660: It’s All Chicken Salad
09 Oct 2025Apple’s ICEBlock takedown, AirPods Pro 3 comfort improvements, Live Translation tests, iPhone 17 Pro cases, and expanding the Goose fanbase.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Marco’s “Vacation” results
- Goose
- Allianz Ampitheater
- Chicken Salad Chick
- Nugs.net
- ZZQ
- Suggestions from Casey, in no particular order:
- Follow-up:
- ATP in the wild
- Original report form Richard Earney
- Follow-up by Matt Smith
- Follow-up on Mark Christian’s report by Santiago Hervella
- Original report form Richard Earney
- AirPods 3
- Ear Lottery
- Michael corroborates Marco’s experience
- …but Franklin Delano Stallone offers hope
- …and sometimes AirPods 3 are a marked improvement, reports Matthew Schaffer
- Tony Dehnke does an ANC comparison
- Live translation results
- Ear Lottery
- David Schaub’s horror story about filling up your phone
- Mike Taffet does science on iPhone ↔ iPhone transfers
- Marco’s USB odyssey
- Synology alternatives
- Colin McKellar suggests QNAP
- See also:
- 🎉 …may not be necessary anymore! 🎉
- ATP in the wild
- More more first impressions
- Quick AirPods Pro 3 update
- iPhone case updates
- Omar Shahine performs surgery on the Nomad back
- Torras clear case
- Bullstrap open-bottom leather case
- Peak Design Everyday Case (Charcoal color has the good fabric)
- Still to test: Süti PhoneBack in black leather, if it ever ships
- iOS 16
- iPadOS 26: Now with slide-over!
- Apple pulls ICEBlock from the App Store
- Post-show: Pour one a Sprite out for a real one TiVo
- Members-only ATP Overtime: The Meta Ray-Ban Display, and Apple’s response
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- OpenCase: The case with the open space for you to fill. Use code ATP for 10% off.
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Become a member for ATP Overtime, ad-free episodes, member specials, and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- Mr. Arment goes to Virginia 🖼️
- Encounters and “Edinburgh”
- AirPods Pro 3 comfort, ANC
- Live Translation
- Sponsor: OpenCase (code ATP)
- Filling iPhone storage
- iPhone transfer speeds
- Thunderbolt-USB follow-up
- Sponsor: Squarespace
- Synology updates
- Mr. Liss upsizes his tips
- More iPhone cases
- Sponsor: DeleteMe (code ATP)
- iOS 26 for regular people, and John
- iPadOS 26.1 Slide Over
- Apple pulls ICEblock
- Ending theme
- TiVo ends DVR business
Mr. Arment goes to Virginia
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I took a vacation to visit Casey. If I’m honest, it was not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entirely to visit Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, that was a happy coincidence if we’re honest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John with each other. It worked out well.
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey’s there all the time, but there was something else that was there that made you go now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of my new favorite bands, Goose, was there playing a couple of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shows in Richmond. You know, it’s one of the things where I looked, I’m like, I kind of want to see Goose’s Falls, looking at where they’re playing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I like a good venue. I also like good seats and I looked I’m like oh they’re playing in Richmond that’s interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean I could fly down there and see Casey and see goose and maybe I could even bring Casey to goose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then I looked I’m like I go I went on like you know one of the ticket resale sites I’m like let me see if I can get tickets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there were three tickets basically like the best seats you could possibly have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this venue the first row of seats behind the the general admission
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pit but it’s also like elevated three feet above the pit so you’re just looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco across the top of everybody you can be seated and be looking above the entire pit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you’re perfectly centered the perfect distance from the stage to get all the light effects and everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I was like oh I can’t let these go and like and you know they were like maybe they were pricey for Richmond
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they were not pricey for New York if you know what I mean oh yeah this this is a no-brainer I’m getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these tickets so I’ve I’ve actually I asked Casey real quick only hey by the way are you free this night by any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah okay so I we booked everything and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Casey was first of all an amazing host like so I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey flew in thanks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flew in the day of the concert like that morning flew out the next day Casey was basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like my private driver like he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey drove me every pick me up at the airport
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drop me off the next day at the airport drove everywhere and he even brought me to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get that this is how good of a friend Casey is. He brought me to a chicken salad place for lunch. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey be clear, this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not a place that serves chicken salad. This is a place that serves only chicken
⏹️ ▶️ Marco salad, 12 different flavors of chicken salad, and you can pick and you can get like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, one scoop of each one, and what a good friend Casey is. Like, that’s amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of chicken salad did you get? I’m dying to know now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they had a bunch of different options. Casey got like a barbecue one that I sampled, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their classic, I wanted to know what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John their regular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I also got one that had pineapple and stuff in it. It was fun.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s funny you say ugh about the barbecue, because I understand where you’re coming from. For the record, this is a chain
⏹️ ▶️ Casey called Chicken Salad Chick, I think it’s only in the Southeast US, and they do a couple of other things besides
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chicken salad, but for all intents and purposes, it’s all chicken salad. And they have something like 12 of them, I forget exactly how many,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’ll put a link in the show notes, but it’s Chicken Salad Chick, right? So all of the names are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey silly, like takes on girls’ names. The Barbie, think the doll with the letter Q, barbecue,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get it, Barbie, Q, barbecue. I love that one. It is a very subtle barbecue flavor, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyone I know that has tried it has at the very least said, oh, that’s pretty good. I get why you would go,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ugh, John, but truly it’s quite tasty.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It doesn’t look
⏹️ ▶️ John as barbecuey as I thought. It’s just like barely pink.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, you get like a hint of the barbecue flavor, but it’s not like overwhelming. It’s not just like a chicken salad
⏹️ ▶️ John doused in barbecue sauce.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no, no, no, no. Then Marco got the classic Carol, and I forget what the other one was.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fruity Fran? No, you didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco have apple. The only one that has pineapple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it doesn’t matter. But my perception of Marco is that, generally speaking, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would like something a little fancier than an equivalent to like a Panera Bread. But I was casting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about thinking, where could I take Marco Arment for a meal that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would be quick and easy after he’s traveled? And even though the travel, I believe, was relatively easy,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s still travel, it’s still tiring and whatnot. And I thought, oh, this is a man who used to go for chicken salad,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what, every other day, every day for lunch.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why are you avoiding saying that you’re trying to take him to a place that is like, you know, uniquely Southern?
⏹️ ▶️ John Cause that seems like what you did.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, that wasn’t the, but that wasn’t the impetus for it. The impetus was, this is a man who appreciates
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a chicken salad, let’s get some chicken salad. I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, your other choice, I guess, would have been barbecue. Like you want to take him to something, someplace he can’t get. Well, hold on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just you wait. Funny you might, we did barbecue the next day for lunch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey It sounded like a very healthy trip.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It was amazing. The chicken
⏹️ ▶️ Casey salad wasn’t terrible. I’m sure it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible. And barbecue is mostly protein. They have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey red velvet cake too. We didn’t have red velvet cake though.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanted to fill up entirely on chicken salad. I’m like, I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything else here. I’m not gonna like, you know, I’m not gonna waste a stomach space on like potato salad or whatever. No, I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have more chicken salad. Oh, they have egg salad too, very nice. Yeah, but like that’s like going to a steakhouse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and ordering the fish. you can do it, but like that’s not really what it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John for. I mean the distance between egg salad and chicken salad is not as far as the distance between fish and steak.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco maybe you’re mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John eating mayonnaise in both cases.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s true. Anyway, regardless, even though we had this amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chicken salad place and the following day, amazing barbecue. That was actually not the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco highlight of the trip. The highlight of this trip was the goose show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was incredible. It was so good. It was so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. On multiple levels like number one you know I’ve only there’s only once the second time I’ve seen them it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say the second best concert I have ever seen like the number one best was fish at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sphere night three that I went to that was that was number one for me this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number two it was that good of a show like goose puts on and this again I’ve seen I seen them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I saw them a year ago and that was also a great show But they’re even better now. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting refined and they’re getting more time together and more, you know, a bigger catalog
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was an amazing performance. It was an amazing show They played so many of my favorite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco songs including some that they hardly ever play. So that was very Very rewarding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all of that was topped off by the topper that Casey
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Seemed to really enjoy it now some backstory here You know the listeners might recall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey, and I often have some debates about whether his band
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mr.. Dave Matthews Is considered a jam band or not and so I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well goose is unquestionably a jam band So let me let me bring I knew
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey probably couldn’t handle fish on his first try I unless maybe I slipped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in some gummies, then you know, then anybody could enjoy it, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey know, for that all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, but I figured like you know an unadorned Casey probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would not go right from Dave to fish like that’s a big jump. Goose has a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco closer to mainstream appeal compared to fish, and so I thought this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a good like step into my musical world. Maybe I thought maybe case you would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enjoy it And it would at least show him like, when I say that Dave Matthews is kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a jam band, but not really, like this is kind of what I’m comparing to, it’s like this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is definitely a jam band. And maybe, I thought maybe this would allow him to just like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mildly appreciate the difference. But instead, like days before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the trip, Casey was like listening to a bunch of goose, like in preparation for the show,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting really into it. And I’m like, oh boy, this could really become like an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fan here. And not only was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey visibly happy during the show, he was moving more than I was.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now granted, you know, this is still like me doing my like, you know, white guy at a jam band
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dancing. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let’s not get carried away with what I mean by moving. It’s pretty limited.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No hard same on that, but yes, I’m with you. I’m with you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco To have brought you to this, to have forced you to go listen to this band that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably didn’t think you would enjoy. I mean, that’s not entirely true, but finish your thought. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to see you get super into it and seem to really enjoy it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco incredibly heartening. And it was a wonderful trip for lots of reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey was amazing as a friend and as a chauffeur, and I got to spend a lot of time with his family, and that was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really nice. And of course the music was really nice, but to also, you know, expand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fandom of one of my favorite bands into somebody who I would describe as maybe a light
⏹️ ▶️ Marco skeptic of the genre was really quite special.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I appreciate it. I was very glad you came down. It was a semi last second thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the funny thing about it is it was whatever the recording we did right before I left for Memphis,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you had kind of, what is the term of phrase, like floated the trial balloon or whatever and said, hey, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey goose is a thing. It’s coming to Richmond. Maybe we should do it. And I was like, okay, yeah, sure. I’m sure it would be fine. And then as I’m trying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get to the airport, you’re like, Hey, let’s do it. Let’s buy tickets. Let’s go. And you weren’t doing anything wrong, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m in, I’m like trying to get to the airport and I’m like, okay, fine, sure. Great. Whatever. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And, uh, and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure it was, I, I, at the time I’m like, I’m sure it’ll all work out. It’ll be great. Uh, and so I go to Memphis, I do my thing. I come back from Memphis. I’m like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all right, now I got to do my deep dive on goose. And I had heard a little bit of their stuff in the past. Like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, the algorithm had pushed a song or two here and there and I liked it. It was fine. It was good. I liked it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And, uh, I generally just really love live music. I don’t have the occasion to go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see live music very often, but it, as I said to you probably 15 times over the couple of,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or the really 24 hours you were here, you know, if you put me at a fish show, as much as I joke, as much as I give
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you a hard time about it, I bet you, I would enjoy it. I might leave it and say, that was fun. I don’t need to do it again,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but at the time I think I would enjoy a Phish concert. And I figured it would be like that with Goose,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe a little bit better. But as it turns out, these four dudes are unbelievably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey freaking good. And now I’ve basically listened to nothing but Goose ever since.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ruined. I’m ruined forever. It is really quite incredible. And the show was phenomenal.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we went with a friend of mine and it was great to have two fans literally on either side of me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I cannot thank Marco enough, not only for buying these tickets annoyingly, but also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey courteously refusing payment for them. But truly, granted this is a very small amphitheater in Richland,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Virginia, this may not be helpful to anyone else, but I tell you what, the seats Marco chose, they were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perfect. They were absolutely perfect. And it was such an unbelievable privilege and treat, not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey only to be there with Marco and my new friend Tyler, but also these seats were just incredible. And the concert
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was incredible. What’s great about these kinds of bands, jam bands or what have you, is that the next
⏹️ ▶️ Casey day, their entire concert from the soundboard was available on Bandcamp.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ll link the show. You can download it for, you know, 10 plus dollars if you want, which is what we did. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey incredible. And then they also simulcast video. So if you happen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to know a guy who’s good with command line tools, as maybe Marco does.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can get a one month subscription to nugs.net and you might be able
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something on nugs.net if you try hard enough. So that means
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hypothetically, one could have an entire video recording of this incredible concert. So it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was a really great 24 hours. It was too quick. I don’t fault you for the time you spent here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t fault you for for not making like a week long trip out of it. But it was great because at the end of the trip, I thought,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey damn, that was great. I hope we get to do that again soon. And that’s the right way to leave a vacation or trip or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever you want to call it. But thank you again, Marco, for being such a wonderful person to hang out with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for 24 straight hours. It was really great. And you had my favorite barbecue joint in town, ZZQ,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I like to think that went pretty well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, it was amazing. And I think the best part of it all is that because I know Minecraft,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was able to talk Minecraft to Casey’s son. And because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey does not play Minecraft, that made me the coolest person in the world in that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know enough Minecraft to have a conversation with him. And I understand the general
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gist of it, but I certainly do not have anywhere near the experience that Marco does. And so again, speaking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of trial balloons, I think Declan kind of threw up a trial balloon to see kind of whether or not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco would bite And because Marco’s a good person, he did the kindness of biting. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then it was basically like, okay, let’s talk Minecraft. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was one of those situations where like, Declan, come on, I need you to go do this, or we need to go do that. I forget exactly what the situation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was, but we got to go to the concert. I need you to wrap it up, big guy. So he was overjoyed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to talk your ear off, which was both adorable and also kind of funny.
⏹️ ▶️ John At least they didn’t ask you to install any mods. That’ll come in the next visit. I don’t know how you two have managed to avoid that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sure just give us time. It’ll happen. It’s too late for Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Very true. But no, it was really great. And you know what? I was starting to go down this path. I got myself sidetracked. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again, I love live music. Even shows that I don’t think I would enjoy, I end up typically enjoying because I just love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey watching live music. I don’t believe in reincarnation, but if reincarnation were a thing, I want to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey come back as a musician. Not even a good one, not even a popular one, just someone that could actually play music.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I just am, I am in awe at the amount of sound. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said noise, I think on Friday nights, cause I couldn’t find a better word for it, but, and I didn’t mean it in a pejorative way, but the amount
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of sound that came from four guys, it was just unreal. And I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if goose is, and you’re, you know, anyone’s particular cup of tea, if you’re listening to this. Um, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you are willing to just let a song really and truly air out in a way that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even a Dave Matthews fan would be like, Whoa, they really aired that one out. Um, it, it really is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey incredible. And I really do recommend their stuff. They have plenty of stuff on Apple Music and I presume on Spotify
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as well. Uh, but I ended up leaving that show very, very much a fan. And I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting to the point that I was a fan by the time I walked in, but I was very much a fan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey leaving that show and they really are incredible. And I think Marco had said to me during, during the show, which was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know we’re going on long, I apologize, but I can’t help myself. Uh, there was a set break in the middle of the, of the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the show. So they played like hour, hour and a half. And then they had a separate for all the old dudes to go pee, which the three old dudes went
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and did. And it was incredible, but we’re talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco to all six thousand other old,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? Exactly. We’re talking during the sec break. And I, and I think Mark would said to me, uh, you know, what’s incredible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about goose is it’s clear that they are on the rise and we are catching them on the early
⏹️ ▶️ Casey end of that. And I think from what I can tell, that’s very much true. So if you want to get down on the ground floor or nearly the ground
⏹️ ▶️ Casey floor, now’s the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Go, go see them while they’re still playing medium sized venues sometimes. Cause like, you know, they, they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already sold out Madison Square garden. Like they’re, they’re on their way up. It’s going to it’s going to become
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the venues are going to get larger over time and the tickets will become more scarce and more expensive And yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is it’s very special to be able to see them like in a small venue small medium-sized venue like this and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And to be able to get those seats was incredible And it’s funny like and there was there was a point like in the second
⏹️ ▶️ Marco set they went I would say in Jamban terms I’m a little more atmospheric
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The second set was a little more exploratory and there was some kind of discordant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sections that they were playing around with. And I kind of look at Casey, I’m like, okay, this was a bit challenging
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a non-Jam Band
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey person. I’m kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gauging, how’s he taking this part? And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he got through it and I’m like, okay, if he can get through that, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s ready for Fish next.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey All right, pump the brakes there, big shoes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ll see. We’ll see. I don’t know. It’s probably only a matter of time. But no, Goose, to my ears, Goose
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, and you said this starting the segment, Goose is considerably more approachable and less esoteric. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe if you fast forward two years, maybe I’ll have a totally different opinion, but sitting here now, that’s how I would describe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. But again, thank you for facilitating, for making it happen, for dealing with me kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey half paying attention to you as you’re trying to book tickets as I’m on the way to the airport and again for purchasing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the tickets because they truly hand on heart. I cannot think of a better place to stand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in that venue than where we were standing. We were incredibly lucky. Thank you much, Lee. Let’s do it again.
Encounters and “Edinburgh”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do some fun stories in Recognition Corner. Richard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ernie was recognized in an ATP Pixel shirt upon arriving in a place in Scotland.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ll get to that in a second. We talked about this last week. Matt Smith wrote in and said, I was that person that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recognized the guy in Scotland. And apparently, I just absolutely murdered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the pronunciation of the city. I am happy to make an attempt, but John, would you like to instruct me on the correct
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pronunciation options, please?
⏹️ ▶️ John This shades a little bit into, you did pronounce it weirdly, and this shades a little bit into the discussion I had in Rectifs
⏹️ ▶️ John about like, do you pronounce the name of a place in the native language of the
⏹️ ▶️ John place? But here’s the thing, the native language of Scotland is ostensibly English, or
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the most common language in Scotland is English.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For a loose definition, it’s very much English different.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, okay. But so that’s like, all right, so the example here in Rectif is like Paris. We say Paris,
⏹️ ▶️ John but French people don’t say Paris. They say Perry or whatever, right? And are we pronouncing
⏹️ ▶️ John it wrong when we say Paris? No, because that’s how you say the capital city of France in English.
⏹️ ▶️ John So how do you say this city in Scotland? Should we say
⏹️ ▶️ John it in a Scottish accent or should we not? And what is the, what is the quote unquote, like American English way
⏹️ ▶️ John to say this city? So you didn’t say, you just pronounce it phonetically, right? What
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve heard in the United States is one of the pronunciations that a Scottish person will tell
⏹️ ▶️ John you is just wrong. They’ll say, it’s not Edinburgh, like a borough of New York City. There are five
⏹️ ▶️ John boroughs, right? Edinburgh. That’s the Scottish person will say, nope, wrong. You don’t have it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like, well, that’s not how you pronounce it. But I do hear that a lot in the US. But anyway, going
⏹️ ▶️ John by what Scottish people say, and I looked this up and tried to find some reasonable pronunciations. I found a funny one
⏹️ ▶️ John from someone saying, here’s three valid pronunciations, uh, which like
⏹️ ▶️ John based on how much of a hurry you’re in, how much are you just swallow up the word? So one is Edinburgh
⏹️ ▶️ John where it’s B U H R U H Borough Edinburgh. If you’re even more in more
⏹️ ▶️ John of a hurry, you can say Edinburgh. Now the borough becomes Edinburgh
⏹️ ▶️ John and if you’re really in a hurry and you’re native scholars, you can say Embra. Yeah. And now I’m not saying these
⏹️ ▶️ John with a Scottish accent, So maybe they sound weird, but anyway, Edinburgh. They definitely sound weird. Edinburgh
⏹️ ▶️ John sounds to me like a Scottish way of saying borough, but I guess not. We can’t say Edinburgh, so we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John say Edinburgh. And there you have it. So we say Melbourne and Edinburgh
⏹️ ▶️ John or Embrough. Anyway, it’s definitely not Edinburgh. And Casey, you said Edinburgh, which is definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrong. Yeah, I don’t know where that came from. That is lunacy. I will be the first to fall on my sword about that one. That was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John But you’re just pronouncing
⏹️ ▶️ John it phonetically, which is fine. But that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the point. I after college, I moved to Pittsburgh.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then continuing in recognition corner, Santiago Hervéla writes, long time listener, first time caller
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and day one overcast user writing in. Hey. On episode 659, you told the story about how Mark Christian was wearing an ATP shirt in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Manhattan when they were tapped by some nerd who showed them their overcast app, currently listening to ATP. That was me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m that nerd. Mark was very gracious when he thought I was just grabbing his attention for something and even more so when I showed him my phone screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was hilarious to hear you describe that interaction while I was walking to the office, not two blocks from that same spot.
⏹️ ▶️ John Remember when I got this, ATP is becoming a misconnection for nerds. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John on the subway and you were listening to a nerdy podcast and I said hi, but then I didn’t get your number.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s great. Thanks and love connections here.
AirPods Pro 3 comfort, ANC
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s talk AirPods 3 and particularly the ear lottery. Michael writes, I had the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey same AirPods Pro 3 experience as Marco, and I also ordered the AirPods Pro 2 again. I can keep them in my ear all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey day for getting them there. I spent two weeks trying to get the AirPods Pro 3 working for me. It was OK initially, but it started
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to hurt quickly. Franklin Delano Stallone writes, I had the same issue as Marco with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new AirPods, but it went away in just about over a week. So I’ve either stretched out my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ears or a level of earwax on the AirPods has helped. AirPods would always be a bit of a pain for me when I clean them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fully, so there’s possibly something there. But while the noise canceling is better, I kind of wish they’d go back to the old style.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Matthew Schaefer writes, My wife has had AirPod Pro 2 since around the time they were released.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey She said they don’t cancel noise very well. This made my ears perk up because pretty much everyone agrees that the ANC is very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good. So I had her stand next to a running fan and switch the ANC off and on and she said there was really wasn’t much of a difference.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey She could hear the fan just fine. This was shocking to me. Apparently, she just thought her experience was normal this whole time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had her put in my brand new AirPods Pro 3s and her words exactly were, that’s approximately 5,000
⏹️ ▶️ Casey times better. AirPods Pro 2 didn’t fit in her ears regardless of which tips she
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used. I had no clue this whole time that they’ve been working about as good as cheap non-ANC earbuds.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Obviously, I went out and bought her some AirPods Pro 3s right then and there. Finally, Michael Gock writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me, the AirPods Pro 3 were slightly uncomfortable and I ended up going up in tip size. They didn’t go in as far,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excuse me, they don’t go in as far and they’re You mentioned trying smaller sizes, but did you try the larger ones?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So interestingly, so this, when Michael said this, it kind of stuck in my brain.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had literally shipped them off to be returned that morning.
⏹️ ▶️ John no. You’re so hasty to throw out your non-working keyboards and return your AirPods. You should chill a little.
⏹️ ▶️ John At least wait one week for followup.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I didn’t want to hit the two week deadline. So I’m like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s annoying. And then there were these YouTubers who were like, well if you angle them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco differently. Like, you know, because what direction are the stems pointing? Most people, it’s somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco between straight down and straight, like, you know, 40 or 90 degrees
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forward. And it turns out a lot of people are saying, like, if you angle them too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far down, they fit wrong, basically, or they fit less comfortably for a lot of people. What you’re supposed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do, apparently, with the threes is angle them so the stems basically form a line towards
⏹️ ▶️ John So on that theory, we’ve all, I think we’ve all seen people with AirPods of many different generations
⏹️ ▶️ John with those stems pointing in every direction imaginable. Yeah. Sometimes in just ridiculous
⏹️ ▶️ John directions. You’re like, there’s no way those are in right. Like, but hearing all the things about how, from like the doctors
⏹️ ▶️ John about how the inside of our ear canals go off in all sorts of weird directions. I do wonder if it’s just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, the whole reason there’s the ear lottery is like, everyone’s ears are a little bit different. And so for some people, maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe the, when we see them with like the, the stems pointing like up at an angle and out away from their head
⏹️ ▶️ John like antennas or something, maybe that’s how their ear is shaped and that’s the best position for them or maybe they just don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know how to use ear pods. I don’t know, but like, I do feel like that there is a huge
⏹️ ▶️ John amount of variability in what the correct angle is for you. I know which video you’re talking about, oh, point it towards your mouth. If that
⏹️ ▶️ John works for you, great, but I feel like the lesson is, try that thing pointing in different directions because
⏹️ ▶️ John who knows which direction will work for your weird ears.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so between those videos and between Michael’s post here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like kind of infecting my brain, like I didn’t, I tried the default medium and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything smaller. I didn’t actually try the large tips. So I’m like, you know what, fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Amazon could deliver me a pair the next morning. Oh, here we go. I’ve been testing them out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the large tips and with them pointing towards my mouth instead of a little bit further down.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They are a lot more comfortable that way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco awesome. Comfortable enough for you to keep them though? I think so. In reality,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are better in a few ways I do care about. Like, they do sound better. They don’t sound massively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better, but they do sound better. You know, as I mentioned in the past, like, you know, the bass is a little bit better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The treble is a decent amount better. The sound stage is a bit wider. Like, you know, they do sound
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better and they do isolate better during noise canceling mode. Almost too well for like walking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around actually. But, you know, there’s lots of other times when you wanna use them. So like, I think overall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are better. The water resistance is better. You know, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s lots of things about them that are better. So I want them to work for me. Ultimately,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the largest ear tips and with them angled towards my mouth, they fit comfortably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough that so far, I haven’t tried them for more than like two hours straight, but for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two hours straight, I was able to wear them and it was fine. And that was not the case with the smaller ear tips, ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all. So I’ve now gotten to the point where they are fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The twos are still more comfortable, but the threes are now good enough with these modifications.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I can keep them. I’m still not sure that I will keep them because the twos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are easier and better for me, but I probably will keep them now. We’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ John So wait until you build up some of your wax.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then with regard, further regard to active noise cancellation, Tony Denke writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I used the AirPods Pro 3 on a recent long haul 787 flight and compared them to the Bose QuietComfort Ultra
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over ear headphones. The AirPods Pro 3 were massively better than the Ultras. I was amazed. Combine that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the lighter, less vibration noise risk from contact with a hard surface in the seat, the AirPods Pro 3 won.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Battery life was seriously impressive too.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is a very real thing. If you’ve ever been on a plane, especially if you have the window seat, like I always try to have,
⏹️ ▶️ John and if you were wearing over ear headphones and you touch the outside of the case of those headphones to the wall of the plane.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh yeah. It’s a bad news. And that’s a much less likely to happen when you’ve got a tiny earbud.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I mean, the noise cancellation is so much better on the threes. Um, and it was all like the twos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were already good enough that I would use them on planes because again, like the, the bag space
⏹️ ▶️ Marco savings are just so big that it was always worth it to me. Um, and then the threes take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it even further. And so I think like, as long as the threes can be comfortable for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you, I don’t see much reason for most people to get the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco giant headphones anymore. If you are getting them for noise cancellation on planes or during work or during
⏹️ ▶️ Marco walking around or whatever, again, if the Pros 3’s are comfortable enough for you,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they’re better than the over-ear headphones for most people most of the time.
Live Translation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then apparently, Marco, you’ve done a little bit of an experiment.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, I did too. Oh, cool. I’d love to. So a bunch of people kept asking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me, like, Hey, have you seen the have you done the live translation with the new AirPods? Like regular people in my life, like people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like in stores and stuff, friends, like people who don’t follow the tech that closely, but they’ve heard about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they don’t know they can probably do them with their own AirPods.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. So yeah, number one thing to know, again, if people in your life are asking you about the live translation feature, keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in mind that it’s it doesn’t require the pro It also works on the Pro 2s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the AirPods 4 with noise cancellation. So if you have either of those models, you already have access
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to live translation. Download Apple’s translation app if you don’t already have it, and there’s a whole tab, a live
⏹️ ▶️ Marco conversation tab. So I’ve actually tried this now. We had a staff party for the restaurant,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we had some chefs who speak Spanish. And so we tried it out, like Spanish to English. I downloaded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the model, so it should be like maximum speed. We had our server speaking in English, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we had a chef speaking in Spanish and we had them kind of gauge how accurate it was. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was okay. So number one thing is it is a little bit awkward when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no one’s done it before or seen it before. Like you gotta be like, oh wait, who holds the phone? Where do I face it? Who’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking at what? Do I speak? Does it speak to me? So getting all that worked out, it takes some doing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then the Spanish option, it’s Spanish,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco parentheses, Spain. So this is like Spanish as spoken in Spain, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco varies a lot, you know, as from like Spanish in other regions and languages and cultures and everything like that. And so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I didn’t say anything about that, but like within the first two sentences, our chef
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who was looking at the translation, he’s like, this is Spain Spanish. Like he knew instantly. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not what we speak in the kitchen. This is a Spain thing. This is very different.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So he instantly called it out. But overall, it was good enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get the gist of what people are saying. It’s not perfect by any means. It missed a lot of things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It missed a lot of nuance. It missed a lot of idioms, slang. It missed a lot of that stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it did communicate the gist of what was being said. It was not super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reliable. It was not super graceful. And it was not super fast. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it did work. And so, and I tested it a second time When I brought it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco earlier today, I brought it to another place where some friends work and they tried it with one of their people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who speaks Spanish and one of their people who speaks English and did the same thing and basically had exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same result. Like, it’s a little awkward. No one knows what to do quite, you know, at first,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but then you try it and it’s like, okay, that’s kind of the gist of what I said. And, you know, and it’s slow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think it is going to be the kind of thing that like it will be useful in a pinch,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco certainly while traveling, if you gotta work something out with somebody. It’s not like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very natural and conversational. Like you have to speak pretty slowly, you have to speak pretty loudly for it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to hear you or hear the other person correctly. Again, like it is slow and awkward when people are not used to it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s the kind of thing that I can see being about as useful as like Google Translate has always been.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s the kind of thing that I can definitely see Apple’s version being fine,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but Google and maybe OpenAI probably do a much better job of this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And certainly, as we go into the future, I can see Apple’s version staying exactly the way it is now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Google and OpenAI’s versions being a lot better overall. So I’m glad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this tech exists. It’s very impressive, but it’s not quite as natural as what everybody might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assume or want it to be. And I don’t expect Apple is going to be the best company to do this long term.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, very quick question. Were you basically a passive viewer for lag or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey listener in this? Like you weren’t doing any of the talking? Yes. Oh, and that was still supported. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just whatever it hears, it’s bringing in and doing its thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I was like, you know, the listener was wearing my AirPods and holding my phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, okay. I got you. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was watching and like and kind of telling people because they would ask, wait, do I talk? I say, no, you talk, you listen. Like I was kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of telling them what to do. I see. Okay. You know, because they didn’t really know. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a cool feature. It’s not going to revolutionize communication
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any more than Google Translate does, but that’s not nothing. Like that’s pretty useful in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of cases. So I think it’ll be a great like casual travel aid,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s not gonna be as seamless as it was in the commercial.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, John, you said you also tested it?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I wish I had saved some of these things. First of all, I don’t even remember If we if this follow-up ever made it into
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the episodes But someone had sent this thing that’s saying that Apple’s live translation despite the translate
⏹️ ▶️ John app having like the option of like oh We’ll go to the server for this, but we’ll download these models fall blah supposedly the
⏹️ ▶️ John air pods live translation Only ever uses local models for some privacy reason that’s if true
⏹️ ▶️ John And it seems like it was based on that link that I can no longer find that we may or may not have talked about in the past episode
⏹️ ▶️ John That is gonna hold Apple back because obviously the models that run on the server can be way better Than anything running locally
⏹️ ▶️ John now obviously have more latency when you go to the server But if you have a really good network connection that can be alleviated
⏹️ ▶️ John Especially since it seems like most of the time you’re waiting for the model to compute the result and maybe a server could actually even Be faster
⏹️ ▶️ John there if you can get the audio up to it or the whatever text up to it as fast as possible Depending on what it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John doing Anyway when this came out like when when it was first Available
⏹️ ▶️ John I tried it, but I didn’t have anyone to speak another language So I tried to give it like what I felt like was a really challenging
⏹️ ▶️ John scenario where I’m gonna sit in front of my computer screen and I’m going to pull
⏹️ ▶️ John up a Spanish-speaking YouTube channel
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ John channel is not doing like what you’re being coached by a Marco and trying to speak in non
⏹️ ▶️ John idiomatic very simple sentences to get your point across slowly and clearly
⏹️ ▶️ John right this was just you know rapid-fire real you know like a youtuber but in Spanish.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, and I was amazed that as far as I could tell it
⏹️ ▶️ John again, it got the gist of it. I can’t judge the translation because I don’t speak Spanish, but
⏹️ ▶️ John looking at, because it shows you both of them looking at like what it thinks the Spanish is and then what the English is. I can’t tell you whether
⏹️ ▶️ John the English is a correct reflection of the Spanish, but I can tell you the Spanish was looking kind of like what they were saying. I was
⏹️ ▶️ John amazed that it worked at all, honestly, because this is not a real person. It’s a computer screens playing out of the computer
⏹️ ▶️ John speakers. I’m wearing air pods. Uh, and And yeah, there is a delay, but I was impressed
⏹️ ▶️ John that it did anything. I’ve heard people report, we had some feedback. Some people said, I tried it,
⏹️ ▶️ John had these two people tried, somebody spoke and the thing just didn’t do anything. Like it didn’t, it didn’t, it didn’t start translating
⏹️ ▶️ John at all. Like as with any of the stuff in iOS 26 or any of this new stuff, there are definitely bugs
⏹️ ▶️ John and I can imagine scenarios where it just falls on its face and doesn’t think there’s anything that’s supposed to translate or can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John understand it at all. Again, Marco mentioned the various different dialects of Spanish. are enough of them and they’re different
⏹️ ▶️ John enough from each other, including not just the pronunciation, but the actual words and everything about them can change
⏹️ ▶️ John in ways that can thwart the model. So, uh, Apple has added more languages and hopefully they’ll add more like, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John localizations of different kinds of Spanish. Um, even within Spain, there’s just plenty
⏹️ ▶️ John of different kinds of Spanish within the regions, but it is impressive that it works at all. It’s again, it’s not really an AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ John feature. It’s really just a feature of your phone that is connecting to the AirPods, which is fine. Uh, but I was impressed that
⏹️ ▶️ John it was able to do a YouTube video. I could probably watch the YouTube video. Now honestly it would be better if I
⏹️ ▶️ John just turned on the auto-generated English subtitles for the YouTube video because I I can imagine Google doing a server side is still better,
⏹️ ▶️ John But, uh, it was neat.
Sponsor: OpenCase (code ATP)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this episode by OpenCase, a patented iPhone case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a literal open space in the back of the case to make MagSafe accessories work a lot better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So here’s how this works. The OpenCase, it has like a big oval hole in the back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where the MagSafe accessories go, things like wallets and whatever else. And the great thing about this is like, you know, when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we know with magnets, we talked about like the sandwich squishing force. I forgot how I put it, like the sliding force.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you try to pull it off the back of the case, like straight off, it’s hard to pull it off. But if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slide it, it’s a lot easier. So what the open case does is it gives a space
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the wallet or whatever back there to stay in the middle and it blocks it from sliding easily.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Which means a couple of things. Number one, it’s just thinner overall because you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not putting your wallet or whatever on top of the case, it’s just going directly against the phone. But the main
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing is, it makes it really hard for it to fall off in everyday use. So it’s much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more secure. You don’t have like your wallet constantly popping off the back of your phone. It also, you know, because it has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this big cutout, it’s also just a nice minimal, you know, case. Like you still get the protection around the edges
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where it really matters, around the corners and everything, around the camera. But overall, you save bulk,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you save weight, and you have, you know, a big window if you’re not using a MagSafe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accessory to see like the color of your phone. you get the nice new orange phone, you wanna see that color, right? You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can see the beauty of the phone, you can see the Apple logo, all that stuff. So it’s nice. So OpenCase, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a great option for cases. There’s no like vendor lock-in or anything. You know, you don’t have to buy their accessories.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everything fits in there that reasonably can, but it’s a great option. I really think, honestly, I’m going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to order one and try it because it looks pretty cool. And I’m always looking for a good case and this was a great one.
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Filling iPhone storage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. With regard to last week’s Ask ATP question about filling SSD
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and particularly iPhone storage, David Schaub writes, my iPhone 8 got full once, resulting in a reboot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey loop whenever springboard loaded. Yikes. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accept a call from the lock screen, add a person, type in the passcode, go to control center, try and change
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Wi-Fi, go into Wi-Fi settings, and then once you’re in settings, delete all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the things. Never let, David continues, never let an iPhone have less than about 5 gigs of free
⏹️ ▶️ Casey space. Why does iOS let you fly so close to the sun? Recovery should have a boot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey directly to settings option. Don’t make the phones angry. They don’t like it. Nope.
iPhone transfer speeds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Additionally, with regard to phones, Mike Taffet did some science, which was very kind of him. Mike writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just transferred from an iPhone 17 Pro Max to an iPhone 17 Pro, both wired via two and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a half gigabit ethernet adapters that also take in power, through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a 10 gigabit Ubiquiti switch. Neither device ran
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out of power, but also the Unify interface allowed me to see the bandwidth being used by each
⏹️ ▶️ Casey port. It seems this transfer was running on average about 500 to 600 megabits per second. So for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey simplicity, I don’t see any reason why Wi-Fi isn’t the best option.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, the USB port is 10 gigabits. This was running at 500 to 600 megabits, probably because it was transferring
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of small files.
Thunderbolt-USB follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then we have some feedback with regard to Marco’s USB Odyssey. This was Marco figuring out that, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey discovering that you couldn’t plug in a USB 2 device to your Thunderbolt Hub,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? Is that a fair summary?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. If any USB 2 device that was plugged in through any Thunderbolt Hub in any method,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco except through the Pro Display XDR’s back ports, would not work anymore, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had traced the problem to a bad cable. And once I changed out the cable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that ran from the Thunderbolt Hub to the laptop, the problem was fixed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin, CFO Alphabet and Google, Inc. Jack Wolborn writes, I had a Thunderbolt cable fail on me a little over a year
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago, and while it wasn’t the same symptoms that Marco had, it did involve only some devices working. In my case, it was the USB devices
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that worked and the Thunderbolt ones that didn’t. Sid Poulk writes, I’m starting to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think that Tahoe and the latest version of Sequoia made a change in the Thunderbolt or USB that breaks older
⏹️ ▶️ Casey USB or Thunderbolt hubs. My OWC Thunderbolt 4 hub stopped serving USB. CalDigit 3 at work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, kernel panics my Mac unless I unplug all of my USB devices. I bought a CalDigit TS5
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for my M1 Max MacBook Pro and it works flawlessly. Fabian writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, in this Fabian was arguably the best person to describe what they were talking about, but we heard this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from a lot of people and I should have thought of this as well. Uh, but anyway, Fabian writes, my USB extension cable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey came with a sticker that reads quote USB 2.0 low speed devices, such as a mouse, keyboard, USB 2.0
⏹️ ▶️ Casey flash drive, USB 2.0 of hub. et cetera, this is not Fabian’s fault, this is the sticker,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can only work with one side of the ultra high rate extension cables interface. If USB 2.0 devices do not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work as you expected, please flip the type C connector over and connect again. So Fabian writes, maybe that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why you had inconsistent results with the same hardware and inadvertently flipped connector. Additionally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Keith Heaton provided a pin out or whatever you would like to call it, a pin diagram
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the USB C connector. And we will put a link to that in the show notes. And it says that Keith
⏹️ ▶️ Casey writes, USB 2 data runs on the A6 and A7 or B6 and B7 pins of a type C connector.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If only the A bank or B bank has an issue, you might be able to keep using that expensive cable by rotating the connector 180
⏹️ ▶️ Casey degrees. So the hub and the computer are both using the functional bank. Even without a cable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tester, there are only four possible combinations. This is worth noting as well. So in my tailgate tub
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we’ve talked about in the past, I have a GL-iNet router that can take
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in tethering, including via phone, via a USB-A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey connector. But on the front of the tailgate tub, I put in USB-C connectors.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so internal to the tailgate tub, I have a C to A line, cable, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’ve noticed that I need to make sure that I connect it the exact same way. So I drew on the connector, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, with like a silvery Sharpie that shows up in the black connector, which side needs to be on which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey side of the input on the tailgate tub. So basically I’m connecting the two sides correctly. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I found, wait, why is this not working? Why is this not working? Why is this, oh, flip, there it goes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey works perfectly now. And I didn’t think of this when we were recording, but I should have, so my apologies to you, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I mean, if it makes you feel any better, I would not accept that solution.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, because yeah, what it basically says is like, if one side’s pins go bad, or whatever part of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco controller, like if one side of pins goes bad, the other side might still work, so flip it over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and try it. That to me is not a solution. The solution
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is replace the thing that is bad because I’m not gonna, like, it’d be one thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if this is the kind of thing, like, if it’s part of my setup that I just plug it in once and it stays there for years,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe I’d tolerate that. But this is like, when I take my laptop to go somewhere, I unplug
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this cable and bring it somewhere, and then when I get back, I plug this cable back into the laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I would not tolerate it working half the time and having to flip it over for that situation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But to be clear, that’s not really the cable’s fault as far as I understand. It’s just circumstantially,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s USB 2 pins on both sides and perhaps-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but they’re duplicated. So theoretically, it should be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to, like, you should be able to plug in a USB-C or Thunderbolt cable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in either direction on either end of the cable, and everything should work. If everything is working properly, it does not matter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which direction you plug it in. What they’re saying basically is like, sometimes things don’t work properly and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it can start to matter. But in that case, like something is broken and so, you know, consider replacing it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or that thing with the sticker that Fabian sent is probably they left out two conductors to save money. Right,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco exactly. They’re trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to say, don’t bother with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Which to me is broken. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John and there was someone else wrote in, I don’t have the details of it, it was just like wrote in just a couple of hours ago
⏹️ ▶️ John about the idea of a dedicated, like the USB to alternate mode you have dedicated pins
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Thunderbolt cable just for USB. But the other version is where you don’t use that
⏹️ ▶️ John alternate mode and you tunnel everything through Thunderbolt. The theory is that the XDR is tunneling everything through PCIe and Thunderbolt,
⏹️ ▶️ John whereas the cheaper hubs and other things are using the USB alternate mode and having dedicated wires,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is why if those if one set of those four wires, one pair of those four wires
⏹️ ▶️ John went bad on your cable, yeah, maybe it would work flipped, but I would definitely get a new cable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then with regard to active versus passive Thunderbolt cables. This was
⏹️ ▶️ John such a nightmare. There’s there’s like three things in here. But it’s because I thought, oh, we’ll get one thing in here.
⏹️ ▶️ John Someone said a thing. I’m like, let me try to get an authoritative source. And then you’ll see it just goes down this terrible rabbit hole
⏹️ ▶️ John where there’s no straightforward answer. But we will try to give you three buckets of information. See
⏹️ ▶️ John if you can reconcile them without reading the friggin Thunderbolt spec.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So on OWC’s website, they write that Thunderbolt three cables longer than 7
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tenths of a meter are active cables, which do not support DisplayPort. Thunderbolt 3
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cables that are one meter or longer, there are passive cables, which are 20 gigabit Thunderbolt 3.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They support 10 gigabit USB DisplayPort and works with a USB-C display directly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Active cables are up to 40 gigabit Thunderbolt 3, up to 480 megabit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey USB. It does support DisplayPort, but it does not work with a USB-C display directly.
⏹️ ▶️ John even that this is OWC like they’re a big hardware manufacturer for Mac stuff you figure their web They know what they’re talking about. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty authoritative source, right? It already from these two bullet points their contradictory Thunderbolt cables longer
⏹️ ▶️ John than 0.7 meters are active But then it tells me about a passive cable. That’s that’s one meter or longer, but it’s 20 gigabits
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that there are two bullet points to contradict each other if I have a meter cable Well, I’m sure that
⏹️ ▶️ John has to be active because it says if they’re longer than 0.7 meters They’re active except when they’re passive, but then
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re 20 gigabits, but then they have 10 gigabit USB but if you have a 40 gigabit one that’s active, then you only have 480 megabits USB.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sure, that’s just OWC. Then I’m like, because originally I came up with a Reddit result, but like, no, let me find
⏹️ ▶️ John something more authoritative. Let me go to OWC, but nope, now I’m going back to Reddit. All right,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so there’s a Rebbit, Rebbit, Rebbit, R-E-B-B-I-T. There’s a Reddit comment from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey LaughingMan11 on active versus passive Thunderbolt cables, which reads, cables rated at 40 gigabits
⏹️ ▶️ Casey per second with a length of 0.8 meters of all kinds, Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, USB 4, are 100% guaranteed to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be passive. If you see 40 gigabits certified cable at 0.8 meters or shorter, it is a passive cable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For distances between 0.8 and two meters, some cables are actually certified
⏹️ ▶️ Casey passive cables. I’ve seen cable manufacturers stretch and make one meter, 40 gigabit per
⏹️ ▶️ Casey second passive cables with no problems. They managed to squeeze the extra two tenths of a meter and keep up the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey signal integrity just fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John So again, there’s more info in that post. I just pulled this out, but at least it sounds very authoritative and you know, Laughing Man is
⏹️ ▶️ John a reference from an anime series that I like. So I’m on board with laughing man 11 from Reddit versus OWC, the
⏹️ ▶️ John company. But at least it’s not self-contradictory, these two points. And it does
⏹️ ▶️ John really outline that it is possible to have passive cables. In fact, passive cables that are longer than you would expect.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then, as with all things, we turn to Wikipedia. And Wikipedia writes, copper Thunderbolt 4 cables of up to one meter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are passive cables, while longer cables must integrate active signal conditioning circuitry. Two meters maximum
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the length of active cables available for most brands, including CalDigit, Cable Matters, et cetera. while Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is currently the only company that offers a three meter active copper cable.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s madness. It’s mad. Like just, I dare you to Google this. You notice how all the numbers change one meter
⏹️ ▶️ John point zero point eight zero point seven. Some companies have been extended to this thing. Active, passive, how fast things
⏹️ ▶️ John go. The only thing I took from this stupid adventure that I spent so long wandering through,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, and I found way more than just OWC, Reddit and Wikipedia, but this is a sampling is that
⏹️ ▶️ John passive Thunderbolt cables exist. That’s it. That’s all I can come away with. And they’re probably short.
Sponsor: Squarespace
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Synology updates
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We spoke about some alternatives to Synology a week or two ago. I forget exactly when it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was. But Colin McKellar writes, have you ever considered QNAP, NASA’s QNAP?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’re fairly equivalent to Synology in terms of hardware and capabilities, but they have not followed Synology in limiting the drives that can be
⏹️ ▶️ John So I looked at QNAP back in the day and I looked again when Colin mentioned it. And They’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John come pretty far since I last checked them out. Their software stack looks very Synology-ish, sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John down to the exact same like name brand apps or similar looking apps. And the other
⏹️ ▶️ John thing QNAP has going for them is that they support ZFS, which I like. It is,
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing about ZFS, and I looked at this when I was looking at the QNAP stuff, is like, it’s got
⏹️ ▶️ John way more features than, it’s got lots of cool features. It’s got like the automatic self-healing
⏹️ ▶️ John replication, it’s got tons and tons of options. But it is very enterprise-y in that it
⏹️ ▶️ John is farther from the Drobo dream than the Synology set up. The Drobo dream,
⏹️ ▶️ John for people who don’t remember Drobo, was you buy this big box full of drives, and whenever you need more storage, you add another drive
⏹️ ▶️ John of any size you feel like, and it just adds to the space, and it maintains whatever level
⏹️ ▶️ John of data protection that you had.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it dies disastrously.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, well, that was the pitch, right? Because that appeals to consumers. Consumers aren’t gonna buy
⏹️ ▶️ John fleets of things with giant hard drives that are like, I’m just gonna buy as many drives as I can afford. And later
⏹️ ▶️ John when I want more space, I’ll buy another drive or whatever I can afford and stick it in. And I don’t have to have
⏹️ ▶️ John all the drives be the same size or make subgroups or make separate VDevs and add them to the ZFS,
⏹️ ▶️ John RAID Z pool and all like, I don’t want to think about that. I just wanna buy a drive for whatever amount of money I have and stick
⏹️ ▶️ John it in. Three years later, do the same thing and stick it in. And I want data protection, whatever data protection I picked
⏹️ ▶️ John when I set up this array, I want to that data protection to be maintained as I add drives and I don’t care what size they are.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that is not what ZFS delivers. ZFS wants you to add things in a more
⏹️ ▶️ John regimented manner. It wants, it’s not as flexible. When you add things, you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John always add any drive of any size. Sometimes it does want you, you can add like drives in pairs and add
⏹️ ▶️ John new things to your pool. Like there are ways to get some more flexibility than just like you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to replace every drive like a traditional RAID, but it’s more fidgety. But anyway, I do like ZFS.
⏹️ ▶️ John But then I looked at the prices and QNAP stuff is just as expensive as Synology. So it’s like, I mean, maybe not as expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they have like better CPUs and more RAM for the same as Synology’s prices. But anyway, QNAP,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re looking for an alternative to Synology, just looking at their product offerings, they seem to be the
⏹️ ▶️ John closest thing to Synology that I’ve seen. Their software stack really does look like
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re copying everything that Synology has in a good way. And they have the option of
⏹️ ▶️ John using ZFS. You don’t have to use ZFS. You can use plain old RAID. You can use ZFS. Anyway, I was impressed with
⏹️ ▶️ John how far QNAP has come. Also, some other recommendations people have for us were Ugreen, which is the
⏹️ ▶️ John company that I just think of as making like USB hubs and ethernet hubs and stuff like that, but they apparently they make NAS hardware now
⏹️ ▶️ John too. Unraid is a software solution, then there’s FreeNAS, TrueNAS. There’s tons of options
⏹️ ▶️ John for you out there, depending on how much stuff you wanna do, but QNAP look like the same type of solution as Synology in
⏹️ ▶️ John that like, you give us money, we take care of everything. Like it’s not DIY, it’s not like you can get down nitty
⏹️ ▶️ John gritty and do like fancy stuff with ZFS, but if you just wanna buy like an appliance and use an interface
⏹️ ▶️ John to set it up, QNAP will do that for you. And it does have features that Synology doesn’t because it has CFS.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cool. That’s all very useful, and I appreciate all the feedback from everyone, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have news. As of about 24 hours from now or thereabouts,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Synology has mostly backtracked on their complete refusal to work
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with third-party drives. So-
⏹️ ▶️ John That Synology Europe thing we had last episode was right. It turns out- YouTube put a stray YouTube comment from the
⏹️ ▶️ John official Synology at Europe account.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Who’da thunk it. So Synology released DiskStation Manager 7.3 DSM as their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey operating system, if you will. And their press release reads, Synology is currently collaborating closely with third-party
⏹️ ▶️ Casey drive manufacturers to accelerate the testing and verification of additional storage drives, and will announce more updates as soon as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey possible. In the meantime, 25 model year DiskStation Plus value and J-series running DSM 7.3
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will support the installation and storage pool creation of non-validated third-party drives. This
⏹️ ▶️ Casey provides greater flexibility while Synology continues to expand the lineup of officially verified drives that meet long-term reliability standards.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey However, the creation of M.2-based storage pool in cache still requires drives from the HCL.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have no idea what that means, but- From
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware compatibility list. So basically the asterisk, it was a footnote one saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll support the creation of non-validated third-party drives, footnote. And the footnote was, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John except for M.2 ones. There’s more detail from this Spacerec’s YouTube channel.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so from SpacerX YouTube, the M2 NVMe restrictions are still in place due to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the highly diverse M2 NVMe market and wide variation. We’ve seen many instances where consumer grade
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M2 SSDs with low endurance performance and quality combined with poor firmware implementations have directly contributed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to system instability and data loss.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s directly from Synology. This was the SpacerX YouTuber asking Synology, hey, what’s the deal? Why can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John we do NVMe? Why can’t we use arbitrary third-party NVMe flash drives?
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s Synology’s explanation. Still only the approved list for those.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then Lee Hutchinson at Arts Technica writes, we asked Synology whether the requirements will also be lifted from previous generation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Synology products and the answer to that question appears to be a no. Quote, this change only affects the 25 series models, blah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey blah, blah, blah, blah. Models in the XS Plus line are considered a business or enterprise model
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and will remain under the current HCL policy for our business lines, Synology explained.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, HCL is not hydrochloric acid, but a hardware compatibility list. So this is why I say they mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John backtracked. They’re trying to have their cake and eat it too. Like their enterprise product lines, this XS Plus
⏹️ ▶️ John line, still only Synology validated drives. Old pre-2025 products,
⏹️ ▶️ John that is, Synology products that don’t end in 25, because all their products are like DS725,
⏹️ ▶️ John DS225, those are all 2025 products. If you have a product that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John a 2025 product, you’re not included in this either. It’s only exactly what
⏹️ ▶️ John the press release says, which is the only running DSM 7.3, and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the plus value in J-series, which I imagine are what consumers buy, right? So they’re trying to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John enterprises with lots of money, we still wanna sell you overpriced storage because that’s what every storage company
⏹️ ▶️ John enterprise does. Like it’s how, you know, these big companies make a lot of their money. But for consumers, cause you all
⏹️ ▶️ John got mad at us, we will let you do this, but only if you buy a new 2025 thing
⏹️ ▶️ John or you have one of the really older ones. If you get caught in that middle thing, too bad for you, which is still kind of crappy. Like I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John saying, like, if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna walk this back, walk it back all the way, they’re walking it back halfway,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is better than nothing, but still not great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m not sure what to make of this. That is probably enough to make me consider
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going, I’m saying going back as though I’ve left, but you know, whenever the time comes that I replace
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my like two-year-old model, if this continues for the home market, I’d
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably stick with Synology, but it certainly kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put a gross taste in my mouth, and we’ll see how long that lasts.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, a lot of the YouTubers, a lot of the various people reporting on this news were like, had, uh, in typically,
⏹️ ▶️ John typically YouTube fashion would come right out and say, this is because their sales got destroyed
⏹️ ▶️ John when they did this. And it’s like, do you have their sales numbers? Like citation needed as they say in Wikipedia,
⏹️ ▶️ John like probably their sales went down. We know that there was lots of people complaining about it,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like they just definitively say it’s because their sales were, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the toilet. It’s like, well, you know, like I would like to see some, but anyway, uh, they,
⏹️ ▶️ John the bottom line is they want to sell to enterprises. Everyone who sells to enterprises makes you buy their
⏹️ ▶️ John storage, like you buy like EMC or I think Dell owns them now or I’ll do the big, like I had to deal
⏹️ ▶️ John with all these vendors and doing like a, what do you call it? Vendor evaluation
⏹️ ▶️ John for lots of big storage vendors for a big storage project back when I had a jobby job. So I got to hear all their sales pitches
⏹️ ▶️ John and they all want to sell you just the most expensive hard drives you’ve ever seen in your entire
⏹️ ▶️ John life. Like it’s like Apple with RAM and storage, like, eh, storage. That’s where all their margins come from.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you can see why Synology wants to do that too. Their mistake was thinking they could also apply to that to people who
⏹️ ▶️ John want to have like a two drive NAS in their basement or something. And that has not worked out. So
⏹️ ▶️ John think QNAP is probably reaping the benefits. I would definitely consider
⏹️ ▶️ John trying them, but now that Synology is backtracking mostly on this, and if I ever buy a new one, it will be a 2025 model or later, I’m like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll probably just stick with Synology.
Mr. Liss upsizes his tips
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do some more first impressions, but I actually have a very quick
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bit of, I guess it’s sort of kind of follow up, sorry, John, about the AirPods Pro 3. After hearing the discussion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about, oh, you should try the bigger tips, I thought to myself, you know what, I should try the bigger tips. What’s it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to hurt? And even though I didn’t feel like the tips were not snug in my ears, I thought, let
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me give it a whirl. And I’ve tried the bigger tips, which I think there’s only one step larger, if I’m not mistaken,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the box from what they have mounted on the device. And you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey option into one size larger, if I’m not mistaken. And I tried that and I got to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell you, they fit, they fit just fine. And who’d have thunk it, the ANC got just a touch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better. I wouldn’t say it was bad before. I wouldn’t say it’s night and day better than the AirPods Pro 2, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s definitely a touch better. So even if you don’t think you need the bigger tips, give it a shot, can’t hurt. just like Marco was saying
More iPhone cases
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, you have some case updates for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us. I do, yeah. So, in the intervening time, last episode of this one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have tried three new iPhone 17 Pro cases as I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wait for my Suity leather back to be delivered ever. I don’t even think it has shipped yet. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I need to email them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, speaking of your leather back, by the way, did you see that person who had your leather back and just cut the top off of it? I meant to say that when you were
⏹️ ▶️ John talking about cutting the top off of one of your older cases, but did you see that person’s post?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, certainly that person did a much better job than I did.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you were using a leather back for an earlier phone. Oh, right.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sticking it on your 17. This person took the leather back for the 17 Pro that you returned
⏹️ ▶️ John and just cut the top off of that one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m done rebuying things I’ve returned. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John don’t want to. I just wanted to know if you saw it,
⏹️ ▶️ John because it looked pretty good. Again, I don’t know how well, if maybe those little things lifted up. I’m trying to find
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. I mean, they seem to have a lot better Dremel skills than I have. So there’s looked a lot better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than I think mine would but it is
⏹️ ▶️ John Omar Shaheen Yeah, it’s looking pretty good. I mean again. I don’t know if those little pointy
⏹️ ▶️ John bits I’ll send you the link to I don’t know if there’s a little pointy bits might catch under your finger or whatever But it just that I immediately thought
⏹️ ▶️ John of that when you’re talking about chopping up your things last time and I forgot to mention
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m hoping the suede leather case comes also like what I’m what I’m also hoping to see I don’t know if this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Will exist because it seems like the the market for like leather magnetically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco attached phone backs that don’t have any side protection seems like a pretty small market. I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean it is kind of a weird thing like people usually buy cases for protection not back grip but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco true. And I also I did try I found some Amazon seller for like seven dollars they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were selling this some kind of like gel back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like oh my like like a stick-on decal that you’d stick on the back. Jelly shoes for your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone? It was horrific. I did have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from for my Casey goose trip I did have just a cheap clear case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Tauras T-O-R-R-A-S from Amazon it was it was relatively inexpensive I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think like under $20 and it’s like a basic clear TPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco case no magsafe support so it does you know it did kind of ruin
⏹️ ▶️ Marco magsafe strength but it was cheap and it would it was it would come the next morning so I tried it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was fine the only the only thing I don’t like about the about the Taurus clear case is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the lip around the camera plateau is very tall and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it which makes sense like it helps it stand off the table better but it kind of protrudes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and makes like an outline on your pocket in your jeans you can see the rim around the camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mesa as its own outline and I didn’t I didn’t love that but can’t beat the value
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah on that topic of the of the having tall rings around the Mesa I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about
⏹️ ▶️ John this and I don’t think people have thought it through. They’re like, they made this big full-width camera
⏹️ ▶️ John Mesa Plateau thing, but the cameras still stick out from it. So when I put it on the table, it still rocks because
⏹️ ▶️ John the cameras stick out, you know, more on the side where the three lenses are than the side that doesn’t have any lenses.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re like, why didn’t they just make it flat all the way across? If there was, first of all, the cameras are not
⏹️ ▶️ John sticking out just for the hell of it. That’s how deep they are. That’s what they can fit. There’s the screen on the other side of them. Those
⏹️ ▶️ John are the cameras. Believe me, there is no empty space that they’re wasting inside there. And given that,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you made the iconic plateau, even with the tops of the camera lenses
⏹️ ▶️ John all the way across, that would look like this case that you’re describing. It would be huge.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you don’t realize how prominent that sort of five head would be to borrow a phrase from
⏹️ ▶️ John the flop house. It’s just, it would just be gigantic and granted they could probably put more stuff in there or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like, I don’t think you want that. Like it’s a shame that the camera lenses stick out as far as they do, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t want the whole plateau to be even with the tips of the cameras because that would just be very top-heavy
⏹️ ▶️ John and weird and leave weird prints in your jeans. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, interesting that you mentioned that though. There actually is a slightly better solution, but I’ll get to that in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a second. So I also tried John’s favorite, the Bullstrap case with the open
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bottom. This is a nice leather case. I got the black one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It looks very nice on the phone. And with the open bottom, you still get to see the nice orange
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strip of your phone on the bottom, which I found to be a nice feature. I don’t like the way Bullstrap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco partially covers up the camera Mesa. I like when cases leave the Mesa itself like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the full round rect shape and don’t try to like just leave the cameras open in a square and then have like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, the two holes for the two things on the on the right.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although in this particular phone, because as we noted on an earlier episode, that sharp
⏹️ ▶️ John edge around the camera plateau is the place where the anodization will come off. And the Bullstrap case does
⏹️ ▶️ John protect that whole sharp edge with leather.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It does. And the Bullstrap, the way the case like rises up around that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn’t create any sharp or like, you know, blunt edges. Everything is
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s one of the things I like about my 16 pro bull strap cases that the thing around the camera is kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of smooth And slanted and leather. It’s not a plastic frame a metal thing to champ
⏹️ ▶️ John chamfered metal frame You know like lots of cases do that that I don’t like feeling that in the back of
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone I like it to be smooth up there My wife’s got the bull strap case too and I don’t like how it looks when it covers that the the
⏹️ ▶️ John full width plateau But I do like the protection it provides and the fact that it’s leather like in more places
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, honestly, it looks like a car bra. It really does. Like going back to our very first podcast together, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks exactly like a car bra.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it has the opposite because it will protect the thing under it instead of getting grit under there and causing abrasions and having it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wet. Yeah, but it’s I wish it was more open. But anyway, otherwise the Bullstrap case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is pretty nice. The leather feels fantastic. It’s a great quality leather.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even like after only a couple days of use, it already feels amazing. The black I think is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a really nice color combo with the orange. And overall I’m very happy with the Bullstrap, except
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the sleep wake button is not a good button feel.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the buttons aren’t great this year on the Bullstrap case.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that really hurts it. Like it’s the kind of thing like, you know, you push sleep wake and like you think it pushed,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you don’t really feel that click the way you do with a good button. So like double clicking it to like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for Apple Pay or something, like it feels awful.
⏹️ ▶️ John You also might have a bad one. Like I think the quality control on the buttons is variable because
⏹️ ▶️ John again, the buttons on my Bullstrap case from the 16 Pro, they’re okay. My wife’s buttons I think are worse than mine, but
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re still clicky. So I mean, I don’t think you want to return it or whatever, but like-
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don’t want to go through that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But their buttons, like something I’ve heard about the Apple case, was it the Apple cases? They said like the buttons are much improved this
⏹️ ▶️ John year or whatever, like the tech woven. Good buttons versus bad buttons. There’s a wide
⏹️ ▶️ John gap with cases and it’s very difficult to tell what you’re getting by looking at the pictures on the website.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, Apple tends to have the best buttons. Like that’s just the reality of their cases. Like if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John want- Although
⏹️ ▶️ John the clear cases, like the buttons on a clear case, Apple clear case, compared to the buttons on an Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the tech woven or fine woven, huge difference. Cause the clear case- Yes, that’s true. It kind of has to be like all
⏹️ ▶️ John one thing and they’re not great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s true. Yeah, the clear case, it’s not nearly as good as the others. But yeah, overall, Bullstrap,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco best looking case I’ve seen, best feeling leather I have found in a long time in a case,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the buttons are not amazing. Open bottom is great, covered up plateau is less great. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of a mixed bag, but overall a very strong showing. And then finally, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have for the last few days been using the Peak Design case. I got that in a couple days ago, so I’ve been trying that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out. I’ve had great success with these in previous phones, and the Peak Design, if you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever used the Peak Design phone case, it’s the same case. It’s like they just keep making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same thing over and over again, but that’s a good thing. It’s a good case. I really like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Peak Design case. There’s a couple things about it that I don’t, but mostly it’s a very positive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So first of all, I think it looks fantastic. Like this is the material that Tech Woven
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wishes it was, but it’s not, I don’t know why. But Peak Design’s material, they do have a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of material choices. I still get like the gray one that has like the original, like nice gray weave.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The other choices are getting poor reviews. So I would say be careful with those. But if you get like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco woven texture ones, It’s the same old texture they’ve always had and it’s great. The rim around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the camera plateau is a little bit pokey but not nearly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as bad as the cheap case. And it doesn’t stick up quite as far overall. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s overall like a nicer ratio for that. You do slightly see the outline
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a pocket but it’s much more subtle. I love having the little square indentation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the back to kind of put your finger in as you’re like resting the phone in your grip. It kind of serves as like an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inverse pop socket in that way. It does have a covered up bottom, but it does not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obstruct like the speakers in any meaningful way, you know, charging cables, even like the thick anchor cables go in it just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine. The buttons feel great. Peak Design buttons are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost as good, maybe even as good as Apple’s buttons. They’re very, very good. They have a camera control
⏹️ ▶️ Marco button this year, which is also, so does the Bullstrap, by the way. Both of those camera control buttons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are very, very good. The TORAS cheap clear case does not have a camera control button, it just has a cutout.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But, yeah, Bullstrap and Peak Design, great camera control buttons. They feel good, they’re easy to push,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they click in nicely. So overall, Peak Design is good. The main downside of the Peak
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Design case is that it’s just bulky. And that’s just, their cases have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always been this way. It’s a trade-off. It is not super slim, it is not super lightweight,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it does cover up most of the orange of the phone, although you do see the entire camera plateau, which is nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s a mixed bag. The Peak Design case, it’s like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mid-sized SUV of phone cases. Like, it will take you anywhere you need to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go. It is overall, if you’re gonna have one case on your phone all year round
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you want it to be relatively protective, you want it to be able to get wet,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unlike leather, and still be okay, like, the Peak Design case is a great choice.
⏹️ ▶️ John Does it not have a lip around the screen that sticks out farther than the screen?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It does. It’s just, it’s not very tall. I mean, it’s a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John at some of the reviews and some for the older cases, they’re complaining that the lip isn’t enough to essentially like if you put your phone face down
⏹️ ▶️ John that your screen will actually be touching it versus like the Bullstrap case, for instance, a grain
⏹️ ▶️ John of salt could very easily be on the table and not touch your screen if you put it screen face down on the Bullstrap case.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, the Peak Design case, actually I’ll compare them for you. The Peak Design case, it does have a raised lip. It’s not a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tall raised lip, but it definitely does have it here. pop it into the bull strap now. Let’s see.
⏹️ ▶️ John Stop taking your phone in and out of cases. You’re upsetting me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I get my phone to be used. I don’t care if it gets like minor little dust
⏹️ ▶️ John and there No, it’s every time you put it in and out of the case, you’re risking, you’re stretching out the case, you’re making the fit worse
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re risking, probably not risking bending your phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say that bull strap is about the same depth. Maybe the bull strap might be a little bit taller ridge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around it, but not, it’s not a meaningful difference. But yeah, overall, I would say bull
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strap for formal occasions, Peak Design for general utility and a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cheap clear case if you want clear view of the phone. But ultimately I’m still waiting for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a good leather back and I still like kind of more like minimal cases than these.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But for now this is good. The Peak Design also for whatever it’s worth, if you have any needs for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a strong mount on something, like if you have like a bike, you wanna mount your phone on your bike,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Peak Design makes mounts like that and they latch in way stronger than magnets. They latch into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the hole in the back of the case, the square hole, and it’s like a physical latching mechanism so it’s much stronger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than anything magnetic. That being said, for whatever it’s worth, the Peak Design case also has,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by far, the strongest MagSafe strength I’ve ever seen in a case.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, when you put this on the MagSafe puck, when you want to take it off the puck,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you gotta pull hard, which is actually really nice in a lot of cases. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I tried earlier in my car mount, I tried to like jiggle it off the car mount to see like, will it fall off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a mount? And the entire mount moved before the phone did. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a very strong magnetic connection on the back of the Peak Design case, way more than the Bullstrap and any other case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve ever had, way more than the naked phone even. And so if that’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco relevant thing to you, again, the Peak Design will probably win that comparison as well. So overall it’s a great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall case. It’s just a bit bulky, but that’s kind of the nature of it. And otherwise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s very, very good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cool. So you’ve seemed like you found at least a couple of winners.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I mean, like, like last year, I’m probably going to change it up throughout the year as, as you know, seasons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and needs change. Uh, but overall I’m, I’m happy with what I have found, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do wish that my Suti leather back would ever ship.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m so sorry. For what it’s worth, I got a considerable amount of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey amusement with Aaron and Marco tag-teaming me on making fun of my blue phone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and saying how much I should return it and get an orange phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I stand by my blue phone that’s sometimes purple but occasionally blue. I don’t think I want an orange phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every time Casey referred to the color of his phone on the trip, it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco resignation and slight displeasure. And we’re like, you’re within the return window. you obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t like the color you picked, just return it while you still can and get the one that you actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, but I don’t think I want, I genuinely don’t think I want the orange phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John I- He just doesn’t want to go through the phone transfer process.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that. Very much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. And I mean, there are definitely times where I really, really do like the look of this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the color of this, but I wish for a stronger, bolder blue. That’s all.
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iOS 26 for regular people, and John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s talk iOS 26 first impressions and John, it seems like you would like to start, so please do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because I didn’t run iOS 26. You two have had it obviously for your betas of your apps and everything
⏹️ ▶️ John like that, but I was avoiding it because I had heard terrible things about it and I’m like, I’ll wait till
⏹️ ▶️ John the release version comes out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, quick update by the way. the twenty six point one beta two and Tahoe beta two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have made tethering less broken all right it will net once you connect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now it will stay connected, but the the initial process of connecting now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco takes like three times longer, because it can get into a state where the little circle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next to the you know markers iphone seventeen pro like the tethering circle in the menu is lit up,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but then the menu bar item still shows like no wifi. And you have to like deselect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it and then reselect it for it to actually connect and make you connect it to the tethering. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s still a mess, but at least like once you are connected, at least it stays connected. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s less broken, but still broken.
⏹️ ▶️ John Cool. Yeah, so I installed iOS 26 when the release one came out. I don’t have the beta that Marko
⏹️ ▶️ John was just referring to it. And I’m not on the beta train, I’m just on the release train. So I’m running 26.0. And
⏹️ ▶️ John again, I’ve been using Tahoe since it was released in all the betas. So I’m familiar
⏹️ ▶️ John with how that looks and I don’t like it and how it works and I don’t like it, but whatever, got to deal with it with my apps.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I was 26, like I’d seen all the screenshots, I’d heard you two talk about it, I’d heard Marco talk about it, I’d lengthened
⏹️ ▶️ John his experience with his apps and everything, but I didn’t really quite know what to expect. Other than
⏹️ ▶️ John I knew that I wasn’t going to like how it looked because I’d seen how it looked.
⏹️ ▶️ John So now having used it, I don’t know, for a couple of weeks now. Here’s the few
⏹️ ▶️ John additional things I have to say about it on top of what you two have already said about it during the betas.
⏹️ ▶️ John To find at least two nice things to say
⏹️ ▶️ John about iOS 26. Wow. Okay. First,
⏹️ ▶️ John in previous versions of iOS, uh, various things,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially in like top navigation and stuff like that, like the back button or like, um,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I don’t know the, the, the thing that you hit to close a sheet or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John The touch areas may have been the same size as they are in 26, but 26 due to its different
⏹️ ▶️ John style where it draws, like if you have like an X button, it draws a circle around it. Or if you have like a toolbar, it draws like an
⏹️ ▶️ John outline around it. the touch areas in iOS 26 look bigger. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know if they are bigger, but they look bigger because visually you used to have like the word back and a little
⏹️ ▶️ John left-facing chevron. And I’m sure the touch area for that was probably huge, but you didn’t see that because you just saw like the background
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s on and you saw the text and you felt like you had to tap the text and the text can be small. Like the capital B
⏹️ ▶️ John is big, but the ACK is small and you’re like, do I have to hit that? No, like the touch area was probably huge,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it felt smaller. With the big actual outlines around buttons, like the big circle
⏹️ ▶️ John around the X or the big circle around a Chevron or the big circular capsule shape
⏹️ ▶️ John around like a toolbar at the top or a checkbox or whatever, or a check mark or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Those touch targets feel bigger to me, and I like that. Number two, second nice
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. In earlier versions of iOS, in the post-iOS 7 era,
⏹️ ▶️ John when there was any kind of state change on touch, like you touch that back button,
⏹️ ▶️ John you touch the little X thing or whatever, It was pretty subtle. Maybe the word back would
⏹️ ▶️ John change from light blue to dark blue or some other kind of highlighting type thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS 26, usually the entire background of the thing that you hit does
⏹️ ▶️ John some stupid glowy effect, right? But it’s not, you won’t miss it. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s sitting there and when you touch it, it like, I don’t know if HDR lights up, but it like lights up and like this
⏹️ ▶️ John little transition and glow goes through it and there’s an animation or whatever, but that happens as soon as you
⏹️ ▶️ John touch it. And imagine having things react to you activating them
⏹️ ▶️ John is a good thing in UI design. One of the things that we kind of sort of lost in the iOS 7 transition,
⏹️ ▶️ John because that became so much more subtle. So those are my two nice things to say on iOS 26.
⏹️ ▶️ John The touch targets feel like they’re bigger even if they’re not. And more
⏹️ ▶️ John things that are button-like in the UI, make it clear when
⏹️ ▶️ John you hit them immediately. As soon as your finger hits them, they do their highlight thing. Everything else is
⏹️ ▶️ John about it is what we’ve said before. And in particular, I felt like doing a blog post about this because
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like the three main sins of the 26 redesign, not
⏹️ ▶️ John just iOS, but across all the platforms are like, how it looks like subjective stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is like, you might like it, you might not, but I don’t. So that’s just the subjective thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Moving everything away from the edges, Like, and you know, the whole like not having
⏹️ ▶️ John things go edge to edge and having them be inset in capsules and whatever the third one is that I put in my notes document
⏹️ ▶️ John that they can’t remember right now. But like, like those are like there, there
⏹️ ▶️ John are a few fundamental, Oh, and the third one I remember to me, uh, showing stuff through behind, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, like I can, you know, why do I need to see through this control to the content that’s behind it or whatever, right? Those are the three
⏹️ ▶️ John main sins as far as I’m concerned of the entire OS redesign. We keep thinking like when they come out with the 20th
⏹️ ▶️ John anniversary phone or the folding phone with a wraparound edge-to-edge screen this this Resign will quote-unquote make
⏹️ ▶️ John sense And I don’t think that’s true Because all you’d have to do is change the safe area insets with the old design
⏹️ ▶️ John and it would make just as much sense Like it’s no you don’t need them to be floating lozenges. You don’t need to see the content through
⏹️ ▶️ John them You don’t need to see the content behind them. But yeah, those are the three main things that I object to
⏹️ ▶️ John this entire OS design I think it’s ugly your miles very very but just subjectively. I think it’s not attractive
⏹️ ▶️ John I think in you know in setting everything off of the margins and making them floating and having to have margins
⏹️ ▶️ John around all the buttons Waste space and is bad And the content that and it makes problems
⏹️ ▶️ John of the content being able to be seen not underneath the controls But around where there are no controls and then finally
⏹️ ▶️ John having the controls show content That’s literally underneath them is a terrible mistake. And those are the three big ones There’s a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of smaller nitpicks to pick but nothing about using the iOS 26 has changed my mind
⏹️ ▶️ John about any of that but it’s just as bad as I thought it would be. Much like Tahoe,
⏹️ ▶️ John like I said about Tahoe, you get used to it, it’s fine. Like it’s not a big deal. I said this from like day one
⏹️ ▶️ John on Tahoe. Like I hate how it looks. I think it’s incredibly stupid, but it’s fine. You survive, it’s not the end of the world.
⏹️ ▶️ John It could be worse, right? And this is coming from someone who doesn’t even like how it looks. And I feel that way about iOS 26.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now on iOS 26, I’m still am and have been trying to like just leave it on the
⏹️ ▶️ John defaults because I didn’t want to be like, oh, day one, I’m putting on reduced transparency. I’m putting it like, I just want to use it like
⏹️ ▶️ John it shipped just so I have a legit experience from it. And so far, I’m mostly sticking with that.
⏹️ ▶️ John There are all sorts of situations where things are legible on the screen. And like, I basically got burned
⏹️ ▶️ John out on those before the thing actually shipped because we’ve seen so many of them, but they’re real. They come up, like
⏹️ ▶️ John in particular, the one that blew me away on day one was like, if you take a screenshot on iOS 26,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then you look at that screenshot and the stupid photos app with the stupid iOS 26 design, guess what?
⏹️ ▶️ John The screenshot, which is a picture of your phone screen that has like the time at the top on your battery,
⏹️ ▶️ John shows right underneath the actual time on your screen and the battery when the screenshot is shown full screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John And why? Because the Photos app has a completely transparent status bar that shows the
⏹️ ▶️ John photo underneath it. So you get to see the time, you get to see what the time was in the screenshot, exactly superimposed
⏹️ ▶️ John on top of the actual time. And it just scrambles that whole top of the screen and it looks ridiculous. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John I just, I can’t even believe that they shipped something that was so dumb. But in the grand scheme
⏹️ ▶️ John of things, when that happens, all you pinch and you can see what time it really is. And you know, like there are always ways
⏹️ ▶️ John around it. It’s not the end of the world. It’s fine, your phone will be fine. And practically speaking, I still haven’t turned
⏹️ ▶️ John on reduced transparency. I just deal with, because I think it looks even uglier with reduced transparency, honestly. I
⏹️ ▶️ John just deal with the way it looks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, also 26.0 has some pretty bad bugs with reduced transparency, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in dark mode. Yeah, yeah. Which I still continue to hear from customers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every single day about. I cannot wait for 26.1 to be released to the public
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as long as they fix tethering first. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John yeah, I cannot
⏹️ ▶️ John wait. Yeah, I wish they would fix these other obvious things that are just like fundamental to design, but it’s like, I don’t know what they
⏹️ ▶️ John can do about it. But anyway, and then finally, on the sort of keeping the default front, there was lots of discussion on earlier episodes
⏹️ ▶️ John of YouTube going back and forth about the, whatever compact toolbar and Safari at the bottom,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? You can have it be two stack and you get the immediate one tap access back to your tabs and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John like that. I’ve left it on the default just to see if I could tolerate it. And the answer is, yeah, I
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly can. I find myself using most often the double tap on the three dots button,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is a nice gesture. I think they, uh, it seems like it might just be a consequence of like, Oh, actually
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re just catching the animation in the process. But I think they program that in. I think they made sure that a double tap,
⏹️ ▶️ John like I don’t think you’re catching the in transition animation of the pop up menu. I think they’re just registering
⏹️ ▶️ John a two tap gesture and doing it. So I use double tap, I occasionally use swipe up from the little bar thingy.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the reason I haven’t gone to the two stack is because I don’t want more, I don’t want it eating into even more of my space.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s bad enough that I have that stupid useless area on the bottom where there’s nothing. Then I have the floating toolbar.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to waste more space with the second row. So yeah, I’ve been using stock iOS 26. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John been surviving. It’s fine, except for all the parts where it’s ridiculous and stupid. And I hope that
⏹️ ▶️ John someone comes in and changes this in the next five to 10 years. Wow. Cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so I was in Memphis when iOS 26 dropped
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I was around a bunch of Allsac employees. Again, Allsac, what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is it? American, Lebanese, Syrian, something, something. I forget what it means. But anyways, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a fundraising arm for St. Jude and associated charities. There you go.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyways, so I would ask these like regular people, What do you think of iOS 26? And- Did
⏹️ ▶️ John they have it on their phone or you asked them
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey to send it to your phone?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, no, no, no, their own phones. And I think, in fact, I think a lot of them had it pushed to their work
⏹️ ▶️ Casey devices, which they were not happy about. But anyways, for the most part,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the reaction was not great. And the only consistent feedback
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I got that was specific was a lot of people really hated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the way messages looked, particularly the lack of like a opaque bar at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the top. And at least one or two people commented, and I have the same issue. A lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of times when I wanna send a screenshot of a messages conversation, I wanna send like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a comment or two, like I don’t need the whole damn conversation. And what I would do in iOS 18
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is if you’re quick about it, you can scroll, scroll, scroll, so that there’s a big gap between the last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey message and the keyboard, and that would shove the last couple of messages all the way up to the top
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the screen, right? And then you can take a screenshot and then crop that screenshot. So you’ve got the top
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the screen, you’ve got the header and the navigation bar with who you’re talking to, and the last couple of text
⏹️ ▶️ Casey messages sent. And I do that oftentimes to call attention to the specific context I want, or maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s, you know, private information that I’m not trying to share above that. But I do this not infrequently.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that is effectively impossible now because there is no top navigation bar in the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sense that there was an 18. And what’s there is translucent. And there were a handful of people that really didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that. So then I get home, I transfer Erin’s old phone to her new one,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which means she’s getting iOS 26. And the first thing she said to me is, how in the name of Zeus’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey butthole do I close a tab in Safari? Not her words, but you get the idea. How do I close a tab in Safari?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I explained, well, you know, they really rejiggered everything and I tried it for a few days. I couldn’t handle it. I really did give
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it an honest thought, but I couldn’t handle it. And so I went back to the best of my knowledge,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she hasn’t yet, which probably relates to the fact that she has about 11 D billion tabs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on her phone. It drives me bananas, but it works for her. But the one positive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feedback that she gave me, most of it, she was like, whatever. But the positive bit of feedback she gave me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I am also enjoying, but I think she’s gotten genuinely quite a lot of love out of, is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being able to see typing indicators in a group text. Because it used to be you could see a typing indicator
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in one-to-one chats, including in RCS. But you can now get that in group chats
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on iMessage, and she was really, really into that. And I thought that was interesting. So that’s my feedback.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Has Tiff had anything interesting or worthwhile to note about it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, she’s basically been like, it’s fine, whatever. Fair enough.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco my kids haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John gotten it yet, but they’re going to get it with their new phones. So it’ll be interesting to see
⏹️ ▶️ John Because again, like I said, my daughter, when I put Tahoe on, quote unquote, her laptop, which is not really hers.
⏹️ ▶️ John She did not like it. She was like, no, no, don’t want, don’t want. I’m like, all right, well, you know, then
⏹️ ▶️ John she’s got a new laptop now that doesn’t have Tahoe on it. I had both my kids turn off auto updates before
⏹️ ▶️ John Tahoe came out because they both expressed that they did not want it. So now they don’t have to get it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Eventually they probably will. But anyway, I bet they’ll probably be fine with it on their phone. But my daughter has complaints about
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of things, but eventually she gets over it. It’s just like I said, I, this is a
⏹️ ▶️ John blog post that I almost made like three times. those three things that apparently I need to write
⏹️ ▶️ John better in my notes document of just like how it looks, I think it’s ugly, moving things in from the edges,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the fact that you can see through stuff. And those are the three like top level,
⏹️ ▶️ John top three sins of this design. And they spread to all the OSs and they’re just, they’re bad
⏹️ ▶️ John ideas. They’re just bad ideas. And so, and we get to deal with them everywhere. And I mean, obviously look,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you like the look, it’s two bad ideas, right? But for me, it’s three, because I don’t like how it looks.
iPadOS 26.1 Slide Over
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, tell me about iOS, or excuse me, iPadOS 26.1, John. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John even more wary about the other OSs. Obviously, like with the iPad, I mentioned we were talking about the beta. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, SlideOver’s gone. That’s like my main use case for using my iPad is I watch full screen video because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like my little bedtime TV. I watch full screen video, and then I have social
⏹️ ▶️ John media apps in SlideOver from watching some thing that I don’t need to pay tons of attention to, like some crappy reality TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I have stuff in SlideOver. SlideOver, like my normal SlideOver apps I have these days are
⏹️ ▶️ John Slack, Ivory, and Tapestry. Tapestry is the thing I use to read Blue Sky most of the time.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s nice. I got full screen video. When I wanna see something in SlideOver, I slide it over. And if
⏹️ ▶️ John you swipe at the bottom of a SlideOver thing, you can cycle through which thing you’re seeing in SlideOver. So I can rotate through
⏹️ ▶️ John those things that I just said. With the SlideOver staying there, it just goes like a little bunch of cards. One, two, three, it
⏹️ ▶️ John just goes around in a cycle. Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. And when you’re done with the slide over, you just chuck it. You can flick the slide over to the
⏹️ ▶️ John other side of the screen if you want on the left and the right, you can hide it. That’s slide over. And I heard that iPadOS 26 doesn’t have it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like, I’m all, you know, I don’t, the windowing features are not for me. Like I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t use my iPad in that way, but I’m like, I don’t mind them, it should all be fine. But I want my slide over. So everyone was
⏹️ ▶️ John all excited when iPadOS 26.1 beta came out and said, slide over is back, slide over is back in iPadOS 26.1. Everyone’s so excited about
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And so I foolishly updated from 18 to 26.1 beta
⏹️ ▶️ John just to get SlideOver. And I think that
⏹️ ▶️ John they did a bad job.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Aw. Oh no. What happened?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so first of all, the thing that everybody knows is now you can only have one app in SlideOver, which doesn’t make any sense
⏹️ ▶️ John to me. Because like I said, when we talked about iPadOS 26, SlideOver fits perfectly
⏹️ ▶️ John with the windowing system of iPad26. It’s just another way of dealing with Windows.
⏹️ ▶️ John It makes your windows tall and skinny and it puts them off to the side where you can’t see them. And when you swipe in from the edge, they come.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when you cycle through it, like it fits perfectly. There’s tons of other things you do with windows and windowing
⏹️ ▶️ John mode on iPad that are just like that. This is just another one. It’s just another place where it can make windows. You know, you got stage manager, you
⏹️ ▶️ John got the windowing thing, you got all sorts of ways to deal with windows on iPad. And this fits the paradigm perfectly.
⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t require the windows to be anything but what they are. It’s just an automated way to have them off screen and
⏹️ ▶️ John then on screen and cycle through them. But they said, no, you can only have one of these 26.1 beta.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know why, but that’s what they did. Second, they put a translucent sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of liquid glass whatever outline around the thing, pretty big, like half a centimeter outline
⏹️ ▶️ John around the thing, to indicate that it’s not like other windows, like it’s gonna behave differently, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ John At least I’m guessing that’s what it’s for. So you don’t think it’s just a regular window because it behaves like a slide over window.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can gesture to chuck it off the screen, you can gesture to pull it on. That’s not true of Windows it’s true slider
⏹️ ▶️ John fine. It’s an affordance didn’t need to be there before but I don’t object to it at all
⏹️ ▶️ John The real thing they screwed up. Well a couple of things one And if you remember
⏹️ ▶️ John the original iPhone one of the cool features they had and it’s still there to this day is If
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re doing something like say scrolling a web page if especially back in the
⏹️ ▶️ John olden days of the original iPhone Not a lot of websites were updated for mobile as they say
⏹️ ▶️ John they were just regular websites that would render on your iPhone. And sometimes the text would be real small and you’d pinch a zoom, blah, blah, blah, but they weren’t
⏹️ ▶️ John like sort of mobile savvy. So you mean like Daring Fireball? Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John I needed a website to test this on and I immediately went to Daring Fireball, sorry, George. Cause he hasn’t updated
⏹️ ▶️ John his website. And here’s the key thing, when you have a sort of a non-mobile savvy website or any kind of content, any
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of content on your phone screen that you can scroll up and down and left and right. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John more to the left, there’s more to the right, there’s more up, there’s more down. This can be an image, this can be whatever, but very often non-mobile savvy
⏹️ ▶️ John webpages are like this, right? But what the iPhone would do from day one is if it
⏹️ ▶️ John sensed that you were trying to scroll vertically, it would lock you into like a rail vertically.
⏹️ ▶️ John And even if as you started scrolling vertically, your finger went off to the left or
⏹️ ▶️ John your finger drifted right a little bit, the content wouldn’t go off to the left or drift right. It would be like it was stuck
⏹️ ▶️ John on a rail. It’s like, ah, you’re vertically scrolling. I’m not gonna make you carefully,
⏹️ ▶️ John perfectly move your finger and at a straight line down the screen. I’m gonna let you, once I realize you’re vertically
⏹️ ▶️ John scrolling, I’m gonna lock it in there and just makes it much, we’d take it for granted, but this is a thing about the iPhone. If
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ve never noticed this before, go load Daring Fireball and try it out. As soon as it figures out you’re going up and down,
⏹️ ▶️ John it locks you into that. And so even if you move your thumb side to side, it won’t do that. SlideOver, that’s 26.1
⏹️ ▶️ John beta, miraculously undoes this. Because when you try to chuck the SlideOver
⏹️ ▶️ John thing back off the screen, You’re like, why is the thing moving up and down?
⏹️ ▶️ John It exactly tracks my finger. I’m trying to, like, alt slide over, and when you chucked it, it would
⏹️ ▶️ John be like, oh, I see you’re trying to dismiss that, and it would move it exactly to the right, exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John east, right, or exactly west. And the current one tracks your finger, so it looks like it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s all loosey-goosey, and it’s like, it’s going up and down and up, and it’s like, that’s stupid. Like, why
⏹️ ▶️ John would, how could they screw that up? And then on top of that, in my context, where I’m watching full-screen video
⏹️ ▶️ John and sliding the thing over and back. First of all, when I swipe it in from the edge of the screen, it doesn’t slide
⏹️ ▶️ John in from the edge. It like fades into its final position. Like what the hell? It’s called slide over, slide
⏹️ ▶️ John it over people. Like just slide it from the side. It like
⏹️ ▶️ John cross fades into its final position. And then it makes the full screen, like
⏹️ ▶️ John it has a full screen flash of both windows, like a flicker, like a one frame
⏹️ ▶️ John flicker flash when the thing comes in. I brought my iPad to just try this out because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so maddening to me that they managed to screw this, I
⏹️ ▶️ John should slow-mo it, because I think it half animates but then fades into the final position.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re playing video, it makes the whole screen flicker every time it comes in and out. Now, granted, this is a beta.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe they’ll fix this stuff. I’m like, how do you screw up slide over so badly? It’s a feature you already had
⏹️ ▶️ John that you could have taken exactly as is and put it into the OS. And somehow
⏹️ ▶️ John they found a way to make it less useful and screw it up in every possible detail.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, and the final thing is, and this is not the fault of iPadOS 26, I guess, but
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of the apps I use don’t understand iOS 26
⏹️ ▶️ John windowing system. So for example, in Ivory, if you swipe left and right
⏹️ ▶️ John and like the toolbar on the top of the thing, you can change accounts. But when you’re in iPadOS,
⏹️ ▶️ John The windowing system grabs that swipe and thinks you’re chucking the window to the left. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not what you’re trying to do. In Tapestry, when
⏹️ ▶️ John you tap a link in the thing and it brings up like an in-app browser sheet type thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and you dismiss that sheet by hitting the big X in the upper or whatever to dismiss like the web view sheet thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John it dismisses the web view, but it also registers it as a tap on top of the timeline and scrolls you immediately to
⏹️ ▶️ John the top. because of the confusion about who is controlling what safe area inside or whatever. These are
⏹️ ▶️ John a combination of like apps not being updated for iOS 26 and beta bugs and stuff like that. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the overall experience is that the thing I was trying to avoid, I did to myself. I feel like Casey. I was trying
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey messing with,
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to avoid messing with my workflow of like watching full screen video and having apps and slide over. And I messed with it in
⏹️ ▶️ John every possible way because now I’m constantly accidentally scrolling tapestry all the way to the top and have
⏹️ ▶️ John to use the jump back button. I’m sliding things in and out and having the screen flicker every time it
⏹️ ▶️ John happens. I’m being distracted by the fact that the thing is wobbling up and down as I move it in and out. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John being annoyed every time the fade animation comes in and I’m being annoyed about that big outline. I don’t know how they managed
⏹️ ▶️ John this. It was an existing feature, but they re-implemented it poorly with fewer features. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s better than not having it. Like I’m sorry, it’s better than not having it, but I kind of regret upgrading. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So other than that, did you like the play? This is like-
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, if you think of how I use my iPad, What else am I getting out of iPadOS 26? Like I’m not a power user of iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m using, I got this thing for the freaking OLED screen so I could watch TV on it and also
⏹️ ▶️ John have Slack and Ivory and Tapestry. And it’s just, it’s kind of sad, but you know, I will
Apple pulls ICEblock
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so we have more first impressions to talk about. We’re going to have to shelve that because there’s been some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey news this week. Apple has pulled Ice Block from the App Store. Richard Lawler
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at The Verge writes, Apple has removed the Ice Block app from its App Store. The Ice Block app is intended
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be used anonymously to report sightings of US Immigration Customs Enforcement, or ICE, officials
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and see sightings reported within a five-mile radius. Ice Block rose to the top of the App Store’s charts this summer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after being targeted by Trump administration with US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey calling it an obstruction of justice and Attorney General Pam Bondi claiming it was not a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey protected speech. On October 2nd Bondi took credit for the apps removal saying to Fox News Digital,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the Ice Block app from their App Store and Apple did so.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ice Block is designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs and violence against law enforcement is an intolerable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey red line that cannot be crossed. Excuse me while I pick up my ice which has just rolled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of my head. Oh, I’m gonna have a lot to say about this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We know we have to be quick. It’ll be fine. Don’t worry. Ice Block developer Joshua Aaron is quoted in the same report as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying it counts over 1.1 million users, and that Apple has claimed they received information
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from law enforcement that ice blocks serve to harm law enforcement officers. This is patently false.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple made similar claims in 2019 when it removed HK Map, an app that allowed Hong Kong protesters to trace
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the movements of law enforcement with CEO Tim Cook telling employees that, over the past several days, we received credible information
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau, as well as from users in Hong Kong, that the app was being used maliciously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to target individual officers for violence and to victimize individuals and property where no police were present. At the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle spoke out against Apple’s censorship of apps. A letter signed by four Republican and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey three Democratic members of Congress, including Cruz and AOC, if I’m not mistaken,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said, cases like these raise real concern about whether Apple and other large U.S. corporate entities will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bow to growing Chinese demands rather than lose access to a billion Chinese consumers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know what would be great? It would be really great if we had an alternative way of getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apps on our phones.
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s just get through this before we do the commentary.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey But yes, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey true. Reuters says Apple removed more than 1,700 apps from its App Store in 2024 in response to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey government demands, but the vast majority, more than 1,300, came from China, followed by Russia with 171 and South Korea
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with 79. Over the last three years, the United States has not appeared as one of the countries where apps were removed due
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to government demands, according to the company Application Transparency Reports. M.J. Tsai writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back in 2011, a group of Democratic senators asked Apple to remove DUI checkpoint apps from the App Store. Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey position at the time was that these apps were a net positive in terms of public safety. Then the government brought the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey VP of Software Technology, Bud Tribble, before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, where Senator Schumer demanded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Senator Udall lambasted, Apple changed its mind and banned the apps.
⏹️ ▶️ John Cool. This last bit of context here. So the the Verge story is like, here’s here’s the deal. Here’s what people said about
⏹️ ▶️ John it with the ice block app. I think the Reuters and MJ Cy story provided some important context in particular that
⏹️ ▶️ John one thousand seven hundred apps were banned in twenty twenty four due due to government responses like government asked
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple to pull an app and they did. And they said yes, one thousand seven hundred times again, most of them from China,
⏹️ ▶️ John followed by Russia and that the US was not on that list. But then MJ Cy points out, Actually, the US has
⏹️ ▶️ John made Apple pull down on apps. And it was kind of similar, like law enforcement related, to remove DUI checkpoint
⏹️ ▶️ John apps. You remember when that happened back in 2011? These were apps that would tell you, here’s a place where police are checking
⏹️ ▶️ John for drunk drivers, and you could note them. And again,
⏹️ ▶️ John Democrats and Republicans asked Apple, you need to pull these apps. Apple hadn’t pulled them, even though
⏹️ ▶️ John people had asked them to. And then they brought them in front of the Congress, and they said, you’ve got to do this. And eventually, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John pulled the apps. And obviously the HK map one is very similar, like tracking protests or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John again, a law enforcement related. So I feel like the story here is that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John has always been pulling apps when governments ask them to, but usually those governments are China
⏹️ ▶️ John and Russia. And it has happened once or twice with the US when it’s related to law enforcement,
⏹️ ▶️ John but now it’s happening again with an app that very much looks like a law enforcement type app,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, knowing where ICE is or whatever. before we go wandering off into ice,
⏹️ ▶️ John ice block and the current context, which is much more dire for us than the DUI
⏹️ ▶️ John checkpoint time was in 2011, let’s say. Um, but actually is very similar. I do want
⏹️ ▶️ John to say that this whole, this whole thing is a
⏹️ ▶️ John good example of the limits of Apple’s strategy because Apple strategy with the Trump administration,
⏹️ ▶️ John both times has been essentially appeasement. Try to make nice with them, try to make them not mad at you because
⏹️ ▶️ John when they’re They’re mad at you, they are, you know, it’s a corrupt administration and they will do things to
⏹️ ▶️ John harm your company individually in a vindictive way because they’re just, you know, mobsters
⏹️ ▶️ John and bullies, right? They will specifically hurt your company and we want them specifically not
⏹️ ▶️ John hurt our company so we’re working within a corrupt system to try to get favors, blah, blah, blah. The problem with
⏹️ ▶️ John that strategy is the strategy is not to make them mad. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you can blow that whole strategy. Appeasement stops working and becomes pointless
⏹️ ▶️ John the second you push back at all and make them mad at you. Because then
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, well, what did you do all that appeasement for? So it leads to like the sunk cost
⏹️ ▶️ John fallacy of saying, well, we already made nice with all these things. We already did all this stuff. When they ask us to pull the ice block
⏹️ ▶️ John out, if we say no, they’ll be mad at us. And it’s like, well, then what did we do all that appeasement for?
⏹️ ▶️ John What did we sell our souls for before? And so you’re inclined to say yes and say yes to the next thing and say
⏹️ ▶️ John yes to the next thing. And it’s a slippery slope of appeasement. The word comes up in the context of World War II all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ John Appeasement looks great right up until you have the rise of Hitler. And then it doesn’t look so
⏹️ ▶️ John good anymore, does it? Because you’re like, anyone who is on board with that appeasement thing tends to look bad
⏹️ ▶️ John in the eye of history of saying, you are appeasing this monster. And you’re like, although I was appeasing them, they weren’t really that monstrous.
⏹️ ▶️ John They were just on their way to monstrous and I kept appeasing them. And but eventually I found my limit. And Apple apparently has not found
⏹️ ▶️ John its limit. And it’s not just the fact that we have a terrible, corrupt administration now.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, in 2011, the situation was different. Apple was still making the same calculus.
⏹️ ▶️ John The government wants us to do this thing. We don’t really care one way or the other. We’ll probably get bad press from
⏹️ ▶️ John this if we say it’s helping people to drunk drive. So we’ll do this, but we’ll still leave
⏹️ ▶️ John the speed radar checkpoint things in the Apple Maps app. They didn’t get rid of that, but DUI is over the line.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re always doing this very cynical corporate calculus of, if there’s too much public or government
⏹️ ▶️ John pressure to get rid of an app in the app store, we’ll do it. In the end, we control it and it’s our decision, but we
⏹️ ▶️ John will do it. And devoid of any context, I feel like the Ice Block
⏹️ ▶️ John app feels exactly like that. It’s like, oh, some government thing doesn’t want us to have a thing, and
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, this is harming law enforcement, or so they say, or they lie about everything, but half the country believes them anyway, so whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll just get rid of it and it’ll be fine. But that’s missing the wider context, which I’m sure Marco will get to in a second, which is 2025
⏹️ ▶️ John is not 2011. The current administration is not what it used to be.
⏹️ ▶️ John And appeasement in this scenario, even though it has been Apple strategy from day one, it has
⏹️ ▶️ John its limits. And Apple so far has not found that limit for them, but I think a lot of their
⏹️ ▶️ John observers have said, you need to just get over the sunk cost
⏹️ ▶️ John fallacy and give up on the appeasement strategy and throw away all the stuff that you’ve done
⏹️ ▶️ John and screw your whole company over, because if you keep down this path of just always saying yes and
⏹️ ▶️ John always agreeing, that’s not gonna lead anywhere good. Like we all hope that they’re gonna find a
⏹️ ▶️ John line somewhere, but every time something like this happens, people like Marco flip out justifiably and say, I guess there is no
⏹️ ▶️ John line. I guess there’s literally nothing that they can ask for that they won’t do. It’s not that, again, not removing ice block is not
⏹️ ▶️ John the biggest thing in the world, but it’s like you just start extrapolating. Well, what if they ask for this? What if they ask for that? Because again, the appeasement
⏹️ ▶️ John strategy requires you to not make them mad, And saying no to them will make them mad,
⏹️ ▶️ John which means you will say yes to anything. Marco, please go. OK.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Understanding I would like to go to bed at some point tonight.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m going to go, and you’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey have to bear with me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here. So this entire premise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is predicated on a lie. It’s predicated on the idea that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they had to remove this app because it was dangerous to law enforcement. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a straight up lie. If you think about, OK, what unreasonable danger is posed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to ISIS? They use the term officials. I would use the term kidnappers and murderers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What unreasonable danger is posed to ISIS, kidnappers and murderers by people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco telling other people where they are? They’re the ones that have the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guns, zero accountability, and the complete support of a fascist
⏹️ ▶️ Marco federal government behind them. They are kidnapping and murdering US citizens. And we are supposed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to believe that they are the ones that need protection from people knowing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where they are. ICE agents, just like Donald Trump himself,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are pathetic, weak, thin-skinned racists who only know how to demonstrate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strength with cruelty, violence, and punching down. They are cowards,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they hide their cowardly faces behind masks because the only real danger they face
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is cameras. And they’re such cowards they can’t even handle that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, just like when racists twisted Black Lives Matter into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Blue Lives Matter and All Lives Matter, the idea that the ICE agents are the victims
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in need of protection from the people they’re assaulting and killing is a dangerous lie. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that lie will be used to justify using more deadly force in retaliation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And Apple is now complicit in that lie.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the context of this is very important. The Trump administration is literally waging war on America
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Americans. This is not a metaphor. They are waging war against US law,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the US Constitution, and US citizens in the US. They are deploying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco military troops intentionally into liberal cities that will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably result in them shooting liberals. And this might sound like an exaggeration, but if this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does, ask, say, your parents, if you’re maybe under age 50 or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so, or ask Neil Young, what happens when a thin-skinned Republican
⏹️ ▶️ Marco president does deplorable things, and then when people start protesting, they deploy National
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Guard soldiers against them? This is going to escalate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco People have already died. A lot more people will probably die as this escalates.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And Apple, in this war against Americans on American soil, has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chosen not only to not fight against it, but to explicitly and repeatedly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco support the aggressors of this war. Tim Cook’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco legacy will forever be tarnished by his Trump support. And not only is he destroying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s brand and reputation by doing this. He’s supporting the destruction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of our democracy and our home country. Tim Cook has shown us exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who and what he is. He is cowardly, spineless, and I would say at this point,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco irredeemable. But there are other people, powerful people at Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who can still make a difference. So Tim Cook is a lost cause. We know he has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shown us who he is, believe him. I urge the rest of Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco senior leadership to do some serious soul-searching right now and consider
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they’re willing to support, what they want their careers and legacies to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, and what they would like to tell their grandchildren in the future about how they handled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s going on in America right now with the power they had. Please, Apple leadership, really do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some soul searching and consider how you want this to end. Paul
⏹️ ▶️ John Matzkoff It’s pretty concise. I disagree with a lot of your more extreme statements there, but the
⏹️ ▶️ John justice that I think we’re all more or less on board with. The lie that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John perpetrating does have a foundation in plausibility, which is like, in theory,
⏹️ ▶️ John knowing where law enforcement are located could cause them to come to harm because now people who are trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John harm them know where they are and can ambush them and so and so forth. In practice, has that happened? No, not to my knowledge. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just a theoretical thing that could happen. It’s the same thing with the Hong Kong protesters, like trying to avoid the
⏹️ ▶️ John armed forces or whatever. It’s like, yeah, you’re picking a side, you’re picking the side of law enforcement saying, we
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want people to know where we are through A to the ZAP, despite the fact that in our country anyway, it’s perfectly legal to take pictures
⏹️ ▶️ John of police in public and so on and so forth. Still, the story that
⏹️ ▶️ John our government says to Apple is like, you know, Apple even says, they told us that law enforcement officers
⏹️ ▶️ John are coming to harm because of this. Could it have happened? Maybe, but our government lies so much about everything routinely
⏹️ ▶️ John all the time. Like, look at all the court cases. They just straight up lie. ICE, in particular, lies like crazy.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, as proven in court multiple times, it’s hard to take anything they say as
⏹️ ▶️ John truth, but in theory it could happen. So, like, the issue is actually somewhat nuanced. Kind of like the DUI checkpoint
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. It’s like, do you want people evading DUI checkpoints when when they’re drunk, probably not. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John as Casey pointed out earlier, this whole thing is a problem caused by Apple being the only way you can get
⏹️ ▶️ John apps because if Apple wasn’t the only way, it was fine. Let them ban whatever they wanted. We’ll just get it from an alternative app
⏹️ ▶️ John store. But that’s not the world we live in, at least in this country. Um, so yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s problems on top of the problems on top of problems. And like the, the appeasement
⏹️ ▶️ John strategy, like it’s just, it’s, it’s essentially a trap, like it’s, it works fine right
⏹️ ▶️ John up until it doesn’t, but when it doesn’t, it negates everything you’ve done. It’s like, well, what was the point
⏹️ ▶️ John in all of that? What was the point in all the harm that we caused if it turns out that the strategy is not sustainable?
⏹️ ▶️ John And I really feel like the strategy is not sustainable at this point. Like, it’s just, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that they pulled an app. It’s not, that’s not the thing. It’s what everything that Marco said that what’s happening with ice in this country is just
⏹️ ▶️ John very, very bad. It’s very bad. It’s not like the DUI checkpoints,
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing like this was happening in that context. So it’s like, oh, Apple pulls an app. It’s kind of crappy, but whatever. And now it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John OK, well, Apple pulling the app is part of what? Part of a thing that is happening that is
⏹️ ▶️ John terrible and is just getting worse by the day. I’m a little more optimistic than you are, Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ John that I’m hoping that the people wearing dinosaur suits in Portland will actually not
⏹️ ▶️ John get themselves shot and killed by ICE. But you never know what’s going to happen. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m hoping that ridicule and peaceful protest And we’ll keep this from
⏹️ ▶️ John escalating because I’m hoping that our side is not going to escalate this because honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the premise of all this of sending the National Guard into cities is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John cities are war zones. Everyone’s dying, which is obviously not true. But part of the whole fascist thing is you
⏹️ ▶️ John just make up lies, get enough people to believe it, and then you send in troops. And then the troops cause
⏹️ ▶️ John violence to happen. And they say, see, look, we told you there was violence. And it’s a terrible thing. But hopefully
⏹️ ▶️ John people know that that’s what’s happening. and can do things like dressing up in silly outfits to combat
⏹️ ▶️ John it. But anyway, it’s grim, and Apple is not helping.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope you are more right than I am. I don’t think you will be, but I hope you are.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we’ll see. You really can’t tell how these things are going to go. But for people
⏹️ ▶️ John who are in positions to influence it, obviously individual citizens protesting
⏹️ ▶️ John and voting and so on and so forth, and positions of power like Apple or any of the other companies that are, or
⏹️ ▶️ John universities or any other of the large institutions in our country that are being, that
⏹️ ▶️ John the government has essentially captured with this appeasement as the path of least resistance strategy,
⏹️ ▶️ John they can actually make an even bigger difference. And it’s sometimes heartening to see like a couple of universities
⏹️ ▶️ John actually standing up for themselves, but it’s incredibly disheartening to see Apple and all the tech companies and Columbia
⏹️ ▶️ John University and all the other things that just have folded like a house of cards and are not pushing back. And like I said,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s because the second they push back, they are self-negating
⏹️ ▶️ John their entire nine-month-long appeasement strategy. And that’s going to feel bad for them. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a sunk cost fallacy, but they probably need to just get over it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And also, I think at this point, it is very clear that Apple needs to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at this point, recognize what they are and stop quoting Martin Luther
⏹️ ▶️ Marco King on their homepage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also, I would say other people who would have pretty strong opinions about what they’re doing right now, stop quoting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them too, including Steve Jobs. They should never quote
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Steve Jobs again on their homepage if they’re going to act like this. Because a lot of people say, what would Steve do? And a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of times it’s just wishful thinking. Steve would not do this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He, he was a hippie. He was there. He would do a lot of things for the shameless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seeking of money and success. He would not do this.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. You can, people get old. He did do that thing of colluding to not let people
⏹️ ▶️ John change jobs for more money with Pixar and everything. That’s pretty close to this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Again, not great. He did a lot of not great things and had a lot of not great opinions,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and he was a master BS artist to try to rationalize what he was doing, but he would not
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, anyway, what we really got to be hoping for is what the next CEO will do. Steve’s not going to be the next
⏹️ ▶️ John CEO, and neither is Tim, so fingers crossed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco transition cannot happen soon enough.
⏹️ ▶️ John I did just see the recent story they’re talking about all the like that Jeff Williams leaving and stuff like that. A German had a bunch on it and
⏹️ ▶️ John it was mentioning like if Tim leaves, he might still be chairman of the board. I’m like, no, Tim, just go to an Island.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do not stay on as chairman of the board,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco please. I mean, at least it would be, at least it would be step one. Like step one is get out of the CEO
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, obviously he’s going to be around for a while.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not to turn this to a succession topic, but like part of the, one of the things that Tim had, a quote
⏹️ ▶️ John unquote problem that Tim had, is just the long shadow of Steve Jobs. So for like his first few years, it was like he was
⏹️ ▶️ John steering the Steve Jobs ship, and that didn’t let him become his own CEO, which
⏹️ ▶️ John for better or for worse, and we would say for worse at this point, right? Yeah. But like, I’m so afraid that like the next
⏹️ ▶️ John CEO will feel like they have to like be steering the Tim Cook ship for the first two years. Like, no, like
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s why I want him to get an ad on him. I want him to be on the board. I don’t want him to be there looking over anyone’s shoulder. I want the new CEO
⏹️ ▶️ John to say, I’m the new CEO. I have different ideas, clean break from the past, but I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not sure that that’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen. I mean, we’ll see like, you know, the, the, the, uh, recent reigniting of the rumors that John Ternus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might be the one kind of, you know, slated up in line next, you know, we, we don’t know that much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about John Ternus in ways like this. Like we don’t know like what kind of CEO he would be,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but so far, like, honestly, like if you look at, you know, look at what, what at Apple is working
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really well and what could use some help hardware is going really well.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the hardware is not nothing, not much political in the hardware. So it’s hard to tell where he stands on that stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that, like we don’t really, we, we won’t know that unless we actually, you know, have that situation and see how
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s the worst. That’s the worst thing about like the, like the second and third level of the org chart on Apple. You almost have no idea what
⏹️ ▶️ John the hell they’re thinking because everyone speaks with one voice and is so aligned on the message, you know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And it’s like, it’s kind of like when you’re electing politicians, you just hope that like this politician did what it
⏹️ ▶️ John took to get elected, but once they get in there, they’re going to do all this great stuff. Almost never happens. Like, because
⏹️ ▶️ John to get that far, to become the senior vice president at Apple, you have to be so
⏹️ ▶️ John willing to, you know, be on message and be aligned with the leadership
⏹️ ▶️ John that are you ever going to get somebody who spends all those years working all the way up, but in their secret heart is like, what’s what I get
⏹️ ▶️ John in charge. I’m going to change everything. No, I feel like you don’t like You breed, you breed like the only way you
⏹️ ▶️ John get that close. The only way you get to be second in line or whatever is to be like, to essentially just drink the Kool-Aid
⏹️ ▶️ John and be like, yep. No, I agree with all these Apple things and just that’s.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like Ternus is just a cipher on this because, you know, again, in hardware, you don’t spend a lot of time having
⏹️ ▶️ John to make any kind of decisions that touch this at all, because it’s like it’s microchips. And like, I mean, I guess maybe like sourcing
⏹️ ▶️ John parts and like sweatshops and stuff like that. But even even that is more of like a Jeff Williams type thing. And
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, uh, it’s, I’m, I’m ready for it to be an uncertain future. I’m kind of over the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it’s an, I think it’s uncertain future now. Like we, you know, we don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m ready to be in the uncertain future. Like I’m ready to be like in, in like, Oh, there’s someone new and I don’t know what they’re going to do. Cause I know
⏹️ ▶️ John what the current people are going to do and it’s not good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I mean, like, yeah, we need, we need a lot of turnover right now in a lot of different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ways, in a lot of different places.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s what the German story is about that we’re referring to that, like all those, Although, you know, Jeff Williams, I think we mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ John this in the show ages ago when it happened, like bringing a second command up and he’s on his way out the door. And lots of people
⏹️ ▶️ John are kind of of that age in senior leadership where they’re going to retire within the next few years, including Tim Cook, we all
⏹️ ▶️ John hope. And so there could actually start to be some turnover at the top level of the company, which is an incredibly dangerous
⏹️ ▶️ John situation. Things could go terribly wrong, but it’s also your only possible hope for, you know, positive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it just sucks. It all sucks. Everything sucks from top to bottom. And I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is, I’m casting about trying to find something to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excited about, something to feel like, yes, yes, this group
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or this person or these people, they get it and they’re fighting for the same thing that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am, to whatever degree I’m fighting, fighting for. And I feel like I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have yet to find that person, that group, et cetera.
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re out there, they’re just losing all the time. I guess,
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why if you follow all the court cases, you can enjoy all the lower court decisions before the Supreme Court overrules them all and
⏹️ ▶️ John says Trump can do whatever he wants. So if you can just enjoy the in-between period after they win
⏹️ ▶️ John decisively in the lower courts and you get to read those court decisions where they just take the government to task for being terrible,
⏹️ ▶️ John bad all over, and then just don’t pay attention as it wanders up to the Supreme Court and they say,
⏹️ ▶️ John no, actually, it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, let me tell you, I’m sure the Democrats fighting tooth and nail. Nevermind. No, no.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Some of them are,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but most of them. Like I, at this point it’s like, I love that everybody has the quaint idea that the courts are going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to save us. Look, look at how much they have saved us so far. Um, that’s not going to happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re not going to save us. The courts won’t save us and the Democrats won’t save us. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, keep looking.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the court, the Supreme court won’t save us. The lower courts, the government’s losing all the time because
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re wrong and breaking the law.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yes. But then when it gets to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Supreme court, they’re going to win again. Like, Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s right. So just enjoy that brief period between those two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things. Look, the entire first Trump era was defined by,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Max’s old joke, we got him this time, and we never are going to get him. That’s it. You want to get him
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got to be rooting for heart disease. Yeah, nothing will ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get him. Except for heart disease. We can all pray for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But nothing else will get him, and nothing else will stop him. And if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you think this is all gonna be over in three years, I got news for you about that too. Like I wouldn’t necessarily count on that either.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Until time saves us all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t count on anything coming to save us. Anyway, what a great show. Thanks for listening.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this would have been fine as an after show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, you can’t end on that. It’s terrible. We’ll have the after show to pick us back up. Thank you to our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sponsors this week. Squarespace, Delete Me, and OpenCase. And thanks to our members who support us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco directly, you can join us at atp.fm slash join. One of the perks of membership is ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overtime, our weekly bonus topic. This week on Overtime, we’re gonna be talking about the new Meta
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ray-Ban display glasses and Apple’s changing plans in response to that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can join to listen atp.fm slash join. Thank you very much, everybody, we’ll talk to you
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Mastodon, you can follow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and T.
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean to Accidental, check podcast so long.
TiVo ends DVR business
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this after show is going to be potentially fun for Marco and I, and real
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sad for one of us.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey only one left. Uh, John news broke over the last, I don’t know, 24, 48 hours
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as we record this, that Tevo is exiting its legacy DVR business.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, Oh, you’re going to have to wake up and join the 2020s. What are you going to do?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, this is not really sad for me because it’s like, uh, Tevo, I’m proud of Tevo for living as long as
⏹️ ▶️ John it is. Yeah. Cause it’s, It’s been a while like the Tivo kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John a couple other companies that uh, I’ve previously enjoyed Like they lost the ability to make good
⏹️ ▶️ John products several years ago Uh, it’s the reason i’m still running Older
⏹️ ▶️ John Tivos because they’re they’re literally better spec wise than the stuff they were selling like they stopped
⏹️ ▶️ John selling Uh DVRs that had the hard drive capacity of the one that I bought ages ago.
⏹️ ▶️ John They just they made them smaller and worse and put but smaller diameter, noisier fans in them and
⏹️ ▶️ John crappier hard drives and just their products got worse, right? Even as technology marched on and they never really made the transition
⏹️ ▶️ John to the 4K era mostly because cable card didn’t make a transition to the 4K era. Like their- That’s not true.
⏹️ ▶️ John Time has passed them by. We have 4K cable cards?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m almost sure of it because I get 4K from my cable card powered HD home run.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I might be wrong, but I’m almost certain.
⏹️ ▶️ John think we went through this when we did like the HD home run thing. Like it’s not the cable card is the problem. Remember I was saying like
⏹️ ▶️ John the only channels I get in 4K are like when they have those Red Sox games locally every once in a while, but everything else is 1080.
⏹️ ▶️ John is 100% true. That’s basically what I mean. They’re like, their idea was they would take quote unquote cable television and record
⏹️ ▶️ John it to a hard drive. And if the cable television is 1080, but you can get 4K on Netflix,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know. But anyway, the streaming area obviously came and passed them by like, you know, and even though I still have
⏹️ ▶️ John TiVos connected to both of my televisions, I have a good one on my downstairs TV and
⏹️ ▶️ John not so good one on my upstairs TV. You know, our viewing has just basically transitioned
⏹️ ▶️ John away from them almost entirely, almost but not quite entirely to streaming services. So I mentioned this
⏹️ ▶️ John ages ago that I got rid of HBO on my cable plan and just subscribed to it in the streaming app because the streaming app had
⏹️ ▶️ John high resolution, right? You know, streaming has come and displaced TiVo.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so it is kind of amazing that they’ve lasted as long as they can. It is also a shame that as this transition
⏹️ ▶️ John happened, They lost the ability to make good products. They could have done more of like a transition into like a more niche
⏹️ ▶️ John consumer product type thing. But like, again, they’re constrained by the fact that the television coming to the house
⏹️ ▶️ John either over the air or through cable lost the spec race to the television coming into your house through streaming
⏹️ ▶️ John services. Because streaming services just went to 4K faster and higher bit rates and HDR and
⏹️ ▶️ John cable was still jamming lots of channels over a single wire and blah, blah, blah. So, you know, time marches on.
⏹️ ▶️ John I still have my TiVos. I’m still running them. I still will continue to run them. I still pay for quote unquote cable television and I get stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John on there. But these days, for example, when I’m watching the Super Bowl or something when that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John on, rather than just going directly to TiVo and watching the Super Bowl, I’ll check
⏹️ ▶️ John if it is in higher resolution on a streaming service somewhere, just to try to get a better version of the Super Bowl. The answer is
⏹️ ▶️ John usually it’s not, it’s usually basically the same because sports is still kind of behind the times for a variety of reasons. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John so yeah, TiVo is no longer making a thing with hard drives and computers that will record cable television to
⏹️ ▶️ John the hard drive that you play Bach later. But I do want to say, pouring one out for TiVo, even though I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John drink, is that the original TiVo, back before high definition television,
⏹️ ▶️ John was just standard definition cable television, analog cable television
⏹️ ▶️ John coming over a cable, going into a cable card that was stuck into one of these things that had a computer
⏹️ ▶️ John and a hard drive in it, was one of the best consumer electronic products ever made,
⏹️ ▶️ John both in terms of how good it was at doing its job, but also in terms of how it changed the
⏹️ ▶️ John lives of people who had it. It’s not iPhone caliber, obviously it didn’t take the world by storm because it was kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of geeky, but like the way, I mean, if you talk to anybody who was around back then and got one of the early TiVos,
⏹️ ▶️ John the way it changed your relationship with television is actually analogous to the way streaming services have changed the way that
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody deals with television. Because it lets you pause live TV, lets you record
⏹️ ▶️ John multiple shows without using VHS tapes, lets you fast forward and rewind and skip commercials,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is the big thing that changed everyone’s lives, right? And eventually it’s recording six shows at once, which is the thing you, only
⏹️ ▶️ John the people with like 17 stacked VCRs used to do, and then you had to rewind all the tapes and blah, blah, blah. But the real
⏹️ ▶️ John thing this thing was so great at was, you know, that little peanut shape remote and the fact that that thing was so responsive.
⏹️ ▶️ John Back in the analog cable days, I don’t even know what resolution it was. It was like 480i, 480p, like MPEG-1
⏹️ ▶️ John code, whatever garbage, like low resolution,
⏹️ ▶️ John primitive algorithms we had, that was the signal it was recording anyway. So responsive. Pause,
⏹️ ▶️ John immediately pause. Played, immediately played. You could fast forward and rewind in increments of X number of seconds as fast as you
⏹️ ▶️ John could hit that button. Just incredibly responsive, incredibly easy to navigate. The Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ John cannot touch the TiVo up, down, left, right, select button. Like every menu was like the
⏹️ ▶️ John old iPhone. You go right to go into something, you go left to go out, up and down to scroll up and down. The whole
⏹️ ▶️ John interface was that. So fast, so simple, so readable from the couch.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everything was instant. Play the show, it’s playing. Pause the show, it’s paused. Skip commercial, it’s like.
⏹️ ▶️ John And as time went on, and as HD came out and so on and so forth, the TiVos got worse. They became less responsive.
⏹️ ▶️ John The interface went through a terrible transition where it got way, way worse. And some of the interface was in non-HD
⏹️ ▶️ John and some of it was in HD or whatever. And they declined, they diminished, they got worse at what they were
⏹️ ▶️ John doing. Streaming came and wiped them off the face of the earth. But today with TiVos stopping
⏹️ ▶️ John the production, you can’t even buy these anymore, although you shouldn’t buy them because they’re worse than the old ones. But stopping
⏹️ ▶️ John production of their hard drive based DVRs, it’s worth remembering just how good
⏹️ ▶️ John the TiVo was in its heyday and how it totally transformed my relationship
⏹️ ▶️ John with television. It stopped being a thing that I had to sit down at a certain time and watch or whatever. I
⏹️ ▶️ John stopped seeing commercials entirely, which kind of disconnected me from popular culture for a while, because people would
⏹️ ▶️ John talk about commercials that were on TV and I’d never seen them. That’s still kind of true to this day, because I think a lot of people add
⏹️ ▶️ John support streaming services and I don’t. But what a piece of hardware. That remote, still
⏹️ ▶️ John amazing. By the way, if you have old TiVo remotes, you can teach the Apple TV to use them as long as you have IR line
⏹️ ▶️ John of sight to the thing. I don’t necessarily recommend that because in some situations the sway pad is faster
⏹️ ▶️ John than the five-way button. But in every other respect, using a TiVo remote with your Apple TV is a much
⏹️ ▶️ John more pleasant experience. If only the Apple TV, with eight bajillion times the computing power, was as responsive
⏹️ ▶️ John as like a Series 2 TiVo was back in the day. I’m sorry for young people who didn’t experience this, but believe
⏹️ ▶️ John me, like same way you don’t believe that changing channels used to be as fast as it was back when we were little kids,
⏹️ ▶️ John because you’ve only ever seen a modern TV where changing channels takes forever, whereas the channels used to change as fast as
⏹️ ▶️ John you could turn that dial. Like, yeah, analog, it had its downsides, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it also had its upsides. Anyway, with TiVo going away, I just wanna remember TiVo for the great,
⏹️ ▶️ John I will always have great memories of it. It made my life better, it continues to make my life better, even as the company,
⏹️ ▶️ John not goes out of business, but stops making those products. It still has a place in my entertainment
⏹️ ▶️ John center until the thing finally dies. And then I guess maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John someday I’ll eventually be a quote unquote cord cutter because one thing I’m not doing is ever having a cable company box in my
⏹️ ▶️ John house. And that’s the thing that I never did because Tivo, there’s another thing Tivo did. Tivo saved me from ever having
⏹️ ▶️ John a cable box. Every time I went over to someone’s house and they had cable and I had to use the cable company cable box,
⏹️ ▶️ John man it was grim. Tivo was just living in the future for at least a decade. And it
⏹️ ▶️ John also happened to coincide the time when both my kids were born, or at least my first kid and a little shading to the second,
⏹️ ▶️ John I do not know what I would have done without Tebow giving me all that stuff to watch at 3am
⏹️ ▶️ John as I bounced my children on a bouncy ball, trying to get them to sleep.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I, again, in the same way that I give Marco a lot of stick about fish, even though I, I bet you, I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enjoy it a lot more than I admit. I give John a lot of stick about Tebow, particularly running
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it in the year of our Lord 2025. But with that said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what John described, I cannot begin to tell you how revolutionary it was. I mean, my children
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t understand what commercials are, and that’s not because of TiVo, that’s because of the things that TiVo brought to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us. And there was no cable company DVR that I was aware of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey until TiVo existed. I mean, it really was revolutionary. And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey born in the new millennium, if your birth date begins with a two,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think you understand how incredibly revolutionary a DVR was. Because,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, my kids don’t understand that there are things that you can only watch when they’re airing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, as an example, there’s a brief window of time over the summer where the family really got into Jeopardy and then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey school happened. We’ve mostly fizzled about that. But they didn’t understand that you couldn’t just watch Jeopardy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whenever the hell you want. Like, what do you mean it’s not on?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco What do you mean? What does that even mean? What is a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey channel? I don’t even like, I hear you say those words, but I don’t know what What is a channel? What does that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John mean? You mean like a YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ Casey channel? Exactly. Exactly. And so all of that, to me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Genesis was the TiVo. And even though I think it’s ridiculous to continue to use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a TiVo in 2025. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not ridiculous, though. Like if it keeps working, like the ridiculous thing is paying for cable. That’s the ridiculous thing. But having a TiVo in the
⏹️ ▶️ John house, if you are paying for cable, it’s just great. It just makes
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey cable better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But so does channels. Like there are much more modern versions
⏹️ ▶️ John this. Yeah. I mean, remember, I did try channels. I do believe my current TiVo is still nicer than channels. Cause I tried it. I
⏹️ ▶️ John tried channels. I did it. Channels is really good. If TiVo didn’t exist, maybe I would do it, but my TiVo is better
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’m not sure I agree, but you might be right. If the content
⏹️ ▶️ John was 4k channels would be better, but it’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, the channels will slurp up whatever you give it. So.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, I just, but I’m saying like, I don’t, Fios doesn’t deliver 4k except for, and remember we went through this, like the Red
⏹️ ▶️ John Sox games every once in a while and a few really high number channels, but almost everything else is not 4k.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, on the exact same day that TiVo stopped making DVRs, we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also lost another revolution. AOL dial-up service ended.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Literally the same day, September 30th, both of these things died. It is kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of remarkable to think that those both had the same lifespan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Although I would
⏹️ ▶️ John say that AOL dial-up service was revolutionary for a lot of people, but its useful lifespan was way shorter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, agreed. but also probably 10 years earlier. But yeah, the remarkable thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in both cases, in the case of AOL dial-up and of TiVo DVRs, in both cases, most people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hearing the news today, the reaction is, you could still get those?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, didn’t they say how many people were actually using dial-up when they stopped it? It was some number
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s way bigger than you would think. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was a couple hundred thousand, I think, or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just wonder if those are accounts where there’s no, that’s just some auto-pay thing going on, and there’s like, I have a hard time believing
⏹️ ▶️ John that is 100,000 actual humans dialing up to AOL. But maybe, you know, like really old people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, figure like, maybe if you live somewhere rural where like you haven’t had good internet service options for most of the time, you might still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not, and you have really simple needs and you’ve been doing the same thing for 40 years, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe, yeah, okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would think the capacitors would blow on their PCs. I think that, you know what I mean? Like how is the
⏹️ ▶️ John modem still working?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I guess like, you know, people still make like all-in-one printer scanner fax things. So like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the components must still be made for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fax modems and those. So I guess like you can still make a modem,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I mean how would you, like how would you get the computer version? Like who even still makes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I’m sure somebody makes like a USB one.
⏹️ ▶️ John But. Yeah, I mean, you know it can happen. Like hey, I’ve got my Synology down in the basement. I was about 13 years old of continuous
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco been using a
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro for 10 years. So like, I don’t know, 30, 40, you could get lucky.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I bet though, I bet Casey’s right. I bet it’s like mostly probably like subscriptions that were just never canceled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey point. That was John that said that. But either way,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was looking for a link to put in the show notes and I stumbled on a Tom’s Hardware link. In the US, there are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey still some ISPs which can make good use of your old US robotic Sportster 56K or Diamond
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Super Express modem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Diamond, no, the Sportster was the best one. Come on, we all know that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We all know that, we’ve been through this many times. The biggest name alternative is MSN Dial-Up which is $22 a month.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There are also dial-up services offered by NetZero and Juno, remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that name? You know still exists?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a name I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John heard in a minute.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wonder how many companies that’s been passed around through.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was my first, you know, quote, internet. I mean, that was when it was back when it was just email. Like, that was my first internet.
⏹️ ▶️ John netcom. Netcom.com. What a domain name. That’s incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Finishing up from Tom’s hardware, we recently also had the pleasure of seeing a pair of network enthusiasts bond 12
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 56k modems together to set dial-up broadband records. They managed to achieve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a record 668 kilobits per second using multi-link
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like the floppy disk raids.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Right? Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco incredible. The term broadband is being used pretty generously
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, maybe they need broad like physical width. Yeah, right. All those modems lined up. up with those