650: Whatever It Takes to Get the Laundry Folded
28 Jul 2025AppleCare One, the OS 26 public betas, and tensions between art and usability in interface design.
Episode Description:
- Pre-Show: Casey’s french-fry problem
- Follow-up:
- D. Griffin Jones takes one for the team
- Casey’s struggles with
iperf3- Tutorial
iperf3 -t 60 -c {ip} -P 4 -i 10 -R
- John’s new toaster and
E01(via J-P Teti & John F.) - Chemical vs. physical sunscreen (via Prodan Statev)
- Apple security for unreleased devices
- Low-cost Apple laptop (via Jason Anthony Guy)
- Ed: Please don’t give Apple ideas like this. 🫣
- Getting customer support from Apple (via Patch)
- Apple support app → Chat
- Any retail store on Apple Maps →
...→Message
- CloudFlare & AI crawlers
- Thoughts from Thomas Schoffelen
- Thoughts from Aaron Zinck
- Thoughts from Anonymous
- The 𝓍26 public betas are out
- Tahoe beta 4
- Contrast will decrease until morale improves
- News summaries are back, baby! 😬
- Ejecting USB storage in Windows (via Justin Bradford)
- Game design concepts in software (via Wes Davis)
- Apple and interfaces
- Tog in Interface (1992)
- Tog on Software Design (1995)
- Apple’s Aqua introduction, Macworld San Francisco, 2000
- AppleCare One
- Dan Moren’s take
- The Verge
- Fees & deductibles
- FAQ (scroll way down)
- Post-show: John has an addendum to his earlier topic
- Members-only ATP Overtime: Frame of preference, an incredible exploration of the Mac’s settings by Marcin Wichary in concert with Mihai Parparita of the Infinite Mac Project
Sponsored by:
- Members like you! Become a member for ad-free episodes, member specials, and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- Hi, Declan!
- Us in Vision Pro 🖼️
- 10 GbE from Synology
- Toaster E01
- Chemical vs. mineral sunscreens
- Apple security for unreleased stuff
- MacBook (with Special Offers)
- AirPods update
- Cloudflare and AI crawlers
- OS 26 public betas 🖼️
- Apple Intelligence news summaries
- ATP Membership
- Apple and interfaces
- AppleCare One
- Ending theme
- Apple and interfaces (reprise)
Hi, Declan!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey When Declan was really little, I’m saying like two-ish years old,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron typically would bring him to what I like to call Baby Gym. It was a place called
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Romp and Roll, where you would bring your infant or your toddler, and you would do like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not gymnastics, but like they would run around and play and sing songs and do games and whatever the case may
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be. Collect viruses. She did this with him constantly. I went on Sundays
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with Declan, and we would go in the morning and do a Romp and Roll together. And we would have lunch together and this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gave Aaron some time to not be mom and be Aaron. And one of the times
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I went to this barbecue place with Declan, it was like two or three at the time, I had gotten myself some French
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fries and I thought, you know what? I’ll let him try a French fry because what’s it going to hurt if he tries it just once?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this was early on in dad life when I didn’t realize that much like with a dog, if you try
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something just once with a child, especially of that age, it’s not just once baby.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Guess what? going to demand french fries every time for the rest of time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so… It’s like trying heroin just once. Right, exactly. And so I learned my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lesson. But fast forward to earlier today, and for reasons
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unknown, Declan has decided that he would like to listen to at least a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bit of ATP tonight. And so I believe that through the wall behind me, he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and his sister are, and maybe Aaron, are listening to me. And he was very excited
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to find the delay between when he hears me laughing through the wall and when I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey laughing on the live broadcast. So now, I don’t know what to do with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey myself because I love that he’s there interested in this, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know if this is a French fry situation where I will regret the monsters
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’ve created, or if this is nothing but a healthy thing. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say hi to the rest of the family, you two, because apparently for at least a few minutes, they’re here as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hi, the rest of the family. Sorry about the
⏹️ ▶️ John heroin joke. Don’t you assume that your amazingly powerful dad uncoolness will repel him eventually?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or that there are combined three-way dad uncoolness? Because we have a potent
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey dose of dad uncoolness here. And so there’s only, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Declan is 10. He is close to 11. Oh, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John One or two more years and he will not be able to tolerate how uncool we all are as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, Michaela, she is seven and a half now, and so I think I am still at least slightly cool
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the most part. Of course, some of the, oh, dead, so uncool will bleed from him to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some point. But yes, by our powers combined, the three of us can repel any child,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, is Declan interested in computer stuff?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not in the way that you mean, I don’t think. He’s become more and more interested
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in futzing about with his phone. Like earlier today, another example of the French fry thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we have, both of them have older iPhones that don’t have cellular service. I’ve mentioned this many times in the past.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But they use them as a noise maker when they sleep. And they also can text only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron and myself because we have, you know, parental controls, whatever it’s called, screen time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and all that set up in such a way that they can only text us. But earlier today, we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey relented and now they are allowed to text each other via, you know, their respective email addresses,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which are used only, excuse me, only for this purpose. And I don’t know if there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey another French fry situation where all of a sudden I’ve created a monster or two monsters really,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where they will start texting each other. You know, it is the second they’re both awake now. Granted, we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have times that I don’t think they can use the messages app until like seven in the morning or something like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but who knows what, what monsters we’ve created, but I’m, I’m enjoying as much as I joke,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m enjoying this surprising amount of interest in what dad does for a living. Because usually it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, oh, he clickety clacks on the keyboard and yaps into the microphone from time to time. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mostly accurate, if I’m honest. Maybe it’ll stop you from having such a potty mouth. That’s the thing. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now I got to really watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco myself, right? Our first topic today is how to bypass screen time protection. He
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey doesn’t need us for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably true Bye.
Us in Vision Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alright, let’s do some follow-up and we I think it was John quipped
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last episode. Do you think there’s anybody listening to this right now who is currently wearing a vision pro?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nope, it was Marco. Oh, wasn’t Mario. See the one time I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John just said of what you think.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It’s so true. Anyway, it stands the technique.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right? So anyway, so Marco quipped. Do you think there’s anybody listening to this right now who’s currently wearing a vision
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pro and I think both of both John and I simultaneously said no. Yeah. Well, it turns out front of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show, D Griffin Jones is and was that person. So make that one right, Steve Griffin Jones.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a great device to wear while doing chores. So you can have a floating video while you fold laundry or play pause media with soapy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dish hands, which is an interesting take that I hadn’t considered. And I think I kind of like it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can see like watching like a show or something while you’re washing dishes or something with the floating window, but it’s a podcast. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no visual element. You can just use AirPods. But you know, I really thought
⏹️ ▶️ John like I wasn’t doing that as a joke. I really thought it would be literally zero. Apparently it’s at least one
⏹️ ▶️ John that and that amazes me, but you know, everyone’s got their own things that work for them,
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever it takes to get the get the laundry folded and the dishes washed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But could I mean, couldn’t he literally just put his phone with the speaker on the counter and do the same?
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s lots of other options. It will put it will put in a link to his toot.
⏹️ ▶️ John He posted like a screenshot so you can see what he’s experiencing, which which is a floating
⏹️ ▶️ John ATP window that’s playing audio while he does dishes with the Vision Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John on. So, you know, again, whatever it takes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the thought technology that was new to me was what DeGriffin Jones said about,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can play pause by just picking up your hands and pinching, which even if you’re grabbing the stalk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of an AirPod, as I can attest, apparently water damage can occur. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is a safer approach, leaving aside the fact that you have a $3,500 thing on your face,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right above a pile of water, but we’ll ignore that.
10 GbE from Synology
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Last episode, I had scared Marco by saying, oh, I just rejiggered my desk.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And as it turns out, there was later an issue with Marco’s recording, which with respect, I thought was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hilarious and I’m very happy it wasn’t me. So I guess it’s going to be my turn this time. But anyways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I briefly mentioned that part of the reason I got this TS5 Plus was because I wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the 10 gigabit ethernet and it’s part of the TS5, specifically the Plus
⏹️ ▶️ Casey model. And I had done as of last episode, which was just a couple of days ago as we sit here, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had done some performance testing using Samba and using
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a command line app called iPerf3. And I had noticed that I was not getting anywhere near full 10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gigabits a second. And we had some theories, which I think knowing what little we knew at the time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were reasonable theories. Marco had said, hey, you’re not gonna get that much data off of a spinning disk, especially a 7200 RPM
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spinning disk, which is completely fair. Marco or John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of you, I don’t know which one, I don’t even know who is the opposite because I don’t know who to guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco It was like four days
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, well, I know man, but a lot has happened since then, I’ve been busy. But one of you said that, oh, it could be CPU
⏹️ ▶️ Casey problems or excuse me. Yeah, I think one of you did say CPU problems and that’s what it was.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I have since found a tutorial which was probably pointed to me by someone, but I lost you that somebody was.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will put a link in the show notes, but suffice to say this tutorial talks about how, yes, iPerf3 is often
⏹️ ▶️ Casey CPU bound. And the easy fix for this is to just multithread it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they provide some examples of how you can do that. I did that, and I forgot to capture a screenshot,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but at one point, I was definitely getting like nine and change gigabits per
⏹️ ▶️ Casey second transfers. So that is what I wanted to see. That makes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me very happy, and I can consider this issue solved for now.
Toaster E01
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, speaking of things that Marco and I are just deeply concerned about, what’s going on with your toaster?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mentioned I had an error code last episode and called support and they said,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, it’s working now, so don’t worry about it. A couple of other people wrote in with info about the same error code. JP Teddy writes,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have the same toaster as you and I’ve owned it for five or six years. I see the E01 code about twice a year.
⏹️ ▶️ John I unplug it and plug it back in five minutes later. In all the other respects, the toaster works flawlessly.
⏹️ ▶️ John I never bother to check the manual or call Breville because it doesn’t bother me enough, but maybe I will next time
⏹️ ▶️ John it happens.” So that’s not great. Seems like it’s common enough that another person had the problem. John
⏹️ ▶️ John F. wrote in to say, I get the EZ-AIR one on my toaster oven maybe once every one to two months. It pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John much always occurs when using another kitchen appliance on the same circuit, most frequently my espresso machine. For that appliance, the toaster
⏹️ ▶️ John freaks out just at the moment I turn off the pump after pulling a shot. I presume the toaster is hypersensitive
⏹️ ▶️ John to disruptions in power either from brief voltage shifts or possibly noise introduced from the appliances. My toaster
⏹️ ▶️ John is newer than John’s original but predates the revised plug design. That sounds even more like mine
⏹️ ▶️ John because I was using the stovetop at the time. I wasn’t using the toaster at all. I was just sitting there but maybe it’s the computers
⏹️ ▶️ John are more sophisticated and it’s cranky about voltage fluctuations. Unfortunately, unlike things like television
⏹️ ▶️ John or a computer, I don’t particularly feel comfortable hooking up my toaster to like a UPS or
⏹️ ▶️ John something to smooth out the voltage because that is probably ill-advised and I don’t have room for it anyway. So
⏹️ ▶️ John at least I have some some anecdotal evidence that you know
⏹️ ▶️ John voltage fluctuations in my ancient crappy house with a too small power panel may be to blame.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we’ll see I will probably like wait a year I’ll tell you how many times during that year did I see E01
⏹️ ▶️ John and then plug and unplug it. So we have one report of you know once
⏹️ ▶️ John or twice a year and one report of once every one to two months. I hope I am in once twice a year category
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It would be really funny to get a toaster UPS. Like it would you know to supply enough power it would have to be a pretty beefy
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah I think
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not a thing you should do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean you can like you can get UPSs that are rated for you know 1500 watts or whatever you know like whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would be like you can you can totally do that and it would be you know as long as it’s rated for that much current it would be fine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but those just tend to be really big UPSs. Where do you even put it on
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to put it in the garage or something. Yeah. Like through the wall or, you know, get one of those whole house
⏹️ ▶️ John UPSs or yeah, my, the whole electrical system in my house needs to be updated, but hopefully that will be somebody
⏹️ ▶️ John else’s problem. We sell this house, but for now I’m just going to cruise by on what we have.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you have any intention on relocating before both kids are graduated from college? No.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you have any intentions before both of you are retired?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, to, to be clear, you’re never allowed to retire because, uh, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco was going to say He kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already is retired.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, you know, here I’m trying to take the happy path, but you know, Marco’s not wrong. But I don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think that I can handle replacing either of you really. So you two are stuck with me forever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hate to break it to you.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey In so many ways, John, don’t worry about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I got, you know, one whole kid to put through college and one, one fourth
⏹️ ▶️ John of a kid to put through college. I’m not going anywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So you heard it here first. John has already got one leg out the door. He’s only got got four years left. We need to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do a Tim Cook style succession planning. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We need a Jon Hot spare.
Chemical vs. mineral sunscreens
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We need to talk about sunscreen and Marco’s new thought technology with regard to sunscreen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, can you summarize for me what your discovery or assertion was last episode with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey regard to chemical versus physical sunscreen and then we’ll talk about the feedback we got.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, I quickly gone through the difference between chemical and mineral sunscreen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I had summarized it basically as saying chemical sunscreens have chemicals that absorb into your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco skin and they absorb UV rays, whereas mineral sunscreens use like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine metallic dust to reflect the sunlight off of the top of your skin.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s what I had said, which apparently is wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Prodan Stetev writes or points us to an academic research
⏹️ ▶️ Casey paper, Improving Patient Communication on Sunscreen Choice, Updating Mechanistic Misconceptions.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And, I don’t know, was this, John, was this from Prodan or was this from the academic paper?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, this is all from the LinkedArticle. LinkedArticle
⏹️ ▶️ John a letter to the editor of some journal. But we’ll put a link in the show notes to this letter to the editor
⏹️ ▶️ John from five different authors. The main point is that this letter cites academic
⏹️ ▶️ John papers, which were all linked from the document with the weird doi.org thing. So if you want to see all the papers
⏹️ ▶️ John that are backing this, it’s not just a crank writing in saying they have an idea. This is someone citing a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, thank you for the clarification. So from that letter, many assume that chemical sunscreens absorb
⏹️ ▶️ Casey UV light and convert the energy to heat, while physical sunscreens such as zinc oxide and titanium dioxide
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reflect and scatter UV light. However, this mechanism is at best a historic artifact from when physical sunscreen particle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sizes were quite large. Though such non-micronized and non-nanoparticulate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey physical sunscreens may have had a greater proportion of its protective mechanism from reflection
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and scatter in the past, these formulations have largely been abandoned for more commercially viable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey options with the advent of micronization technologies.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Furthermore, even micro-sized physical sunscreen formulations have been increasingly replaced by nanoparticle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey formulations. It is important for dermatologists to recognize that the primary mechanism of action for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey modern physical sunscreen agents is the very same protective mechanism of chemical sunscreens – absorption
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of UV light. It was recently found that modern particulate-sized physical zinc oxide and titanium oxide
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reflected less than 5% of incoming UV light on average. than relying on reflection and scatter,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the overwhelming majority of the attributable protective effect of zinc oxide and titanium dioxide
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is by UV light absorption, which excites electrons from the valence band to the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey higher energy conductance band. This energy is later primarily dissipated as heat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a manner analogous to chemical sunscreen UV light absorption.”
⏹️ ▶️ John This is another one of those things that’s like, was probably true at one point, but technology marches
⏹️ ▶️ John on and it sounds like they’re making the the stuff the like the metal oxides and stuff smaller
⏹️ ▶️ John and smaller in the Sunscreen because that makes for a better product like it’s smoother and we we have the technology to
⏹️ ▶️ John make it smaller and apparently once You make them that small Probably given the wavelength of UV light or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s been a bunch of new studies that have shown actually It’s not really reflecting that much anymore. It’s mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John you know Its effect is because of this absorption effect and there’s a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of papers about that and the papers seem somewhat contentious So this may be sort of the cutting edge of research. Although this is
⏹️ ▶️ John again, this is a letter from 2023. But just to clarify from last week, apparently it’s not as cut
⏹️ ▶️ John and dried as it used to be. And, you know, technology marches on.
Apple security for unreleased stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey With regard to Apple security for unreleased devices, and the suing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Jon Prosser because of the leak of the liquid metal design scheme, an anonymous
⏹️ ▶️ Casey person writes, Apple employees with pre-release iPhone hardware can, or could when I was there, expense an Apple-approved
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gun safe to store the phone in, and then they are required to store the device in such a safe when not carrying it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is a relaxation of the older rules requiring you to be accompanied by a quote, physical security
⏹️ ▶️ Casey expert quote from Apple while taking unreleased hardware out of Apple secure areas,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or maybe two of them, two of the experts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of love the idea that like your phone would have a bodyguard. That’s kind of amazing. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not guarding you, you can get run over by a car. They don’t care. They’re just guarding the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What they’ll do is they’ll let you get run over by the car and then snatch up the phone as quickly as possible.
MacBook (with Special Offers)
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, yeah. All right. With regard to the low-cost Apple laptops, Jason Anthony Guy writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think I want to read this because I know at least a handful of people from Apple listen to this program and I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to give them ideas. All right, fine. I’ll read it. Jason Anthony Guy writes, here’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one more option for cost savings on the rumored low-cost Apple laptop. Ads on the boot, login, and wake screens, and for good measure,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the screensaver. Coming soon. Apple MacBook, per-en, fall 2025, comma, with ads, per-en,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a $150 option to remove them. familiar with this whole schtick. Kindles,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Amazon Kindles are sold as a version with ads or a version without ads.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, no, they don’t come with ads, Casey, they come with special offers.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, sorry. I’m so
⏹️ ▶️ John offers. Yeah. So this it’s a funny joke. Like we didn’t mention it. And like, how can they take money out of laptops?
⏹️ ▶️ John We didn’t mention it for two main reasons. I feel like one is that, you know, and
⏹️ ▶️ John we say this every time we talk about the potential of Apple doing ads and and stuff, currently,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not how Apple makes its money. So we’re not saying that Apple is like wonderful and magnanimous, it’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t, they’re not incentivized to do that because that’s not a big income stream for
⏹️ ▶️ John them. Yes, they have at various times done ads and they still do have like search ads and everything like that, but
⏹️ ▶️ John the majority of their money comes from other things. Even though they don’t break down the services revenue, the parts that we did
⏹️ ▶️ John see the breakdown, like during court cases, did not lead us to believe that ads are a massive portion of that. But two, and perhaps
⏹️ ▶️ John more importantly, when Apple has done ads, they’re so bad at it. They’re just
⏹️ ▶️ John really bad at it. Like, are they bad at it because institutionally they kind of like don’t want to do ads? Are they bad
⏹️ ▶️ John at it because people who are really good at doing ads wouldn’t go to work at Apple? I don’t know the reason, but they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not good at ads. And so it’s not really a fear for me
⏹️ ▶️ John that that’s going to be their go-to strategy to extract money to produce a low
⏹️ ▶️ John cost laptop. I hope it’s because they also would be repelled by the tastelessness
⏹️ ▶️ John of it. I do see a lot of complaints in the Windows world about the prevalence of ads within the Windows interface.
⏹️ ▶️ John And yes, we complain about Apple advertising its stuff to us all over its own things. But if
⏹️ ▶️ John I see like a Geico ad in system settings, that’s a whole other line that has been crossed. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I, you know, this is a joke and I get it, ha, but I also think Apple is not
⏹️ ▶️ John really into ads as a main revenue stream and they’re really bad at it. So both of those things I hope will combine
⏹️ ▶️ John to make this continue to be just a joke and not a reality.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I agree that there is a line between what they do now with like promoting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Music, Apple Pay, you know, all the, like all the different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John things. F1 movie.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, that’s a different section. But I’m just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John saying like, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know. Still, it’s all in the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know, but like, but in the settings and as like, you know, splash modal screens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in their own apps, like the music app, like they do heavily have advertisements for their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco own upsells in those apps. And they’re very, you know, they work like any other ad. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think we can call them anything but ads when they have like, you know, the badge on the settings app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you go in and it’s like, you should add AppleCare today, you know, or like the full screen modal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in music saying, you should really subscribe to Apple Music. Like those are just ads for Apple stuff. So like they’re definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ads, there’s no getting around it. There is a line between that and a Geico
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ad in settings, But I think you might think that line is a bigger gap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than I do. I don’t think that’s that far from what they already do. Well, the
⏹️ ▶️ John difference is they have to sell the ad to Geico. They don’t have to sell it to Apple. Apple just gets that ad for free, you know what I mean? Like the
⏹️ ▶️ John sales, the whole mechanism of selling ads, right, that Apple, I mean, when you
⏹️ ▶️ John sell ads, just look at the people who are the best in the world about selling ads. It really helps to have a lot of information
⏹️ ▶️ John to sell those ads against so you can target them. And Apple currently doesn’t have that information and doesn’t seem
⏹️ ▶️ John to want to collect it. And also, I think they’re bad at selling ads, and they’re also bad at serving ads. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John where they do sell ads, like the App Store search ads, they sell those, but like, that’s nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John compared to like selling ads for app installs through Facebook or whatever. It’s just so much less sophisticated.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, you know, that’s where you get into their bad at it. Like, I don’t think they have the expertise
⏹️ ▶️ John or knowledge in how to sell ads. It’s not so much about presenting them. They can put ads wherever they want. I’m sure
⏹️ ▶️ John someone was willing to put them, but to put them there, you gotta sell them first. That’s true.
AirPods update
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so continuing my AirPods, not saga, that’s a bit dramatic, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my AirPods story. A few people had written in saying, hey, you need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do either an online chat or talk to them on the phone. And I didn’t understand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how you could get to this phantom online chat. Well, Patch writes in, you can always talk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Apple support without going through any kind of menu or tree by using their iMessage business account. Okay, great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, how do you get that? Patch writes, if you type a message there, within two or three minutes, they’ll connect with a customer service person. That sounds awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, how do you do that? Well, Patch says, it looks like there are two main ways to get to this chat function. The first is the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Support app on iOS or iPadOS. The chat option there takes you to iMessage. The second
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way is if you do a search for any Apple store using Apple Maps specifically. In the three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dot menu, there’s an option to message them, which pulls you to an iMessage chat, both on iOS and macOS.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is incredibly useful. So thank you, Patch. You get plus one internet points for the day.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve run across that chat thing several times, but it’s not, it’s not entirely out of his where to find it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But, you know, I guess if you’re going down one of those avenues, like if you’re looking for a store only with the Apple Maps app, or
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re in the support app, supposedly it will land in your face. but it’s good to know how to get there directly.
Cloudflare and AI crawlers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, with regard to Cloudflare and AI crawlers, Thomas Schaffelin writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I recently started using Cloudflare for one of my projects now that over half of the many gigabytes of bandwidth used for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey images each month is from AI crawlers. I definitely don’t want to do something to limit user access to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the website and the user contributed content, but I had to take action to prevent our CDN bill from being hundreds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of dollars higher each month than it was a year ago. Cloudflare’s AI bot detection and blocking has been a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey massive help in that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so this is something that sort of went unsaid, Like why would Cloudflare even have a thing to block AI crawlers? What’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the issue they’re trying to solve? What concern do website owners have? Why are they trying to block AI crawlers?
⏹️ ▶️ John So that was our bad, we should have mentioned that. But the underlying assumption was you’d wanna block AI crawlers because
⏹️ ▶️ John AI crawlers are badly behaved and are costing people money. And so here’s yet more evidence
⏹️ ▶️ John of that. So this is like the small version of like, I’ve got a small website and they’re costing me
⏹️ ▶️ John hundreds of dollars, which for my small website is significant.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. Aaron Zink writes, I’m a consultant who works with many large organizations and government websites. We’ve seen unprecedented
⏹️ ▶️ Casey levels of bot crawling across all of our sites. These are aggressive bots that bring our sites to their knees despite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us using caching. Any site that has dynamic functionality is particularly vulnerable to the problem because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there are nearly infinite combinations of parameters and settings that users can choose. So caching is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little to no benefit when a bot decides to go deep exploring every possible combination. Some of the bots we’ve been seeing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have been extremely tricky to identify. In these cases, Cloudflare has been our most effective tool by far.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Their proprietary heuristics have been the only things that have enabled us to keep our sites online. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey real bad guy here, in my opinion, is not Cloudflare, but the aggressive AI companies who are sending DDoS levels
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of traffic don’t honor robots.txt files and make it nearly impossible to identify
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and block them selectively. I want to reiterate again, the recent traffic levels have been truly historic.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Additionally, Anonymous writes, when I worked at GitHub, one of the biggest technical challenges we had was the explosive growth of AI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey crawlers against the site. Over the course of about six months, we saw traffic increase by about 40% due to AI scrapers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This has regularly threatened to take the site down. Intuitively, you’d think it would be a few companies doing this sort of scraping, but it’s effectively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every AI startup plus everyone that wants to sell data sets to them. Detecting AI crawlers is incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey difficult. They source traffic from hundreds of thousands of IP addresses, and they are generally smart enough to avoid being blocked with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey approaches like the JA3 or JA4 signatures. John, what the heck does that mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John I had to look it up, but it was on the Cloudflare site. In fact, we’ll link to the definition. It’s fingerprints that help you profile specific
⏹️ ▶️ John SSL slash TLS clients across different destinations, IPs, ports, and X509 certificates. I mean, that doesn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John tell you much, but anyway, it’s a way to try to identify bots, even if they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John all come from the same IP address or whatever. I’m not quite sure how it works, but that’s why we’ll link to the
⏹️ ▶️ John website if you wanna look it up. But the point is, those techniques don’t work with the diversity of sources
⏹️ ▶️ John that the AI crawlers are using apparently.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Continuing from anonymous, they’re buying proxy services from companies like IP Royal, bright data, et cetera. These companies source
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the traffic from real residential IP addresses. Sometimes they’re paying end users to install what is effectively malware,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and sometimes it’s sketchier than that. Because of this, the AI crawlers, in many cases, do look like legitimate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey user traffic. Cloudflare has a huge advantage over most smaller players, like GitHub, precisely because so much of this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey traffic goes through them. They can afford to invest compute resources and brainpower into identifying and tracking
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this has been a story for a while now, and I was glad to hear some explanation. First of all, characterizing
⏹️ ▶️ John GitHub as a small player lets you know the scale of this problem, because compared to that first person with their
⏹️ ▶️ John personal website or whatever, down to GitHub, it’s like, oh, we’re just a small player. We need Cloudflare to help
⏹️ ▶️ John out. But it’s something that we’re not used to, because you’re like, well, what’s the big deal? People have been crawling the web since
⏹️ ▶️ John the advent of the web. Why is it such a problem with the AI things? And according to this anonymous person
⏹️ ▶️ John at GitHub, part of it is basically the fact that pretty rapidly
⏹️ ▶️ John after the advent of Google, it extinguished all the other big search engines. And so you just
⏹️ ▶️ John had the Google bot crawling the web. There is no such monopoly in
⏹️ ▶️ John AI, and it’s every AI startup. It’s all the big AI companies. And like this anonymous
⏹️ ▶️ John person said, all the companies that want to sell data sets to any of those companies. It’s just this, it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s, it’s the web at scale, but imagine if there was a hundred Googles crawling
⏹️ ▶️ John and that, you know, it’s in their interest as the crawlers to crawl as much as fast as possible to get
⏹️ ▶️ John the biggest data set to make the most money, so on and so forth. multiplied by 100 of those things,
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone who runs a website that is worth crawling is seeing a huge burden
⏹️ ▶️ John from these AI crawlers. They don’t care about robots.txt, which arguably maybe they shouldn’t, maybe they should, but whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John they don’t. Because robots.txt is entirely advisory. It’s like, please don’t crawl me. You can just ignore it and crawl anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they’re costing people money and they’re taking down sites because they don’t care how fast they go and they’re not throttled. And
⏹️ ▶️ John this is all just a side effect of a new influx of venture
⏹️ ▶️ John capital money in an industry that is exploding, where the incentives are to grow as fast as
⏹️ ▶️ John possible, and no one cares how much damage it’s doing to the websites that they’re constantly trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to crawl. So yeah, that’s why blocking AI bots specifically
⏹️ ▶️ John is a feature that, you know, people who run websites would want and see past discussion last episode’s
⏹️ ▶️ John discussion about the, the difficult situation that puts us all in if
⏹️ ▶️ John one company has the ability to control that spigot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, what we’re seeing here is like, yes, there are reasons why Cloudflare is useful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to website owners right now. That doesn’t mean this isn’t a really problematic situation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have that much centralized power in one company over that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much of the internet, and they can just change the way things work on a whim. And so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while there might be decent reasons behind some of this stuff, it doesn’t actually fix the problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The problem is still that most smaller companies and DIY projects
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and things like that just won’t be able to crawl pages on the web anymore before too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long. And that’s not a great place to be.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Because if you’re running a site, you need your site to stay up and not have your bandwidth
⏹️ ▶️ John bill double because of non-human traffic that’s not giving you anything. So that’s your main
⏹️ ▶️ John concern. And the email that you’re getting from 20 people with their dinky websites is so much
⏹️ ▶️ John lower level concern for you just keeping your stuff online. So you can see where, you know, the, the,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s, it’s like things are on fire here. And also as with so many things with AI, this leads to sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of thoughts about sustainability. It’s like, can the web withstand
⏹️ ▶️ John an arbitrary number of AI crawlers constantly crawling? Like, it’s kind of like email and spam,
⏹️ ▶️ John like how sustainable is it when, you know, 10% of email spam, 50%, 90%, 99%, how many nines
⏹️ ▶️ John percent of email can be spam before the email system falls down. Like we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of run that experiment and it’s got the percentage of spam has got frighteningly high. Well, what percentage of traffic
⏹️ ▶️ John on the web can be AI crawlers before it becomes economically
⏹️ ▶️ John unfeasible to run websites? Because you’re not actually running them for humans, you’re just running them for
⏹️ ▶️ John AI crawlers that are extracting value from your site and never sending anything back. And this is just another version of the same,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, well, they’re taking my content and not sending any people to to my site and I didn’t want to give them rights to my con. It’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s another sustainability thing of like, how are we going to work this out? We need a system where people are still
⏹️ ▶️ John incentivized to make things and publish them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because if not, all those AI crawlers are going to run out of stuff to crawl. Like they, you know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the goose that lays the golden egg once you eat the goose, you’ve got a problem.
OS 26 public betas
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, public service announcement as of, I believe, today, as we record this, the 26 betas, the iOS 26,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPadOS 26, et cetera, are all out and available. You can go to beta.apple.com if you want to go on that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey crazy ride. For what it’s worth, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am still not running anything on my carry phone. I heard the most recent Under the Radar where you were encouraging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people to do that, and I largely agree with you, but we have a couple of pieces of travel coming up that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really do not want to mess with having a beta on my phone, which I know professionally is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little questionable, but personally I think is a very sound decision. So I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, Marco, if you would recommend for non-developers to put the beta on their phones, but now would be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the time to try to wave people off if that’s the case.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, you know, what you’re doing with, with signing up for the beta, you know, in like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in any year, what you’re signing up for is some stuff that works now might not work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And stepping back from the beta is possible, but it requires basically a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reformat of your phone and you can’t just migrate everything back from your current installation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to it. So going back from a beta is such a high pain in the butt for most people that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unless you have a second device, you’re probably not going back. It’s probably like a one-way door
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for you. So it’s not advisable if you don’t have a really good reason.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What qualifies as a really good reason, that’s kind of up for interpretation. And what I was saying under the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco radar is like, anybody who’s a developer or a designer responsible for the design of an app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on iOS should definitely have the beta installed on their carry phone now. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is a lot that you kind of have to live with with the new design to get a feel for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what your app, how your app should be designed. And then that of course assumes that the new design
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a fixed target, which it is not. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not a great beta season, but it is one that if you have any tolerance for beta
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems, you should get in it now if you aren’t already in it. Because it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is very illuminating, especially if you are a developer, it is very helpful. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the more people use it, the more problems that will be found
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the more noise will be made about them. and if we have any chance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Apple sanding off some of the rough edges or fixing some of the bugs, we’re gonna need as many people as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco possible. It’s simple as that. I will say, you know, as betas go,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we are now on beta 4. In most years, beta 4 is a reasonably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stable time to jump in. That is true this year, but beta 4
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is more like a beta 2 or a beta 3 of most years. they are behind in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quality. You do still have weird bugs all over the place in apps. You do still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have significant rendering and animation glitches all over the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco UI, all over the system. Now, stuff does actually end up working most of the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m no longer having to do things like reboot my phone to connect my AirPods, or force
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quit apps in the middle of typing a text message because the keyboard crashes. That has been mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fixed in the recent two betas. So, you know, the really big bugs are gone,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but there’s tons of visual glitches all over the place. And that’s not even counting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the design itself being pretty controversial and rough in a lot of places.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But there are still tons of animation bugs, tons of little glitches, occasional layout bugs that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do require, you know, apps to be forced quit or something, but at least, you know, you can generally not lose data most of the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anymore. So it’s rough, performance-wise, battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco life isn’t too bad anymore, but it still chugs. You still have a lot of dropped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frames, you have a lot of glitchy and dropped animations, you have like…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I… frankly, I don’t know how Apple is going to land this plane
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by early September. I think it’s gonna be a really rough release,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in terms of just a huge number of mostly tiny bugs. everywhere,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially animation and layout bugs. So if you can tolerate that, and you wanna see the new design,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you wanna experience it, jump in. It’s, you’re probably not gonna lose data or things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that anymore. Like that’s, those times are past us, probably. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is, it is rough. And by the way, and I’m saying, it’s chugging along, it’s slow,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it drops frames. I have an iPhone 16 Pro. So if you have an older device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you were gonna maybe think about testing this on, I would maybe think again. And I think, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll say it now, my prediction for the fall, people around our circles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are saying like, users are gonna hate this design or it’s gonna be really controversial.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think we’re not gonna hear too much about that from non-nerds. What we will hear about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is how incredibly slow it is. If you recall, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was one of the big criticisms iOS 7 is I put this on my iPhone and now it is much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slower. This is going to be one of those years. Literally, if we’re already in beta 4
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and their current fastest phone available can’t run the animation smoothly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know we’re in for a rough time in that front. So keep that in mind as well. It will probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be fine and if you do, if you are really curious about the new design everywhere, or if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are responsible for software design of an iOS app, you really should jump in now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, John, tell me about Tahoe Beta 4 specifically, please.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, just a couple of quick hits from this before we go into our first topic, which is tied to this.
⏹️ ▶️ John When Beta 4 came out, you know, I’m the only beta still I’m running is macOS, but I’m running it a lot to test my apps and stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John waiting oh so patiently for Apple to fix some of the bugs, one of which is a showstopper for
⏹️ ▶️ John me, which actually has been fixed, but it isn’t out in beta 4 yet. Anyway, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John just wandering through the OS because I’m living in it and one of the things that you do when you’re living in the OS and
⏹️ ▶️ John booting from your internal to your external drive and stuff is you’re changing the startup disk and I happened upon
⏹️ ▶️ John the startup disk screen and system settings and was struck by the
⏹️ ▶️ John fact that I’m not sure if it’s a backslide from beta 4 although some things are especially
⏹️ ▶️ John in iOS and other betas that I’m not are running. But I was struck by the fact that this
⏹️ ▶️ John system setting screen seems to be part of some kind of contest within Apple to
⏹️ ▶️ John figure out how low contrast can we make something while it’s still technically selected.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it shows two disks, a Tahoe disk, and then my other disk. And they’re huge. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John really big. They’re like 64 by 64 icons, maybe even bigger, with a big rectangle. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John text underneath it with a big rectangle around it. And the selected one has a background. and the
⏹️ ▶️ John non-selected one does not. But man, is that background hard to see. So I posted it on Mastodon.
⏹️ ▶️ John After I posted it, I did some investigation to see just how
⏹️ ▶️ John slight is the highlight in that rounded rectangle highlight. So
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s the thing. The rounded rectile highlight, which is big, it’s like one inch by two inches on your screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s big, okay? This is not a subtle highlight, it’s a big rectangle. Um, it has
⏹️ ▶️ John a darker rim and a body color to it. And then, of course, there’s the window background.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, the background of the selection is 1.6% darker
⏹️ ▶️ John than the window background.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey -$$LAUGHS$- That’s not enough context. Hold on a second. Hold on a second. I love that you did this research
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and this math. This is one of those moments that you being independent is such a perk for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show, and I mean that genuinely. How did you come to this conclusion? I’m not arguing, I’m genuinely wondering, wondering, how did you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey determine this? What was the process to figure this out?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I mean, so I took the screenshot in Tahoe. So I figure out whatever they’re doing with the screenshot, I’m going to trust the color values.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then I just pulled it up in Photoshop and then just got the RGB values. So the RGB values are the
⏹️ ▶️ John zero to 255 for the R, the G and the B, the red, the green and the blue. It’s a gray color. So the red, the
⏹️ ▶️ John green, the blue are all equal values. The background is 251 and the selection is 247. So it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco The difference
⏹️ ▶️ John of four, which is about 1.57%. The rim is 3.5% darker. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John think the only reason a lot of people can see the rounded rectangle is because the rim is 3.5% darker. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is one of those, you know, I put it on, both as a joke and not as a joke. Many
⏹️ ▶️ John people said, I cannot see the selection on my screen because my screen is a crappy quality, you know, older
⏹️ ▶️ John display or something like that. It’s ridiculous. Now here’s the thing. Startup disk system setting
⏹️ ▶️ John in Sequoia Also doesn’t have a lot of contrast, but it’s still
⏹️ ▶️ John twice what Tahoe is. So on Sequoia, it’s 3.1% for the body and 7% for the rim.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was already bad. So I’m not saying like Tahoe made this mistake or whatever. Why
⏹️ ▶️ John I find this baffling is because as far as I can tell, it’s not like they redesigned the startup disc system setting in Tahoe.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just something about Tahoe came by and sideswiped the already bad startup
⏹️ ▶️ John disc thing to make the contrast half as much as it used to be. And
⏹️ ▶️ John when I posted this on Mastodon, many people said, until I read your text, I didn’t know what you were talking about because I couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John see a selection at all. It’s, I mean, again, there is a increased contrast option and accessibility,
⏹️ ▶️ John but this is a perfect example of like, well, it’s example of two things. One, that this, it needs to be higher contrast
⏹️ ▶️ John even when that setting’s not turned on because it is, it’s ridiculous, right? Even on a really high
⏹️ ▶️ John quality screen. And two, what Marco just said, Do you think anyone has time to worry about the contrast of the
⏹️ ▶️ John highlight and the startup system setting when they’re trying to get the OS to just work and have the animations run at the right speed?
⏹️ ▶️ John But no, so this is Mac OS, they don’t care that much about it anyway. So I’m really concerned
⏹️ ▶️ John that stuff like this is just forget about this being fixed or changed or improved in
⏹️ ▶️ John any way before this thing releases because it’s they have so much bigger fish to fry. So this is
⏹️ ▶️ John just a little thing but I just thought I’d point out because I just found it absurd. I would encourage you to look at the images
⏹️ ▶️ John that we will link in the show notes and see for yourself if on your screen you can see
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s highlighted. You’re going in knowing one of them is highlighted and one of them is not. I’m telling you that that’s the case and still
⏹️ ▶️ John you may not be able to see it depending on your monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, it’s not great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s amazing. And so what has probably happened here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, you know, the Mac APIs and the iOS APIs, they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of semantic color values. So not every color is specified. OK, it’s R
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, G this, B this. Most colors in the UI, especially in Apple’s apps, presumably,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are specified by colors like background one, background two, that kind of thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or light background, lighter background. Do you
⏹️ ▶️ John have the thing on iOS? The constants on Mac OS are called primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John whatever. We
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do have those as well. Yeah. And that’s the newer Swift UI way of doing it. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically, like, you know, the colors are not specified on everything by color
⏹️ ▶️ Marco value. They’re specified semantically in a lot of things. So what Apple has done with the redesign
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is change a lot of what those colors mean. So they can change that like in one place in some system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco definition of that. And then all the other apps that compile against that will have their colors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changed. And what John was just saying is like, they’re not going to have time to go through every single place those are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used and see like, is this still legible? Is this still usable? Does this still even look right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or does it look like a rendering error?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or like, I mean, what they could do is perhaps say, hey, does primary on top of secondary,
⏹️ ▶️ John is that readable? Like, is the delta between prime, because think of it, like the contest thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John If there was a contest to do this, given just plain RGB values, integer RGB values,
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s set aside floating point, the only way you can win this contest is by having a difference of one.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you could have 251 and 252. If you can’t do fractions, That’s as close as you can get. RGB 251, 251, 251, and then 252,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s, it’s one away, unless you go into floating point values.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I guess you could do opacity tricks, which is floating point as well. But like, you’re really getting up to
⏹️ ▶️ John like, seriously, it’s either the same color or it’s not. It’s, you know, how close can we get to the same color without
⏹️ ▶️ John it being the same color? And if you have two constants, whether it’s the primary, secondary, tertiary, or like window
⏹️ ▶️ John background, light, lighter, lightest, whatever, like whatever sequence of constant names that you
⏹️ ▶️ John have. The distance between one constant name and the other that you expect to be next to each other
⏹️ ▶️ John should probably be discernible. So there should be some kind of like acceptance test to say, hey, if you’re going through
⏹️ ▶️ John the US and changing all these colors, make sure you change them in a way that two colors, the two of the colors aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ John like literally the same when they’re supposed to be used on top of each other. This is all setting aside whether the fact that the startup
⏹️ ▶️ John system setting uses these colors at all, because for all we know, the person who programmed this 55 years ago
⏹️ ▶️ John just did RGB values because they felt like it, or just did opacity like a black with an opacity
⏹️ ▶️ John of.001. Like who knows what the code does? It could be anything. Again, this is not a highly
⏹️ ▶️ John trafficked, highly revised area of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the OS. Keep in mind like the scale of what we’re dealing with here. You know, when iOS 7
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was released, I mean, that was a hundred years ago. Everything was less, everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was smaller. There were fewer platforms. There were fewer apps on those platforms. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps themselves had less code and fewer screens fewer features and less UI. It was a long
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time ago. Now, the number of like possible areas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that changing these system constants and metrics and things, the number of areas those affect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is huge now. There’s so much surface area to test and to revise and to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fix. And that’s why I was saying, you know, a couple months ago when there were rumors of a big redesign coming,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s why I was saying it’s really big deal. Because it touches everything. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we’re going to see for a year, maybe at least, maybe two years,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re going to keep finding little edges of the UI or screens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of apps. Oh, that button is now an ellipsis because the text is being cut off because the metrics changed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or, oh, this button over here that used to be like, you know, a contrast button that you could see, now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s gray on gray on gray because those colors changed. We’re going to have a year or two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that across not only the OS’s and Apple’s apps, but then across third party apps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because when third party apps compile against the new API, there is a flag
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you can opt out of the entire new design. You can put it in your info.plist.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think a lot of apps are gonna do that for a while. But if you want any of the new design, you have to take all of the new design.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so as soon as you want any of the new design, all of these little subtle constants
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and metrics in the APIs will change across your entire app. And so you have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go through every single screen and retest everything and fix it in a way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not gonna mess up your iOS 18 and earlier compatibility as well, if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still maintaining that compatibility. So the workload for both Apple and its apps and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for third-party developers is massive. And you just can’t do this in a summer. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I kinda, I mean, I hate to go here, but I kinda feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the design team is doging through the system here, just ripping stuff out and just rushing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to change things that have huge effects that they either don’t fully
⏹️ ▶️ Marco appreciate or maybe are just disregarding, but the reality is, whatever their reasons or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thinking behind it, it takes a lot of time to adapt the software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the changes they’re making. And I think it takes way more time than they have. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why I think it’s going to be a year of UI bugs everywhere across everyone’s apps.
⏹️ ▶️ John And speaking of the contrast, one of the changes that I had to do to Switch Glass, I have a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John in my appearance setting that lets you pick where the palettes are on the screen. It shows a little rectangle
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s supposed to represent your screen with radio buttons and the cardinal directions, top, bottom,
⏹️ ▶️ John left, right, upper right, upper left, so on and so forth. And it shows a desktop background. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s hard to believe for such an old school Mac user, but the idea of having a desktop
⏹️ ▶️ John background image and then putting a radio button on top of that image, it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John you should always be able to see the radio button because radio buttons are circle and they have an outline
⏹️ ▶️ John and inside them is a dot. Like how could how could a radio button not be visible?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like they used to be opaque, right? It was an opaque circle. So I don’t care what the background
⏹️ ▶️ John is. I don’t care what desktop background you have. When I put a radio button control on top of your desktop background
⏹️ ▶️ John image, you should still you’ll be able to see the radio button, right? And that was true right up to Tahoe. If you
⏹️ ▶️ John put a Tahoe radio button on top of lots of different kinds of desktop backgrounds, it is basically
⏹️ ▶️ John invisible. Basically like this highlight color that you see here. So I had to literally draw a circle,
⏹️ ▶️ John like I’m drawing a custom drawing of a opaque circle around the radio button when it’s not selected
⏹️ ▶️ John to say here’s the radio button, because Apple’s own controls are not visible on
⏹️ ▶️ John many different, even just like solid color backgrounds. Forget about cool patterns and stuff like that. That’s the type of
⏹️ ▶️ John attention that needs to be done to every single screen to say, are the controls still visible? You mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ John again with a button, I bet there’s a lot of screens that are gonna come up even during the setup process. People are gonna be like, how do I keep
⏹️ ▶️ John going in this process? Is that word a button? It’s kind of like iOS seven all over again. Only instead of not drawing the borders
⏹️ ▶️ John around the buttons, they’re trying to draw the borders around the buttons. They’re just so low contrast, you can’t see them.
Apple Intelligence news summaries
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and in our final piece of follow up for tonight, Apple Intelligence News Summaries are back, baby, with a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey big red disclaimer that reads, Summarization may change the meaning of the original headlines. Verify
⏹️ ▶️ Casey information. Reading from Ars Technica, Apple Intelligence Notification
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Summaries for News Apps are back in Tahoe Beta 4. Upon installing the new update, users of Apple Intelligence-compatible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey devices will be asked to enable or disable three broad categories of notifications. Those for news
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and and entertainment apps, for communication and social apps, and for all other apps. The operating systems will list sample
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apps based on what you currently have installed in your device. Apple disabled news notification summaries as part of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iOS 18.3 update in January and correct summaries circulating on social media prompted news organizations to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey complain to Apple, particularly after one summary said that Luigi Mangione, the alleged murder
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, had died by suicide. He had not and has not.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so this screen is interesting because that red text that you read, It says summarization may change the meaning of original headlines,
⏹️ ▶️ John verify information. That only appears on the news and entertainment one. The
⏹️ ▶️ John communication, social, and all other apps don’t have that warning. So this is, you know, again, when Apple just
⏹️ ▶️ John disabled this feature because people were complaining, you know, it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John as I said at the time, the reason they disabled it is because they can’t fix it. Like there’s no way to make an LLM
⏹️ ▶️ John that doesn’t make mistakes when trying to summarize stuff because that’s just the nature of the technology
⏹️ ▶️ John as it currently exists. It’s not an unsolvable problem. It’s just that Apple has not solved it and I believe nobody has
⏹️ ▶️ John solved it. So unless they come up with a breakthrough, they’re just gonna have errors. And Apple’s solution
⏹️ ▶️ John was disable it, wait a little while and turn it back on. Still doesn’t work all the time, but
⏹️ ▶️ John if we put a big red warning on it, like our hands are clean, done and done. Anyway, at least they give you the option
⏹️ ▶️ John and they pulled out the red text. The red text is there and it says verify information. So we’ll summarize
⏹️ ▶️ John it for you, but don’t believe what we say. You gotta click through to check. And so I think that kind of nullifies
⏹️ ▶️ John the usefulness of the summary. But as I saw Gruber say online, he said, well, it doesn’t matter because if I see anything
⏹️ ▶️ John that looks weird, I’ll always click through on it to figure it out. The tricky bit is sometimes incorrect
⏹️ ▶️ John information doesn’t look weird. Sometimes it just looks fine. Like the result of a sporting event. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John one team wins. Maybe another team wins. Maybe it’s a lopsided contest and you’re like, really, they won. But if it was a closely contested
⏹️ ▶️ John and they say team A won when really team B won and it was a close game. Are you going to click through on that because it looks weird
⏹️ ▶️ John to you? No, you’d be like, hey, team A won. But you’re wrong, they didn’t, it was incorrectly summarized. information
⏹️ ▶️ John or just disable news summaries.
ATP Membership
⏹️ ▶️ John We are brought to you this week by our members. If you are not
⏹️ ▶️ John a member, we’re here to tell you about ATP membership. What is it and why should you get it?
⏹️ ▶️ John And can you get that information without going to our website and reading a bunch of texts on our FAQ? Yes, you can. Here we are to tell you.
⏹️ ▶️ John My pitch for membership is that it makes the show better. If you like the show,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ll like the show better if you’re a member. First of all, you don’t have to hear any ads. So
⏹️ ▶️ John if you were a member, you wouldn’t be hearing this right now. You certainly won’t hear any other ads. If you want to hear the ads, you can, because some people like them,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you don’t have to hear them. So you get an ad-free version of the show. Second, you get ATP Overtime, which is on
⏹️ ▶️ John every single episode, there’s another topic that we talk about that’s usually pretty good and juicy
⏹️ ▶️ John that you don’t get to hear if you’re not a member. If you want to hear the quote unquote bootleg
⏹️ ▶️ John version of the show, which is the unedited feed or with all of our cursing and mistakes or whatever, that includes everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s published like the second we stop recording, you can also get access to that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Also, we do once a month, roughly, bonus episodes where we talk about all sorts of stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John We have maybe 30 of those bonus episodes up and every month we make another one so you get access to all the bonus episodes
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re a member. And then finally, when we have our merch sales, you get 15% off during those time-limited
⏹️ ▶️ John sales. So that’s what I think makes the show better and that’s my pitch for membership. How did I do?
⏹️ ▶️ John Pretty well. Is that a good ad? I came in under time. Was this the first ad you’ve ever done? I think it is. It’s not really
⏹️ ▶️ John an ad because I’m just trying to tell people to pay for the show that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m on, but you know. It counts. It’s his first ad read. So congratulations.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah, I did a
⏹️ ▶️ John ad read back in the day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it was only like 90 seconds too. This is pretty impressive.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’m very impressed. My angle on it, just behind the curtain, my angle on it is to tell people
⏹️ ▶️ John what they’re getting. We always try to tell people what they’re getting. I think Casey did a pretty good job on a recent episode. Like, here’s what you get with
⏹️ ▶️ John membership. But he forgot overtime. There’s a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John But like, that’s my pitch. It makes the show, if you like the show, you will like it better with membership. Yes, and you pay money
⏹️ ▶️ John for it. Did I make that clear? You pay for it, right? You can either pay monthly or annually.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you like the show a lot and it’s a big part of your life and you can fit us into your entertainment budget,
⏹️ ▶️ John the show will get better. It’s not just you pay us because you feel like it and you’re like being nice to us or whatever and you’re supporting the
⏹️ ▶️ John show, which you are, but like whatever, the show will be better. That’s the reason why I pay for all the
⏹️ ▶️ John podcasts I pay for. Yes, I wanna support the shows, but also the shows become better when you don’t have to hear ads,
⏹️ ▶️ John when you get access to episodes sooner, when you get the bonus episodes. That’s why I pay for things. That’s the pitch.
⏹️ ▶️ John Membership, it’s good. You’ll like it more.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you like us, it will give you more of us and better of us. Done.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey And less of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. Less of not us. Right. No, it’s very true. And, and, you know, I, I can’t say enough
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good things about all the members that we have been lucky enough to amass over the years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and, and it really is what makes the show possible. I mean, it’s no secret
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that ads have been down particularly in podcasts for a long In fact, I just listened to Backstage,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is the Relay members podcast earlier today, and they were lamenting the same problem and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying much of the same thing, that if it wasn’t for their members, Relay would be in a bad spot. And I can tell you for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey certainty, if it wasn’t for the members of ATP, ATP may or may not even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be a thing anymore if it wasn’t for members. And so it really, truly helps make this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show happen. That’s not just lip service. It really, really does. And we can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say enough good things for how much we appreciate any of you who have signed up. And it makes a tremendous difference.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And one thing that John didn’t mention this time is that, hey, what if you’re not in a position to pay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us, I don’t even remember what we charge, but pay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco us whatever it is that we charge.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s about eight bucks a month. About eight bucks a month. I think it’s like 88 bucks a year, something like that. If you’re not in a position to pay that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey money, you can also ask for a gift. And John slaved over, let me reboot that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John spent a lot of time working on how to make gift memberships possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can do that on the website. And it’s very, very easy and very straightforward. So you can ask for a gift for a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey birthday or a holiday or something like that. And you can be gifted ATP membership. So really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and truly, I really think John’s hit the nail on the head. It makes it better for you. And it honestly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey makes it better for us too. So everyone wins.
⏹️ ▶️ John At the end of the year, I do the thing where I like thank the patrons, which I’m not going to do now. You’ll get to your time at the end of the year.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I mean, this is not like thanking the members, but just to let everyone know, members make the show possible.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re not a member, you should also be thankful to the members because they’re helping, you know, subsidize
⏹️ ▶️ John the show that you’re listening to. Lots of times I’ll listen to a podcast that I’m not a member of because I only listen to an episode every once in a while.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that show has members that are making it possible, and I’m thankful to those members. So if, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like I said when I pitched the patron thing at the beginning of the year, everyone’s got to decide, like, what is their
⏹️ ▶️ John entertainment budget? Do I even like this show? You know, how much can I afford? And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a balance. Everyone has to make that decision for themselves. But like part of the thing that makes patrons possible is some people
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I like the show fine. It’s OK. But also, I have a huge amount of money. So this is nothing to me.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Or someone’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, this is my favorite part of every single week. And even though I don’t have a lot of money, it’s worth
⏹️ ▶️ John it for me to pay $8 a month for this show. Everyone’s got to make that decision themselves. So I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John going to, you know, just if you can’t pay for it, the show is still free. It’s fine. But if you can pay for it, we thank you because you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John making the show possible for us to make and for everyone else to listen to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I couldn’t say it better myself. So thanks to members who are not hearing this, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you are hearing this, it is the members who keep the show going. In addition to the very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crappy ad market. And it is the member is the success of the member program that has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco allowed us to keep our ads reasonably high quality. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a lot more ads to be had in the podcast space if we basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do dynamic ad insertion and stick in like radio style ads for, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, cheap kind of, you know, weird car dealerships in your area and stuff like that and do like creepy targeting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like we could do that, but thanks to membership we don’t need to.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Not yet anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And thanks to membership we are able to be a little picky about who we advertise for. So if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s some sponsor that we’re like, mm, I don’t really wanna shill for that on the show,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we don’t have to, we can say no to that. And that’s all thanks to members because we have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the little bit of headroom there to afford to say no to stuff that we don’t feel good about.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so podcast listeners out there, I’m one of you and I never have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once said, you know what I think the world needs? More podcast ads. And whenever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a show is offered in an ad-free version, I will almost always splurge for it because I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t love listening to podcast ads over and over and over again in the middle of all my shows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, we try to make them as good as we can, but at the end of the day, they’re still ads. If you also are not super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crazy about podcast ads, we are giving you that option and it’s a great option. You get all that other stuff, you get more of us, you get better of us,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all that other fun stuff, plus cheaper t-shirts. So definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco check it out. Atv.fm slash join is where you get
⏹️ ▶️ John that. You have to repeat the call to action three times, Marco, and do it verbatim, please.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s atp.fm slash join. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only way to get this deal is to go to atp.fm slash join. That’s atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John join. I think you did it
⏹️ ▶️ John four times. Nope, that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Wrong, sorry. Make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. That’s a make good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John good for sure. If you just go to atp.fm,
Apple and interfaces
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do some topics. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apparently, John, you want to take us on a tour of Apple and interfaces.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this since we’ve been talking about all the liquid metal stuff. And it’s kind of kind of like the thing with the AI crawler
⏹️ ▶️ John is causing large bandwidth or whatever. Something like sort of goes on said, uh, but I think it’s worth saying because not everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John has the same context for these discussions. Certainly they don’t have the old man historic context that
⏹️ ▶️ John I have. Um, but I do feel like as time passes on, Like
⏹️ ▶️ John part of the reason we’re in this situation with liquid glass and everything is because
⏹️ ▶️ John Institutional knowledge and historic knowledge just goes by the wayside. So I want to just give like a brief refresher
⏹️ ▶️ John on Some of the foundational things that are being left
⏹️ ▶️ John by the wayside as we continue in this modern age and that is the
⏹️ ▶️ John idea that that trying to make interfaces for computers so
⏹️ ▶️ John people can use them, there is a science aspect to that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple at various times has been at the forefront of that science.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll put a link in the notes to a couple of books from Bruce Tognizzini, who was a user
⏹️ ▶️ John interface expert who worked at Apple many, many years ago and was very influential in the field.
⏹️ ▶️ John Tog on interface and a Tog on software design. Tog is short for Tognazini, his last name.
⏹️ ▶️ John Talks about the science of interface design. You’ve probably heard of some of the science things if you’re kind of an old school
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac user, like Fitts’ Law, which is like, okay, well, with graphical user interfaces, we have pointing devices.
⏹️ ▶️ John The user has to put the pointing device on a target to click on it or do a thing with
⏹️ ▶️ John it. So that whole task of targeting, how easy is it for people to get a pointing device
⏹️ ▶️ John onto a target when using a mouse or whatever. And you can imagine similar things for using your finger on a
⏹️ ▶️ John screen and stuff like that. And they, you know, use science. Okay, well, that turns out to be a function
⏹️ ▶️ John of the size of the target, the distance from you are like the, the, the, how does the interface
⏹️ ▶️ John work? Is it one to one? Does it have an acceleration curve? You can do science, come up with ideas,
⏹️ ▶️ John test them, run experiments and try to determine more efficient, more useful, easier
⏹️ ▶️ John to understand interfaces. in especially in the early days around the era
⏹️ ▶️ John of the early days of the Mac a lot of the things in both in the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John and subsequently following on from the initial Mac OS to the later ones were informed by this
⏹️ ▶️ John scientific progress and this also includes user testing saying we have an idea for an interface
⏹️ ▶️ John but it doesn’t make the computer easy to use do people understand it some of the ideas that are in the original Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John are like let’s make a standardized interface so you learn how to use a scroll bar you can reuse that knowledge every
⏹️ ▶️ John app has a a standard scroll bar. Every app has a standard window with a title bar and a closed box so that when you
⏹️ ▶️ John learn one app, it’s the same everywhere. This was a revolutionary idea and user interface design
⏹️ ▶️ John from the previous days when every application just did whatever the heck it wanted interface wise. But the Mac was like
⏹️ ▶️ John every Mac app has Mac windows and Mac scroll bars and Mac buttons and Mac radio buttons and Mac checkboxes
⏹️ ▶️ John standard controls right that it sounds boring now but this was a this was in advance and it was
⏹️ ▶️ John you know it’s it’s an idea and it was tested and it has rationale behind it
⏹️ ▶️ John to make the interfaces easy to use. So that’s the science aspect of user interfaces. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John another aspect of making good user interfaces, which is the art of it. Apple’s Aqua introduction, which
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t have a video of because maybe they didn’t give that on the W2C disks. But anyways, Macworld’s, or not W2C,
⏹️ ▶️ John Macworld San Francisco 2000. We’ll put a link in the show notes to the YouTube video of it. The quality is terrible,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I don’t have a better one. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The quality is so bad. I watched it earlier today, and I don’t think I’d ever seen it before because I was not in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple world in 2000. I will briefly sidetrack us and say that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a direct quote from Jobs during this presentation is he says, menus are semi-transparent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey too, except for the text. And I was just like, oh, really now? It just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey made me think of all the liquid glass discourse of these days and how that relates all the way back
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, again, I wish there was a higher quality one, but I think the Aqua introduction, this is the first time the Aqua
⏹️ ▶️ John user interface was revealed to the public and it was quite shocking coming from the classic Mac OS interface, which was nothing like
⏹️ ▶️ John this at all. That shows some of the art because there’s lots of things that are in Aqua
⏹️ ▶️ John that are there not for scientifically backed user interface
⏹️ ▶️ John reasons, but because they want to evoke an emotional response.
⏹️ ▶️ John As Job said in the keynote, one of the design goals was that when you see the
⏹️ ▶️ John interface, you want to lick it. That’s, there’s not a usability angle on that. That’s part of
⏹️ ▶️ John the art of it. You want to make it attractive, fun, cool looking. And that is an important
⏹️ ▶️ John part of interface design. Because the, you know, there’s, you know, this, this YouTube channel I
⏹️ ▶️ John watch that, that it’s a food channel, I forget what the name of it is, but they always talk about the different aspects
⏹️ ▶️ John of taste of like, I forget what it like sweet, sour, bitter, umami, um,
⏹️ ▶️ John what am I forgetting? Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco whatever. A whole bunch of salty,
⏹️ ▶️ John salty. There you go. Thank you. Um, but then he always adds, uh, I think an unfortunately
⏹️ ▶️ John named, but an important thing, which is the human factor, which is like, how does the food
⏹️ ▶️ John look? What memories do you have it over your childhood or whatever? And you think, well, that’s not a, that’s not an aspect of taste, but it is. It’s such
⏹️ ▶️ John a big part of the food experience. Yes. There’s all the taste factors that go into a food, but it’s always the human element.
⏹️ ▶️ John In any interface design, making something cool or lickable or attractive
⏹️ ▶️ John or like makes it feel fun or makes you want to use it and want to touch it and want to manipulate
⏹️ ▶️ John it, that’s an art to it. And so ideally,
⏹️ ▶️ John any good computer interface has ideas that are founded in science
⏹️ ▶️ John that we found to be a good way to let people use a computer, that it makes them be able to be
⏹️ ▶️ John successful, makes it makes fewer errors, makes it understandable, makes it easier to use, makes it powerful so they
⏹️ ▶️ John can do the things they wanna do without lots of effort. And also the art of interface design that
⏹️ ▶️ John makes it attractive and makes you want to play with it and makes you excited
⏹️ ▶️ John about using it and makes it feel like a pleasant place to be and does not cause anxiety and like a million different things, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And that whole science aspect of interfaces sometimes feels to me entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John forgotten by everybody, not just Apple, not just people who work in the industry,
⏹️ ▶️ John by users, by journalists, by everybody has like forgetting the idea
⏹️ ▶️ John that there even is an aspect of user interfaces on that can be founded in science. These
⏹️ ▶️ John are the, you can test things and see if they make the interfaces better. And you can have ideas about how
⏹️ ▶️ John you might make the interface better that are founded in reason. Maybe if we have standard scroll
⏹️ ▶️ John bars everywhere, then once someone learns how that scroll bar works, they’ll be able to
⏹️ ▶️ John scroll in every application instead of having to relearn it. That’s an idea, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John they can test that idea. And the idea, there’s reasoning behind it, there’s logic behind it. Let’s have an idea
⏹️ ▶️ John for improving the interface founded in some kind of logic that seems like it should make sense,
⏹️ ▶️ John and let’s test that idea. And I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen anything
⏹️ ▶️ John like that anywhere having anything to do with interfaces across this entire industry for like decades.
⏹️ ▶️ John All I ever see is the art and debate about the art and whether the art is good or bad or whether they like
⏹️ ▶️ John how it looks and whether they don’t like it. Do you think it’s cool? Do you not think it’s cool? And the art part is important,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s not the only part of interface design. So if you’re listening to this and you’ve never heard anything about this,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t know anything about the science of using interface design or it sounds boring or whatever, I encourage you to
⏹️ ▶️ John either buy or find an ebook or PDF download or whatever of these very old, like they’re thrown in the 90s, this TOG on
⏹️ ▶️ John interface and TOG on software design and just read them. Is it relevant to today’s things? not really, but it will give you the mindset
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, how do I think about interface design? If I want to use logic and reason
⏹️ ▶️ John to come up with ideas that I think will make the interface better and then test those ideas, because that seems
⏹️ ▶️ John so incredibly absent all the debates about liquid. I keep saying liquid metal. I know I do all the
⏹️ ▶️ John liquid glass interface stuff. Many people say oh, it’s misguided,
⏹️ ▶️ John the foundations are wrong, so on and so forth, that the reasons they give for it, as Marco said in past shows like
⏹️ ▶️ John the reasons they give don’t make any sense and are basically BS because they don’t, they’re not logical. Like the things
⏹️ ▶️ John they say that it does, it doesn’t do. And even if it did do it, it doesn’t, it doesn’t make any logical sense why that
⏹️ ▶️ John would make the interface better. It’s like, it’s, it’s a tautological thing. We wanted to do this, therefore we wanted to do it. Therefore
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s good. Like they don’t even attempt to say how, like it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway. So I, I just feel like that’s entirely missing. And then part of it is, you know, so when jobs came
⏹️ ▶️ John back, he was so heavily into the art and he didn’t like all these nerd eggheads doing the science part of
⏹️ ▶️ John it, you know, he changed the balance for sure. And I feel like it has only accelerated to the point
⏹️ ▶️ John where now, Alan Dye, who apparently comes from like a mark on background, which is marketing communication,
⏹️ ▶️ John like and print design doesn’t even have a background in user interface design. But I assure you,
⏹️ ▶️ John user interface design still is a field of study, at least in the academic world where people
⏹️ ▶️ John are trying to make, you know, interfaces more usable to people by using reason and
⏹️ ▶️ John testing things, and not just, you know, having a whim and deciding I want, you know, stitch
⏹️ ▶️ John leather, because I think it’s cool and reminds me of the seat backs on my private jet or whatever the heck the story behind that
⏹️ ▶️ John was like, again, that’s an important part of it. But there has to be a balance. And I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John the balance is way, way, way, way, way too far in the direction
⏹️ ▶️ John of the art and emotion side, which again, is an important factor, but it
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t be the only factor. And if you’re on way on the art side and you make an interface that people
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t find appealing, now you’ve got a real problem because it’s not usable. It’s not useful. It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re making the interface worse and people don’t even think it’s cool looking. So hopefully lots of people will think liquid
⏹️ ▶️ John glass looks real cool because I think in many aspects, the usability of it
⏹️ ▶️ John has gotten worse and the supposed foundations of its design don’t make
⏹️ ▶️ John any sense and surely weren’t tested in any way because we’re using the interfaces and finding
⏹️ ▶️ John all these obvious problems and they don’t care and they’re they’re not fixable because the design itself is fundamentally
⏹️ ▶️ John just flawed. And I guess not the end of the world. Like I agree with what Margo said, like you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, you can use it. It’s mostly if I said this since the beginning, since I’ve been using Tahoe, like I don’t particularly like it. I see
⏹️ ▶️ John that it is doing dumb things for dumb reasons, but in the end you mostly get along. You know, it
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t stop you from using your Mac. It’s not some kind of fundamental change that like now I can’t even use my Mac or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the accessibility options there are, they’re turned on. I just don’t find the art appealing. And I think they made the interface worse.
⏹️ ▶️ John And what I’m craving is a return of a better balance
⏹️ ▶️ John between the science of interface design and the art of interface design. And I, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I, this has been an industry trend for everybody for ages. And within Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s like epidemic proportions of too much
⏹️ ▶️ John art, not enough science.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t even know if the really, really high ups
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even know that this is a science or respect it as one.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or have any people who work at Apple, whose degree is in user interface design, who are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing it. I mean, I’m sure, I mean, I hope some of those people are still there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s very clear that they are not the ones making the big decisions anymore. And that’s a shame because you’re right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, this is a knowable and known field. This is a studied
⏹️ ▶️ Marco field, a rigorous, studied, like real discipline.
⏹️ ▶️ John And evolving. Like I’m not saying it’s stuck in stone. You advance it. You try to come up with new ideas using new
⏹️ ▶️ John technology. Like it should always be advancing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and it seems like they don’t respect it. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unless they’re just, I mean, either they’re really bad at it, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they don’t even know this is a thing that they should be respecting. And I’m thinking the latter is more like
⏹️ ▶️ John I think a lot of it is the hangover from jobs, he eventually had such a disdain for that thing
⏹️ ▶️ John because he would have an idea in his head about something that he thinks is really cool and they would say there’s some aspect of it that
⏹️ ▶️ John is not good for usability and it was like don’t be a naysayer. Like he really intentionally pushed
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple in the other direction which is you know I have good taste don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John tell me about the stupid science stuff that’s how you get boring interfaces like platinum was boring aqua is exciting
⏹️ ▶️ John see how I fixed Apple by doing this and in many respects he was right that the pendulum had swung too far the other direction.
⏹️ ▶️ John But he’s such a forceful person and was such a powerful leader in Apple for so
⏹️ ▶️ John long and so influential. And the company was so successful that I think he was very
⏹️ ▶️ John able to drive out the power and influence of the science-based user internet
⏹️ ▶️ John design within Apple. And then when he left, everyone’s like, well, we should just keep doing what Jobs is doing, because he’s great and we’re great and
⏹️ ▶️ John everything. And it just continued after he was gone. And I think now the company is reaping
⏹️ ▶️ John the non-benefits, reaping what they sowed. Like they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John successfully expunged all people who know how to make better user interfaces in exchange
⏹️ ▶️ John for artists. And now sometimes when the art goes wrong, And there’s nothing left.
AppleCare One
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, a couple of days ago, yesterday maybe, I think it was, as we record this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple announced services, services, services. And this one is AppleCare
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One. Writing, or excuse me, reading from Apple’s announcement, Apple today on the 23rd
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unveiled AppleCare One, a new way for customers to cover multiple Apple products with one simple plan.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For just $19.99 per month, customers can protect up to three products in one plan with the option to add more at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any time for $5.99 per month for each device. must be less than four years old and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey headphones must be less than one year old. Only devices in the customer’s Apple account can be covered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey under AppleCare One. Starting tomorrow, customers in the US can sign up for AppleCare One directly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on their iPhone, iPad, or Mac, or by visiting their nearest Apple Store. AppleCare One
⏹️ ▶️ Casey includes all of the benefits that come with AppleCare Plus, including unlimited repairs for accidents like drops and spills, 24-7
⏹️ ▶️ Casey priority support, quick and convenient Apple-certified service, and battery coverage. AppleCare One also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey expands against theft and loss protection beyond iPhone to also cover
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad and Apple Watch. Fees and deductibles apply. AppleCare One pricing is the same regardless of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the products that are covered, meaning a customer can enroll their phone, iPad, and Apple Watch and save up to $11 a month
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over enrolling in separate AppleCare Plus plans for each device. Additional items can be added for $5.99
⏹️ ▶️ Casey per month each. With AppleCare One, customers can now add products they already own that are up to four years old if they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are in good condition. To verify good condition, products may be required to undergo a diagnostic check
⏹️ ▶️ Casey using a customer’s iPhone or iPad or at an Apple Store prior to being added to the plan. This provides
⏹️ ▶️ Casey customers with more opportunities to protect their devices, even beyond the current 60-day window to purchase AppleCare+.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Verge writes that AppleCare One is a good deal, but not for everyone. AppleCare One lets you protect up to three devices for $19.99
⏹️ ▶️ Casey per month. Apple claims that customers can save $11 per month by enrolling in a phone, watch, and pad in AppleCare
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One compared to paying for three individual AppleCare Plus plans for those devices. But that’s not true. all of its
⏹️ ▶️ Casey models. For example, the monthly cost for iPhone coverage with AppleCare Plus starts at $999 for the cheapest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and oldest eligible models, whereas the iPad and Apple Watch start at $499 and $299 respectively, totaling $17.97 per month. In this case, AppleCare
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One is a slightly worse deal than buying the plans a la carte. Where the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new service shines is if you own some of Apple’s most expensive products, like the iPhone 16 Pro, the Apple Vision Pro, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the 12.9-inch iPad Pro with the M4 chip. Paying for a monthly AppleCare Plus plan for each
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of these three would cost $47.47 total per month. That’s almost $50
⏹️ ▶️ Casey according to a list of prices Apple PR manager Anna Mitchell shared with The Verge. AppleCare One on the other hand would still be $19.99 for any mix of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey three products, Mitchell confirmed, which is obviously the better deal by a huge margin. What’s important to keep in mind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that just like AppleCare Plus, with AppleCare One you still have to pay deductibles and fees for each and every repair and those costs vary depending
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the device as well as the type of repair you need. How much you can expect to pay, which is in addition to your monthly Apple care
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fee is listed on Apple’s website. And we will link to a couple of things with regard to that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So the service fees and deductibles tells you like, like Casey had to pay 29 bucks or whatever for
⏹️ ▶️ John his AirPods thing. You’ll see on this thing, Hey, if you get any kind of Apple care plus AirPods thing, you’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ John pay $29. So you can find out what that is for your product. And then we’ll link to the
⏹️ ▶️ John main Apple care page, which has the plans of the prices, which will become relevant in a moment.
⏹️ ▶️ John A couple of selected FAQ items here from Apple’s AppleCare page. Can I add my family’s
⏹️ ▶️ John devices to my AppleCare One plan? That was one of my biggest questions because a lot of like the, what is it called? iCloud,
⏹️ ▶️ John what is the iCloud? How’s the-
⏹️ ▶️ John One. Apple One, thank you. Apple One. That is kind of like a family thing where you can get everyone in on
⏹️ ▶️ John it. But as for AppleCare One, the answer is AppleCare One plans cover devices
⏹️ ▶️ John that are on the same Apple account as the subscriber. And I’ll have a little bit more on that
⏹️ ▶️ John with my personal experience in a second. But if you’re thinking of like, oh, I’m just gonna put my whole family’s devices under one AppleCare,
⏹️ ▶️ John one plan, it only counts if they’re on the, whatever account you buy
⏹️ ▶️ John it through, your Apple ID, I keep saying Apple ID, your Apple account, it’s only for devices that also use that same
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple account. And then how do you buy it? It’s actually kind of tricky.
⏹️ ▶️ John They have an answer in the back, which is, oh, it’s just easy. You just, you can do it online or through your app or, you know, through
⏹️ ▶️ John your device or whatever. I’m sure they will push it more harshly,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like an easiest way to do it is just go to your phone, go to settings, general, and then there’s a warranty and repair thing, and you’ll see the come
⏹️ ▶️ John on at the top of the page. So for once, Apple’s advertising of features helps you to find things.
⏹️ ▶️ John I did that on my phone, and it brought up a nice little, after I said, yes, I wanna try
⏹️ ▶️ John upgrading my plan, brought up a nice little thing that says, hey, given these devices, I think it just picks three
⏹️ ▶️ John random devices, or maybe picks like the most attractive random devices. So it says you can save up to 1798 per month
⏹️ ▶️ John when you protect John’s iPhone 16 Pro, Tina’s iPhone 15 Pro, and John’s iPad Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John M4. Luckily I named my devices so you can tell what they all are. So hey, almost $18 a month in saving.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s saying right there, if you upgrade, if you go to this instead of what you currently have, you
⏹️ ▶️ John will save money. And I did that upgrade coverage thing and then it just told me it couldn’t process my
⏹️ ▶️ John request because the thing is slammed. It took me all day to get through. All day
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just been totally down. Like it brings you to the Apple Pay prompt, you double tap, you do face
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, it says processing and then it says, oh, I couldn’t do it, sorry. But eventually it did let me do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that led me to the plan prices page because after you do this, after you see the
⏹️ ▶️ John little come on and says, you can save $18 a month, do you wanna do this? Yeah, I do wanna save $18 a month, so I did it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And fine, you’re done. But then after you’ve done that, so now I’m paying $19.99 a month for these three devices and I’m saving $18
⏹️ ▶️ John a month. but you can add more devices to this AppleCare One plan
⏹️ ▶️ John for what was it, 599 per device? I think that’s right, yeah. But the question is,
⏹️ ▶️ John if I add this device to my AppleCare One, is it cheaper or is it more expensive? So
⏹️ ▶️ John for example, with the Apple Watch, that’s 299 a month. If I add it to the plan, it becomes 599 a month.
⏹️ ▶️ John And nowhere in the interface did they say, are you sure you wanna add that device? Cause you’d be paying more.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, they don’t tell you that at all. So you have to go to the apple.com,
⏹️ ▶️ John apple.com slash applecare, scroll down to the plans section, click on the thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John you have like Mac or iPhone or display or whatever, and then click on all model
⏹️ ▶️ John pricing, and then look for the model that you have and it will tell you what the monthly and annual fees
⏹️ ▶️ John are. It gets more complicated because like, what if you’re not paying month by month? What if you paid for two years in advance and you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John paying annually? The annual prices are way cheaper than the monthly ones in some cases. So you have to do a little bit of math in your
⏹️ ▶️ John head and figure out how many of my devices should I add to my
⏹️ ▶️ John AppleCare One plan so that I’m not losing money. I’m only added if I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John save money. And that was a little bit tedious. They don’t make that easy. It’s nice that on the very first come on, they will
⏹️ ▶️ John say, do this and this is how much you’ll save for these three devices. So I just took their advice. I said, great, those three devices,
⏹️ ▶️ John I will save that much money. I believe you, good. But the other devices I added, I
⏹️ ▶️ John only added devices where after I looked up the pricing everything I determined that it would be
⏹️ ▶️ John cheaper to add the device than to leave it. So I had to leave a bunch of devices on their existing plans
⏹️ ▶️ John either because they’re on multi-year plans that are cheaper or because they’re monthly plans that are less than $5.99. Like a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Mini is $3.49 a month. You should not add that at $5.99 a month because
⏹️ ▶️ John when you do add it, it cancels your old Apple Care and it refunds you any, you know, fees
⏹️ ▶️ John that, anything for like the remainder of the time that you aren’t going to use or whatever. And by the way, I think it refunds it
⏹️ ▶️ John to you as an Apple gift card, which is kind of janky, but whatever, I’ll end up spending it. So I did that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then like for the family thing, one of the devices that I put on after looking up the price, it was a MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Air 13 inch, which its monthly fee is 699. My son’s M2 MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Air is out of warranty. This is one of the good things about AppleCare One. It’s been out of warranty for like years
⏹️ ▶️ John now, right? As long as it’s less than four years old, you can put
⏹️ ▶️ John it back on warranty, which I don’t think you think you’d ever be able to do. Like I think it’s like they said, 60 day window, normally
⏹️ ▶️ John after your AppleCare expires, you can put it back into AppleCare. Now you have four years to
⏹️ ▶️ John decide to put that into AppleCare. I didn’t mean for my son’s Apple MacBook Air to expire, I just bought like a two
⏹️ ▶️ John year thing and just let it expire because I forgot about it. So I want it to be back on
⏹️ ▶️ John AppleCare and 599 is cheaper than 699. So I put it back on and it worked and
⏹️ ▶️ John it did that and it put it back on. And then I saw some orange text underneath it that says this device will be
⏹️ ▶️ John removed. Like on like my warranty screen where it says, here’s all your AppleCareOne devices. And I said, this device will
⏹️ ▶️ John be removed. I’m like, why, why will it be removed? And I kept tapping into it or whatever. And eventually I realized it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John that rule that we said before, AppleCareOne only applies to devices
⏹️ ▶️ John that are on the same Apple account as the subscriber. So what I had to do
⏹️ ▶️ John was go to my son’s MacBook Air, make an account for me, sign into my
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple ID on that account, and that makes it happy because now it thinks it’s quote unquote, my MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John I did pay for it and technically,
⏹️ ▶️ John I do own it, but anyway. So that’s your way around the family thing. That works great
⏹️ ▶️ John for Macs where I can make a second account and sign in with a different Apple ID. Doesn’t work so great for phones. Cause if
⏹️ ▶️ John your kid’s got a phone, you’re not gonna sign into your Apple ID on your kid’s phone probably. Maybe you can sign
⏹️ ▶️ John in with your Apple ID in the store or something and find some workaround, but I wouldn’t want to risk it too much there. So
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s my advice is look into AppleCare One. Anyone who’s listening to this who has any AppleCare on anything,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially if you have expensive devices, like they said in that Verge article or whatever. If you have
⏹️ ▶️ John something with Pro in the name or some kind of expensive Mac, you’ll probably
⏹️ ▶️ John save money. You can add your kids’ devices, especially if they’re Macs, if you have an account on it signed into your Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John ID, but just be careful that you do the math with all the links we’ll put in here to figure out whether you’re actually
⏹️ ▶️ John saving money or not. Oh, and I was very disappointed to learn that, like, for what, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think I could get month to month, or anyway, I didn’t get month to month for my Pro Display XDR. I
⏹️ ▶️ John wish I did. It has been out of warranty for a while now. And I fear, I see an underscore having
⏹️ ▶️ John the big red line on his XDR, but he keeps making appointments at the Apple store about,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then as soon as the appointment comes up, the red line goes away, so he cancels it. I fear every day that
⏹️ ▶️ John my XDR will have a problem because I don’t wanna get a smaller monitor, but I would never buy this big monitor
⏹️ ▶️ John again. But I can’t put it, like, they’re more than four years old. My 2019 Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John and my XDR that I bought at the same time, they’re both more than four years old. they’re ineligible to be added
⏹️ ▶️ John to an AppleCare One plan. So I’m just sitting here with my fingers crossed. And the other thing is my wife’s studio
⏹️ ▶️ John display, it’s less than four years old, but it doesn’t show up anywhere in the
⏹️ ▶️ John UI for me to add it to the plan. So I don’t know the deal with that is maybe it, I did add her Mac mini or
⏹️ ▶️ John sorry, her Mac studio, but I didn’t see the monitor. I don’t know if that’s bundled with it or something cause I bought them together. But
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, that’s my advice. Check out AppleCare One, you will probably save some money.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. Thank you to our members for being our exclusive sponsors today. You can join
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us at atv.fm slash join to become a member. One of the perks of membership is ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overtime, our weekly bonus topic. It is more of us every week exclusively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for members. If you wanna hear this week’s Overtime, you can go and join as a member. And this week’s Overtime
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is an amazing exploration of the Mac control panel through this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amazing, I think it’s one of the best web apps I’ve ever seen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s really quite something. We’re gonna talk about it in the after show and kind of all the joy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around exploring the old Mac control panel. That’s this week’s Overtime.
⏹️ ▶️ John And how it ties into what I was just talking about with the interface design.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly, yes. There is a lot of relevant tie-ins there. So we will talk about that and more.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Atv.fm slash join to hear all that. Thank you everybody, and we’ll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they didn’t even mean to begin Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental John didn’t do any
⏹️ ▶️ John research, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John find the show notes at atp.fm And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John into 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 Auntie Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Accidental, check podcast so long
Apple and interfaces (reprise)
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, John, do you have a correction or an addition to an earlier topic?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, my bad. I should put more detailed notes for myself. When we were, I was talking about Apple and interfaces and the science and
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware interface, one other point that I wanted to make about the Aqua introduction, which again, I encourage everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John who either wasn’t alive then or, or, or it’s just never seen it,
⏹️ ▶️ John um, to watch that video. Cause it is, it is a trip when they introduce Aqua,
⏹️ ▶️ John they talk a little bit about some of their reasoning behind things, but also in their
⏹️ ▶️ John human interface guidelines of the day. They talk more about it. Maybe we’ll find a link to that and shove
⏹️ ▶️ John it in the shows, but you can probably find it somewhere. And actually, it might be difficult. You might have to go to archive that org or something. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John an example of a combination of art and science
⏹️ ▶️ John with some kind of rationale behind it, which may or may not have worked out. But anyway, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John an example of something with a rationale that makes some kind of sense. Aqua has transparency in it. That was one of its
⏹️ ▶️ John innovative features. There’s transparency in the interface, which was new for Mac OS and new for desktop
⏹️ ▶️ John OS is to the degree that Alcoa did it. It was a compositing window manager that you could have like
⏹️ ▶️ John soft shadows that are transparent, laid on top of stuff. The title bars of windows when are inactive
⏹️ ▶️ John or transparent, pull down menus for transparent stuff like that. Part of Apple’s pitch
⏹️ ▶️ John about, hey, why are these things in the OS transparent and these
⏹️ ▶️ John things not had a logic behind it. Sheets,
⏹️ ▶️ John which were an innovation in Mac OS X, still exist. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John basically little dialogues that are attached to Windows. So for example, if you have a document window and you want to
⏹️ ▶️ John save it, back in the old days in classic Mac OS, they would throw up an app modal dialogue,
⏹️ ▶️ John which means a save dialogue will come up and say, where do you want to save this document? And that would block the whole
⏹️ ▶️ John app. Even if you had five documents open on a big screen, because you were saving one of them,
⏹️ ▶️ John you couldn’t say, before I decide where to save this, let me go over to this other document. It was like, nope, this document is
⏹️ ▶️ John app modal, means this entire app is currently in the mode that’s saying you are now saving, pick a directory
⏹️ ▶️ John to save this document in and give it a file name, right? Totally blocked, you can go to other apps and use them,
⏹️ ▶️ John but this dialog will block the entire app. The innovation of Sheets was it would be attached
⏹️ ▶️ John to the document window, and yeah, that window is blocked until you decide to save or hit cancel,
⏹️ ▶️ John but other document windows are fine. And so the sheet sort of came out
⏹️ ▶️ John of the, with an animation, sort of like vertically, sort of came out of the document window
⏹️ ▶️ John towards you and then curled down to let you know unambiguously this sheet
⏹️ ▶️ John is attached to this window. First of all, it’s within the bounds of this window, but also you saw it come out
⏹️ ▶️ John of this window. It is clearly like a necktie for this window. So it is
⏹️ ▶️ John document modal, right? And why is the sheet transparent? because it’s temporary.
⏹️ ▶️ John Same thing with pull-down menus from the menu bar. They appear briefly on top of something else
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re transparent, not because it looks cool, not to highlight your content, but
⏹️ ▶️ John because in the original Aqua interface, transparent meant temporary,
⏹️ ▶️ John meant I’m going on top of stuff briefly, but then I’m going away. I’m pulling down a menu,
⏹️ ▶️ John but when I’m done, it will go away. They violated that sometimes. certain things were transparent
⏹️ ▶️ John that weren’t temporary, like the dock, which was there all the time. Similarly, but yeah, and
⏹️ ▶️ John they use it for other things like the title bar of an active window was opaque, but title bars
⏹️ ▶️ John of background windows were transparent. One of the things they learned after they released it was,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t read the titles of background windows because they’re all transparent and the titles overlay each other. So they walk that
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But I do wanna highlight like the combination of art and science here
⏹️ ▶️ John of saying, we think transparent stuff looks cool. It’s a cornerstone of our lickable user interface. That’s part of the
⏹️ ▶️ John art of this. It is very appealing to people. People are dazzled by it. It’s great, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John when and where should we use transparency? Let’s come up with some kind of rationale. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that rationale of temporary interface elements that briefly appear and then go away,
⏹️ ▶️ John those should be transparent to highlight their transient nature, whereas more permanent
⏹️ ▶️ John things are opaque. And yes, they violated that in a few areas here or there. But that’s an example of
⏹️ ▶️ John combining those two things, of coming up with something that you think is cool, but then deciding how
⏹️ ▶️ John and where to deploy it with some kind of rationale that makes some kind of sense. And yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John they should have user tested the transparent inactive window tile bars and realized that it makes it so you can’t read the title
⏹️ ▶️ John of Windows because they all jumble up. I think I did a screenshot of that in my original Mac OS X review, right? So there were infallible.
⏹️ ▶️ John Aqua is not perfect. I complained a bit. You know, I arguably made an entire career complaining about the usability
⏹️ ▶️ John problems with Aqua, right? But I, you know, it’s, it’s such a, even Aqua
⏹️ ▶️ John for all the things that everyone hated about it, all the things I complained about it is such a contrast in that they
⏹️ ▶️ John at least try to explain why they were doing things. And when you hear the explanation,
⏹️ ▶️ John you go, yeah, all right, that makes sense. And still you get to then try it and see how it works out. And they probably should have
⏹️ ▶️ John done more user testing. But anyway, that was the point I meant to make earlier. And I didn’t, so I shoved it in the after show.