catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).

669: Ternus, Take the Wheel

11 Dec 2025

More Apple-executive turnover, and the risks and upsides of leadership change.

Episode Description:

Sponsored by:

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Transcribed using Whisper large_v2 (transcription) + WAV2VEC2_ASR_LARGE_LV60K_960H (alignment) + Pyannote (speaker diaritization).

Chapters

  1. ❄️🔫🇺🇸🛻❄️
  2. Fitness+ expansion
  3. Sponsor: Aura Frames (code ATP)
  4. Cloudflare, hosting decisions
  5. Siri, say my name
  6. Apple’s pushing iOS 26 harder
  7. Marco’s broken tethering
  8. Sponsor: Leesa (code ATP)
  9. Intel fabbing for Apple?
  10. Gruber not a fan of Dye
  11. Sponsor: Factor (code atp50off)
  12. More Apple-exec departures
  13. Ending theme
  14. John’s broken iMessage groups

❄️🔫🇺🇸🛻❄️

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So this week we had something happen in Richmond, which does not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey typically happen in December. And what we had happen was… LARRY ESCHMIDT Good

⏹️ ▶️ Casey bagels? COREY PENNER Oh, really? This is the energy you’re gonna bring to the show tonight. LARRY ESCHMIDT Please take note of who’s antagonizing you.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John COREY PENNER Yes,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am. You’re still on my poo-poo list, but now it’s both of you. Both of you are on my poo-poo list, darn it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco COREY PENNER

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, how do I not try that?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey COREY PENNER Ugh.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well played, well played.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco LARRY ESCHMIDT I’m the chief derailer in chief.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey COREY PENNER Right. In any case, we had something very unusual happen. We

⏹️ ▶️ Casey got snow. And what is so funny to me, so I haven’t lived

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Connecticut. I’m sure I’ve made this speech before on the show and sometimes last 10, 11 years, whatever. But I haven’t lived

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Connecticut since I graduated high school in 2000. Went to Virginia Tech for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey four years, briefly went back to Connecticut in the summertime for a couple of months while I was looking for work. And then I was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey down in Central Virginia, different part of Central Virginia after that. So it’s been 21

⏹️ ▶️ Casey years that I’ve been in Virginia, far and away the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really do not miss the snow. I’m good not having snow anymore. And if Virginia, or at

⏹️ ▶️ Casey least Richmond, gets snow, typically that happens for whatever reason. Like the January, February,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe March time frame. But it is very unusual to get it in December.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But the thing that makes me laugh so much is that Richmond, for better and for worse,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey approximately, let me do the math, zero ability to deal with snow.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so, uh, it was, I believe Sunday night and they were calling for,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey prepare yourselves, Northeasterners, they were calling for, I believe

⏹️ ▶️ Casey three inches of snow and by 4 PM on Sunday afternoon,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they had already canceled school from one day. And intellectually, I get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey why that is because as I said, we just don’t have the We just don’t have the plows and the salt and the whatever

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in order to deal with it. I mean, we have some, but not nearly to the level that Massachusetts or New York has

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or Connecticut. But as someone who spent his formative years in Connecticut,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey where my recollection, probably incorrect, but my recollection was we were under a foot of snow

⏹️ ▶️ Casey between October and April, it’s so funny to me that there had not been a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey single snowflake coming out of the sky by 4 PM on Sunday, and they had already

⏹️ ▶️ Casey school for Monday. And then they canceled school for Tuesday. And then today…

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John What? Wait a second.

⏹️ ▶️ John They canceled school for Tuesday on Sunday or on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Monday? Oh no, I’m sorry. On Monday afternoon. I’m sorry. That was ambiguous of me. My apologies. And what was happening

⏹️ ▶️ John on the ground Monday afternoon that they canceled school for Tuesday?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, they just hadn’t been able to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John clear anything.

⏹️ ▶️ John So, it was the same three inches of snow? Yeah, pretty much. Two days off from school? I think that’s excessive. I

⏹️ ▶️ John understand you can’t get rid of it. We’re not going to have

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey time to follow through. No, I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sorry. My timeline’s wrong. Wait. My timeline’s wrong. It was Friday and Monday. I’m sorry, my timeline is all wrong. I should have taken notes.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, so it was Friday. We, they got canceled. I think I have this right now. So they canceled Thursday into Friday.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That was the first batch. And then we got more snow on my, that’s what it was. We were getting more snow on Monday. So they canceled

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Monday. So what is time when the kids don’t go to school? What is time? I don’t know how you, John, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know how you keep track of what day to record because you have no kids there to keep you on track. But anyways, so yeah, it’s just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so funny to me. Our inability to deal with snow, or if you believe these two jerks make bagels, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway, our inability to deal with snow, it will never stop being funny to me. And honestly,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is reasonable that they canceled school both of these days, but to do so before

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there was a flake of snow on the ground, it will never stop making me laugh. I just find it to be

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the funniest thing in the world.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you know, canceling when there’s no snow on the ground is reasonable if there’s going to be like three feet or something, it’s going to be like

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey a-

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, right. That’s the thing. No, three inches, John, three inches.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I don’t know what the metric conversion is.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But they don’t have, they don’t have like plows and salt there. Like that’s, you know, the reason

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey why,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, You, John, up there in the Arctic, you wouldn’t cancel for three, like up there

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it snows three inches, no one even mentions it, because you’re equipped for it. Everything is so commonly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco covered in snow up there that everyone, like the towns are prepared with plows and salt and everything, everyone knows how to drive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the snow. And down in the South, in the deep South where Casey

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey lives. The

⏹️ ▶️ Casey deep,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco deep, deep South where I am.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No one there has ever seen snow before. It’s like the way the British people have never realized they need air

⏹️ ▶️ Marco conditioning. even though every summer, it’s obvious that everyone in Britain needs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco air conditioning, but they’re like, oh, it’s not usually like this. And then of course, every summer, they say it’s not usually like this,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they obviously need air conditioning. Virginia, it does snow sometimes,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so you do probably need a plow or two in town. But- That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John what I was saying, maybe you get the one day, but by that day being off, the one plow

⏹️ ▶️ John that you have should drive over all the roads that are important. You know what I mean?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I think part of the problem is, a lot in a lot of cases, it’s not the main roads

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or even like the second tier roads. It’s the neighborhood roads that are often either not maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not impassable, but not great.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you know, everyone in America has these gigantic SUVs now, even no matter where they live, I feel

⏹️ ▶️ John like, okay, so your, your local roads are, haven’t been plowed. I think your S, your giant,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, gnarly SUV with the big tires and 12 inches of ground clearance can make it over three

⏹️ ▶️ John inches of snow to get onto the highway.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it can’t because first of all, they don’t have all the good tires and ground clearance. They’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey large.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re large vehicles that have like, you know, racing slicks and 25 inch rims. They

⏹️ ▶️ John have racing slicks, but

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco okay. They

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are also often like, you know, most SUVs now, they, the most common trims sold are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not off-road trims. They’re like, you know, low, lower to the ground, lower suspension, bigger wheels, smooth tires

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you know, they made to look pretty. Are they more than three inches off the ground? Sometimes not.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But then, you know, and then also they are being piloted by people who not only

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have never driven in any kind of condition, but think that their SUV will allow them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to drive however they would like in such conditions.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a combination of, you know, a lot of confidence in a vehicle that seems like it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be good, but might not be as good as you think. And that oftentimes results in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That

⏹️ ▶️ John reminds me, I never gave my daughter her snow driving lesson because we just like the timing didn’t line up.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like when my son was getting his license, there was a day when it snowed, I think school was canceled or something.

⏹️ ▶️ John And we raced over to the school parking lot, which was not plowed. And it just had like a foot of snow in it and

⏹️ ▶️ John did all sorts of like snow shenanigans to learn how to drive in snow. But, uh, my daughter,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, we’ve had a very, you know, fingers crossed, we’ve had very light snow here, like where it would just

⏹️ ▶️ John be like, you know, an inch or two and then it just sort of settles in and then other introduce it like very, very

⏹️ ▶️ John light snow for the past several winters, not enough to go high school parking lot, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John skidding in the snow. And so she’s never, I’ve never gotten a chance to do that with her. So maybe, maybe when she’s home over the holidays,

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll have a chance to do that, but we’ll see. It’s the, that’s the tricky thing about having plows. So you want

⏹️ ▶️ John to teach your kid how to drive in the snow. You have a very narrow

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey window of time

⏹️ ▶️ John where you can get to an

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey unplowed parking lot

⏹️ ▶️ John before the plows come and plow the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey parking lot. That’s so true. The only thing that this reminds me of, It’s not apples to apples, but, uh, years

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago, again, I’m sure I’ve told this story before, but years ago, many, many years ago, like 10 plus years ago, I was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing a lot of work in the LA area. And there was one day that we were, it was an evening

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we were catching a flight back East. I believe it was a red eye and we were driving to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey LAX and there was rain in Los Angeles and it was,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I’m, if I’m honest, it was a genuine rain. It wasn’t just a little spittle. Like it was an honest to goodness

⏹️ ▶️ Casey rain. And if I wasn’t there, I would not believe the words that are about to come out of my mouth. But I kid

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you not, people in Los Angeles don’t understand what weather is. I think most of coastal California

⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t understand, don’t get what weather is. And so anyways, these cars were spinning

⏹️ ▶️ Casey off the road, left and right. And it was rain, like just rain,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but they never get weather. So they didn’t know what to do. And it was scary, but also

⏹️ ▶️ Casey freaking hilarious because nobody understood what to do when the weather wasn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey absolutely perfect. It was incredible.

Fitness+ expansion

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do some follow-up. Speaking of the Los Angeles area, if I’m not mistaken, that’s where this is all filmed.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Fitness Plus, and I would like to state for the record, I did not write this, I believe this was John. From our

⏹️ ▶️ Casey internal show notes, Apple Fitness Plus is doing better than the Mac Pro. Kind of wish I came up with that burn.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Very well done, John, very well done. And like I said, I believe that their studio is in Santa Monica. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there was an announcement a couple of days back that Apple Fitness Plus will be expanding to 28 new markets.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey reading from the announcement. Apple Today, which was December 8th, announced Apple Fitness Plus is expanding to 28 new markets

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on December 15th, with Japan launching early next year. As part of the service’s latest expansion,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey since it was unveiled five years ago, hundreds of Fitness Plus workouts and meditations will be digitally dubbed with a generated

⏹️ ▶️ Casey voice in Spanish, German, and Japanese, with more dubbed episodes added every week. The dubbed workouts and meditations

⏹️ ▶️ Casey feature a generated voice based on the actual voice of each of the 28 Fitness Plus trainers. Fitness Plus is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey also introducing a new music genre to the service, K-pop. I thought that this was interesting for a few

⏹️ ▶️ Casey reasons. First of all, we just recently had an article, I think from German, saying that basically Fitness Plus

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was circling the drain. I’m paraphrasing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco heavily. It

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was under review.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey There you go.

⏹️ ▶️ John Seems like it got a pretty good review. Yeah, and on that topic, and the reason I wrote that it’s doing better than the Mac Pro,

⏹️ ▶️ John it might still be under review. This might be like an effort to get more,

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe people, maybe we can get more customers because it’s all in English. How do we deal with that? I’ll use these AI dub voices,

⏹️ ▶️ John blah, blah, blah, right? It still might be under review, but it’s doing better than the Mac Pro because at least

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re doing stuff with it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not that we’re bitter. But anyways, so this whole story is interesting in that regard. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the thing that’s most interesting to me is the part in, as you just mentioned, John, the part about the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey voices. So let me read just that quick, that subsection one more time. The workouts and meditations will be

⏹️ ▶️ Casey digitally dubbed with a generated voice in Spanish, German, and Japanese with more dubbed episodes, blah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey blah, blah. The generated voice based on the actual voice of each of the 28 Fitness Plus trainers.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that’s fascinating. And if I’m to base how this will go on Workout

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Buddy, which I don’t know if you recall this, I think it was new this year, I don’t think it was last year, but the idea

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is as you’re doing a workout with your watch, there will be a Workout Buddy that will chime

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in periodically and say something along the lines of, great job in your outdoor walk. You’ve walked 340 million miles

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so far this year. You have 28 minutes left in your exercise ring.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and now back to Metallica or whatever you’re listening to. And the voice that I use is very clearly, if

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not mistaken, it’s Sam, which is one of the trainers on Fitness Plus. They don’t name who it is, but that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty clear who it is. I’m pretty sure I have that right. But anyways, it’s really good. And again,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey she, it, whatever, will even announce the music or whatever that you’re listening to. I don’t think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it does anything for podcasts, but for music, when I’m using Apple Music anyway, it’ll say now back to, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Metallica, Goose or what have you. And it really is. I mean, it’s clear that it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a human, but as generated voices go, it’s really, really, really good.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I presume and assume that they’re using similar technology for Workout Buddy as they

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are for these dubbed episodes. But I just think that’s super duper cool and a very fascinating

⏹️ ▶️ Casey approach.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is becoming more popular. There was actually a recent controversy in one of the

⏹️ ▶️ John video games that I’m playing now, where the voice actors that voiced the lines of the various characters in

⏹️ ▶️ John the video game, were, depending on who you ask, forced or railroaded into

⏹️ ▶️ John signing a contract that said, you give us the right to essentially generate speech from your

⏹️ ▶️ John voice. Same way I’m assuming these fitness trainers did. You work as a

⏹️ ▶️ John fitness trainer for Apple Plus, and part of their contract probably says, we are allowed to synthesize your voice

⏹️ ▶️ John so that we can make you speak German, even though you don’t speak German, or whatever, W in a different language.

⏹️ ▶️ John And people don’t like that because people mad about AI and they’re like, well, that was part of their contract. Those voice actors or those

⏹️ ▶️ John fitness trainers signed it or like, yeah, but they were forced into it because you can’t get the job in this industry because they all make

⏹️ ▶️ John you sign away your rights to X, Y and Z. So anyway, people are mad at the video game because the video

⏹️ ▶️ John game, you know, has lines of dialogue that are generated by, you know, AI

⏹️ ▶️ John trained on the actual voice actors voices. So I don’t know how this is going to turn out. It seems like another one of those things

⏹️ ▶️ John where like if there have to be like a better contract negotiations, kind of like

⏹️ ▶️ John before the contracts dealt with streaming and everything like that, better contract negotiations to get a better deal that if you are going

⏹️ ▶️ John to sign away your AI voice rights, that you are fairly compensated for

⏹️ ▶️ John it in some way. So I wonder if the fitness plus trainers are kind of feeling the same way of like, Hey, wait

⏹️ ▶️ John a second. Did you just kind of replace me? Like rather than paying me to read all those lines in German. And the

⏹️ ▶️ John second thing is, okay, so they train it on your voice in English, but there are sounds in other languages that don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John exist in English. So it’s really interesting, like for native speakers

⏹️ ▶️ John of those languages, like, does this person, does this sound right? Does, you know, does this person is speaking Korean

⏹️ ▶️ John sound correct? Or are there sounds that are Chinese like, or are there sounds that sound weird

⏹️ ▶️ John because nothing in the training data included that sound?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know how that’s going to work out, but I do think it’s fascinating one way or the other. And if ATP

⏹️ ▶️ Casey listener, if you try one of these in a week or so when it comes out and you have feedback,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey please, you know, send me a toot on Mastodon or something. I’d be interested to hear what you think.

⏹️ ▶️ John — Especially if you speak a language, if you’re listening to a dub in a language that doesn’t — that has sounds that are not in English.

⏹️ ▶️ John — Or just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re a native speaker of the language dubbed into, like, let us know, like, how good are these dubs? Like, how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco does it — does it sound natural? Can you tell it’s AI-generated? Or, you know, like, how good does it sound,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey — Right. One other quick piece on this. Later on — I hadn’t read this part yet — there’s a quote

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and reading from the announcement, through its seamless integration across Apple devices, Fitness Plus has helped inspire users

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to live a healthier day, said Jay Blahnik, Apple’s Vice President of Fitness Technologies. I call this out,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it’s interesting that they’re quoting Jay Blahnik, not necessarily bad, but certainly interesting.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because if you recall just a few months back, I think it was like summertime or something like that, there was a big controversy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey where he was accused of really, Jay Blahnik that is, was accused of really toxic

⏹️ ▶️ Casey workplace culture and mild to severe harassment and so on and so forth. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple seemed to just kind of want to sweep this under the rug. And I’m not here to pass judgment as to whether or not any of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey those accusations were true, but they usually are from what I can tell. Uh, so anyways, um,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just thought it was interesting that they actually came out and quoted him specifically named a named quote in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the newsroom announcement.

⏹️ ▶️ John I follow this under the same thing as people getting a press release saying how wonderful they are when they get a

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey force

⏹️ ▶️ John out of a company for not doing their job. But

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey if you’re a high

⏹️ ▶️ John enough level executive and you do terrible things that everybody hates you, they will fly cover for you and allow

⏹️ ▶️ John you to continue to have a job and sweep that stuff under the carpet. And I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey agree

⏹️ ▶️ John with you, Casey. Usually when a story like that actually gets out into the public, it has to be so bad

⏹️ ▶️ John that we actually hear about it. There’s plenty of bad managers doing bad things in positions

⏹️ ▶️ John where that doesn’t get out to the public. When it does, it’s really almost always like a where there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John smoke, there’s fire situation. So maybe a little bit more corporate dysfunction at high levels

⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple.

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Cloudflare, hosting decisions

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s talk Cloudflare. If you recall, there was a Cloudflare outage in mid-November, I believe

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was. We talked about it, what was it, last week, I think. And John, you had moved your,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or excuse me, not moved, you had put Cloudflare in front of your website to handle certificates and whatnot.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And Jramskov writes, good timing with the switch to automatic SSL certificate updates since they will soon start expiring

⏹️ ▶️ Casey quite quickly. and we will link to and JramSkov link to. TLS certificate

⏹️ ▶️ Casey lifetimes will officially reduce to 47 days. And there’s a post on DigiCert that talks about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this. So Steven Davidson at DigiCert writes on May 16th of this year, the CA browser forum

⏹️ ▶️ Casey has officially voted to amend the TLS baseline requirements to set a schedule for shortening both the lifetime of TLS certificates

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the reusability of CA validated information in certificates. The first user impacts

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this ballot takes place in March 2026. The new ballot targets certificate validity of 47 days, making

⏹️ ▶️ Casey automation essential. And if you read this link, and John, correct me

⏹️ ▶️ Casey whenever you’re ready, but my executive summary as the chief summarizer in chief, is that the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey current timeline is, I think something like 400 days. And over the next few years, it’s gonna shorten and shorten and shorten.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And what I found fascinating was the 47 day number wasn’t actually arbitrary. It

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was one, and now I’m sort of reading from the article, one maximum maximal month,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is 31 days, plus half of a 30-day month, which is 15 days, plus one day of wiggle

⏹️ ▶️ Casey room. So that’s how you get to 47, which I thought was very interesting. But all of this came from Apple. They

⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t say it this way, but I kind of read it as, Apple railroaded everyone into, look, this should be

⏹️ ▶️ Casey automated. We should force people to automate it. It’s not safe to do it by hand. Let’s make it so incredibly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey short that it’s frustrating not to. And apparently it was Apple that really banged this drum really hard

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and started this whole process.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is a interesting human factors type thing where, I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John if you’ve been in the web world or worked on server side stuff, or even just been a customer for

⏹️ ▶️ John long enough, I’m sure you’ve encountered a situation where, oops, someone

⏹️ ▶️ John forgot to renew their SSL certificate on this very popular website. And you’re like, how can that possibly happen?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, this is an incredibly popular website. It’s the yahoo.com, whatever, like some

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey really popular. That’s an incredibly popular website. I’m saying back in

⏹️ ▶️ John time, like back,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You know, a long time ago, like you’d

⏹️ ▶️ John go to a website and like there’d be some security error and you can’t bring it up. You’re like, how did they, don’t they have a person

⏹️ ▶️ John on staff whose job it is to, and let me tell you, having worked for a lot of big companies that make a lot of money and have a lot

⏹️ ▶️ John of employees, when certificates last for five years, it’s really

⏹️ ▶️ John easy to miss that five year anniversary renewal time when you have to refresh the certificate

⏹️ ▶️ John and only find out about it when like alarms start going off at like 1 a.m. when the certificate expires and nobody

⏹️ ▶️ John noticed because the person who had set up, who had done it and then set a calendar reminder five years, like left the company

⏹️ ▶️ John two and a half years ago and no one else was on top of that. And then the first time that happens at every company

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s this big meeting and everyone gets together. Oh, we’re not gonna let this happen again, blah, blah, blah. But the point is when things are done manually

⏹️ ▶️ John and when there’s a long time between them, it’s easy to forget. So I think Apple’s point here is like,

⏹️ ▶️ John if you make the time short enough, there’s no way any sane company you hope is going to do this manually.

⏹️ ▶️ John There are lots of other dangers of doing it manually too, of secrets leaking out and copying and pasting things of the wrong window and crap like that.

⏹️ ▶️ John You want it to be automated. All that said, I had no idea this was happening and it is just a happy accident

⏹️ ▶️ John that there’s no way I’d wanna do the thing that I had to do like all those sites manually every 47 days.

⏹️ ▶️ John So if I hadn’t done the CloudFlare stuff that I did, I definitely would have done it once

⏹️ ▶️ John I learned that they’re gonna keep shortening the thing until it gets to 47 days. So automation is good.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wes Doman writes, John should look into GitHub Pages for a static site. It’s free and can be built from markdown using GitHub

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Actions and also includes SSL. I’ve been running my blog site on it for years now, and I’ve seen zero performance or uptime

⏹️ ▶️ Casey issues, no server costs, no renewals, et cetera. I think this is interesting, but you’re not a Markdown

⏹️ ▶️ Casey fan, if I’m not mistaken, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John No, and I wouldn’t hitch my wagon to the GitHub star. I mean, it’s Microsoft-owned, and they’re doing some weird stuff, and they’re not

⏹️ ▶️ John primarily a web host, so it’s fun for like a cute little thing, and it’s great that it works, but I wouldn’t want to

⏹️ ▶️ John put my site there.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. And then an anonymous Cloudflare employee wrote, you can use Cloudflare workers, pages, or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey even R2 to host static sites there directly. No need to run your own origin for this, all free.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Workers started as a serverless offering, but is now able to host static assets too and thus do what Pages

⏹️ ▶️ Casey does. So workers are certainly the way to go for new stuff. Beyond static assets, workers can be used to build

⏹️ ▶️ Casey insanely scalable full stack web applications without issues. Would have been perfect for the overcast chapter image back end, for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey example. The workers plus R2 plus KV, which I believe is key value storage, plus durable object stack

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is very powerful and scalable.

⏹️ ▶️ John So I actually looked into this. Pages, it seems like it’s kind of deprecated,

⏹️ ▶️ John even if it’s not really deprecated, they’re like, you know, workers is the new thing, it can do everything that Pages did, but Pages was very

⏹️ ▶️ John aligned towards letting you make static sites. R2 is just like S3, it’s just like a bucket or whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ John but I think R2 has some interesting features in terms of URL rewriting, like just on the

⏹️ ▶️ John bucket that S3 doesn’t have. So you can really serve a static site and not have like.html extensions on

⏹️ ▶️ John all your URLs, because I think R2 will do stuff I haven’t entirely looked into that. But what I did look into is

⏹️ ▶️ John workers. Workers has a way of saying like you have static assets and put them in a directory

⏹️ ▶️ John and then, you know, deploy your worker and you can run it locally, or you can run it on the CloudFlare

⏹️ ▶️ John servers and you point it into a domain and it’s real easy. And I set that up on my website and then I tried

⏹️ ▶️ John to do my first deployment. I was just using a different scratch domain. I tried to do the deployment and it’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, it looks like you have a file that’s more than 25 megabytes and assets can’t be more than 25 megabytes. I’m like, oh, that

⏹️ ▶️ John really puts a damper on workers. And they’re like, well, you know, you can put the files that are bigger than 25 megabytes

⏹️ ▶️ John in R2, and then you can route, you can in your worker config, you can say if a request comes in for this,

⏹️ ▶️ John route it to the R2 bucket instead of the secure assets thing. But I was like, oh, I don’t wanna have to figure

⏹️ ▶️ John out all the 25 meg files that are over here and do all this routing. So let me just do pure

⏹️ ▶️ John worker in front of R2 because the worker you get to actually write like Node.js code or whatever, where you can

⏹️ ▶️ John do any routing you want and do all your redirects. So you just write code instead of having to do like a server config.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I got that set up and this is everything I’m describing it took place today. So this was, I was able to explore

⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of this pretty quickly and I have basically my website up with workers on all backed

⏹️ ▶️ John by R2 using a different domain. And it seems fine. I might move the real

⏹️ ▶️ John site there. Again, this is all entirely free, which is great. Like you can run code, like,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the quote unquote code is like a JavaScript file. It’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John a page of code. Like just, you know, when a request comes in, what should I do with it? And you get to implement

⏹️ ▶️ John all of your routing logic, however you want to do it. And my routing logic is not complicated. I’m basically just

⏹️ ▶️ John removing that HTML file extensions. I also get to set all my cache exploration headers and do all the stuff that you would

⏹️ ▶️ John do in a typical web server config. So I’m pretty impressed by it, but I haven’t decided whether I am going to

⏹️ ▶️ John move, fully move the site there. Right now, I’m still just putting CloudFlare and it’s caching in front

⏹️ ▶️ John of my crappy shared hosting thing. I may actually just leave the crappy shared hosting

⏹️ ▶️ John to Mulder and move all the actual pages to Cloudflare. Tune in next week for an update.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And as for using it for overcast images, two reasons why

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t done this. Number one, when you actually look at the number of images

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would have to host, a lot of times, any kind of managed image service is priced

⏹️ ▶️ Marco per source image. And even if you try to make your own, when you look at like what the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco scale would be for me to do this for every podcast and every podcast’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco individual episodes of episode art. We’re talking millions of images. The

⏹️ ▶️ Marco small versions of which at least get a lot of traffic and the big versions get some traffic. So it’s a very large number and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually the economics of it are way out of whack for what that would be.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But secondly, I also don’t like relying on a proprietary

⏹️ ▶️ Marco service in the hosting world that nothing else can replicate. You know, right now, I’ve been

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Linode for a while, I just use the basic, you know, Linode compute instances, which used to be called

⏹️ ▶️ Marco VPSs. And these are just little Linux servers. And if Linode goes bad, which it has been,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m able to, you know, move to other hosts, which I’m looking at,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that can also host any kind of Linode computing instance. And everyone can host that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco AWS can host that, there’s, you know, DigitalOcean, there’s, you know, different other hosts, I’m looking at Hetzner

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, because they’re apparently in the US now, which I didn’t realize. And so there’s,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, if that host goes bad, whatever host I’m on, I can move without rewriting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my entire stack. Now moving hosts is not fun, but I can do it. When I was using S3,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I was describing, and then using Linear Object Storage, those are just, that’s the same, like standard

⏹️ ▶️ Marco compatible service. It was no big deal to move from S3 to Linear Objects, and then Linear Objects,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for some reason, was limited to 50, 500 million, whatever it was, entries, it was no big deal to then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco move out of Linode objects into Cloudflare R2, which John was just talking about. Because these are all like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco plug-in compatible, identical functioning services, basically.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco When you get into anything that’s more specialized, that’s more managed by one of these, or like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a capability that only Cloudflare has, that means if Cloudflare goes bad, I can’t move very easily. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the kind of decisions I make for my hosting, I look at the long term because moving

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hosts is terrible, dealing with server code more than you have to is terrible. I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco love dealing with servers at all. I do it to achieve its means to an end. So I want my servers to be as low

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maintenance as possible. The last thing I want is for anything I choose today

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be different or discontinued or merge with something else in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco three or five years. And you might think, oh, you don’t have to worry about it. well, Overcast is 11 years old.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do have to worry about things like that. And so I’ve been burned in the past of, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anytime I’ve relied on some kind of like new managed thing that, oh, you can just,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ve run this other cloud service thing by this provider and you automatically get this, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, capability that it’s just managed for you. And yeah, usually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco within, you know, five years, if you’re looking at that kind of time span, a lot of those services are no longer there

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or they jack up the prices really high and they’re no longer affordable, or when you get to overcast scale,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they weren’t affordable to begin with. So like there’s all sorts of reasons

⏹️ ▶️ Marco why I do very boring things in the hosting world. Mostly it’s because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a lot cheaper. And at my scale that matters. And then secondly, it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is because of the longevity concerns. This is a rapidly moving industry and anything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco too specialized, I don’t like to rely on.

⏹️ ▶️ John And on that front with my little dinky static site, as it turns out

⏹️ ▶️ John doing something like this, I mean, again, R2 is just like an S3 replacement. I’m using S3 compatible commands

⏹️ ▶️ John like the R clone command and stuff. Like, you know, that’s kind of a plugin thing because the S3 API has

⏹️ ▶️ John become the de facto API. But the amount of like custom code that

⏹️ ▶️ John I have to essentially port from my Apache config on my crappy shared host

⏹️ ▶️ John to my worker.js file, It’s basically the same. Like there’s like a page

⏹️ ▶️ John of code. You got to write an Apache for like redirect rules and expires headers or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John And then it’s like a page of JavaScript that you have to write that does the same thing. That’s around the range of stuff that you want to change. No matter

⏹️ ▶️ John what you have. So I have a static host. I can take a static site. I can take it anywhere. What if I took it to somewhere that uses

⏹️ ▶️ John Nginx? Then I would have to write a page of Nginx config somewhere. Probably like you’re always there.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s impossible to move things without changing anything, anything like you’re always going to have to do something. But if it’s like a page of code

⏹️ ▶️ John and you might think, well, that’s just configuration. Now you have to write code. The like index.js

⏹️ ▶️ John file that I wrote is not any more complicated than having to look up what the directors for Nginx or Apache

⏹️ ▶️ John are. So if you have a static site, don’t think you’re not going to have to do some kind of thing when you move

⏹️ ▶️ John your stuff. But it’s the difference between like, all right, so I ported a one page of config to

⏹️ ▶️ John one page of JavaScript versus Marcos thing where it’s like, oh, you wrote something for workers, but now you got to get it to work

⏹️ ▶️ John in AWS, Lambda, and all the APIs are different because the worker API thing that talks to R2

⏹️ ▶️ John and everything is nothing like the API set for, you know, talking to S3 and Lambda or whatever. Even though

⏹️ ▶️ John R2 and S3 are both compatible, the JavaScript interface to that and to the request response and everything

⏹️ ▶️ John is different. I don’t think there’s a de facto standard for sort of like serverless

⏹️ ▶️ John worker type things, but I might be wrong about that. But anyway, that’s the thing to keep in mind. And yes, I kind of agree with Marco’s thing. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John like, look, if you just give me a server with the CPU and memory and disk and let me run software on it, that’s probably

⏹️ ▶️ John the most portable thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So coming back to CloudFlare, we spoke about this, I think it was last week, and then shortly after the episode

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was released, we got some feedback. Tony Denke writes, guys, please don’t talk about CloudFlare

⏹️ ▶️ Casey again, and conveniently included a 500 internal server error CloudFlare image. And then

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Landon wrote, the irony of listening to John talk about the next CloudFlare outage and experiencing it at the same time.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So as it turns out, on the 5th of December, there was another CloudFlare outage Starting at 847 universal time,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a portion of Cloudflare’s network began experiencing significant failures. The incident was resolved

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at 912, for about 25 minutes total impact when all services were fully restored. A subset of customers

⏹️ ▶️ Casey were impacted, accounting for approximately 20% of all HTTP traffic served by Cloudflare. The issue was triggered

⏹️ ▶️ Casey by changes being made to our body parsing logic while attempting to detect and mitigate an industry-wide vulnerability

⏹️ ▶️ Casey disclosed this week in React server components.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, as I noted last week, my, you know, wrong-headed notion that I said like, oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John Cloudflare, yeah, I always meant to move to Cloudflare and they just had an outage, right? So they probably won’t have another one soon. That’s not how outages

⏹️ ▶️ John work. I was hoping this one would be caused by them trying to mitigate the problems of the first outages.

⏹️ ▶️ John Turns out it was caused by something else, but they did mention some of the changes they were making for the other outage, yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, bad luck, but this one didn’t affect every site. In fact, my site stayed up the entire time,

⏹️ ▶️ John so lucky me, but it was funny that I talked about, talked about moving to Cloudflare right after they

⏹️ ▶️ John had a big outage and they immediately Another one

Siri, say my name

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. With regard to the dingus and saying one’s name, Jonathan Gilbranson writes,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, regarding whether Siri answers in voice, text, both, et cetera, this is configurable in settings and then Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Casey intelligence and Siri. And there is a knowledge-based article that we will link and additionally an

⏹️ ▶️ Casey image of this. And it says in Siri responses, spoken responses is the header. And the three options

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are prefer silent responses, automatic, or prefer spoken responses. And the footer reads, Siri will always speak responses

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in certain circumstances, like when you appear to be driving or using headphones with the screen off.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so I did figure that out with the screen off thing. I don’t know if the automatic is the default, but that’s what mine was

⏹️ ▶️ John set to. And honestly, I left it on automatic. It’s good to know if I ever want to demand that

⏹️ ▶️ John it say my name out loud, I can switch it to prefer spoken responses, but I guess automatic normally

⏹️ ▶️ John works fine, except for that one time when I really, really needed to speak to me and it wouldn’t.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. Or in Aydin writes, after hearing episode 668, I tried getting Siri to say my name

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it wouldn’t work. Then I had the idea of trying with my AirPods while the phone was in my pocket and it actually worked. Siri said

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my name. As a side note, I also tried getting Siri to call my daughter, but it couldn’t find her no matter what I did.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I added her as my daughter in the contacts app and tried telling Siri her name, but nothing helped. What finally worked was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey opening her contact page and telling Siri to set this contact as my daughter. Also be grateful that your native language

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is English. I once tried using Siri in Hebrew and let’s just say it wasn’t very pretty.

⏹️ ▶️ John Wow, is that Apple intelligence? You can go to a page on the screen and say this and it knows what it is. It’s a miracle.

⏹️ ▶️ John That is a miracle. I would never have thought to try that because I would think it was one of those things they hadn’t added to SIRI

⏹️ ▶️ John yet. Right? Sad.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, SIRI’s been able to do things, like when you say this in the past, you could say things like, remind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me about this tomorrow at one. And what it would do is whatever the, like, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, the current, like, NS user activity was. So you could actually, I don’t think it ever worked well in third-party

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps. I never actually tried it much, but, you know, if there was like a webpage that you wanted to be reminded of, you could say, remind me

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this tomorrow, if there’s a phone call, And it would actually create a reminder that would link to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that thing. It’s still, that still does work, but I don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how that will change in the era of Apple Intelligence, which is supposed to be a lot more aware of stuff like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then we had a couple of people, a handful of people write in about a little bit of an oops. That was kind of our fault.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sean Santry writes, I was listening to ATP episode 668 via CarPlay. And when you said, dingus,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey say my name, my dingus answered. Then since the podcast had briefly paused, Overcast

⏹️ ▶️ Casey helpfully rewound exactly to the point where you said, dingus, say my name. Lather, rinse, repeat.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Reed Sordenson writes, thanks to the handy smart resume feature in Overcast, the Siri discussion in episode 668

⏹️ ▶️ Casey threw my phone into a five second time loop of dingus, say my name, while I was driving in conditions too snowy to hit the skip

⏹️ ▶️ Casey button.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hey Siri, buy Overcast Premium. Confirm, confirm.

⏹️ ▶️ John Lots of people wrote in with this. Yeah, as I said in the header here, it’s kind of a team effort. Me saying it and Marco making an

⏹️ ▶️ John app that will rewind just long enough to make it say that over and over again. And I also like the person who, Speaking of snow, Casey

⏹️ ▶️ John and Richmond, who couldn’t fix the situation because they were driving in the snow and they had to keep their hands on the wheel. Good job.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s more important to keep your hands on the wheel. Just, you know, eventually we’ll get through this. But yeah, it wasn’t just like one

⏹️ ▶️ John person this happened to. We had a bad coincidence of timing and speech that caused a lot of

⏹️ ▶️ John people to go into a loop with Overcast.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that made me, every time I saw it, I felt bad, but I also, every single one of them made me giggle.

Apple’s pushing iOS 26 harder

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we have a update from front of the show, underscore David Smith. We were talking last episode about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alan’s departure, Alan Dye’s departure, and the reaction to all the 26 OSes.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And John, you had made some passing reference, I think, to underscore’s post about the slower than expected rollout.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So building on that, Dave in 20th of November wrote last year,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey around a week before Thanksgiving, was when Apple hit the Go Wide Everyone button for iOS 18 updates, resulting in a rapid

⏹️ ▶️ Casey uptick in adoption over the following weeks. and we’ll include a link to this with the picture in the show notes.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey This year, we didn’t get the big jump in iOS adoption right before Thanksgiving. And again, that’s in David’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey tweet. And then on the 8th of December, Dave writes, aha, someone at Apple hit the update

⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone button over the weekend. So now I’m seeing the more rapid uptick in adoption of iOS 26

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’ve been hoping for. We’ll probably hit the majority mark in the next couple of days.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we got that feedback after we published the episode. When we recorded it, I said, the NOS

⏹️ ▶️ John Core hadn’t seen the uptick, but as soon as we published it, people were like, saying, I’m seeing the iOS 26 getting pushed

⏹️ ▶️ John more aggressively and sure enough, Underscore was like, yep, it’s happening. The line is bending. So yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know why they waited longer this year, maybe because the 26.0 was buggier or whatever, but

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, or caution about people being cranky about the OS, but it seems like it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John happening. So I guess over the Christmas holidays or the end of year

⏹️ ▶️ John holidays, ask your relatives what they think of iOS 26 and did they enjoy

⏹️ ▶️ John getting it pushed onto their phone?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fun fact, it’s because we brought it up. That’s why they flipped the button. They heard ATP and said, oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey we forgot. And so that’s why the switch got flipped. You’re welcome, everyone.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think there was something up with, I mean, obviously we all know like 26.0 had a lot of bugs.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had an overcast update that I shipped that would crash like on one or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco two of the early betas of 26.1 or two. I forget

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which point really. I think point one, point one’s out, yeah. So some of the early betas of 26.1, it would crash because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they had added an API that I was calling in the shipping version, but the first two betas didn’t have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that API. Anyway, what I learned from feedback emails about that and from digging in with certain

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people, like trying to figure out why it was crashing for them, is that it sounded like their company

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that manages OS releases and their IT department that approves OS releases

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for their phones, their company had mandated one of those early beta

⏹️ ▶️ Marco versions of 26.1. Now, I also heard the same story

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from at least five or six different people about like, oh, their company approved version was this 26.1

⏹️ ▶️ Marco beta and that’s why they were on it. So it seems like some big company or some,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, standards and practices followed by some group of companies actually had their employees

⏹️ ▶️ Marco install 26.1 beta and lock them on that until I guess a better version could be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco approved or whatever. So that I think is really interesting, that maybe rumor

⏹️ ▶️ Marco out there of 26.0 was so bad that they forced their users onto this beta and then just haven’t updated it yet. I doubt it was a rumor.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s probably

⏹️ ▶️ John because it didn’t work with some part of their intranet or whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ John and they basically couldn’t use 26.0, so they had to stop people from using 26.0. I mean, they

⏹️ ▶️ John could have just stopped them from using any of the 26 OSs, but maybe it was too late in people who had upgraded, So they forced everyone to 26.1 beta

⏹️ ▶️ John to basically stop the bleeding of whatever problem they had with 26.0. But yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John not an ideal situation.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it could have even just been as simple as like they’re buying new iPhones. They come with 26.0, they gotta- Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, they can’t. They have no choice. They can’t downgrade them, but 26.0 doesn’t work with their

⏹️ ▶️ John corporate VPN or has some other bug that they’re like, we can’t let people run this. We have to mandate they use 26.1 beta. And guess

⏹️ ▶️ John what? Betas are beta. Yeah. Although, but apparently still may be better than 26.0. It was.

Marco’s broken tethering

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Although, can I give a little, just a tiny little complaint here? I know we’re on a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco roll. I just want to, just a really quick complaint. Tethering is still totally broken

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on my iPhone 17 Pro. It’s to the point where like, I actually, I’m trying to turn it off

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and disable it because I’m now just carrying around a standalone 5G hotspot. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sometimes my laptop will attach a tethering on the phone without me realizing it instead of joining the hotspots Wi-Fi network.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I will be on the train and stuff will just slow down and stop working. Oh, that’s weird. Are we in a bad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco reception area? Oh no, I see the little chain link icon. Oh, I’m on tethering. Why does it keep

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to tethering? So I spent all of the last few years trying to get my laptop to please automatically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco connect to tethering whenever you can. Now I have to get it to stop. Please stop automatically connecting to tethering

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it’s so bad. It’s completely broken. I have no idea

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s up. If it’s my phone, if it’s AT&T, I’ve never had this problem with any other phone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I’ve been on the same AT&T setup for a very long time. But tethering is completely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco broken for me. And not in a way that I could ask for support, because yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’ll work for a while. So it’s not like it’s not working at all. It works for a bit,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then eventually just connections start failing and timing out and nothing happens.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I don’t know what to do about this. I’ve never had an iPhone that had this problem. And I did some

⏹️ ▶️ Marco quick research the other day and I found some Reddit threads about it, So like I think it might be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco other people as well, but it didn’t seem like a massively widespread thing. So if anybody knows, what the heck

⏹️ ▶️ Marco am I supposed to do about this? Please let me know.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We are sponsored this week by Lisa. All right, folks, I’m gonna go a little

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Intel fabbing for Apple?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So Intel might be making

⏹️ ▶️ Casey chips for Apple. We talked about this a little bit, but it’s more than what we initially thought. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey also we have some feedback about it. Tambourine Man writes, one thing I didn’t think you guys emphasized enough

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the Intel made M series topic is that Intel could still be a potential competitor. Apple will be

⏹️ ▶️ Casey providing them with state of the art chip schematics, which is stopping Intel from learning a few tricks and implementing them in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey their x86 offerings. something no TSMC customer has to worry about. And it seems like a major

⏹️ ▶️ Casey competitive advantage that that TSMC has.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Presumably Intel and entering the Foundry business, cleanly separates the

⏹️ ▶️ John Foundry business from their own chip designs, but it is a thing that you should worry about. And also like, obviously, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John you can, you can learn a lot about your competitors’ chips without them giving you the designs just by chopping the top off of them and examining

⏹️ ▶️ John them and stuff. But yes, the schematics probably help as well. Um, that’s,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think a lot of companies do walk that line. I mean, Apple itself, you know, most how well it does, like

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has its own apps and yet it also accepts third party apps. Now, granted it doesn’t get the source code to them, but it is

⏹️ ▶️ John an advantage to know what third parties are doing because you can see their apps in development or whatever. And lots of other

⏹️ ▶️ John companies do this. Microsoft has their own first party games as do other console developers

⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff. And yet they also solicit third party games. So I don’t think this is an impossible thing for Intel to deal with, but it

⏹️ ▶️ John is a much cleaner relationship with TSMC. It doesn’t have any chips of its own and you don’t have to worry about them making

⏹️ ▶️ John them, at least right now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Didn’t Samsung manufacture Apple’s chips for a little while?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, for a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John long time.

⏹️ ▶️ John Next item.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, there you go. David Beck writes, Apple split the manufacturing for the A8 between Samsung

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and TSMC before switching entirely to TSMC.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, there’s a graph I meant to put in here. Maybe I’ll put it in next week or whatever. It was showing

⏹️ ▶️ John the number of manufacturers for a particular transistor or process

⏹️ ▶️ John node or whatever, starting way back in the day of like, you know, I don’t know, it’s like 90 nanometers

⏹️ ▶️ John and you know, when they were much larger than now and the number of companies who manufacture

⏹️ ▶️ John the different process node sizes goes down dramatically. From like 15

⏹️ ▶️ John to 20 and we’re currently at like two, maybe three and that is TSMC, Samsung

⏹️ ▶️ John and then on the graph Intel was in gray like it was grayed out. It’s like, well, technically they might kind of sort of be doing

⏹️ ▶️ John it, but uh, yeah, so Samsung is, is one of the last fabs

⏹️ ▶️ John standing, uh, still a little bit behind TSMC and Intel is maybe in the race, but there used to be

⏹️ ▶️ John so many more. Um, even though there was a big lead, the other ones would eventually get on board and, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, they weren’t on it all at the same time, but the graph is just showing who has ever made a 90 nanometer chip and

⏹️ ▶️ John had a huge list who has ever made a three nanometer chip, way smaller list,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jeffrey Marocchi writes, didn’t apples chip boss talk about packaging being the thing to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey watch out for. And that is something we talked about in the past. We

⏹️ ▶️ Casey talked about it in episode 562. And this was based on Johnny Srouji and an interview that he

⏹️ ▶️ Casey had. And John has been kind enough to find a timestamp link for the video on YouTube. So thank you, John.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So why are we talking about packaging in the first place? Because on November 18th,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alexander K in Tech Power Up writes, Apple Broadcom and Qualcomm are considering Intel Foundry for its advanced

⏹️ ▶️ Casey packaging technologies, which could allow Intel to significantly increase its foundry revenue without manufacturing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the actual silicon. Job listings from Apple, Broadcom, and Qualcomm highlight Intel’s Embedded

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge, or EMIB, as a key requirement for packaging

⏹️ ▶️ Casey engineer positions. Qualcomm’s CEO recently stated that Intel is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not an option today. He noted that Intel’s current foundry node, likely 18a, is not suitable for their mobile

⏹️ ▶️ Casey chips. The main focus of the 18a node is not Not on mobile low-power SoCs, but rather on mid-range

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and high-power solutions. However, the 18A node is seemingly not what is attracting customers like Qualcomm.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is the packaging that Intel offers. Last year Broadcom tested the 18A node, but expressed disappointment.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey However, now Intel’s advanced packaging is emerging as a promising alternative to TSMC’s COW OS

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and other packaging types. Intel’s Foundry advanced packaging portfolio enables designers

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to utilize 2D, 2.5D, and 3D building blocks to optimize cost, power, and bandwidth. EMIB is a substrate

⏹️ ▶️ Casey embedded silicon bridge that offers localized high density die-to-die routing without the cost and area drawbacks of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a full-size silicon interposer.

⏹️ ▶️ John So this is an interesting twist on the rumor of like, oh, Intel is gonna make chips. So this is a November story and like,

⏹️ ▶️ John oh, actually people are interested in Intel, not because of 18A, which some customers or

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey at

⏹️ ▶️ John least two customers here are saying, eh, we didn’t like it, it’s not great. 18A is not what we need for mobile chips or for low

⏹️ ▶️ John power chips, but they have their own packaging things, sort of like, I know we’ve talked

⏹️ ▶️ John about these weird abbreviations that TSMC has, like C-O-W-O-S and all the other ones. Basically a way of taking

⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of smaller dies and putting them together in an efficient manner. It’s easier to make a bunch of small dies

⏹️ ▶️ John because you have a higher chance of a small die coming out with no defects than a bigger one, right? So if you can make a bunch of small ones and connect

⏹️ ▶️ John them, AMD has been doing that with its chiplets or whatever. And the SOIC is a thing that

⏹️ ▶️ John TSMC is supposedly using for the M5 Pro and M5 Max. We’ll see when those are released early next year.

⏹️ ▶️ John Intel has its EMIB thing, which is a way of stacking a bunch of dies together. So maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s going to fab the silicon for the M6 or M7 at TSMC

⏹️ ▶️ John and then give those little dies to Intel for it to package with the EMIB thing. And maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the source of the rumor saying, oh, Intel’s going to be fabbing the M series chips for Apple. Maybe they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John not going to be fabbing them. Maybe they’re going to be packaging them. Lots of rumors

⏹️ ▶️ John swirling around this, but I can, you know, I’m not sure which way this will go, but like having both Qualcomm

⏹️ ▶️ John and Broadcom say 18a fast, but not good for low power. It doesn’t make me think, oh, that

⏹️ ▶️ John means, you know, is Apple gonna make the base M series ship on a process

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not good for low power or are they just not interested in 18a, it’s really gonna be 14a if Intel ever even builds those

⏹️ ▶️ John things. So keep an eye on that. Packaging, as Surya says, it’s the place of, it’s interesting,

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, the real packaging thing is like the SOIC is a packaging innovation that I’m assuming Apple will tout when

⏹️ ▶️ John the new M series chips comes out, We’ll see if they tout that, but everybody’s trying

⏹️ ▶️ John to do something with packaging and this is Intel’s take on it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then finally, reading from MacRumors from a few days back and Joe Rosignol

⏹️ ▶️ Casey over at MacRumors, in a research note with the investment firm GF Securities this week obtained by MacRumors, analyst Jeff

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Poo said he and his colleagues now expect Intel to reach a supply deal with Apple for at least

⏹️ ▶️ Casey some non-pro iPhone chips starting 2028. The non-pro iPhone chips would be manufactured

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with Intel’s future 14a process, according to Pew. The research note did not provide

⏹️ ▶️ Casey any other details about these potential plans, but based on the standard timeframe, Intel could start supplying

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple with the A22 chip for devices like the iPhone 20 and the iPhone 20e in around

⏹️ ▶️ Casey three years from now.

⏹️ ▶️ John More rumors, not for Mac chips, now for phone chips, which are even smaller and even lower power, but this is about

⏹️ ▶️ John 14a and not 18a. So I guess all these rumors only take place at Apple, or I keep

⏹️ ▶️ John saying Apple, Intel actually builds and ramps up 14a and 18a to actually be able to

⏹️ ▶️ John manufacture chips, but I would keep an eye on this. It’s pretty interesting that Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John is supposedly in talks for not just Mac stuff, which are way lower volume than

⏹️ ▶️ John the phone, but like, I guess it’s not the pro chips, not the flagship flagship, but even the non-pro phones, they

⏹️ ▶️ John sell a lot of those. So to be talking to Intel about that is something.

Gruber not a fan of Dye

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and finally for follow-up today, we had a fascinating article, actually a couple

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of articles, from our good friend John Gruber. One of them is entitled Bad Dye

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Job, which is very good. I’m going to read a fair bit of it, because a lot of it is pertinent.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it is worth, if you are not driving or whatever, it is worth having a read

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this entire article. It’s a little bit on the longer side for Gruber’s stuff, but it is very, very good and absolutely fascinating.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and the reason I’m reading, put this long passages in here. Cause like you just summarize it like Gruber,

⏹️ ▶️ John not a fan of Alan Dye. Like that would be the quick summary. Why do we need to have all this stuff? I thought it was notable.

⏹️ ▶️ John And again, Casey will read some excerpts here. So you get a feel for it. So you don’t have to read the whole thing. Exactly

⏹️ ▶️ John how much Gruber trashes Alan Dye. Like he’s, he’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not above like calling it like he sees it or whatever and being blunt, but he spent a long time

⏹️ ▶️ John saying a lot of terrible things about Alan Dye. And we’ll talk about it when you finish reading things, but just, I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think in some places maybe he’s a little bit unfair, but either way, this is sort of the, the,

⏹️ ▶️ John uh, the most, I don’t know, the most angry, the most, the most vitriol I’ve seen from Gruber in a long time.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. So again, this isn’t the whole article, but it gives you the general gist. Everyone I’ve spoken to at

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple is happy, if not downright giddy at the news that Stephen LeMay is replacing Dai. LeMay

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is well-liked personally and deeply respected talent-wise. Said one source in a position to know the choices.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Quote, I don’t think there was a better choice than LeMay. Quote, the sentiment within the ranks at Apple is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that today’s news is almost too good to be true. People had given up hope that Dye would ever get squeezed out and no

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one expected that he’d just up and leave on his own. If you care about design, there’s nowhere to go but down after leaving

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple. What people overlooked is the obvious. Alan Dye doesn’t actually care about design. Shots

⏹️ ▶️ John fired. I see the construction there and the snark. I’m sure he does care about design. He’s just bad

⏹️ ▶️ John at it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or maybe the kind of design that he is better at is not software UI design.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John like laying out ads in magazines. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, look, he rose to a high level at Apple when he was doing the print and packaging

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and marketing. He rose to a high level for a reason. He probably is a good designer in certain

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ways. And maybe he’s a good designer in different types of design. Maybe he’s a good designer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when working in different teams or with different people around him or above him maybe. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco he got to a point in Apple where he was not a good designer. And I don’t necessarily blame

⏹️ ▶️ Marco him personally for that. I blame Apple for putting him in that position that he shouldn’t have had.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, so continuing with Gruber, the oddest thing about Alan Dye’s stint leading software

⏹️ ▶️ Casey design is that there are effectively zero design critics who’ve been on his side. The debate regarding Apple’s software design

⏹️ ▶️ Casey over the last decade isn’t between those on Dye’s side and those against. It’s only a matter of debating how bad it’s been and how far

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s fallen from its previous remarkable heights. It’s rather extraordinary in today’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hyper-partisan world that there’s nearly universal agreement amongst actual practitioners of user interface design that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alan Dye is a fraud who led the company deeply astray. I’m sorry. I’m trying to get through this with a straight face.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was a big problem inside the company, too. I’m aware of dozens of designers who’ve left Apple out of frustration over the company’s direction.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey From the stories I’m aware of, the theme is identical. These designers are driven to do great work. And under Alan

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Dye, doing great work was no longer the guiding principle at Apple. Designers chose to work at Apple to do the best

⏹️ ▶️ Casey work in the industry. That has stopped being true under Alan Dye. The most talented designers I know are the harshest critics of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Dye’s body of work and the direction in which it’s been heading.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. This also echoes what we’ve heard elsewhere. And we’ve seen some of the, you know, some people like Louis Mantia,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a great designer, he’s been blogging about it, but there’s also people who, you know, who don’t want to like speak out publicly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it’s bad for career moves for a lot of people. But we’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Marco heard from a lot of people that this is the case, that it seemed,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, during the die era at Apple, which did not seem like it was going to end anytime soon,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seemed like there was not a place there anymore for people who

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cared about user interface design the way that we all knew Apple for,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like years ago. Like why did we all come to the Mac? Why do we all love these products so much? And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco why do we stick around through, you know, some of the more difficult times, let’s be honest,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is in all roses. And it’s because of details and priorities

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and values that Allen Dive’s design in user interface

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just didn’t really practice or outright had disregard for or outright despised it seemed.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, and this is why, like, you know, yeah, Gruber is being pretty harsh here. What got under

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Gruber’s skin probably is all the years of Allen Dye’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco software organization, software design organization, doing things that were pretty antithetical

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the reason why we all love this platform, these platforms,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially the Mac. There’s very few people besides John Syracuse maybe,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who love the Mac as much as John Kruber. And to Allen Dye’s design

⏹️ ▶️ Marco style on the Mac was really rough and outright dismissive and,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and kind of, you know, just going through with a wrecking ball and not understanding any of it and not caring and just plowing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco through. So yeah, Gerber got fired up. And yeah, some of this, I think some of this is a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco little, a little harsh, but I was reading it with, you know, with popcorn,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco honestly. I’m not incredibly proud of that, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just, I loved, I love this. It felt like an amazing expression

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a lot of the frustration that I’ve been feeling for years. So I was very happy to see

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of this.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, goodness. All right. So continuing with the other post, Alan Dye was in Tim Cook’s blind spot.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’d have thrown OpenAI in that list of companies where it would have been surprising, but not shocking for Dye to leave

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple for. But that simply wasn’t possible given Johnny Ives’ relationship with Sam Altman, Love from

⏹️ ▶️ Casey his collaboration with open AI, with the IO project and Ives utter disdain for a dies

⏹️ ▶️ Casey talent, leadership, and personality, uh, citation needed, but woof.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I believe this is the first we are hearing about this. I believe I, I, I’d never heard before

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, you know, what Gruber is saying that he, I guess he’s heard the Johnny Ive really does not like Alan Dye

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or his work, uh, which is surprising because it seems from what we were, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think from what we were told or what was reported, it seems like Johnny Ive is the person who

⏹️ ▶️ Marco put Dai in that role. Maybe that’s not true, or maybe I’ve used to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like him and didn’t like where he went with the job. Who knows? But that’s interesting news,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that would be certainly the first time I’ve seen it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So like I said, the reason I think this post is notable is,

⏹️ ▶️ John first, Gruber does have connections to people inside Apple. So

⏹️ ▶️ John he tends not to cite his sources or do the people said like they do in Bloomberg and other things or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John But suffice it to say that he does know people at Apple, people at Apple do talk to him. So I

⏹️ ▶️ John take seriously when he’s stating as fact that like everybody

⏹️ ▶️ John he’s heard from has said they didn’t like Dai and.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John absolutely. Right. And it’s not just like the five people like he talks to on his podcast, but like I’m sure he’s getting

⏹️ ▶️ John sources there. Like no defenders are coming from Apple there. And the Johnny Ive thing is another

⏹️ ▶️ John example of just dropping that in there as if it’s It’s a fact with no sourcing, but presumably he’s not pulling that out of thin

⏹️ ▶️ John air. That’s coming from somewhere. And I can imagine, I was kind of having his foot out the door for

⏹️ ▶️ John a while at Apple and trying to leave and Tim was making him stay. And at a certain point, you don’t really get to pick who succeeds

⏹️ ▶️ John you. You’re on your way out the door. You can give your opinion, but the fact is you’re leaving. And so once he’s gone,

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe he didn’t want Dyad to be his successor, but once you leave the company, you don’t get to have a, your opinion doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John matter anymore. You’re out of there. They get to pick who replaces you. So maybe he’s always been mad about that.

⏹️ ▶️ John The other reason I think this is interesting is because I felt like I’ve been sort of internally

⏹️ ▶️ John flipping out as with a couple of other selected people who I follow on Mastodon about

⏹️ ▶️ John the poor choices in the 26 OS. Not that they’re terrible, as I’ve always said in the

⏹️ ▶️ John show, like they’re fine, you’ll get through it. It’s not the worst thing in the world. It could have gone much worse, right? But the things

⏹️ ▶️ John that are bad about them are so, like they’re like, you know, the canary in the coal

⏹️ ▶️ John mine. such glaring mistakes for no good reason that are indefensible that,

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, they don’t ruin the whole ass, it doesn’t make it super terrible, but like, the more you know about

⏹️ ▶️ John user interface design, the more you say, someone who could have done that, someone who made this decision here,

⏹️ ▶️ John no, it doesn’t ruin the OS, but it shows that they have no idea what they’re doing. And I’ve been just flipping out about it,

⏹️ ▶️ John and everyone else I’ve seen, including Gruber, has been like, oh, the 26 OSs are out there here, they’re not that bad, it’s a whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m like, maybe I’m the only one, maybe it’s just me and those two other people I follow on Mastodon who just

⏹️ ▶️ John cannot believe what they’ve done with these OS is again, not because it’s so hard, terrible, it makes them unusable.

⏹️ ▶️ John But just because, like, these mistakes are indicative of just a complete

⏹️ ▶️ John lack of understanding of what could what good user interface design is. And they’re just lucky

⏹️ ▶️ John that they’ve been made in areas that doesn’t really impact the usability as much as it you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John as it could, like, and I wondered why I wouldn’t see more stuff from

⏹️ ▶️ John Gruber saying I can’t believe that they made these mistakes, but I guess he was saving it all up because I mean, some of

⏹️ ▶️ John the stuff we cut out here is like his opinion of it, you know, in particular Tahoe. That

⏹️ ▶️ John design is just as harsh as mine and the other people. He just hasn’t been saying it. And if you’re thinking like,

⏹️ ▶️ John what is this Alan Dye? Everyone all of a sudden hates him, but I never heard anything about him. Well, I’m going to say if you listen to ATP over the last

⏹️ ▶️ John like several years, you’ve heard the name Alan Dye a lot. Usually Marco

⏹️ ▶️ John saying he hates his guts and me

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco saying, well,

⏹️ ▶️ John we don’t know if Alan Dye is responsible for

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that mean.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t look. I don’t I don’t know the guy personally. I don’t like his work.

⏹️ ▶️ John I know, but you’re just using you were using it as a placeholder of like Allen dies design or whatever. And I

⏹️ ▶️ John was like, well, it’s Apple’s design. How much is Alan Dyer responsible for it? But now that he’s left, people are coming

⏹️ ▶️ John out of the woodwork and saying, yeah, it was totally him. Like it makes sense. He was in charge of it. But like it’s, you know, again, it’s difficult to know

⏹️ ▶️ John what’s going on inside the company. But like, I feel like this

⏹️ ▶️ John is people who would now feel free to speak essentially, that everyone sort of had this opinion.

⏹️ ▶️ John And maybe Marco was free with his opinion in the past several years. But other people were more kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of like saying, Oh, you know, maybe, you know, it’s just we don’t know what goes inside Apple. I know Alan dies in charge,

⏹️ ▶️ John so on and so forth. But I for me, it was when he was, you know, at W3C, introducing liquid glass stuff. I was like,

⏹️ ▶️ John well, he’s the face of he’s the public face of it now. So he’s fair game. And shortly after he just leaves the company, and

⏹️ ▶️ John then everybody comes out of the woodwork and is like, No, I totally hated that guy and and everything he did. It was like,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s just shocking to me. Like, granted, this is a tiny little inside baseball world

⏹️ ▶️ John and the regular public thus far has not had a very strong reaction. But as Gruber pointed out in the articles

⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve said in the past, the more you know about this, the more you know about what makes good user interface design,

⏹️ ▶️ John the more concerning the recent changes have been. Not because they have destroyed the products, but because

⏹️ ▶️ John they reveal the decision-making to be flawed in a way that is embarrassing

⏹️ ▶️ John for a company with the history and reputation of Apple. And so hopefully that will change.

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More Apple-exec departures

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And speaking of departures, moving out of followup and into topics, Apple has announced more

⏹️ ▶️ Casey executive transitions. Tis

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John the season.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tis the season to be lonely. Uh, Apple today on December 12th announced that Jennifer Newstead will

⏹️ ▶️ Casey become Apple’s general counsel on March 1, 2026, following a transition of duties from Kate Adams,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey who has served as Apple’s general counsel since 2017. She will join Apple as senior vice president in January, reporting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to CEO Tim Cook. In addition, Lisa Jackson, Vice President for Environment Policy and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Social Initiatives, will retire in late January 2026. The Government Affairs Organization

⏹️ ▶️ Casey will transition to Adams, who will oversee the team until her retirement late next

⏹️ ▶️ Casey year, after which will be led by Newstead. Newstead’s title will become Senior Vice President, General Counsel in Government

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Affairs, reflecting the combining of the two organizations. The Environment and Social Initiatives teams

⏹️ ▶️ Casey will report to Apple Chief Operating Officer Sabih Khan. was most recently the chief

⏹️ ▶️ Casey legal officer of MEDA, whoops, and previously served as legal advisor of the US Department of State,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey where she led the legal team responsible for advising the Secretary of State on legal issues affecting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the conduct of US foreign relations. She held a range of other positions in government earlier in her career as well,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey including as general counsel of the White House Office of Management and Budget, as a principal deputy assistant attorney

⏹️ ▶️ Casey general in the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice, as associate White House counsel and a law clerk

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to somebody. She also spent a dozen years at some law firm where she advised global corporations

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on a wide variety of issues. She got her undergraduate at Harvard and her law degree at Yale, so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not a dummy. Gurman writes, Jennifer Newsted helped oversee Meta’s successful

⏹️ ▶️ Casey antitrust battle with the US Federal Trade Commission, experience that’s likely to prove useful in Apple’s own legal fight with

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Justice Department over alleged anti-competitive practices. Anonymous writes, Apple’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey corporate values were supposedly the environment and privacy. Today, Apple eliminated the VP

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of environment position and hired as SVP someone who not only worked at Facebook, but also helped

⏹️ ▶️ Casey write the US Patriot Act, which is one of the most egregious violations of privacy among other civil rights

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in US history.

⏹️ ▶️ John Cool,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey cool, cool, cool, cool.

⏹️ ▶️ John So this change here, right? So more people leaving. Lisa Jackson, you’ve seen her in videos

⏹️ ▶️ John increasingly as her career went on at Apple. She was on the roof. Was she on the roof of the building? I forget. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John her face has been in keynotes more and more as her career has gone on. And she’s the the environment

⏹️ ▶️ John person leading that whole initiative. She is retiring, not leaving for another company, and she’s having

⏹️ ▶️ John someone else take over her position. But then that person is going to retire. And then all that environmental stuff is getting sort of

⏹️ ▶️ John wrapped up and split up. And then the general counsel is Jennifer Newsted is taking over from the

⏹️ ▶️ John as the new general counsel in this new combined position, blah, blah, blah. Jennifer Newsted is making a lot of people

⏹️ ▶️ John angry because she worked on the Patriot Act, which are people don’t follow U.S. politics is

⏹️ ▶️ John some panic legislation that our legislature passed when everyone

⏹️ ▶️ John was scared of terrorists to say, the government should be allowed to look at all your crap. Terrorists,

⏹️ ▶️ John you see the terrorists are like children are in danger anyway. Incredibly invaded. Why it’s relevant to Apple is, as he says,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a privacy type thing. Like the Patriot Act, it’s named. It’s it’s right out of a movie. The

⏹️ ▶️ John Patriot Act, Eagle Screech. You know, it’s got a name that who can who can be against the Patriot

⏹️ ▶️ John Act where the government gets to pry into all your information and crap.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was the perfect George W. Bush era law name.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So anyway, she was part of that. She’s worked for the Trump administration. She worked

⏹️ ▶️ John for MEDA for a long time. She defended MEDA in the FTC case, successfully defended

⏹️ ▶️ John antitrust against the FTC. So people were like, do we want to be? Why is Apple hiring someone

⏹️ ▶️ John from MEDA, which Apple hates, who worked for these Republican administrations who

⏹️ ▶️ John worked on legislature that was privacy invasive that Apple would not like, you know, because Apple is usually

⏹️ ▶️ John fighting the government when they ask for information. And Lisa Jackson, everybody

⏹️ ▶️ John loved Lisa Jackson and she’s doing environment stuff and that like essentially eliminated that position. Now they don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John have an environment person, it’s just all going to be like, put those responsibilities pushed elsewhere. And we’ll talk about

⏹️ ▶️ John more about that in overtime. My take on this is like,

⏹️ ▶️ John general counselor, like the big lawyer at a hodgillian dollar company

⏹️ ▶️ John like Apple, I should just say trillion. It’s a big enough number and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey actual real, correct? Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a real thing. Multi trillion dollar company like Apple. Um, I do think

⏹️ ▶️ John that her relevant experience defending giant companies against

⏹️ ▶️ John government action and succeeding overrides any of Apple’s

⏹️ ▶️ John concerns about her having worked for Metta or Republican administrations or worked on the Patriot

⏹️ ▶️ John Act. Because if you’re looking for the general counsel, the big

⏹️ ▶️ John lawyer at your company to provide moral clarity,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s, you’re probably looking in the wrong place. People hire lawyers because they

⏹️ ▶️ John have experienced knowledge and win cases. You kind of want, it’s like everyone, everyone hates everyone else’s

⏹️ ▶️ John lawyer, but everyone wants their lawyer to be the biggest, you know, jerk in the entire world, because,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, that’s, and that doesn’t, and that’s true of people, but it’s like doubly true

⏹️ ▶️ John of corporations. Like, do you know the issues involved? Can you win these cases?

⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple has plenty of cases where governments are trying to apply regulations

⏹️ ▶️ John on them and fining them and suing them. Like for what you for however much you might hate meta or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, I mean, maybe just we talk about them so much in the show. Like every government in the world is on their case for

⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of legitimate reasons and maybe some less ones or whatever. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I kind of think, yeah, if if this one person you’re going to hire in your company where

⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t really care like what kind of other bad things

⏹️ ▶️ John they worked for. I mean, you can say Facebook is, you know, I don’t know. I get it. She worked for like the first Trump

⏹️ ▶️ John administration, but not the second. I think I don’t know. She worked for George W. Bush on the Patriot. Like I

⏹️ ▶️ John get why people are mad. We would prefer a lawyer who is a wonderful person who, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John helps small children and the elderly and also wins cases against the government when they

⏹️ ▶️ John sue big companies. But I think this is just the nature of the beast that

⏹️ ▶️ John for employees that you’re hiring, this particular role, the biggest, baddest lawyer in your company,

⏹️ ▶️ John it seems like you would have to sort of look aside of the fact that they worked at Meta. Versus,

⏹️ ▶️ John for example, let me hire a new head designer and let me get it from one of Gerber’s

⏹️ ▶️ John favorite punching bags, Amazon, which I think is arguably described as a company that has no interest in design ever. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John if Apple brought in a new head of design and brought and pulled them from Amazon, we’d be saying, why are you pulling a new

⏹️ ▶️ John designer from there? But Apple pulling a new general counsel from a meta?

⏹️ ▶️ John Meh. That’s my take.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. I mean, I don’t really have strong feelings about it. I don’t have strong feelings about the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey lawyer rejiggering. I have somewhat strong feelings about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Lisa Jackson retiring. I don’t like that. We’re just kind of letting that role fizzle.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I get it. I get it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it’s like that because there’s no one else who can do what she’s done. Like that’s such a weird position. I think she was so

⏹️ ▶️ John uniquely suited for it. I don’t know. I mean, it is weird and concerning though. And again, we’ll

⏹️ ▶️ John talk about this more in overtime, but like, because we’re going to talk about Apple and the environment, but that’s another

⏹️ ▶️ John thing people are upset about. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it wasn’t the position created for her. Like, wasn’t she the first

⏹️ ▶️ John person? Yes, exactly. It was basically to get her to work at Apple. You’re going to be this new thing. And now when she’s leaving, the position

⏹️ ▶️ John is going with her. So we’ll see how that turns out.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’ll see how that turns out. Yeah. I mean, you know, people are trying to, you know, ascribe it to, you know, in Trump era

⏹️ ▶️ Marco America that, you know, we’re apples trying to get rid of environmental stuff. I don’t think this says that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you know, like I I’d be the first person to, you know, throw Tim Cook under the bus for that kind of thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Uh, but I don’t think this means that, uh, but you know, we’ll see it. Like I, what I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco suspect is that she. Wanted to retire for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever her reasons were that there’s, you can, you can guess there’s plenty of reasons why somebody

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who works for, you know, for works on environmental issues, uh, in a prominent role in America

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now, uh, might say, you know what enough is enough and just retire. Um, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think there’s enough of environmental care built into Apple,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh, that like, I’m not that worried about this indicating anything either way.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. So, all right. That’s not the only news. On December 6th,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey reading from Mark Gurman, Johnny Sruji, the senior vice president of hardware technologies and one of Apple’s most

⏹️ ▶️ Casey respected executives, recently told Tim Cook that he is seriously considering leaving in the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey near future, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Sruji, the architect of Apple’s prized in-house chips effort,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey has informed colleagues that he intends to join another company if he ultimately departs. Cook has been working aggressively to retain

⏹️ ▶️ Casey him, an effort that included a substantial pay package and the potential of more responsibility down the road. One

⏹️ ▶️ Casey scenario floated internally by some executives involves elevating him into the role of chief technology officer. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that change would likely require John Turnus to be promoted CEO, a step the company may not be ready to take.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And some people within Apple have said that Sruji would prefer not to work under a different CEO, even with an expanded title.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey If Sruji does depart, the company would likely tap one of his two top lieutenants to replace him. Then,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey two days later, on December 8, a new article, Apple chip chief tells staff he’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not leaving any time soon. Johnny Sruji told staff on Monday that he’ll stay at the iPhone maker for now.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Quote, I know you’ve been reading all kinds of rumors and speculations about my future at Apple and I feel that you need to hear from me directly.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey He said in a memo to his division. I love my team and I love my job at Apple and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s also Gruber by the way. So Gruber, not Gruber, German. German on December 6th says, oh, Sruji might

⏹️ ▶️ John be leaving. And then on December 8th, German also then follows up and says, nevermind.

⏹️ ▶️ John You know, Sruji sent this memo and said that he’s not leaving. So good on Gurman for correcting himself

⏹️ ▶️ John quickly. Although again, I’m not necessarily sure this is a correction because I don’t think these stories are contradictory.

⏹️ ▶️ John When you get information like this, it may be about the past. It may be that Suruji

⏹️ ▶️ John did express a potential desire lead and Cook did work aggressively to retain him and succeeded

⏹️ ▶️ John in retaining him. And then when the story breaks, this is all in the past and

⏹️ ▶️ John Suruji writes a memo and says, I’m not going anywhere, I’m staying here, I love you all, everything’s great. Because

⏹️ ▶️ John it is, it’s true, because Tim Cook retained him by convincing him to

⏹️ ▶️ John stay. Tim Cook reportedly convinced Johnny Ive to stay way longer than we all wish he did. And so maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a thing that he’s good at and maybe that’s a thing that happened.

⏹️ ▶️ John What I’ve heard is that everyone’s saying, oh, Gurman was the first person to break this Johnny Sturridge, you might be leaving story. And

⏹️ ▶️ John I seem to recall seeing it multiple times, probably also from Gurman. So this may have been a thing that was

⏹️ ▶️ John sort of, You know, I think maybe we talked about it on the show and I was like, oh, if he’s gonna, oh no, it was in a

⏹️ ▶️ John Slack channel somewhere, I’m sorry. Anyway, my online world is mixed together

⏹️ ▶️ John very much these days. The idea was like, oh, Suruji might be leaving, but

⏹️ ▶️ John if he left, would he really go to another company or wouldn’t he just retire? Because again, all these people at a high level

⏹️ ▶️ John at Apple who’ve been there for years, they’re all fabulously wealthy because the salaries are high at that level and they have Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John stock and Apple stock has been going up. So all these people can retire easily. And Saruji is

⏹️ ▶️ John of the age, you’re like, you probably wanna retire, right? You got your money, enjoy, you know, you don’t have to wait

⏹️ ▶️ John until you’re like super duper old to retire. Why would he go work at another company? And as

⏹️ ▶️ John Gruber pointed out in the recent episode of Dithering where would he go that’s more exciting in terms of chip design than Apple?

⏹️ ▶️ John Because Apple is one of the leaders in the kind of chip design that he’s doing.

⏹️ ▶️ John Unless he wants to do a different kind of chip design that Apple doesn’t do. And everyone keeps saying,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, this is, he’s, talk about someone who’s successful. part of the Apple, part of the company,

⏹️ ▶️ John part of Apple that’s been doing really well is the chip design and he’s the head of that. So he’s been knocking it out of the park.

⏹️ ▶️ John Why would he, you know, is he leaving at top? Where would he go where he thinks he’s gonna top himself? And to

⏹️ ▶️ John that, I would say, yeah, Apple’s chip design has absolutely been knocking it out of the park. I think Gruber said,

⏹️ ▶️ John no one would have anything bad to say about his work. And I was like, well, there is one area

⏹️ ▶️ John where the Johnny Shirouchi regime has failed to produce. Oh no.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it was a thing that they were trying to do. When they switched from Intel to Apple Silicon,

⏹️ ▶️ John they had plans to replace all the Intel chips with even better ones made with

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Silicon. And they did that for every chip except for the ones in the Mac Pro. And they had planned it. There was rumors,

⏹️ ▶️ John there was designs, there was diagrams, they were gonna do it. And they’ve just never, ever, ever done it. Nobody cares

⏹️ ▶️ John about that. I get it. I get nobody cares. And yes, Johnny Sruji is a champion of the world and

⏹️ ▶️ John he’s done some amazing things for the chips that actually matter to Apple. So he gets an A plus

⏹️ ▶️ John first place gold medal. I give it to him, but it is not true to say that there is nothing

⏹️ ▶️ John bad you can say about Johnny Cerugi’s time at Apple. There is one tiny little thing that

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I

⏹️ ▶️ John personally can say

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. You are the only human that has anything

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John to say. I mean, but

⏹️ ▶️ John here’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John They plan to do it, right? It’s not just like me on the outside wishing a thing. It’s a thing that was on their roadmap and

⏹️ ▶️ John they just never did it. So it’s not like they decided we’re not going to do this. They wanted to do

⏹️ ▶️ John it. They tried to do it. They have not been able to do it. So in that way, it is one of those very, very minor sort of internal

⏹️ ▶️ John failures. Kind of like making their own modem chips, which they wanted to do for a long time. And for a

⏹️ ▶️ John long time, they failed to do and it took them. They took them while they eventually did do it. It’s a thing they wanted to do.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think Apple still potentially wants to do something like this to make

⏹️ ▶️ John a higher power chip or whatever. But like, you know, again, the rumors were that it’s not anywhere on the road map until like the M7 or

⏹️ ▶️ John something, which we are rapidly approaching because time passes. Um, so that’s, that’s the,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s why I think it’s fair to put a tiny little ding on the, on the otherwise sterling

⏹️ ▶️ John record to say, this is a thing you were actually tasked with that the company wanted to do,

⏹️ ▶️ John that it makes sense for you to want to do because you’re transitioning from one set of chips to a new one. And you want

⏹️ ▶️ John to have replacements that are better than all the ones you had before in all possible ways. And this one little area that

⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t even matter. I know it’s an area where it failed, but anyway, I would have expected him to to retire.

⏹️ ▶️ John That like, why would you go to another company? Where are you going to go? What have you got left to prove? You could same thing for

⏹️ ▶️ John it could be said of it on the eye, but some people just want to keep working, right? And so I mean, who knows if that rumor is true, but the

⏹️ ▶️ John rumor was, he was going to leave Apple and go somewhere else. And I just I just can’t imagine where he would have gone. But

⏹️ ▶️ John apparently, according to his intended to be leaked memo, he loves everything

⏹️ ▶️ John there. He’s staying in Apple, he has no plans to leave. But of course, plans change every

⏹️ ▶️ John day. So we’ll keep an eye out.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, going back to his December 6th, so the first post. The recent shifts are already

⏹️ ▶️ Casey reshaping Apple’s power structure. More authority is now flowing to a quartet of executives. Ternus serves as

⏹️ ▶️ Casey chief at EQ, software head for Craig Federighi, and new CEO of Subicon.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple’s AI efforts have been redistributed across its leadership, with Federighi becoming the company’s de facto

⏹️ ▶️ Casey AI chief. Ternus is also poised to take a starring role next year in the celebration of Apple’s 50th anniversary,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey further raising his profile. And he’s been given more responsibility over robotics and smart glasses, two areas seen

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as future growth drivers. Further reorganization is likely. Deirdre O’Brien, head of retail and human resources

⏹️ ▶️ Casey has been with Apple for more than 35 years while marketing chief Greg Joswiak has spent four decades at the company.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple has elevated the key lieutenants under both executives preparing for their eventual retirements.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s, this is kind of the story this week. Uh, continuing executive exodus and reshuffling

⏹️ ▶️ John at Apple, which I agree with what everyone else has said. I don’t find this as a concerning thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John As Gruber said, many people are giddy about some of the departure. But it’s like it’s just

⏹️ ▶️ John an age based turnover. And it’s it makes sense for them to sort of, you know, kind of

⏹️ ▶️ John all transition around the same time. You know, Tim Cook being the big departure, which will eventually happen,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, whenever people get old, people want to retire, people want to move on. People have been in the company

⏹️ ▶️ John for decades. It’s a changing of the guard. And I think it’s all good. But like

⏹️ ▶️ John I, as I’ve written about, I think there needs to be turnover, both at the top and everybody else underneath them. I think it’s healthy

⏹️ ▶️ John for that to happen. It’s been great to have the continuity of like the old school Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John folks sort of keeping that culture alive. But we’ve seen how that can fail

⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of maybe blind spots for newer technologies and not making the right moves on AI,

⏹️ ▶️ John but also at how like those old school people who have been to the company for decades,

⏹️ ▶️ John being unable to stop something like Allen Dyer ruining the user interface to all their products, right? So like, what

⏹️ ▶️ John is the point of like, oh, it’s great. We have these people. We have this continuity of leadership. We have this leadership team that like this page hasn’t changed

⏹️ ▶️ John in a real long time. It’s very stable. These people have been with the company. They really know the spirit of Apple. The spirit of Apple doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John do anybody any good unless it manifests in preventing the company

⏹️ ▶️ John from doing things that are clearly against the spirit of Apple. And in many, many ways recently, that has not been happening. So

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s when you say, OK, your spirit of Apple, you know, sort of reason for you

⏹️ ▶️ John being in your job 40 years that no longer flies. So probably you should retire

⏹️ ▶️ John because you kind of retire when age and let someone else have a chance. And let’s let’s see a changing of the guard. Let’s see some

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple turnover. Ha ha.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John happening. I mean, even when people like Lisa Jackson leave that everybody loved, like, you know, again, people move on, get old,

⏹️ ▶️ John retire, you know, good luck to them. I’m happy to see a lot of turnover

⏹️ ▶️ John turnover. And, you know, as great as Johnny Suruji is, it’s you know, if he left, I don’t think it would be the end of the

⏹️ ▶️ John world. I think what’s much more concerning are those rumors that we talked about, you know, many months ago about

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Silicon team under him, those people leaving to go work for other companies. That’s way more

⏹️ ▶️ John concerning than the head of that thing. Because I think that organization is very functional. And I think,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, if he were ever to leave, there are probably people under him who could take over his role. And perhaps

⏹️ ▶️ John his biggest expertise was sort of like we’re going to make all our own chips now.

⏹️ ▶️ John Get that effort rolling from zero, you know, from, you know, buying P.A. semi and like getting him to sort of

⏹️ ▶️ John take all those people and, you know, go to the Apple Silicon era. Keeping that machine running is easier

⏹️ ▶️ John than starting it up from zero. So I’m not I wouldn’t be as concerned if he left or retired

⏹️ ▶️ John or went somewhere else. But I have been concerned with sort of the brain drain from the rumored brain

⏹️ ▶️ John drain from under him. And the same thing with what Gruber talked about, which, again, I’m assuming is sourced even though he’s not like

⏹️ ▶️ John pinpointing the sources or telling you how many people said this of designers who left Apple to

⏹️ ▶️ John go elsewhere because they didn’t like the direction Alan Dye was doing things like We know designers left

⏹️ ▶️ John like when Johnny I’ve left basically the whole team who was loyal to him left with him and went to work with him at love from

⏹️ ▶️ John or Working with him on the open AI stuff or whatever and a lot of times you can look that and say those are just his Friends

⏹️ ▶️ John they wanted to go where he’s going. It’s fine But here’s Gruber saying another factor in that is

⏹️ ▶️ John they didn’t want to stay at Apple with someone telling them It was someone leading them who doesn’t know what they’re doing

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s telling them to do things that they disagree with So that is way more concerning than

⏹️ ▶️ John the people at the top leaving so I think the people at top need to rotate and hopefully new people

⏹️ ▶️ John at the top will Be more proactive about preventing bad things from

⏹️ ▶️ John happening in the company. So if John Ternus becomes CEO he can make a lot of decisions that could change stuff there.

⏹️ ▶️ John If John Turner’s was CEO, would he have allowed Alan Dye to fester as long as he did, or would he have done something differently?

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s I’m I’m definitely optimistic about the turnover right now. Again, it can go bad.

⏹️ ▶️ John Things could be worse than they are now instead of better. But it’s time for some new folks to have a shot at this.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I mean, anytime that you change leadership, a lot of stuff gets shaken up and you are rolling the dice.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, we don’t know, you know, pick whoever, whatever the theory is. like, you know, it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems like there’s a lot of a lot of smoke behind the turn us fire here. So like we don’t know what kind of CEO John turn us would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be and we don’t know what kind of challenges he would face during his tenure at Apple. You

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, just like, you know, Tim Cook like Tim Cook has had to deal with a lot of a lot of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco conditions and events and dynamics that he probably could not have predicted

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when he first got on the job and that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Steve Jobs predicted.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, and like, you know, Steve Jobs when, you know, when basically recommending Tim Cook

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the job, he couldn’t have known all the stuff that Tim Cook was going to face either and so you know you are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re rolling the dice with anybody and we don’t know how it’s gonna be but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve said for a long time like John I’ve said that I’m ready for some new some fresh

⏹️ ▶️ Marco blood in a lot of these high up ranks for lots of reasons not all of them are bad some of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them are just a generational turnover obviously you know I’m not a huge fan of Tim Cook by any

⏹️ ▶️ Marco means. There was that report, or that part of the German report that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tim Cook has an unexplained tremor in his hands and people have noticed. I wouldn’t read too

⏹️ ▶️ Marco much into that if it’s even true.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think the dexterity of his right hand is essential to his job at CEO. He’s not a professional

⏹️ ▶️ John athlete.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so I wouldn’t read too much into that. If he does have a health problem, I’m not going to take joy in that. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do want Apple to have new leadership. I don’t want it to be that way, but I want

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple to have new leadership. And I’m very much looking forward to what the next generation

⏹️ ▶️ Marco could do. Because there was a great segment on Upgrade about this, the last two episodes of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Upgrade, where especially Jason was going in deep about like how when

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you are rising up the ranks, if there’s nowhere for you to go above a certain level,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you tend to often just leave to a different company or go

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do something else because you hit a ceiling and if the person above you is not gonna retire for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a long time, then you kind of have nowhere to go. So there is a lot of that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mid-level and upper-level talent that shuffles around or departs for a different company.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And maybe that’s what happened with Alan Dye, it just happened to benefit us. But like there’s-

⏹️ ▶️ John And on that front though, it’s not just like the person behind you is never gonna leave because you’ll never get their position.

⏹️ ▶️ John The other part of that is maybe the people above you are never gonna promote you.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like maybe there’s places for you to be promoted too, but the people above you have got a

⏹️ ▶️ John vendetta against you or disagree with you fundamentally about something or whatever and you feel trapped in the company, not because you need

⏹️ ▶️ John someone to leave so you can take their job up because they don’t like you and won’t promote you, so you leave

⏹️ ▶️ John to go else. Like that’s the real danger in brain-damaging companies is not that the super important

⏹️ ▶️ John people on your leadership page leave, it’s that the sort of mid-level and low-level people will leave for all the

⏹️ ▶️ John reasons that they leave. And one of those reasons could be there’s some bad manager that the manager

⏹️ ▶️ John two or three levels above should have gotten rid of the company ages ago, but hasn’t. Like, you know, for example, someone who has a

⏹️ ▶️ John great toxic work environment and higher level executives run cover for them because they’re part of the boys

⏹️ ▶️ John club. You know what I mean? Like that’s that causes hundreds of people, many levels

⏹️ ▶️ John below to say, maybe I should go look elsewhere. And that leadership is not allowing

⏹️ ▶️ John that to happen. So, yes, sometimes it’s because you you hit the ceiling and you can’t get promoted anymore. But sometimes it’s because

⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t even get promoted from level one to level two because you have a bad manager above you that you can’t

⏹️ ▶️ John get rid of in the company.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so what I’m looking forward to is the shuffling up, because what tends to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen, like one thing that Jason mentioned, I believe, on Upgrade this week, that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when Tim Cook took over from Steve Jobs, the very first day, he brought back Apple’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco charitable giving matching program that Steve Jobs just hated that kind of thing and would never allow it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tim Cook had a list on day one of stuff to change and it was it seemed like pretty good stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every time somebody really high up turns over, you have a chance for someone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be elevated into that role who has one of those like to-do lists that like for whatever reason

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the previous leader just wouldn’t do it or you couldn’t convince them to do it and you know, it’s the right idea.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sometimes it’s not but a lot of times it is and so whenever there is that this kind of turnover

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you, you know, you get rid of like personalities or dynamics or politics that were

⏹️ ▶️ Marco blocking some good ideas from happening. So it tends to be positive. Now there’s also,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, there’s learning curves, there’s mistakes that are made along the way, but typically responsibly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco done turnover, when you have a good bench behind you, typically results in some pretty good stuff happening.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of smoke behind the fire now of this being, you know, near the end of the Tim Cook era.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And when you have a CEO transition in particular, then that tends to cycle

⏹️ ▶️ Marco out a lot of the people around the CEO and right below the CEO. So anybody who

⏹️ ▶️ Marco does not get the job, who maybe wanted the job, they’re very likely to retire maybe a little bit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco earlier than planned or quit or leave or whatever. Anybody who doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get along with the new dynamic created might get forced all out of the company. There

⏹️ ▶️ Marco might be people who just don’t want to work for the new CEO. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like John was saying, when Johnny Ive left, a lot of people went with him. When Alan Dye left, some people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco went with him. Sometimes you just want to stay with the person you’ve been working with because you work well together or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So when the CEO leaves, there tends to be a lot of shifting around of things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco below them. So I think there’s enough smoke to this fire.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think Tim Cook is going to leave soon and, you know, I guess leave in terms

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the CEO role in particular. We don’t, you know, if he’s made chairman of the board or whatever, that’s a different story. But like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it does seem like he’s going to leave the CEO role in the near future. This

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounds very, very likely. There’s a lot of smoke now behind this from pretty good sources. So probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s out soon as CEO for whatever reason. And so I think we’re about to see a lot of this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco turnover. We’re already seeing it like in the last few weeks. I think this is a very exciting time for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple. And you know, this whole generation now, like look at the leadership page now,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how many of them are going to be here in five years on that leadership page? You know, their government report is that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, the, the, the quartet of executives that are gaining power now, Ternus, Eddy Cue,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Craig Federighi and Sambit Khan. Well, Craig Federighi is 57. Eddy Q is 61.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how old Sabi Khan is off the top of my head, but like, so even those, like Turnus I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think is about 50, but even of those four people, Eddy Q and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Craig Federighi and probably Sabi Khan, all three of those will probably be retired within 10 years,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe five. So like, there’s a lot of turnover about to happen.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think it’s time. We, you know, this era of executives has

⏹️ ▶️ Marco done very well. They’ve made a lot of great stuff happen, and it’s time for the next

⏹️ ▶️ Marco generation to start filtering in. So I’m looking forward to this. I think this will be exciting. And even if it’s a little bit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bumpy at times, again, people make mistakes in their new roles here and there, even if it’s a little bit bumpy,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m excited for all of those initial ideas that have been held back for whatever reason

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to start being implemented, and some of those changes to start shifting. And I’m not expecting things to change overnight. Again,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is a huge company with huge operations. Things don’t turn on a dime,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but progress will be made. And it’ll add up over time. It’ll be pretty meaningful, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bet. So I’m very much looking forward to this transition.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think we also need some young people to cycle back into Apple, which is the thing that happens. Lots of people go to work for Apple, then they

⏹️ ▶️ John leave Apple, then they come back later. Certainly that happened in the run-up to near bankruptcy

⏹️ ▶️ John in the late 90s. And then people came back once they realized Apple was ascendant again. And that has happened at

⏹️ ▶️ John various times in the jobs era, this job second era where they were very successful and people

⏹️ ▶️ John left the company with their stock options thinking they sold at the peak and went and did something else. But then they

⏹️ ▶️ John came back at Apple because they realized Apple was still growing and their startup that they went to failed or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John The thing about people hanging around for a long time is that it does encourage people to

⏹️ ▶️ John go elsewhere because it seems sort of like the leadership structure is sort of ossified. And like I said,

⏹️ ▶️ John the idea is that those long-time employees are sort of carrying the spirit of Apple forward,

⏹️ ▶️ John that they’ve been around here for a long time. They really know what makes Apple, Apple. And it’s important

⏹️ ▶️ John for them to stay with the company because they’re keeping that spirit alive. Well, that spirit, again, that spirit’s only good if it prevents bad things

⏹️ ▶️ John from happening. But if all those people leave, one of the dangers of lots of turnover is now you get a bunch of young

⏹️ ▶️ John people who have no idea what Apple should be, right? Because they’ve grown up with an Apple that has had deteriorating user interface

⏹️ ▶️ John design, for example. And so they don’t see that as a hallmark of Apple’s strength. They just think it’s like, oh, they have

⏹️ ▶️ John cool shiny phones or something. And they have no idea about like Apple’s traditional strengths in

⏹️ ▶️ John human centered design, because that’s not the Apple that they’ve seen from the outside or the inside. And so

⏹️ ▶️ John all the old people leave, and you do need some people around who are like, hey, back in the day, we used to

⏹️ ▶️ John carefully design interfaces with these things in mind. We didn’t just wing it. We’re not the same as Samsung.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like we have a different ethos. And like, what are you talking about? All phones are the same. We just make shiny ones. We’re Apple. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John like, no, there is something deeper. So I hope some people who left Apple, some

⏹️ ▶️ John people left Apple in disgust, let’s say, cycle back in because we need people who know

⏹️ ▶️ John what Apple should be. And some of those people are no longer at Apple. So, yes, new leadership, new ideas. And again,

⏹️ ▶️ John the new leadership like Ternus has been with the company a long time. It’s not like he’s a random from outside, like that’s why

⏹️ ▶️ John no one is even assuming that Apple’s new leader would come from outside the company. But at the sort of as you go

⏹️ ▶️ John down the org chart, there are lots of people there. I wonder, like, do they know what Apple is supposed to be?

⏹️ ▶️ John If all of the people who have been at Apple for decades leave and just Apple is left for the

⏹️ ▶️ John new people. I think Apple has been doing weird stuff for such a long time that there’s probably

⏹️ ▶️ John not a lot of universal agreement about what Apple should be. Again, it seems like there is in our circles because we just talk to other old Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John people, right? But the younger people, right? How do they feel about App Store policy? Do

⏹️ ▶️ John they just accept it as the way things are because that’s the way the internet has been their entire life, right? They don’t remember

⏹️ ▶️ John an error when people were selling software over the internet, not through the App Store because they weren’t alive

⏹️ ▶️ John for that or weren’t old enough to use computers when that happened. So there are some concerns about

⏹️ ▶️ John just like, let the young people run this. But again, Ternus is 50, he’s not young, but he’ll, he could 50,

⏹️ ▶️ John becoming CEO at 50 still gives you a lot of runway to do lots of stuff. And then the other folks, so like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John for all we love Phil Schiller and Joswiak, like I kinda hope those people kind of stay around,

⏹️ ▶️ John continuing to just be the sort of cranky old people who keep the spirit of Apple alive, but

⏹️ ▶️ John who wants to work for new people decades younger than you, right? And I think there was one of the Siruji

⏹️ ▶️ John rumors that he didn’t want to work under a different CEO. Who knows why he loves Tim Cook so much. I mean, they made a good team

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but like when you reach a certain age, it’s kind of galling to have some kid come

⏹️ ▶️ John and be your new boss, right? And that makes people retire. So there is some danger

⏹️ ▶️ John in this transition, but I do hope like if you’re out there and you’re listening and you used to work at Apple and you

⏹️ ▶️ John know what the heck you’re doing, wait for the dust to settle and consider maybe going back to Apple. Not just because you may

⏹️ ▶️ John be able to rise through the ranks, but also because this company might need your help.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I wouldn’t worry too much about that with this transition because I mean, the reality

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like when you think about like, you know, what what is Apple? Well, what would the what would the answer to that be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in, you know, say 2002 or 2004 versus 2007 versus 2008? Like it changes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco over time. I know and I know, you know, to you, you’re like, that’s, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, decades after the company started, but like that’s that’s when it started to me. So like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, there’s a reason why Steve Jobs said, you know, don’t do what I would to do what’s right. Like that’s, that sentiment, even though I don’t think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tim Cook did a very good job of that, I think that sentiment was right. Apple is a set

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of core values, but the specifics of how those are implemented and deployed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and what the products are, what they’re like, what’s important to them, how they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco address markets, the specifics of those shift over time, as they have to. It’s a tech company.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tech is constantly moving, constantly changing. So Apple has changed over time, even like during

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever period of Apple you view as like the good old days, you out there, I’m sure we all have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco different periods of that, but whatever period that is, that period was one of many

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they shifted around, they changed, and even today, even when, you know I have a lot of problems with some

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the decisions that the current administration has

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John made,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I still love most of their products and I still use most of their products constantly and they’re better

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than they’ve ever been in most ways. Yeah, we have nitpicks about software design and stuff, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like most of the products are amazing and have never been better. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t trade my laptop of today for anything from six

⏹️ ▶️ Marco years ago. You

⏹️ ▶️ John got Johnny Sturridge, I think for that one. Yeah. I think the danger is the core values that you’re talking about. It’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John any specific decision, but one of the core values is user interface design. And like it manifests in different ways because user

⏹️ ▶️ John interface design means something different when it’s an iPod click wheel versus when it’s the original Macintosh user

⏹️ ▶️ John interface versus when it’s the iPhone, right? But all of those things were informed by those

⏹️ ▶️ John core values. And Apple has held on to a lot of its core values. But when we see, it’s kind of like an inside out for people

⏹️ ▶️ John who’ve seen that movie, when those pillars start to crumble, you’re like, oh wait, like, this is not just,

⏹️ ▶️ John oh, you made a bad decision or something or whatever. This is like one of those core value pillars. Like again, like Apple making

⏹️ ▶️ John a car, that’s very different than what Apple used to be. Or making a phone for that matter, anything. Like it’s fine for the company to change

⏹️ ▶️ John and become something different. But the thing that makes Apple Apple, the thing that makes them successful, the thing that makes us

⏹️ ▶️ John attracted to their products are those core values. And that’s what you’re worried about crumbling. Like, again, with the App Store

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff, I think a lot of the stuff they’ve done with the App Store is against some of the core values of Apple, although others would argue

⏹️ ▶️ John it is aligned with the core values of Apple’s screwing developers. But anyway, like I get for young

⏹️ ▶️ John people who have grown up in a world with much more powerful corporations having their thumb on

⏹️ ▶️ John every creator. Right. But that’s just normal to them. It’s good to have some

⏹️ ▶️ John of the ethos from like the Apple II era or whatever. when, you know, when the company had a different attitude

⏹️ ▶️ John towards developers, you can argue about what is, has it ever been Apple’s core value? When did it

⏹️ ▶️ John change? Which core values do you like? But I think user entry design and attention to detail are two that people would

⏹️ ▶️ John agree with that should be universal to the history of Apple, which manifests in different ways. But when we see those

⏹️ ▶️ John pillars crumbling in and out style, it’s when I get a little panicked. I just want to make sure that

⏹️ ▶️ John whoever is in the new regime understands that their job is to restore those pillars, not to ignore

⏹️ ▶️ John them and pretend they never existed.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I think this is a very interesting and I’ll even go so far as to say exciting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey time to be someone that’s intrigued by Apple as a company. Um, as you both have said, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey think, uh, you know, getting some new blood up at the top is probably healthy and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe, maybe it won’t be, maybe everything will take a terrible, terrible turn. And, and next thing you know, we’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Casey be the accidental Android podcast. I doubt it, but you never know. Um, but I, I, I’m, I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey tentatively, and cautiously optimistic that 2026 is going to bring a lot of really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey interesting and really exciting and really positive changes.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. One of the other reasons I’m optimistic is I look at sort of like, let’s use a car

⏹️ ▶️ John analogy, the car they’ve made, like the car they have there, the pieces, the pieces of the puzzle or whatever, like the ingredients.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m pick, pick your metaphor. The stuff that Apple has right now, you look at

⏹️ ▶️ John it from an outside perspective as a tech enthusiast who loves Apple and you’re like, You’ve got all the pieces here. You

⏹️ ▶️ John can do great things. The only thing stopping you is yourself for making dumb. Like it’s not like in the age

⏹️ ▶️ John of like, oh, I don’t know what. They don’t have a good operating system story. They don’t have a modern operating system, and they don’t know what to

⏹️ ▶️ John do with their CPUs. And the power we see can’t get to the clock speeds that they promised. And,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, like all the pieces are there. Like you’re so close. Like that’s why that’s why to Marco’s

⏹️ ▶️ John point, all their products are so good now. It’s just that they just need to make a couple of decisions differently.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not as if there’s some fundamental problem where it’s like, again, like the operating system, or it’s like, what

⏹️ ▶️ John is this company going to do? They’re still basically a computer company, and everyone else is moving on to have modern operating systems,

⏹️ ▶️ John and they cannot get their act together. That was a really concerning time. Whereas now we see like this amazing

⏹️ ▶️ John vehicle that has been created, the Apple of today, this giant company. It’s like you’ve got it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Just, just, you know, whatever. Turn us, take the wheel. All

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, thanks to our sponsors this week, Factor, Lisa, and Aura Frames. And thanks to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco our members who support us directly. You can join us at atv.fm.com. One of the many perks of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco membership is overtime, our weekly bonus topic. Every single episode

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has bonus content, usually another extra like 15 to 20 minutes or so. And it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one topic extra, and that’s called overtime. This week on overtime, we’re talking about how the Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Watch and Mac mini are no longer advertised as being carbon neutral. Will Apple really be carbon neutral

⏹️ ▶️ Marco by 2030 as they had planned? We’ll be talking about that in overtime. Join the list in at.fm

⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash join. Thanks everybody. to you next week!

Ending theme

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was accidental, oh

⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and

⏹️ ▶️ John Casey wouldn’t let him Cause it was accidental, oh

⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental And you can find the show notes at atp.fm

⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into mastodon, you can follow them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s K-C-L-I-S-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Armin,

⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, accidental They didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean to, accidental, accidental Check podcasts,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so long.

John’s broken iMessage groups

⏹️ ▶️ John So I have a software problem that like,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s kind of like Margo’s problem with tethering. It’s like, what are you going to do about it? It’s not the type of thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I guess someone can write in and tell me what I can do about it, but it’s this. Messages,

⏹️ ▶️ John which I use to communicate with my family, has done a thing that I’ve heard other people talk about and I got

⏹️ ▶️ John to ignore them when it wasn’t happening to me, but now it’s happened to me. I have, for example, I have a message,

⏹️ ▶️ John a group message thread, whatever, a message group. That’s me, my wife, and my daughter.

⏹️ ▶️ John Where she talks to her two parents about stuff that she needs us to do for her while she’s at college mostly. Or asks for pictures of the

⏹️ ▶️ John dog or whatever. That’s the group. Me, my wife, and my daughter. The group

⏹️ ▶️ John has existed, I don’t know, since she got an iPhone basically.

⏹️ ▶️ John Where the three of us talk about stuff. Recently, Apple has added the features where you can put like a background

⏹️ ▶️ John image on it and you’ve always been able to name the group and so she has fun renaming it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like anyway, it’s a group. And then I think maybe about a month ago,

⏹️ ▶️ John my wife was complaining that now she has two message threads

⏹️ ▶️ John that are me, her and my daughter. And they look identical. And sometimes

⏹️ ▶️ John when she sends a message, it goes into one group and sometimes it goes into the other one. And I’m like, oh, that’s crappy. And she’s like, how do I fix this?

⏹️ ▶️ John I said, I don’t know. Then it happened to me. Now I have two message groups with these three people

⏹️ ▶️ John in them that have the same name and the same stuff or whatever, but they are separate. And so every time I want to send a

⏹️ ▶️ John message, I got to make sure I’m sending a message to the group that has most recently had activity in it and not the other one, which

⏹️ ▶️ John hasn’t, which means that if I’m ever in another app and I want to share it, a message thread, since the groups are named

⏹️ ▶️ John the same, like I don’t know, and I don’t know which one is the one that’s had an activity. Now, if you look at the groups,

⏹️ ▶️ John I look at them and I think, okay, from a computer person perspective, I kind of see the, like this

⏹️ ▶️ John one, if I look at who’s in the group it shows Apple IDs and the other one shows phone numbers, right? That’s the problem.

⏹️ ▶️ John Right, but but here’s the thing. Nailed it. Here’s the thing. In the contacts

⏹️ ▶️ John app. I know it doesn’t matter. Those phone numbers and Apple IDs are associated with the same person.

⏹️ ▶️ John What is the function of the contacts database if not to let you know that all of

⏹️ ▶️ John these things refer to this one person? Therefore, if there is a message thread with those

⏹️ ▶️ John three people, It shouldn’t matter if it’s a phone number, an Apple ID, a phone number, a phone number, a phone number,

⏹️ ▶️ John a phone number, Apple ID, Apple ID, Apple ID. And the second question is, how did this ever happen? Because

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like we intentionally made a new group with those three people in it. And I know we didn’t make a new group because if we did, we wouldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John have made like all of the attributes of the group exactly match the old one, but they do. So it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John the group splintered at some point when we were all away from Wi-Fi or something and we can only use our phone numbers and now

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s bifurcated. Why doesn’t messages merge them? Why can’t I force messages

⏹️ ▶️ John to merge them? This seems like just messages not working in my mental model

⏹️ ▶️ John of how messages should work and how the context database should function is obviously not the actual model.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s maddening. And I’m sure there’s some reason they do this with like phone numbers and SMS and whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John But like, we’re all on iPhones. It’s all blue bubbles. Like it seems to me that

⏹️ ▶️ John at least there should be an option or a preference somewhere that says, look, just when you’re recruiting groups, groups

⏹️ ▶️ John of people, it’s that person, whether it’s coming from their Apple ID, their phone number or whatever

⏹️ ▶️ John the hell other information is in there. They’re back in the day, their AIM address or whatever. It’s that person. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John why all those things are in their contact cards. I’m very frustrated by it. If anyone knows the solution to this, this does not

⏹️ ▶️ John involve deleting one of the conversations, which is, you know, we don’t want to do because now there’s history in both

⏹️ ▶️ John of them. I would just love for them to be merged or to appear in one place, but I think that’s not possible.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hmm. there’s if it’s if it has to do with like if okay so if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have the car if you have a contact card that has somebody’s name or it has somebody’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple ID and phone number on the same contact but if someone else in the conversation has

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a different company like it if they have just the name and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John not the Apple ID maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John but that’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the case could that I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying like so maybe the system is designed to be this strict because if it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasn’t it could introduce weird, like either, you know, either disclosures of private data

⏹️ ▶️ Marco accidentally, or it could have like this weird fractional thing of like, what if, if the different people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the conversation have different spotty contacts for each other,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe that could create some kind of weird condition that that would break in some way or would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco leak data.

⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like if that’s the case, where you have different contact info on different sides, it just I mean, that is the case when you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John talking not with my family, but with strangers, where someone on one person’s phone, they show up with their

⏹️ ▶️ John face and their contact info and your phone, they just show up as a phone number because you don’t have any contact info on them. But it’s still the same conversation.

⏹️ ▶️ John Your view into it is different because you don’t have that person’s contact information. All you know is their own phone number, whereas

⏹️ ▶️ John the two other participants have contact information. The same way we see different pictures for our contacts. Because my daughter

⏹️ ▶️ John has a different picture for me than my wife has for me, right? So they see different me’s

⏹️ ▶️ John in the conversation, but it’s still me. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. Either way, it seems like there should be a way

⏹️ ▶️ John to merge the conversations. I should be able to like drag them on top of each other or select them both and say, please merge

⏹️ ▶️ John these for the purposes of history or whatever. In the case where all three of us have all the contact info

⏹️ ▶️ John and all, you know, we all have our own Apple IDs and our phone numbers and they’re all in all of our contacts. I have made sure of that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would also suggest a killer feature that I wish

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMessage had, and maybe they can add this. I often will get added to group conversations

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where there’s some random phone number in it that I don’t know. It’s a bad experience

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all around if there’s some random in a conversation that you don’t have their contact and then you have this message

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, oh hey, who’s number 1234 at the end? Like, who is this? I don’t have your contact.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s clumsy and annoying when you’re trying to form groups. So what I would love to see is some feature that addresses

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. Maybe the way to do it is like when you are in a group conversation, if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco send a message to the group And anyone else in the group doesn’t have your

⏹️ ▶️ Marco contact. Maybe I message prompts you to share your contact with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the people who don’t have it. Or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I think it already does that for your

⏹️ ▶️ John image, but only for your image, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, image and name, if I’m not mistaken.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh man. Okay. So maybe this is already

⏹️ ▶️ John covered in the gaming world. They do it kind of the reverse where it’s like, um,

⏹️ ▶️ John You can offer to share your real name with people or not. And people can make a request for you or they want to see

⏹️ ▶️ John your real name or they want to become close friends instead of just friends. But like in the game world, it’s very much

⏹️ ▶️ John like standoffish where nothing happens unless there’s a two way handshake about an agreement that you want to share

⏹️ ▶️ John this information, which does make it a little bit annoying. But it’s it’s very cautious. I think Apple is less

⏹️ ▶️ John cautious, like sharing their offering to share images and stuff, especially since people just

⏹️ ▶️ John tap through that stuff like it pops up. You’re like, Yeah, yeah, whatever. They don’t even know what they’re doing. They don’t know they’re sending their image to other people

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. But again, I’ve just like whatever the policy is

⏹️ ▶️ John fine. You know, you’ve got this policy that’s very protective of whatever. There should be a way to manually,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, to your point, like just like you said, Marco, the way this manifests

⏹️ ▶️ John is who is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now you’re reading someone’s phone number out, which may be, you know, I get around it. Everyone could look up because

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re in the same group chat, but a lot of people won’t know. It would be much better if there was a verb that people could

⏹️ ▶️ John use, like let’s all share our info, like like some kind of verb that everyone knew how to do

⏹️ ▶️ John in messages where you just press one button and say, yes, I’ve agreed to share all my info with everybody. If there was a word behind

⏹️ ▶️ John that, there was an action, if there was a proper noun, if there was something, if there was some kind of vocabulary to talk

⏹️ ▶️ John about this instead of individually having to say, who is one, two, three, four, five? Who’s this number? Who’s that

⏹️ ▶️ John number? I don’t have you this. You don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco have this. I’m saying like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like messages should should basically prompt the people whose numbers are not known to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco someone to say, hey, this person in the group doesn’t have your contact. Do you want to, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco reveal yourself or something?

⏹️ ▶️ John But even that is like onesie twosie. Like you could just have someone in the group says, we should all super share. And there’d be a super share

⏹️ ▶️ John button. And we push super share and everyone in the group gets everyone else’s info. And like, everyone has to turn your key, sir. And they all

⏹️ ▶️ John have to put super share. But once everybody presses super share, everybody gets shared with everybody else. Right? As opposed

⏹️ ▶️ John to going onesie twosie to individual people and sending contacts and doing all that stuff. Because believe

⏹️ ▶️ John me, like we know how to sell, send a contact card to somebody. I send contact cards to my family all the time. And they just stare at it in their messages.

⏹️ ▶️ John They have no idea. Like, am I supposed to do something with this? Like, yes, you are supposed to do something without

⏹️ ▶️ John sending you the entire contact information. You just have to tap it. You just have to do literally anything

⏹️ ▶️ John with it and it will open in contacts. And then maybe it’ll ask you if you want to merge with the existing account, but they just look at it and be like,

⏹️ ▶️ John is that, did that do something? Like, no, you got to, at least on the Mac, you have to do stuff with it. Maybe iOS automatically adds it.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco But anyway. No, I don’t think it ever automatically adds

⏹️ ▶️ John it. This seems like it should be better. And, you know, Apple has made some progress

⏹️ ▶️ John here with the photo sharing stuff or whatever. Although that mostly all I’ve heard from my family with the photo sharing is their annoyance

⏹️ ▶️ John because they all want their, Like my daughter has a, I don’t think it’s AI generated, but I forget some

⏹️ ▶️ John picture of me. It’s like, I think it’s a picture of me from middle school, but then someone has added like

⏹️ ▶️ John a handlebar mustache and a beard or a

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey goatee or something. We need to see this picture.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We need to see this immediately.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think you’ve seen it before. I think I’ve showed it to you. But anyway, she insists on keeping that as her contact picture for

⏹️ ▶️ John me. But of course, Apple being helpful is constantly offering my dry picture to her. And she’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ John no, no, stop offering. I’m like, I’m not offering it to you. Like iOS or whatever, like I’m not pressing

⏹️ ▶️ John a button to make that happen. It’s just unavoidable. And same thing on my side. I have my own pictures of a lot of my

⏹️ ▶️ John contacts and then people are constantly sending like, I think like a Gruber’s contact

⏹️ ▶️ John that he’s always offering is like the daring fireball logo, but I’ve got an actual picture of him or like a cartoon face or

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. Like, no, no, I don’t want the cartoon. I don’t want your corporate logo. I want this picture I took of you.

⏹️ ▶️ John And so I have to constantly have to fend off that thing. And if I accidentally tap it or click the wrong thing one day, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John why I saved a little folder of like, here are the contact pictures that I want for these people. And even if somehow

⏹️ ▶️ John your finger slips and it gets overwritten by the thing that they want, tough luck, I want this person to look like that. And

⏹️ ▶️ John that is a little bit of a battle. So there’s, you know, the system could be improved in many respects.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I feel like setting custom contact pictures for people you know is one of life’s great pleasures

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they should not be interfering more than necessary with that. And it is funny too, like whenever

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I get like the, you know, this update, update this person’s photo from them, question mark, people who work for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple are always Memojis. Yes. And no one else ever is.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve noticed this. I’ve never had anyone who didn’t work at Apple have a Memoji as their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco avatar.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have had that. I have had regular people use Memojis, but I swear to you,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if it was an edict or what, but I have noticed this as well. I don’t know a whole bunch of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey people that work at Apple, but golly, I don’t think it’s 100% for me, but it’s darn near 100% use Memoji. Maybe it was fun

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to use it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John when it was first being developed

⏹️ ▶️ John and you were inside Apple, when it like essentially went wide inside Apple or especially if you were in the people

⏹️ ▶️ John who got to see it ahead of time. But like, as I’ve complained about me, Moji’s before,

⏹️ ▶️ John they are the opposite of a like a likeness because every Memoji’s

⏹️ ▶️ John face is head is shaped the same. And that’s not true of people. That’s why Memoji’s never

⏹️ ▶️ John look like the person, because like a caricature that you get at a carnival or any kind of cartoon thing will emphasize

⏹️ ▶️ John the things that make you look like you. And Memoji’s never do that. Mii’s, unlike

⏹️ ▶️ John the Nintendo Wii, would let you make a long skinny head. If you got a long skinny head, make a short one, make a big nose,

⏹️ ▶️ John make a small nose, like but Memojis, everybody’s a spherical generic thing and they look,

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, other than the fact that you can say, oh, I guess that person has brown hair and so does your Memoji and I guess their glasses

⏹️ ▶️ John look like yours. They never look like the people, which is fine if you don’t want it to be a likeness, you just want it

⏹️ ▶️ John to be like a generic avatar. But like, you know, why not just, I don’t know,

⏹️ ▶️ John I just, I’m not a fan of Memoji. I don’t think they serve a purpose because if I see him, to your point about talking with Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John people, if I see him emoji and like as an icon, I have no idea who that person is. Like even if they

⏹️ ▶️ John use the same emoji all the time, they just all look the same, they all look generic, and I can’t recognize people based

⏹️ ▶️ John on an emoji.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s one of the indicators of somebody does work at Apple. Like in the same way, like when you go to somebody like Macedon profile, there’ll be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a couple of indicators sometimes, like, you know, like, like people who, who live in,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as their location in Macedon, they put like some suburb near Cupertino or something and they don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco say their company, or they’ll say like fruit company, or there’ll be all these kind of coded things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that indicate, yeah, you work for Apple, you just don’t wanna get in trouble, you know, that kind of thing. But the Memoji is definitely a tell. Now,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco also, while we are working on the contacts database in our fantasy here,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco archived contacts. Please make a concept of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco archived

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey contacts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where you can put people who you don’t want to contact without some kind of warning,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or you don’t want to show up in searches. So things like estranged family

⏹️ ▶️ Marco members, ex-partners, people who have died. You don’t wanna

⏹️ ▶️ Marco delete their contact because you might someday want it again. Or in the case

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of somebody who has died, you don’t want all the past messages with that person to just be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco unassociated with a name anymore. But have a concept of an archived

⏹️ ▶️ Marco contact. Because think about what this can do. First of all, people who have a name conflict where your spouse is named

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bob and you have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Bob in your contacts that you talk to once every five years and Siri will often offer you that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one instead of your spouse. So many of these things could be resolved. Let me just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco archive a whole bunch of contacts that I probably, that I don’t need in frequent

⏹️ ▶️ Marco day-to-day or present-day use, but I don’t want to delete because I might someday need them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where I don’t want to lose association.

⏹️ ▶️ John I actually want this, I’ve always wanted this within a single contact. I’ve been battling with this for the

⏹️ ▶️ John entire time I’ve had contacts, even back in like the Claris email and entourage days. Within a contact,

⏹️ ▶️ John often my contact, but often other people’s, I have a massive history of email

⏹️ ▶️ John addresses. Most of them don’t exist or work for me anymore. But why would I want to keep them in my

⏹️ ▶️ John contact? Because like you said, when there’s any kind of thing in the world, like an email or

⏹️ ▶️ John a message thread or whatever, I want to know that it was from me back when I worked at company

⏹️ ▶️ John XYZ because it’s associated with that email address, which I don’t want to be in my contact or ever in any autocomplete

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but when someone sees me at somecompany.com, that company long since has gone

⏹️ ▶️ John under and that domain name is gone, but there’s some email in some email archive that I’m browsing or some message thread in something that I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John looking at, I still wanted to know that was me, but I do not want that email address to

⏹️ ▶️ John be anywhere. And I wish within a contact I could say, Yeah, I used to have

⏹️ ▶️ John these email addresses. Same thing with addresses in some respects. I used to live with these addresses, but I don’t anymore, but anyway.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, please,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least an archive contact. Like people who, you don’t want to show up in Siri,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t want to, because so often you do something in the OS, like you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do a spotlight search, and so often you’re like, one tap would call this person right now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s the last thing, it’s like a minefield. And sometimes you accidentally do, you’re like, oh my God, I just called this person I haven’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco worked with in eight

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John years.

⏹️ ▶️ John Or the auto complete when sending an email. You don’t notice a tab completes the wrong thing. You send the email to exactly the wrong person.

⏹️ ▶️ John Or like you said, my grandfather, my deceased grandfather, and my nephew have

⏹️ ▶️ John exactly the same first and last name. That is difficult. It’s difficult, for example, in photos.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a really difficult one because in photos, I do want to identify old pictures of my grandfather and

⏹️ ▶️ John new pictures of my nephew, and they have the same name. And yeah, you can get cute with giving them nicknames and stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John like that or whatever, but like if one of those contacts was archived, when they come in

⏹️ ▶️ John the pop-up, the archive one could be like grayed out or a little skull and crossbones next to it. I don’t know,

⏹️ ▶️ John like, whatever you wanna do, but it’s like, seriously, like my long dead grandfather and my

⏹️ ▶️ John just entering high school nephew, there shouldn’t be as much confusion in life as there is just

⏹️ ▶️ John because they have the same name.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, or just, you know, like an ex-girlfriend or something or like you don’t wanna like accidentally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco call certain people or text certain, and like, yes, you mentioned autocomplete with email, what about autocomplete

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in message threads? That’s another one where it’s like, as you’re just typing in names, oh, send this to Casey

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and John. Well, what if there were some other, Casey in my past I really didn’t wanna talk to, because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco he was really bad at Transport Tycoon back in the day or something.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m right here, Marco, I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John right here. What if there were other people named John, can you imagine that?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Right, I’m sure you never have this problem.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I completely agree with both of you. I have had occurrences and occasions

⏹️ ▶️ Casey where I’ve wanted exactly what each of you describes. So yes, you have my vote. This might be the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing, one of the three of us, you know, people always ask us, you know, if you could be Craig Federighi for a day,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what would you go and force everyone to do and then quit right after? This might be it for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me. Archive contacts is a pretty—also, look, Apple, hey, take this as a little suggestion.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If Gurman’s right that you’re looking for like a Snow Leopard kind of bug fixing kind of release, and I know all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the problems with that reference that Sonolipart actually did have new features, but whatever. Anyway, if you’re looking for a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco quality assurance, low excitement kind of release, and you need some features to jazz people up

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about it, Archive Contacts is such a good feature that it’s not a ton

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of work. I know there’s a lot of places where contacts show up and you’d have to account for this, but it’s not no work. It

⏹️ ▶️ Marco isn’t like an afternoon. I

⏹️ ▶️ John was going to say, it is actually a fairly heavyweight feature because it gets its tendrils into everything,

⏹️ ▶️ John but they just added password history to passwords so we know they can do it. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s not a small lift, but it’s not a big lift. It’s not like a major

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tent pole thing, but it’s one of those little like quality of life features that would breeze by

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the WWC keynote and you get a huge applause because that solves problems people actually have like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, I don’t want to call, you know, the weird, you know, uncle I haven’t spoken to in 10

⏹️ ▶️ Marco years or my ex who if I call them that could bring up some weird feelings or this person who

⏹️ ▶️ Marco died 10 years ago. Like, no, I don’t want to call these people with one tap accidentally. I don’t want to accidentally add them to a message

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thread, but I don’t want to, you know, delete the contact either. Like so it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco such it’s such a big high value win if you can get it.

⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like fixing the messaging merging thing is much more targeted and easier to do. So if someone’s wanting to join Apple and fix

⏹️ ▶️ John one bug, do the message merging thing. You can get in and out faster.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bet mine’s easier.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, because you just got to do the only you only have to work on the messages app code base to implement my thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John Your thing, you got to work on a million apps. No, honestly, I don’t think you do. You don’t. Like all the pop

⏹️ ▶️ John up contact autocomplete things now have to understand the concept of an archive contact and have to display

⏹️ ▶️ John it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco differently. No, I think by default, anything that’s archived doesn’t show up through that API.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But

⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t have that because photos needs to show dead people, right? You need to identify dead people in photos. So photos

⏹️ ▶️ John needs to do it. So the very least, you got to do the integration with photos. It’s a long, it’s yours

⏹️ ▶️ John is a bigger lift. It’s definitely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a I don’t think so. You’re talking about merging iMessage threads? No way. That’s crazy.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, how about just not letting them bifurcate ever? Just going forward. I’ll take that. You don’t have

⏹️ ▶️ John to fix the damage done in the past. Just going forward, when people are talking in a conversation, look up

⏹️ ▶️ John which contact is associated with that thing and say, here. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John so frustrating. What is the point of having a contact with lots of different information if

⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t treat all that information as corresponding to that contact? It’s like a, it’s only a one way relationship. It’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John one to many and then many to many in the other direction.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I, you’re not wrong, but as soon as you said, oh, my, you know, group chats have split

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, that is almost certainly, I mean, you nailed the problem that some of the chats with emails, some

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are with phone numbers, some are a mixture of both. And I agree with you. It’s infuriating that we have the technology

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to fix this problem. I don’t know why it’s not already

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John fixed.

⏹️ ▶️ John And the other thing is the interface of like, there is so little visibility and awareness of

⏹️ ▶️ John people who initiate conversations. Are you initiating it with a phone number or an Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John ID? Almost nowhere do they make that super duper clear. People don’t even

⏹️ ▶️ John know that they can set it. You can set the default by default start conversations with this but the default can be different on different

⏹️ ▶️ John platforms because they just see a name in an article. It’s the thing that infuriates me about

⏹️ ▶️ John FaceTime on Apple TV, which I used to talk to my family like we on the actual Apple TV and I use like continuity camera

⏹️ ▶️ John with my phone FaceTime on Apple TV. It’s like start a conversation with. And then

⏹️ ▶️ John you’ll tap on a contact and it’ll be like my dad’s name and it’ll say underneath it. Home, home,

⏹️ ▶️ John home,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey home, mobile, mobile,

⏹️ ▶️ John home, home. Which one of those is a phone number? Which one of those is an Apple ID? Who knows?

⏹️ ▶️ John Just they don’t tell you because there’s no room on my 65 inch screen to indicate which one

⏹️ ▶️ John is a phone number, which was an Apple ID. And the consequences of getting it wrong is they get rung on their iPad when they were trying to

⏹️ ▶️ John use their phone or they’re not near their iPad or they’re not on Wi-Fi or the like.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s it’s. But they got out of the way of your content, John.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, just there’s no room for any word except for home and mobile. Good luck.

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