thought it was really important
⏹️ ▶️ John for Apple to make sure that they keep those people. Yes, of course. They should look at other models. If they, if their models
⏹️ ▶️ John are not up to snuff and some competitive model is better, they should license that or use it or whatever. But I thought it was still
⏹️ ▶️ John a good idea for them to have their own group and just keep working on it. Kind of like they use Qualcomm’s modems for 20
⏹️ ▶️ John years or whatever it’s been. Right. But eventually when they could do their own, it is a strategically
⏹️ ▶️ John good thing to do. So I’m like, man, do they really need to hold onto these people? They are not holding onto these people. I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, I, you know, when that’s when that is throwing that much money at them, but it seems like just a big
⏹️ ▶️ John exodus and like maybe Apple was trying to keep them there trying to make counter
⏹️ ▶️ John offers, but just it’s a double whammy. So as we said, when we talked about this, like, it’s got to be disheartening.
⏹️ ▶️ John When you’re on Apple’s team working on their foundation models, and you’re working real hard to try to make apples models the best they can be in
⏹️ ▶️ John and the company essentially lose either loses faith in you or decides to go another direction and says,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re gonna we’re auditioning other models, we’re gonna try you know, I think Claude was in lead or whatever. We’re gonna look at
⏹️ ▶️ John these other companies. But yeah, no, you guys keep going. It’s like, I feel so terrible. And then also on
⏹️ ▶️ John top of that, you know, meta throwing buckets of money at these people. So apparently whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has been doing to try to retain them has not been working and a lot of important people are leaving and that’s going to be.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s also interesting to me because my understanding from friends in Silicon Valley
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that Apple generally speaking is considered, and this is not new news, but Apple’s considered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be fairly cheap in a lot of ways, but including, you know, compensation and that they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pay their engineers or or really anyone, near as much as you would expect, and certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as their peers. And so it is not surprising that perhaps these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well-sought after individuals are looking to bail in general. But then you also put on top of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that that Meta is looking to pay these ridiculous salaries.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Money talks, man. I don’t know if I would be able to resist if I were in their shoes.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if that’s a salary or if it’s like RSUs being part of it or whatever. But I mean, the other thing that we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John talked about in the past episodes is that there’s bitterness within Apple because the AI
⏹️ ▶️ John people are getting hired on it higher than average for Apple salaries. So like
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple does recognize that they have to pay something closer to the market rate for people in high demand, like the AI folks.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then everyone else’s Apple’s like, wait a second, that guy just got hired and he’s like the same level as me. Why is he making twice as
⏹️ ▶️ John much? It’s like, well, he’s in the AI group. And so they have, Apple has a whole bunch of problems related to
⏹️ ▶️ John this. I mean, as we know, Apple has a whole bunch of AI related problems, but add to it personnel problems of like
⏹️ ▶️ John our traditional method of, uh, you know, paying middle of the road salaries,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, and compensating for it with the prestige of being an Apple employee and also with our ever increasing stock price
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s worked for us. But now we’re in this competitive market for AI where we’re already behind and people are paying huge salaries and
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve amped it up and we’re paying big salaries too, but now we’re sowing dissatisfaction with our own employees and we’re still not
⏹️ ▶️ John keeping them. So I don’t know how this shakes out. It definitely feels like a bubble. Like I said, I’m not sure this is sustainable
⏹️ ▶️ John or that I don’t trust these companies to know, to, to correctly
⏹️ ▶️ John know which of the individual people are actually worth tens of millions of dollars. But that’s also true of hiring executives and it hasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John stopped companies from paying executives tens of millions of dollars for years and years. And sometimes the executives just
⏹️ ▶️ John make a total mess of the company and they still get that money. So capitalism. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also just, it’s, you know, competition and value. Like right now AI is incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high value to most of these companies. and the market is supporting that. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regardless of whatever you think of AI personally, the reality is it is right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now hugely valuable and everybody thinks that the value of it is only going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up over time. So if you are really good AI talent that can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take a company’s AI position and make it a lot better, you are very valuable right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Simple as that. Like engineering has always had different parts of it that were more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or less in demand, and therefore, higher salary offers in the market.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That whatever that is has shifted over time. Certain engineers have always been worth more if they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the cutting edge of what everyone’s, whatever the current boom or bubble is about. Right now, it’s AI,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s a really, really big boom or bubble. The valuations are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very, very, very high for AI stuff right now. So these people are,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at this moment, to these companies, they are worth these prices. And if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is gonna keep being Apple and just thinking like, well, you should be honored to work for us,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s going to cost them. And whatever they are going to not pay for talent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because if they’re being cheap about that, it’s just gonna end up with them having to pay a higher price
⏹️ ▶️ Marco later to acquire all these companies. So.
⏹️ ▶️ John They get to go back. I mean, I wouldn’t even, they may be giving these people counter offers that are
⏹️ ▶️ John equal to or greater. But again, if you’re at Apple and you say, well, Meta’s offering me this and Apple offers you
⏹️ ▶️ John that plus 10 or whatever, you say, yeah, but Apple, you just basically,
⏹️ ▶️ John changed the company’s decision to not use the stuff we’re working on instead to use stuff from competitors.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I don’t wanna work here anymore, even if you pay me more. Like sometimes it’s a problem that you can’t just solve with money. So for all we know, Apple is making,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, competitive counter offers to Meta’s offers and the employees who just be like, yeah, no, Meta
⏹️ ▶️ John told me I’d actually be able to do stuff that would actually get used. And that’s, you know, for all the money, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John when you get into these big amounts of money, people want to do things that they think are actually going to ship and make a difference. They want
⏹️ ▶️ John to be on the A team, you know what I mean? They don’t want to be the C team while Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John farms out the AI stuff to Anthropic or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the other thing too is like, you know, it isn’t necessarily just about like whether your work will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ship or not. In any kind of, in any of these like, you know, big technological upset
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash, you know, disruption moments or waves, There are companies that are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the cool place to do those things. And there are companies that are the not cool place to do things.
⏹️ ▶️ John Meta really the cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco place for anything? Well, maybe if you’re into cutting edge AI,
⏹️ ▶️ John it might be. Open AI, I can see that having that attraction. Meta, I feel like people are still holding their nose
⏹️ ▶️ John to go there, but $10 million per year or whatever makes for good nose plugs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I mean, yeah, Meta’s always been pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good about getting over the nose holes by just throwing huge amounts of money at it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you look at like when, when in the boom of the app age, you know, like 2008
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to 2018 maybe like in that time, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cool place to make apps was on iOS. And whether that was you working on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS team at a company or you working at Apple on iOS itself in some form or some app that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco runs, you know, that was the cool place to be. And it was pretty hard at the time for like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Microsoft to get really good talent to make mobile apps for Microsoft’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco platforms and Microsoft’s things. Because that wasn’t the cool thing to do. Like when they launched Windows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mobile, they had a huge problem getting anybody to care. And when you’re like the uncool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco company in something like that, oftentimes there isn’t even enough money for you to really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pay people to get them to want to come work for you. Before that with web apps, Google was like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the place to be. If you wanted to make cool stuff for the web, you went to go work for Google.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And at the time, again, Microsoft is perpetually the uncool company, even a better one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AOL. AOL had a really hard time hiring and retaining talent in the early
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to mid 2000s because they were not cool and they did not succeed on the web, they were not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing it well. Microsoft also honestly was doing pretty badly on the web at that point. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you were a good web developer, you wanted to work on web backend stuff, you wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to go work for Microsoft, you’d want to go work for Google. So now, you look at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AI landscape now, even if Apple would pay good money, they have an uphill
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battle to get and retain good talent because Apple is an AI laughingstock.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The last, if you’re like a good AI researcher, I think right now Apple might be the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last place you’d want to be. Not only does it have like the stink of failure, but all of this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco action that’s happening in AI, Apple is not even a player. Like they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so far behind and showing no signs of catching up and also showing no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco signs of really even necessarily like respecting what’s going on anywhere else. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you look at those, you know, the interviews, especially like the interviews that Jaws did over WBC,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a lot of like dismissiveness and derisiveness and snideness towards the rest of the AI world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in that attitude. And I think that reflects Apple’s position or at least the position of a lot of their higher up leaders.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so if you’re like a cutting edge AI engineer or researcher, you don’t wanna go work for Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re the stink of losers who hate you. Like why would you want that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you are like making all this cool AI stuff or researching all this cool AI stuff, why would you wanna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go work for a company that is both losing terribly in this market and also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keeps turning their nose up at it and not giving it enough resources to succeed? That’s death for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talent. So they have a really big uphill battle that they seem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to still not really have any interest in changing. But again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what that will result in is they will eventually have to make at least one very big AI acquisition. And that’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cost them dearly. But that’s how this is going to have to go.
Sponsor: HelloFresh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We are sponsored this week by HelloFresh. Hey, it’s summer, at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey least here in the northern hemisphere. And I can tell you that my favorite place to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be in the summertime is not inside the kitchen. I prefer to be out at the beach or at the pool or doing some sort of fun thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that. And what I don’t want to be worrying about is going to the grocery store or figuring out an online
⏹️ ▶️ Casey order for the grocery store and figuring out recipes and all that jazz. So what I like to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is go to HelloFresh, where they will make it easy for me to make quick home-cooked meals
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and do that so that I can get back out and enjoy the summer sun. And additionally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this summer HelloFresh made it even easier to enjoy these delicious, healthy and homemade quality meals with their new Ready
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Made Meals. These heat and go HelloFresh meals are chef-crafted, flavorful dishes ready in just three minutes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so you can go dig in and do summer right. Again, the less time you have to spend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the kitchen or thinking about the kitchen, the better. Now, if you’re like me and perhaps really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do like the experience of learning new recipes or new pairings or whatever, you can continue
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do the classic HelloFresh, you know, choose a meal and they’ll send you the ingredients thing. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for us, they sent us a few meals, including sweet chili turkey lettuce wraps with bell pepper and candied
⏹️ ▶️ Casey peanuts. What I loved about this was you’re combining peanuts, which is a thing I think of as kind of its own thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with turkey and bell peppers and lettuce wraps. It’s a combination that my simple mind wouldn’t have come up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with and it was delicious. They also sent us a chicken sausage rigatoni which I am genuinely still thinking about because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was really truly that good. If you want to make your summer enjoyable and delicious, you can sign up for HelloFresh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at hellofresh.com slash atp10fm and get 10 free meals with a free item for life.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s hellofresh.com slash atp10fm for 10 free meals and a free item in every box.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey H-E-L-L-O-F-R-E-S-H.com slash atp number one number 10 f-m atp10fm.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One per box with an active subscription, Free meals are applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only. Varies by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey plan. Thank you to HelloFresh for sponsoring ATP.
FireWire Doesn’tWork
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have some stuff to talk about with regard to Tahoe Beta 3, beginning with Firewire
⏹️ ▶️ Casey using adapters. Several people have said, what, John? It doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John work. You can plug, you can, you know, people have all these, these fun
⏹️ ▶️ John daisy chains of like taking a really old original iPod with a Firewire adapter to Firewire 800
⏹️ ▶️ John to Thunderbolt to, you know, I don’t know, I’m missing a connector somewhere in there. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can get it to physically connect, but because FireWire support is not in Tahoe Beta 3
⏹️ ▶️ John and doesn’t look like it’s going to be in Tahoe at all, even though it physically connects, it doesn’t actually work. So that kind of answers
⏹️ ▶️ John the question from earlier weeks that if you have a FireWire device and you can get adapter, or does it matter that
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no firewire driver? apparently it does.
Tahoe folder symbols
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then we have some interesting discoveries from Sam Henry-Gold, who writes, I figured out how to apply any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey arbitrary SF symbol to a folder in Tahoe. And there’s a command that we will put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the show notes. And then apparently it also works with private symbol names. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s, again, a command in the show notes. Also, writes Sam, because emoji
⏹️ ▶️ Casey labels are just handled as strings, you can put anything in the emoji config thing. And so Sam puts a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey string like, hi mom, on a folder, which is pretty funny.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is actually great because this there historically there’s been a lot of third-party apps for doing this
⏹️ ▶️ John basically I’ll make you a folder icon that is embossed like if you know if you look if you put these folders in your
⏹️ ▶️ John dock or look at them in the finder like your home folder has always had a little house embossed on it and the applications folder has a little a and
⏹️ ▶️ John the documents folder has a little document. What if you want to have a folder I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know full of like your you know remote control car stuff you want a little car icon on the folder there’s been third-party
⏹️ ▶️ John apps for years and years that will make you that little custom icon and you’ll paste it onto the folder.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that works great until the next OS comes out and they change what the folder icon looks like. And all of a sudden your custom
⏹️ ▶️ John folder icon doesn’t look like the rest of the folders because they all look, you know, they changed the base folder
⏹️ ▶️ John icon. And when you put on a custom icon, it’s the whole icon is just a big bitmap. And so it’s got the old folders,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And you have to kind of keep up with that cycle and the app has to get updated. And you have to remember where that car icon
⏹️ ▶️ John was. And if they change the way it embosses, then the third-party app doesn’t emboss it the same way that Apple does.
⏹️ ▶️ John This technique is basically add an extended attribute com.apple.icon.folder Hash sign
⏹️ ▶️ John capital s whatever that’s there for and then the value is a json thing. This is like sim colon
⏹️ ▶️ John Camera viewfinder like an sf symbol name Or emoji colon and then just any string.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is an extended attribute that’s on the folder And no matter how many times apple changes what the folders
⏹️ ▶️ John look like if you put this extended attribute on any folder Whatever presumably if the apple keeps supporting
⏹️ ▶️ John this whatever version of mac os you’re running will read the extended attribute and emboss
⏹️ ▶️ John the symbol name that you put in there or the text that you put in there onto the current version of the folder.
⏹️ ▶️ John With the private symbol name thing, I’m not sure how that works because I don’t even know how private SF symbols work, but can you like register
⏹️ ▶️ John your own SF symbol somewhere with the system?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, there are certain symbols that Apple does not expose for use. Like one of the feedbacks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I filed for this current beta cycle is the summary symbol that they use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everywhere, like where Apple Intelligence summarizes notifications, with that little like kind of like three lines with an arrow on one of them. You know like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. The L-shaped arrow. Yeah, that symbol, that’s an SF symbol. I believe it’s actually called summary. And in fact,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the SF symbols page on apple.com, like that advertises the app, that symbol is what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re showing in the example screenshots and it’s called summary. And that symbol is private.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So there’s a set of symbols that Apple uses themselves, but if apps try to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use it, they don’t work. And they don’t show up in the SF symbols app. All
⏹️ ▶️ John right, well, so anyway, if you wanted to have a truly custom image, I wonder if they take like a data thing where you can put like a base 64 encoded SVG or
⏹️ ▶️ John bitmap or something. But anyway, there’s so many SF symbols that surely you can find one
⏹️ ▶️ John that is appropriate for your folder. And I think the system is way better than all the past ones and I’m glad that they’re building this in.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although this does still leave room for a third-party app to simply adopt this because people don’t wanna use the XADR command and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John So a third-party app could just, you know, say, hey, pick an SF symbol and put it on a folder for you. And now it’s future-proof. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I like the system, thumbs up. That’s your next step.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was thinking the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I actually wrote an SF symbol index. Someone’s already written it by now. It’s too simple. Sure someone’s already made
⏹️ ▶️ John it. I’m just gonna use the
⏹️ ▶️ John not scratching itch that I have because I’m just making an alias for this just anyway, we’ll see.
Tahoe Safari toolbars
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, then Safari toolbars in Tahoe John It seems like you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been going on a quest to understand what’s happening
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah I wish when I took the screenshots for beta 1 that I had thought had to be able to easily reproduce these but
⏹️ ▶️ John I took a screenshot of like the thing that I thought was a rendering error in Safari and Tahoe beta 1
⏹️ ▶️ John where But it reality was just a region of the page that was showing through the toolbar and that weird way
⏹️ ▶️ John and I thought that was terrible. And also, if you have a page that has like dark regions and light regions, the toolbar
⏹️ ▶️ John will invert because when the dark region comes in below it, it has to switch from dark light mode to dark mode and vice
⏹️ ▶️ John versa. And it looks terrible. So in beta three, they’ve toned it down a lot. We’ll put
⏹️ ▶️ John links in the show notes to beta one versus beta three. I had to go back to this same web page and scroll it to
⏹️ ▶️ John the same position as best I could. And still I didn’t get exactly right because beta three has this new translate icon in the
⏹️ ▶️ John address But anyway, this should basically be an apples-to-apples comparison It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John Entirely opaque. This is just the default mode not like reduced transparency It’s not entirely opaque, but it is
⏹️ ▶️ John way more opaque than it used to be But most importantly as far as I can tell
⏹️ ▶️ John Beta 3 does not invert the toolbar So if you’re in light mode The toolbar will never switch to be all black
⏹️ ▶️ John and it also doesn’t seem to honor the theme color thing like the guardian.com Has a theme color
⏹️ ▶️ John set in their CSS that previously was telling Safari You know make the whole
⏹️ ▶️ John toolbar really dark navy blue the Guardian color or whatever It’s beta 3
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t honor that at all And so if your toolbar if you’re in light mode Your Safari toolbar should never turn
⏹️ ▶️ John to black either from the website asking for it or from you scrolling something underneath it but it still will show
⏹️ ▶️ John a vague image of the thing that’s scrolling behind it, which is dumb, but an improvement.
Tahoe Terminal tabs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then tell me about terminal
⏹️ ▶️ John Terminal tabs I complained about these at the first beta that on the the the color reproduction
⏹️ ▶️ John on the m1 MacBook Air screen was Insufficient for me to even tell which tab was active as the contrast was so low
⏹️ ▶️ John The screen could not discern between the lightest gray of the active tab and a slightly darker gray
⏹️ ▶️ John of the inactive tab in Beta 3 they have increased the contrast
⏹️ ▶️ John So that it passes that threshold, but and we’ll put these two images in the show notes as well I want you to to look in the
⏹️ ▶️ John document you can tell that beta 3 has more contrast right but it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco contrast no I mean I’ll tell you like I like in my actual use of these I complained
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the week before beta 3 dropped I complained about this exact problem as well from beta 2 and You know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in beta 2 it was It took some some doing to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tell what tab was active in beta 3 it takes less. Like it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is more clear. It is still a very, very low contrast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design in an area that I don’t think that’s a compliment, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is getting more, it’s getting less low contrast.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is now discernible on an M1 MacBook Air screen, but that is low bar. It is still very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, and this was, to be clear, like it was, it was almost indecipherable on a MacBook Pro screen. Like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I was using on my 14 inch MacBook Pro. Like on the best screen Apple makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now, it was still like
⏹️ ▶️ John impossible to see. Especially in laptop conditions, like on my XDR in ideal conditions with
⏹️ ▶️ John no sunlight on the screen, I could always tell on the XDR, but on the laptop, which is in the same room, it was difficult.
⏹️ ▶️ John So they’re changing things. Also, I saw there was, I don’t have the notes here, but there was a PLIST thing. You could do like a default
⏹️ ▶️ John write command that I believe only worked with terminal that would revert it to
⏹️ ▶️ John like the old style tabs, not like the capsule thing. It was still low contrast, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John funny, but it’s interesting that that option seems to exist. Although I think it was for terminal only, but,
⏹️ ▶️ John or maybe it wasn’t, maybe it was a global one. If I find it, I’ll have it in our next episode
⏹️ ▶️ John or something. But the existence of those things, like always gives people hope, like, oh, I don’t like the new capsule shaped tabs,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I can always just use this defaults right command that I’ll have the old tabs. If you even have that
⏹️ ▶️ John for the life of this OS, it will probably go away in a version or two, if it even makes it to release. So don’t rely on that.
⏹️ ▶️ John The capsule tab is what we’re stuck with. The contrast still needs to be increased, but it’s better than it was.
Design drama & revision
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, I mean, again, like, I don’t want to bash too hard on Al and I, but like, really?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but this design that is ostensibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about getting out of the way of your content. If you look at terminal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco under, you know, OS 26, and if you look at terminal under Sequoia,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the terminal under Sequoia leaves more room for your content. In their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco effort to get out of the way of your content, they are lowering information density. Everything is getting larger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and bubblier and having bigger margins.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, one of the reasons for that, by the way, someone had a good screenshot that I didn’t grab, but they did it on the phone, which we’ll get to in a second,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they showed like the same app. And all they were talking about was, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John how much room is left after we subtract out the controls for the content? And the reason, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John on the iPhone, why the OS 26s leave less
⏹️ ▶️ John room for content is the stupid rounded corners because that requires everything to be pulled
⏹️ ▶️ John in. So if you’re wondering, for example, when you go to like system settings in iOS 26, why is it so much less information
⏹️ ▶️ John dense? It’s because of the curved corners, the radius of the curve. You have to keep content away from there. So you have to
⏹️ ▶️ John move it in and up. You can’t nestle the, you know, essentially rectilinear text
⏹️ ▶️ John content into the corners of things. And when you have a single item with incredibly big radius
⏹️ ▶️ John on the corners, it pushes all the content in and makes it essentially mandatory margins
⏹️ ▶️ John on everything. And that makes it less information dense. And the tabs are falling to that as well because they’re capsules with big
⏹️ ▶️ John curves on them. And there’s a border above and below. So yeah, it’s not like the
⏹️ ▶️ John words, like the text, the text in the tabs isn’t any bigger. It’s the stuff around it. And it’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John corner radius. Corner radiuses are killing information density.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there’s more than that too. You know, there’s like, for instance, you know, they, when you, their strategy for,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay, how do we make content go behind everything? They have these blurs around the edges
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that, you know, as the content gets near and near the top or bottom edges, it, it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it goes into a blur instead of even just, instead of just going to the top or instead of a gradient
⏹️ ▶️ John blur where it’s blurrier at the top and less blurry as you go down.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. What that means though is that like the area of your content that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fully visible and unobstructed when you combine, how, How high
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up the blur has to start? With the, you know, the all the, as you were saying, like all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the corner radii of everything having been expanded and so you have to kind of pad everything more.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What you end up with is kind of a tough combination of you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the controls themselves because they have to be so padded and get away from the edges so much. The controls
⏹️ ▶️ Marco horizontally are closer together. your touch targets, if you have a toolbar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that has like, you know, say five items across the bottom, for that to adapt to this new design it has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be further away from the edges, which means it’s narrower, which means all the touch targets for that not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only have moved, but, so everyone’s muscle memory will be slightly broken, but they’re all smaller now. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less wide because the whole thing had to shrink in. So that’s problem number one, is that the controls are closer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco together and harder to hit. One of the ways the design solves this is by collapsing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more controls into dot dot dot menus and you know the problem with that of course now is that everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has additional taps. You have to tap the menu then find the option move your finger to it tap that so it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slower, it feels more cumbersome. Anyway so you have closer together controls, you have room for fewer of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the amount of space that you have for your content in full
⏹️ ▶️ Marco view without being obstructed or blurred is actually shrinking. So you actually you need a bigger screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just to fit, you know, the same amount of stuff on screen at once. So the design ostensibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keeps, they keep saying over and over again, they’re getting out of the way of our content.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But in fact, they’re leaving less room than ever for our content, unless you count the blurred
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version of it that goes under toolbars and tools. But
⏹️ ▶️ John even even if you don’t count the blurred version, there’s still less. Like for I think someone did measurements on the Safari toolbar, which does
⏹️ ▶️ John not have a a blur or at least they had an example didn’t have a blur still less room. Not that it matters in Safari and the Mac, cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s such a big thing, but it just like even not counting the blur, they’re taking up more room and then yes, the
⏹️ ▶️ John blur adds insult to injury.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And like, and to be clear, like I, I hear a lot about, I hear a lot of people talking about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the, you know, these designs on, on podcast and YouTube and everything. And I can always tell when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the people don’t use it on their daily phones. Uh, it’s very obvious. And I’m not saying this to slag anybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because Using this on your daily phone has sucked until beta three, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sucks less. Beta three is significantly better than betas one and two. One and two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were both awful. Like real basics weren’t working in betas one and two. Beta three,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think is the first one that I can honestly say I don’t feel like a moron for having installed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s not a recommendation to be clear. But if you must install the beta
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for your own curiosity or, you know, your work or whatever, Beta 3 is basically fine,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but betas 1 and 2 were very much not. But, if you live with this design,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bunch of things become very, very clear. Number one, it is cool and it is modern.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, no question, this design is cooler and it is more modern. And when you live with this design
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for even a few days, when you go back and look at previous apps that were made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the previous design, or when you go back and use iOS 18, It feels really dated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really quickly. So I have no qualms of saying this is a cool-looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modern looking design. It also has significant functional problems that they are working
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on that they are slowly revising. Some of them will never get revised I don’t think some of them will just have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco live with and that’s fine that’s how Apple design always goes and I think I can simultaneously say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is a cool design and I’m looking forward to you know everything evolving and looking more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modern and being cooler like this in a lot of ways. I can simultaneously say that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while also saying the things they say about this design
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are bullshit. It does not respect your content.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It does not show off your content. It does not get out of the way of your content. Liquid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco glass is all about putting controls on top of your content that blink and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flash at you and are shiny and draw your attention to them. It’s cool. It’s modern.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is terrible for showcasing your content, but it is cool and modern. So if I just take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out everything they say about the design, if I try to ignore it, I actually like it a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more. And yet there’s a lot of revision. We’ll get to it in a second. There’s a lot of revision that they’re doing and that they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to still do. But overall, the idea of this redesign to be refreshed and cool,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are succeeding. I think they’re succeeding the least on the Mac, but that’s also not a surprise. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have the least credibility and the least talent designing for the Mac, which is sad,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that is true. And we all knew it going into this. Um, they also care the least about the Mac. This design works the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worst on the Mac. It fits the Mac the worst, and it has lots of conceptual problems in the Mac that I don’t think they’re going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to resolve. Uh, so on the Mac, I’m a lot less of a fan of it on the Mac. On the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco though, which is obviously the only platform they really gave a crap about when they designed this, it looks great and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco works okay. A lot of the times, and, but it looks cool and it looks fresh and I’m looking forward to that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as long as you just totally ignore all of the BS they say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about it, because it is all BS. And if that’s actually what they believe, they’re deluding themselves. It’s very easy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to prove by just using it and looking at it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. I was 26 beta three front of the show. Dan Morin writes one of the most distracting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things in liquid glass is when you go from scrolling over light content to scrolling over dark content. And the control elements pick
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up the colors, which can lead to a jarring flip from light to dark. But in beta three, it appears to be aware of your speed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you quickly scroll past darker content, it won’t refract those colors in the controls. But if you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey scroll at a normal speed, it will refract them. It is an interesting way of approaching this issue. We’ll put a link to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey his toot and a video in his toot in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wish I had remembered to test this before beta three, because I wondered if this was true in earlier betas, but I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John presumably he did test it. But anyway, that’s yeah, that’s one way to avoid some of the flickering is like we have to bother
⏹️ ▶️ John with this Oh, they just scroll past it real quick But it you know, it’s hiding it’s hiding
⏹️ ▶️ John the problem in some cases while still allowing it to be there in other cases And it is just distracting when your controls
⏹️ ▶️ John invert You know people haven’t used the OS or haven’t seen these videos It’s basically
⏹️ ▶️ John switching from light mode to dark mode and you’re like why would the controls ever need to change from light mode to dark mode? Why don’t they just respect the setting
⏹️ ▶️ John that I have my phone set to? It’s because the controls are showing through so much of the background
⏹️ ▶️ John that if you have a control in light mode, which is a light background with dark text, but all of a
⏹️ ▶️ John sudden the thing behind it is black, you can’t have dark text on a black background, you can’t read it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John the control switches to essentially dark mode where it’s light text on a dark background. And
⏹️ ▶️ John now you can read the text again. Imagine doing that in response to what is scrolling beneath it. And now they’re saying, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John when you scroll fast, we won’t do it. But if you scroll slowly, we will.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that was actually, that flashing, I talked about it on the show, that was one of the worst things about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco betas one and two. Like, it was so distracting, and it was very difficult to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not constantly have your eye drawn to effectively the controls flashing very obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at you as you would scroll down a page or a list. So this is a good change. A
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better change is not needing those inversions to begin with. And they actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco achieve that, which I guess we’re about to talk about, with some of the tweaks to where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the really clear look is used in Beta 3. Beta 3, so, and again, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is one of those things where the reactionary sphere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overreacted to what Beta 3 has done. What Beta 3 has done is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a bunch of common places, especially tab bars, which this is the navigation used in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say the music app, where you have the tabs across the bottom then the search blob, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then the mini player that can shrink into the tab bar as you scroll and everything. Tab bars in betas 1
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and 2 used the very clear look, and that was one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the most common places where I would have to do this flashing back and forth between light and dark as you would scroll something colorful behind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the tab bar, and all of Apple’s apps have these accent colors that they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco highlight their icons with, like the music app, it’s that kind of like bright pinkish color. You know, you put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that with blurred color behind it and it would just be totally unreadable so much of the time with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many color choices. What they’ve done in Beta 3 is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco super clear material is no longer used in tab bars and in a few other places
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that, like navigation style places. Instead, they have frosted it pretty heavily,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much so that it doesn’t need to change. So if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have a very frosted glass look, and in light mode it’s pretty light, in dark mode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s pretty dark, and then in light mode you put black text on it, dark mode you put white text on it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it’s frosted enough, then you can scroll any kind of color content behind it, and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco won’t need to flip to have enough contrast to be readable with the text. And so what they’ve done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in Beta 3 is a lot of the places that use that super clear glass, like tab bars,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they now use this kind of medium frosted glass. And it’s enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it’s way more legible in practice. Now, this has led a lot of commenters who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously are not using this regularly to say they have totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reverted liquid glass or they’ve severely reverted it, they’ve withdrawn, they’ve gone back, how could they do this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, they’ve given in to, you know, social media or whatever, like, whatever it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know Mark Gurman complained about that, saying they’re giving into social media complaints,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which I would, sidebar, I would just say, social media is just people. These are just people’s complaints.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not like a separate thing. It’s just people. And I guarantee you, it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not just people on social media who were complaining about the terrible usability of this before. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they have done by basically frosting more of the glass does not negate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the design. It is not withdrawing. It is not reverting to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old design. This design is so different from iOS 18 that a simple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frost level change on some of the controls does not make that big of a difference
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in practice. And I can tell you, again, I’ve been using this stupidly on my daily driver since beta one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Don’t do that, really, especially this time. It was really annoying. But when you actually use it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that does not make a very big difference in practice in a negative way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like when I put beta three on, I wasn’t like, oh no, liquid glass is gone. No, it’s not even close
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to that. The design still is the design. It still holds up. They’ve tweaked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the worst problem that gave them the most usability, legibility, and frankly design problems.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’ve tweaked it to make it have way fewer problems. That’s good. That’s design.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s design evolution. That’s user testing. That’s feedback. That’s what’s supposed to happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ideally, they wouldn’t be doing this, you know, after they’re, you know, ideally they would have done these experiments
⏹️ ▶️ Marco internally. I think the reality is Apple does not have strong design leadership right now. And that’s not just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a slag at Allen die. Like if you look at what just happened, we’ll, you know, we’ll get to it with the Jeff Williams transition and everything. Like who is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco head of design on Apple right now? Nobody, you know? So who is the head of product at Apple? Hmm.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe, maybe jaws. Maybe, I don’t know. Maybe Jeff Williams, but not anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Who knows? But like, so they have to do more of this experimentation in public. That’s just what happens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you have weak leadership like that in this area or absent or missing leadership in this area.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s what they’re going to do. They’re going to, they’re going to be doing this in public and it is the public’s job to give
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them feedback to say, look, this part doesn’t work for us. This part is hard to read. This part’s hard to use. Then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is going to revise, but that’s the process of design. That’s what happens. It’s not a failure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of design to put something out there and then tweak it in response to feedback. That’s a success
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of design. That is design. I think this is exactly the process they should be doing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, there’s still the debate of how much of this could you caught internally and how much of it are you going to like. You have to choose at what
⏹️ ▶️ John point you show it to people. And when there’s obvious errors that anybody could have caught internally, that’s a failure,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, that is a failure of leadership. Again, I don’t think Apple has had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strong design leadership since Steve Jobs died. I think it’s very, very clear that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tim Cook, for everything you can say about his operational, et cetera, you know, benefits.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He has never provided strong product or design leadership or empowered people beneath
⏹️ ▶️ John I think, I think Johnny I have had some pretty strong design leadership for iOS 7.
⏹️ ▶️ John And more and a more successful launch, I would say I’m going to say iOS 7 for all of like the others, tweaking the font not to
⏹️ ▶️ John be quite as fine and maybe, you know, increasing some contrast here and there has had a smoother
⏹️ ▶️ John initial beta and feedback period than liquid I think it’s no contest.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, it’s yeah, probably. I also think, I mean, frankly, I think the 26 series OS’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are buggier than we’ve seen in a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s setting aside the bugs. I’m just saying like design feedback. Yes, there was design feedback in iOS 7, but it is, it is,
⏹️ ▶️ John has been less severe. And like you said, with all these changes that you just described for beta three, it’s not like
⏹️ ▶️ John they removed the clear material. No. It’s still there. And the places where it still exists, like one place, someone,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m on one of my timelines is constantly posting pictures of one of the easiest places to
⏹️ ▶️ John see the clear glass totally fall on its face. And that’s the numpad for dialing numbers
⏹️ ▶️ John on a telephone on your phone, like the grid of nine numbers and zero on the bottom or whatever, that’s still clear.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you have music playing in the background with an album cover that doesn’t work with that, the numbers are absolutely invisible. So
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not getting rid of clear glass, it’s still there. It’s just that they’ve removed that clear glass
⏹️ ▶️ John from a very common UI element. But it’s still in other places, And in the other places,
⏹️ ▶️ John it still sucks. Well, but there are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, there are some places where the clear glass can be a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cool effect. They’re just dramatically overusing it because they wanna show off, it’s cool, I get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. But, you know, that, again, the process of design oftentimes is like, look at this cool thing we’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show off. They use it everywhere, and then you pull it back. You’re like, oh, okay, actually, that’s too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much. It doesn’t belong here, this effect is too strong here. You start pulling it back, pulling it back, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you get into a more settled state. Right now, they’re so proud of themselves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they think they’re really cool and they went really too far. But that’s what this process is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it is our job as, quote, social media or whatever you wanna call
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, it is our job to give them the feedback during this time to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco save them from their own lack of strong design leadership because that’s what this beta is for. It’s to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco test out what they are doing. And it isn’t just testing out APIs, It’s testing out the redesign also.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if the redesign totally falls over with something as common as purple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco album art in your music app, then they need to know that they should catch drilly, but they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they won’t. So, okay, we’ll, we’ll do it here. As long as it’s happening before release, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, most of the damage is being avoided. This, this is the process of design. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iteration, getting feedback, figuring out like that’s, that’s the process. If
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they had stronger processes in place internally, we wouldn’t see as much of it, but we are. Oh well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is the situation we’ve been dealt, so we’ll do our best to steer it in the right direction.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alright, anything else on the betas?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say if you want to see the glass effect being used in a way that is both
⏹️ ▶️ Marco impressive and also totally dysfunctional, play a video. And,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, look at the full screen video controls. They showed it in the keynote. You know, if you like, you know, go to YouTube or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco play a full screen video. Use the default stock player controls. Actually, I don’t even know if YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does it, but if you like open up a video in some other app or one of Apple’s apps, play a video and you’ll see the liquid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco glass overlay controls. You’ll see a few things. Number one, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does look really cool. Number two, it is huge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and massively obstructs the content. content. Like for them to say they’re getting out of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way of the content, go look at the full-screen video controls. Play a video, pause
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the video, try to seek around within it. It’s comical how much the controls
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are yelling themselves to you. They are so in your face, they’re so big,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it does look pretty cool. And I think that’s just kind of the era that we’re gonna be in for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this release. We’re gonna have a bunch of weird usability or regressions. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not all going to be great. Again, I think on the Mac, I think it’s in a rough spot and will continue to be in a rough spot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they don’t iterate this well on the Mac. When the modern era’s designs get to the Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they arrive in a bad state. They barely iterate on them at all, and then they don’t touch them for years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the Mac, I’m a little more, uh, about. But on the iPhone, it does look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really cool. And so we’re going to be in this era for the next year or two or three, where stuff’s going to look really cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and be less usable. but we’re going to like it because it’s going to look really cool and it looks fresh and modern and that’ll be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine for a while and then this pendulum will swing back and we will go a little bit more towards usability
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know maybe apple’s design leaders will go have some special trip in the woods
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you know pick a new direction to go and it’ll throw the pendulum in a different direction uh who knows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but for now we’re going to have some cool looking apps that are a little a little bit worse in usability, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re gonna appreciate they’re gonna be fresh and cool.
YouTube’s fake-glass UI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John you want to tell me about YouTube’s new player UI?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, speaking of YouTube you mentioned Oh, I forgot if YouTube uses the native controls or not Well YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ John is rolling out its own new look for its own player UI Not the native Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John one with AV player or whatever that you can get in various circumstances but the YouTube native
⏹️ ▶️ John UI when you look at YouTube in a web browser and they put the play and pause controls and the little Gear menu
⏹️ ▶️ John and the closed caption thing that interface You’ll be shocked to hear what the new YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ John player UI looks like. It looks like liquid glass. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Your eyes do not deceive you. You haven’t suddenly stealth upgraded your OS. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not rolled out to everybody, so we’ll put a link to an image in the show notes. But if you are one of the lucky
⏹️ ▶️ John few, and I apparently am, as they are either trialing this or rolling it out slowly,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you go to YouTube, you will see sort of a little bargain basement and
⏹️ ▶️ John liquid glass-ish controls along the bottom of the video. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think it looks great, but it is so much of the prophecy as foretold in earlier episodes, that whatever Apple does,
⏹️ ▶️ John other people very quickly copy. We talked about Flutter imitating the UI and other web frameworks
⏹️ ▶️ John doing it. And here, a fairly popular video site with a player that’s probably seen by billions
⏹️ ▶️ John of people per day, go on Liquid Glass.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it’s like the MS Paint version of Liquid Glass.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, you know, it’s not, this is the thing. It’s not so important that they
⏹️ ▶️ John like look as cool or whatever is just, they just want to be part of it. They
⏹️ ▶️ John just want to be part of the movement. You know what I mean? It’s like, Oh, it’s the thing that Apple’s doing. It’s industry trend. Look, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John part of it too. And you’re like, yeah, I guess you are. Okay, fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cool. I mean, it looks like a crummy interpretation of liquid glass, which is what I would expect.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And I, and it is less usable because they have the same problem of like, well, what if the things behind it is light or dark and
⏹️ ▶️ John it changes the contrast and well that’s all part of the thing so there you have it.
Clear-iPhone follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, the clear iPhone mock-up. This was when somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had a phone and the phone was basically displaying what was behind on the other side of the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We talked about this a week or two ago. John, you had brought this to the show and apparently we attributed it to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the wrong person, despite the phenomenal name of artisanal asparagus water. It was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not by them. So, John, who brought this to us?
⏹️ ▶️ John us. This apparently was made by Gavin Nelson and that got lost in translation for the various social media things.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is originally posted to X, which explains why we may not have seen it, but there you have Gavin
⏹️ ▶️ John Nelson made this back in April of 2025. Cool demo. Hope Apple never does it.
HDR UI APIs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then friend of the show, Guy Rambaud, with regard to HDR controls in iOS 26, writes, Marco mentioned how the new HDR
⏹️ ▶️ Casey UI effects are limited to built-in controls provided by Apple. That’s not the case with iOS 26. New APIs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in UI color and SwiftUI’s color can be used to increase the quote unquote exposure of a color,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and this can be used to create effects similar to those used by Apple in system controls. Guy writes that I’ve made a very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basic sample project to demonstrate it, we’ll put a link to GitHub.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s neat that it’s not as difficult to do that, but they just simply extended the control things for this exposure thing, or it’s such
⏹️ ▶️ John a weird way to do it. Like you got RGB values, you got opacity, and now exposure? Again,
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like this whole thing of HDR is like a one to two trick pony. You don’t get to
⏹️ ▶️ John do this forever. There’s not that many levels of brightness that are comfortable for humans to look at simultaneously.
⏹️ ▶️ John Having a layer that is brighter than everything else, like the Siri layer, makes sense. Maybe there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John room for one more in the middle layer, but that’s basically it. You can’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco there’s not enough,
⏹️ ▶️ John not much more dynamic range that people comfortably want to look at on their screen. So you basically get regular
⏹️ ▶️ John brightness, super bright, and then maybe medium bright. And then even the medium bright may be a difficult sell. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s going to be a feature, it’s nice that it is more readily accessible to third-party developers.
⏹️ ▶️ John If only someday third-party developers could do system-wide things on iOS.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is not such a great thing for third-party developers to have such easy access to because you can see the Black Mirror version of this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everyone just gets brighter.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like the loudest wars in CDs. Yeah, like, okay, our ad is gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit brighter than everyone else’s ads, and we’ll perform a little bit better. Oh, for sure, they’re gonna do
⏹️ ▶️ John that. They already are doing that. Like the HDR ads that you see on Instagram and stuff, already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can see how this will just make everything get brighter to compete for your attention more.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then it will just be, okay, now everything is just super bright.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, every technology is going to be used to annoy people, but you know, that’s life. And the good
⏹️ ▶️ John thing is, at least on iOS, most apps, you know, they’re accustomed to having the whole screen to themselves anyway, so they don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John to try that hard to get your attention. They’ve got the whole screen. We’ll see how it goes. But yeah, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it is something they do need to build in. If they’re gonna use it as part of the UI, it’s something the third party should have
⏹️ ▶️ John access to as well. And like any other feature, you can use it poorly or well. And so it’ll be interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John to see like which apps use this to great effect, So like, you know, use just the right time and just
⏹️ ▶️ John the right amount that it adds to the app is not like a gimmick or something that is distracting.
Sponsor: Notion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this episode by Notion, the best AI tool for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work. Notion AI is all in one AI, powered by your work and all in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one place. It automatically captures meeting notes, instantly finds the exact content you need, drafts detailed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco docs for you, and lets you chat with the best AI models right in Notion. Notion AI just became twice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as powerful for teams, making it the best AI tool for work. Now I told you before about enterprise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco search, where they do amazing search across all your docs and everything. Now I’m not gonna talk about AI meeting notes. Imagine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco perfect meeting memory every time. Every idea, decision, and next step is captured in Notion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where they can be put to work right away, following up with suggested action items immediately after the meeting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can capture anything and turn it into organized searchable notes, meetings, one-to-one conversations, lectures, even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcast episodes. And there’s no meeting bot sitting in your meetings. It works with any meeting platform,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Zoom, Google Meet, whatever, or just with your system audio. And all this is powered by transcription
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and summaries that are automatically saved right in notion zero notes are searchable with notion AI. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can find your ideas from the past your insights, your decisions alongside everything else. notion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has top AI models built right in so you can choose from the best AI model for whatever your task might be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco GPT 4.1 clod sonnet, you can chat directly with them directly in notion without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any separate subscriptions or tabs needed. notion is so great. It’s used by over half of fortune 500 companies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and teams that use notion send less email cancel more meetings, save time searching for their work, reduce spending
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on tools, and keep everyone on the same page. And the fastest growing companies like OpenAI, Ramp, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Vercell themselves use Notion AI to make processes faster and help their teams stay ahead.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Check out Notion, the best AI tool for work right now at Notion.com. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all lowercase letters, Notion.com. Just try the powerful all-in-one Notion AI today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And when you use our link, you are supporting our show. Notion.com. Thank you so much to Notion, the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AI tool for work for sponsoring our show.
Jeff Williams retiring
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s do some topics and let’s start with Apple. And we alluded to this earlier. Apple has announced
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that their chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, is going to be transitioning to a different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey role soon. And that is to say he’s retiring. Apple today, July 8th, announced Jeff Williams will transition
⏹️ ▶️ Casey his role as chief operating officer later this month to Sabik Khan, Apple’s senior vice president of operations,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as part of a long planned succession. will continue reporting to Apple CEO Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and overseeing Apple’s world-class design team and Apple Watch according, excuse me, alongside the company’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey health initiatives. Apple’s design team will then transition to reporting directly to Cook after Williams retires
⏹️ ▶️ Casey late in the year. Gruber had the following to say, left unsaid in Apple’s announcement
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is who will take over Williams’s roles overseeing Apple Watch and health. I presume watch will simply fall under John Ternus,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who is SVP of hardware and that’s Symbol Desai, who is already, who already has the title of VP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Health and frequently appears during the health segments of Apple Keynotes, will report directly to Cook. Mark Gurman adds,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Williams has several senior design leaders reporting to him, and Apple will likely consolidate those teams under
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alan Dye, hey Marco, Vice President of Human Interface, and Molly Anderson, Vice President of Industrial Design,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with both reporting to Cook. The design team previously reported to Cook from 2015 to 2017. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a good compare and contrast to how different senior
⏹️ ▶️ John executives leave Apple and under what circumstances. And Jeff Williams is clearly essentially going out
⏹️ ▶️ John on top. He was really good at his job. The CEO really liked him. He
⏹️ ▶️ John is retiring. There is no like waffle worlds. He’s not being like corroded to the roof. He’s not going to become an Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John fellow. He’s not in consultation. It’s just a smooth transition out of the company to enjoy
⏹️ ▶️ John his well-earned riches in actual real life retirement. And I think he’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John three years younger than Tim Cook. He’s like 62 and Tim Cook is like 65 or something. Anyway, um,
⏹️ ▶️ John so he was always kind of the, uh, the emergency backup hot spare CEO because
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s so much like Tim Cook and has a lot of the same skill set and seems to be well trusted. So if like Tim Cook got hit by
⏹️ ▶️ John a bus, we just assumed that Jeff Williams would be running the company until they found a permanent CEO. But as
⏹️ ▶️ John a potential future successor to Tim Cook doesn’t really make sense because their ages are too similar and here he is on his way out
⏹️ ▶️ John of the company. So see a Jeff Williams, but all the stories about it have not been about like,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, thanks for the great work, Jeff Williams, off you go. It’s been like, wait, what was the reporting structure before
⏹️ ▶️ John he left? The design team was reporting to him. And then as a government points out, I think this is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, after I’ve left the design team, like various heads of the design department were reporting directly
⏹️ ▶️ John to cook. This happens in companies of all sizes. I’ve experienced it myself. Like when, And
⏹️ ▶️ John when big important people leave the company or things get shuffled around, they’re often
⏹️ ▶️ John somewhat nonsensical reporting arrangements for a surprisingly long time. It’s like, oh, I guess,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, I don’t know what to do. I’m not sure we’re going to hire someone for this and we’re not hiring this year anyway. So I guess for now
⏹️ ▶️ John you just report to this person or whatever. And if it goes okay and it’s like, okay, fine, I have the
⏹️ ▶️ John capacity of they can report to me for now or whatever. People just forget about it. And then you wake up two years later and like, how
⏹️ ▶️ John long has this person been reporting to that person? no sense. In some ways, it doesn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John It seems like it doesn’t matter that much. Like I know a market you keep harping on who’s the head of this and who’s the head of that. In the end, Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ John is the head of everything. Everything is delegated. You don’t necessarily need every single
⏹️ ▶️ John function to be delegated to a single person. In fact, that is often anti pattern because if the subsections
⏹️ ▶️ John of your company go up to these single people, then that’s like a single point of failure if they get hit
⏹️ ▶️ John by a bus, but also a single point of screwing things up. It’s the Allen die situation. Essentially, if,
⏹️ ▶️ John if the one decider starts making bad decisions, sometimes having a more committee like structure
⏹️ ▶️ John with two or three peers heading a department who can fight amongst themselves, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John works out better. But anyway, the reporting structure of having resigned reports, Jeff Williams is like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John what the hell does Jeff Williams know about design? He’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like, he knows about as much about design
⏹️ ▶️ John as Tim Cook knows about design, but Jeff would probably say, I don’t need to know anything about design. That’s why we hire the world’s best
⏹️ ▶️ John designers. I am above them in the org chart. And I talked to them and ask questions. And we have all these stories about him
⏹️ ▶️ John being in meetings and asking questions, but none of the stories about that I said. And then Jeff Williams said, No, I demand you do it
⏹️ ▶️ John this way. Because that’s not his area of expertise. That’s not what he’s doing. In the end, the
⏹️ ▶️ John lack of a, you know, when you say strong leadership and design, there’s leadership and design, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John just making bad decisions. And it’s not Jeff Williams fault. He’s not a designer. It’s the whoever is heading
⏹️ ▶️ John design below him in those meetings presenting him with things that turn out to be bad ideas that he’s not pushing back against
⏹️ ▶️ John because he doesn’t feel like that’s a serious expertise. And honestly, it probably isn’t. So when you say strong
⏹️ ▶️ John design, what you mean is designers who make better decisions strong as in strong skill set, not strong as
⏹️ ▶️ John in singular voice, because honestly, I think there is a singular voice for liquid metal when it’s on die.
⏹️ ▶️ John And for better or for worse, very often for worse, more so than when it was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I forget it was like Evans, Hankey and somebody else who were like dual heading design after Johnny Ive left and they were reporting
⏹️ ▶️ John to Tim Cook or whatever. But anyway, with Jeff Williams leaving, it’s like, okay, so now those, I guess the
⏹️ ▶️ John design people report to Tim Cook, which is like, that’s basically the same thing. Tim Cook’s gonna listen and
⏹️ ▶️ John ask good questions about design, but in the end, he’s not gonna probably have any strong opinions and he’s probably not gonna push back too hard against the designers
⏹️ ▶️ John because he doesn’t feel like that’s his area of expertise and it’s not. So, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, like this, all this is, I don’t think this is actually an org chart problem. I think this is a
⏹️ ▶️ John who, uh, you know, who are the designers and what decisions are they making? Do we need to hire in,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s kind of, kind of like John G Andrea situation, uh, for better or for worse, they’ve decided that
⏹️ ▶️ John the leadership and the AI section of the company needed to be changed. They didn’t say, well, we need a strong AI leader.
⏹️ ▶️ John They had one. They just, he just didn’t get it done. So they’re saying, let’s try a different one
⏹️ ▶️ John or different too. Let’s try a Federighi. and who was the person they put in charge? Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John Rockwell, right? Let’s try those two different people instead of the previous people who were there and hopefully
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll get a different result. Will Alan Dye ever get replaced with somebody who makes different decisions? Seems like no,
⏹️ ▶️ John until there’s a new CEO, but that’s the situation we’re in. So I don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John any ill will towards Jeff Williams and I don’t actually think that the org chart situation was that ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just think a lot of people are mapping their dissatisfaction with Alan Dye onto
⏹️ ▶️ John org chart issues And in the end, if Allen Dye is still in the company, unless you hire a new person above him, which
⏹️ ▶️ John would probably make him leave, we’re stuck with the Allen Dye we’ve got. Yeah, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s very clear. It’s up to very, very, very high up people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make changes or to delegate that in those ways. And it’s either Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or somebody directly below Tim Cook who makes those kind of decisions. And Tim Cook makes the decisions for who is directly below him.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so their lack of strong, coherent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design leadership for so long is ultimately Tim Cook’s problem. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seems like this change by having, I mean, it seemed like Jeff Williams, from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we have heard, and this is, we haven’t heard much, you know, bits and pieces here and there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco From what we’ve heard, Jeff Williams was leading a bunch of this stuff, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was more of an overseeing type role rather than like giving direction
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Cause he probably doesn’t have a lot of strong opinions about, for example, design, like how it should be, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s, I mean, it’s interesting, like, you know, for, for a company like Apple that you think of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you think of them as having such good overall product design in so many ways for that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of company, you would expect there to be strong design leadership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at or near the top and for the top and for there kind of not to be and for it to be, he kind of passed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around here and there is a little bit weird. I mean, it’s three
⏹️ ▶️ John levels down. That’s pretty near the top. Not for Apple. It’s not. Well, yeah. I mean, when it was Johnny Ive,
⏹️ ▶️ John it was one level down.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And of course, and a lot of that was, you know, Johnny was seen as like, you know, like Steve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco jobs level of clout. And it was so important, you know, both to him and internally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and also it was so important to the public, to the stock market, to the press, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when Steve died, it was so important that Apple keep Johnny for image and for so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many, it was very important. And so he kind of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he had free reign to a level that I think most people would never actually be given
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who weren’t CEOs or founders. And the reality is that Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in Johnny’s departure, which I think we all know came at the right time, if not late,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he was never really replaced in terms of consolidating that power. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now, I don’t think anybody who we know about, which doesn’t mean nobody,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I don’t think anybody we know about has clearly like the, the talent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the clout and the design expertise or taste expertise to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be that person right now at Apple. Um, and that’s kind of what you get with,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, 12 years of weak design leadership or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John I think he was too high on the org chart though. Like I don’t think one person should have been in charge of hardware and software. And he was, he was just
⏹️ ▶️ John under the CEO. And even in a company like Apple, I feel like that is perhaps a single, single person
⏹️ ▶️ John reporting to the CEO in charge of all design is too much power in too small a place. I think it
⏹️ ▶️ John should be CEO, someone like Jeff Williams, and then one or two design
⏹️ ▶️ John people, two or three design people who make decisions that I agree with.
⏹️ ▶️ John But like, but like you need them to balance each other, right? Because if you give that, because I don’t expect Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ John to say, I demand stitch leather because he’s not Steve Jobs. He doesn’t have those kinds of opinions, right? I don’t want him to have those kinds
⏹️ ▶️ John of opinions. It’s not his strength. And I don’t think you need the Apple CEO to have those kinds of opinions. What you do
⏹️ ▶️ John need is, then there’s Jeff Williams, who also doesn’t have those opinions. What you do need is below that for there to be
⏹️ ▶️ John enough people to check each other and to also have have good ideas. If one of them
⏹️ ▶️ John goes off the rails, the other two could be like, no, we’re not going to do that way. They need to balance each
⏹️ ▶️ John other out. And it seems like now the problem is Tim Cook, who’s not putting his aura in, Jeff Williams, same thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly hands off, asking questions, and then Alan Dye, who’s the final decider for all of liquid metal.
⏹️ ▶️ John And who’s going to disagree with Alan Dye’s opinions? Not the two people above him in the
⏹️ ▶️ John org chart. And I’m sure there’s tons of people below him in the org chart that disagree. But it’s like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John what are you going to do? And yeah, so I would I
⏹️ ▶️ John would prefer it if there was more diversity of design opinion at Apple. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think they need to be higher in the org chart. If they were higher in the org chart, they should definitely be two of them, not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think I’m coming around. Yeah, I think I think I agree. You’re right. You convinced me about that part. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m just maybe I’m just sad that it seems like neither
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the CEO nor his hot spare until moments ago, nor the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people in charge of the software design at Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It seems like none of them are very strong product people or design people. And that kind of just makes me sad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Alan Dye, I’m sure there are reasons why he has gotten where he has, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think those were bad choices. Part of why he got where he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was is that- I’ll tell the people left. Is it? Well, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Tim Cook in his infinite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wisdom of, you know, design and product leadership put too much on Johnny Ive to, you know, in order to keep him,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he put hardware and software together. And hardware and software design are very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different practices. And we now, you know, we have Alan Dye doing software and we have Molly Anderson
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing hardware. That’s great. That’s that split should remain because those are two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very different disciplines. Tim Cook made those both under Johnny. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Johnny was a very, very good hardware designer. He needed an editor like many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good artists, but he, you know, and he had that in Steve Jobs and never since. But he was very good at hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He was pretty terrible at software design. And that’s kind of how we got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Al and Di era was because Johnny and I have, you know, kind of cleaned house and picked him. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the problem is like, no one at the top seems to have really good software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design skills. Tim Cook, I don’t think Tim Cook has ever used a computer. Johnny
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ive loved the hardware so much, fancied himself a software designer, wasn’t a good software designer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Allen Dye was Johnny Ive’s software pick, so that’s kind of where that came from. Who is left?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, who at Apple would be a really good software designer? I don’t even know if anyone’s left who could.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, there’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of people lower down in the arc chart who would be great at it, from, in my opinion. Actually, I have a
⏹️ ▶️ John topic for a future episode related to this whole conundrum. So I don’t want to go too far into
⏹️ ▶️ John it in this episode since we’re running long. But yeah, there is a problem here.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there is, as we’ve discussed in the past, it seems like a lot of the expertise and knowledge has left Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John in the past several decades for obvious good reasons. People getting old, people retiring, people getting wealthy from their stock
⏹️ ▶️ John options and retiring young. Either way. But that’s just a problem Apple’s got to deal with. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John continue to think that a new CEO is the best potential for make different decisions.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not a new design focus CEO, not a new like, oh, I have the same tastes as Steve Jobs CEO,
⏹️ ▶️ John or even the same taste as Scott Forstall who brought us that leather or whatever, right? But just like a new CEO
⏹️ ▶️ John who makes radically different decisions despite the fact that also they’re not a good
⏹️ ▶️ John designer and also they’re not a big product person. Like it’s a matter of what you value because
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have to be good at these things to value them and to place different priority, different
⏹️ ▶️ John importance levels on different types of things. And it seems like Tim Cook is mostly prioritized
⏹️ ▶️ John harmony and predictability over, uh, you know, like even like look at glass, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John so changing the leadership and AI, it’s like that raises the Tim Cook level of like, I Tim, even Tim Cook can tell we’re failing
⏹️ ▶️ John here. Right. But, uh, I keep saying liquid metal, look, look at glass. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think no matter how liquid glass goes, uh, cook is going to think, eh, okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John So no, no big changes are required here. Like there’s There’s no amount of gnashing of teeth about
⏹️ ▶️ John liquid glass that is going to cause Tim Cook to rethink his approach to design leadership. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John in the end, it’ll be fine. Like, it’s not a big deal. The usability is not great. The information
⏹️ ▶️ John is not great. I don’t think it’s a great design. I don’t think it’s good. I don’t like it. But is it the end of the world? No,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s fine. And like you said, it looks cool. And so Tim Cook, that’s way below the level of his. He’s going to be like, great job, Alan. You did,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, because he doesn’t think that Apple needs to be the very best
⏹️ ▶️ John of the best in design. As long as it’s not a disaster, it’s probably fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so I think the only chance you have of any kind of like change in design leadership is Allen Dye retiring
⏹️ ▶️ John or a new CEO coming in and really changing priorities.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do you think Tim Cook knows that Apple makes software? Oh, stop, good grief. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think one thing I’m looking forward to this wave of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of this generation of Apple senior leadership, slowly retiring. It’s happening, slowly. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s possibly more slowly than it should. But it is happening. Time will march on,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and people want to retire. And so I’m not looking for Apple to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive radical changes. Overall, the business is so big, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco company is so big, they not only can’t make big radical changes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but probably shouldn’t. What they have is mostly working. There are some things they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to tweak. Some of them are pretty big. like China situation. But like overall, we’re not looking for them to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco change to a different kind of company or anything like that. What I wanna see is like, when you’ve had a certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco leadership or ownership for a company or a business for a long time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the people right below them or two levels down, oftentimes have great ideas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of what they would do if they were in charge, but they can’t convince the current leaders to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And a lot of times there’s some really great innovations there, there’s some really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great kind of like finally moments there. And so when leadership transitions happen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when those number two or number three people get elevated, that’s when we often see like, oh, thank
⏹️ ▶️ Marco God they finally changed this thing. You know, and you can see it in other tech companies. It doesn’t always happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But like, you know, one of the, one of the, you know, biggest ones of these stories, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is Satya Nadella at Microsoft.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s the exact example I was gonna pull out. And I think it’s, in corporate world, it’s a little bit different than the political
⏹️ ▶️ John world, that these people do, they know how to get themselves
⏹️ ▶️ John in position so that they will be the next CEO, and they kind of like keep their powder dry. Like they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John the person who’s like railing and yelling about everything, but they do have it, they’re like, I think I might do things a little differently.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they pitch their vision, like, serve Satya Nadella, pitch the board of the vision, here’s my vision of how I’m gonna do
⏹️ ▶️ John things differently than Balmer or whatever, but they do it in a gentle way until you give them the key, and then it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John ha, now I’m actually the CEO, and actually what I’m going to do is all that stuff that I talked about, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John really actually gonna do that. And that it’s a great thing to see when it’s a good idea. But that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John part of the thing about like, I can’t know who those people are gonna be because they’re not gonna be the people screaming about it. If there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John someone who’s like a second or third level of the org chart at Apple screaming about how they would do a better job
⏹️ ▶️ John than Tim Cook, they’re never gonna be CEO. Yeah, they won’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be there anymore. But like, yeah, but and like, so that’s what I wanna see is like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like what are the Satya Nadella level ideas or transitions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that will come next with Apple’s next wave of leadership. And we don’t know what, I mean, that could still be 10 years away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Who knows? But it’s going to probably happen sometime in the next five to 10 years.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, Tim Cook put a cap on it, I think, a year or two ago. He said he didn’t think he’d be there for the next 10 years.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everyone thinks he’s just going to stay long enough to see some Apple glasses. But the clock is ticking on Tim Cook, by his
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and to be clear, I’m not just talking about Tim Cook. But certainly a CEO
⏹️ ▶️ Marco transition, that tends to. That’s where the that’s where
⏹️ ▶️ John the big stuff is. Because then you get to really change. Like, I mean, that’s what my blog post is about. Like, how can you actually
⏹️ ▶️ John change Apple’s attitude about developers? You can’t have Tim Cook there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anymore. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. For that for that problem, definitely.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like but stuff like that, like there are certain things, certain things you could do at a lower level of company, certain things you can’t. And,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, there’s a whole bunch of important stuff that you even the China stuff, not that I think Tim
⏹️ ▶️ John Cook is doing the wrong thing there, but like you need you need the CEO to do those type of things. But
⏹️ ▶️ John these lower level design stuff could actually happen with a second or third level reshuffle because again
⏹️ ▶️ John Tim cook would be like, uh, I’m sure it’s gone. It’s fine. Like if Jeff Williams get replaced by somebody who has really strong design opinions
⏹️ ▶️ John Tim cook won’t interfere with that I don’t think it’s gonna happen, but no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, but but the reality is like if the CEO changes Some of the SVPs might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then change, you know that typically what happens in a leadership transition is like Some of the next people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down shuffle around or you know Some of them might leave if they wanted to be CEO, or if they don’t get along with the new CEO,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever it is. There’s oftentimes other shuffling that happens. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that can also often result in this kind of thing. I mean, look, when Tim Cook took over Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you had a clash between Scott Forstall and Johnny Ive, and they couldn’t work with each other. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new CEO had to pick one and get rid of the other one. Like that kind of thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happens. And then look at the ramifications of that kind of thing. It’s huge at a company like Apple. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s kind of like what I want to see is like, what would, you know, Apple Satya Nadella
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do? You know, would it result in, you know, I think honestly, small
⏹️ ▶️ Marco potatoes stuff like improving the developer relationship, which as much as it matters to us, it’s a small potatoes to Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, maybe it will result in some of those things. I think the more interesting questions are probably things like, would their relationship
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to AI change? What about services? What about big data problems?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Be careful what you wish for, because an actual equivalent of Southern Italy could be like, we’re not doing the Mac anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I mean, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John you need a new CEO to make those bold decisions. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frankly, it’s hard to imagine a worse CEO for the Mac than Tim Cook. It’s remarkable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac survived. Oh, no, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John someone cancels it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. But like Tim Cook had is so clueless about the Mac and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always has been. He
⏹️ ▶️ John really made a dog’s dinner of it for a while there. But to his own credit, he did recover. I think he’s had multiple
⏹️ ▶️ John recoveries on the Mac. It’s a shame that he has to keep learning these same lessons, but the Mac still exists.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. But anyway, I think it’s going to be an exciting and interesting and scary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and overall probably good transitions happening at Apple over the next decade.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this is going to be something really to watch.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if it’s John Ternes, I really hope he got my Mac Pro shirt. He did.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh man, can you imagine? I know for a fact that he did.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want to read one brief thing from the press release. Quote, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a deep love for Apple. Working with all the amazing people at this company has been a privilege of a lifetime. I can’t thank Tim enough for the opportunity. He’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey inspired inspirational leadership in our friendship over the years. Said Williams, June marked my 27th anniversary
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with Apple and my 40th in the industry. Beginning next year, I plan to spend more time with friends and family, including five grandchildren
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and counting. Had the pleasure of working close. Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just want to call out that they’re actually talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about, like family and friends in a official Apple newsroom post. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that that’s adorable. And I love this.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the, well, that’s, that was the euphemism of like, yeah, he’s leaving to spend more time with his family when somebody got fired, but
⏹️ ▶️ John no Jeff Williams really is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. Exactly. legitimately is.
Casey’s bad AppleCare
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so I talked I don’t remember when I’m probably not going to bother putting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it in the show notes But like a month or two ago, maybe three months ago. I had talked about how my air pods Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Gen 2 or whatever you want to call it mark 2. I think we had laughed about me calling it mark 2 This
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is before the USBC. It’s still lightning the right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AirPod was not charging particularly via Qi and then a a listener’s kind enough to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey send me their leftover lightning case that they had after like a repair or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that seemed to make things a touch better, but then it started to act up again
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I went to mow the lawn the other day and I went to put in my noise
⏹️ ▶️ Casey canceling AirPods pro two in and only one of them had a charge, only the left one. And that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fairly miserable. I did know enough to turn on the accessibility thing where I could turn on noise canceling on only one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AirPod, which I did, made it fine, but I was annoyed. So I go through a whole bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of trying to troubleshoot what’s going on. And I eventually say, well, I think maybe what I should do is reset
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my AirPods, which at the time sounded like a great idea. And what you do is you basically mash on the button on the back for like 15
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seconds. And then they, well, first I unpaired them in software on my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone and said, forget this device. And then I went to reset them. And now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anytime I go to pair, nothing happens. And then anytime I go to re reset
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them something, and I think it’s the right air pod that otherwise seemed like it had no charge, God
⏹️ ▶️ Casey makes three tones. I got boop, boop, boop. And it’s almost like jeopardy. And, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I couldn’t figure out a way to resuscitate it. I tried putting them in the, in the old case, the original case, put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them back in the new case. Nothing I could do. I could, I couldn’t figure it out. So I go to the Genius Bar this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey morning and I’m wearing my Dongletown, my upgrade Dongletown shirt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they had no idea who I was, which is exactly what I expected. Nobody acknowledged my shirt, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was exactly what I expected. But at one point they’re doing diagnostics
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and so they bring out, most of the operation the Genius was doing on a Mac Mini,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or excuse me, not a Mac Mini, an iPad Mini. many. But at some point, they bring out a MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Air that has a USB-C to USB-A dongle that then has a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different dongle that I think is for troubleshooting that then is plugged into my AirPods case.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I was living in dongle town while wearing the dongle town t-shirt. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was amazing. I will try to remember to put a link in the show notes. It was incredible. Nobody thought this was funny but me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nobody noticed it but I, but I noticed. Isn’t that the John Syracuse’s story, your biography, nobody cares about me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I care a whole lot or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John do care. Getting farther away.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, sorry. So anyway, so the conclusion they came to was, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey past Casey was not a jerk for the first time and apparently got AppleCare on this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey device. And apparently the AppleCare runs out in like two months. So excellent.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m very excited about this. And so I assumed what that meant was I would be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey walking away with the very least a new right AirPod or maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would get like a triple word score and get a whole new set of AirPods and a new USB-C case
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it was going to be great. And then the conclusion was no we have to ship them away
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I can’t effectively perform diagnostics. Let me repeat that. They’re so broken
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I cannot perform diagnostics but But yet I need to ship them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off to some repair center so they can do more diagnostics. How is this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worth their time? Right. And I will acknowledge I’m going full, I’m about to go full Karen or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the, what is it, Chad is the male equivalent, whatever. You know what I’m saying? And this is the first worldiest of first world
⏹️ ▶️ Casey problems. With that said, what is the f***ing point of AppleCare if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all I want to do is have problems go away and go away quickly? I am literally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey paying Apple for my problems to go away and go away quickly. My problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has not gone away because I still don’t have AirPods and it’s not going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be quick because it’s going to be between three and five business days, I think, in order
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get them back. Now, and the good news is they will, they will ship to my home.
⏹️ ▶️ John must’ve been a bear when you were a kid waiting for Christmas morning. Let me tell you, is patience is not a virtue that you have a lot of,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I would say what you’re, I would say what you’re paying for is not for your your problem to go away and go away quickly.
⏹️ ▶️ John What you’re paying for is not having to pay a full price for replacement AirPods. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and that is true, but I still feel like a company, one of the most
⏹️ ▶️ Casey valuable companies in the world, if they can’t even diagnose what’s wrong
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with my stuff, shouldn’t that be an indicator that the stuff is broken? I feel like that pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much indicates. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John it just needs to be like reset by a thing that they don’t have in-house that they only have-
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Then they should have it in-house, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Before the age of the Apple Store, you guys don’t remember, this is how every Apple warranty repair went. You wouldn’t go
⏹️ ▶️ John in there and then walk out with a new item or how broken your thing was. They’d always take your broken thing and ship it somewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then at some point later, you would get something, either your old thing back or a new thing back. But the idea of
⏹️ ▶️ John instantaneous or cross ship or whatever is a fairly, well, not recent, but it is a in the age
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple retail stores, recent innovation and has never been standard everywhere. In fact, I think there is a fancier
⏹️ ▶️ John level of applicator depending on how you contact them or the cross
⏹️ ▶️ John shipping express thing, or if you’re in a store, the manager’s discretion, you can get a new one there and
⏹️ ▶️ John leave with it when they take your old one in and stuff like that. But I think what you’re experiencing is the average
⏹️ ▶️ John case basis. You don’t always get instantly a new one. And I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John heard of anybody getting a full new boxed AirPod. They always want to replace one bud,
⏹️ ▶️ John two buds, or the case separately. And my kids have destroyed
⏹️ ▶️ John many AirPods, And I’ve gotten many warranty repairs and always they replace the part that they think
⏹️ ▶️ John is broken. Never have I gotten brand new stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And to be clear, I would have been perfectly happy if they sent me away with a right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AirPod and all my old stuff and got it to the point that I could at least repair
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them with my device. I would have been over the moon happy about that. You wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have been over the moon happy because remember my story of my son going in, I think it was four total times for a very similar
⏹️ ▶️ John problem because in each one of those times they sent him away with a new thing. And each one of those times, the new thing didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John quite work and he had to come back and go around and around. So, you know, sometimes sending it away and having it get
⏹️ ▶️ John done for real for good in one trip is better than four individual trips where the person at the store
⏹️ ▶️ John makes a decision in the moment and says, I think it’s probably just the right AirPod. And then you go back and say, I think it’s still the right AirPod
⏹️ ▶️ John and they replace it again. Now let’s replace the left AirPod and they replace it again. Now let’s replace the case and they replace it again. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and I don’t argue with anything you said. I know I’m going to be eviscerated after this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey airs because everyone’s going to say I’m being a big baby, which is arguably true. But the whole point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Apple and Apple care is to make it right and make it right. To my standby,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it should be made right relatively quickly. And again, just a right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John airpods. 3-5 business
⏹️ ▶️ John days, not quick enough?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, not when there’s an Apple store right there with a gazillion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John airpods sitting in the store. Maybe if
⏹️ ▶️ John you’d paid 10 grand for a Mac Pro, I can see your complaints a little. Obviously you would never get that thing back in three to
⏹️ ▶️ John business. But it’s like, it’s, it’s their, one of their least expensive products that
⏹️ ▶️ John they sell a bazillion of the break all the time. So I think three to five business days, it’s not great, but you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I, I’d, at this point, I would rather have them fix it once in three to five business days than have to return
⏹️ ▶️ John to the store multiple times.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, that is your story is a failure of AppleCare as far as I’m concerned. Like that should never
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, that used to be the way it was, was that you didn’t get the, okay, will give you all a new one until you’d gone
⏹️ ▶️ John back three to five times or they had some like metric or like it like most places have this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which is fair. And again, like this is not I feel like I’m coming across as saying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want a brand new full package AirPods, you know, with the upgraded case and all that. I well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yes, I would like that, but that’s not what I expect by any stretch of the imagination. I think it’s perfectly reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if they send me back my old AirPods case, my old left AirPod in a repaired
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or replaced right?
⏹️ ▶️ John What makes you think it’s the ear pod and not the case?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. Just because the left side seems to be fine. So why is it the case?
⏹️ ▶️ John The case is not charging the right side.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, yeah, you could be right. I don’t know. But it’s frustrating when I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I go, I do everything I can never to speak to Apple in this capacity anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then… You just yell at them from here. Right. Well, basically. I can to try
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not to engage with Apple. And I never say like, look at me in my big podcast, which honestly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey isn’t that big. I didn’t even whip out the, I’m an iOS developer. So I actually know what I’m doing because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in this context, I kind of don’t know what I’m doing. Um, but it’s just frustrating that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is the, this is the experience I have. And I’m frustrated that these AirPods are, I mean, don’t make me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say planned obsolescence, but it’s hard not to sometimes, even though I do think that’s BS, it’s sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hard not to, but I don’t know. I don’t know, I feel like, you know, the terms of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AppleCare, it used to be in years past that you could basically walk in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and basically come out with an often refurbished, which is perfectly fair, but a replacement device.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I remember going to AppleCare and saying, look, I have a reasonably bad scratch on my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone. Would you fix it, please? And they said, absolutely. And then a couple of years later, Mike went and they said, absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not. And he got all grumpy about it, which I completely agree with. And then I tried the same thing. I was like, well, he was in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the UK, I’m in America. Hey, you know, I have this phone and I’ve had, I’ve got Apple care on it and it’s got a handful of scratches
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on it. Can I replace it? And they said, well, no. Well, huh? Well, so if I step outside and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shatter it, would you replace it? And I told the story on the show. Well, yeah, but as long as we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see you. And I didn’t do that because I’m not that evil, but I really, really, really thought about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s just when the terms are getting that owner ornerous or nervous, I think I can say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that onerous,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, onerous, dammit. I threw it in R, it doesn’t exist. Anyways, I’m very tired. I was at a concert
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last night, I’m very tired. When the terms are that onerous, in my personal opinion, then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t help but wonder why am I doing this in the first place.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, you’ve always got the option of, you know, the other option that will get you fast
⏹️ ▶️ John service in exchange for money is don’t get AppleCare. And when your things go wonky, buy brand new ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John You save the money. Again, what I think the point of AppleCare, like any insurance, is not paying the full
⏹️ ▶️ John cost out of pocket when something goes wrong. that is the one of insurance and you can quibble about how quickly they do that. And if you do that
⏹️ ▶️ John matter of your liking, but if you don’t like the time that they take to do it or the way the service does, you can buy
⏹️ ▶️ John yourself brand new AirPods real fast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And honestly, to build on what you’re saying, and I absolutely agree with you to build on that though,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if, if the phantom theorized brand new ones like the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the AirPods pro three that, that I think there was recently, uh, some hints of that in software somewhere,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If the AirPods Pro 3 were available today, I would already have
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, that’s true. Even if these were twos, we’re still working probably, let’s be honest here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Probably yes, actually, probably right. But the only reason I took them in is because I’m trying to just hold on until.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, so that’s the thing about AppleCare. It’s like, even if you’re on there, well, I don’t buy AppleCare. If I need to get new ones, I’ll just pay
⏹️ ▶️ John for them myself. But if you know when the new products are coming out and you’re close to it, you’re like, oh, I didn’t get AppleCare.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I also really don’t want to buy new twos right before the threes come out. So, you know, there’s another
⏹️ ▶️ John function of insurance slash AppleCare for you. It lets you avoid that sticky situation as well in exchange
⏹️ ▶️ John for waiting three to five business days. And speaking of business days, one of my big HomePods is now
⏹️ ▶️ John out for repair. Oh, tell me more. They repair them? Somebody does. When I get it
⏹️ ▶️ John back, I’ll tell you about it. You’re saying it’s that guy who does the capacitor fix on YouTube? Well, I don’t know which person
⏹️ ▶️ John is, but it’s one of those people. Although, interestingly, I’ve got all these HomePods in my house. I got my original one and Marco’s
⏹️ ▶️ John too that he sent me. And I don’t think I ever wrote down
⏹️ ▶️ John like the serial numbers of which one is mine versus which two are Marco’s. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John them in, I think I sent mine in, but I might be wrong. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, we’ll see how it turns out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, in summary, I recognize fully that this is, I want to repeat it because I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hear all the angry emails and all the angry tweets. I get that this is low stakes. I get that there are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much more important things that matter. It’s just frustrating and I need somewhere to yell and scream
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into the ether. And so you to provide me that platform by which I can yell and scream into the ether and I feel better
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having released this anger. So thank you for indulging me and thank you for not writing me and telling me how much of a self-centered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey jerk I am. So I appreciate you.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, hopefully after your three to five business days, what you will get back is a fully functional working set
⏹️ ▶️ John of AirPods. Because if you don’t doing that four times is really going to suck. All
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, thanks to our sponsors this week, HelloFresh and Notion, and thanks to our members who support us directly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can join us at atp.fm.com. One of the many perks of membership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is ATP overtime, our weekly bonus topic. You think you if you have not had enough of us, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know that’s that’s how everybody feels all the time, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey You haven’t had enough of us.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You just need to hear more of this. You can do that by joining atp.fm.com. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you will hear overtime every single week plus bonus topics and bonus content like we talked about earlier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with our member specials. This week and over time, we’re gonna be talking about 2020 hindsight.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Looking back on what was going on with John G. and Andrea on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple and AI in 2020 with today’s eyes. It’ll be kind of fun. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco join http.fm slash join to hear that and everything else. Thank you so much and we’ll talk to you next week!
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ John show notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John mastodon, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and T. Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, check podcast so long
F1® The Movie
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So John, you, uh, did something that I didn’t expect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you would do. You went and saw a movie about Formula One.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, yeah, it’s so hot in the summer. You just want to be in an air conditioned theater. Um, really, honestly, I don’t, I don’t see a lot of movies in the theater
⏹️ ▶️ John these days, just because I pay for every streaming service in the entire universe and have a big fancy TV. And that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John I prefer to do. But I often get frustrated by how long I have to wait for movies
⏹️ ▶️ John to come from the theater to be available on streaming in any fashion. So that’s annoying.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why I end up sometimes paying ridiculous fees. Like I just watched Thunderbolts recently.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because it got some medium, middle of the road reviews. And you could rent it for $25 or buy it for $29. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I bought it. It was OK. It was fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco choose to see F1 in the movie theater?
⏹️ ▶️ John And no, it wasn’t the ad in Apple Wallet that pushed me over the edge. Did supplies last?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, supplies
⏹️ ▶️ John did in fact last. I was always gonna watch it, and I could have easily waited for it to
⏹️ ▶️ John be available on streaming. Is it already available on streaming? I don’t know what Apple’s theatrical window for it is,
⏹️ ▶️ John but anyway, this is the type of movie I thought, you know what, to give this
⏹️ ▶️ John movie the best chance of being the most enjoyable, it’s the type of movie that I wanna actually see
⏹️ ▶️ John in a dark theater on a really big screen with a giant sound system, because it’s that kind of movie. It’s like from the director
⏹️ ▶️ John of Top Gun Maverick, It’s going to be, you know, big, loud and fast and flashy.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I want to give this movie the best possible chance to wow me and for it to be enjoyable.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s why I chose to see this in the movie theater. Now, I’m not into F1 at all. I’ve never even watched Drive
⏹️ ▶️ John to Survive. It’s not a thing that I’m into, but I was going to watch this on streaming.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we wanted to go see a movie. We wanted to be in the air conditioning. I said, this is what we should see. It’s perfect
⏹️ ▶️ John opportunity. So I went and saw it in a fancy theater.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sorry, so you don’t care for F1. Had you, do you know anything about F1 at all?
⏹️ ▶️ John They drive cars really fast around. You know, I actually, I know a lot about F1 cars because, because in the YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ John channels that I watch, inevitably my, all my watching of supercars and hypercars
⏹️ ▶️ John inevitably leads you to F1 technology and
⏹️ ▶️ John videos and stuff. So I have seen a lot of that stuff from that perspective, but
⏹️ ▶️ John never touching on like the sport competitive part of it. Or I don’t know the team names. I don’t know the driver
⏹️ ▶️ John names. I don’t know any of that. It’s all just about like, how do they build the, uh, the, you know, carbon
⏹️ ▶️ John ceramic brakes and why do they have these little pointy spikes on them? And like, I know that stuff, but
⏹️ ▶️ John no interest whatsoever in the, in the sport part of
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, like I, it’s a movie, so, you know, I’m going to see an exciting movie. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I had heard from people who do know F1 and like F1 that the movie is
⏹️ ▶️ John a reasonable representation for, if you, to someone who doesn’t follow the sport of like, this is not entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, the sport is nothing like this movie. If you watch this and you get some idea
⏹️ ▶️ John of what the sport is like, obviously it’s not a movie starring Brad Pitt or whatever, but like, that it was somewhat
⏹️ ▶️ John representative. Again, I wasn’t watching it to convince me to like F1, I just wanted to see a good movie.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and so I went on a field trip this afternoon by myself, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey went to the theater and I watched the F1 movie because there was no freaking way that you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were going to talk about this movie And even though you kindly offered to make a no spoiler
⏹️ ▶️ Casey review segment, which is what we’re going to aim for. I didn’t want there to be any risk of you slipping up. Not because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think this movie really justifies like a full media blackout, Todd Vizzeri style, but just because I really wanted to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go in cold. And so I also watched the movie this afternoon and I have thoughts. And one thing I will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say is that I think you’re right. Is this exactly accurate to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perfection? Is this exactly how F1 works? No. Is it close enough?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is it as they say around these parts, is it good enough for government work? Absolutely. Yes. There
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are some details that are wrong. It’s fine. The point of the movie, it did it, it, it, it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have made it perfect would have been to make the movie worse, which is exactly what you would expect.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was, it was, it was fine in the sense that it was not, it didn’t take away from the movie,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t think I wasn’t, I didn’t have the plumber problem. You know, it was close enough. It was good enough
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in terms of F1 accuracy. accuracy and broadly speaking and again, I’m going to also aim for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no spoilers. I loved it. I thought it was a great movie.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so the first thing I’m going to say about it is, uh, after this show, uh, I’m going to talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple product placement, which, you know, Apple likes a lot of media. They make a lot of TV shows,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, make a lot of movies. They’re usually pretty good about not conspicuously
⏹️ ▶️ John putting Apple stuff everywhere. Yeah. The good guys have iPhones and the bad guys don’t like whatever, but like it’s not that conspicuous.
⏹️ ▶️ John was one of the more conspicuous examples of product placement because at one point they were showing, I think,
⏹️ ▶️ John the design department for our Heroes F1 team where they work on the car and the aerodynamics and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they had a bunch of Pro Display XDRs connected to Mac studios. Yes, I was sad
⏹️ ▶️ John not to see Mac Pros, but they probably wouldn’t have fit on the screen. They’re so freaking big. Or they’d be under the desk.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But they have wheels. What a perfect tie-in.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Exactly. Yeah, they’d be
⏹️ ▶️ John racing around. But yeah, there was one or two conspicuous shots. That’s a lot of XDRs
⏹️ ▶️ John on screen. And you know, well, F1 teams have a lot of money, so it kind of fits a little. Obviously the software they were running probably is Windows
⏹️ ▶️ John only or Linux only.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What I also, I couldn’t believe that Brad Pitt’s choice of headphones, which was AirPods Max,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that made sense, but they were stickered to Kingdom Come and he seemed to be like on the verge or maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did actively get them wet a few times, like underwater, which I didn’t think- Oh
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, no, he did, definitely did get them wet. I thought of Merlin, I’m like, you know, those
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey aren’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John waterproof, but you know, he’s, Whatever, yeah, the stickers I thought were cute. But so there was a little bit of that.
⏹️ ▶️ John As for the movie, I think I’m glad I saw it in the theater because it does, I think it did benefit.
⏹️ ▶️ John It got like a five to 10% boost of just like movie experience because no matter how, my sound
⏹️ ▶️ John system is not that great in the house, but like this has got car engines and roaring things and just, you need to
⏹️ ▶️ John really be immersed in that. And so that did give it a little bump. What I would say of this movie is
⏹️ ▶️ John that it is, in my opinion, ever so slightly
⏹️ ▶️ John above average in almost everything. There’s a couple of things that are a little bit below. There are a couple of things that are a little bit above,
⏹️ ▶️ John but overall, it is slightly above average, a slightly above average execution
⏹️ ▶️ John of a tried and true formula. Again, I’m not going to spoil it. If you’ve seen any movies like this at all,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey not be shocked by what happens in this movie.
⏹️ ▶️ John what? That formula exists for a reason, and it works. I am a staunch defender of, quote
⏹️ ▶️ John unquote, formula movies that execute really well on that formula. A lot of my favorite movies are like
⏹️ ▶️ John that. This one executes pretty well on the formula. Importantly, it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do any huge, disastrously wrong things that would really drag it down for me. And I’ve seen this
⏹️ ▶️ John in a lot of media. Some people have referred to it derisively.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Merlin has said this, it’s like B plus media. I got nothing against a B plus. Like it’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John like frame rate in a video game. As long as there’s no big dips, If you’re a little bit above
⏹️ ▶️ John average in everything you do, that’s a good movie. And so if you have any
⏹️ ▶️ John interest at all in movies like this, not an F1, because I don’t care about F1, but like if you have any interest in movies
⏹️ ▶️ John like this, and let’s name some movies like this, I mean, you can just go with the car racing movies, even like something like Ford versus Ferrari, or
⏹️ ▶️ John your five favorite days of thunder, or Top Gun, or Top Gun Maverick, or the Karate Kid,
⏹️ ▶️ John or any sports movie, like if you like that kind of movie, this
⏹️ ▶️ John is a pretty good version of that kind of movie. And if you don’t know anything about F1, like
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t, you will learn things about F1 from this movie because the movie does, one of the things that I think is
⏹️ ▶️ John slightly below average is the movie does bend over backward to make the announcers say things that I assume the announcers would never
⏹️ ▶️ John say because fans of
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco F1 already know this stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they have to, as you know, Bob, by doing X, Y, and Z, P, Q, R, like
⏹️ ▶️ John I know this is someone who, you know, when I watch tennis, for example, they don’t explain things like that. They assume you
⏹️ ▶️ John know what they’re talking about. And if you watch a lot of tennis, you will learn this stuff through osmosis, but you don’t have time in a two hour movie
⏹️ ▶️ John to learn this through osmosis. So they, they, they have the announcers somewhat
⏹️ ▶️ John painfully explain that. And I need to be clear. I needed them explained cause I didn’t know this, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I also knew that I was being explained to. And I can imagine if you know stuff about F1, you might be like, why?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they, but anyway, it doesn’t matter. Like I, this is what I say, this movie, despite all the,
⏹️ ▶️ John the controversy about the ads or whatever, this is a thoroughly,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, average to above average execution of a tried and true formula.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it benefits from being seen in the theater. So if you want to escape the heat and get into the air condition, I recommend checking
⏹️ ▶️ John it out. Don’t expect the Godfather or something. But if you like Top Gun Maverick, I think you’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if I agree with that. I need to watch it again. I will be the first to watch Top Gun Maverick again.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t care for it. It was
⏹️ ▶️ John so I didn’t like I thought Top Gun Maverick was the worst movie in this to be clear. but if that kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of thing appeals to you, like the dazzle, the spectacle, and the formula, this will also appeal.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I see what you’re going for, but I get so turned off by you comparing this to Top Gun
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I compare it to the original Top Gun, which I think the original Top Gun is a better movie than this.
⏹️ ▶️ John would lump them in the same category. And did it make me more interested in F1? Not really,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I like cars, and I like fast cars, and I think one of the things they did above average is
⏹️ ▶️ John showing a bunch of cars going faster on a track, which sounds boring, but with the application of modern technology, you can do
⏹️ ▶️ John that in a slightly different way than has been done in the past. I’m not saying the way that it is better than like the
⏹️ ▶️ John way they did in Days of Thunder. It’s just informed by modern technology and it allows for a different look. I thought it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, I broadly agree with everything you’re saying. This is the standard, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the standard sports movie. I don’t want to give even the hint of a spoiler. It’s the standard sports movie. It is Days of Thunder all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over again, in a lot of ways.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although I will give credit. I see this is like a spoiler. Maybe we should have a special spoiler after this one thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that I will give this movie credit for that it did. I mean, I didn’t expect it. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just because I was being dumb. And once the movie started, I’m like, oh, of course, they’re going to do it this way. But I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it made it a better movie. I guess I’ll talk about it in the after after show. So the bootleg people will hear.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s that’s that’s a good plan. Let’s do it. Let’s do a touch just a touch of spoilers in the post post show. Anyways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with regards to the movie, though, I thought it was really well done. Yeah, there were times like a great example of this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is DRS, which is drag reduction system. And the way this works is if you’re within one second of the car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in front of you, in certain parts of the track, the rear wing of the F1
⏹️ ▶️ Casey car, which is there for several reasons, but especially downforce to give the car better handling.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that wing kind of acts like an air brake almost because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s horizontally behind the car and it’s a bunch of airs hitting it, It’s slowing the car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey down. So at certain times, if you are within one second of the car in front of you, then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can engage DRS, which is to say that wing will open up. There’s a little flap that opens up. So the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey air will pass straight through the wing and you get like something, something like 10 or 20 miles an hour faster
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by doing that. And when they explain DRS, they like super close up shots
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the wing with the flap opening and they, you hear the announcer say DRS two or three times and then explicitly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say drag reduction system. This is what John is talking about. It was very like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as you said, oh, as you would know, Bob, that’s the drag reduction system.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You are right. But I thought as that goes, it was a not particularly cringe way of doing that. It is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey still a bit cringe, but it wasn’t that bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John I already knew about DRS because that is a thing that’s often referenced in hypercars, and they come with their own version of that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because of course, hypercars can do things that F1 cars cannot because of all those darn rules they have in F1.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But the other thing that I thought this, this movie executed exceedingly well on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is it was trying to paint itself as a movie of this minute or maybe last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey year, if you will, in, insofar as this is current at formula one in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey circa 2023 to 2025, 2025.
⏹️ ▶️ John Most of the cameos were lost to me. I recognize one person.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And all of these cameos. Now some of these people have since left F1 like Gunter Steiner,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, has a couple of very brief bit parts where he’s the guy who basically leans back, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the pit wall to look at the, the star, uh, trio of the, the, the, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe it’s four of them, the two people that are talking on the radio, the, the, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John the head lady. I have no memory
⏹️ ▶️ John of this scene because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have no idea who this person is. That’s fine. It doesn’t matter. Uh, but he’s no longer an F1. He was formerly a team
⏹️ ▶️ Casey principal. He’s not an F1 anymore. Uh, the teams have been rejiggered at least once since this was recorded,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but all of that being said, they had enough participation from actual
⏹️ ▶️ Casey formula one and actual formula and drivers and actual formula one team principles and so on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it read as real. Eve, but they were also smart
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough not to go too deep into that because formula one drivers, team principles, they’re not actors. There
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was one scene and it’s a made up team too, by
⏹️ ▶️ John a baseball movie where they’re playing the Yankees, but the team is like the, I was trying to make up a fake baseball
⏹️ ▶️ John team, but I’m afraid it would be like a Florida team, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it’s a made up, made up the Sasquatches or whatever. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Cause it’s like, Because if you do a makeup team, no one’s going to get as mad at you as if you were like, oh, he’s the driver
⏹️ ▶️ John for McLaren. It’s like, oh, now you’ve got a bunch of problems.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. And so, um, they, they did a really good job of giving enough nods to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey make it feel like it’s real while not going completely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out of control in having like extended scenes with these people who are clearly not actors. The closest they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey came was meeting with a couple of team principals. There was, uh, Zach Brown from McLaren.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, there was, uh, the dude from, from Ferrari, whose name is escaping me and, and the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the fake teams, team principal and the other two guys on that couch, like they are real honest goodness team principals.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought they did a great job. Granted they had like a line each, so it wasn’t hard,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but that’s what I’m talking about. Like they, they leveraged F1 appropriately.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John And they were
⏹️ ▶️ John playing themselves and talking about F1. So you think they do. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly. This is, you know, you, you’ve seen Tim, uh, get better at acting ish over the years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you know, these, these gentlemen did a pretty good job. Um, so, you know, I, I really loved how well
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they thread that needle. Um, I thought it was extremely well executed the in-car scenes to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your point, the tech has gotten better since Ronan since days of thunder, since, uh, since all of these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other movies that are classic car movies.
⏹️ ▶️ John And even Ford versus Ferrari took a different approach. Yeah. Similar tech, but different approach than this movie took.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And I think the director was a Joe Kaczynski or something like that, uh, got a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little aggressive with like the 180 crash, uh, twists. I’m not, I’m sorry, Todd. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know the right term for it, but you’ll be like looking at the driver of the car and then he’ll like slam
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the camera 180 degrees the other way. So you’re looking out the front of the car. That was very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey heavy handed in this movie, but it was a cool effect. And I liked it a lot. Um, this, this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really enjoyed this movie. Admittedly, I was predisposed to enjoy this movie.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, I thought it was really well done.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John And it’s also.
⏹️ ▶️ John If anything, you’re, you’re predisposed not to like it because whenever I watch tennis movies, I can’t stand them because they screw it up so
⏹️ ▶️ John bad. So that’s fair. You would be the harshest critic. You actually know stuff about F1. So it’s a testament to this movie’s accomplishment
⏹️ ▶️ John that you weren’t going like, Oh, they got it all so wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. I think the biggest problem I have with this movie was how is, uh, Brad Pitt that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey astonishingly attractive at like 62 years old? It’s not fair.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It’s just. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess I should find this at the show. Not speaking of Brad Pitt. There was a YouTube video that of course was checked in my face because of everything
⏹️ ▶️ John that I’m doing. And I somehow knew that I watched the movie. Anyway, whatever. I blame Apple. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco where Brad Pitt goes
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey out in an actual
⏹️ ▶️ John F1 car on the course. Uh, and you get to see him actually driving
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it. Yeah. Well they had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this in the vision pro. It’s incredible. It’s absolutely incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ John I do enjoy watching the actor Brad Pitt try to drive a very expensive car very carefully. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John very different than his character in the movie. He’s just seeing every second he’s out there. He’s like, do not crash this multimillion
⏹️ ▶️ John dollar car. Do not crash.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Either way though, I thought the movie was really well done. And I forgot to bring up, there was another bit of product placement
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you didn’t talk about. In the very beginning of the film, uh, it was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think when we meet the owner of the F1 team, not the boss, mind you, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the, the, the, the guy who owns it, who was played by Javier Bardem. Um, we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see Brad Pitt in a laundromat and he’s playing a pinball machine and I almost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fell right the hell out of my chair because that exact same pinball machine in much worse shape
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is in my house as we speak. I almost died. I almost freaking died. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which was incredible. And the name of the pinball machine is Grand Prix. But I almost fell out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of my chair. And I immediately grabbed my phone and took a picture and sent it to Aaron because I was like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh my God, you will not believe what just happened. Which only matters to me and I recognize
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. But I just thought it was incredibly funny and incredibly cool. Aaron’s like, now we’re never getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rid of this thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. Exactly. I would like to talk spoilers again in the post-post show, but all told,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think this is an enjoyable movie. If you will permit me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the summary of the plot, which is kind of hinted at this is if you mash together, so skip like 20
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seconds, if you’re not interested, if you mash together days of thunder and cars, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey animated movie three and put them together, that’s the plot now to you might, that’s, that might sound terrible,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but to me, that’s great. Cause I love both those movies. And, uh, I think that that, that the combination
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the two, it really worked for me. I, I really enjoyed the movie. Yes. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my, my friend, uh, Brian, who’s the kind of the reason I’m in depth one. And he’s been watching F1
⏹️ ▶️ Casey since I’ve known him in the early two thousands. I’m confident that he would hate every second
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this movie because he would be too particular about it. But I went into it wanting it to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at least realistic enough. And otherwise I was going to let it wash over me. me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it was it was exactly that. It was great. I loved it. And if I presume it will show up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Apple TV plus, you can watch it at home. And although I concur with John, you should go to the theater and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see it. But if you’re, you know, kind of about it, then just wait until it’s you can watch it at home
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then watch it on the biggest, loudest system you can, and just let it wash over you and you’ll enjoy it.