676: A Sternly Worded Instruction
29 Jan 2026TCL and Sony TVs, Apple and Google’s AI infrastructure, new AirTags, John Ternus overseeing design, and more adventures with Claude Code.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Snowpocalypse update
- Follow-up:
atp.fmpasskey update- Google Private AI Compute
- Apple 🤝🏻 Google Cloud
- Removing copy/paste crud (via rauli)
- Screen on RAM
- ASUS improves color accuracy for Mac users (via Oliver Thomas)
- Modular headphones
- AIAIAI (via Graham Dobie)
- Tyler H’s review of the Fender Mix and Fairphone Fairbuds
- Window management in macOS (via Ben)
- New AirTags
- Apple hosting LA event
- TCL has bought Sony’s TV business
- John Ternus takes over design at Apple
- Post-show:
- We stand with Minnesotans.
- John’s new bff
- Members-only ATP Overtime: TikTok in the US is under new ownership… for real this time
Sponsored by:
- Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code atp.
- DeleteMe: Making it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online.
Become a member for ATP Overtime, ad-free episodes, member specials, and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- Snowpocalypse follow-up
- Passkeys
- Apple on Google Cloud
- Clipboard-spam cleanup
- Screens on RAM
- Improving color accuracy
- Modular headphones and AIAIAI
- High-res audio is bull—
- Mac window-management utilities
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- New AirTags
- No new MBPs yet
- TCL and Sony TVs
- Sponsor: DeleteMe (code ATP)
- Ternus taking over design
- Ending theme
- Cook and Minneapolis
- More Claude Code adventures
Snowpocalypse follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like we should do some snowpocalypse follow-up. I was talking last week about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how Richmond was due for like 30 inches of snow. Yeah, what happened? We did not get 30 inches of snow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I saw your picture of your driveway. You got barely enough to cover the ground.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was a little more than that, perhaps not by Boston standards, I will allow. But by local standards, it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey somewhat significant. It was like three or four inches. I’m not gonna do that computation for centimeters. It was a handful of centimeters.
⏹️ ▶️ John doing unit conversions. I think we need a moratorium on unit conversions. conversions, especially since you can’t do them in your head and then
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re always just guessing. People like, if people are interested in doing the unit conversion, lots of ways
⏹️ ▶️ John that is possible after the fact. But I feel like what we should instead be doing is slowly acclimating people to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, because our units, with the exception of Fahrenheit, stink. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John They do, but there are units and that we talk about them. And that’s, you know, by listening to the show, people will
⏹️ ▶️ John become familiar with them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m pretty sure that people outside of the US who consume US media have plenty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of other cases of other shows and things, you know, just using our units and making them figure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it out. I don’t think they need us to add to the pile. That being said, um, I also don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s our responsibility to keep converting everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Well, let the record show. I tried anyways, we got a small amount of snow, but on top of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey snow, we got a pile of ice and that ice during the day will,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when it’s which has been the last couple of days, it will melt a little bit at the top and then refreeze
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and refreeze and refreeze and refreeze. And so it ends up that we have like a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of inches of ice everywhere. That’s not good. Which is not good. And the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey county, because remember in Virginia, everything is by counties. The county has done an actually extraordinary
⏹️ ▶️ Casey job of keeping interstates clear, of keeping major,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the bigger side roads, not side roads, the bigger like non interstate roads clear. You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, for example, my neighborhood dumps into one of the larger roads where we are. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s bone dry. It’s been dry basically this whole time. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when it comes to the neighborhoods, they justifiably didn’t get to them in time to like really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clear them when it was workable. And now we’ve got like two to three to four inches of ice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on all of these neighborhood roads. basically said, it’ll melt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one day, I guess. And so the kids, it’s currently Wednesdays, we record this. And,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, at about noon today, the school system said, ah, screw it. We’re out for the week. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, that is the status of snow apocalypse. And then this coming weekend, we might get anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between two and 30 inches more snow. Although I think they’re pumped the brakes on the 30 inches side of things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think it’s going to be closer to like two to four, but we have been below freezing as I’m sure you two very much have.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have been below freezing for a week almost, and we’re not supposed to get above freezing until
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this coming Monday. So, you know, anything that hasn’t been fairly well cleared, like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron and I and the kids went out and cleared about half of our driveway in order to make sure we could get out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And anything that isn’t mostly clear is just turning into ever thicker layers of ice. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then we might put a couple to 30 inches of snow on top of it, which is going to be super fun. You
⏹️ ▶️ John went out and you shoveled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco half your driveway? Yes. See, that’s how you can tell he doesn’t get a lot of snow. How about you shovel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the whole driveway? John, do you have any idea how f***ing hard it is to shovel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey under three inches of ice? You don’t, because as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John much as you do know snow… I don’t? You think I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco don’t? Believe me, I do. Ha
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ha ha! John lives in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Boston, he knows! Under ice! You get metric a** ton of snow,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I don’t think you get the
⏹️ ▶️ John get. We get every possible combination of snow you can imagine, including heavy, slushy, icy,
⏹️ ▶️ John everything. Wintry mix, they call it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not talking about slushy, icy snow. I’m talking about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey literal ice. We had to take a shovel to get
⏹️ ▶️ John through it. I’m familiar with ice, Casey. And by the way, if you were familiar with winter, you would know
⏹️ ▶️ John that the correct time to shovel when it’s less work is when the snow or ice or whatever is
⏹️ ▶️ John fresh-ish instead of waiting for it to freeze overnight.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which is what we did. That’s what we did. As soon as we could, we got out there. But
⏹️ ▶️ John you did half. You did half the job. Did you shovel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your sidewalk too? Yeah. Well, we don’t have a sidewalk in the sense that you’re expecting, but the walk from the driveway to the front door
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is shoveled enough for UPS to get there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, next time do the whole driveway. Can your kids play ice hockey on the street now?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh God, yes. People, if they are skating, like there are people skating around the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey neighborhood roads of Richmond on ice skates. Absolutely. And yeah, it’s a mess. And we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t have an ice scraper, which means we had to use like shovel,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John like yard shovels.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t own an ice scraper?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In the car? You know what I’m talking about? Like it’s like a hoe, but instead of a 90 degree angle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the end, it’s just a straight shot. And so you can get under the ice and- I
⏹️ ▶️ John know what you’re talking about, but like you shouldn’t be using that on a driveway. Now you’re going to mess it up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, what are my choices? I mean, I’m using a freaking shovel right now, John. What are you going to do?
⏹️ ▶️ John You need to take some like continuing education classes on how to live with winter. Jesus Christ. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I left the Northeast, so I didn’t have to deal with your bull** winters. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John yet here I am.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apparently you didn’t do any shoveling when you lived in Connecticut either.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no, because dad had a snowblower. like a ridiculously overpowered snowblower and he loved going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out there. I have a ridiculously overpowered snowblower and it’s wonderful, you know, three times a year that I need it. But even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then, like, you have to go out while the snow is like fresh, before it has a chance to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco packed down or have anybody walk on it and pack down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey more. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then what you do is you first clear the snow and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you put down salt. Which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I get, I get you. Because that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will help keep it, you know, that’ll finish the job of any like little remnants left behind and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that will prevent it from getting ice covered all over it when everything starts to melt. If you
⏹️ ▶️ John do a good enough job shoveling, you won’t have to worry about ice because the sun will be able to reach the darker
⏹️ ▶️ John pavement and it will either evaporate or sublimate off the ice and you’ll get fresh
⏹️ ▶️ John clean asphalt or pavers or whatever is underneath there that will slowly be exposed
⏹️ ▶️ John to the sun and even if it’s five degrees as it has been here, it will clear off the remnants of the snow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, I shoveled my entire driveway and sidewalk three times. Here’s your cookie, John.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John stinks around here. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey icy. It’s not fun. It’s interesting in Erin’s car because her car is rear-wheel drive when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey under electricity, and then it will turn on the gas motor to be all-wheel drive when necessary.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s kind of fun. But I took my car out briefly to make a food run, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t have the time or good spot to do any hooliganism, which was disappointing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but at this rate, I’ll have plenty of times and perhaps can find a spot to do donuts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and other ridiculous childish things. But nevertheless, think happy thoughts for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Virginia this coming weekend because it could get worse. Yeah. you
Passkeys
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s talk about the ATPFM, our website’s passkeys.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, what have you been up to?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it was last episode I said that I had added passkey support. Not I had added passkey support.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Claude Code had added passkey
⏹️ ▶️ John support to our website. And it was working when I talked about it on
⏹️ ▶️ John the show, even for the live listeners. But since the show was
⏹️ ▶️ John released, I got some feedback from users about how they expected it to work. one user, I forgot,
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t save this person’s name, sent me a links, I asked for links, like show me some websites where you like how
⏹️ ▶️ John it works. And I forget what they sent, but they sent a bunch of websites where some of which I already have an account on. And like basically,
⏹️ ▶️ John the sort of best practice way to do this is to not even wait for the person to enter anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if they have a passkey to essentially offer to log them in with their passkey, of course they could just say cancel
⏹️ ▶️ John and just manually log in, because our website atp.fm has three ways to log
⏹️ ▶️ John in. You can log in with the magic email link, you can log in with a password and you can log in with a passkey and you can choose which one you want.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you have a passkey and you land on the login page, now you won’t even have to do anything. It will
⏹️ ▶️ John just pop up a thing that says, hey, do you wanna log in with your passkey? And you can say yes or no. And if you say no, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John just do it manually. So that’s working. And lots of people are trying out the system. I see them all
⏹️ ▶️ John logging in with their passkeys and it is exciting. And I haven’t got any bug reports yet. So
Apple on Google Cloud
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. With regard to private AI compute in Google,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this was an announcement from November 11th of 2025. Google writes that private AI compute
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the cloud is our next step in AI processing technology. It builds off the industry-leading security
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and privacy safeguards that we embed to keep you in control of your experiences and your data safe,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guided by our secure AI framework, AI principles, and privacy principles. Private AI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey compute is a secure, fortified space for processing your data that keeps your data isolated and private to you. It processes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the same type of sensitive information you might expect to be processed on device within its trusted boundary.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Your personal information, unique insights, and how you use them are protected by an extra layer of security and privacy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in addition to our existing AI safeguards. Remote attestation and encryption are used to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey connect your device to hardware-secured, sealed cloud environments, allowing Gemini models
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to securely process your data within a specialized protected space. This ensures sensitive data processed by private AI compute
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that remains accessible only to you and no one else, not even Google.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think I had this in the notes ages ago, but this is essentially Google’s answer to private cloud compute. Now, the
⏹️ ▶️ John tricky bits are always like, how Apple did a bunch of stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John where they bent over backwards to say, and we’ll give you this binary image of the thing, and
⏹️ ▶️ John this is the way that you can prove to yourself mathematically that when you connect to our servers, what you’re actually connecting to
⏹️ ▶️ John is the binary thing that we gave you. So we know we’re not just giving you one thing and using a different thing on our servers.
⏹️ ▶️ John And lots of people looked at that and they said, it’s great and this is very helpful, but in the end you do kind of sort of have to trust Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John to some degree, same thing with the Google private compute. I’m sure they’re doing all the same things, but in the end you
⏹️ ▶️ John have to trust Google. Trust that Google has correctly and honestly implemented the thing that they said they implemented, which I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sure they have because again, you know, they wanna do this for Apple, they wanna do it for
⏹️ ▶️ John themselves. Being able to privately process stuff that is too expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John to do on devices. a useful service to offer. And this is their offering that they announced in
⏹️ ▶️ John November. So again, no announcement from Apple about, I mean, there’s some rumors. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think we’re gonna cover them in this show. Maybe we mentioned last time, but like the bifurcation of the Apple’s rollout of their
⏹️ ▶️ John LLM tech where like 26.4, we’ll have some stuff within like the chat bot thing will come
⏹️ ▶️ John later. And the rumors about Apple using Google’s TPUs and their data centers
⏹️ ▶️ John was about the later chat bots and not the 26.4 thing. So we’ll see, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John there’ll be another weird joint statement sometime around the next WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ John to say, oh, and Apple’s gonna be using Google’s private cloud compute, or maybe they just won’t say anything and they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John rebrand it. I think Marco was alluding to that last episode, like maybe we’ll just keep saying private cloud compute. And when you,
⏹️ ▶️ John the little asterisk will say, either an Apple’s data center is using our thing, or Google’s data center is using their thing, which is basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh no, I was saying that it was very likely to just kind of be memory hold, like just kind of just never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be talked, like AirPower, just kind of never be talked about again. You know, maybe a quick little mention
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John somewhere. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John they will talk about it because they’ve been advertising it like crazy. They’re definitely gonna be using it and Google’s got the same thing. So why
⏹️ ▶️ John would they ever memory haul it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I think they will keep advertising their commitment to privacy. But the specifics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of how that’s achieved, I think will become a little bit less specific because they have to, because again, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the outcome here is Apple’s private cloud compute infrastructure is probably not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna be their long-term solution. it might not even be their next year solution.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think ultimately they are going to most likely move to Google’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco large models exclusively for all their large model needs. I mean, I guess that’s kind of what has already been reported.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think that’s going to be running on Google’s infrastructure, probably for the foreseeable future. For
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on-device stuff, I’m sure they’re still gonna do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but won’t they just still call it private cloud compute? Maybe, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I do think- Like, it’s the same thing. It’s just like they’re not running Google is, but it’s the same idea that even Google
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have access to it. And you can prove that you’re running on the hardware that they say you’re running on. I think they’ll just rebrand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe, I do think though, like this is a good example. You know, there’s a lot of examples throughout, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, recent tech history where Apple either, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, designs their own complete thing, their own complete standard for something that doesn’t yet have a standard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then everyone else kind of copies it and kind of makes it the standard. know, see things like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like Chi2 and she met with magnets like that, like MagSafe kind of became
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Chi2 like and that clearly influenced it. You know, Apple kind of steered that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or, you know, in some cases, Apple participates in the design of a standard very heavily,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like USBC, where, like, you know, Apple takes a big role because they want it done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a certain way. And it’s kind of done the Apple way and then that that, you know, everybody gets to use that. that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think private cloud compute set a framework
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in motion and a set of standards in motion that effectively Google looked at that and was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, oh yeah, that’s probably a good idea. And then Google copied it. And maybe that was in part because they were already talking to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about possibly hosting this stuff at that point whenever they decided to do this. Maybe that came afterwards,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but whatever it is, I think without Apple having announced private cloud compute and made a big,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put that stake in the ground the way it was back then. I think if that hadn’t happened, Google
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would not have done their thing. However, the actions came to be that Google did their thing that seems very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco similar. I think that is a direct result of Apple having announced private cloud compute the way they did.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So even if Apple’s version of this is kind of a temporary flash
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the pan and isn’t really a long-term thing, it was good that Apple did that because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that caused Google, I think, to do their basically copy of it. And that’s better for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everybody, including Google’s customers. And I don’t think that’s the kind of thing Google would have come up with on their own. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not historically one of their strong suits. So I think overall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this was a very beneficial outcome, even if we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never hear about Apple’s version of it again.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wonder if Apple spent more money and time on private cloud compute or the supposed server
⏹️ ▶️ John chips that they made that are based on the M5. We know they were using like the m2 ultras before that but the rumor
⏹️ ▶️ John is that they actually made a like Chip for their own servers that is not a chip that will go into
⏹️ ▶️ John any other devices And if they just end up entirely on Google’s data centers and look at the next year or two boy That was a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of money for those server chips that that really you know went nowhere But you know, they can just join the Mac Pro with
⏹️ ▶️ John products that Apple lost interest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, they can join the car and probably pretty soon VR.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, these are these will be shipping though Like you’ll be running cut your code will be running on them. You just won’t know it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean obviously I think Apple has a lot of things they could do with a large amount of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their own processors in their own cloud, but ultimately like that is not Apple’s wheelhouse.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Google like Google wins on infrastructure so much in so many ways across the Internet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like Google for all of their for all of their faults in some of their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weird privacy stuff sometimes and a lot of their you know kind of all over the place product design.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have the best infrastructure in the world. They can scale to Apple’s scale, and not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of other people can, including sometimes Apple itself. So while Apple does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco run a lot of their services, it’s generally on other people’s cloud hardware. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a bunch of Apple-branded data centers. I think there’s some Apple data centers, but I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s where most of their stuff is running. I think most of their stuff is running on Google Cloud, Azure, AWS, that kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of infrastructure, CloudFlare or whatever. Wasn’t Cloudflare involved in private relay? I think
⏹️ ▶️ John they did do something. Didn’t they do like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the private IP thing you remember?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so anyway, to run large scale, large volume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AI models is so top of the line in infrastructure, it’s so cutting edge, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so demanding, it’s so high scale. You need somebody like Google to do that. Like Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was never going to serve that need at the right scale for them. So I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see a situation in which it makes any sense for Apple to use their own AI
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chips right now. Maybe again, 10, 20 years down the road, maybe things will be different,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but right now it makes total sense to go all in on a company
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that really specializes in this. And if you want a company that you already have a good relationship with,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that has all the levels of the stack, that has first party flagship models
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and huge infrastructure. The only answer is Google. So I think this, again, I’m very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco optimistic about this partnership. I think this is a very good partnership for both companies. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think Apple made by far the best choice in choosing Google for this and investing in it like this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I think they’re gonna be way ahead of where they would be if they were on their own. And I can’t imagine any other company having partnered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with them that would give them a better outcome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Speaking of Google and Apple, an anonymous ex-Googler wrote in and said, If Apple is or was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of Google Cloud’s largest customers, Google Cloud is the only public cloud with enough network bandwidth to serve iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Drive and backup, which was wholly on Google Cloud. Mobile Me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was on Azure, contributing to its disaster. Shots fired.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So what a surprise that an ex-Google employee would
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe a slightly biased opinion there, but I mean, having used these services in a professional
⏹️ ▶️ John capacity, I can’t say that Azure was, let’s say, maybe not up to the standards of AWS
⏹️ ▶️ John Google Cloud one back when I was using Google Cloud, Google Cloud was also kind of the new entrant.
⏹️ ▶️ John But Azure was definitely weird and had like a weird Windows flavor to something. So I think there’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ John a grain of truth in this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I mean, mobile me had a lot of problems. Like when you have when you have that kind of service,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually like the the server provider is usually not your problem,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it can contribute to it. Like it’s basically like how easy is it to build a resilient system using
⏹️ ▶️ John these cloud services? And obviously AWS is the biggest entrant in this market and is
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of number one for a reason. Google Cloud is slightly different in that Google’s main expertise
⏹️ ▶️ John was building things for itself and it only later decided we should be selling this to customers.
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, Azure was like, Microsoft’s like, we can do this too. And it’s like, yeah, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Gracious. All right, and then continuing from the ex-Googler, the other main Apple product that runs on Google Cloud
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is Shazam, which is running on Google Kubernetes Engine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, they acquired Shazam, So I wonder if they just left it where it was originally running when it was an independent company, you know?
Clipboard-spam cleanup
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we should talk with regard to using Alfred to remove the attribution
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff that was copied in text from macOS from the News app. And John, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apparently made a snarky comment, only on the Mac can you do these sorts of things, which at the time I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey agreed with. But Raleigh writes in to say, you can also remove the attribution crud from copied
⏹️ ▶️ Casey text on iOS. I made a clean URL shortcut that removes the attribution text and also changes x.com
⏹️ ▶️ Casey links to xcanceled.com links.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I was mostly alluding to, I didn’t know, don’t know if Alfred does this, but the idea of like when you copy would run
⏹️ ▶️ John automatically and clean the thing out versus having to manually run the shortcut. But for all I know, shortcuts can do it automatically
⏹️ ▶️ John on copy as well. I don’t know. Anyway, sorry for slagging
⏹️ ▶️ John shortcuts. Just, it’s not my cup of tea. So I’m not always aware of all the capabilities.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m sure the shortcut will work great for at least one year. Ha!
Screens on RAM
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then you had also snarked in episode 674, how long until we have screens on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey RAM? Well, Vasudev Baldwell writes, good news, you can buy DDR5 memory
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sticks with little OLED screens on them right now. The idea is that the screen would display details useful to know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey while overclocking your memory. It’s only $590, which is not much more than current DDR5 prices. Should have
⏹️ ▶️ John known it existed because why wouldn’t it exist? Why wouldn’t it exist? Because it’s a terrible idea and you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want to put something heat producing on top of your RAM. I was like you know you can put a heat sink on your ram. What’s the opposite of a heat sink? Can we put
⏹️ ▶️ John a hot thing on your ram? Yes, you can okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but okay in in the defense of this ridiculousness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back in the day, screens were expensive. Like when we all came up with computers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screens were expensive and memory was expensive. Now only one of those is true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What a wonderful world that we live in that an old screen like not even a crappy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco type of An OLED screen is so cheap that they’re shoving it in battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chargers and RAM sticks because they cost basically nothing now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What an amazing world we live in. As a computer nerd, look I know there’s a lot of bad stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going on in the world, we’ll get to it, but there’s a lot of good stuff in the world too. And what an amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world it is that we have created technology so good that we can waste
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screens on stupid crap that doesn’t need them. It doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John matter. Put screens in places where honestly you shouldn’t ever be able to see them because inside your
⏹️ ▶️ John computer but I know I know everyone wants to be able to see everything on their computer. That’s why all the the cases are made of glass. Remember that
⏹️ ▶️ John rumor from ages ago that we talked about on the show of like the Mac Pro case made of glass. Finally,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple can now have screens on its RAM too. But it’ll be soldered to the motherboard. The screen
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey is massage of
⏹️ ▶️ John the motherboard too.
Improving color accuracy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Asus, whatever it’s called. It’s not Asus, I learned.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is not Asus. It has improved or is improving color accuracy for Mac users. Jacob Han on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey CineD website writes, Asus has introduced new Mac OS focus features for its
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ProArt displays aimed at improving color critical workflows for photography and video professionals using MacBook, Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mini and Mac studio systems. Key updates include support for the Asus display widget center on Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey OS, enabling software based monitor control and MacBook keyboard brightness adjustment, as well as new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M model P3 color mode, designed to align ProArt displays with MacBook screens
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for consistent color reproduction.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I find it hilarious that that is like, at all the companies that market, like their, you know, sort of formerly PC
⏹️ ▶️ John monitors to Macs, they all seem to use the same
⏹️ ▶️ John phrasing or like same scenario. They say like, our monitor will exactly match your MacBook’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like built-in screen. Because I guess they think that’s what people want. It’s like, we just
⏹️ ▶️ John want an accurate monitor. If my laptop screen is not accurate, don’t match it. And they’re just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they just say like, if you have your laptop up on your desk, our monitor will match it and it will look right. But it’s like, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John more to, you know, like you never see Apple say, all right, if you buy our monitors, they’ll exactly match our laptops. They’re always talking
⏹️ ▶️ John about the accuracy as measured objectively against some like color checker type thing. But they’re like, no, it’ll just match your laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John screen. Isn’t that what you want? It’s like, well, yeah, but that’s not, anyway. All this to say
⏹️ ▶️ John that more of these companies are aiming at Mac users with their monitors, you know, these sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of pro art ones and other product lines that are not gamery are more likely
⏹️ ▶️ John to, for example, work with the keyboard brightness controls on your Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John having to run a third party driver, how long will that be supported, yada yada. But like there’s a sort of a,
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems to be developing a gradient from Apple monitors, which you plug in and will work
⏹️ ▶️ John in theory with everything having to do with Mac OS that to work with the keyboard things that you know, does not even have a power button like it,
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac knows about them, like that’s at one end and at the other end is just a gaming monitor that you plug in that the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John has no idea what the hell it is and hopefully you can get it working right and these are kind of in the middle. Of course, these are a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John more expensive and they tend not to have the all the fanciest features
⏹️ ▶️ John because those are still on kind of the gaming monitors first so many LED backlights, super high refresh,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, fancy OLEDs with fancy pixel structures, give it time so more of these will come out but I’m glad to see
⏹️ ▶️ John some of these monitor makers realizing that there is a market here to cater to Mac users and
⏹️ ▶️ John also that Mac users are probably willing to pay what seem like astronomical prices
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s still cheaper than Apple’s monitors. And speaking of, we live in this amazing age when screens are cheap, not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, that was never the case. Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have never, ever been cheap.
⏹️ ▶️ John just saying like, They are stubbornly going against the tide.
Modular headphones and AIAIAI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then we talked in last week’s overtime about the Fender Mix modular headphones, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Graham Doby writes, there’s a Danish company called AIAIAI, all caps,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s been making custom modular repairable headphones for 15 years or so. That brand name didn’t age so well. It’s all caps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think it’s IAI, but it doesn’t matter. I actually tried one of their pairs of headphones back when I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reviewing headphones during that brief time in my life, before there were way too many of them. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they were fine. But that’s all I could say about them. They were fine, but I wasn’t impressed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, like the company, if you look at it, like this does seem like a company that’s really focused on this type of, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, durable, rugged, no-nonsense, modular, you know, they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John aiming for the super-duper audiophiles. There is a little bit of like an aesthetic they’re going for,
⏹️ ▶️ John but yeah, it’s good to know companies like this are out there. I’d never heard of this company, but these products look like that. If the
⏹️ ▶️ John Fender mix appealed to you, these might appeal to you as well. And the prices seem similar. I looked at one or two of them, they’re only like 300 bucks or so. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, one of the ways that things like this have been modular in the past
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has basically been like, you can clip on a cover, like a plastic cover of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a different color where you want it. So you can customize your color scheme. And like, there was a brief
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phase, I think I was part of that, I don’t know if that’s still what they’re doing now, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was a brief phase, like in like the mid 2010s, where like every headphone brand had some kind of like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quote, modular design like that, where they would sell you like, You can get any of these five different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco translucent plastic things you can clip on your headphones and make them unique.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s one version of modularity. I don’t think that version of it ever went anywhere and for good reason.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not modularity, that’s just like skinning. That’s like the face plates that you get for your Xbox. So the thing’s just gonna, the little clips
⏹️ ▶️ John are gonna break off and it’s just gonna fall off. Like that’s, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and all you’re doing is adding weight where there didn’t need to be and adding bulk.
⏹️ ▶️ John And another creaky part.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. So that’s that kind of thing nobody’s really asking for, but serviceability and modularity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in wearable parts, that’s the important thing. Like the important thing with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Fender headphones, things like replaceable batteries. Because when you’re looking at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modern headphones, like back when headphones were wired, there were two ways your headphones would die.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One was the ear pads would rot out and you could replace those for 20, 30 bucks. The other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was the cord would wear out where it meets the headphones, usually, like that joint,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or maybe at the plug side, but usually at the part where it meets the headphones. And for most people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most people couldn’t service those tiny little wires and you know, so that usually, you would just replace them at that point.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the good headphones would have connectors on both ends so you just buy a new wire.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, see that came later. That was not common until relatively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recently in the world of headphones. Like the last 15 years maybe, that’s when that really became common. With wireless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headphones, like once everything moved to Bluetooth, you still have the ear pads being possible to wear out over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time, but usually what wears out far before that is the battery. As we know, with any rechargeable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery-based device, those batteries have a certain lifetime. Beyond that, they don’t really hold a useful charge.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you’re using a lithium-ion battery in some kind of device regularly every day or a few times a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week, you’re gonna get a few years out of it maybe. And once you go past
⏹️ ▶️ Marco four or five years, you’re probably not gonna have a lot of battery life left. And headphones, like the rest of headphones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the actual speaker drivers, the enclosures, like most of that stuff can last way longer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than four or five years if it’s not abused. But to have then the battery, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the most easily worn out component, to have that be replaceable is great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for extending the lifetime of headphones in the same way that, what John was just saying, in the same way that like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when wired headphones switched to having socketed on both ends cables, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made those headphones last for longer. Like the headphones, most wired headphones I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I use in regular use, they’re at least 10 years old. Some of them are even older
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than that, but I’ve had to replace the ear pads a couple times and that’s it. And so like when you have,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see also monitors, when you have really good components that don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go out of date, just kind of wear out, it’s really good for longevity if you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco replace easily the parts that will wear out. So this is all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. It was, this is a long way of saying this is all good in the world of headphones to have replaceable batteries in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wireless headphones. Cause that is by far the earliest part to wear out and the headphone can be useful a lot longer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than that if you can replace with batteries.
⏹️ ▶️ John One of the things they’re showing on this III website is that, I’m thinking of another thing that breaks on headphones
⏹️ ▶️ John is like that the plug for wired headphones, the wire that goes into
⏹️ ▶️ John your headphones connects to one of the ear cups. if you’re lucky and don’t have those ones that connect to both.
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, if it kicks on one of your ear cups, that means there’s a wire that somehow that takes the sound signal from that
⏹️ ▶️ John one ear cup over to the other ear cup. Usually that wire goes across the headband. And sometimes that
⏹️ ▶️ John wire that brings the signal from one ear to the other can be small and can wear out, especially since the headband’s
⏹️ ▶️ John stretchy. And this video they’re showing on their website for their TMA2DJ $200 headphones shows that their entire, the first
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re showing how tough their band is because they’re twisting it around and stuff. and their band has little like,
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever the 3.5 millimeter headphone jacks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, I think they’re 2.5s up there, but yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the band is replaceable, and if that breaks or that wire wears out or something else happens
⏹️ ▶️ John to it, you chuck that away, you buy another band, and you plug the band into each of your ear cups and problem
⏹️ ▶️ John solve. It is very modular.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s hardcore. And yeah, that’s a great situation there. Also, the other ways
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that headphones most often break is they can crack right in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the middle of the headband. If it’s like a reasonably inflexible plastic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headband, which most of the big over-ear noise-canceling ones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have a mostly plastic construction, which is, again, largely good for weight, which is important for comfort,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but over time, the stressing of that plastic where it bends on the headband, that can sometimes crack.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they’ve gotten better over time. Most of the models out there today have evolved their designs enough that that doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen that often, but it used to happen a lot more.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then Tyler H. writes, I tried the Fender mix at CES. They’re not heavy and sound decent.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the draw should be the high-res audio, but customization is neat and battery replacement is fine. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also used the Fairphone modular earbuds and I hated them. They sound bad and are bigger, so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why would you want to keep them around any longer? At least the mix looks fine and sounds good.
High-res audio is bull—
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can I just go on a very very very quick rant about high-res audio just I know I’m timing you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey very very quick
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, it sounds warmer here Bluetooth audio is not very good in its regular Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forms to make it better You don’t need like 24-bit 96
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kilohertz. You don’t need that you just need less compression So people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who who are being sold like high-res audio like it sounds better because that’s 24 192 or whatever No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn’t. It sounds better because they’re using less compression and they can use less compression on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 1644 and it’ll sound just as good and you won’t notice any difference whatsoever, especially in your not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco incredibly advanced Bluetooth headphone drivers But anyway, that’s that’s it. I’m good
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That was very fast. I’m proud of you.
Mac window-management utilities
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then way back in episode 672 in Ask ATP,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we were asked about the difference between minimizing, hiding, zooming, et cetera. And Ben writes, here are two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey incredible free open source Mac OS apps that fix the where did my window go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey problem in my life. The first is Flash Space, a blazingly fast spaces replacement
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to find workspaces which instantly via hotkeys or gestures and use floating apps across workspaces.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Additionally, secondly, Alt Tab, a window style window switcher done right. Thumbnails that show the individual
⏹️ ▶️ Casey window content, separate keyboard shortcuts to show all windows versus current desktop versus current app, quick
⏹️ ▶️ Casey access to quick close, minimize full screen, extremely customizable, and a drop-in replacement for the Mac app switcher.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And these two apps pair absurdly well. Flash space nails content switching, the right set of apps,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then all tab nails window switching inside that context. If you’ve ever lost windows across spaces or desktops,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this combo is a lifesaver.
⏹️ ▶️ John And these apps are kind of right in the sweet spot of things that are possible without
⏹️ ▶️ John too much effort on the Mac. Uh, there, as far as I know, they’re all using
⏹️ ▶️ John the existing, uh, very old, uh, very creaky, very difficult to use accessibility
⏹️ ▶️ John APIs. Um, and I believe they also both need like screen recording permission and
⏹️ ▶️ John you got to jump through all these hoops. They can’t be sold in the Mac app store. Cause nothing that uses the accessibility APIs can be sold in Mac app store. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John they take advantage of everything. You don’t need to, you know, it’s not system integrity protection. It’s not a hacksy or anything like that. It is just like
⏹️ ▶️ John use the accessibility APIs, use screen recording permission, because once you have screen recording permission, now you can get little images of
⏹️ ▶️ John the windows so you can make little thumbnails out of them. And with accessibility, you can know where all the windows are. You can make them appear
⏹️ ▶️ John and disappear, bring them to the front, bring them to the back. You can do all sorts of stuff like that. You can’t do
⏹️ ▶️ John very easily the kind of things that like stage manager does, but that’s not what this does. Flash space and alt tab
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially like say, okay, so you’re telling me I can to make Windows appear and disappear. And I know
⏹️ ▶️ John where they all are, I know what they will look like, I know what apps they belong to, fine. I’m gonna build on that. And it
⏹️ ▶️ John is very straightforward. It’s like you build up sets of app just like spaces, but instead of, you know, with actual
⏹️ ▶️ John spaces, you’re like swiping from side to side. And I don’t know how it’s implemented on the covers, but this is, think of it this way. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like simulating spaces, but just controlling what is visible at any given time on
⏹️ ▶️ John your one and only space as far as Mac OS is concerned. And they do it without animations. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems really fast because, hey, hide these seven windows, show these four windows, right? And having a floating
⏹️ ▶️ John thing of like, oh, okay, these windows are seen in all of the Flash spaces, but this
⏹️ ▶️ John context is just these windows, and this context is just these windows, and it is very configurable, and you could set up these little contexts, and
⏹️ ▶️ John if that’s the way you wanna work, and you’re sick of waiting for spaces to switch around, this is the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing for you. And Alt-Tab, same deal, if you wanna be able to sort of, Alt-Tab, Command-Tab,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco anyway, through- They’ve infected
⏹️ ▶️ John you with all this Windows talk. I know, that’s what they call their app. If you wanna do Windows style alt-tabbing instead
⏹️ ▶️ John of the Mac style, where you have like where it’s a hierarchy where you do command tab through apps and then command like
⏹️ ▶️ John the windows within the app, this will bring you through all your windows and it’ll show you thumbnails so you can identify
⏹️ ▶️ John them. And like, that’s the way you wanna work. You should check out these apps. They’re pretty well implemented.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is not the way I work with Windows at all, but I’m glad these apps exist for people who want them. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if you didn’t know they exist, now you do, Check them out.
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New AirTags
⏹️ ▶️ Casey New AirTags were announced. We have been waiting for this for months, some perhaps more than others,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but Apple’s announced new AirTags. They have a few very cool features. There’s enhanced
⏹️ ▶️ Casey range and findability with a second generation ultra-wideband chip. Precision finding works from up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to 50% further away than in the previous generation. An upgraded Bluetooth chip expands the range at which items can be located
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thus. For the first time, Users can use precision finding on Apple Watch Series 9 or later, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later to find their AirTag, and the new AirTag is 50% louder than the previous
⏹️ ▶️ Casey generation. Also, apparently the chime has changed from F to G, and if I knew more about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey music I would probably be more impressed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there’s a bit—if you follow that link, there’s a video of someone playing, like, the old AirTag versus the new one.
⏹️ ▶️ John It sounds different. I mean, I don’t know if they did that on purpose, or it’s just a side effect of the louder chimey thing that they
⏹️ ▶️ John used to be louder, and it just happened to be a different note, but you will be able to tell the difference between the old ones and the new
⏹️ ▶️ John one as, as they chirp. I was waiting for these because we have a couple of air tags that are just like, for
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever reason, just don’t hold the charge anymore. Like, you know, I have a ton of these little cheap, the little cheap
⏹️ ▶️ John coin batteries and like this one air tag, like every time we put a coin battery in there, it just eats it. So like, okay, that one
⏹️ ▶️ John needs to be retired. Let’s buy a replacement. And I said, no, don’t new air tags are coming out. That was like six months ago. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I had to tell my wife, finally, new
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey air tags are
⏹️ ▶️ John out and we can finally buy them. Uh, and we will. As much as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I appreciate the utility of AirTags, it’s one of those products, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the instant it was released, there were obvious problems with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And after now, what, five years is it? They’ve solved none of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like the most obvious problem with it was there was absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no reasonable way to attach it to anything or attach anything to it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the only way that people use air tags is either showing them loose somewhere where they bounce around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and fall out or putting them in some kind of accessory. But the air tags were not designed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to accommodate accessories at all. It’s a naked robotic air tag, Marco. But even the most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco simple thing, like a loop in it, something, like some kind of accommodation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to recognize, people are going to be using these in lots of different physical situations. let’s design it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it accommodates anything. Because instead what happens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, suppose you want to put it somewhere, something on something small, like on a key chain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or in a wallet or something. What has to happen is, you have to have something that wraps all the way around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of its side just to keep it secure. Which makes that whole thing bigger and bulkier than it otherwise would need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be. So it’s a product that like, the physical design of it has obvious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems. Everyone saw this the incident was released see also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the vision pro and the air pods max Similar pattern like you Apple puts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these out there There’s obvious problems from day one and then years later. They release
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a new version that addresses none of them Got I got to give Apple credit like when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they half-ass a product they Gloriously half-ass it Bravo
⏹️ ▶️ John They probably make more money from the accessories that they sell for air tags and they do run the air tags
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t the accessories are definitely obviously very high profit for them. I don’t know how many they sell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean other I see other people selling a bunch of air tag accessories
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, there’s a million cheap things you can buy on You know everywhere for them and speaking of that we have
⏹️ ▶️ John we have an air tag on one set of our keys And we bought whatever they like, you know $2 a little
⏹️ ▶️ John Air tag holder that lets you put it on a keychain from like Amazon or something many years
⏹️ ▶️ John ago ago, and it’s made of like that rubberized plastic that like gets like sticky and tacky
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco old. Yeah, you gotta throw that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John away. You know that right? Yeah, you got really toxic. Yeah, that’s gross. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco service announcement. Everybody once plastic starts emitting oil, you need to throw that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco away. That’s not good for
⏹️ ▶️ John you. The problem with the Apple ones is they’re they’re they’re bigger and bulkier than like the cheap third party ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple ones are very expensive and also very large. Anyway, I’ll be getting new air tags. They should have a whole you can find
⏹️ ▶️ John a million YouTube videos of people drilling holes in and maybe seeing all those like that. You know, there’s DIY ways to do this
⏹️ ▶️ John that I don’t recommend this, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it’s the thing you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, so the other thing is like, I guess we will learn once we disassemble them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So obviously, like as soon as AirTags were launched, the other major problem with them is stuff like stalking.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And Apple has done various mitigations over the years to try to make that less of a problem. It’s still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a problem, but this entire product category enables a level
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of stalking and surveillance that is, you know, very problematic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a lot of cases. And so for this product to exist at all, I think Apple does a pretty good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco job with mitigating that if it’s going to exist at all. That being said, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back when it was released, we actually had conversations on the show about how, like, you know, maybe this is too much trouble to even be worth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple having this product. But I guess they decided otherwise. But anyway, some of the rumors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this update before it came out where that maybe they might be making things like disabling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the speaker more difficult. I guess we’ll find out like as people get these and start, you know, taking them apart
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff, I guess we’ll find out if that actually came to pass. That would actually be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a, a reasonable upgrade to have made. Uh, I just don’t know like the, the physical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco realities of how possible that is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And I don’t think it’s possible if someone has physical access to your, to your air tag. I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, you can just put hot glue on the thing that moves to make the noise. Like there’s no stopping someone
⏹️ ▶️ John from, it’s not like, you know, like, oh, is it possible to make it turn the camera on without making the green
⏹️ ▶️ John LED come on on your like MacBook Pro screen? Like that is a tractable problem that you can solve in various ways.
⏹️ ▶️ John But like, I’ll give you physical access to this AirTag, but I’ll make it so you can’t disable
⏹️ ▶️ John the speaker. You can always disable the speaker. Like it’ll be very, very difficult to make it so
⏹️ ▶️ John someone with physical access couldn’t disable the speaker. But yeah, you know, Apple does what it can and they’re always
⏹️ ▶️ John refining the software approach to do. And the thing is, it’s a security convenience thing because,
⏹️ ▶️ John um, you know, we’re using the within our family and we’re not stalking each other, but we are constantly
⏹️ ▶️ John running into annoyances that are caused by the stalker mitigation. Right. So
⏹️ ▶️ John like, like in any, anything like this, trying to deal with the worst possible actors makes
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody’s life more difficult because now you’re getting like an unknown air tag moving with you and blah, blah, blah. It’s like, no, it’s just me.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just the, you know, you don’t know why that stuff is there, but once again, the bad actors in
⏹️ ▶️ John the world make things worse for everybody.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey With regard to the environment, 85% recycled plastic in the enclosure, 100% recycled rare earth
⏹️ ▶️ Casey elements and all magnets, 100% recycled gold platey and all Apple-designed printed circuit boards. The paper
⏹️ ▶️ Casey packaging is 100% fiber-based and can be easily recycled, and it’s maintaining the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey form factor as the original with this new AirTag being compatible with all existing AirTag
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John accessories.
⏹️ ▶️ John They spun it as a positive marker. You know why we didn’t change it? The environment. That’s why it’s not because we don’t care.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well, and to be clear, like in the bed they created for themselves, you can make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an argument that like we shouldn’t break accessory compatibility. Like that is a reasonable argument to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make and that and that does have, you know, a cost to it if you wanted to break it. But God,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think of how like how much better the AirTag would be if it changed its shape to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit more to be at all accommodating of the physical reality of how this product was ever actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used. Remember when the very, very first iPad, like the iPad one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did not have any accommodations for a case. And so the case that went around it was this huge,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thick rubber thing that had to go around all sides of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco four sides of it just to hold onto it. And it added a huge amount of bulk. And the amazing innovation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the iPad two, in addition to shutting a bunch of the thickness and weight and everything, the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two added magnets to the side and it had that wonderful smart cover that gave
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you protection where most people needed it, the screen, without having to wrap around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the entire iPad and bulk the whole thing up if you didn’t want it to. So that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was a great example of Apple recognizing the physical realities of how these products need to be used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the real world and designing something to accommodate that in the product itself to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the cases and accessories better. See also the Apple Pencil when it went from the weird, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco excited to see you method, to the magnets on the side of the iPad that hold it on there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not perfect, but it was so much more accommodating of the realities of using the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product that like, okay, we have a pencil, we need to like store it somewhere where we’re not using it. Instead of having to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, have it like be loose in your bag or wherever, let’s have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco few magnets in the iPad that are designed to accommodate the reality of this and have the pencil stick to it when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people use it. You know, you can say, well, the iPad should just be nothing. It should be the naked robotic iPad and have no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accommodations because what about the people who don’t have a pencil? those are wasted magnets and That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an argument you can make I think it’s a bad argument For a very very common use case of the product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like if if it’s something that like almost no one needs That’s a different story But if it’s a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco common use case The product should be designed with that in mind and to accommodate that as best as it can and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why every iPad since the iPad 2 has had magnets to support cases because it makes them a lot better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The AirTag is the opposite of that. The AirTag has no accommodation whatsoever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for any of the ways it is physically used. See also the AirPods Max.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would say the magnets inside the iPad are part of their Naked Robotic Core thing because the
⏹️ ▶️ John idea is we don’t put anything on it, but we provide places for you to put stuff on it. Because the magnets don’t stick out and they’re in
⏹️ ▶️ John space that is otherwise unused inside it, so it’s fine. And by the way, I feel like they could have, if they really
⏹️ ▶️ John wanted to, probably at additional cost to the product, put a hole in these suckers while still maintaining compatibility
⏹️ ▶️ John with all existing accessories. Cause all people want is just a little hole that you can put a little ring through. You know what I mean? I know it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John difficult cause it would be really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have it in the AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ John case. Yeah. You know, there’s the coin batteries in there. It’s really close to the edge. You need some like very strong,
⏹️ ▶️ John like metal ring thing around it. So that little piece doesn’t break there and blah, blah, blah. But anyway, they chose not to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I feel like the next time, if they keep selling this product and they eventually revise it further,
⏹️ ▶️ John the next time they’ll, the only way that they can move forward is they have to move to a smaller size coin battery.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that gives them a whole bunch of options. Cause once you are, first of all, it would be smaller period. And once you’re moving to a smaller
⏹️ ▶️ John size with a smaller battery, you have more options for attachability instead of trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to put one very small hole with reinforcement around it on the very, very edge of the existing form factor.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, price and availability. It is available today for the same price as the AirTag 1.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey $29 for a single AirTag and $99 for a four pack. You can also get free personalized
⏹️ ▶️ Casey engraving at apple.com in the Apple Store app.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you should, because you should engrave little emojis on them so you can call them by their names.
No new MBPs yet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we are recording on the evening of January 28th, and I’m excited to tell you that we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can’t talk about new MacBook Pros because they haven’t been announced yet, at least not as we sit here today.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But apparently there’s an event going on for creators yesterday, today, and tomorrow in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Los Angeles. Apple has invited select creators for an Apple experience
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Los Angeles, scheduled for January 27th through 29. Creator Peter Mara
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shared an image of this, which we will put in the show notes. Save the date. Hi, Peter, save the date
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for an Apple experience in such and such time in Los Angeles. Confirm availability is a link and then please confirm
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or decline by January 9th.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey That’s all we have. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m assuming they’re all there doing creator things. I mean, everyone thought like this would be a good time to announce
⏹️ ▶️ John the new M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros, but it seems like they’re probably just showing them Creator
⏹️ ▶️ John Studio. I think the embargo just lifted for that because I saw Jason Snell’s review of Creator Studio. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I guess we’ll find out. I mean, maybe they could release the MacBook Pros on the 29th and maybe the people who are at this event are already using
⏹️ ▶️ John them right now, we don’t know. But yeah, we do feel like sometime
⏹️ ▶️ John early in this year, we will see the M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros, just not today as we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that definitely seems like the answer here. You know, Apple has a lot of smaller events
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where they try to promote something to some audience and it’s not, they aren’t always hardware releases. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially when they’re doing like creator events, it’s usually to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco try to, you know, it’s, it’s usually stuff that’s less interesting to a podcast like ours. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, we’re going to try to get a bunch of like YouTube creators to use our new version of final cut or whatever. Like it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s that type of thing. So it would totally make sense now for this one, especially given the timing of the embargoes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dropping today for the new creative suite or whatever it’s called. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John creator, right? It’s totally separate from Adobe creative suite. It’s a studio.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s definitely, you know, ACS it’s different. It’s a different ACS. It’s, It’s not Adobe Creative Suite,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s Apple Creator Studio. Totally, totally different. It’s an academic computing system. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so yeah, it makes sense that this was not related. And look, we might be getting M5
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Pros tomorrow, for all we know, but it’s not related to this event.
TCL and Sony TVs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, Marco, you and I can, I think, buzz off for probably 30 to 45 minutes, because,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, you have some stuff to tell us about. We promised this last week, but, uh, Sony’s TV business is being taken
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over by TCL. I’m sorry for your loss, John.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All these years, I-I figured it was pronounced Tickle. What a waste. I mean, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can pronounce it that way, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, I will set you up, John, by reading from Jess Weatherbed at The Verge. Uh, Sony has announced plans
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to spin off its TV hardware business, shifting it to a new joint venture with TCL. The two companies have signed a non-binding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey agreement for Sony’s home entertainment business, with TCL set to hold a 51% stake in the new venture, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sony holding 49%. Sony and TCL are aiming to finalize binding agreements by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the end of March and start operating the new joint company in April 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and other partnership
⏹️ ▶️ Casey conditions. The new company is expected to retain Sony and Bravia branding for its future products and will handle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey global operations from product development and design to manufacturing sales and logistics for TVs and home audio equipment.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sony says that the partnership will leverage Sony’s picture and audio tech, brand value, supply chain management, and other operational expertise.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This will combine with TCL’s own display technology, vertical supply chain strength, global market presence, and end-to-end
⏹️ ▶️ John So based on the headline, everyone’s
⏹️ ▶️ John oh no, if you love Sony TVs, now they’re dead. TCL is taking them over and they’ll just be TCL
⏹️ ▶️ John TVs. But if you read, you know, two paragraphs into any of the announcements, you realize, oh, Sony’s still going to
⏹️ ▶️ John be selling Sony TVs. It’s just that they’re having this partnership with TCL. And yes, TCL is 51% and they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John 49% so TCL will technically be in control but they’ll still be Sony products with
⏹️ ▶️ John Sony’s all exists existing Sony proprietary stuff going into them
⏹️ ▶️ John and the reasons behind why they might want this partnership are complex and have to do with manufacturing
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff and we’ll get to some of TCL’s announcements from CES in a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John but I’m actually not too broken up about this it just just seems like a sort of a
⏹️ ▶️ John business reality for Sony and it’s probably a good deal for them because TCL has lots
⏹️ ▶️ John of manufacturing capacity and some interesting new technology they’re coming out with and that’s what Sony needs
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently. I mean, Sony has been contracting out the assembly of its televisions
⏹️ ▶️ John for a long time now. They’re just changing the arrangement. I believe Sony’s also part of this deal,
⏹️ ▶️ John like Sony’s receivers and stuff are gonna be part of this as well. And the final thing I’ll say before I
⏹️ ▶️ John do an aside on TV tech is that this is like a memorandum
⏹️ ▶️ John of understanding or whatever, like many things can go wrong that will make this deal not
⏹️ ▶️ John happen sometime between now and 2027 when they’re supposed to start doing
⏹️ ▶️ John business. So maybe you won’t get regulatory approval. Maybe the deal will fall apart. So stay tuned.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is not a thing that has happened yet but this is just a thing that these two companies say that they
⏹️ ▶️ John want to happen. Um, and I think this is a good time to take a
⏹️ ▶️ John couple of steps back and look at where we are in the television technology
⏹️ ▶️ John market to see how this deal might fit into it. Um, and this is
⏹️ ▶️ John from the perspective of like, I don’t know, technology enthusiasts, right? There’s the TV market
⏹️ ▶️ John is huge. Most people buy inexpensive televisions and like the, the
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of enthusiast level of the market does trickle down to that lower end of the market, but where the action is happening is
⏹️ ▶️ John on the high end. Right? So that’s what I’m interested in. That’s what most TV nerds are interested in. And on the
⏹️ ▶️ John high end, for the past many, many years, the market has been
⏹️ ▶️ John focused on competition between two different ways of
⏹️ ▶️ John making good TVs, divided by whether or not you can turn
⏹️ ▶️ John on individual pixels. Every time someone talks to me about TVs online, I always say that I
⏹️ ▶️ John demand per pixel lighting control. That is obviously the technically
⏹️ ▶️ John best way to form a nice picture, which is that you can turn individual pixels on and off. And you’re thinking, doesn’t every
⏹️ ▶️ John TV do that? Doesn’t every monitor do that? What are you even talking about? Well, lots of televisions
⏹️ ▶️ John and lots of monitors to make a single pixel turn on have to turn on a
⏹️ ▶️ John huge amount of light behind that single pixel. Studio display turns on the
⏹️ ▶️ John entire backlight. if you just want one pixel to be turned on. All the other pixels are trying
⏹️ ▶️ John mightily to prevent the backlight from going through, but there is just one giant backlight.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you make a black screen with a white pixel in the middle of it, the entire backlight
⏹️ ▶️ John is trying to not let you see any of it, except for that one white pixel. That’s very difficult.
⏹️ ▶️ John And various technologies for stopping you from seeing that entire backlight have been
⏹️ ▶️ John tried over the years, but they can’t stop all the light, which is why if you take the studio display,
⏹️ ▶️ John put it in a pitch black room and make the studio display show a black screen, it will light up your room
⏹️ ▶️ John because that’s just the way it is. And then as you go down the spectrum, okay, let’s break up the backlight into a bunch of
⏹️ ▶️ John little pieces. And then we’ll just turn on the little pieces that are behind things. So if we have a single white
⏹️ ▶️ John pixel in the middle of a black screen, we’ll just turn on like a one inch by one inch square behind that pixel.
⏹️ ▶️ John But then you get a little glowing region around the one inch pixel, People refer to that as bloom. It’s very
⏹️ ▶️ John difficult again to keep the light. The other parts of the monitor don’t have any backlight turned on, so they’re totally black, but the little pixel
⏹️ ▶️ John has a little bit of bloom around it. So you try to turn the backlight down a little bit and combat bloom. And anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s one whole section of televisions, which is we cannot turn on individual pixels and make just
⏹️ ▶️ John the pixel emit its own light. We always have to turn on some portion of the backlight behind the pixels
⏹️ ▶️ John that we want to show up. And those regions have been getting smaller and smaller. It used to be like, divided up into
⏹️ ▶️ John like five regions, 16. Now there are thousands of backlight regions on like modern displays,
⏹️ ▶️ John not the studio display. But you know, Apple’s Pro Display XDR has what, 570
⏹️ ▶️ John something backlight regions. And that’s like a six year old thing. The monitors we were talking about from
⏹️ ▶️ John CES are like 2000 zones, but of course, how many pixels are there on a 5K display? Way more than 2000.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s one side of things. And the other side of things are the technologies that allow
⏹️ ▶️ John per pixel lighting control. and the one that is most commonly used in television these days is OLED.
⏹️ ▶️ John But just like on your phone or on the new iPad Pro, OLED you can turn on a single pixel because the pixels
⏹️ ▶️ John themselves emit their own light. There is no light behind them that shining through them and big chunky
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. The individual pixels make their own light. Um, and
⏹️ ▶️ John there are trade-offs between them because OLEDs can’t get as bright as those other ones because when you’ve got the big light behind everything, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John crank up the light real high. More recently, The
⏹️ ▶️ John battle between these things, these two different kinds of technologies has advanced to the point where it’s not just
⏹️ ▶️ John brightness anymore. It used to be, okay, well, OLED has the best picture, but LCD TVs with
⏹️ ▶️ John backlights can get brighter. And the competition is now
⏹️ ▶️ John in something called color volume, which is like, okay, how many colors can you show? And it used to be
⏹️ ▶️ John that the fanciest OLEDs were winning that as well, because the QD OLED, the quantum dot OLED that I’ve got in my TV,
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s in a lot of monitors now, had R, G, and B subpixels,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you could turn the R, the G, and the B on to maximum brightness, and you could get a really pure white, or
⏹️ ▶️ John you could turn on the R to maximum brightness, get a really pure red, so on and so forth. Whereas those other monitors that had a backlight,
⏹️ ▶️ John they had a backlight that they would shine through, and then they had to have something that would turn the backlight into other colors,
⏹️ ▶️ John some kind of color filter or quantum dots or whatever. And on the OLED side, there were
⏹️ ▶️ John some OLEDs that had to add a white subpixel to increase the brightness, And of course that would wash out all their colors.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, QD OLED was the champion in color volume as well because it didn’t have a white sub-pixel, you had per-pixel
⏹️ ▶️ John lighting control. You could turn up the red pixel really, really high. It wasn’t as bright as the best LCDs,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that was sort of like the enthusiast thing. All the Sony A95L, Sony A95K, all the
⏹️ ▶️ John Sony monitors and the Samsung monitors with Samsung’s QD OLED panels, they were the champions
⏹️ ▶️ John because they had per-pixel lighting control, they could get really bright and they had huge color volume. This is sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of an Empire Strikes Back situation where the televisions with the backlights are saying, okay, we’ve got a new
⏹️ ▶️ John idea. It’s not really that new, Sony did it ages ago. But anyway, in the past few years, it’s been like, instead of
⏹️ ▶️ John having a backlight that is just a white or blue light, most of them are blue because you can change the blue until the other
⏹️ ▶️ John colors because it’s the shortest wavelength. How about we have a backlight broken up into little regions,
⏹️ ▶️ John but we’ll make the backlight itself, like the little lights that are behind there, the little backlight
⏹️ ▶️ John regions, they will be RGB. This is like a gamer’s dream. RGB
⏹️ ▶️ John lights, they’re behind my TV, right? And it’s really complicated to do that, because if you think
⏹️ ▶️ John about it, I’m gonna show you an image and you have 2,000 backlight regions, and you know what
⏹️ ▶️ John color every pixel’s supposed to be, but for like the one inch by one inch region, or the one centimeter
⏹️ ▶️ John by one centimeter region that’s behind this particular set of pixels in this like drawing of a landscape or something,
⏹️ ▶️ John what color should that RGB backlight be? because you just got one R, one G and one B for that little tiny region
⏹️ ▶️ John of the backlight. What color should we make it? Well, if most of the pixels are blue, you can just make the backlight
⏹️ ▶️ John blue and then you get super duper blue and it’ll be really bright with lots of color volume because you’ve got a blue backlight going through a blue
⏹️ ▶️ John filter, it’ll be great. But what if there’s like tons of different colors in that little one centimeter region on your screen?
⏹️ ▶️ John What color should the backlight be? Now, do you average them? Like, anyway, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John why it’s computationally tricky to do that. But what it gives these screens is more color volume
⏹️ ▶️ John Instead of just having a blue backlight with color filters that are imperfect, now we can crank up the
⏹️ ▶️ John color volume with these RGB backlights. In fact, some of them don’t just have RGB behind there.
⏹️ ▶️ John They have RGB backlights and some of them add a yellow, RGBY or a cyan,
⏹️ ▶️ John RGBC backlight regions. Very complicated. The
⏹️ ▶️ John war of words at CES was very hot because some people were like, well, if you do that, like then you have your RGB
⏹️ ▶️ John backlight region and you decided this backlight’s gonna be orange, but now you have some pixels that didn’t need any orange and then we’re getting
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit of orange bleed through so your colors are all muddied because you’re not able to control the colors of the individual
⏹️ ▶️ John pixels, you’re just putting this back. Anyway, it’s very complicated. Sony is out
⏹️ ▶️ John there with its own sort of not
⏹️ ▶️ John particularly consistent idea of how to make a good TV because
⏹️ ▶️ John for a while they were selling essentially the best TV in the world for years and years, but at a certain point somebody decided
⏹️ ▶️ John this is not gonna be our flagship TV. even though everyone keeps saying it’s the best TV in the world, how about we make
⏹️ ▶️ John this other TV our best TV? Because we think it’s better to have brighter TVs that are less expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John than this less bright TV with the OLED stuff. And so they would say, yeah, we still sell those OLEDs and they’re still pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John good. It’s just the reason the A95L, which was their flagship, became the BRAVIA82, which is not their flagship,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though it’s still their best TV, because they wanted to sell LCD TVs with
⏹️ ▶️ John backlight regions on them because they could get brighter and they were cheaper. And this is complicated by the fact
⏹️ ▶️ John that the only company in the world, I believe that makes QD OLED screens is Samsung.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the other big company in the world that makes OLED screens that are not QD OLED is LG. And now they
⏹️ ▶️ John make the tandem OLED screens that don’t have white sub pixels in them. And there’s probably other
⏹️ ▶️ John OLED makers. I’m not sure if they make them at TV size, but the point is, it’s not like Silicon Chips, where it’s just TSMC and like a few other
⏹️ ▶️ John companies or whatever, but it’s the companies that can make TV size panels
⏹️ ▶️ John in any kind of volume are small in number. Everybody else uses those panels Sony uses in Panasonic
⏹️ ▶️ John uses and obviously sampling uses an LG uses and TCL is one of those companies TCL makes panels
⏹️ ▶️ John they make LCD panels and they’re building factories to make OLED ones. So Sony partnering with them
⏹️ ▶️ John makes some sense because like look we weren’t making our own panels anyway, and We’re not we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not quite sure how to go forward in this business because just being at the high end is not giving us high Enough volume so we
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t really have a low-end story. So TCL you have huge amounts of manufacturing you take stuff over for
⏹️ ▶️ John us So that’s that’s kind of the shape of things here. It’s still per pixel lighting versus not per pixel
⏹️ ▶️ John lighting. It’s still Companies taking panels made by other companies who are probably their competitors and
⏹️ ▶️ John packaging them into TVs with their own processing and everything And you know, so he’s been doing well there Sony
⏹️ ▶️ John has good processing but still in areas like Wide wide is only televisions
⏹️ ▶️ John still only have like two HDMI 2.1 ports. Whereas LG and Samsung have four because Sony
⏹️ ▶️ John outsources the chip for handling that, and the company that makes the chip hasn’t made one that can do four, and it’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a weird and complicated landscape, and I don’t really blame Sony for doing what
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s done, which is we need a manufacturing partner who can make huge amounts of TVs cheaply, and who looks like
⏹️ ▶️ John they have a good technological roadmap. And speaking of roadmap, it’s time to wake Casey up and
⏹️ ▶️ John talk about this next one. What? Hi. All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. So TCL has super quantum dot technology that is landed or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been announced, I guess, at CES. There was a video that we will put in the show notes about this. Then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from TCL’s official Reddit of all places, TCL super quantum dot technology or SQD
⏹️ ▶️ Casey represents a major advance in color performance, delivering up to a 33% increase in color gamut and a 69%
⏹️ ▶️ Casey improvement in quantum dot accuracy compared to previous generation TVs. RGB mini LED systems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can also produce a vibrant color and cover a lot of BT2020, which is a color space, I think? Is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that right? It’s like P3, but bigger. Right. But because they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use separate red, green, and blue LEDs, the blending of light can sometimes cause color crosstalk or color bleed,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where colors overlap and reduce accuracy and fine details. We wanted to create a TV that could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get this level of color without compromise, and TCL claims that their X11LTD covers 100% of BT.2020 color.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey SuperQuantumDot technology avoids this issue entirely. By generating color through quantum dot conversion rather than colored
⏹️ ▶️ Casey LEDs, SQD delivers cleaner color separation and higher color precision even in complex or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey high-contrast scenes, using a single-chip pure white light source and SQD using more refined
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 5nm filter particles down from the standard 60nm to ensure where each pixel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey renders color with extreme precision and no blooming or interference. So this
⏹️ ▶️ John is the next salvo here, and this was an announcement from TCL. They’re saying, okay, we don’t have per pixel lighting
⏹️ ▶️ John control, but everyone else is putting colored backlights behind their pixels. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John bad, and let me tell you why it’s bad. And we don’t have to do that. We’re gonna stick with a single color backlight,
⏹️ ▶️ John like we always had broken up into little regions, but now our quantum dots are better. Quantum dots are the things that take like the
⏹️ ▶️ John blue backlight and change it into a red, green, and blue. their quantum dots
⏹️ ▶️ John do that conversion better, allowing more of the color through, which is how I think this is the first I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John ever seen of a quantum dot LCD TV that can do 100% of BT 2020. Like historically, I think the only
⏹️ ▶️ John TVs that have come close to that are the QD OLEDs because they
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have the white sub-pixel and now maybe the tandem OLEDs from LG that don’t have the white sub-pixel diluting your colors.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re trying to go for color volume. Can we cover this entire volume of this color space? the color
⏹️ ▶️ John spaces are always shown as like a 3D thing because you’ve got R, G and B in the three different dimensions. So it’s like this
⏹️ ▶️ John 3D shape filled with color and BT220 is very big and
⏹️ ▶️ John inside that is P3 and way inside that is sRGB or now Rec707 or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever the plain standard FTV you want. Anyway, they’re saying we got
⏹️ ▶️ John these super quantum dots. They’re better than your quantum dots. We don’t have the weird colored backlight thing. We don’t have to do the
⏹️ ▶️ John processing to figure out what the hell color to make our RGB backlights. We don’t have the color bleed through. We still
⏹️ ▶️ John do have the blooming thing, because we don’t have perpexel lighting control, but whatever. And part of the reason
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a big announcement is that TCL is, I think, the only company in the industry that has
⏹️ ▶️ John decided to do this. Not because it’s like, I don’t think it’s like exclusive tech to them, but to do this, they
⏹️ ▶️ John basically had to either redo their existing factory or build a new one. I’m not sure which they did, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to change your entire LCD manufacturing line to do this. And everyone else is like, our current
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff is fine. We don’t want to bother with that, but TCL decided to make the investment. And now I believe they
⏹️ ▶️ John are the only company for now that is going to be putting out these super quantum dot things. And these are the TVs most people
⏹️ ▶️ John buy. Most people don’t buy OLEDs. Most people don’t buy, certainly don’t buy QD OLEDs. Those TVs are very expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ John People buy plain old LCD TVs because they’re cheaper to manufacture and cheaper to buy.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now this X11L TV with 100% of BT.2020, not a cheap TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you know, in theory, as volumes increase, this technology will trickle down. it is,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, in theory, it is as cheap to manufacture as LCD screens that they’re putting on RAM or OLED, tiny
⏹️ ▶️ John OLED screens they’re putting around. Like it’s inexpensive to use this technology. And so Sony is partnering with them.
⏹️ ▶️ John In theory, they could have first dibs access to an, a.
⏹️ ▶️ John LCD non per pixel lighting control technology that nobody else has. Meanwhile, just
⏹️ ▶️ John the year or two before this, Sony was like, we’ve got our own RGB backlight. Look at our backlight. We have all the different colors
⏹️ ▶️ John here and we have this cool processing to figure out what color to make all the little backlight regions. And they, they did the thing I think I talked about in the
⏹️ ▶️ John show where they stripped off the layers of the TV so you would just see the backlight and say, look,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you can kind of see what the
⏹️ ▶️ John picture is even just from the backlight. It’s like, that’s great, Sony. I just look at it and roll my eyes and I say,
⏹️ ▶️ John per pixel lighting control or bust. Anyway, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John Sony and TCL. I’m not too broken up about it. I don’t buy these TVs anyway. These are the most of the TVs that Sony
⏹️ ▶️ John wants to sell. They should partner with TCL to make these because they look like really good LCD TVs.
⏹️ ▶️ John All I care about is the high end and the high end is LG Tandem OLED with no white sub-pixel
⏹️ ▶️ John and Samsung QD OLED with no white sub-pixel. That’s all I care about. I will be
⏹️ ▶️ John sad if Sony stops making an OLED TV, but the rumors are not that they’re gonna do that. And in fact, TCL
⏹️ ▶️ John is building an OLED factory. The details of the OLEDs that they will build in that factory are as yet
⏹️ ▶️ John undetermined, but my fingers are crossed that they will not have a white sub-pixel and Sony can finally stop
⏹️ ▶️ John buying all their panels from Samsung.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How close, Aubrey, do you think to micro LED?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s like, what do you call it? Like car, right? It’s always
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey five years in the future.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, they show those TVs all the time. They’re amazing. They cost 50 grand.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re the size of your wall because making them small is also expensive. Like, they’ve been showing those at CES
⏹️ ▶️ John for, I don’t know, like a decade now. They are amazing. What Marco was talking about is, hey, you want per pixel lighting
⏹️ ▶️ John control? How about every pixel has a tiny red, green, and blue LED in it?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Isn’t that sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of what OLED is? Not really, because OLED is kind of like a sandwich with a light emitting layer
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff. It is per pixel, but they’re not like literally LEDs. Think of like an LED that you could buy for a little
⏹️ ▶️ John kit and shrink it real small. That’s not what OLED is. It’s the organic part of it
⏹️ ▶️ John that makes it susceptible to burn in. It’s kind of a sandwich, right? Actual micro
⏹️ ▶️ John LED where every individual pixel has a red and green and blue light up LED. Those
⏹️ ▶️ John exist, you see them in stadiums because it’s really easy to make them big. Cause if it’s in a stadium, the red, green and
⏹️ ▶️ John blue LEDs are huge. Like, and so you just stick them, it’s like a light
⏹️ ▶️ John bright, right? From close up it looks terrible, but like across the stadium, it looks great. Trying to get that down
⏹️ ▶️ John to a 4K 55 inch TV, do the math on how small those LEDs have to
⏹️ ▶️ John be. And the problem is the manufacturing. Like, you know, do you have some way to
⏹️ ▶️ John manufacture that? Like, I can’t do the math on how many pixels there are in a 4K TV, but there’s a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you need to like place them individually and connect wires to them, that’s not the way you do things. You need to be able
⏹️ ▶️ John to essentially print them. That’s why they’re like Japanese companies have these printable OLEDs where you kind of use
⏹️ ▶️ John like an inkjet printer kind of the same way they print the LCD stuff. So far there’s been no manufacturing
⏹️ ▶️ John breakthrough. So that technology continues to be a curiosity for extremely rich people.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it looks real cool at CES, but there’s a bunch of other technologies too. Like I don’t remember
⏹️ ▶️ John the acronyms off the top of my head, There’s a bunch of other ways to produce pixels that make light besides OLEDs.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re just like in the experimental stage where they’ll show like a postage stamp size little experimental thing
⏹️ ▶️ John in a back room at CES and say, maybe someday we can make TVs out of this. But if someone
⏹️ ▶️ John actually eventually does it and it becomes manufacturable, I’m sure you’ll hear about it here from me. But for now,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s QD OLED and Tandem OLED. And honestly, Tandem OLED is very exciting. That’s what Apple’s M6
⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook Pros are gonna use sometime later this year, the rumors have it. So, and that’s what the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John uses now. I’m excited about that because it’s a really good technology and those screens look great. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m happy with what we have, but yeah, micro LED, some, and boy, the naming,
⏹️ ▶️ John RGB, mini LED, LCD, I was like, it’s ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s so confusing.
⏹️ ▶️ John SQD, super quantum. All right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s worse for naming? TV display technology or USB
⏹️ ▶️ John TV display, because in TV displays, every single manufacturer has their own branded
⏹️ ▶️ John version of what the actual generic technology is called and USB didn’t do that.
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Ternus taking over design
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John Ternes is taking over design at Apple. Reading from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple has expanded the job of hardware chief John Ternes to include design work, solidifying his status as a leading contender
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to eventually succeed chief executive officer Tim Cook. Cook tapped Ternes to manage the company’s design teams
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the end of last year. People with knowledge of the move said that Cook himself was trying to expose Ternes to more parts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the company’s operations. In this case, one that Cook doesn’t know anything about.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Johnny Heidenthal’s…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Lyle Troxell, Jr.: How about the ethics department? Paul Matzko, Jr.: Oh, sick burn. Until his departure in 2019, Cook oversaw
⏹️ ▶️ Casey design from 2015 to 2017, when Ive temporarily stepped back from the position. Jeff Williams
⏹️ ▶️ Casey most recently held the job up until his retirement at the end of 2025. Ternes is now billed internally as the executive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sponsor for all design on Cook’s management team. That entails being a bridge between design staff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Apple’s top brass. He represents the design organization in executive team gatherings and manages
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the group’s leaders. The heads of Apple’s design teams continue to report directly to Cook in both internal
⏹️ ▶️ Casey organizational charts and the company’s public disclosures. Having Ternes oversee the design teams while they still technically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey report to Cook is a strange arrangement, according to Apple employees, but it’s a sensitive situation. Changing the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reporting structure would affirm Ternes’ status as a rising star at a time when the company is still keeping
⏹️ ▶️ Casey its succession planning under wraps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re doing a really good job
⏹️ ▶️ John keeping it under wraps. Well, like, he’s taking over design, but he’s not really
⏹️ ▶️ John taking over design. Like, no org chart change. It was just like, that Cook is essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John parachuting him in and saying, just check out the design stuff. And like, it’s not changing any of the reporting
⏹️ ▶️ John arrangements. It’s so weird. Like, this is German saying like, you know, oh, well, they would, it would affirm his
⏹️ ▶️ John rising star status, blah, blah, blah. Like, that’s just German guessing what the reasoning might be. But if it’s true that the reporting
⏹️ ▶️ John structure has not changed, but instead he’s sort of like being an executive sponsor or whatever. It does really seem like just kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of, Oh, I, again, I’m not sure if I believe that it’s like Tim Cook thinks Turner’s needs
⏹️ ▶️ John some experience dealing with design, but maybe he does. But either way, as we’ll see with some, um,
⏹️ ▶️ John news later in this section, it does seem like that if Ternus is the leading
⏹️ ▶️ John contender for to be Cook’s successor, that does, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know, maybe it’s wishful thinking that perhaps design is an area that he may want to turn his attention to and that even Tim
⏹️ ▶️ John Cook can possibly see that at this point? I don’t know. Just speculating.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think, I mean, look, first of all, like, yeah, this, you know, Apple is not doing a great job hiding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the idea that John Ternus is seemingly most likely the next CEO candidate, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this is great. Yeah, the reality is that I think Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design leadership under Tim Cook has been just kind of weak overall because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as discussed a million times Tim Cook seems to equate all design
⏹️ ▶️ Marco together and so he’s like oh Johnny Ive you are designer you are good designer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here software design this it’s all the
⏹️ ▶️ John same but Jeff Williams in charge who is not a good designer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right and and all the reports we’ve heard so far about Jeff Williams is term you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of serving that role, basically make it seem like he was pretty hands off. But, you know, he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was there, he was at the meetings, but like, sounds like he was pretty hands off and nobody seemed to really have any
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, it’s not that he’s not expected to do that. But like at a certain point, as you go down the org chart, you have to get to someone who knows design.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s fine for the CEO not to design. OK, maybe the next person now not to know design, but like eventually is like, OK, but
⏹️ ▶️ John who who in the company is in charge and also. Is a designer, at least
⏹️ ▶️ John Johnny Ive was that and Alan Dye was even that, But Jeff Williams was not that Tim Cook is definitely not that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah But so there’s a couple of things about this that I think are promising first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just in general. I think reinforcing the idea that John Ternus is the is the most likely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CEO successor and that that process is starting That I think overall is very promising
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for Apple’s future Again, even though we don’t know what kind of CEO Ternus would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s seemed to do an extremely good job but his current his current role is being hardware chief. And he seems very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well liked. And he seems like he has a pretty, pretty good like personality traits. As
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far as we know, we don’t know that much about him. But like what we do know, it seems like he’d be a pretty good person for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this role. And it seems like he is a little bit more product focused than Cook,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who seem, you know, Cook is much more kind of high level operations focused. Cook doesn’t really have a good product sense
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all. And he’s shown that many times over the years. So he kind of outsources that to people below him. but he’s not very good at choosing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those people sometimes. So, I think Terenas will be better at a lot of those things. So that overall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a promising part of this, but also I think this is not unrelated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Alan Dye’s departure. I suspect this has kind of been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in progress for a while. This kind of thing does not just happen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and surprise everyone around it. Like, all the top executives and top people including
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Alan Dye probably have known about this transition for longer than we have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and My guess is that part of why die left is that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Some some part of turnus and I wasn’t going to work together and one or both of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them knew it I’m guessing these are actually related to each other and that once
⏹️ ▶️ Marco die, you know saw like the tide shifting towards turnus Somehow they realized
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this isn’t gonna work and he started looking around That’s that’s my best guess because again like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people up at that level they know what’s going on they’re not idiots like we only hear a drop in the bucket
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually after everything has happened so odds are this was all related but also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having Ternus be the executive sponsor and we have to kind of figure out what that means we’ll talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a second but like that I think is promising because I’m guessing Ternus was involved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the selection of Stephen I forgot his last name again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my god, sorry Stephen. I’ve forgotten your last name like four times in four consecutive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco episodes. I’m guessing Stephen Lame being elevated to this position
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was also not unrelated to Ternus’ taking over. I’m guessing this all kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happened in concert with each other. These were all related and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if Ternus was involved in the selection of Stephen Lame and by the the way, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess we’ll jump the gun slightly. Sorry, Casey. Sebastian DeWitt has just announced that he joined the team at Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He was the lead designer for Halide. And he’s been around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the scene forever. He’s a very, very good UI designer. So it looks like the tide has shifted substantially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the design leadership at Apple on the software side. And it looks like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ternos was probably involved on some level with that. So that’s all very promising
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me. I think this is really good signs of things to come.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, even if he’s not going up to CEO, this kind of dynamic happens
⏹️ ▶️ John frequently in big organizations and is one of the skills that is actually important to have when you’re a higher up
⏹️ ▶️ John and are like a CEO, which is recognizing, maybe too late, but whatever, better late than never,
⏹️ ▶️ John recognizing what parts of your company are having problems or potentially having problems. Where are we
⏹️ ▶️ John weak? What are we not doing well? What dangers lurk out there? What are the risks, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And obviously if you’re slow in the draw, it takes you a while to realize this. And sometimes, you know there are problems,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there’s like, you know, I think there were, for example, with the keyboards and laptops with no
⏹️ ▶️ John ports or whatever, I think the company more or less knew there was a problem there, but
⏹️ ▶️ John solving it, you’re not gonna tell Johnny Ivey can’t have his thin keyboard, and then you’re not gonna tell the engineer organization that
⏹️ ▶️ John they need to stop trying to make the thin keyboard because they’re not doing, it’s like, you’re kind of stuck where you’re like, I don’t wanna
⏹️ ▶️ John make these people angry because I actually want Johnny to stay because I need him to build Apple Park
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever the hell, like it’s a difficult situation. But like knowing that you have some weak area,
⏹️ ▶️ John what you do as a CEO, vice president or whatever is you look down the org chart and you find the person that you
⏹️ ▶️ John think this person knows what they’re doing. This is a competent person. I
⏹️ ▶️ John need someone to come in here to this other part of the org and fix this crap. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John they find somebody who’s like, you, you are in charge of X and X is doing great. And you
⏹️ ▶️ John did a great job with x. Can you also look at y because y sucks. And they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John tell that person, in addition to your current responsibilities, take some time and go over there
⏹️ ▶️ John and fix that part of the org. And you know, sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John you pick the wrong person or whatever. But again, even if turners wasn’t going to become CEO, just simply having him say
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you were in charge of this part of our company that’s done great. Over here. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John hearing years too late, that we’re not doing great on design,
⏹️ ▶️ John broadly speaking, I’m not going to put you in charge of design because you’re not a designer, but can you
⏹️ ▶️ John go over there and like just fix stuff and fig like just
⏹️ ▶️ John figure it out and just like make it better. And we, again, we
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have privy to, you know, we don’t know what’s going inside the company. We don’t know if he’s just started doing this this year or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like, as Marco said, from the outside, it sure looks like we’re having a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John issues in design. All of a sudden there’s a bunch of turnover. All of a sudden new things start happening in design. We start hearing
⏹️ ▶️ John new names and the things we know about those names make us think that Apple will be making different
⏹️ ▶️ John decisions related to design in the future. Because we know the people that left
⏹️ ▶️ John and we know the people that are coming in. And those are people have very different opinions about how to do design. Now, does
⏹️ ▶️ John John Ternus know anything about design? I don’t know, but it seems like things are changing in a direction
⏹️ ▶️ John that makes us out here who are dissatisfied with design happier. And if that’s the result of John Turner’s
⏹️ ▶️ John parachuting in, even though the org chart hasn’t changed and just being like, I’m your executive sponsor
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, like representing them in meetings and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Okay. But like, as Marco points out,
⏹️ ▶️ John was he part of the decision to pick John Lemay? Was
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco he the person that
⏹️ ▶️ John said, Hey, see, you keep forgetting his first name.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everything should be John, not a Steven. Steven. Like, was he the one who said, there’s a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of great designers out there who love our platform, can we go hire some of them?
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe like throw money at them like it’s like the AI problem except for with what was supposed to be Apple’s core competency,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Let’s go get some good people everyone and Johnny I’ve seen left to go to open AI right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Everyone you know who’s not good like all these rumors of like just brain drain from Apple people either get rich
⏹️ ▶️ John and leave Apple and go do something else. Or they build their skills at Apple and decide to go elsewhere
⏹️ ▶️ John or they they get more money somewhere. Like if ever Apple is going to overpay people to come
⏹️ ▶️ John back to the company to fix things, it would be, we’re having problems in design. Let’s
⏹️ ▶️ John hire some good designers. And you know, I mean, we have, we have
⏹️ ▶️ John Steven LeMay, whose name we can’t remember, and Sebastian DeWitt, whose name I can’t pronounce.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s two people. It’s two people that we know about, but like things seem to be moving
⏹️ ▶️ John in the right direction. Obviously, we won’t see the result of any of this stuff for a long time, so jury’s still
⏹️ ▶️ John out, but this is encouraging news. And yes, Marco did hoist up the Halide developer
⏹️ ▶️ John hiring up to the top, but there’s a little bit more to the story.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So then in a different post, Mark Gurman writes, even with hardware chief John Ternus now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey overseeing the operation, there’s no single design decision maker at Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey During the Steve Jobs era, the company co-founder was firmly in charge, but after his passing, the ultimate design arbiter was Johnny
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ive. But it’s more recently been a committee. Besides Ternes, software head Greg
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Federighi and marketing chief Greg Joswiak and even services boss Eddie Q to some extent all have sway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ternes is the top voice when it comes to hardware design. Federighi is the chief influence on the look and feel of software and Joswiak
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is an important voice across the board. Of course, the heads of Apple’s design teams, Molly Anderson
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and now Steve LeMay, have their recommendations as well. Under the new arrangement, they’re now managed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by Ternes but continue to officially report to CEO Tim Cook.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so that’s an interesting breakdown of like, who that is not technically in charge of design
⏹️ ▶️ John has influence, and it makes sense that like, you know, Ternus would, because he’s the hardware guy,
⏹️ ▶️ John would be able to give his two cents on any hardware design stuff, and Federighi being in charge of software would
⏹️ ▶️ John have his opinions about software, and then Joswiak, because he’s marketing, would say, you know, I want everything to be teddy bears, because people love
⏹️ ▶️ John teddy bears, right? It doesn’t seem like,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you know- That doesn’t sound like him. Well, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know what I mean. But anyway, it was like a sort of cross-cutting concern. So like the, the old way
⏹️ ▶️ John this was where the CEO was, you know, the entire company was run off the taste of the CEO.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, there’s pluses and minuses to that system. Obviously the minuses, where you get stitched leather, but the presses was that Steve
⏹️ ▶️ John job had a pretty good batting average. And there’s one thing Steve jobs did not lack, which was opinions.
⏹️ ▶️ John He knew what he wanted, whether he, what he wanted was good or not. There was no
⏹️ ▶️ John dilly dallying and no real committees. I mean, I’m sure there was committees below him, but he got presented with stuff and
⏹️ ▶️ John he said yes or no. And I think Johnny was like that as well. The stories when he was like, had one foot out the door for seemingly years
⏹️ ▶️ John was like, he’d just be hanging out at his place in San Francisco and, you know, come to a meeting and he would say, show me all the crap
⏹️ ▶️ John that you made. And he would say, yes, no, no, yes, no, change this, change that, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ John But this new system they’re describing doesn’t really reassure me, which is like a whole bunch of people
⏹️ ▶️ John who are not designers offering their opinions on designs offered to them by designers. And the designers get to give
⏹️ ▶️ John their opinions as well. but like if it’s Molly Anderson and Steve Lemay arguing with Eddie Q about
⏹️ ▶️ John design, I’m like, Eddie, just like, I mean, in some respects,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, the designers should have the most sway here. You can give your opinions
⏹️ ▶️ John and whatever, but like in the end, but unfortunately, org chart wise, everybody on that list is above
⏹️ ▶️ John Steve Lemay and Molly Anderson, who are the only actual designers. And honestly, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want Greg Joswiak, Eddie Cue and Craig Federighi and Ternus overriding
⏹️ ▶️ John Steve Lemay and Molly Anderson. On the other hand, when they, when they delegated to Alan Dynal, let him do what he wanted,
⏹️ ▶️ John he made bad decisions. So I’m not sure what to do about this org chart, but if,
⏹️ ▶️ John if German’s reporting here is true, it is a very interesting sort of stew of people that makes
⏹️ ▶️ John it very difficult to know who to blame for things that Apple does that you don’t like design wise.
⏹️ ▶️ John Much easier when it was just a I’ve.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s, you know, standard leadership is like the CEO and the top execs are not going to be specialists
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in all areas. And so you have to be able to identify and hire good people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at every level below you, like, like set things up in place that like you hire good execs and they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hire good VPs and they hire good men, you know, you go to, you hire good people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because you’re outsourcing that, that decision making to them and you can’t do everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. But, but all those people shouldn’t be in the meeting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Well, right, but then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also, you know, part of the process is like every part of that stack as you go up the chain,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you need to be able to trust the people who are experts. That’s why you hired them. So like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the CEO needs to be able to trust some of the decision making to the level
⏹️ ▶️ Marco below them, and then they need to trust some of the decision making at the level below them until you get to the actual experts that know what they’re talking about.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But then the people above, they’re responsible for more of an editorial role. So like Steve Jobs didn’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how to, you know, grind the corners down on a computer case to make it round,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but he knew like he, you know, somebody at some point brought him the idea of a round computer case and he’s like, yes, that’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re gonna do that. We’re gonna do it with, you know, my ideals and qualities and whatever. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the role of leadership. Like you don’t have to need to know, you don’t need to know how to do everything. You need to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have people who can do it and you need to trust them and serve as like an editor and a guiding voice. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as long as the people at the top can do that, and as long as the people below them can work with that dynamic,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that can produce great outcomes. It’s just a question of, you know, I think we’ve seen times
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where that dynamic wasn’t working very well. Like one of the things that we’ve heard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot about Tim Cook’s leadership style is this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco repeated thing we’ve heard over and over again, which is don’t bring me problems. That’s apparently a big thing for Tim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cook. Don’t bring me problems. And he seems, from what we’ve heard, to lead
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by kind of like sheer force of will. Just kind of like an ice cold, this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we are doing, what are you still doing here? Like that kind of like very cold,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stern, like strict and unwavering way. Well, does the combination
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that and don’t bring me problems, does that sound like a kind of environment that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco creates good collaboration and decision making when things aren’t obvious what to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or in areas that he doesn’t care that much about. I don’t think that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great for that. And so one of the things that we have also heard is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by pushing problems down in the stack, you create more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dysfunction in other ways. So by bringing problems up into the leadership roles,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by letting the leaders better engage with that kind of stuff and by maybe having a new CEO coming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that might have a different style of dealing with that kind of thing, could be better. It could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco result in better work coming out. It could result in less weird infighting and divisional
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems, maybe the whole thing with Apple Intelligence and like John G. Andreas’ group versus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Craig Federighi’s group. Maybe that wouldn’t have happened that way if the CEO was less about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t bring me problems and more about, hey, let’s look at this thing holistically and figure it out. So I’m actually very excited
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about a lot of these changes coming up probably, including stuff like that, that we will never even hear about,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least not for years of just very basic differences in like how Ternus operates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost anything versus how Tim Cook operates almost anything. They’re, they’re going to be very different people, very different leaders.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, and that’s, again, this is part of why I’m excited about, um, Cook’s hopefully soon departure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And in particular, it sounds like Ternus is a pretty good candidate to replace him, but we’ll see how this all goes. could go a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different way because we don’t yet know what kind of leader Turnus will be given that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of escalation and responsibilities. But I think we can look at a lot of the dynamics that we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seen in Apple during the Cook tenure, some of which have been great. He’s made a lot of money, good for him.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And some of which have been problematic or inefficient or have other non-ideal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco outcomes. And some of that’s due to Cook’s style, and that’s going to change. And I’m really, really looking
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s difficult to tell from the outside whether Steve LeMay, not Steve LeMay, Ternus was deployed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You finally got his name. We finally got it and we weren’t even talking about it. I was just reading it
⏹️ ▶️ John from the screen, that’s why. Whether Ternus was deployed by Cook to solve a problem
⏹️ ▶️ John or whether Ternus was lobbying up the management chain and saying, we’ve got a design problem,
⏹️ ▶️ John let me go fix it, right? Because yes, part of being leadership is knowing how to hire and delegate
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but also part of leadership is setting direction and inspiring people. And a lot of the times, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John even in Steve Jobs’ case, like you said, it’ll be that people are presenting
⏹️ ▶️ John things to higher-ups all the time. Steve Jobs had a good ability to, when presented
⏹️ ▶️ John with the 75 things that people in his organization were doing, he would see one of them and
⏹️ ▶️ John Darth Vader-style say, that’s it, the rebels are there. He would say, this is it. This is what we’re doing.
⏹️ ▶️ John He sees the gumdrop computer in Johnny Ives’ lab, along with 8,000 other things that Johnny I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John showed him and said, this is it. We’re doing this. We’re making this computer. This is the whole, the whole company’s focused
⏹️ ▶️ John on this. And John, John, I have to try like a, okay. Like I showed you 25 things, but you figure that’s it. We’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John this now. And because, you know, being able to detect whether it’s like, this
⏹️ ▶️ John is a thing that I think people will like, it will make a good product. It’s technically feasible. Like the whole big formula
⏹️ ▶️ John of like identifying that versus cook, where I think cook was like glasses, it’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ John be the future, but like, didn’t, it It didn’t have the right combination of can we do this now?
⏹️ ▶️ John Are you sure this will be a good product? Are you right? It will be a good product. How much will it like
⏹️ ▶️ John all the things have to come together. The iMac was possible. The iPhone was barely possible, but possible.
⏹️ ▶️ John The glasses that Tim seemed to be one of Tim Cook’s babies, not currently possible
⏹️ ▶️ John in the way that Tim Cook wants to make them. And he’s going to be gone before probably anything comes to fruition
⏹️ ▶️ John in that. Right. So with Ternus, it’s like, OK, well, Cook just sick Ternus on this to say we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John got a design problem, go solve it, and Ternus is competent at doing it. That’s great. I would love it even more if Ternus was
⏹️ ▶️ John telling everybody who had listened to him, we’ve got a design problem, we need to fix it. And then the people said to him,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, okay, well, if you think we have a design problem, you go fix it. And he’s like, fine, I will. Um, and that’s how you, that’s, that’s how you
⏹️ ▶️ John move up the, the, the chain. Of course, every, every executive doesn’t want their underlings to bring them problems. It’s not a
⏹️ ▶️ John unique thing to Tim Cook. That’s just part of being management. The whole point is the people below you should be solving their problem. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but I see. Okay. That I will disagree with that. But your job as the CEO
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is to solve the difficult problems that like the most difficult problems come to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you. And that’s your job. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John but he’s just saying he doesn’t want to be a referee for a bunch of infighting below them. Like there’s a balance. And then when they say, don’t bring any problems, it’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John like, look, it’s your job to work this out. Like, don’t don’t don’t constantly run to daddy when you
⏹️ ▶️ John have any kind of conflict, because that’s exhausting for me. And it’s not you people doing your job. Obviously, there’s a balance.
⏹️ ▶️ John Obviously, things do bubble up and there’s decision making atop. Like that attitude is trying to discourage
⏹️ ▶️ John the anti-pattern, which is anytime there’s any kind of issue and people can’t agree, they
⏹️ ▶️ John immediately run up the org chart and say, well, fine, our boss will decide for both of us. And it’s like, that’s, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a scalable system either. I don’t know what you’ve heard about the don’t bring me problems thing, but I feel like that is, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John that is mostly a healthy dynamic within companies and it’s not saying never bring me problems. It’s not saying I’ll never
⏹️ ▶️ John make any opinion. It’s just saying part of being at this level of management is taking
⏹️ ▶️ John responsibility and working things out amongst yourself, which is, you know, why? Like the forestall thing and everything. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, we can’t have this thing where every time anything comes up, you two fight tooth and nail
⏹️ ▶️ John and immediately run to me and say, decide which one of us do you love more? Like with every decision, that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John tenable. And maybe that’s for the error where that, that rumor came from, but, but yeah, I hope Ternus is,
⏹️ ▶️ John I hope Ternus is able to recognize problems before Tim Cook, which is not hard, but still,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, and I hope he has been lobbying to like, you You know, I know I’m not in that part of the org, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, like, you know, we say Tim Cook reading the room or having his finger on the pulse. Like, I really hope
⏹️ ▶️ John this is for the one thing I hope for Turner is that he is better able to accurately assess
⏹️ ▶️ John at any given time. How is Apple doing? That’s really hard to do when you’re high up in New York, because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s kind of part of your job is to be like, rah, rah, Apple or whatever. But like, you have to have a clear eyed view
⏹️ ▶️ John is Steve Jobs is really good at that, probably because he hated everything, right? So whatever Apple was doing is like, this is crap,
⏹️ ▶️ John we could do better, right? Tim Cook at various times seems to be distracted by
⏹️ ▶️ John his various money-making schemes and other things and not really keeping his eye on the ball.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like how are we actually doing? What about our, like, why do people buy our products and are we selling products that fulfill
⏹️ ▶️ John that promise? And you know, like taking his eye off the ball with the Mac for such a long time, taking his
⏹️ ▶️ John eye off the ball on design, like just not understanding how, developer’s attitude towards Apple. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John to his grave, he will go to his grave, not understanding how much developers
⏹️ ▶️ John dislike Apple because of the decisions he’s made for most of his tenure,
⏹️ ▶️ John that he’s got blind spots. So I’m hoping Ternus wasn’t simply a fixer called in Pulp
⏹️ ▶️ John Fiction. Is it Pulp Fiction? Yeah, Pulp Fiction style or is it Reservoir Dogs? Or is the fixer? I thought it was Pulp Fiction.
⏹️ ▶️ John What is it called? What’s that guy’s name? Mr. White? The short guy?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, Harvey Keitel?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, Harvey Keitel, the wolf. That’s Pulp Fiction. Oh, Wolf, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you’re right, you’re right. I hope he’s not just like we
⏹️ ▶️ John called in the wolf to fix things. I hope instead he has been telling everyone who
⏹️ ▶️ John would listen to him that we need to do something about design. And by the way, we should get rid of Al and die.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. I mean, I feel like this is slightly hamfisted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in so far as everyone knows what’s going on here. So why don’t we just embrace it? And I know it’s not quite that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey simple because, you know, once they start really embracing it and really properly announcing who’s next, that gets
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the SEC involved. There’s a lot more to it than even I’m aware of. But it is kind of funny,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this like cloak and dagger thing that they’re trying to pull off, even though everyone seems to know what direction the wind is blowing.
⏹️ ▶️ John This still can go any way, you know? Like, things change all the time. And like I said, just because he’s being tapped to do this,
⏹️ ▶️ John it may just be, oh, he’s the most competent lieutenant being asked to do this. But of course, we’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John ask this other person to be CEO. Which
⏹️ ▶️ John seems unlikely, but you never know. It’s like the Sony TCL deal. Like, it’ll probably happen, but nothing’s signed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true. And then with regard to Cook’s departure as CEO, Apple told shareholders this month, writes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mark Gurman, that its current chairman, Art Levinson, would remain in his role past the company’s February
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shareholder meeting, despite the fact that he’s now 75, the usual retirement age for directors. That implies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a chairman transition won’t happen until at least 2027. Sorry, Marco. Marco Pagliarini
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hey, look, I’m just happy this is, you know, that there’s obvious signs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that this is in motion. Now, Now this, whether or not, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Art Levinson is there for another year or another six months, who knows? I don’t think this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really says either way. All this says is that he is not being forced to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco retire by their original rules because again like, you know, Apple makes the rules, you can change them whenever they want. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re kind of holding Art Levinson over a little bit longer. I still think the most likely outcome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here is sometime soon Tim Cook replaces Art Levinson as chairman of the board
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and John Turner’s become CEO. That seems like still the obvious path. But as I said a few weeks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago, Tim Cook and Apple are very patient.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They are happy to wait what seems like an eternity to us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to move on something or to resolve an issue, to issue an update
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a product, whatever it is. They do things on their timeline and they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t like having anyone else influence their timeline. So whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cook’s plan is for the succession, he’s going to take his time and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s going to do it the way he wants to do it. And given the gravity of that situation,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that’s the right move. You know I will not say good things about Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when they’re not warranted, but in this particular way, he is a very efficient leader,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a very effective leader in terms of like when he has a plan on his timeline
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he will stick to it he has almost certainly planned this very carefully
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s with a very considered way and I’m sure it seems like from everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so far with the various executive retirements and different transitions and everything it seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like he is executing on a plan that has been carefully considered and it’s going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on his timeline and it didn’t seem like he was going to leave like in January, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way the original rumors said about like, because of, because of the chairman of the board age requirement, they had like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that seemed a little fast. I still think it could, it could happen in this calendar year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or can happen next year. They can, you know, it’s the board is totally under Apple’s control. They can do whatever they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want. They, they don’t need to wait until a one year anniversary of this extension for Art Levinson
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or anything like that. Like they can do whatever they want. So whatever their plan is, they’re going to keep doing it. But I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still think it’s, you know, this month was aggressive, but it could still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be this year or next year. It doesn’t matter.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think one of Tim Cook’s strengths is the sort of bird’s eye view of the sort of macro
⏹️ ▶️ John economic picture and where Apple fits into it, which is why he’s been so successful in making money and all that other stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s also part of his blind spots with China because it just makes so much sense in an economic sense. And it’s like, well, the
⏹️ ▶️ John downsides, he was not seeing where this could lead. It’s just that the money was too good, as they
⏹️ ▶️ John say. But this transition is all about, I’m sure he has in his own mind,
⏹️ ▶️ John ideally, this is when the transition would happen in terms of stuff I probably don’t understand
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of commodity deals and the way the market is moving and how Apple is positioned
⏹️ ▶️ John and minimizing the impact to the company’s economics, because there’s always gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John be some hit during the transition because there’s uncertainty and everything like that. It’s got this idea in his head of, here’s the best
⏹️ ▶️ John time to make this move. And it’s something that he’s probably one of the only people, maybe with Jeff Williams
⏹️ ▶️ John in the world who even understands who has, who holds the entirety of Apple’s economic engine in their mind
⏹️ ▶️ John and the whole world market and all the political stuff or whatever, and deciding, when can we do this switcheroo? But in
⏹️ ▶️ John the end, it’s like, you know, there’s no perfect time. Like he’s going to do the best he can. He’s patient,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, whatever. But like, there’s always going to be uncertainty during transition. Uh, he’s certainly not
⏹️ ▶️ John going to rush it, but like, kind of like the blind spot with China. It’s like, yeah, everything’s great. You’re right
⏹️ ▶️ John about a lot of the things there. But if you don’t pay attention to the downsides, one day you’re going
⏹️ ▶️ John to wake up and it’s going to be a big deal. And it’s like if he takes too long and it’s like, I just want it to be just right
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. It’s like at a certain point, various crises, the company might be having should
⏹️ ▶️ John take precedence over his desire to make a smooth transition. Because obviously if there are any other
⏹️ ▶️ John crises that come up as if, you know, Alan Dye leaving in the design thing and Apple Intel as if
⏹️ ▶️ John we don’t have enough already But like anytime something like that happens, it’s like, okay, I guess well the transition We’ll have to wait a little bit because we have
⏹️ ▶️ John to sort this out It’s like they’ll never be a perfect time right and a certain point Which I think we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John long past you staying is the biggest problem So you do have to
⏹️ ▶️ John eventually do it and I hope you know, he’s a sensible person I hope he’s probably some kind of deadline He’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever his deadline in his head and it’s like I’ll try to find the perfect time But honestly, it’s definitely gonna happen
⏹️ ▶️ John within the next you know X number of years or months and fingers crossed that
⏹️ ▶️ John he finds a time where he feels like it’s the right time and he makes it Happen because he needs to go Yeah I mean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you would have if you would have asked me, you know Maybe six months ago before any of the rumors started, you know When
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do like when do I think Tim Cook might retire if it’s gonna be sometime soon? I would say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would he would wait until the Trump administration’s over
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and honestly that would make a lot of sense. But like I think he sees now that that’s not the right move
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m a little curious why he sees that’s not the right move I mean that and that you know maybe he just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t want to do it that long because that’s you know unfortunately we still have Probably three more years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that so So you know that’s that’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while in terms of you know this timeline So I don’t think that’s the plan now because I don’t think we’d be hearing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all this all this Shuffling around and all these moves if it was that far off. I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s three years off But certainly if the, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Apple defenders and the Tim Cook defenders, with all this Trump stuff, they point
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to some kind of role that Tim Cook is like heroically taking the heat so that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, it shields the rest of the company, or maybe, you know, he takes the heat and then he leaves, you know, at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the right time or whatever. If that is true, which I honestly don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that’s the whole story, if it’s even any of the story, But if that is true,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that timeline is too long for this. That doesn’t fit what seems to be happening here. And I do wonder,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, what’s gonna happen with that side of the job?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why I said I don’t want him to be chairman of the board, because I think it’s, how can you, how can you, the day you sit
⏹️ ▶️ John in the CEO seat and say, okay, Tim, I’m gonna do everything the opposite of you did. I know you’re still chairman of the board.
⏹️ ▶️ John What do you think of that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but, you know, in terms of politics, Like I think Tim staying as chairman
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the board for a few years, that could he maybe the plan is he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stays on his chairman of the board. He keeps politicking with Trump and that kind of leaves turn us out
⏹️ ▶️ John Trump will still think he’s CEO, so it’s fine. That’s probably true. He’ll still be Tim Apple to Trump for the
⏹️ ▶️ John for forever. So it’s like the fact that he’s no longer CEO is immaterial because Trump won’t know or care about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. That’s probably true. And like, and that, you know, from if, if Cook wanted to isolate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple from at more of that heat than it needs, maybe that’s what he’s thinking. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, like he’s a very, Cook is a very considered person. He’s good at playing the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco politics game when he needs to. And so it would not surprise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me if that was his plan. But I think the CEO transition seems to be happening way sooner than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. So if his plan is to, to be like the hate sink, so to speak, It’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have to at least include some of his time as chairman of the board.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Lately I can’t wait for it to happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Alright, thanks to our sponsors for this episode, Delete Me and Squarespace. And thanks to our members who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm.com. One of the many perks of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco membership is ATP Overtime, our weekly bonus topic, which tends to be approximately 21 minutes
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco join. Thanks for listening, everybody. And we’ll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental John didn’t do any research, Margo
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ John into mastodon, you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, Auntie Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean to Accidental, check podcast so long
Cook and Minneapolis
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, I don’t want to belabor this, but it would be remiss of us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not to at least acknowledge that what’s going on in Minnesota
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and what’s going on with ICE, and not the ICE I was dealing with, but the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey national ICE, it’s terrible, it’s disgusting. We, all three of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us, absolutely stand in unison with the people of Minnesota, that we are disgusted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by what our government has become. Um, you know, Marco was tweeting a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey day or two ago about how, you know, it seems bananas that anyone would travel to our country these days. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey echo what Marco says. Uh, it’s awful. It’s really, really bad. And Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not making things a whole lot better. Now, granted, he’s not actually affecting things, as far as we can tell, but it’s certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really gross to go from, uh, the second or third shooting in as many weeks,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, to, Hey, let’s watch this movie about Melania It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gross and disgusting and again, I don’t want to belabor it too much It seems like you know, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of Apple employees don’t like it either. We’ll put a link about that in the show notes Tim wrote an extremely mealy-mouthed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey memo about it. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes. It’s just It’s gross,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey especially when you compare to his letter after George Floyd was killed, which was much much much better
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s all gross top to bottom I’m going to stop talking and let Marco and John take a turn. But again, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to try to make this quick, not because it’s not important, but because we’re trying to not be total Debbie Downers
⏹️ ▶️ John will have an actual after show on a cheerier topic. But it’s hard not to talk about this, like
⏹️ ▶️ John US citizens being murdered by the government, and then the government refusing to even have an investigation,
⏹️ ▶️ John have an independent investigation of that, and smearing the victims, saying they’re terrible. Terrible things are happening
⏹️ ▶️ John here. And it’s not a good situation. And it’s affecting everybody, even if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not where this is happening, because it could happen to you. And apparently there’s no recourse if it does. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re all feeling kind of crappy about it. And it’s him. The typical on your thing, like I’m sure he’s loving this because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, you know, how long has this movie premiere thing been been scheduled?
⏹️ ▶️ John And then like the government’s got to murder people just like exactly around. And not that it matters. It’s bad either way. But like
⏹️ ▶️ John it looks even worse. It’s part it’s, you know, Tim Cook’s strategy about this has
⏹️ ▶️ John not changed, And it continues to be a terrible strategy and continues to make him and Apple look terrible. And you know, this,
⏹️ ▶️ John this story from the intercept about Apple employees being cranky about it, like, you know, it’s not just people outside
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple that can’t handle this. People inside Apple feel that way too, which is another reason
⏹️ ▶️ John that the sooner Tim Cook can leave, the better chance the next CEO has to, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, make, keep these employees from leaving the company, right? You don’t want your employees being this angry at your
⏹️ ▶️ John CEO because they’ll leave and you, you need them because they do the work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and again, I have very strong feelings about this. I will point you to two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco posts by John Gruber over the last day or so that were excellent about Tim Cook’s ridiculous statement
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about being heartbroken, prayers and deepest sympathies, this is a time for de-escalation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, what a bunch of bullsh** from Tim Cook. Like, such
⏹️ ▶️ John You gotta make sure you don’t say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything to make Trump angry. non-committal, not say it’s it’s both sides. It’s oh both
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sides have good people. That’s that’s what this is. It’s so despicable and I Know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why he’s doing it. I know look Part of it is he’s trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco protect Apple in the Trump era and this and you kind of have to just suck up a lot to do that I get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that also Apple gets tariff exceptions Apple has the government
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do things like block, you know know, competition from like Huawei and stuff from being used like Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Justice Department now kind of just disappearing things from being looked at. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple benefits a lot from government stuff that is giving them advantages, unfair advantages or illegal advantages
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sometimes, but it’s giving them advantages. So it isn’t just about defending Apple’s business from having retribution.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tim Cook is getting a lot of favors from the government that help Apple continue doing things that are kind of despicable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not all roses. He’s not this wonderful leader who’s throwing himself under the bus out of his own out of the grace of his heart.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, he’s a bullshitter. He is a CEO who extracts advantages from the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco government by trading favors and gold trinkets and BS like that. We know exactly who Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is. He’s going to keep showing us that over and over again. I can’t wait for the Tim Cook era to end. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s that’s all I got for tonight.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, anything to add about that specifically?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, but I have a much cheerier actual tech related after show that we should
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey move on Freaking please don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have to think about ice anymore Um, at least until we get off the air and see whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John horror has happened.
More Claude Code adventures
⏹️ ▶️ John Let’s go back to me and my friend, my new friend, Claude Code. I
⏹️ ▶️ John had a past Key East ATP, did a bunch of stuff, talked about last time. I’ve still been hanging out with Claude Code.
⏹️ ▶️ John Claude Code is a little bit of a needy friend and he did get money
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, you are, I think you and I wrestle for who, who is more frugal and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think you usually win, but it’s a toss up. Yeah. I am
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stunned. But in terms of value for the money, there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco few things in the tech business that many of us agree are great values. I think one of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is paying for the no ads thing on YouTube, whatever they call it this year. That is obviously a great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy. And I think number two thing is whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your AI of choice is, buy whatever their 20-ish bucks a month plan is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that gets you access to the good models and removes restrictions and stuff. Oh my God, like, cause like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I haven’t, honestly, I haven’t actually used Claude code yet. I’ve used Claude, but I haven’t used Claude code.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I’m trying Gemini for certain things. I’m still a very heavy chat GPT user. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco earlier today, I got a statement for a retirement account that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have. And I wanted to understand better some of the acronyms and numbers that were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it. And so I just, I scanned it and I took a screenshot without any of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my account numbers, just like the middle of the paper that shows like this table of values and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headings and stuff. And I pasted it in a chat GPT and I said, can you explain this to me and tell me what this means for this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year and what this number means over here? And it gave me this entire breakdown of what every single
⏹️ ▶️ Marco term means and how these numbers work out over time and what the different aspects, pros
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and cons of different things are. And I’m like, this is amazing. As far as you know. But like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, again, I know this is not about my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco experience with AI this week, but my experiences with AI continue to be extremely positive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I cannot tell you the difference it is making in my life, the more I,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the walls are coming down in terms of figuring information out. And even though it isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always 100% right, it’s right a lot and it’s amazing a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you don’t know, it’s like the ads, half the money we spend on ads is wasted but we don’t know which half. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John some percentage of your answers are wrong but you don’t know which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones. But it’s right so often. I mean, look, no matter who I ask for information,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I actually, I asked a financial advisor recently a couple of questions,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it turned out later that part of what he said was wrong. And that, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that error rate different from?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco wouldn’t say
⏹️ ▶️ John Chat TFG has a worse error rate than a financial advisor, yes. But setting
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that aside. You’d be surprised.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, setting that aside, the real trick with all these things is obviously you need a way to tell
⏹️ ▶️ John like whether the answer is right. Like I think I talked about this, maybe it was on rectips about, you know, kind of like in the cryptography thing
⏹️ ▶️ John where it’s like, it’s really hard to derive the answer but it should be really fast to check it. That’s the ideal. But for everything in life,
⏹️ ▶️ John you need that. How can I tell whether this answer is right? You don’t, you know, you have to have some way to tell.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s why I always say, whether it’s you’re asking a person or asking a financial advisor or asking anybody, any kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of professional, like, or hiring somebody or whatever, if you hire someone to fix your fridge and they fix your fridge, you’ll know real
⏹️ ▶️ John fast you fix it? Does it get cold? Or does it not get cold? Did they fix it? Or do they not fix it? Right? Now, there’s varying degrees, like maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John it breaks next year, because they did something badly or whatever. But at the very least, if you ask someone a question
⏹️ ▶️ John or hire someone to do a thing, you can tell whether they did it. If it’s a type of thing where it’s like, this is broken,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I need you to fix it. And same thing with chat GPT. This is broken, I need you to fix it. Did you fix it? Yes, no, good.
⏹️ ▶️ John With other stuff that’s more abstract, it gets a little bit loosey goosey, because you’re like, well, if I just believe everything you say, and
⏹️ ▶️ John continue along that path for a year, maybe it will lead me down a path where we went astray two months ago and I didn’t realize
⏹️ ▶️ John it because it’s totally an area that I don’t understand. This is a sidetrack. This is a sidetrack what I’m trying to talk about with Claude
⏹️ ▶️ John Code. I’m glad that you’re continuing to have your friend that you talk with that gives you plausible answers, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ John And a lot of the time you can just immediately check whether it’s right and that is helping you and I get that. And that’s exactly the same thing with Claude Code.
⏹️ ▶️ John As I’m using it to do stuff, the reason I paid more, I already had the $20 a month thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John but we were getting it for free as part of a pass Claude code sponsorship thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I stopped like that trial was going to end anyway. And so I paid for the hundred dollar thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, my. The $20 thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was running out of tokens too much with the $20 thing. And I tell myself I’m going
⏹️ ▶️ John to do the $100 thing, but just for one month. That’s what I tell myself. Tune in. Sure you are. Next month.
⏹️ ▶️ John I did it. I wondered if this is a $200 plan, too. And that is the $100 gives you five times what you get for
⏹️ ▶️ John the $20 and the $200 gives you 10 times, I think. But anyway, it turns out five times is plenty for me. And what am
⏹️ ▶️ John I doing with this, right? Because like, I did the pass keys thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I did my status board thing that I talked about.
⏹️ ▶️ John I had an idea for another project. But before I had that idea,
⏹️ ▶️ John like I guess it was kind of simultaneous. My status board thing that I talked about, see, I’m not gonna go into it again. See past
⏹️ ▶️ John episode where I talked about this. I made a web version of Panic Status Board. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just a website for me. And I don’t want it to be accessible to the public. So I just had a HTTP basic
⏹️ ▶️ John auth on it. Do you guys remember HTTP basic auth?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Username, at password, colon, rest of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it brings up a little dialogue. Browsers still support it. It brings up a little dialogue.
⏹️ ▶️ John You put in a username and password, and if it’s not HTTPS, it sends them in clear text. It’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You know what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also still uses that? Podcast feeds sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I mean, anyway, it’s very primitive, but I said like, and
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s fine, but like, it just bothered me. It’s like, it was the 1990s, I’m using HTTP
⏹️ ▶️ John basic auth in 2025, I just felt wrong. And I had just added passkeys
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, basic auth, okay, for whatever it’s worth, sorry, basic auth over HTTPS
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, I know, I know, I’m just saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco anyway. Okay, sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why don’t I add a passkey-based account system to my status board website. Cloud Code
⏹️ ▶️ John has already shown me that it can do it in PHP, no less. It should be
⏹️ ▶️ John easy to do it in Node because that’s like an actual implementation with like real libraries and stuff. Should be a snap, like a million examples.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like this is the thing Cloud Code should knock out of the park. And then I had to decide like, okay, well
⏹️ ▶️ John how should an account system work on like a personal tool website that’s only supposed to be accessible
⏹️ ▶️ John to me? And I had to go through like, it’s like really weird. So first of all, you know, status board,
⏹️ ▶️ John Its persistence layer is essentially, it’s R2, essentially S3. Everything is in JSON files
⏹️ ▶️ John in S3. There’s no database, it’s just, because the data volumes are minuscule,
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing ever, like that’s it, that’s its data storage. Same thing with the account system. Like, okay, well, that’s fine. There’s gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ John like one or two accounts on this thing ever. I’ll just put everything in JSON files.
⏹️ ▶️ John And PaaS keys are great, because you don’t have to store anything. The server stores nothing. There’s no hashed password. You store a public
⏹️ ▶️ John key. That’s the great thing about PaaS keys. One of the many great things about Passkeys is if there’s like a data breach
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, all they get is public keys, information that is literally public. There’s nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John in there. There’s no password, hashes, nothing to crack. There’s certainly no plain text, anything. That’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John beauty of Passkeys. I’m like, I have no problem putting, you know, public key Passkey stuff in a JSON file
⏹️ ▶️ John and R2, not that anyone cares. But then it was like, okay, but
⏹️ ▶️ John how, like, how do I make the first account?
⏹️ ▶️ John You know what I mean? Like if
⏹️ ▶️ John website that doesn’t let anybody in, but there’s no accounts on it, how do I make the first account? I’m like, well, I
⏹️ ▶️ John guess I need like a bootstrap mode where like when there’s zero accounts, you get an account creation screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John but as soon as there’s non-zero number of accounts, you get a login screen. Like PHP BB.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, exactly. It’s old technology. And then I was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, what if I wanted, like what if other people in my family want to make an account
⏹️ ▶️ John on this thing? They can’t make one because once I add the first account, they would just get a login screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no like signup process, because why would there be? It’s not a public website. Because if there was a signup thing, then anybody could go there
⏹️ ▶️ John and sign up for an account, but I don’t want that. But I just want the people who I want to allow to sign up. And I could create
⏹️ ▶️ John the account for them, but I can’t create a passkey for them. Because if I create an account for them, the passkey will go into my iCloud keychain
⏹️ ▶️ John and not in theirs, right? That’s the thing you could do with passwords. You can make them an account and with a temporary password
⏹️ ▶️ John and tell them what the password is, and then you’d have to change it when they logged in the old ways. But with passkeys, that doesn’t work. And I was like, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna be no passwords. It’s just gonna be passkeys only. It’s just all modern. It’s my website. So then
⏹️ ▶️ John I came up with this token-based system where you can create a token with a fixed number of accounts that
⏹️ ▶️ John can be created from the token. It’s just basically like a secure, a secret URL, security through obscurity.
⏹️ ▶️ John Go to this big, long URL. Once you go there, it burns the token. You can create an account, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And then I would just give that URL to whoever wanted an account. Then they could create an account
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. If I wanted to give you two accounts, I would make a token with two things, give the URL to both of you, you’d both go in, create
⏹️ ▶️ John your account, put your PASKIs in your thing. Anyway, I spent a while doing this PASKI-based account system. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John I did eventually have the ability to add a password, right? Because I’m like, well, maybe if you want a password, you can add one if
⏹️ ▶️ John you really want to. And yes, there would be a hash password in there, whatever, I spent a while doing this. It’s like a little
⏹️ ▶️ John miniature account system that supports PASKIs, that’s in front of my status board site
⏹️ ▶️ John to let you in to do the status board stuff. And around while I was doing this, I’m like, I have another
⏹️ ▶️ John idea for a different project, but I’m in the middle of doing this PASCY thing. I’m like, you know what? For this
⏹️ ▶️ John other project, it’s the same type of deal. It’s like a little personal web app just for me,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I don’t want anyone else to have access to it. I’m probably gonna wanna use this whole PASCY account system that I just made for
⏹️ ▶️ John the status board thing. I’m probably gonna wanna use that in this new thing too. So I should have looked
⏹️ ▶️ John up the XKCD comic with the passing the salt. Please, Casey, find this for me.
⏹️ ▶️ John So like, you know what I need? I need to factor out this whole password account
⏹️ ▶️ John system into a framework that can be used by the status board site and also
⏹️ ▶️ John the new site. Oh my God. Cause once, cause if you’re a programmer, once you have two things
⏹️ ▶️ John that use the same thing, it’s like, oh, now it’s gotta be factored out. Oh yeah. Yup. It’s just gotta be.
⏹️ ▶️ John By the way, I wish that’s the thing Claude Code could understand. I’ve heard from a lot of people who are
⏹️ ▶️ John like, here is the tutelage that I put Claude Code under. and it felt
⏹️ ▶️ John like giant essays that I write it about how to be a good programmer. But I feel like in the training data,
⏹️ ▶️ John there should be something that says, you know what? I don’t wanna open up a source code file and see that
⏹️ ▶️ John the same seven lines of code are repeated a hundred times. Have you heard of functions, Cloud Code?
⏹️ ▶️ John Factor that stuff out. You can’t do that. Like machines, especially when you’re a human, you’re like, I would never
⏹️ ▶️ John do that. It’s too much typing. I would never update it in all the places. Well, guess what? Apparently Cloud Code has no problem updating the same
⏹️ ▶️ John seven lines of code in a thousand places because it’s a machine. And it’s like, I’m never gonna miss it. I’m not gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John make a copy and paste type. I’m never gonna make a mistake, it will. But anyway, like, I don’t know what’s making it do
⏹️ ▶️ John this, but the code it writes just pulls my hair out. And I just like, I had to spend some quality time refactoring
⏹️ ▶️ John and saying, you’re doing this same thing in a hundred places. Making a function, put it
⏹️ ▶️ John into a library. Look, see how much, I mean, eventually I just went and did a bunch of stuff by hand because it wasn’t getting,
⏹️ ▶️ John and there’s no sense arguing with the machine when I can just factor it out myself. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John gotta factor out this functionality into a library, I’m kind of playing it like a video game where it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, yeah, I could just do this myself. But the video game is don’t do it yourself. The video game is type in little
⏹️ ▶️ John essays to make the machine do it for you. And so I’m trying to get it understand. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, no, here’s the thing. Here’s the guidelines. I bullet pointed it out for it. I made this big essay in a cloud that MD.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s like, when I change things in the framework those changes should be reflected
⏹️ ▶️ John immediately in everything that uses the framework. Like there’s no, like, you know I don’t know if you remember MFC where it would
⏹️ ▶️ John generate source code for you, and then you would modify the source code. Well, guess what? If a new version of MMC
⏹️ ▶️ John comes out and it generates different source code, that doesn’t help you if you just generated it for your giant project three
⏹️ ▶️ John years ago. You don’t get the benefit from those changes. That’s what a library is, you know? And
⏹️ ▶️ John with node packages and stuff, it was just like, oh, just generate this and blah, blah, blah, and now you’re fine. I’m like, no, I’m not fine. Because if
⏹️ ▶️ John I go back into the framework and I change this character here, that’s not reflected in the other products. That’s not how a framework works.
⏹️ ▶️ John I spent so long arguing with this stupid machine. I’m like, nothing can be like, it has to
⏹️ ▶️ John all stay in the framework. You can’t copy the files into the other. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I made a framework. I fought cloud code. I made it make a framework for the account system.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the second little app that I wanted to make, it was actually something that someone
⏹️ ▶️ John suggested to me a while after I had already made it. They said, hey, you know what you should
⏹️ ▶️ John make? You should make this thing. And I felt like replying, but I didn’t want to spoil this episode. I already did. Can you guess what it
⏹️ ▶️ John is? I have no idea. Single website
⏹️ ▶️ John just for me, not public.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Something to do with like membership tracking, but that’s the status
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John board. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the status board thing, you’re right. It’s a tier list website. Oh!
⏹️ ▶️ John tiermaker.com. Every time we do a tier list, I have to go like with the Chrome DevTools
⏹️ ▶️ John and like hide and delete nodes. I turn on the ad blocker and then I go in there and manually edit
⏹️ ▶️ John the DOM to get all of the ads and crap out and you can’t delete all the notes because JavaScript will just bring them back so you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to hide some of them. And then I have to arrange it so like as we do the tier list thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the stupid buttons in copyright notice don’t scroll up into view. So I have to hide, like it
⏹️ ▶️ John takes so long to arrange this window just so and I always do it like a few days ahead of time and then I come back and see Chrome has taken that tab out of
⏹️ ▶️ John memory and it reloads the page and everything is gone and I’m so sick of that. And that the
⏹️ ▶️ John tier, by the way, when we make the video of it, I have to arrange my window and I use Xscope to make the window the
⏹️ ▶️ John right proportions and that I use the screen capture within the, you know, carefully drag out the outline of where I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John be doing quick time screen capturing and then make sure that after I drag all the little tiles up
⏹️ ▶️ John that the board looks clean and no weird stuff is coming into it, right? But make sure you can see all the,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, all the, once I fill the tiers, everything is still visible. I’m like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I need to make a tier list app myself. And I made it look pretty much exactly like TierMaker because
⏹️ ▶️ John TierMaker is sort of the canonical thing and for historical continuity purposes with ATP. But
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, now I have a tierless website that has configurable aspect ratios,
⏹️ ▶️ John auto-zooming to make sure that all the tiles are always visible at all times and that you can always see at
⏹️ ▶️ John least some of the things you’re dragging into the thing, but also when you were done, the thing will be
⏹️ ▶️ John the maximum size it can be. I have things to hide the scroll
⏹️ ▶️ John bars so they don’t show up in the little scrolly region. I even made it work on the phone because of course
⏹️ ▶️ John I would. I made the status board thing work on the phone as well. And the iPad, which was a pain in the butt for Claude to
⏹️ ▶️ John do because yeah, that’s another thing with like, it saved me a lot of time on this too, because
⏹️ ▶️ John like to make a status board takes you two seconds. Like the person who sent in the thing, I made this status board, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John make it in two seconds. But the thing you make in two seconds is garbage. Like there are so many things that can go wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, I was thinking when you program something yourself, like say you’re doing drag and drop of images and like a tier
⏹️ ▶️ John list type thing. If you haven’t done that recently, maybe you’re not familiar with the modern APIs for doing drag and
⏹️ ▶️ John drop and like HTML5 and stuff like that. So if you were a human programmer doing it, you’re like, okay, I’m gonna start simple.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna make a thing. I’m gonna make just one thing and I’m gonna have the ability to drag it. Okay, now I have one thing, I have the ability
⏹️ ▶️ John to drag it, I’m gonna drop it somewhere. Like you’d build up in a piece at a time. That’s how you do programming, right? Like when you’re a human,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re like one thing at a time, piece by piece, each step of the way, I’m like, I’ve got something draggable,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve got a place where I can drag it. And each time you work out the things, Okay, now I need multiple ones. Now they need
⏹️ ▶️ John to move out of the way when they’re, like you would build it up a piece at a time. Cloud Code, because it’s a machine and goes real
⏹️ ▶️ John fast, is like, I’ve done everything, it’s all done. And then you try to use it and like, nothing works. Oh, you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John drag this one anywhere. You can’t drag this from the top row to the bottom row. When you drag this, the image doubles. Now
⏹️ ▶️ John it triples. Now it leaves a ghost image over here. Doesn’t work at all on the phone. It’s just, no
⏹️ ▶️ John human would ever say, here you go, I’m done. And like, nothing works. And so you’d go back and forth and be like,
⏹️ ▶️ John this didn’t work. And it’s like, you’re filing, you’re filing tickets in JIRA. You got to make this work. This doesn’t do anything like this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why don’t we try a different strategy? Like then you peek in the source code and you’re like, what are you doing? They’re like, reconsider this.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then you’re thinking, would it be faster if I did it myself? That’s the game you’re playing. So I spent a long time with cloud code, working on drag
⏹️ ▶️ John and drop. Uh, and scrolling and hover effects and double touch thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and scrolling and touch, and apparently the phone doesn’t support HTML, HTML five, drag and drop stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to use entirely different API. Uh, but anyway, it’s done. I have a tier
⏹️ ▶️ John list app. I have a, I needed a framework because once you got two apps, you needed to factor it out into a framework and
⏹️ ▶️ John I did. And now it’s real easy for me to make future apps. I don’t currently have any
⏹️ ▶️ John future app ideas, but I’ll probably polish up my tier list. And the next time we do a tier list as an ATP member special which
⏹️ ▶️ John won’t be next month because we just did one, but at some point in the future, we will do another tier list. We will get to try
⏹️ ▶️ John out my fancy new tier list website. And I will say the
⏹️ ▶️ John one thing I stopped myself from doing was and I may be able to revisit this, but I probably shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John was, I thought, you know what, what if I did this as a multi-user thing where all three of you could be,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, all three of us could be on it at the same time and we could all be dragging things at the same time
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and moving around and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that. Why don’t you have us vote on what the rank should be, John?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Well, that’s what we
⏹️ ▶️ John do verbally. It’s an audio podcast. Like we talk through the things, but I was like, I don’t want to do that
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly because I don’t want to upgrade to a different thing, a storage thing, and trying to do it with JSON
⏹️ ▶️ John files. you could do it, but there’d be all sorts of things where it’s like, oh, that person started their drag first,
⏹️ ▶️ John so that person dropped it first, so that invalidates yours, and then you drop it, and it goes back to its original position, or it goes to a different
⏹️ ▶️ John position. It would be confusing, so I didn’t do that. Yeah, that’s a lot of scope
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I held off, because honestly, I feel like the Cloud Code would do a good job of that,
⏹️ ▶️ John because there’s so many examples of the conflict-free data, whatever thing that are out
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco there. CRDTs?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but with JSON backing, it’s a little bit tricky. I mean, I did basic mutual exclusion with the JSON thing because
⏹️ ▶️ John you can do conditional puts that basically say, don’t accept this put unless the content
⏹️ ▶️ John is exactly how it was when I did the get, which is the world’s dumbest way
⏹️ ▶️ John to not corrupt your data. But I did, at the very least I did that, but this is a single user
⏹️ ▶️ John system with a single account, but it looks really good. I’ve been using the 91 car logos as my test case for
⏹️ ▶️ John it, and it’s shaping up pretty nice. So I’m having a good time with Cloud Code. it is a,
⏹️ ▶️ John I wouldn’t call it productive. Like it has done, it has helped me a little bit, but honestly I’m thinking mostly like playing
⏹️ ▶️ John arc Raiders. Like this is, this is essentially a thing I am doing for entertainment. I mean, I guess it’s for
⏹️ ▶️ John the show where I talk about it as well, but it is very much like playing a video game and the video game is,
⏹️ ▶️ John can you make this other thing do a thing? That’s the game. And it’s kind of fun, especially if
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re a programmer and you know how you would do it yourself, but trying to make something else do it, that’s not a human. It is a
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty fun video game and I recommend everyone give to try.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well this is like the power of AI coding. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it lowers the bar significantly for new programmers and for existing programmers looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff up but also by lowering the bar so far in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the all this like you know kind of like grunt work for a lot of these these things what it does is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it makes it it makes it worthwhile to create things that previously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were just not worth the time to create.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or wouldn’t have been fun. Like I didn’t do PASCY as an ATP FM because it wouldn’t have been fun.
⏹️ ▶️ John I hate doing authentication and web stuff. I did it my whole career. It would not have been fun, but using cloud
⏹️ ▶️ John code made it fun. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s extremely cool. So sitting here now, do you plan to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fall back to either the $20 a month or free plan after the end of your $100 a month?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think so. I think I’ve learned how to use it more efficiently and I don’t have any other big projects.
⏹️ ▶️ John a big learning curve for me of like when to say
⏹️ ▶️ John uncle and dive in. Like, for example, I spent literally hours today,
⏹️ ▶️ John I believe it was three hours fixing this
⏹️ ▶️ John cloud code CSS because the CSS it made, oh my God,
⏹️ ▶️ John just like, like it like brute forces CSS. It’s like, whatever. I’ll just
⏹️ ▶️ John I know how to make a CSS rule and I know how to make it applied with thing. That’s all I need. I was like, no, no, there
⏹️ ▶️ John is, there is a design philosophy of not making a bazillion
⏹️ ▶️ John randomly named styles connected to a bazillion randomly named stuff, especially when you have like a base framework.
⏹️ ▶️ John I consolidated, I don’t know, I should have counted how many selectors it was, but like, just pages and
⏹️ ▶️ John pages and pages of selectors. And I spent three hours manually consolidating them
⏹️ ▶️ John it down into one sane CSS file that like, it’s like 190th the length.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, yeah, you can write a new selector for everything you want
⏹️ ▶️ John to style. And yes, you can keep the same color up to date in 500 places because you’re a computer,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I can’t stand it. And so I spent three hours fixing it. And now I’m like, am I actually saving time with cloud code? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John I spent three hours editing, consolidating three CSS files into one CSS
⏹️ ▶️ John file on the framework and carefully doing it changing the markup so that the appearance stays exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John the same because it made it look the way I would say make this look like this make this look like that and it would do it and then you look under the covers
⏹️ ▶️ John is like oh my god what are you doing I know I said to make that look like that and it does but this is not
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s it’s it’s madness and I did I have tried Gemini as well and Claude Cote
⏹️ ▶️ John is kicking Gemini’s butt I haven’t tried Codex yet but uh yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah by all accounts it seems like the one for code generation is Claude by far like that it seems like they’re they’re way
⏹️ ▶️ John Some good things on code. Oh, and by the way, one, remember I said that Claude erased my entire directory or I suspect
⏹️ ▶️ John erased my entire directory last time. I can’t conclusively blame that, but I have something that I can conclusively blame
⏹️ ▶️ John on Claude which is we were working together on the tier list thing. And at a certain point,
⏹️ ▶️ John despite me literally never having said anything that even remotely suggests that it should
⏹️ ▶️ John do this, it deployed my code. Deployed. I’m like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I put a sternly worded instruction in all the cloud.md files said, never deploy.
⏹️ ▶️ John I will do that manually. But it wasn’t a big deal because it’s a private website or whatever. I’m like, are you kidding me?
⏹️ ▶️ John Cause I started running a NPM run deploy, like what in the, it was too late. It deployed it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John you gotta watch it. You gotta keep your eye on these things. Even if they’re sandbox, if they have network access, don’t deploy your code, they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bananas. That’s extremely cool. Yeah, I’ve been fiddling with cloud code some I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had to check over my entire call sheet code base and it found some minor stuff that I was happy for it to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey find. It’s I’ve had it code a couple of minor things. And what I’ve decided
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do, this is probably I’m surely not the first person that’s done this. But I instead of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey working on the folder, the directory that I typically do my work in, you know, when I open
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Xcode, I’m pointed to such and such a directory, I’ve created a second clone of the repo somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ Casey else so that it’s off in its own little world and it’s doing its own thing over there. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then I have it make whatever modifications it wants to make to the files in that folder. And then I’ll typically go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and do a manual diff deliberately, you know, as a check to make sure, okay, yeah, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see what it’s doing here. And that makes sense. And that’s worked out pretty well for me, but it’s all been minor, minor, minor stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I haven’t really had it do anything larger yet. And I’m sure with time, as I get used to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Claude code and get used to, you know, working with my new little buddy, I’ll, I’ll get better at doing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey larger and offering it larger and bigger efforts. But so far I’ve, I’ve been pretty impressed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, and, and I think I’ve been impressed enough that I would probably pony
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up for like Marco was saying, the $20 a month plan. Uh, I can’t imagine ponying up for the a hundred dollar a month
⏹️ ▶️ Casey plan unless I’m doing something, you know, like a one-off like you were describing John, but you never know.
⏹️ ▶️ John just put a screenshot of it. If you want to see what it looks like. It should look very familiar because I was basically saying this has to look pixel
⏹️ ▶️ John for pixel like tear maker calm because that is the Canonical tier list website and
⏹️ ▶️ John I made some slight changes, but it’s essentially the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t love the way it looks but it does look like the tearless
⏹️ ▶️ John did I did that by the way Like I’ve had varying success with various AI things where you send them a screenshot and
⏹️ ▶️ John say make a thing that looks like this It utterly failed like I gave it a screenshot. I carefully compose
⏹️ ▶️ John these screenshots and what it made look look absolutely nothing like the screenshot. I was like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John we got our work cut out for us. Let’s dive in and fix this. But yeah, it looks like, the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing is, it’s all numbered. I can control the aspect ratio. I can turn on an outline that shows me exactly where
⏹️ ▶️ John I need to do the screenshot capture. It auto scales everything to make sure everything fits in the thing. It’s glorious.
⏹️ ▶️ John I never have to right click and inspect on that stupid Tiermaker website ever again.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s very cool. That’s very, very cool. And I’m glad you did it. And I hope it works. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t mean that in a snarky way. and, you know, hey, this is something that we’re all three of us going to use.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I hope it works out the way you expect. Certainly sounds like you’ve tested it. Um, so this is really, really cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I know, I don’t think the listeners know, but Marco and I know the amount of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pain, and I know John went through this a minute ago, but truly, he goes through an immense amount of pain to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these tier lists to work. And I love him for it, because I do love the tier list member specials. I think they’re becoming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my favorites. But it is such a pain for John, for John and I’m so glad that hopefully, knock on wood,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it will be a lot better now.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it’s fun too. I enjoy making them and finding the things and coming up with the ideas and now it’ll be even more fun because I’ll get
⏹️ ▶️ John to use my own app to do it and not that terrible app that’s there. I mean, this is, I can also like, oh, I gotta add
⏹️ ▶️ John an image export. That’s my last feature I need to add. But like, so I don’t have to do a screenshot of it, I can just export an image of the
⏹️ ▶️ John final tier list, which is what we want. And it looks beautiful because I don’t have to worry about composing the screenshot. Everything will be in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, like this, this is gonna make my life a heck of a lot easier. You can do individual play sessions with save
⏹️ ▶️ John session. So we can I can name the sessions after the episode and we’ll always have the final state of the tier list saved in the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John cool. I actually had one more feature was I want to make publicly accessible ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if I wanted to share to your list, these are all it’s all private data, you can’t get this unless you’re signed in. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I do probably want to make a way to have publicly accessible URL so someone can look at the tier list.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It would be cool to deploy this, you know, under the ATP domain some way, somehow be that, you know, some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sub domain or, you know, some path that’s referred to this. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I’m not trying to make a product here. No, no, no. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know. But I mean, it relates to ATP and it would be cool
⏹️ ▶️ John there. Just the image of the final thing is fine, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah. True. That’s cool. I really dig it. I can also see it being fun.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Actually, I’m not trying to scope creepy here, despite what it sounds, but I could see it fun leaving, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey leaving it possible to generate your own tier list. So like, you know, if I’m a listener,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could take the same source material, generate my own and then generate an image from that, that I could share,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, on social media or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John something like that. If I made this
⏹️ ▶️ John accessible and people could make accounts on it, anyone can make their own tier lists and it would work fine, but I’m not doing that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although it does sound like the tier maker website is so junked up with crap. And I did this in like two days. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously their website is more than just but like if I replace these JSON files with a real database, like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not hard to compete with a lot of these popular websites. They’re just popular because they got a good domain and everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John knows about how to get there. But they’re so junked up with ads and the functionality is so janky. And like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, in two days, I can make a thing that has more features than there. It’s substantially more features than
⏹️ ▶️ John theirs, including ones that are specifically aimed towards our weird use case of doing screen recordings for a podcast,
⏹️ ▶️ John but no one’s ever gonna make that product. So you kind of have to make it yourself.
⏹️ ▶️ John even setting that aside, even the people who just made their little toy things and sent me them or whatever, those are
⏹️ ▶️ John better than the Tiermaker website too, just because the Tiermaker website is so terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, I totally buy it. That’s super cool, John, and definitely a much happier thing to talk about this. So I