689: The Positive Effect of Enthusiasm
30 Apr 2026Mythos, the different personalities of Tim Cook and John Ternus, the complexity of backing up files from cloud-storage providers on macOS, and the long-term future of the Mac.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Mythos
- Follow-up:
- ATP Store
- Yes, it happened again.
- The ATP Neo Silver made it!
- UPenn is an Ivy
- Gurman’s transition coverage
- The Ability to be Hotter
- ATP Store
- Backblaze is no longer backing up cloud storage
- Ask ATP:
- What generation is John’s Accord? What’s the plan for replacement? (via Brian Ashe)
- Which Apple CEO will 💩-can the Mac? (via Jason)
- How often should Macs be restarted? (via Paul Franz)
- Post-show: Pedometer++ version 8.0
- Members-only ATP Overtime: Should Apple MacBook Neo all the things?
Sponsored by:
- Aura Frames: Frames for every memory, gifts for every occasion
- DeleteMe: Making it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online
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Chapters
- Nobody ever has brick!
- Mythos
- ATP Store is closed!
- UPenn is, apparently, a big deal
- Cook and Ternus
- …and Federighi
- Sponsor: Aura Frames (code ATP)
- The ability to be hotter
- Backblaze skips cloud storage
- Sponsor: DeleteMe (code ATP)
- #askatp: John’s next Honda
- #askatp: Which CEO will kill the Mac?
- #askatp: Uptime
- Ending theme
- Pedometer++ 8
Nobody ever has brick!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey See, now you missed my amazing joke, which really wasn’t that amazing. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did, yeah. Well, it’s only uphill from here. No, wait, downhill? Which is, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco knows. It’s only up from here, looking up from here, falling down from here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A debate that Aaron and I had, which I reached a conclusion to, but I don’t think she was paying any attention because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she could not possibly care less, was…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You lost her one sentence
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in. Yeah, pretty much. If I want the air conditioning to be colder, am
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I turning it up or turning it down?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I feel like that when it comes to air conditioning season, I feel like that catches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everybody. Like, oh, turn it up. Well, make it stronger. Which direction is that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. Turn the temperature up, which makes it weaker. Right. And I feel like it’s one of those situations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like settlers or Catan trades where you just have to add more words to clarify what you mean.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anybody want to trade wood for sheep? Oh, wait, no, sorry. I have sheep.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I want wood. Oh, okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey God, I haven’t played that game possibly since you and I and Tiff and Aaron played it 84 years ago. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always has too much sheep. And look, everyone always needs brick. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anybody want to trade sheep? No one has brick, you know, Roger, like pay attention.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s too bad this isn’t in the show.
Mythos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are we ever going to talk about mythos? Mythos? Probably not. What is there to talk about?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wait, what are we talking about?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The model from Anthropic that is…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing! Yes, yes, yes. Sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Alright, so I’m actually legitimately freaked out about it. I gotta say, like, I’m actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I was planning a big overcast server upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I’m accelerating those plans now. Just only, not to like unlock any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new functionality really just like you know I run a certain distribution of Linux that is a few years old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now and it’s it’s you know it’s starting to leave its supported time range
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for certain patches of certain packages and stuff like that and I’m on like I’m on the other side of the big open
⏹️ ▶️ Marco SSL upgrade as well so my god boy there’s no way to really upgrade that in place that breaking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything so I’m gonna you know slowly migrate to new servers but like now I’m like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh maybe I should do that a little more quickly then before. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know you are you two really not you don’t think it’s going to be a thing?
⏹️ ▶️ John Mythos is just a marketing BS, but the idea that LLMs can find security flaws is 100% real
⏹️ ▶️ John and Mythos or not. Yeah, you should upgrade your software to versions that
⏹️ ▶️ John you hope have less security flaws in them because LLMs make it a lot easier for lay people to
⏹️ ▶️ John find those flaws. So yeah, I agree with the upgrade process. I just think the whole Mythos thing is silly
⏹️ ▶️ John overload marketing stunt.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think and again, like I think whether or not Mythos specifically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is okay. So just to explain anybody who missed the story quickly, Anthropx
⏹️ ▶️ Marco latest model Mythos, they’ve only released in a very limited way to like approved people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because what they say is it’s incredibly good at finding security
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vulnerabilities in source code. And it’s already found like hundreds of vulnerabilities in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old packages like, you know, like OpenBSD and FFmpeg, like, you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old software that’s been around forever that’s like run on servers and stuff. And so the concern
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, if this gets into the mass market, lots of people can find security vulnerabilities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and exploit them. And so what they are doing is having like a preview program where they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco allowing certain software vendors to have access to it so they can run it against their code, patch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their code, and get those patches released before this is available to the public.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, this is not a perfect system. Anthropic, as with most AI companies, has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a history of overhyping the capabilities of their models and calling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wolf, so to speak. It’s a good marketing, right? It is. Ben Thompson points out like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the story of the boy who cried wolf does end in an actual wolf. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John is obvious that they didn’t run mythos on their own software because yes
⏹️ ▶️ John people exploited flaws and got and like I got disco got a whole discord got access to mythos and has
⏹️ ▶️ John had it for months. So yeah, you’re not actually keeping this genie in the bottle like we’re only
⏹️ ▶️ John going to release it to a select group of people that is extremely difficult to do and they immediately screwed it
⏹️ ▶️ John up by having security flaws in their own software that were exploited by people who just wanted access to it. But like, but setting
⏹️ ▶️ John the side like as I discussed them, you know, we were talking about things you can use LLMs for many, many episodes ago,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can just ask it to find bugs in your in any code or you could ask it to find security flaws.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it is a tireless searcher for security flaws that you know, it will find things that have not been found by
⏹️ ▶️ John other people because, you know, it’s it’s good at finding them and it doesn’t sleep. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one thing I have found with using LLMs to analyze documents or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco code or whatever it is, is like they are often able to find correlations between different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sections or different parts that I wouldn’t have seen, you know, just because they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work like human brains. They work differently.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And also because they are tireless, like they’re finding bugs in really old code because no one has looked
⏹️ ▶️ John at, no human has looked at that code in 20 years. If a human did look at it and concentrate on it, yeah, they would find the same
⏹️ ▶️ John flaws. But no one’s looking at that. They’re like, oh, that’s old, it’s debugged, it’s fine, it’s good. But a computer doesn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John that same, you know, like, oh, I won’t look at that code because it’s really old and I don’t need to bother looking at it.
⏹️ ▶️ John you just pointed at the whole code base and it just goes through all of it. So it’s not like it’s even better than humans at it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is just simply, it does the things that humans don’t, which is, I’ll look at everything forever as long as you ask me to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I’ll never get tired and I’ll never get bored and I’ll never zone out and I’ll never complain that it’s really boring.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and I’ll never skip over stuff because like, oh, obviously that’s fine. I won’t do that because I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just do what you tell me. If it’s the code, I’ll look at it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. So anyway, I think regardless of whether the hype
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about Mythos is real or valid or earned, like regardless of that, the truth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that we are in a transition point now where like in the long run,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having LLMs look at a bunch of source code at the time will be great for security because I think fewer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco security vulnerabilities will get released in the first place, because the LLMs will either be writing the code and will avoid them, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they will find them.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think they avoid them when they’re writing the code. I think they write plenty of themselves, because they’re copying other code that has security flaws. But yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can have a phase where you say, now just keep looking for security flaws until you think you can’t find any anymore. And then the new
⏹️ ▶️ John version of the model comes out and you ask it to do the same thing over and over,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? But in the meantime, the transition between having all this sloppy human code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is full of vulnerabilities nobody’s ever found, and the future where LLM code is mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s out there or LLM vetted human code or whatever, LLM assisted human, you know, whatever it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This transition period, I think it’s going to be just a tidal wave
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of patches coming out from lots of places. And so, like what I told
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my family, you know, when this news came out a few weeks ago, I’m like, listen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whenever you get an update on your phone or your devices, just accept it, run it. Like don’t defer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software updates for six months. But you know, like this is a good time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be on the latest versions of everything that you can be on the latest versions of. You know, certainly on our personal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco devices, that’s a good idea. You know, I think we can count on the major vendors, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple, Microsoft. Like you can count on them to probably issue critical security patches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for older OSs back to a point. And Apple has actually done that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recently. They’ve actually issued some very old OS patches recently for like some pretty big bugs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that’s only to a point that they’ll do that and only for like the worst bugs probably.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so this is a really good, like the way I think it’s wise to deal with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether it’s Mythos or Mythos-like things in the present or future is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just be running the latest versions of everything you possibly can. And when patches come out, just install them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as fast as you can. This is not a good time to be running old software. And unfortunately, on servers, it’s a lot more difficult.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, and so that’s why like I’m embarking on this project to do this giant rolling upgrade basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not fun, but I feel like, you know, if Overcast got hacked because I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upgrade my Linux version from one from 2024 or whatever, like I’m gonna feel pretty bad about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the tricky part of just upgrade to the latest version whenever it comes out is you gotta hope those latest versions don’t have a bunch of vibe coded
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff that adds a bunch of horrendous security flaws in it. So, you know, it’s a double-edged sword because
⏹️ ▶️ John yes, And to be clear, you don’t need to use Mythos to find security flaws. Any of the existing
⏹️ ▶️ John coding models, they can and will find security flaws, right? Not just Mythos, right? But also
⏹️ ▶️ John people will use them carelessly to create security flaws because, you know, just because they’re good at finding them doesn’t mean they won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John create them themselves. And because you can create so much code so much faster these days, like I just saw a stat fly by today
⏹️ ▶️ John that GitHub for all their problems, they’re having a bunch of problems related to Microsoft being Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever and absorbing that company. But setting that aside, one stat that they threw out was
⏹️ ▶️ John that the number of commits going into GitHub has increased by a literal order of magnitude since
⏹️ ▶️ John this time last year. Yeah, that’s wild. So, and where do you think all those new commits are coming from?
⏹️ ▶️ John Did we get 10 times as many programmers in the last year? We did not. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, it’s a wild time out there in the software world, you know, and we can
⏹️ ▶️ John use the tools to help protect us, but those same tools are also kind of screwing us over. And there were some, I don’t know if any of
⏹️ ▶️ John this is true, but there’s a bunch of narrative that a part of GitHub stability problems is because the people at GitHub
⏹️ ▶️ John themselves are vide coding a bunch of things and it’s destroying their stability. But other people say just being bought by Microsoft destroyed
⏹️ ▶️ John their ability because anyway, I’m not even weighing in on that, but just simply the stat that 10
⏹️ ▶️ John times more commits are going to, or was it 14 times more commits are happening in GitHub
⏹️ ▶️ John versus a year ago is a fairly large change. It’s difficult for GitHub to handle and it is indicative
⏹️ ▶️ John that more code is being produced than you would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expect. Yeah, but and honestly, like, you know, I don’t know what’s going on with GitHub, but if I ran
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a giant web service and it had 14 times the traffic in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few months. I thought you did that with Tumblr. Yeah, we grew like 20%, you know, like 20% at a time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically. Like this is very different. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John like 14X in, what is it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco four months? They said
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco they’re on pace for 14X in a year,
⏹️ ▶️ John if the current curve continues. But still,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco also, they’re starting from a larger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s significant. Oh, yeah. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John already pretty big. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t know what the internal politics are there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I certainly don’t blame them for having some uptime issues when they’re growing at that rate all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a sudden. That is significant.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that’s the problem. If you look at the graph of their stability, the uptime issues happen coincident
⏹️ ▶️ John with the Microsoft acquisition and not coincident with the rise of coding agents. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not entirely sure where the cause is there. but I’m sure that story will be told eventually.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Anyway, this is a good time to run updated software. So I suggest everyone out there, keep those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco patches installed. Like install them when they come out, keep current. This is a bad time to hold on to an old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version as much as Mac OS Tahoe sucks.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, unless you’re running Mac OS 15, which Apple has been patching it. So good on Apple. Yeah, so far.
ATP Store is closed!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do some follow-up. Uh, I wanted to reiterate, even though the store is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey closed, it happened yet again. I will save this person’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey name. I will not share their name to save their dishonor, but an anonymous
⏹️ ▶️ Casey person wrote in and wrote the following. I thought I would remember as I always have. I did remember on Monday,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the 27th of April at 1 34 AM Pacific time, the store was closed. I wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to order the RIP Mac pro shirt to go with my Believe version. RIP me, I guess, pulling over next time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is why we say to pull over the car, people, every time. Every time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Don’t be that person next time. Every time.
⏹️ ▶️ John There was more than one person. I saw at least one other report. It
⏹️ ▶️ John you know? It happens.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It happens. But there is some good news, John. Can you share the good word?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the ATP Neo Silver shirt did, in fact, get enough people to order it to have
⏹️ ▶️ John the shirt printed. In the end, a total of 34 people bought it. So we had the first week, one person bought it. The second week, two
⏹️ ▶️ John people. And then the third week, everyone came storming in and they passed that threshold of a dozen
⏹️ ▶️ John orders. In the end, 34 people ordered it. It will be printed. Congratulations, ATP Neo
⏹️ ▶️ John Silver Shirt Owners. That grew faster than GitHub. Yeah. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is that the most rare piece of ATP merchandise? Because remember that we had those misprints on, I think, the very first
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but I think we sold more than 34 of the misprints. Yeah, way more.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey That’s what I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying. I think this might be the most rare piece of ATP merchandise.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, we’ve sold fewer than 34 from other
⏹️ ▶️ John Normally, what happens is the whole thing with the silver is what took so long to go over the threshold or you’ve had things
⏹️ ▶️ John go over the threshold pretty quickly but still only end up sending like 16 or 20. So, I don’t think it’s that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, either way. Yeah.
UPenn is, apparently, a big deal
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we have a handful of very grumpy people from the University of Pennsylvania who took issue with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John. I’m going to say, and this is hyperbolic, pooh-poohing their engineering program.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is, again, hyperbolic. John, would you like to read?
⏹️ ▶️ John wasn’t pooh-poohing their engineering program. I was saying that we were talking about John Ternus last week for
⏹️ ▶️ John a very obvious reason. And I noted that he just had an engineering degree from the University
⏹️ ▶️ John of Pennsylvania. And I was saying how that’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John unimpressive pedigree for someone who is the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world. Just
⏹️ ▶️ John an undergraduate degree, just an engineering degree, and just from University of Pennsylvania. And everyone in the world
⏹️ ▶️ John wrote in to tell us, to remind us, that University of Pennsylvania is, in fact, an Ivy League school.
⏹️ ▶️ John I did not remember that at all, because Brown fills that slot in my mind, as the school that you never remember is an
⏹️ ▶️ John Ivy League school, but really is. We’ll put a link in the show notes to Ivy League schools if you’re not in the US
⏹️ ▶️ John and don’t know what they are. You can read the Wikipedia page. It’s a bunch of supposedly prestigious schools
⏹️ ▶️ John for reasons that are rooted in history more than anything else. Kieran Healy writes, when I was a grad
⏹️ ▶️ John student, the joke amongst obnoxious Princeton undergraduates about UPenn was that
⏹️ ▶️ John the students there thought the full name of the school was UPenn and other Ivies. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John to see the people who were there, it’s like, would always remind you. And you know, I go, University of Pennsylvania,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is of course one of the Ivies. And then Kieran continues, there’s also a trollish bit where people deliberately
⏹️ ▶️ John confuse University of Pennsylvania and Penn State, which are two entirely different schools. Indeed.
⏹️ ▶️ John And one of them is Ivy League and one of them is not. And then Marina Eppelman writes, arguably,
⏹️ ▶️ John engineering in Penn State is superior to UPenn. That was my other point that, like, you know, setting aside University of
⏹️ ▶️ John Pennsylvania being an Ivy League school, I don’t think it’s particularly known as like an amazing
⏹️ ▶️ John engineering school. But to our credit and to Casey’s credit, we did. Casey did look up on last
⏹️ ▶️ John episode what is ranked. And so it’s not like we said, oh, this is a terrible school. And then we didn’t bother looking into
⏹️ ▶️ John it further. We looked up and Casey looked up in real time and said on last episode that you pen is number 16
⏹️ ▶️ John ranked in engineering and for whatever US News and World Report is worth. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John you and Virginia Tech are 32. And what is PSU? Penn State University. Yeah. Penn State is number 28.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m not saying it’s a bad school or anything, but my point stands, which is like he’s just got an engineering bachelor’s degree.
⏹️ ▶️ John What I should the other point that I should have made. He doesn’t even have an MBA. Like if you’re going to be like an executive, very
⏹️ ▶️ John often you get like an engineering degree, but eventually you decide, like, actually I want to be like a C level executive
⏹️ ▶️ John or something. And so you get an MBA on top of your undergrad or you’ll get an undergrad and a master’s and
⏹️ ▶️ John an MBA. Like, unless you’re a founder of a company, you tend not to see someone
⏹️ ▶️ John going to the C level of a company without
⏹️ ▶️ John more degrees. That was my only point. And I said, you know, it shows that you don’t need to worry about
⏹️ ▶️ John getting, you know, a bunch of fancy degrees from fancy schools to become a CEO, but obviously UPenn being
⏹️ ▶️ John an Ivy League kind of undercuts that a bit. But still, just having a bachelor’s degree and not being a founder of a company,
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty good job. And then other people argued, well, he did that a long time ago and things have changed and now you actually do need another degree.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m not sure that’s the case, but all I’m saying is don’t let your education dictate your destiny.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, thank God the new CEO of Apple doesn’t have an MBA.
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s rare. Obviously Apple’s a special case, but look at the CEOs of most other companies.
⏹️ ▶️ John you will see that like they’re like business people or have business degrees or have some other degree of whatever they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John interested into. And then they got an MBA, because that’s kind of how you get into the like, I wanna be,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, management in the C level. Eventually you get an MBA and you tack it on to whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John your other degree was.
Cook and Ternus
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we have kind of Mark Gurman corner. First of all, Gurman reported
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Tim Cook’s remarks to Apple employees regarding his pending retirement or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John reassignment. Not retirement, but stepping down as CEO. There you go.
⏹️ ▶️ John Stepping up to be executive chairman. I don’t know. He’s stepping somewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Stepping onto the roof. So he spoke to Apple employees on Tuesday, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 21st of April. A couple of quotes that Gurman reports, I’m excited to continue my journey at Apple as executive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chairman. I am healthy. My energy is high and I plan to be in this new role for a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ John That, that addresses the point we talked about last time when I asked, do you think, how long do you think Tim Cook will be
⏹️ ▶️ John executive chairman at Apple? And I said, I don’t think he’ll ever leave. And so what he’s saying
⏹️ ▶️ John is, first of all, I’m healthy, which is a way of his way of saying, I’m not stepping down as CEO because
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m about to die. Right? Like it’s the, I don’t, there’s some health thing, you know, I’m healthy, my energy is high and
⏹️ ▶️ John guess what? I plan to be here for a long time. I’m not just being executive chairman in the next year, I’m going to retire and go fishing.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not his plan currently. So all this checks out. It’s going to be tough to get rid of Tim
⏹️ ▶️ John Cook if he’s healthy, exercising and does not really ever feel like leaving as executive chairman.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tim continues, I’ll be there to support, excuse me, here to support John in any way he needs and in any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way I can. I’ll be here to offer my knowledge and experience and be a sounding board anytime I’m called
⏹️ ▶️ Casey upon. Apple will be my top priority. It’s who I am at my core. That’s a good Apple joke. And I can’t imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John Because again, that’s an Apple lifer talking right there. Mm-hmm.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cook finalized, there can only be one CEO at a time, which is a good way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of saying I’m not going to be in the way. Hopefully. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, certainly, executive chairman of the board should be a much easier, more relaxing job for
⏹️ ▶️ John Tim than being CEO, obviously. And so congratulations to him to hopefully lowering his
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then with regard to Mark Ternes. Wow,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John let me try that again.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mark Gurman with regard to John Ternes. There we go. German writes, Ternes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was a champion of the MacBook Neo. He urged the company to sell a cheaper laptop that could appeal to a younger generation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Longtime colleagues describe Ternes as someone willing to make clear calls, in contrast to Cook’s more deliberative,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey consensus-oriented approach. Quote, Ternes will make decisions, quote, when it comes to product developments, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one person who’s worked closely with both executives. Quote, if you go into Tim with A or B, he won’t pick. He’ll ask a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey series of questions instead of he has concerns. Ternes, on the other hand, will choose, said the person. It could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be right or wrong, but at least it’s a decision. That shift could mark the end of an era in which major product
⏹️ ▶️ Casey decisions were made collectively by a small group of top executives. Ternes is expected to take
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a more centralized approach, where he will be a singular decision maker. Earlier this month,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ternes overhauled the hardware engineering organization around what he calls a new AI platform designed to speed up product development
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and improve device quality. It’s indicative of his plan to deploy AI quickly throughout the company to improve its
⏹️ ▶️ Casey operations. The executive has told staffers that he will remain closely involved with hardware engineering efforts,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey aiming to shepherd the next generation of technologies.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this, uh, characterization of Ternus as decisive in areas where Cook wasn’t, uh, sounds
⏹️ ▶️ John encouraging, but I do have to say that I have also seen reports of the exact opposite that he’s not decisive
⏹️ ▶️ John and is afraid to make decisions. So it’s really hard to tell what’s going on inside there. That’s this, the
⏹️ ▶️ John problem I’ve always cited when talking about this is Ternus as he existed in the company run by Tim Cook necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ John was subsumed under the way Tim Cook wanted to do things. So it’s very difficult to figure out how he
⏹️ ▶️ John in particular does things except for through like these anonymous reports from people in turn. It’s his reporting chain
⏹️ ▶️ John who can, can describe what he was like. And that’s, you know, that’s presumably what this is, but what
⏹️ ▶️ John will he be like at CEO? I can tell you, I would love him to be decisive, even if he
⏹️ ▶️ John makes mistakes. You know, again, he was supposedly a proponent of the touch bar, which I don’t think was a good idea. But
⏹️ ▶️ John decisively backing the touch bar might have had a different result than throwing the touch bar
⏹️ ▶️ John out there and letting it languish until you just give up on it and never make any changes to it. So like I’m all for decisive
⏹️ ▶️ John action, especially if that decisive action can go in the opposite direction, which is we take decisive action,
⏹️ ▶️ John we try it, and then we decisively figure out that we screwed up and decisively stop, right? As
⏹️ ▶️ John opposed to just kind of going, eh, I don’t know, maybe try this, see how it goes, whatever. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John um, I’m kind of hearing what I want to hear, uh, in these stories, but, uh, until proven otherwise, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John continued to be optimistic about how things will go.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. This honestly sounds, you know, having turn us come in here with a different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco style and everything we don’t know for sure, this is going to be a good thing, uh, time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will tell, but. I’m, I’m pretty optimistic. I think this is what Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs. Obviously, any strategy can go wrong, but whenever we’ve heard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stories about Tim Cook’s leadership style as CEO, there’s a few themes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that run through. Number one is basically what German says here of like, Cook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does not like to be brought problems. I’ve even heard people say like, don’t bring me problems is one of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco his things that he has always said. It seems like, you know, Cook does a really good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco job of seeming like a nice, calm, chill guy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in public or in interviews, but everything we’ve heard about Cook’s leadership style
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounds a lot less nice and chill. It sounds like Cook is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ruthless and leads by sheer force of will in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a, what are you doing to ask, even asking me this question kind of way. That’s the story, the kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of theme of what we hear is, that’s more what he is. A ruthless bean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco counter and decision avoider. And very cold, like all the descriptions of Cook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this leader’s life, it’s like a cold, ruthless numbers guy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nothing we’ve heard about Ternus sounds anything like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s why I’m optimistic. It’s not that, you know, it’s not that Cook is without benefit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the company, obviously, know, he did very well in lots of ways. But like, I think the way to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great products more consistently is more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the kind of style we’re hearing about turn us not the kind of style we’ve heard about about cook.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And like I think one of the aspects that doesn’t get talked about much these days is the ability to inspire
⏹️ ▶️ John the organization behind whatever it is that you think is your vision or whatever. And for all Tim Cook’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, good sides, I don’t feel like he was ever an inspiration to the people
⏹️ ▶️ John who reported to him or to parts of the organization in terms of a vision of where we’re going. Whereas,
⏹️ ▶️ John again, I have no friggin idea how Ternus actually was within the company under Tim Cook. But it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John like the hardware division did a good job in a way that I can only imagine happening
⏹️ ▶️ John if Ternus was inspiring them to do their best work. Maybe that’s not true. I don’t know. But
⏹️ ▶️ John when you have an organization excelling, you always imagine that the leadership is not just like
⏹️ ▶️ John making the right decisions and getting people to do things on the right track. But they’re also inspiring those people to
⏹️ ▶️ John do, to go the extra mile, to be enthusiastic about something cool
⏹️ ▶️ John that they’re doing. And it’s hard to imagine Apple’s recent hardware run without there being some
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of inspiration in that organization. Because it’s not just like, oh, we’re afraid of the boss and we’ll just try to do a really good job.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s not just like, oh, we’re really smart. Because there’s tons of really smart people at Apple. And there’s tons of people who want to do a good job. But
⏹️ ▶️ John having leadership that inspires, and that’s one thing Steve Jobs did. he had enthusiasm for certain things.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if the thing he was enthusiastic about, he would inspire people to do it. He was obviously, Steve Jobs was enthusiastic
⏹️ ▶️ John about what he considered to be good user interface design. Very often he had weird ideas,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s so clear that the people who were also inspired by, were on the same way, like this, and were like, yeah, I do
⏹️ ▶️ John wanna make the best looking button that you wanna lick. Was that a good idea? But I can tell you, he
⏹️ ▶️ John sure as hell inspired that team to make Aqua to his tastes, and that team was enthusiastic
⏹️ ▶️ John to do it because they could see the vision like, yes, we’re gonna do this. Again, you can quibble with the ideas, but it was so
⏹️ ▶️ John clearly not just like, this is what we’re gonna do and everyone get in line.
⏹️ ▶️ John How could you not help but be inspired by Steve Jobs’ obvious enthusiasm for what would
⏹️ ▶️ John become the Aqua interface? And you know, and so that’s what I hope Ternus will provide that Cook didn’t, which is whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John Ternus is excited about, whether it’s the touch bar or cheap laptops or whatever things that he’s
⏹️ ▶️ John excited about, I want him to inspire the Apple organization to get behind
⏹️ ▶️ John his vision because they want them to see that he’s super jazzed and into it. And like, what the hell was Tim
⏹️ ▶️ John Cook super jazzed and into, you know, product wise, I guess, maybe the car and maybe also
⏹️ ▶️ John like the iPad for a while, but it was so hard to tell.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know if Cook was super jazzed about anything like that’s not his style. Super jazzed about earnings calls, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Even yeah, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he felt like, but that’s I think also, you know, kind of another another aspect of these styles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, you know, one of the things we’ve always heard about Cook is Again, like they don’t bring me problems.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What that meant is that it kind of pushed problems down in the organization.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The idea, I believe, I think the goal of a philosophy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that is to make the people under you figure things out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and deal with things themselves. And deal with conflict, resolve conflicts themselves, don’t bring it to you. That’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the idea. But one of the downsides of that approach is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many problems in the organization can result or many problems in the products can result
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from like weird personality problems, like in like some mid level of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco leadership. And so if some VP doesn’t get along with some other VP, or there’s friction between two different divisions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever, that can like hold back a product or that can cause certain dysfunctions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or that can create the wrong incentives. Ideally, the leader,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through both inspiration, as John was just saying, and I think through being a little more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco involved in product development in a company like Apple, should ideally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bring those conflicts better to resolutions that are directed from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the philosophy at the top. Rather than Cook saying, figure it out yourself, don’t come to me with your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco BS. That just pushes down that that’s like you know that’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know deal with deal with your problems by suppressing them like that doesn’t really work. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve heard over the years we’ve heard so many stories of like why is this thing this way oh it’s because this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one leader of this one group like refuses to do it any other way and there’s some conflict between them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and some other group but like we’ve heard these stories enough of them that it’s probably there’s probably some some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco truth to this general dynamic. So the turn of style, if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more like the job style, you know, jobs would get in there and like, you know, command
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things to happen and they would happen. It’s a harder process to scale, like the jobs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the job style is harder to scale as a company gets really big. But that does result
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in certain frictions being removed. Now it’s also bottlenecks certain things. If more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things are going through the CEO, you do have to, you know, deal with bottlenecks here and there. But like, yeah, like
⏹️ ▶️ John an apple under the jobs to our, you could kind of tell what they were concentrating on. And other things suffered
⏹️ ▶️ John during that time because of that bottleneck.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. Um, and so, you know, there are, you know, the, the approaches are not without their, their downsides, but.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The, the jobs approach and what it sounds like, hopefully the turn this approach is closer to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that’s better for apple’s product quality overall. Um, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, you can, we can argue about finances and operations and everything. And there’s, you know, there’s ways
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to delegate those things. You know, you don’t have to, the CEO is not the one going to every factory or whatever, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you, you can delegate, but the general leadership style of jobs and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco allegedly Ternus sounds better for Apple and for Apple’s products.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I think you’re right. And I’m really hopeful that once things get settled, we’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see kind of a new normal that’s maybe better, which would be really nice.
…and Federighi
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, can I, this is just pure speculation here. Do you think it’s worth noting that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have a chief hardware officer now, but Craig Federighi did not get elevated to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chief software officer?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, he wasn’t the one who was threatening to leave. And he’s not as indispensable as Sruji,
⏹️ ▶️ John so that’s what that boils down to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, look, I don’t wanna start any crap or anything, but that to me kind of stood out as like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe Federighi’s not gonna be with us that much longer in this role.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, that’s up to him, right? Like that’s another thing that I haven’t seen mentioned as much. I got mentioned a couple of times in the CEO
⏹️ ▶️ John transition, but like, and we’ve been talking about it for months leading up to this. Uh, we’re like, Oh, you know, when, when there’s a CEO
⏹️ ▶️ John transition, obviously there’s a lot of turnover. Cause like now’s the time to re re-examine what you’re doing and maybe you’re old as well,
⏹️ ▶️ John blah, blah, blah. But that, that turnover does not necessarily end when the CEO transition
⏹️ ▶️ John is announced. So don’t be surprised if you see more executive turnover surrounding
⏹️ ▶️ John the CEO transition, not just only before it. So I agree with you. Like, I don’t think Federico is going anywhere, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t be shocked if you see some more people leave and it’s like, well, why didn’t they leave before the transition? Surely they knew it was coming. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes it happens before, sometimes it happens after, but I mean, just the Federico situation to him, not becoming
⏹️ ▶️ John chief software officer or whatever, um, from an outside perspective, because I have no idea what’s
⏹️ ▶️ John going on in there. Apple’s hardware is amazing. Apple’s chips are amazing. Apple software is less
⏹️ ▶️ John amazing. I mean, it’s as simple
⏹️ ▶️ John The hardware guy becomes CEO. The chip guy becomes chief hardware officer and the software guy. Stay where you are. You
⏹️ ▶️ John got some work to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and I think like, you know, if we maybe, you know, whenever Federico does actually retire or leave,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m sure we’ll do a whole thing about like what we feel about his era. But I do think the the Federico
⏹️ ▶️ Marco era has been defined by some things being pretty good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and some things being a little rough.
⏹️ ▶️ John And also, I have to say, I mean, this is one of the things that I would say in the defense of Federico is
⏹️ ▶️ John at various times, including currently, he hasn’t actually been in charge of all software
⏹️ ▶️ John to the detriment of like, I mean, for example, Siri has been passed around like a hot potato, not
⏹️ ▶️ John spending too much time under Federighi. How can he be expected
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around more like nuclear waste?
⏹️ ▶️ John But like, and I believe Siri was under Federighi for some period of time. But for a thing for like
⏹️ ▶️ John long suffering weaknesses in Apple software platform, Federighi, if you had given that to Federighi 10 years ago,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it had always been his, I think it would have done better than if it had been passed around the org and he would hire the Google guy
⏹️ ▶️ John from the outside and let him run it and then given it to Rockwell. And like, it’s been all over the place. And like, I just feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s unfair to say, well, Federico, you’re, you’re the big, you’re the highest level software guy. So anything
⏹️ ▶️ John involving software with Apple is your fault. Some things are, but not everything. And in particular, not Siri, which has
⏹️ ▶️ John been one of the most glaring weaknesses that has only become more glaring with the advent of LLM. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John give Federico some cover for like, I mean, Sruji has been in charge of Apple Silicon, right? There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John It hasn’t been passed around. It hasn’t been divided up between him and some outside hires and stuff. It’s just him. So it literally dies
⏹️ ▶️ John based on him. But Federico has been gaining responsibility, but at various times has not been given
⏹️ ▶️ John responsibility over all the things. So I don’t know. Yeah, we will talk about that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t feel like the Federico era, like some of its I think some of its shortcomings
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are around like like product or design decisions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the software that he probably was not the one making those decisions, or at least not exclusively.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like he’s involved in that process, but he is not the head of design.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you look at like the challenges of the Federighi software, even let’s leave out Siri, because yeah, we know that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been nuclear waste. But like, I think the main challenges of the Federighi era have been software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design, which isn’t really him, software quality, which is him. And you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, that’s we that we can talk about. And I would say the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco features that are developed with Federighi, there’s like, there’s immense
⏹️ ▶️ Marco engineering sophistication and an immense care for privacy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But then you have the user facing features are like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really kind of like finicky and complicated configuration stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like focus modes and like the like the home screen configuration stuff. And like there’s there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of stuff there that’s like, I see where this came from, But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is delivered as a very kind of complicated story that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think could have used better product direction. So like, and again, I don’t know the way things work between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software design and marketing and like how the product decisions are made. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know how much of that was Federighi’s call, but the software quality is under him for sure. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do think like regardless of whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other inputs there are on design and product decisions, software quality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco itself is a hundred percent on Federighi’s leadership and his organization.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like that is definitely him. And I do think that story with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software has been spotty. And I like Federico
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a leader, as a presenter, as a character. And I like that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he, I’ve had the chance to meet him a few times. And he is very clearly a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very good engineer. The technical sophistication of the things that he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both understands and has implemented in the past and has led the implementation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of more recently. He really knows his stuff at a technical engineering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco level. And everything they say about like privacy and everything, he embodies that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he values that, he enforces that. So I give him a hundred
⏹️ ▶️ Marco percent credit for being a real nerds nerd, a really good engineer, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having the right principles about things like quality and privacy. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the quality part, the execution on the quality part has been spotty.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And but I do wonder like with this new elevation of turn us we don’t know how to turn us in favor Federico
⏹️ ▶️ Marco along probably I’m sure it’s fine but like with that elevation Federico I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think Federico you want to be CEO so I don’t think there’s that kind of weird friction but like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s gotta maybe like put an end date in his mind of when he wants to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco leave and I would not surprise me if the Federico era
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and sooner than than people think I would be I would be shocked if he’s still there in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say certainly five years, maybe even three years And then finally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my one really crazy wild card, which I know this is ridiculous But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what if they brought Scott Forstall back?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John They will I mean
⏹️ ▶️ John this is not a serious. I don’t I don’t think he wants to come back, right? honestly, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want him to come back but But you know, like that’s the type of thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that a new CEO can make happen. Because honestly, as much as Tim Cook was responsible for for forestall
⏹️ ▶️ John being booted out or leaving or whatever, Tim Cook wouldn’t stop turn us from bringing forestall back if he wanted.
⏹️ ▶️ John I doesn’t seem like a thing that is going to happen. And I think I don’t agree with a lot of things that forestall did. But
⏹️ ▶️ John to give an example, forestall definitely inspired the people under him. And the same way I feel like Federighi and his Federighi’s
⏹️ ▶️ John obvious enthusiasm for the technical aspects of his work inspires the people who work under him,
⏹️ ▶️ John who are also enthusiastic about those things. So there’s a positive effect of the positive effect of
⏹️ ▶️ John enthusiasm is what I’m endorsing in this episode that like, if you’re excited about a job related thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t be excited about every job related thing. But Federico, when we see him speak, he’s clearly animated
⏹️ ▶️ John enthusiastic about specific aspects of his work. And it’s infectious, right? If you
⏹️ ▶️ John are also on that same wavelength, like yes, my boss’s boss’s His boss is also super into this thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that I also think is cool, and we’re going to do some awesome stuff together. And they do. And then there’s the parts that he seems
⏹️ ▶️ John less enthusiastic about or has bad taste with, right? So, you know, nobody’s perfect. But yeah, Forrestal coming
⏹️ ▶️ John back. Ternus could do that if he felt like it was the right thing to do. And Forrestal was willing to do it, which it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John like Forrestal’s happy out there doing whatever he wants. But, you know, stranger things have happened. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco To be clear, like, I don’t I don’t think that that’s a realistic outcome for lots of reasons. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is an interesting thing, I think, to think about as fans, just like a wild fantasy to
⏹️ ▶️ John Especially if Federighi leaves and there’s a gap and it’s like, who can we get to fill this gap? It’s like, well, we have one guy who kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of has already been in that seat. And if he suddenly has a change of heart and is like, you know what?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you know, there’s a gap, there’s a power vacuum and you’re going to bring me back. Hey, it worked for jobs.
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The ability to be hotter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. I think about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an hour ago we were in follow-up. So let’s continue. The ability to be hotter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What was the context for this, please, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John This is, uh, have Apple making computers that can cool CPUs
⏹️ ▶️ John that have more transistors and that dissipate more energy in exchange for doing more computation.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re, you know, as of now, their biggest computer is the Mac Studio. It can only dissipate, you know, under
⏹️ ▶️ John 300 watts of power, or it is only dissipating under 300 watts of power with the current most power hungry chip.
⏹️ ▶️ John What if you could dissipate twice that heat? Could you put a chip that had twice as many transistors and was maybe 1.5
⏹️ ▶️ John times as fast? I think you could, but Apple hasn’t done it. So on that topic of the ability for Macs to be
⏹️ ▶️ John hotter in exchange for doing more computation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so Rachel Neuwer in Scientific American writes, as reported in Science, a metallic material
⏹️ ▶️ Casey called Theta Phase Tantalum Nitrate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey achieved a thermal conductivity of about 1110 watts per meter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Kelvin, about three times higher than copper’s 400 watts per meter Kelvin.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it works in a way scientists have never seen before. Quote, our result breaks the historic ceiling for heat transport metallic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey materials, says senior author Yongjie Hu, a physicist and engineer at the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey University of California, Los Angeles. this conductor superior performance, it has potential to compliment or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even replace copper. So Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if you want to keep the Mac Studio the same size, boy, do I have a way you can get more heat out of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe three times as much heat. I don’t know how much this alloy costs or how difficult it is to manufacture,
⏹️ ▶️ John but, and it’s probably actually much more relevant for things like phones where a tiny amount of this exotic material
⏹️ ▶️ John could dissipate heat even better, but I’m excited about material advances. So Apple, just make the
⏹️ ▶️ John bigger Mac case to dissipate more heat, but on the phones, put one of these suckers in there because it sounds cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it literally sounds cool, John.
Backblaze skips cloud storage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do some topics. And we’ve had, this is one of those topics that we’ve had on the docket
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a couple of weeks, but we just haven’t had a chance to talk about it. Um, we’re going to talk about Backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and how they’re no longer backing up everything that we thought they were. Uh, before I go any further,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wanted to remind everyone, uh, backblaze is a former sponsor. They are not currently a future sponsor.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In fact, they last sponsored us, I believe the summer of 2023, as far as my records indicated, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just want to make that plain for everyone. Uh, with that in mind, Robert Anton Rees
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrote, sometime semi-recently, despite claiming to back up all of your data, Backblaze quietly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders, along with potentially many other things. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey later in the same piece, which we’ll link in the show notes, of course, he said the following, which I thought was very,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at first I thought it was a bit dramatic, and then the more I thought about it, I was like, no, actually I think he’s onto something here. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Robert Anton Rees wrote, by deciding not to back up everything, Backblaze has made
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it as if they are backing up nothing. His point here is that it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey always used to be that you could just assume that Backblaze was backing up everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And over the years, they seem to be chipping away at that in bits and pieces and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fits and spurts. And so now there’s some amount of question. Are they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey backing up x? Are they backing up y? Are they backing up z? And at that point, it’s like, well, what am
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I even doing here in the first place? To be fair, I am a backblaze person. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey still like it. I still use it. I am unaware of a better solution for my needs. We’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gonna talk about other options toward the end of this topic, but that’s where I stand. And maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey once you guys start chiming in, you can tell me your situation. But one way or another, John, it looks like you did some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spelunking and discovered in Mac version 9.2.2.878, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was released roundabouts of the end of August, 2025. There’s the following in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey release notes. Recent macOS versions can mount cloud storage, for example, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox in local paths, causing the backup client to mistakenly back them up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey These cloud-mounted folders are now detected and excluded to avoid performance issues, excessive data
⏹️ ▶️ Casey usage, and restore complications.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Meanwhile, in version 9.2.2.877,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and this is for Windows now, The backup client now excludes popular cloud storage providers from backup, including both
⏹️ ▶️ Casey malpoints and cache directories. This prevents performance issues, excessive data usage, and unintended uploads
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from services like OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, iDrive, and others.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This change aligns with Backblaze’s policy to backup only local and directly connected storage.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey People were not happy about this, and people got very unhappy about this in a lot of places, including
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Backblaze’s Reddit, or subreddit, excuse
⏹️ ▶️ John me. And by the way, just to reiterate the date for those versions that I just pulled out here. And I was guessing based on like archive.org
⏹️ ▶️ John pages and some random webpage I found that listed the date as being around end of August, early September, 2025
⏹️ ▶️ John because Backplace does not put dates in their own release notes on their website. That’s why I had to do the spelunking to figure it out.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, that’s summer 2025, when these releases came out
⏹️ ▶️ John that started excluding these things. So it’s taken people to, to Casey’s earlier point, it’s taken people
⏹️ ▶️ John like almost a year to go, hey, wait a second, you mean it’s not backing up my stuff my Dropbox.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s one of the worst things about this is like, you just assume it’s doing a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and backing up your stuff. And if you don’t have occasion to check, you know, maybe you won’t know that suddenly a thing that was
⏹️ ▶️ John being previously backed up as not being backed up. So yes, people have discovered it almost a year later and are making lots of noise
⏹️ ▶️ John about it, which is why it’s in the news now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. So on their subreddit, Natasha, who is an employee at Backblaze wrote the following.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This decision was driven by a consistent set of technical issues we were seeing at scale, most of them driven by updates
⏹️ ▶️ Casey created by third third-party sync tools, including unreliable backups and incomplete restores when backing up files managed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by third-party sync providers. These cloud storage providers now rely heavily on OS-level frameworks to manage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sync state. On Windows, for example, files are often represented as reparse points, which is an NTFS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing, via the Cloud Files API. When they can appear local, they are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey still system-managed placeholders, which makes it difficult to reliably back them up as standard on-disk files.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Additionally, Jim, another Backlays employee, chimed in, Once a reparse point is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey added, Backblaze is unable to back up the file, even if it physically resides on the computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not great, Bob. Continuing from Natasha, we built our product in a way to not back up reparse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey points for two reasons. One, we wanted the backup client to be light on the system and only backup needed user-generated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey files. Two, we wanted the service to be unlimited. So following reparse points would lead us to backing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up tons of data in the cloud. We’ve made targeted investments where we can,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for example, adding support for iCloud Drive by working within Apple’s model and supporting Google Drive. But extending
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that same level of support to third-party providers like Dropbox or OneDrive is more complex and not included in the current
⏹️ ▶️ Casey version. We are currently exploring an add-on that either follows reparse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey points or backs up the tag data in another way. We also hear you clearly about the communication gap.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Both the sync providers and backplay should have been more proactive in notifying customers about a change with this level of impact.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Please feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any questions. So here’s the thing. I’ve read into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this some, and I think two things are simultaneously true. It seems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me that by way of the OS level affordances for this stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey becoming more of a thing and arguably somewhat more opaque
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for anything that isn’t like Dropbox itself, or, you know, whatever your pro provider is itself. It does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey legitimately make it harder for Backblaze to the point that it seemed so unreliable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you are to believe backblaze, so unreliable that it’s almost worse for them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to try to back this stuff up, because then some parts will get there, some files won’t get there, some files will be in a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weird state, and it’s inconsistent, and that’s arguably worse. It’s better off to just say, screw it, we’re not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to back any of this stuff up. I genuinely have no reason to believe, maybe John will correct me here in a minute, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have no reason to believe that’s untrue. However, to just quietly slide this into release
⏹️ ▶️ Casey notes and not say anything about it, And also to say that it’s on the sync
⏹️ ▶️ Casey providers. Let me reread what Natasha said. We also hear you clearly on the communication gap. Both the sync providers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Backblaze should have been more proactive in notifying customers. I don’t think this is on Dropbox or whatever or whoever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey else to notify Backblaze customers that this is the case. This is a Backblaze problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, so it’s, I see what they’re saying. And that you remember when Dropbox went to like the, rolled out
⏹️ ▶️ John their file provider version, the one that works with Apple’s framework for doing cloud files, as opposed to using like the
⏹️ ▶️ John custom system, in the back that Dropbox did. When they rolled that out, Dropbox, first
⏹️ ▶️ John of all, I think it was like optional or opt-in and within the little Dropbox app on macOS, you’d
⏹️ ▶️ John be like, there’s a thing you could click and it’d be like, what is this? What are you talking about, file provider? Which would lead
⏹️ ▶️ John you to a webpage on dropbox.com which would say, hey, here’s the deal with the file provider version. We’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John this because Apple’s making us, they basically said, which is true because Apple’s trying to make them use their framework.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you go to this version, here are the limitations. And those limitations were like,
⏹️ ▶️ John other programs that were previously accessing files in your Dropbox might have problems because
⏹️ ▶️ John of the way File Provider works. And so I feel like Dropbox actually did do a better job of saying, if you choose
⏹️ ▶️ John to go to the File Provider version of Dropbox, it won’t work the same as the old one
⏹️ ▶️ John in ways that affect other apps. Like we are changing the way our stuff in Dropbox looks
⏹️ ▶️ John to the rest of the system, and that will have an effect on those other apps. And I think that’s what Backblaze is getting at
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of like, you know, they would like it because like they didn’t, Backblaze didn’t decide to make Dropbox
⏹️ ▶️ John files harder to backup. Dropbox decided to do that. And Dropbox, I feel like did communicate that to the
⏹️ ▶️ John best of their ability, much better than Backblaze communicated. That’s for sure, because I know that
⏹️ ▶️ John when this happened to Dropbox and Dropbox made it up. And in fact, I still have not opted into file provider on Dropbox.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m still right now running the non-file provider version of Dropbox because it’s better.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because it just, they’re just regular files And they are backed up by Backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ John and all that. Backblaze is probably excluding it by path or whatever, but like they could in theory be backed
⏹️ ▶️ John up by Backblaze. So they’re just plain files. It’s not using file provider at all. So that’s the other half of that. But I
⏹️ ▶️ John get what you’re saying. It’s like, well, in the end, you’re the backup provider. Regardless of the reason
⏹️ ▶️ John it is that you can no longer back up these files, that’s on you to communicate. Like so if Dropbox says, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John we might affect other apps because we’re changing the way we’re doing things and Apple’s making us. And then the other people who are
⏹️ ▶️ John affected have to say, hey, Dropbox just released a new version if you’re using the file provider version. Our backup
⏹️ ▶️ John app can no longer backup your files, so seek an alternative method. And they just didn’t say anything. Like they
⏹️ ▶️ John put it in their release notes, you know, in a door in a basement behind a sign that says beware of tiger.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then, and they did it a year ago in the summer and then didn’t say anything. And by the way, I would like to return
⏹️ ▶️ John to what they said in their release notes. It says like,
⏹️ ▶️ John recent versions of Mac OS can mount cloud storage, which is a weird way of describing it and local paths causing the backup client to mistakenly
⏹️ ▶️ John back them up. These cloud mounted folders are now detected and excluded to avoid performance
⏹️ ▶️ John issues, excessive data usage and restore complications. Restore complications is the only one that is later
⏹️ ▶️ John referenced. No one references performance issues or excessive data. Excessive data usage is like, that’s what we’re paying you for. To
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco take our excessive data. Like the whole. Using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John is excessive data usage.
⏹️ ▶️ John Exactly, it’s like, oh, if we backed up those files, we would have more files in the backup. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the whole thing, we watch. So their release notes characterize it as
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, this is a bug, we shouldn’t have ever been backing up those files anyway, and we’re doing it because there are performance issues and blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Restore complications is the only legit one because it’s like, if we can’t back them up and you go to restore them and we have like
⏹️ ▶️ John half of the files, then you’re gonna be mad about that, so we’re just excluding the whole thing. So their release
⏹️ ▶️ John notes, which are, you know, release notes are not the official communication mechanism for a nuanced discussion of this
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, it’s like a paragraph, but the release notes Compare the release notes to what
⏹️ ▶️ John Natasha says on Reddit. Totally different reasoning. Now all of a sudden it’s like, oh, well here’s why we’re doing it
⏹️ ▶️ John and we can’t back them up and restore things and blah, blah, blah. It’s like they weren’t speaking
⏹️ ▶️ John with one voice in this and they were definitely not trying to advertise the fact that they were doing it, which is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the communication gap. And that is the biggest, easiest slam dunk against back blades is like, you
⏹️ ▶️ John failed to communicate this to your customers and it’s an important thing that your customers needed to know. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so now they’re doing damage control. But for the technical aspects of it, having dealt with
⏹️ ▶️ John cloud files in hyperspace, I have some
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey experience with
⏹️ ▶️ John this. I get where they’re coming from, because like
⏹️ ▶️ John in hyperspace, I’ve got it easy. And even though I had it easy, recall that version 1.0 wouldn’t touch cloud files
⏹️ ▶️ John at all, because I knew there were gonna be complications. And I’m like, it’s a 1.0, let’s not overcomplicate it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But when I did tackle cloud files in whatever version that was 1.3 or whatever, I have it easy
⏹️ ▶️ John because given the APIs in macOS, I can tell when the file is cloud synced
⏹️ ▶️ John and I can tell when, like, all right, you know, there’s APIs where I can say, hey, is this file cloud
⏹️ ▶️ John synced or not? And the OS will tell me yes or no. Most of the time it’s right, although sometimes it’s not. And
⏹️ ▶️ John then I can also say, all right, so if it is cloud synced, is the file actually on this
⏹️ ▶️ John disk or is this just like, you know, a stub for the file? And if I were to read it, I would get the file contents, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not actually here. And if it tells me, oh, that’s just like a stub, that the file isn’t there,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t have to touch it because my app saves disk space. And if the file’s not there, I’m done. Yay, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John even there, right? Because like, what the hell am I, you know, I’m not gonna force the file
⏹️ ▶️ John to be downloaded so I can see if I can de-dupe it. It saves the most space
⏹️ ▶️ John by not being on the disk. So that’s, I have it easy. And even doing that,
⏹️ ▶️ John there are lots of nuances and blah, blah, blah, right? But a backup client can’t do that. a backup client can
⏹️ ▶️ John ask those questions. And if the answer is, yeah, that file’s not even on the disk, the backup client now has a difficult
⏹️ ▶️ John choice. It’s like, well, I could skip it and be like, well, how am I gonna back up a file
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not on the disk? Or I could cause it to be downloaded, which
⏹️ ▶️ John takes disk space. And also, by the way, I can tell you that asking macOS’s file
⏹️ ▶️ John provider thing to cause a non-downloaded file to be downloaded, you might as well put a letter in the
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS where you make a suggestion about a thing that might happen in the future and then you go away for a month and come back and see if it’s happened.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not as if you like, you can sit there with your arms crossed and being like, so is the file
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna be downloaded? Is that gonna, is it gonna happen? It’s like, well, there’s a whole other demon that does that and it’s busy right now
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s a low priority thread and you’re like tapping your fingers and it’s like, okay. And how many of those can you wait
⏹️ ▶️ John on at the same time? And then how long do your backups take? And then what if it just, what if hours pass and that one file doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John download? Is there a big button you can push to make that one file downloaded? Hell no. Otherwise there’d be that button
⏹️ ▶️ John in photos too where you could say, just download the photos now. Sync now, now. You
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t need low priority threads. Do everything, there’s no do it now. Like you’re at the mercy of the system.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so if you’re a backup app, you’re like, I can’t tell you that I will successfully
⏹️ ▶️ John ever reliably get all these files to the point where they download. And by the way, what you’d wanna do is get
⏹️ ▶️ John them to download, back them with the back plates, but then evict them again because you don’t wanna take up the disk
⏹️ ▶️ John space. The whole point is like the cloud storage, it’s like, oh, they’re not even all on your disk. Maybe they don’t even all fit on your disk.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you can’t ask them all to be downloaded because you’ll fill the disk. So you gotta ask a small number to be downloaded, then wait for them to
⏹️ ▶️ John be downloaded, then upload them, then re-evict them. Oh, by the way, what if they were editing the file during that hour long process?
⏹️ ▶️ John I understand why a backup client is gonna be like, we just can’t, like, even
⏹️ ▶️ John if we tried to do this, we will not be able to give you a coherent, internally
⏹️ ▶️ John consistent backup of this because they can’t even use things like APFS snapshots,
⏹️ ▶️ John because you snapshot a directory filled with a bunch of stub files. That doesn’t, like, you have a point
⏹️ ▶️ John in time image of a directory with half the files that aren’t there. If the files were all there, you could
⏹️ ▶️ John snapshot it and then read the snapshot and back up like time machine, but if there’s stub files that are in cloud storage, what the hell are you gonna do?
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t cause them to be downloaded into the snapshot. So I am totally
⏹️ ▶️ John on board with Backblaze saying, we can’t actually back up these files in a reliable fashion.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know everyone in all the threads is like, but what if they’re all downloaded? Backlays can’t know that they’re all downloaded.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you want it to iterate over the whole thing, confirm that they’re all downloaded and then start backing them up? Guess what? In between the time
⏹️ ▶️ John that it confirmed they’re all downloaded and started backing them up, some of them got evicted. Now what do you do? Like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John no 100% solution to this. And it’s just the nature of the, like the pros of this system is,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, so you can have a Dropbox that’s four terabytes and you can mount that on your one
⏹️ ▶️ John terabyte Mac. How does that work? Well, half the files aren’t there, they’re just stubs. and it’s all transparent to you. And if you just double click
⏹️ ▶️ John them, they all work as long as you’re internet connected and blah, blah. Like that’s the benefit. The downside is
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t back it up in a reasonable manner. It’s just not possible. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think this is a case where Backblaze did a really poor job communicating
⏹️ ▶️ John a real technical issue. And they continued, by the way, I think to do a really poor job of communicating both the technical
⏹️ ▶️ John issue and what they’re gonna do about it. But I do think they’re not just like, oh, they’re just being lazy and trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to save money. Like I don’t actually think there’s a easy way for them to do this successfully.
⏹️ ▶️ John And as they noted, like we’re looking into this, that, and the other thing, and we’ve worked with Apple directly to do iCloud Drive backups.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like how are they doing iCloud Drive backups? Well, if you can work directly with Apple, they can figure something out. Like I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sure this has taken a long time where, you know, they’re talking to Apple. Apple does actually control
⏹️ ▶️ John the, you know, whatever it is, I forget what it’s called, CloudD or the Ubiquitous Storage Backup. Like there’s demons on macOS
⏹️ ▶️ John that do this. Apple writes those, right? And so they can work something out with backblaze. Here’s
⏹️ ▶️ John how you can actually back up iCloud files in a somewhat safe and consistent manner. But I bet even there,
⏹️ ▶️ John there are situations in which a particular backblaze run will fail to back up a file because it couldn’t get
⏹️ ▶️ John the stupid cloud demon to download the thing locally. But whatever, they’re doing that. And the same thing with Google
⏹️ ▶️ John Drive, but Dropbox is a little bit more exotic than the same one drive. And then on Windows, I have no freaking idea what a reparse
⏹️ ▶️ John point is, and I don’t even wanna know. But apparently there are additional complications that I do not understand
⏹️ ▶️ John there. So I can’t chime in on what that situation is. But yeah, I’m kind of in the same situation
⏹️ ▶️ John as Casey. I, again, Backblaze has been a past sponsor. I would gladly have them as a
⏹️ ▶️ John future sponsor because I think Backblaze is the best cloud-based backup product for the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just that in this world we live in, the number of limitations on that product are just increasing with the use
⏹️ ▶️ John of the file provider and various cloud storage things. There are other alternatives that we’ll talk about in a little bit,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I still use and pay for Backblaze. and I think it is the best software that does what it does,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I think they did a terrible job communicating this limitation. Communicating this limitation and, you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ John any backup strategy, you gotta have multiple ones, right? So even if Backblaze is totally ignoring my Dropbox,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have other things that are like my SuperDuper clone that are not ignoring Dropbox because SuperDuper doesn’t care about Dropbox.
⏹️ ▶️ John And because I don’t use the file provider version of Dropbox, all my Dropbox files are plain normal
⏹️ ▶️ John files on my disk and SuperDuper backs them up fine. And by the way, so does Time Machine. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, backing up is difficult and the price of good backups is eternal vigilance. And in this case,
⏹️ ▶️ John our vigilance was somewhat thwarted. Our vigilance was thwarted by Backblaze doing a really bad
⏹️ ▶️ John job of communicating this change.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ll put a couple other links in the show notes. There’s a blog post from Backblaze that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of, we’re victims too, which again, like I think there’s truth to that, but I just don’t love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the way in which it was communicated. There’s also some other reports round up from MJ Psy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as always. And then there’s some alternatives here that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we can at least have you look at. I don’t know if we necessarily recommend them, but we can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point them in point them or point you in their directions.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. This first one is not a piece of software, but it is a strategy that I saw mentioned many, many times. And I do want to address
⏹️ ▶️ John it because it, it can work, but only in certain circumstances. So
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s the suggestion. Number one, you’re, if you’re a Dropbox user, don’t use the file provider version
⏹️ ▶️ John in Dropbox. There is an option for that buried in the app. You can even opt out of it once you’ve opted back in. It’s the same
⏹️ ▶️ John piece of software. For a while I thought it was like a different version, but like right now it’s like the same, it’s just the Dropbox client
⏹️ ▶️ John for the Mac. And the same piece of software can run in two different modes apparently. If you can find your way to the option,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can disable it. I don’t know what the limitations on that are. I may be, maybe some people are opting in permanently, but anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have the option turned on and off. And I know this because to test hyperspace with both the
⏹️ ▶️ John file provider and non-file provider version, I have the non-file provider version on this Mac and on the other Mac I have the file provider
⏹️ ▶️ John version so I can see the different behaviors. And it’s the same account and it’s the same client software.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the idea is don’t use the file provider version so that every file in your Dropbox is on your disk taking up
⏹️ ▶️ John space. There’s no weird file stubs, there’s no ubiquitous files, they’re just plain boring files
⏹️ ▶️ John that are just 100% there once they’re synced, okay? But Backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ John will probably still skip them because they’re in a folder called Dropbox and you know, a well known location, I’ll just say,
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, well, I’m not going to check whether these are cloud backed, I’m just going to say anything in a folder called Dropbox,
⏹️ ▶️ John anything under there, we won’t back up or whatever heuristics they use to figure out is this a Dropbox folder, maybe there’s even a way they can just look
⏹️ ▶️ John it up and Dropbox prefs where your Dropbox folder is, they might still be skipped, right? So and people
⏹️ ▶️ John complain about that, like, look, backblaze, don’t skip it based on the path. I’m telling you, I’m not using the Fopper out of version,
⏹️ ▶️ John just back them up, it’s pissing me off. So the Solution it the suggestion it very much in the
⏹️ ▶️ John hyperspace style is how about you do an APFS clone of the entire dropbox tree?
⏹️ ▶️ John Which will take up? Essentially zero extra space not really zero because it’s a tiny directory entry for
⏹️ ▶️ John every single file It’s a but effectively zero space in the grand scheme of things do a complete complete
⏹️ ▶️ John clone of your dropbox tree to a location that does not have dropbox in the path and Then
⏹️ ▶️ John backblaze will back that up because backblaze has no idea where those files came from from, but it also won’t take up any additional space on
⏹️ ▶️ John your disk. The problem is doing a giant recursive clone of your Dropbox tree. A it’s the painting,
⏹️ ▶️ John the golden gate bridge thing, where when you start that recursive clone, things could have changed by the time it finishes. So it’s not really
⏹️ ▶️ John a point in time snapshot, although you could do it. You could do it from a time machine snapshot if you wanted. Um, but
⏹️ ▶️ John B that’s time consuming, like just creating that directory trees and all the directory entries and entering all
⏹️ ▶️ John the metadata and all that stuff, uh, that is time consuming. And if you have like a terabyte
⏹️ ▶️ John of Dropbox stuff, just doing that operation on a periodic basis like and what tool you if
⏹️ ▶️ John you use our sink, our sink won’t won’t copy all the metadata you use our clone, you might get more data. If you use Apple’s like ditto
⏹️ ▶️ John tool, you’ll get even more like, you’re starting to become like you’re starting to deal with like file system API’s
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff that you don’t want to deal with because like faithfully reproducing every aspect
⏹️ ▶️ John of files is difficult and setting aside the backblaze doesn’t even back up all that metadata anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John on Mac OS is terrifyingly complicated these days, as I’ve had to find out
⏹️ ▶️ John with hyperspace. And so doing something as simple as, oh, I’m just going to make a copy of the directory. I’m sure, you know, it
⏹️ ▶️ John will take up effectively zero space. But will the metadata and every one of those files be identical
⏹️ ▶️ John to the source files? No, it absolutely won’t. It’ll differ in ways that probably don’t matter, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it will differ. And so there’s now you have that in the mix. So it’s another complication, but I just want to throw that out there. If you do
⏹️ ▶️ John this, you have to have the non file provider version and you have to find some way to carefully and efficiently periodically
⏹️ ▶️ John make a full APFS clone. And by the way, don’t just make a plain copy, you got to make sure those copies are clones, which they probably
⏹️ ▶️ John will be. But depending on the tool use, they might not be. And anyway, back point point black blaze
⏹️ ▶️ John that you know, backblaze will back up that directory because it’s not excluded because it has no idea this was came from Dropbox. So that is the
⏹️ ▶️ John zero cost as long as your time has no value solution to this problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There are also some not-free solutions to the problem. This is software. First is ArcARQ.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is it Marco that’s used this? I feel like one of you has used this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I used it a long time—years ago I used it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you have anything you’d like to add about that or just gonna—
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean, it’s been a long time, so anything I say would be very outdated.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is, I think, just an independent developer making a piece of software that backs up files.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the person obviously has a passion for it and has developed this program over years and it is tries to be very
⏹️ ▶️ John careful and reliable. It is not big corporate bloatware,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it is also very clearly an idiosyncratic indie style app that does one very specific thing and
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of people like it and have success with it. And it doesn’t have the same limitations. Now, how does it handle
⏹️ ▶️ John the difficulties that I just described with Dropbox? I don’t know. One thing I can imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John is that if you have the non file provider version that it will just back them up because it’s like, well, they’re just playing files.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t I don’t I’m not going to exclude them based on the directory name containing Dropbox. It’s not going to do any of that. So thumbs up for Arc
⏹️ ▶️ John in that respect. But if you use the file provider version of OneDrive or, you know, the
⏹️ ▶️ John Dropbox or any of the other things that Backblaze is skipping, I’m not sure how Arc will handle that. You could ask the Arc developer,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that is a third party alternative to a piece of software, like an app that you run that will periodically
⏹️ ▶️ John back stuff up that is entirely divorced from the Backblaze code base and technique.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And to be clear, my limited, very limited understanding of this is that it’s mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bring your own backup destination kind of thing where you use Arc to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey manage sending data somewhere else, but the somewhere else is also your problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I also just realized as I’m loading arcbackup.com, again, A-R-Q, there’s some quotes on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here. Quote, I honestly love this app, quote, Marco Arment. Which is funny.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John But anyways. I did say that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I think they do, it appears they do dabble in providing the the destination
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as well. But I think the bread and butter of arc for my limited understanding is you have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a place like a Synology or is one of like backblaze B2 or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the AWS equivalent. What is that I’m thinking of that drawn blank?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey S3. S3. Thank you. Something along those lines that you are using arc to manage backing up and restoring from there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s very fun. Like you look on their page, like here’s Here’s the storage locations, Amazon Drive, AWS, B2,
⏹️ ▶️ John Dropbox, Filebase, Google Cloud, Google Drive, OneDrive, Polycloud, SharePoint, SFTP, Wasabi,
⏹️ ▶️ John AttachDisk or Network Share, S3 compatible server, like it is backend, not backend
⏹️ ▶️ John diagnostic, but it’s pluggable backend. So if you just want to copy things from one hard drive to another, Arc will do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you want to copy things from a hard drive, S3, Arc will do it. If you want to copy things from a hard drive to, you know, Wasabi,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is another like S3 type server, like that’s what this app does. And so people like
⏹️ ▶️ John the flexibility of like, I just want to copy things from A to B and let me pick what A is and let me pick
⏹️ ▶️ John what B is and let me use an app that is, you know, seemingly been
⏹️ ▶️ John developed over many, many years by a development team or an individual that are really enthusiastic
⏹️ ▶️ John about this problem space. So there you have it. Arc is that comes up a lot in these discussions.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then there’s a, I don’t remember if this is a newcomer, which is what I was about to say, or if it’s just been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey purchased by another group. But the same folks that do Kaleidoscope, which is my diffing tool
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of choice, they now own or run or whatever, a parachute backup, which is again,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just software. But what this is about is specifically with regard to iCloud. So iCloud Photos and iCloud Drive.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is a way to slurp up the stuff that’s in iCloud and put it somewhere else as a backup. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if your use is limited to iCloud stuff, you might want to check out Parachute as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ll put a link in the show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John notes. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is another one of the problems. So I talk about this a lot with my photos backup thing. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s photos app on the Mac has options in its settings. It says, hey, do you want me to download
⏹️ ▶️ John what they call like download originals to this Mac, which is I’m gonna get the original full resolution
⏹️ ▶️ John version of all your images and I will download them on this Mac. Or do you want me to quote optimize storage, which
⏹️ ▶️ John basically means some of these photos aren’t gonna be on your Mac. We’ll put the thumbnails on your Mac or whatever so you can scroll through
⏹️ ▶️ John them. But like when you double click on one to see the big version, we might not have downloaded that. So we’ll download it. And that’s to
⏹️ ▶️ John save disk space, because if your photo library is terabyte and you have a 500 gig laptop,
⏹️ ▶️ John how can you ever have your whole photo library in there? Well, if you do optimize storage, it will make it look like your whole photo library is on
⏹️ ▶️ John there, but obviously there’s a demon behind the scenes that is downloading and evicting the full resolution photos
⏹️ ▶️ John periodically. So what if you’re trying to back up your Mac? You’re like, oh, I’m backing up my Mac. So my Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John has my whole photo library on it and I’m backing up my Mac, therefore I have a backup of my whole photo library. It’s like, well, if you
⏹️ ▶️ John have optimized storage on in your iCloud photo library and you make a backup, you’re not backing up your whole photo library,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re backing up whatever portion of your photo library is on your Mac at that moment. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so I always advocate having at least one Mac that you say download originals on, right? But what if you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have any Mac that has enough space to download all your originals on because your photo libraries, usually
⏹️ ▶️ John your Mac SSDs are small? Parachute, what it will do is
⏹️ ▶️ John it will essentially go through your photo library and say, is this photo on the Mac? If it is, I’ll back
⏹️ ▶️ John it up. If it’s not on the Mac, it will say, okay, photo thing, download it, wait for it to
⏹️ ▶️ John download, back it up, and then evict it again. That’s my impression of what Parachute is doing for you. It will
⏹️ ▶️ John laboriously, piecemeal, download your whole photo library a few photos at a time
⏹️ ▶️ John so it can back them up to wherever you’re backing them up to and then it will chuck them back off again. And obviously, if your whole
⏹️ ▶️ John photo library is on your Mac, you could use Arc to back it up or Parachute backup will have less work to do. It was like, hey, look, all the
⏹️ ▶️ John files were there. I backed them all up. But that’s, it’s trying to capture
⏹️ ▶️ John a niche, which is like, well, lots of things in the Apple ecosystem won’t even bother backing
⏹️ ▶️ John up your photos library. It’s like, hey, it’s in the cloud and the cloud is the backup. And that’s something that we should mention
⏹️ ▶️ John here. Like people think all my files are in Google Drive. So they’re backed up, all my files in Dropbox. So they’re backed
⏹️ ▶️ John up. A backup is not the same as having your files on a server somewhere in the cloud.
⏹️ ▶️ John Having your files on a server somewhere in the cloud is great if your laptop falls into the ocean. But if you accidentally
⏹️ ▶️ John delete all your files or accidentally delete a file and don’t notice until it’s 30 days later and it’s been removed from the trash,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s where backups come in handy because backup is not the main location where your file is. It’s a second
⏹️ ▶️ John location that is not affected by changes to the origin. So
⏹️ ▶️ John if you have a backup of a file and you delete that file, you can get it
⏹️ ▶️ John from the backup. If you have your file on Google Drive and you delete it from Google Drive, you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John get it anymore because you deleted it. Again, setting aside, it’ll still be in the trash for 30 days, yada, yada. The whole point is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s really gone from where it was, it should still be in your backup.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if something is really gone from your photo library and you don’t have any backups, it’s really gone. So
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s why apps like Parachute help for people who are paranoid about this type of thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I’m paranoid about photos to the point where I have my photos library
⏹️ ▶️ John uploading to Google Photos. So my originals are also in Google Photos and Google Photos,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no connection to Apple Photos. Like if Apple burns down and my whole iPhone photo library dies and I
⏹️ ▶️ John lose all my time machine backups and I lose all my M disk optical disks and you’re like, this is like my fifth
⏹️ ▶️ John level backup. It’s like in the end, Google Photos also has all the originals
⏹️ ▶️ John from my photo library and it doesn’t know they came from my photo library. It just knows it has a bunch of images in it. And so,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, the more diverse your backup environment can be, the more protected you
⏹️ ▶️ John are. and that’s what apps like Parachute and ARC are there for. They’re not made by Apple, they’re not made
⏹️ ▶️ John by Backblaze, they’re not made by Google, they’re made by another company and so you’re trying to like, this is Marco’s point earlier about
⏹️ ▶️ John security bugs and stuff like that. Try to spread the risk around across multiple companies,
⏹️ ▶️ John multiple things, some of them are in your house, some of them are offsite, some of them are cloud, some of them are big companies,
⏹️ ▶️ John some of them are small companies. I know it seems like, it seems to me often, that the main job of me and my
⏹️ ▶️ John computer is to back up my computer. Like it seems like what does your computer do other than back itself
⏹️ ▶️ John up? But if you have digital data that you care about to the degree that I care about my photos,
⏹️ ▶️ John for example, it is a considerable amount of effort to make
⏹️ ▶️ John sure that that data is protected in some way. Or otherwise you’re just rolling a dice and hoping
⏹️ ▶️ John disaster never strikes. And even I am not fully protected. I am absolutely sure there are many failure
⏹️ ▶️ John modes in which I will lose all my data, but I’m just trying to minimize them to the best of my ability. and
⏹️ ▶️ John diversity in your backup strategies is a great way to do that.
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#askatp: John’s next Honda
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s do some Ask ATP. And Brian Ashe writes, hey, John, what year
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or generation is your Honda? Any plans on when you’ll replace it? If you don’t have plans, but if you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had to replace it, what would you get? Brian, John does not believe in hypotheticals. I am
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right there with you with this question, Brian Ashe. We
⏹️ ▶️ John did a whole member special on this hypothetical. How are you saying I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey don’t believe in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it? Well, you’re going to poke a hole in it. I guarantee it. Anyway, I looked at Honda’s website, writes Brian Ashe. Unless
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I missed it, it looks like they don’t offer anything with a manual anymore. Are you driving less now that you’re independent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and or because of what your kids are doing now?
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, so let’s take this one piece of time here. What year generation is my Honda? It’s 2014. So I hope it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John over a decade old now. It’s hanging in there. Any plans on when you replace it? My current
⏹️ ▶️ John plan is to replace it when it dies. What does dies mean? Well, you know, it’s a certain point
⏹️ ▶️ John cars get so old that repairing them is no longer worth money. I will say that I’m probably willing to put
⏹️ ▶️ John a surprising amount of money into this to keep it on the road. But at a certain point, you know, it becomes untenable. The car gets sold
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. So I’ll tell you what that point is. But right now I have no plans to replace it because I like it and it fulfills
⏹️ ▶️ John my needs and it’s paid for. So, yeah, it’s hanging in there. It’s low mileage,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey About how many miles are on it just off the top of your head? Forty
⏹️ ▶️ John less than forty five, I think. Forty three. So 2014 car with forty three thousand miles on it. So this is low mileage,
⏹️ ▶️ John low mileage example, as they would say.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My, uh, my, what is it a 2018? I’m pretty sure I had that right. My 2018 Golf
⏹️ ▶️ Casey R, uh, has like 32, 33,000 miles on it. So similar situation, you know, when you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey drive, if you don’t have a commute and you’re not driving long distance to offset that commute on a regular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basis, you know, for whatever reason, uh, you end up putting not too many miles
⏹️ ▶️ John For probably, I don’t know, almost a decade. When I, like my last job that I had for like 12
⏹️ ▶️ John or 13 years, I commuted to it, but the commute was not long. Like having a short commute, like my commute
⏹️ ▶️ John was like three miles or so or something like that. I mean, it took forever because of traffic, but you know, distance wise, it wasn’t long.
⏹️ ▶️ John Time wise, it was very often long. And so even when I was commuting, I wasn’t racking up the miles. I know some people
⏹️ ▶️ John will commute, you know, 10, 15, 20, 50, 100 miles to their job and that will really rack up the mileage. So that’s another reason it’s low
⏹️ ▶️ John mileage. And then obviously quitting my job and working from home is just reduce
⏹️ ▶️ John it further. If I did have to replace it, what would I get? it like with like with big TVs,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m always always looking for what would I that’s that’s my main activity, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And in the car space, like I can do you find the number special that we did about that?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m looking as we speak. I haven’t gotten there yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John And in the car space, it’s tricky because I want my next car to be electric, but I don’t like any of the electric
⏹️ ▶️ John cars that are available. Right? Like I like them, but like, you know, when I ranked, I don’t like anything better than my current car. You know what
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean? Like they all have something that annoys me about them. Makes me think I’ll I’ll just wait until they figure that out and fix it. And And they just
⏹️ ▶️ John keep always messing up one even my beloved lucid air like I hate that interior I don’t like what they did with
⏹️ ▶️ John the the controls and like I’ll go fix it with the next revision of the air It’s like no, we’re never revising that car all
⏹️ ▶️ John right, so I Don’t know there are other cars that I like if I I think the
⏹️ ▶️ John member special Hypothetical was more like if you had to like if your car broke, you know, you got totaled or whatever And
⏹️ ▶️ John you had to get a new car What would you get this right now? The answer would be I would get a stick shift Honda
⏹️ ▶️ John Civic without a sunroof on it because my
⏹️ ▶️ John that car with the sunroof. And I really like her car, except the stupid sunroof hits my head.
⏹️ ▶️ John So she insisted on the one with the sunroof as I think we talked about before, because she wants the heated seats and all the blah, blah, blah, and you can’t get
⏹️ ▶️ John that car without a sunroof with the trim over she wants. And it’s her car and she’s way shorter than me. So it’s fine for her. And
⏹️ ▶️ John she likes it. She likes her car. I like her car too. I just don’t like the sunroof. I would get a stick
⏹️ ▶️ John shift Honda Civic without a sunroof. I like the current generation. I like the current generation. It’s a really nice car. I recommend
⏹️ ▶️ John it to anybody. It’s excellent. Even the hybrid is excellent, which I wouldn’t buy, because it doesn’t come with a stick shift,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the hybrid is also excellent in the current model year, current generation of Honda Civic.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then, are you driving less now that you’re independent? Yes, because I don’t have to commute to work.
⏹️ ▶️ John So even though it was only three miles, it was three miles there and three miles back every single day, whereas now, you know, run errands
⏹️ ▶️ John a couple times a week, but it’s not every single day. And because of what my kids are doing, it’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ John more because of what my kids are doing, because my kids are doing is going to schools that are far away, and I’m driving back and forth to
⏹️ ▶️ John either pick them up or drop them off or bring them stuff or whatever. So my son was like 45 minutes to an hour away, depending
⏹️ ▶️ John on traffic, and my daughter is like an hour and a half to two hours away. And I’ve gone back and forth to both of those schools a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ John So what my kids are doing is actually driving up my mileage.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. ATP Neutral Car Shopping from the 14th of May, 2024. we will put a link
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the show notes.
#askatp: Which CEO will kill the Mac?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jason writes, Mac hardware represents just under 8% of Apple’s revenue.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It will probably be overtaken by AirPods soon. Woof. My question is this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which Apple CEO will remove the Mac from their lineup? Will it be John Turness? I don’t think I want to keep reading this. Even I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John want to keep reading this. Keep reading. I think this is
⏹️ ▶️ John the answer to this one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Will it be John Turness? He could be CEO until 2040. Do we think the Mac will exist in hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Casey form then? Will it be the next CEO after Turness? If the best-selling Mac of all time is basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an iPhone in a bigger chassis, why not sell macOS as an app for iPhone users and save
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on manufacturing costs? Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John wants everything to be in their iPhone. My whole computer could be in my iPhone. Then I would just connect my phone to
⏹️ ▶️ John a keyboard and a mouse and a big monitor and it would become a Mac. The files are in the computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John You just described a Mac mini with a screen on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, that’s just a Mac. That book. Yeah, exactly. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John the easy answer to this, and the one that everybody says because it is the easy answer, is
⏹️ ▶️ John as long as the Mac is the platform you use to develop for all of Apple’s other platforms, you can’t get rid of the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because then there would be no apps for the phone, there would be no apps for the iPad, there would be no apps for Apple TV,
⏹️ ▶️ John there would be no apps for Vision Pro, well, anyway. Like, and that’s on Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple did make a way to develop iPad apps on the iPad, but it’s extremely limited.
⏹️ ▶️ John But like, they never went whole hoggis that here’s Xcode for the iPad, here’s Xcode for Vision Pro, here’s Xcode
⏹️ ▶️ John for the phone, for crying out loud. full-fledged 100% can do everything Xcode like and
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple could have done that. There’s nothing stopping them from porting Xcode to the iPad and getting rid of the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know, like like like that’s but until they do that they can they can’t they literally can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John get rid of the Mac now setting that aside say they decide to that. Oh the new CEO comes in and says we want to get
⏹️ ▶️ John rid of the Mac. So of course we have to port Xcode to the iPad and then we’ll be done. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John especially in the current age of excitement over AI LM stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John where is all that action happening on Apple’s platforms? It’s not happening on the phone, it’s not happening on the iPad, it’s not happening
⏹️ ▶️ John in the Vision Pro, it’s happening on the Mac because the Mac is the more technically capable
⏹️ ▶️ John and more open platform. And whether Apple recognizes it or not, I would
⏹️ ▶️ John encourage them to recognize the openness and power of the Mac is what is allowing Apple to participate
⏹️ ▶️ John in this stuff at all. Because if Apple didn’t have the Mac, Nobody would be
⏹️ ▶️ John doing trying to do this stuff on the phone or on the iPad because they’re just too closed and make it too difficult whereas you
⏹️ ▶️ John can let Command line stuff run wild on your Mac and screw everything up and that’s what people are currently excited about
⏹️ ▶️ John in doing and so I Think Apple should not get rid of the Mac I think Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John should not close down the Mac any further and I think they won’t I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think Ternus is gonna do that He seems like he’s a big Mac guy and he’s a nerdy person and those people tend to like it. So So
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t look at the percentage revenue. Look at how important this platform is to the company. It is immensely
⏹️ ▶️ John important and necessary for the company to continue to exist now. And if Apple removes that necessity
⏹️ ▶️ John by allowing you to develop software for their other platforms not on the Mac, it would still be dumb
⏹️ ▶️ John because the openness of the Mac is super important to Apple being even in the conversation
⏹️ ▶️ John for future innovations like AI stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I would go a little further. First of all, what is a Mac? It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer running Mac OS. And that has shifted a little bit over time and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the different form factors and technical implementation details of what exactly that means. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the most part, in broad strokes, a Mac is a computer that runs Mac OS.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you have an iPhone and you can plug it into other hardware and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it becomes a keyboard pointing device and a screen running Mac OS,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a Mac. And maybe it’s an iPhone when you remove it from all that stuff, but like the combination
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all those things, that’s a Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John And as we’ve discussed in the past, putting two OS’s on the SSD on the iPhone and having to deal with
⏹️ ▶️ John this, but like it’s probably a bad compromised Mac and a bad compromised phone. But
⏹️ ▶️ John if it is truly a Mac, it will be running Mac OS and you don’t want your phone to be running Mac OS. So it’s also
⏹️ ▶️ John gotta be running iOS and now you got a device that’s running two OS’s and virtualization and blah, blah, blah. And there’s so many compromises
⏹️ ▶️ John that have to do with that, which is why Apple has never actually shipped that product. Could you do it? Absolutely, 100%, you could do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I don’t think anyone would want that product. It’s just easier to make phones and Macs separately, and so Apple does.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and as for like, you know, the software differences between them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it’s possible to open up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough pathways in the iOS software architecture for apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make it able to do the kinds of apps people love the Mac for. People love the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac, you know, software development is a big one, but what is it about software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco development that makes people want to and be able to do it on a Mac and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either not want to or literally not be able to do it on iOS? It’s a bunch of characteristics of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what tool software developers use. Part of it is, yeah, command line stuff is often involved or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scripting. A lot of it is multiple applications operating on the same data,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different tools, integrating with other tools, and lots of different things, fast switching, multitasking,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a lot of that stuff either is impossible on iOS or is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just such a pain in the butt that nobody wants to do it when a Mac is available. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to actually change that about iOS, you’re just making a Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like if you have all those.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like they wouldn’t, the way they would do that on iOS, like it’s totally technically possible, you know how? you run a virtual
⏹️ ▶️ John machine that essentially has Mac OS inside it. And everything that runs in that environment is running in a big shared Mac inside your phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John But like, you can’t break the sandboxing and security of the iPhone, because like, why would you?
⏹️ ▶️ John You destroy the security model of the iPhone. But hey, I want to do all this stuff where everybody can see everybody else’s data. I want to run full-fledged Xcode.
⏹️ ▶️ John No problem. Or run you in a little VM inside the phone. Now you’ve got a little tiny world that’s kind of like a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John inside there where everything can see each other and you can run command line stuff. It’s like the Linux virtual environment in Windows
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. Totally technically possible, by essentially creating a new separate little world
⏹️ ▶️ John inside your phone where that stuff is allowed to happen. So even though you have technically modified
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS to do all the stuff that Xcode needs to do, you’ve done it by eventually boring
⏹️ ▶️ John a little hole in iOS and saying, here’s this little playpen where Xcode gets to live. And it’s essentially a
⏹️ ▶️ John environment that’s more like the Mac inside the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco environment. Yeah, and it isn’t just software development that works this way. There’s lots of tools
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and applications and needs that people have on computers that just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t fit well with the iOS super isolated software model.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I don’t think iOS will ever get there because that’s not what makes iOS good. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if anything, what we’ve seen in recent years with trying to make the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more Mac-like in some of its windowing and multitasking features, what we’ve seen is that it often
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is kind of a sidestep and a lot of iPad users actually don’t like it and wanna disable it or switch it back because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a little clunkier or it’s a little bit different and it’s kind of a mixed bag. It’s hard, it’s very difficult
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to advance iOS, especially like once you’re at the iPad scale, you’re trying to make it closer to Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s very hard to advance iOS towards the Mac in a way that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t make it worse at being what people loved about iOS before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or what has worked very well for iOS before. So I don’t think, I think the whole idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of iPhones and iPads replacing Macs, that idea is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably not going to happen. You know, what happens in computing, usually when we have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a new platform come out, usually, or a new form factor, usually it doesn’t replace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything, it just adds. People might choose to have multiple ones, or you know, like when the watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco came out, the watch didn’t replace the phone. Some people said it would, it didn’t, and it won’t. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it’s an inevitability that our phones or iPads are gonna replace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Macs or PCs. What we’ve seen in the computing industry is that there are certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco form factors and ways of interacting and ways that the devices work that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just hit a real sweet spot for people and they tend to last, even though all the people who love
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talking about tech in the future are saying, oh, this thing’s gonna die. Like certain things never die. I think the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most obvious thing in what we know today that probably has the longest lifespan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the smartphone. The phone is just so ideal for people in so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many ways, in so many like basic physical ways. The phone is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great and very compelling and such a great balance of lots of things. I think the phone is gonna be with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us for the rest of our lives and probably significantly after that. And not just existing, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think being like the central computing device for most people, I think it’s the phone for a long time, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also the computer, the way we know it as like the Mac and Windows PC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco today, like that style of computer, I think is another one of those sweet spots.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco People have tried over the years to replace it and to make it obsolete
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and or to phase it out and it doesn’t work because people love it and it keeps working really well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and lots of other things like, and look, part of what you can say against the Tim Cook era at Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Tim Cook clearly had the idea for whatever reason that the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was going to replace the Mac and that the iPad was the modern platform and the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was the legacy platform. And eventually he seems to have changed his mind on that. But for the first, I don’t know, five
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to ten years maybe of his leadership at Apple, that seemed like that was the plan. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco customers didn’t go for it. The iPad was not the future of all computing. It was the future of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPad. It has a market, it has uses, but it didn’t replace the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the PC for that many people. And Apple sure did try. They tried really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard to push it that direction and it just didn’t go that way. I think people have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shown over and over again they love their phones and they love their laptops. And they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t necessarily want those things to merge and no one’s asking for those things to merge. Finally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one other thing to consider is that the computing industry for a long time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has kind of been, it keeps pushing this command and this assumption
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and this goal of like computers are too hard to use. We need to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computers easier for everyone, everyone else, all the non-nerds, easier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use. And there’s a lot of truth in that. There’s also a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco false advocating for groups that don’t exist anymore, or that exist a lot smaller than you think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or speaking for people, or making decisions for theoretical people that you’re not really talking to real people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think what’s also happening is all the people who don’t know how to use computers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are aging out. Most people today are fine operating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a computer to the degree they need to operate it. whole push of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let’s get rid of the Mac it’s too complicated we’re gonna make everything simple not only is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the years and not only is iOS getting more and more complicated over the years to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically match the complexity of a Mac or PC in many ways but also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the demand for that the need for that is just a lot lower than it used to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because way more people are way more people have basic proficiency
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at using computers now.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think that’s why the demand has gotten lower. I think the demand has gotten lower because Macs have actually gotten
⏹️ ▶️ John less intimidating. Like the Apple has done a lot of work on the Mac over
⏹️ ▶️ John many, many years to take those things that were the most difficult and confusing and make them less
⏹️ ▶️ John so. There’s still a gap. Obviously, a Mac is easier to screw up than a phone by a million miles or whatever. But compare
⏹️ ▶️ John how difficult it is to wrangle a Mac today. Like compare like a MacBook Neo to like
⏹️ ▶️ John a power brick running classic Mac OS night and day level of expertise required. So I think people
⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t changed. I think Apple has successfully over many decades made the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac easier to use. Not as easy as an iPad, not as easy as an iPhone. But like to
⏹️ ▶️ John your point, I think they’re reaching a point where they’re they’re getting to a threshold where it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John you can no longer argue for the elimination of this platform due for it due to its intractable difficulty,
⏹️ ▶️ John because Now we’ve made it reliable and easy enough that to the average
⏹️ ▶️ John person, it is not impossibly difficult. And that wasn’t true in the early days of the PC. The PC was essentially impossibly
⏹️ ▶️ John difficult for way too many people, if you weren’t a computer nerd. Today, you don’t have to be a computer
⏹️ ▶️ John nerd. You can throw a MacBook Neo at anybody. It’s more complicated than a phone. It’s more complicated than
⏹️ ▶️ John an iPad. They can screw it up more easily, but they will be successful in using it
⏹️ ▶️ John to a degree that you could not say for a Mac or any PC 20 or 30 years ago. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think both things have happened. Like, the Mac is easier to use today, but also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way more of the population is proficient at using Mac and PC style computers today as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they used to be. But and
⏹️ ▶️ John Proficient? No, I think you’re right. When it was your case, you said they can do what
⏹️ ▶️ John they need to do with them. But it’s the joke about Gen X being the only generation that knows how to use computers,
⏹️ ▶️ John because we had to help our parents with it when we were kids, and now I have to help my kids with it when I’m an old person.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John And it’s because- But proficiency
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does not mean power user. It means you’re able to use the computer to do what you need to do with it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, but even that, still, it’s like, I can’t print. I mean, the eternal one.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Why can’t I?
⏹️ ▶️ John Printing is not a power user feature. It’s a thing that you have to do every once in a while. Why can’t I print? My
⏹️ ▶️ John kids can’t figure out why they can’t print. My parents can’t figure out why they can’t print. I can figure out why we can’t print. And
⏹️ ▶️ John my son now has a computer science degree. So what’s his excuse?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And keep in mind also like having the smartphone take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the world has also affected this greatly. So like first of all way more people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are able to use smartphones because they are simpler and in a lot of ways and so many people’s needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are perfectly satisfied with their smartphones. Many people… Yeah, they don’t even have a Mac or PC because they don’t need one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, like many people who don’t want a computer or can’t use a computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get their needs solved with a phone just fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because having, and to refer to that point, having a personal computer or a Mac is not
⏹️ ▶️ John a requirement to live in today’s society. Having a smartphone essentially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is. And that also, I feel like many people who never learned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how to use Mac and PC computers, they didn’t need to. They weren’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever forced to. Whereas today, phones are pretty important for lots of society. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also, because people tend to like them more than they used to like old computers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who are not into computers are more motivated to use their phones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more often and therefore actually become more proficient just by experience with them. Whereas that motivation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasn’t there for them for a computer necessarily. So the need to wedge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the simplicity into macOS and ruin what the Mac is or get rid of the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over time, that need is gone. Meanwhile, the MacBook Neo just came
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out. It’s a Mac for the price of an iPad. And everyone is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco loving this. People are so much more excited about the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Neo than I have heard about any iPad model released
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in probably the last eight years. Like I can’t imagine, I can’t remember the last time anybody was excited about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an iPad. The MacBook Neo is a hit. Why? Because people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who want an iPad, mostly that’s like, you know, more basic needs like watching TV and stuff like that. And that needs been solved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a long time by the iPad. That’s nothing new. But people love having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac in a lower price point. And it doesn’t need to be a super powerful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Pro. It like, it wasn’t about computing power. It’s a, and that’s how we know, like you take an iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chip and you put it in a Mac and you have, you know, a pretty limited
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac in terms of like sheer hardware capability. But people love
⏹️ ▶️ Marco working that way. They love using a computer like that. The great reception of the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Neo, I think, proves this point. What people have wanted all this time, that Apple was trying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make the iPad the future of computing, what most people want for their computing is a computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what most people like about the Mac is not replaced by an iPad with a keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that ends up costing $1,300 for the combo or whatever. People like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Mac and making just a cheaper Mac with lower hardware specs, people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco love that. You know, meanwhile, the idea of making the iPad the future of computing, it seems like that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco increasingly not the case. The iPad is another platform that many people use and love, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is not going to replace the Mac.
#askatp: Uptime
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then finally, Paul Franz writes, a recent macOS bug report suggests that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey macOS will crash after reaching 49 days of uptime. John Gruber in his article about it says that 91
⏹️ ▶️ Casey days of uptime is remarkable. Both of these numbers seem really small to me. I run Linux at work. Some new desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey software has been causing me problems and our desktop support team pointed out my uptime was over a month and could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use a reboot. Is my experience with Linux servers giving me unreasonable expectations for desktops? Unless I’m out of the loop,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t hear this brought up with other devices running a Linux or macOS kernel, like phones, watches, TV, or cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey To be fair, I looked at my Mac OS uptime going back to November on my laptop, and the longest uptime was 40 days.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My Linux server’s longest uptime was seven months. It’s WTEMP goes back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to 2022. I believe in all these cases, there were OS updates or needing to physically move
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my server. Rebooting for updates seems less annoying than things breaking and requiring an immediate
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, I don’t think the expectations are out of whack, but as it was kind of alluded to here, If you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t shut down your Mac every day, like Jason Snell, because you’re a weirdo, if you have a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re conscientious, as Margo suggested at the beginning of the show, your uptime is going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be determined by Apple’s OS release
⏹️ ▶️ John because you have to reboot when they update it, when they do a point release. So 15.7.7 comes out, you do the update, you reboot.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is for me, for someone who leaves my Mac on all the time and I just put it to sleep when I’m not using
⏹️ ▶️ John it and I wake up when I’m using it, but I never, ever, ever shut down. my uptime is 100% determined
⏹️ ▶️ John by when Apple releases software updates. I tend not to do a software update right before I record a podcast, so maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John it’ll be delayed by a couple of days, but that’s it. But if I didn’t do that, how long would my uptime be?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, essentially forever. Like I, you know, I have had kernel panics on this Mac at
⏹️ ▶️ John various times, especially with all my video card swapping and stuff, but it doesn’t happen very frequently.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m sure I could have had like multiple years where I just had an uptime of multiple years.
⏹️ ▶️ John But like, well, here’s the problem. You reboot for all sorts of reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ John If when I go on a long vacation, I like to shut down and unplug my computer. When I reboot into Windows,
⏹️ ▶️ John there goes my uptime. But like, theoretically, if you have a stable system running Mac OS X
⏹️ ▶️ John or Mac OS or whatever, there’s no reason why you should ever need to reboot a distro of software bugs.
⏹️ ▶️ John And software bugs requiring a reboot are very rare. Even bugs that require like, everything
⏹️ ▶️ John is frozen and dead. If you just kill login window, for SSH and NK login window, your uptime will
⏹️ ▶️ John be maintained, even though you just booted yourself back to the login screen, but that doesn’t affect your uptime because hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John the machine is still up. So, now obviously Linux servers that are just doing one
⏹️ ▶️ John thing over and over again and don’t have any software updates that are running on them, although I think that is also rare and it should be rare
⏹️ ▶️ John because you should be patching your, you should be updating. So again, to Marko’s point, you should update
⏹️ ▶️ John everything, even your servers every once in a while. But in theory, people have these Linux servers, they never update them, they run the same software. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John the only thing that’s gonna take them down a hardware problem or whatever. And I think that is also true of any
⏹️ ▶️ John modern device like an Apple TV or a phone or a Mac or whatever. But the
⏹️ ▶️ John world we live in is a world where there are software updates and you should apply them a lot of the times
⏹️ ▶️ John because a lot of times they are security related and also software does have bugs. So
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I don’t think it’s that if someone just has to say your Mac has been up for a long time and you you should reboot.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s maybe not great advice, but one of the things that I tell my kids
⏹️ ▶️ John every time they tell me their computer is doing something flaky, like, you know, it’s the whole turn off and turn
⏹️ ▶️ John on again. Rebooting is one of the first, best, easiest diagnostic steps. Did
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to reboot? It’s like, no, but like, it takes two seconds. Macs boot really fast these days, and if
⏹️ ▶️ John it solves the problem, like, then try that first before you come to me. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John X isn’t working, Y isn’t working. And very often it’s like some app isn’t working. It’s like, I don’t know, log out and back in,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is the soft version of a reboot, which is like, maybe that app has a bug and it’s screwed up in some way. And if you log out and back
⏹️ ▶️ John in and it will fix it. But if nothing fixes it, you can reboot. But if there’s nothing wrong with your computer
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re like, oh, you have up time of a month, you should just reboot just to be safe. No, if
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s working fine, you don’t need to reboot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I remember when I was first on my own, I ran
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some flavor, if I want to say Ubuntu, on like a thing pad or something like that. This was 20 years ago, so I can barely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey remember now. But I remember being very impressed by the uptime of that machine. And I remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being so impressed by it that when I, at one point, needed to either shut it down or reboot it or whatever the case may be, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually captured a PDF of a little diagnostic page that I’d written.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the record server uptime, which was recorded actually a month after
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me being married to Aaron, so this was 2007, excuse me, Server uptime, 299 days, six hours, 28 minutes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I was very proud of that at the time. Yeah, if you search the internet, you’ll find
⏹️ ▶️ John people with like, this Linux server has been running for 37 years. Not joking, 37 years, like
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know if that fits with Linux, but there are Unix servers, they’re like, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sure there are some of those like, you know, very fancy mainframes with a redundant CPU and power supplies that are doing like visa
⏹️ ▶️ John transactions for all of our lives. Like, that’s a little bit fudge where it’s like, well, has the same thing been
⏹️ ▶️ John up because they swapped out the CPU a few times? But anyway, yeah, there are lots of long running
⏹️ ▶️ John things out there and Linux, Linux was one of the first ones you started to see people brag about it because like
⏹️ ▶️ John regular tech nerds would just like set up a Linux server in their house somewhere and then they’d wake
⏹️ ▶️ John up 25 years later and they’d realize they’d never rebooted it and they’d post a cool screenshot or whatever. But
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, as with all things, again, I always find it hilarious when people
⏹️ ▶️ John post screenshots as proof of anything. It’s like, you know, you can make any pixel in any arrangement and a bitmap.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you know, you can just like, like I can turn on and off any pixel and I can make any pixel,
⏹️ ▶️ John any color screenshots are not proof of anything. But yeah, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can just edit WTEP directly and then type uptime and be like,
⏹️ ▶️ John wow, uptime of five millennia.
⏹️ ▶️ John assuming people are being honest because yeah, computer systems can be made reliable in the right circumstances.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, thanks to our sponsors this episode, Aura Frames and Delete.me. And thanks to our members who support
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash join. One of the many perks of membership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is ATP overtime. This is our weekly bonus topic. Every single episode, there is more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco content that non-members, sorry, you’re missing out. Members, you get it, it’s great. This week on Overtime, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna be talking about basically should Apple make Neo versions of more products,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more affordable iPhones, Macs, et cetera? We’re gonna talk about that in overtime this week. You can join to listen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco atv.fm slash join. Thanks everyone, and we’ll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Mastodon, you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean to Accidental, check
Pedometer++ 8
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did want to call out the update to Pedometer++. This is our friend David
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Smith, underscore David Smith’s app, Pedometer++. I’ve mentioned a little bit here and there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I prepare for my giant walk around Manhattan, which is actually this weekend, my big 32 mile walk. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a couple of days. As I’ve been testing out like, you know, different watch options
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that, the app I’ve been using on the Apple Watch Ultra has been the beta
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Pedometer++ 8. And that just came out, I think, yesterday or the day before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s brand new and Underscore has a couple of great blog posts about it. Our friend Stephen Hackett over at 512 Pixels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also did a great post about it. It is such an amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app because what I love about Penometer Plus Plus, and I made a little Massadon post about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it earlier, but I’ll repeat myself here. In the App Store, in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of Apple developer ecosystem, Sometimes you get an app that somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has just poured so much love into, even if there might not necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be like an ROI that justifies that level of investment. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is something that like, this is exemplified, like this is what people love
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the Apple indie developer scene. This is what made a lot of us fall in love
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the Mac and certainly the software scene around it. that just people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who put in a huge amount of care and whether that’s design,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco engineering, polish, some combination of all three, a huge amount of care
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going into a fairly specialized app. More care than that app necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quote, needs in terms of what would the market pay for or support or whatever, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mostly because that person or company just cares so much about making something great in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that area. It’s like it’s something they personally love and they just want to be great.
⏹️ ▶️ John You want to hear the great phrase from the gaming industry for the phenomenon you’re describing? It’s called over delivery.
⏹️ ▶️ John I like that. It’s a sedative in a pejorative way in various contexts, but yeah, over
⏹️ ▶️ John delivery. You are delivering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too much. Right. And and we hear, you know, I think another term for this is a labor of love, which is also sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used pejoratively. I think there’s a lot of truth to that. Like, like there are certain apps that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you look at, you know, oh, this was a labor of love. And I personally take that as a compliment when somebody calls something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’ve made, you know, something like that. The way to use it pejoratively is like, wow, this idiot wasted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their time doing this thing that’s not worth it. But the way I see it is much more generous. It’s more like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wow, like this person put so much love into a thing, not because they needed to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but because they wanted to. And that’s, you know, as long as, you know, the bills are getting paid, it’s fine. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so pedometer plus plus, you know, underscore makes widget Smith.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And by all accounts, Widget Smith is so ridiculously popular that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco numbers wise, he probably shouldn’t spend any time ever working on anything else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like if you just calculate like, you know, where does it make sense to devote your time? Like you have this one massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mega hit product. Like it doesn’t make a lot of sense. You know, like Tim Cook wasn’t having like a side
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gig, you know, making little apps for himself. Like he had enough to deal with, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And, you know, so Underscore doesn’t need to make Predometer++. He makes it because he loves it and he makes it for himself.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this update to this app, like you think it’s just a step counter and it is a pretty good step counter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But then behind the step counter is this like world-class
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hiking and walking tracker, especially in the Apple Watch. Like if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are walking or hiking, and it actually supports other types too, but those I think those are the big ones. Walking, hiking,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything where you could use a map on your wrist or distance measurements on your wrist or step counts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever. Actually, it probably would be good for cycling too. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you are doing like, you know, walking, hiking, running, cycling, things where you are outside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco following trails or maps or whatever, the experience of using Pedometer++ on the watch,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was always good, but now it is even better. He brought in a designer to help him
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make these amazing… He brought in a cartographer to help him make the maps look better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How many people do you know who have hired a cartographer for anything? But he brought in a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cartographer, he brought in a designer. It looks incredible, it works great, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco engineering behind it is great. It destroys the like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in terms of like how nice it looks, it destroys all the other fitness watches and Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco built-in apps and any other app I’ve ever seen, third party or first party, in terms of niceness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this experience. And one of my favorite things too is that it has this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expedition mode where to extend the Apple Watch battery life,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a few tricks you can do, but if you want your Apple Watch to last like multiple days
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a hike, you can turn on expedition mode and that’s a special workout mode that doesn’t use the heart rate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all. Like if you’re just walking, if you’re hiking, the heart rate might not be that relevant to you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you can turn off the heart rate and get 40% more battery life, which is massive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So all this is to say like, this is an amount of coolness and niceness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and effort into an app that this one guy has,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, embarrassed the rest of the industry with how good his app is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for these purposes compared to the built-in Apple Workouts app, the Suunto,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Garmin, all those watches of the world. This app is awesome. So if you go outside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and walk or run or bike or hike, which is just walking I think, but in the woods or something, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you do those things, check out Pedometer Plus Plus, especially on the watch, where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it really shines. It’s a great phone app as well, but the watch and no one else is doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Watch development worth a damn except Underscore. He blows everyone else away in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much effort he puts into the Apple Watch as a platform. Because the platform
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fights you at every turn. It’s very developer hostile for lots of good reasons and some bad reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And he gets through it and he does great work on the watch. And so it has made me like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco re-fall in love with the Apple Watch as a fitness device for that particular purpose, for the walks. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even though I also like the Suunto for other reasons, man, the Pedometer Plus Plus is so good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, when we went on spring break a couple of weeks back or a month back, we did some hikes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey including one that was, I think I described it on the show, two miles out, two miles back. And what I did was I found
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on like AllTrails or something like that, I found a GPX, which is, you know, a series of waypoints. I think it’s XML,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it doesn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco matter. It is. It’s really ugly. Yeah, there you go.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I found that and sent it to Pedometer++ and then it would show me, am I on or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off the track that was provided via the website, the Alltrails website, which was really, really slick. It’s really good stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that was the old version. That was version 7 or whatever of Pedometer++. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really good stuff. Underscore has put in an astonishing amount of engineering work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And like Marco said, I mean, who says I hired a cartographer? How do you even do that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Where do you find? Yeah, do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you go on LinkedIn? Like what? Right. Like, how do you find your friendly neighborhood cartographer? I mean, just ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He’s next to the cobbler.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the blockbuster. I’ve said many times throughout the course of this show, the reason, one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the main reasons I think that we’re, we are successful, the three of us at doing this show is, is really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two actually. Number one, you know, I think the three of us have a pretty good chemistry. And even though sometimes we want to murder
⏹️ ▶️ Casey each other, by and large, we’re really dear, close friends. And I think that comes through in shows, but number two, and what’s relevant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here is that we really and truly give a crap. We don’t always succeed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and execute perfectly, but we really and truly give a crap. And that is something that is extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey true of underscore broadly and of pedometer plus plus specifically. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like Marco said, I mean, I don’t know anything about underscores, you know, uh, business
⏹️ ▶️ Casey finances or anything like that, but I have to assume that just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an astonishing, overwhelming share of the money that his business earns is from widget Smith, which he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also gives a crap about, but nevertheless, because this is a labor of love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey complimentary, because this is something that is scratching an itch that Underscore very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much has, he still spends a lot of time on Pedometer++ and it shows. And I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yet had the chance to read. He also put up a blog post about how he spent,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is literally the title of his blog post, six years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perfecting maps on watchOS. And that’s both a testament to Underscore’s tenacity
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and perseverance and also how sh**y watchOS development is. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway, you get the point. So yeah, you should check it out. It’s good stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have one more unrelated tidbit on this. Back in the classic macOS days,
⏹️ ▶️ John when it was the Wild West and there was no memory protection and there was cool little system extensions to change the way
⏹️ ▶️ John everything looked in the operating system, there were various engines that could do cool things
⏹️ ▶️ John like make it look like your windows are transparent. It’s, uh, you know, something
⏹️ ▶️ John that is trivial now, everything has it. But before the age of compositing window managers,
⏹️ ▶️ John when your app drew a window, it didn’t know what was
⏹️ ▶️ John like, like the, the system, when you’re dragging a window around, didn’t know what was behind it. It was just like telling the things to draw
⏹️ ▶️ John the new dirty areas of the screen. There was no compositing window manager, which meant that like in a compositing window manager,
⏹️ ▶️ John some part of the operating system says, okay, give me all your windows. You want a white window here. You want
⏹️ ▶️ John a yellow window here. You want this window here. and by the way, the windows can also have transparency values, like I got all the windows, I know where
⏹️ ▶️ John they all are, you’ve told me what’s in the bitmaps for them, and you’ve also told me for every single pixel how transparent
⏹️ ▶️ John it should be, now I will combine all those windows into a final image that you will
⏹️ ▶️ John see on the screen by compositing them together. I’ll take the back thing and then I’ll put the next layer over it, then I’ll put
⏹️ ▶️ John the next layer, then I’ll put the next layer, and as I’m layering them on, hey, if I’m layering a window on top of some other stuff and that
⏹️ ▶️ John window has some pixels that have some transparency, I will blend them with the stuff that I know is behind them.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what a compositing window manager does. That was introduced with Mac OS X. Before that, that was not how it
⏹️ ▶️ John worked. Before that, applications drew directly into a backing buffer for the entire screen and they just drew opaque
⏹️ ▶️ John pixels. But if you were clever, you could say, hey, I’m about to draw my window
⏹️ ▶️ John onto the screen and there is stuff already on the screen. So before I draw what’s on the screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll look to see what’s in the area that I’m about to draw the window and I will blend
⏹️ ▶️ John those pixels with my pixels in a transparent kind of way. And so what they were doing is drawing an opaque
⏹️ ▶️ John window that contains contents that look like it’s showing what’s behind it. Now the
⏹️ ▶️ John tricky part of that is if you then move something behind it, if something behind it changed, your app had no idea that
⏹️ ▶️ John it happened. You know, it’s not like Mac OS X where the operating system would be like, I’m constantly, every frame I’m compositing,
⏹️ ▶️ John compositing, compositing. This would be like, well, when I drew this window, like if you, if you had like a clock behind
⏹️ ▶️ John you, when I drew this window, here’s what was behind me. But then a second passes and the clock ticks over and your window has no
⏹️ ▶️ John idea that that happened because it has no awareness of what’s going on behind it. Right. So what I’m saying is you could get fake
⏹️ ▶️ John transparency, which only became apparent when like you either move something in the background or something changed
⏹️ ▶️ John in the background. You’re like, oh, I see you’re not really compositing and like you could fudge
⏹️ ▶️ John it by saying, okay, every every few seconds, you know, look at what’s behind you and then redraw it yourself.
⏹️ ▶️ John And every window could do that, like that fake transparency. Here’s why this is relevant to your underscore discussion.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like Casey with this long, long way to, to
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey all right. And
⏹️ ▶️ John speaking to like, you know, underscore cares about this app and everything. And Casey said, and we just met two, he cares about, I
⏹️ ▶️ John recall seeing a thread go by, I think I’m asked it on where underscore was describing what
⏹️ ▶️ John he wanted to do was make essentially transparent widgets, but there is no good way to
⏹️ ▶️ John do that. So he’s like, well, if I just know what’s behind them and I draw them exactly how they would
⏹️ ▶️ John be appear if they were transparent, they’ll look transparent. But
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, to do that, I have to know down to the, not just down
⏹️ ▶️ John to the pixel, but down to the like the, you know, yeah, down, down to the screen pixel, not just
⏹️ ▶️ John the point, but down to the screen pixel, where everything is in the screen, because I have to draw
⏹️ ▶️ John my widgets as if you can see through them. So I need to know where every single
⏹️ ▶️ John other element is on the screen. So the illusion is perfect. But oh, there are so
⏹️ ▶️ John many many different sizes of iPhones. And also, by the way, people can have that magnifying mode on the iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ John So he wrote this program, I forget if it was vibe coded or not, that would automate the process
⏹️ ▶️ John of figuring out every single Apple device, every possible set of display settings, every possible widget arrangement,
⏹️ ▶️ John and every possible screen. So he would know, so he could exactly fake with Widgetsmith
⏹️ ▶️ John widgets that appeared in a way that seemed impossible because he’s faking it down to the pixel
⏹️ ▶️ John for any iPhone in any display resolution, in any zoom factor. And like, he cares a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot about everything he does. Not just for number plus plus. And that’s for a feature, which I think by the
⏹️ ▶️ John way, is stupid. But he didn’t think it was stupid. He thought it was cool. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so he went like, talk about going the extra mile. It’s like anybody would have looked at that and said, yeah, you can do it, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it would be ridiculous. And Underscore was like, but you can do it, right? And he did
⏹️ ▶️ John it. I believe this is shipping. So all this is to say that Underscore
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t just care about Widgetsmith, he cares about uh, or doesn’t just care about Padamera Plus Plus, he
⏹️ ▶️ John cares about Widgetsmith and all his other apps as well. Check them out.