0:00:00We have to start with some housekeeping right away.
0:00:02Happy birthday, Marco.
0:00:04You are 40 years old in what, like six days?
0:00:06- Something like that, yeah, five.
0:00:08- Yeah.
0:00:09How you feeling?
0:00:10- We've heard our friend Merlin always joke about
0:00:12like, you know, getting older and he like,
0:00:14apparently injured his ankle while sleeping
0:00:16a few weeks ago.
0:00:17And I have now, I was 40 for like 72 hours.
0:00:21I woke up one morning, like a half hour
0:00:24before my alarm was supposed to go off.
0:00:26I thought, oh crap.
0:00:27I convinced myself, all right, let's go back to sleep.
0:00:29half hour later I wake up, I can't move.
0:00:32(laughing)
0:00:33So literally in that half hour,
0:00:36I had somehow slept on my neck or shoulder
0:00:40in some weird way that,
0:00:42and like I do a lot of like core and flexibility exercises,
0:00:47I am usually very healthy in these areas,
0:00:50and yet somehow 72 hours after I turned 40,
0:00:55I slept for 30 minutes and broke myself
0:00:57and can't twist my body for two days now.
0:01:01It's slowly getting better, but I'm like, oh my God.
0:01:03Wow, that comes on quickly.
0:01:06- I feel like the warranty doesn't run out
0:01:09until the mid-40s, so I'm not sure what this is.
0:01:11- I don't know, man.
0:01:12I genuinely feel this is such a boring thing
0:01:15for three old white guys to wind about
0:01:16being three old white guys, but here we are.
0:01:19But no, I feel like once I hit 35,
0:01:21things that never ever used to bother me
0:01:24started to occasionally bother me,
0:01:26And I didn't have the planned obsolescence
0:01:28of 40 in three days that you have had,
0:01:31but I definitely will bend wrong
0:01:35and can't twist my back for a week
0:01:38or whatever the case may be.
0:01:39Like all sorts of weird ailments
0:01:40or I'll cough the wrong way
0:01:43and suddenly my abdomen hurts for a day or two.
0:01:45And I also, I'm not saying I exercise more or less
0:01:48than Marco, but I exercise every day.
0:01:51Again, maybe not the same way, maybe not as strenuously,
0:01:54but I exercise every single day.
0:01:56And I am probably the healthiest I've ever been in my life,
0:01:59or at least certainly the strongest.
0:02:01And yet still, if I look at something the wrong way,
0:02:05suddenly like an entirely opposite end of my body is broken.
0:02:08So yeah.
0:02:09- Well, I don't understand how this is happening to Marco.
0:02:12'Cause like I said on Twitter,
0:02:13Marco is I think probably also
0:02:14in probably the best shape of his life.
0:02:16He's got rid of his banana allergy.
0:02:18He's all trim and buff and doing all these exercises.
0:02:22And like what-- - Well, not trim.
0:02:23- Well, trim-er.
0:02:25- Yes, well, yeah, I'm very strong in certain ways
0:02:30I am not trim.
0:02:30That's not a thing.
0:02:33- Anyway, either way, you've definitely sort of had
0:02:35a mid-life rally here, but now this whole sleep thing
0:02:38has really set you back.
0:02:39- I know, and like, ever since I got more serious
0:02:41about fitness a few years ago and started doing
0:02:43more and more stuff, having the trainer and everything,
0:02:46like, our trainer's awesome, like, we'll do things
0:02:48that exercise muscles that I didn't even know existed.
0:02:52So like, you know, most of the problems most people have
0:02:54when they're doing fitness stuff on their own,
0:02:56maybe you go to a gym, maybe you have like a treadmill
0:02:59or a bike at home, whatever it is,
0:03:01usually most people can think of a few top hit muscle groups
0:03:04that you should work and you don't think of everything else
0:03:06'cause you're not a trainer,
0:03:07you're not a professional in that area, you know?
0:03:09I love our trainers so much because we,
0:03:11it's always a variety of stuff we're doing
0:03:12and it's always extra, all sorts of different muscles
0:03:14like your inner hips or like, you know,
0:03:17weird side bending things or something.
0:03:19It's like stuff that you would never think
0:03:21to even know how to exercise on your own,
0:03:22let alone to do it correctly.
0:03:25And so I'm very fortunate to have that.
0:03:26And I've been able to avoid,
0:03:28I don't have any RSI problems anymore.
0:03:30I've been able to avoid lots of back problems I used to have.
0:03:34That's all gone and fixed.
0:03:35Well, asterisk it was.
0:03:37I mean, it was fixed until last weekend when I turned 40.
0:03:41(laughs)
0:03:43But it's just, I've put in all,
0:03:45and I guess this is why you put in the work, right?
0:03:49You put in all that work.
0:03:50You do all the fitness stuff because, yeah,
0:03:53when you're 19, you're made of rubber
0:03:55and you can do whatever you want and you won't get hurt.
0:03:59But as you approach and then cross 40,
0:04:02these things start adding up.
0:04:04I'm so glad that I do all that stuff
0:04:07because I can't imagine,
0:04:08I'd probably be in way worse condition,
0:04:10like I'm sure I'd be hurting constantly,
0:04:13if I wasn't doing all the exercise stuff that I do.
0:04:16And it's, oh my god, it's so disheartening
0:04:20to somehow like sleep wrong for a half hour
0:04:23and be hurting for two days.
0:04:25- Shoulda got MarcoCare+.
0:04:27(beeping)
0:04:29- Speaking of which, I have unplugged my HomePods.
0:04:34(Brennan gasps)
0:04:35- Are you okay?
0:04:36- They just don't work anymore.
0:04:37Like they've, in the last couple of weeks,
0:04:40I don't think I've gotten the stereo pairing to work once.
0:04:43- Oh no.
0:04:44- It's been such a rollercoaster.
0:04:45They've gone up and down, you know,
0:04:47we've had good times and bad times.
0:04:49And this time, it just, they are so broken.
0:04:53Like they're so unreliable in so many different ways.
0:04:56They're slow, they don't respond to things.
0:04:58They forget what they're saying halfway.
0:05:00It's just everything about them is just broken.
0:05:03They don't work reliably anymore.
0:05:04And so I'm officially decommissioning them.
0:05:07I unplugged them.
0:05:08I actually, this is embarrassing.
0:05:11I got some stupid thing from B&O.
0:05:14It was supposed to be a really good replacement
0:05:16And it lasted like two seconds on the counter
0:05:19before it was rejected by the historical committee.
0:05:21But it wasn't even good enough to keep,
0:05:24like if I'm honest, it wasn't good enough
0:05:25to be worth the stupid price.
0:05:27So what I did now, I just plugged in a HomePod mini
0:05:31up there which is not even close to sounding good
0:05:35in the relatively large room it's placed in.
0:05:38'Cause of course, it's a tiny little thing.
0:05:40But I just, I wish Apple would fix the HomePod
0:05:44and release a new big one.
0:05:45because whatever they're doing with the Mini,
0:05:48I don't wanna drill this into the ground,
0:05:49but whatever they're doing with the Mini,
0:05:51it's clearly running a different software stack
0:05:53than the big one.
0:05:53It's certainly a different hardware stack,
0:05:55but I think the software stack is very different as well.
0:05:57And so the big one just is so much more broken
0:06:01in so many more ways.
0:06:02The small one seems to work pretty well.
0:06:03We have a few small ones around the house.
0:06:04They seem to work pretty well.
0:06:06The big ones just don't anymore.
0:06:07And on one hand, I feel very burned
0:06:10in the sense that these were expensive
0:06:12and they aren't that old,
0:06:14and they're already pretty much not functioning.
0:06:18So on one hand I kinda feel burned.
0:06:20On the other hand, I'm looking around the environment
0:06:24and I'm like, I still just want Apple to make a good one.
0:06:26I don't trust anyone else to do this
0:06:29because I've looked around the market
0:06:31and there just isn't anything good.
0:06:32So I don't know what to do.
0:06:35That's gonna be an ongoing thing.
0:06:36I'm also, I'm kind of upset
0:06:37because I also had to just replace my iPad keyboard
0:06:40'cause it died.
0:06:42- Oh. - Did it just turn 40?
0:06:44(laughing)
0:06:46- It is about four, it's almost four, so that's--
0:06:50- It's 40 in overpriced accessory years.
0:06:52- Right, you multiply it by 10 and yeah.
0:06:53- Well, you know, which keyboard,
0:06:55the floaty one or the not floaty one?
0:06:57- The one that came out in 2018,
0:06:59the Folio without the trackpad.
0:07:00- Oh, okay, 'cause I was gonna say the floaty one
0:07:03came out like early on in the pandemic, if I'm not mistaken.
0:07:05So it wouldn't be four years old,
0:07:08but no, I didn't realize, okay.
0:07:10- I don't care for that one on the 11 inch
0:07:12because, well, either side, just 'cause I'm not that much
0:07:15of an iPad power user and it's so big and bulky
0:07:18and expensive and the combined object you get
0:07:22with the Magic Keyboard, which is the one you're talking
0:07:24about with the trackpad, the combined object you get,
0:07:26I did not like, I thought it was clunky,
0:07:29I didn't like how hard it was to move the hinge
0:07:30and it was very heavy and it was just like, forget it.
0:07:34But I like the regular keyboard folios they've been making
0:07:37since the iPad Pro forever ago.
0:07:39I like those, those are great.
0:07:41Those are like almost $200, like 160, 170 usually.
0:07:45So they're almost 200 bucks.
0:07:46They do die eventually.
0:07:48We got one for my father-in-law a few years back,
0:07:51and his just died this past year.
0:07:53I've had one other one die before this.
0:07:56Mine just died again.
0:07:58And it seems like it's an electronic thing.
0:08:02It's not a key switch failing thing.
0:08:03It's something with the controller electronics
0:08:05where it just won't appear to the iPad anymore.
0:08:09The iPad will just think there's no keyboard connected,
0:08:10and you can pop it off, pop it back on,
0:08:12and it might reconnect, eventually that stops working.
0:08:15Over time, even that doesn't work anymore.
0:08:17It doesn't seem to be a dirty contacts thing,
0:08:19it's like try cleaning the contacts, it's not that.
0:08:21It just seems like these keyboards just die so often.
0:08:23So worth pointing out, if you're gonna buy a $200,
0:08:26or if you get the Magic Keyboard,
0:08:28a $330, I think, dollar iPad keyboard.
0:08:31- Yeah, whatever it is, it's a lot.
0:08:32- Yeah, be aware they only last a few years.
0:08:35Which again, I'm not happy about that either.
0:08:37And through other various, this is,
0:08:39I don't wanna make this too much of the Marco Show,
0:08:40but through other various things that are mostly boring,
0:08:44in the last couple of days, I have ordered both a new iPad
0:08:48and a new iPhone for various reasons and family needs
0:08:52and things like that off cycle.
0:08:55And it feels really dirty.
0:08:56I'm like, I know new stuff in both of those areas
0:09:00is going to come out in a few months,
0:09:02but I need them now.
0:09:04So it's like I'm just, I'm becoming a normal person.
0:09:06I have to just buy stuff and kinda not care
0:09:08for these particular roles,
0:09:09like well this thing's gonna be replaced
0:09:10in a couple of months.
0:09:11- Done 'em plenty of times too,
0:09:13getting kids phones and stuff
0:09:15when they don't wanna hand me down
0:09:16or when they break a hand me down
0:09:17and they need a new phone now
0:09:18and you know a new one's coming in two months,
0:09:19they just gotta buy.
0:09:20- Yeah, I've been eyeing an M1 iPad Pro
0:09:23'cause as I've said many times,
0:09:25I'm on the 2018 iPad Pro,
0:09:26which honestly still runs really well.
0:09:29Like it's not brand new and the battery is a little eh,
0:09:31but all things considered,
0:09:33this thing is four years old or thereabouts
0:09:35and it runs really well.
0:09:37and i hear what you're saying about magic keyboard the flotie keyboard it is
0:09:41heavy and bulky i disagree about the hinge but otherwise i agree with
0:09:43everything you said
0:09:44uh... but i i do really like it and i like uh... maybe i'm just easily news
0:09:48but i like having a track that from time to time
0:09:51so i still really like my pad but i'm looking at you know the beta and and
0:09:55uh... center stage or whatever heck it's called no not center stage i'm doing
0:09:58this stage manager
0:09:59thank you stage manager
0:10:00uh... and and i'm looking at not having an m one i pet program thinking mister
0:10:04Should I get an iPad?
0:10:05It's about time to upgrade, but no, I should wait.
0:10:07Shouldn't I?
0:10:08I should wait.
0:10:09I should definitely wait.
0:10:10- That's one of the reasons I upgraded.
0:10:11So I didn't even have an iPad for most,
0:10:14I don't even have a TV.
0:10:15I didn't even have an iPad for most of the last year
0:10:19because as my kid's iPad was breaking
0:10:22and we were awaiting that product to be updated,
0:10:25as that was happening, I lent him mine
0:10:26for a span of a number of months.
0:10:28So, and I just didn't have one for a while.
0:10:30I hardly ever used the iPad.
0:10:31However, now I have significant reason
0:10:34to have an iPad for testing,
0:10:36because now my app became a lot more resizable on the iPad.
0:10:40(laughing)
0:10:41And I have to really make sure that works.
0:10:43And you can do, I think you can do some testing
0:10:45in the simulator, but anyway.
0:10:46So at the same time as I was thinking,
0:10:48'cause again, I too have the 2018 11-inch iPad Pro.
0:10:53And it's because, you know, for my uses it's fine.
0:10:57- Yeah, I really do wanna point that out one more time.
0:10:59I know I said it a second ago,
0:11:00But this is a four year old device that,
0:11:03for the sorts of things that Marco and I are doing
0:11:05up until now, it's been fine.
0:11:07Like it doesn't feel slow,
0:11:09it doesn't feel like a four year old device.
0:11:11It's actually held up stunningly well.
0:11:14And I feel like we should applaud Apple for that.
0:11:16But that being said, somebody buy me an M1 iPad Pro, please.
0:11:20- Yeah, well that's the conclusion I came to.
0:11:22Is like, I wanted a stage manager test device,
0:11:26and I looked at the Air, I looked at the Pro,
0:11:28and basically the pro could get to me faster.
0:11:31And separately from that, I also,
0:11:33there's a new role in my life for boring reasons,
0:11:37but I now could use an iPad again,
0:11:39like on a regular basis,
0:11:41I kinda need like a separate device.
0:11:42I need an iPad.
0:11:44The iPad I currently own,
0:11:46oh, and like over on my side of my desk
0:11:48is Tiff's old 12.9 inch iPad, the previous Gen 1.
0:11:53So I have the 12.9 and the 11, both from 2018,
0:11:57sitting around not doing anything.
0:11:59Meanwhile, I need an M1 version for testing.
0:12:02- Man, that hurts.
0:12:03- So I'm just like, all right,
0:12:04so I did the Apple trade-in for both of them,
0:12:07and the combined trade-in for both of them
0:12:08gets me the cheapest M1 iPad, so I'm just like,
0:12:12- Oh, nice. - I'll trade these two in
0:12:14for the one I actually want,
0:12:16and spend the $200 on a new keyboard,
0:12:18and call it a day. (laughs)
0:12:20- So wait, what's the story with the iPhone?
0:12:22- Oh, and so that's a separate thing.
0:12:24So that's a family member finally has accepted an iPhone.
0:12:29And so for various reasons, not my kid,
0:12:33just an older family member, finally,
0:12:34we've been trying to get them on an iPhone for a long time,
0:12:35we finally did, they agreed to take my old iPhone 12 mini.
0:12:40Currently, before that, my main testing iPhones
0:12:44for testing my app on different Apple IDs
0:12:46and different store configurations, stuff like that,
0:12:48and different OS versions,
0:12:49my testing setup has been an iPhone 7
0:12:52and my iPhone 12 mini.
0:12:54Well, the 12 mini you just have to give in a way
0:12:56and the iPhone 7 doesn't run iOS 16.
0:12:59So I'm like, all right,
0:13:01I could really use one more iPhone.
0:13:05And so I went on Amazon and bought their refurbished,
0:13:08renewed crap, used iPhone 13 mini.
0:13:13So that way I will have the best mini phone
0:13:17that was ever made, paid almost nothing for it
0:13:20relatively to its new price.
0:13:22And that will be a new good test phone, because it is both mini,
0:13:26so it's cool, and I'll be happy when I pick it up.
0:13:28And also, I can run all the latest stuff on it.
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0:15:23- So popping up the stack several levels.
0:15:28We also need to go back to our housekeeping
0:15:32and congratulate John's son, Alex,
0:15:34who is a high school graduate, which is very exciting.
0:15:36- Hey!
0:15:37- So how we feeling, dad?
0:15:39- Good, I guess.
0:15:40I mean, one thing I learned about his high school,
0:15:41and I don't know if it's just his high school,
0:15:43it seems like it'd be a trend.
0:15:45When we were in high school, and maybe, I don't know,
0:15:48I should say when I was in high school,
0:15:49and maybe when you two were in high school as well,
0:15:51the sort of tradition was that at graduation,
0:15:55the school valedictorian would give a speech, right?
0:15:57Is that a thing that you two experienced?
0:16:00- I gave a speech at my high school graduation
0:16:01'cause I was president of the graduating class,
0:16:03thank you very much, but yes, it was valedictorian,
0:16:06I think the salutatorian gave a speech in me,
0:16:08if memory serves. - Yeah, there you go.
0:16:09All right, so they don't do that as much anymore, I think,
0:16:12And my son's school also, as far as I'm aware,
0:16:17doesn't even give like rankings, academic rankings.
0:16:21- Oh, interesting.
0:16:22- And so instead what they do is everyone in the school
0:16:25votes or something like that to say who should speak.
0:16:28So they had a bunch of student speakers
0:16:29and people voted for them and they got up to go up there
0:16:33and talk, right?
0:16:34But it's not based on like academic rank
0:16:35or class president or anything like that.
0:16:38Although I think one of the people that spoke
0:16:39was someone involved in student government.
0:16:41But anyway, I'm not quite sure how it works.
0:16:42But all this is to say is that,
0:16:45say okay, well there's no,
0:16:46'cause I ask myself, what do you think your class rank was?
0:16:48It's like, oh, they don't do that, dad.
0:16:50You're so old.
0:16:50And so I'm like, well, I can just say
0:16:55that you are the number one in your class, right?
0:16:57'Cause who knows?
0:16:58I mean, you might have been, so.
0:17:01- My class rank was 90 out of 180.
0:17:04- Nice, nice.
0:17:05- I was exactly the most mediocre student in my class.
0:17:08- And that's, so the number, yeah,
0:17:10The number like that is like, well, you know, academically,
0:17:13the numbers are what they are,
0:17:13but the numbers are so weird now
0:17:15'cause they do waiting for like honors classes
0:17:17and all sorts of weird stuff.
0:17:18And some people do add a 5.0, some people do add a 4.0.
0:17:21It's just so confusing.
0:17:22So anyway, I'm just declaring my son
0:17:24probably the valedictorian of his class.
0:17:26Let's be honest.
0:17:27(both laughing)
0:17:29- Were his grades, all kidding aside,
0:17:30were his grades that good?
0:17:31- His grades were fantastic.
0:17:32He did better in school than either of his parents.
0:17:35- Oh, that's awesome.
0:17:36- And I'm not asking you to upset the privacy clown
0:17:41or whatever it is from Dubai Friday,
0:17:42but he has a college plan or a post-graduate plan
0:17:46or what have you.
0:17:47- Yep, he's off to college.
0:17:48You know, college admissions is rough
0:17:51and college tuition is rough, but you know,
0:17:53you can do what you can.
0:17:54But he did a great in high school.
0:17:56Very proud of him.
0:17:59- Good. - Awesome.
0:17:59- And then is he doing any sort of summer work
0:18:01or anything like that or is he just chilling out?
0:18:03- No.
0:18:04I don't know what his,
0:18:05I haven't been really--
0:18:06I mean, this is the thing when you have a kid who's
0:18:08like academically excellent.
0:18:10You feel bad.
0:18:12It's like my wife's inclination, especially
0:18:14to get on his case about school work.
0:18:16It's like, look, his grades are perfect.
0:18:19Like, it's nothing--
0:18:21and yeah, sometimes it does seem like he's slacking
0:18:23or whatever.
0:18:24But it's like, you can't argue with results, right?
0:18:27There's no higher grade attainable.
0:18:30There's no higher scores attainable.
0:18:32And so anyway, so what is he doing for summer?
0:18:34you should be pressuring him to do something or whatever."
0:18:36It's like, "Nah."
0:18:38I feel like if you do really awesome in high school
0:18:40and your parents never have to bug you about it,
0:18:41one of your rewards is you can probably do
0:18:43whatever the hell you want between,
0:18:44the summer between high school and college.
0:18:47I don't know, I'm gonna encourage him
0:18:48to do something or other, but who knows if he will.
0:18:50And honestly, he's earned the ability
0:18:53to just goof off all summer if he wants.
0:18:54Hopefully he doesn't listen to this podcast,
0:18:56but he doesn't, it's fine.
0:18:58- You know, I hear, Jon, that success hides failure.
0:19:00- No, success hides problems, come on.
0:19:02- Oh, that's what it is, damn it.
0:19:03- I was trying to be smart,
0:19:04and clearly I'm not as smart as Al.
0:19:05- There's more to life than academic success.
0:19:07That is definitely true.
0:19:09- Oh my God, there's so much more.
0:19:10- That is very true.
0:19:11- But academic success is nice too.
0:19:13- Academic success matters a lot when you're in it
0:19:16and right after you're in it.
0:19:18And then it doesn't matter at all.
0:19:19- That is also true.
0:19:20- Matters a lot when you're trying
0:19:21to get into college though, just FYI.
0:19:22- Right, that qualifies as the right after you're in it.
0:19:25As soon as you do the next thing after it,
0:19:28it stops mattering at all.
0:19:29- Well, if you wanna go to graduate school,
0:19:30kinda helps if you do well as an undergraduate.
0:19:32- Yeah, well then that's the next thing after it.
0:19:34- All right, 'cause some people just--
0:19:35- It's a recursive problem, John.
0:19:36- Keep doing that forever.
0:19:37They just never leave academia.
0:19:39- Do you, to the extent you're willing to discuss
0:19:42on this You're Not Feelings program,
0:19:44do you have plans for him with regard to a computer
0:19:48to go to college and/or automobile to go to college?
0:19:50- Yeah, I'm already excited
0:19:52about those educational discounts.
0:19:54- Yeah, baby.
0:19:54- This Friday, I'm ordering him a new M2 MacBook Air.
0:19:59He chose the boring color.
0:20:00I tried to push the midnight.
0:20:02he was just not having it, so he's picking Space Gray, whatever.
0:20:05That's the worst.
0:20:07I like it too.
0:20:08It would be my site.
0:20:09Anyway, that's what he picked.
0:20:10It's his computer.
0:20:12With his educational discount, love those savings.
0:20:15But then I am going to take advantage of it.
0:20:18You can go to the eDU store and check out to the point--
0:20:20you can't actually order it, but you
0:20:21can go through the whole config process and everything.
0:20:24And when you scroll down, you configure your computer,
0:20:26and it's like, what else do you want?
0:20:27Do you want Final Cut Pro?
0:20:28Do you want Logic?
0:20:29You know when Apple does that on their sites?
0:20:31Well, in the EDU store--
0:20:32The optimistic upsells.
0:20:34In the EDU store, they said, do you
0:20:36want the student professional something something bundle?
0:20:39I was like, huh, what's this?
0:20:40For $199, you get Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Motion,
0:20:46and like two other things that I can't remember.
0:20:48But just--
0:20:48Whoa.
0:20:49Like Final Cut Pro itself is like, what, $300, $200?
0:20:52I think it's two or $300, yeah.
0:20:53Logic is like $100.
0:20:54Like, there's a lot of savings.
0:20:56Yeah, I think it's about a 50% discount, I think.
0:20:58I'm going to get that bundle.
0:20:59Like, you can't beat those savings.
0:21:01And maybe he'll use them, maybe he won't,
0:21:02but I want, but see, I want those apps to be mine.
0:21:05Like, I want the computer to be his,
0:21:07but I want those apps to be mine.
0:21:09And so I'm like, when I buy that,
0:21:10are they gonna like give me a promo code
0:21:12that I enter in the app store?
0:21:13Does that mean I have to buy it on my Apple ID,
0:21:15but then will I get the either you discount?
0:21:17So I gotta figure that out, you know.
0:21:18But anyway, Friday in the morning
0:21:20is when the MacBook Air goes on sale
0:21:22and I'm getting him that for school.
0:21:24He already has, he already has one code,
0:21:26an old M1 MacBook Air. - Wait, hold on.
0:21:27I think only the 13-inch Pro goes on sale this Friday.
0:21:32They haven't announced the on-sale date for the Air yet.
0:21:34- But as soon as it goes on sale, I'm getting it.
0:21:37And he just wants, you know, the M1 MacBook Air
0:21:39is technically this family's,
0:21:41and this will be actually his computer, so, yeah.
0:21:44- That's fair.
0:21:44Is he bringing a car to school or anything like that?
0:21:46- No, there's no car for him to bring.
0:21:47- Well, there could be.
0:21:49- But there's not.
0:21:50(laughing)
0:21:52- This is why I asked the question.
0:21:53- You get a renewed refurbished one on Amazon
0:21:55for not that much money.
0:21:56His tuition costs much more than any car I've ever purchased.
0:22:01I will never forget my dad telling me, sitting me down before I went to Virginia Tech, and
0:22:05tech was cheap, even out of state.
0:22:08But he sat me down and he said, "I just want you to know," because he had just like a year
0:22:11or two before bought himself his second Wrangler of the three that he's owned.
0:22:15And he said, "I just want you to know, you going to school is like me driving the Jeep
0:22:20off a cliff and then doing it again next year and doing it again next year."
0:22:25- Thanks, Dad.
0:22:26That makes me feel real great.
0:22:27Thanks so much.
0:22:28Oh, goodness.
0:22:29All right, well, congratulations, Marco,
0:22:31for surviving till 40 in what, two days?
0:22:33And congratulations, Alex, for graduating high school.
0:22:37All three of us are very proud of the two of you.
0:22:41So very well done.
0:22:42As per tradition, we need to do the follow-up episode,
0:22:45since it was just a big Apple event,
0:22:47and we need to do what will almost surely be an episode,
0:22:50almost entirely a follow-up.
0:22:51And let's start with iCloud Shared Photo Library,
0:22:55which unfortunately, but understandably,
0:22:57is not in any of the betas, but we have news about this.
0:22:59- Understandably, I was disappointed not to find it there.
0:23:02I was looking around, I'm like, "Where is this?
0:23:03"How do you do it?" or whatever.
0:23:04I had to ask, and they're like,
0:23:04"Oh yeah, no, it's not in the betas."
0:23:06They didn't say that on the thing.
0:23:08They just did a whole presentation,
0:23:10got me all excited about this new feature,
0:23:11and they didn't say, "Oh, and by the way,
0:23:12"this is totally not in the beta.
0:23:14"It'll be in the beta eventually,
0:23:15"but it's not in the current beta."
0:23:16So I was disappointed by that.
0:23:17- It's always shady when they do the like,
0:23:20"Well, if you upgrade this device,
0:23:21everything else is screwed, you know?
0:23:23Which I understand why it's like that,
0:23:26'cause you're doing new things in iCloud
0:23:28and that server side and blah, blah, blah,
0:23:29but it gets a little squishy, so I can understand it.
0:23:31- By the way, this feature is another reason
0:23:34to have testing Apple IDs,
0:23:36which Apple does not make easy to do
0:23:38and has caused me problems in the past,
0:23:39but I still have a couple of them rattling around,
0:23:41and yeah, I'm not letting iCloud shared photo library
0:23:43anywhere near my real Apple ID until it is out
0:23:46and tested by somebody who's not me.
0:23:49- In any case, somebody, I guess John
0:23:51had noticed a tweet from Jason Snell with regard to,
0:23:54excuse me, from Jason with regard to
0:23:57what happens with the sharing allocations.
0:24:01And so Jason wrote,
0:24:02"If you're sharing with someone in the family,
0:24:04"it just uses the shared family allotment once,
0:24:07"not multiple times.
0:24:08"If you share with someone not in a family plan with you,
0:24:11"I believe the person sharing the images
0:24:13"is the one who quote unquote pays for the storage."
0:24:16And then Jason went on to say,
0:24:17I think this is more of Jason, I didn't put this in.
0:24:19- No, that's not me, this is me clarifying
0:24:21because when I saw it, I'm like, wait a second,
0:24:22you have to pay, like if I share a shared library with Casey,
0:24:26I have to pay for that storage, so I got a clarification.
0:24:29This is just me interpreting the clarification.
0:24:32- Okay, and so apparently I'm reading for John now.
0:24:35It doesn't subtract it, it's just using your storage.
0:24:39So if you share with someone outside the family
0:24:40and you contribute 200 gigabytes
0:24:42and they contribute 200 gigabytes,
0:24:43then you each pay for what you contribute,
0:24:45but it's not double counted.
0:24:46- Yeah, this is a worry a lot of people have
0:24:47with any sharing thing, especially since I think Dropbox,
0:24:50I don't know if they still do it this way,
0:24:51but I think they originally did it the terrible way
0:24:52where it's like, if you do a shared folder in Dropbox,
0:24:55everybody has that storage counted
0:24:57towards their total allotment, which is just terrible
0:25:00because you know that they're not storing the data 17 times
0:25:02or whatever.
0:25:03But so it seems like the iCloud shared photo library
0:25:06works the way you would want it to.
0:25:08And that you don't double or triple or quadruple count.
0:25:11The stuff is only stored once.
0:25:13And if you have a shared photo library
0:25:15where you contribute some photos and so does somebody else
0:25:17and you do different family things,
0:25:18you just each pay for whatever you've contributed.
0:25:21It's as if it was in just your own regular library.
0:25:24- Copy paste edits in photos.
0:25:27According to the Iowa 16 preview on Apple's website,
0:25:30you can copy the edits you've made to a photo
0:25:32and then paste them onto another photo or a batch of photos.
0:25:35I presume that you're very excited about this, Jon.
0:25:38- This is actually a big deal.
0:25:39This is something that Lightroom had forever ago,
0:25:41and I remember that was one of the big
0:25:43life-changing moments when I had a huge set of photos
0:25:47that I just shot and maybe I wanted to adjust
0:25:49the white balance on all of them at once
0:25:51'cause it was set a little bit wrong or something like that.
0:25:54It's really nice to have this kind of feature.
0:25:55Or you tweak your photos a certain way
0:25:58and maybe you wanna apply them all to a big batch.
0:26:01It's a really nice feature to have
0:26:02and it's something that pro workflows expect
0:26:05and have expected for quite some time.
0:26:07So it's nice to see.
0:26:08- I think Aperture might have had a similar feature
0:26:10and one of the things I always remember
0:26:12is from like OmniGraffle where you could copy subsets
0:26:15styling and then paste that styling with a special tool onto other things.
0:26:19And so yeah, this is definitely a useful feature, but, and I, well I don't know this for a fact,
0:26:24but I just saw the URL that this page was on is like iOS 16 preview features, right?
0:26:29I checked the Mac OS, you know, Ventura preview whatever thing and this wasn't listed there.
0:26:35So it's cool that you can do this from the iOS and iPad OS photos application, but you
0:26:42can't do it from the Mac one?
0:26:43I don't know that to be true.
0:26:45Again, the Mac Photos application doesn't even
0:26:47have the shared thing in it yet,
0:26:48so maybe it will be on the Mac too.
0:26:49But I really hope, because I don't spend my time
0:26:52doing photo edits on my phone or my iPad.
0:26:54I do them on my Mac, so I hope this feature
0:26:56comes there as well.
0:26:57- Eric DeRider has some thoughts on Safety Check,
0:27:00which are really, really useful.
0:27:02Eric writes, "Safety Check looks like a great feature,
0:27:04but in the meantime, and for those who can't
0:27:06or won't update to iOS 16, Apple has a guide
0:27:08to do some of these things manually,
0:27:10and there is a personal safety user guide
0:27:12that we will link to, which discusses
0:27:14how to take care of yourself with regard
0:27:16to personal safety and your devices, which is pretty cool.
0:27:18Yeah, that's exactly why this feature needs to exist,
0:27:20because you read that document, and your eyes start to glaze
0:27:22over, and it's just so much work.
0:27:23And expecting someone to do that at a very difficult time
0:27:26of their life and a limited amount of time
0:27:28and do it carefully and do it perfectly
0:27:29is probably too much to ask.
0:27:30But worst case scenario, you do have some recourse,
0:27:34even if you don't have iOS 16.
0:27:36Yep, which is excellent.
0:27:37All right, tell me about pass keys, John.
0:27:39This is a question a lot of people had.
0:27:41There's a lot of misunderstanding about PassKeys,
0:27:43but one of the questions is like,
0:27:44how do I share this with somebody?
0:27:45This came up in this program.
0:27:45You're like, well, you know, technologically,
0:27:47there's nothing stopping you from doing what you can do
0:27:49with one password, which is like put it
0:27:50into a shared family vault or whatever.
0:27:52As far as I can tell, Apple does not have the concept
0:27:55of a shared family iCloud keychain.
0:27:58Now that we've got it for photos,
0:27:59it makes me want it everywhere else.
0:28:00I think on past shows, I said,
0:28:03Apple should do it with contacts
0:28:04'cause it's like so much a small use case,
0:28:05shared family contacts, library, whatever,
0:28:09Shared Family iCloud Keychain.
0:28:11All those things should happen, but they don't yet exist.
0:28:14But Apple's solution to the idea of sharing a password
0:28:17with somebody, like say you sign up for an account
0:28:19with a passkey, and you just send the password
0:28:23to someone in your family if they want to log into.
0:28:25How do I do that with a passkey?
0:28:27Well, in Apple's WWDC session about passkeys this year,
0:28:31starting at around six minutes and 14 seconds,
0:28:33you can see their answer.
0:28:34And their answer is you AirDrop it to them.
0:28:35So you can go into passwords on your phone,
0:28:38and you just AirDrop it like you AirDrop anything else.
0:28:40And why is it AirDrop and not like email or messages
0:28:44or whatever, I assume they want you to be in proximity
0:28:46so you kind of know who you're sending it to
0:28:48because AirDrop doesn't work like, you know,
0:28:49over hundreds of miles or whatever.
0:28:51They don't really talk about that.
0:28:53But anyway, that is the thing that works.
0:28:55You can AirDrop a passkey to somebody.
0:28:57And for people who don't,
0:28:59who have some misunderstanding about this,
0:29:02it's not like you have one passkey and that's it.
0:29:04Every single account on every single service
0:29:07has its own public private key pair, right?
0:29:10So you can have 50 accounts on mycoolsite.com
0:29:13and they all have separate pass keys
0:29:16and they're all, you can pass them around.
0:29:17It's just like a password, right?
0:29:18It's instead of username and password,
0:29:20it's username and pass key, right?
0:29:21And all the stuff we talked about
0:29:23of how they're unlocked or whatever is,
0:29:25it's the pass key stuff.
0:29:26But in the end, there is one of them
0:29:28for every single account and there's no limitation
0:29:30that you can, it's not like tied to your Apple ID
0:29:33or tied to your phone and I can only have one account
0:29:35on this service because it's tied to my phone,
0:29:38you can have as many as you want,
0:29:39and you can pass them around with AirDrop
0:29:41just like any other data.
0:29:42- And then, how do you recover pass keys
0:29:45if you lose all your devices?
0:29:46- Yeah, Apple has a document about this,
0:29:48and it's an interesting question,
0:29:50like say your house burns down, right?
0:29:51And it had all your stuff in it,
0:29:53it had all your backup codes,
0:29:54it had all your iOS devices, right?
0:29:57- We were sponsored this week by Backblaze.
0:29:58- Yeah. - No, just kidding.
0:30:00- Well, that's the question.
0:30:01So if you have passwords, you could say,
0:30:03well, I put a text document and I put it in Backblaze
0:30:06or whatever, and so I'll just like,
0:30:07if I can just restore from Backblaze
0:30:08and I'll see what my password was
0:30:09and I'll get back all my stuff.
0:30:10But passkeys, the whole point of them is
0:30:12they don't leave your device, right?
0:30:14Other than apparently how they get airdropped,
0:30:16and I'm not quite sure how they do that in a secure way,
0:30:17but it's, you know, Apple end to end,
0:30:19so they figure out some way to do it.
0:30:20But anyway.
0:30:21- Right, but like the private keys are not
0:30:22just sitting in a file somewhere, right?
0:30:23- They're in a secure enclave,
0:30:25and they're in iCloud Keychain, which is end to end encrypted,
0:30:27and if you like don't know your, you know,
0:30:31Apple ID, password, like if you lose all the hardware devices
0:30:34and you don't remember stuff, how do you get anything back?
0:30:37And Apple actually has solutions to this.
0:30:39One of them that's a big one and a fairly new one
0:30:41that we talked about in past shows is
0:30:43have a recovery contact where you can have another person
0:30:46be sort of your backstop and say,
0:30:48if all else fails and everything screws up,
0:30:50this person who I better super duper trust
0:30:52can help me get my stuff back.
0:30:54And I actually set that up today.
0:30:55Last time I tried to set it up,
0:30:56it was complaining about like minimal S versions of devices.
0:30:59You basically have to kick out any devices
0:31:01that have really old OSs.
0:31:02Like I had an iPod that was still listed
0:31:04as belonging to my Apple ID and stuff,
0:31:06or my iPhone 7 was still registered for Apple Pay.
0:31:09You can go to appleid.apple.com
0:31:12and just delete those devices,
0:31:14'cause they're all in the attic and erased now anyway,
0:31:16so they don't have anything on them.
0:31:17But once you do that, you can set up a recovery contact.
0:31:20You could also have this sort of like
0:31:22fallback recovery code thing that you can do
0:31:25where you call Apple on the phone
0:31:26and they have something in escrow for you
0:31:28you prove who you are, read the document,
0:31:31put it in the show notes, but the point is,
0:31:33even if you lose everything, you can,
0:31:36there are ways to recover some of your stuff.
0:31:39Some of it might involve you putting a piece of paper
0:31:40in a security deposit box somewhere,
0:31:42or giving it to somebody that's your
0:31:43if all else fails thing, but yeah.
0:31:47And it's a pretty unlikely scenario that you would
0:31:50not only lose every single hardware device you own
0:31:52that is signed into your Apple ID,
0:31:53but also not know any of your passwords.
0:31:56I guess it's envisioning a world
0:31:57where there are no more passwords,
0:31:58but it's just pass keys and what if everything
0:31:59that had that pass key in this key enclave is gone?
0:32:02Apple has thought of that.
0:32:03It is complicated but it is not entirely unsolvable.
0:32:06So check out the links in the show notes
0:32:07if you wanna see what Apple's thinking is
0:32:08on how to deal with that.
0:32:10- We are sponsored this week by Linode,
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0:34:09- All right, tell me about the M2.
0:34:14- So we're wondering what's the deal with the M2.
0:34:16They told us the stats, oh, it's like X percent faster,
0:34:19whatever, we didn't know anything more about it
0:34:21on last week's show.
0:34:22Well, now we do know more from this site Semi-analysis.
0:34:27I read their big analysis of looking at the die shot
0:34:30and what they say seems to hold some weight to me,
0:34:33assuming these die shots are vaguely accurate.
0:34:36It's A15 stuff in there, right?
0:34:37So it's the A15 power cores
0:34:40and the A15 efficiency cores, right?
0:34:43So if you're wondering,
0:34:44is it just an A14 with an extra GPU core
0:34:46or an M1 with extra GPU core?
0:34:48It's not.
0:34:48It's A15 stuff inside there.
0:34:50And the power core is actually bigger than it is.
0:34:55Well, it's obviously bigger than it is in M1,
0:34:56and it's also bigger than it is in the A15.
0:34:58It's 21% bigger than in the M1
0:35:00and 7% bigger than in the A15.
0:35:03And a lot of that has to do with like the L2 cache
0:35:05being bigger than it was in the A15,
0:35:06but the core itself, computation-wise, is the A15.
0:35:10The E-cores look about the same.
0:35:12There is the faster LPDDR6400 memory controller,
0:35:16which apparently costs more money,
0:35:18but that's how you get the extra memory bandwidth.
0:35:20So, you know, it is, like I said last week,
0:35:23it is definitely a worthy successor to the M1.
0:35:26The M1 had A14 stuff in it, the M2 has A15 stuff in it.
0:35:30It's a slightly better five nanometer process,
0:35:33which comes with it, you know, on its own.
0:35:36Even if you just fab the M1 in the, you know,
0:35:39the straight up M1 with this new process,
0:35:41it would get a little bit of boost in power,
0:35:44you know, power savings or, you know,
0:35:46a computer per watt or whatever.
0:35:47So, the M2 is looking pretty good.
0:35:50Like it's not super duper fantastic,
0:35:52but it is definitely a reasonable successor to the M1.
0:35:57- One thing that I do have a little bit of reservation
0:36:00about that I, you know, we'll have to just see the machines
0:36:03and use them to really know, but we don't know yet,
0:36:06you know, I kind of alluded to last week,
0:36:08like with the new MacBook Air, again, it's fanless again,
0:36:11and you know, presumably the same thing will apply
0:36:13to all the M2-based iPads that are presumably
0:36:16gonna come out soon, because I just bought an M1 one,
0:36:18so the M2 ones must be coming out like tomorrow.
0:36:21Actually, it'll come out, what's the return period,
0:36:2315 days, it'll come out 16 days from now.
0:36:26But anyway, is that we don't really know yet,
0:36:29like it does look like it might have a higher thermal load
0:36:34when it's under full load,
0:36:36because the die itself got significantly bigger,
0:36:40and the performance cores got bigger,
0:36:43and there was a leaked Geekbench result that came out today
0:36:46that look like they clocked it up a little bit too.
0:36:48And so it wouldn't surprise me if this might get throttled
0:36:53more than the M1 did in fanless enclosures.
0:36:56So again, we will have to see,
0:36:58hopefully I'm wrong about that,
0:37:00because that was one of the best things about the M1
0:37:02is that it pretty much never throttled
0:37:03unless you were really crushing both CPU and GPU.
0:37:07So we'll see what happens with the M2,
0:37:08but in case you were waffling over maybe getting an error
0:37:12or the quote pro, which we'll get to,
0:37:15But that decision, we don't really have all the information
0:37:19yet until we learn what is the trade off
0:37:21by making the M2 fanless?
0:37:23Does it get a little bit hotter than the M1?
0:37:25Does it have to throttle at some point
0:37:26sooner that you might hit,
0:37:27where you wouldn't have hit it on the M1?
0:37:29And the answer is we just don't know yet.
0:37:31- Well the thing with the,
0:37:32I wish I had the number on this offhand,
0:37:33but the new five nanometer process,
0:37:36again comes with it some percentage
0:37:37of better power efficiency.
0:37:40If that percentage is around the same percentage
0:37:43as the sort of area increase and the clocking increase.
0:37:47If those two balance each other out,
0:37:49it should be about the same as the M1, right?
0:37:51'Cause these numbers aren't big.
0:37:52If you look at how much bigger it is than the M1,
0:37:54it's like, I don't know, 10, 15% bigger.
0:37:57But if you get 10, 15% more power savings
0:37:59from the new process, it may just be a wash.
0:38:02We'll find out for the testing.
0:38:03Also, we don't even know what the cooling solution
0:38:06looks like inside the fanless M2 MacBook Air.
0:38:09You can solve a lot of problems with more heat pipes
0:38:12and more surface area and more little fins and stuff.
0:38:13So we'll see.
0:38:14- The M2 MacBook Air comes with color matched
0:38:18MagSafe cables, which makes me very jealous.
0:38:20This is unlike my MacBook Pro,
0:38:22which just used a, what is it, silver MagSafe connector.
0:38:26- Yeah, no matter what color MacBook Pro you get,
0:38:28you get the plain silver MagSafe connector,
0:38:31but the color match cable--
0:38:32- Which supports my assertion that the silver
0:38:34is the best color of MacBook Pro.
0:38:36- So the color match, I wish I had a picture of it here
0:38:39in the notes, but I think they're like,
0:38:40the cord is colored to match the MacBook Air or something.
0:38:43- And the little metal end.
0:38:45But no, you can actually, you can buy those separately
0:38:46as of whenever these things launch.
0:38:49There's a separate listing on Apple's website somewhere
0:38:50where you can actually, so if you want,
0:38:52even though Apple should have given you
0:38:53the color-matched version to begin with
0:38:54with your boring space gray laptop,
0:38:56you can now go buy the boring space gray
0:38:58MagSafe cable by itself.
0:39:00- Well, good to know.
0:39:01Also, the M2 MacBook Air has a 500-nit P3 screen.
0:39:04- Yeah, last week, Marco mistakenly said
0:39:07that it didn't have P3 and that the M2 MacBook Pro
0:39:10also didn't have P3, they both have P3.
0:39:12So they're 100 nits brighter,
0:39:13well the MacBook Air is 100 nits brighter than it was
0:39:15and they are both P3.
0:39:16- Yep, my bad.
0:39:18- Desk view, what is the situation with cameras in desk view?
0:39:22- We were talking last week about how it's using
0:39:23the wide angle camera to get a view of you
0:39:25and a view of your desk surface, your physical desktop.
0:39:29Well apparently if you are using it
0:39:32and you use the regular camera to see your face,
0:39:35It will then also simultaneously use the wide camera
0:39:38to see your physical desktop.
0:39:40So we'll use two cameras at once.
0:39:41And one of them is just using just to look at your fingers
0:39:44or whatever you have on your desk
0:39:45and the other is looking at your face.
0:39:46So it's nice that you're not limited to using the
0:39:48probably pretty bad, potentially center stage powered
0:39:51super ultra wide camera for your face.
0:39:53You can use the regular camera for that
0:39:54and just use the super ultra wide one
0:39:57to be able to see your desktop.
0:40:00- And then with regard to messages, according to Tobias,
0:40:03you can finally scroll through long messages
0:40:05from the normal UI, no more long press, et cetera.
0:40:08And also audio recording has been moved
0:40:10to the iMessage app area, woo!
0:40:11That's exciting.
0:40:12- I didn't confirm any of this, but I assume,
0:40:14'cause I don't have, do either one of you have the beta
0:40:16on anything where you can look at this and say,
0:40:18I'm assuming what this means is no more accidentally hitting
0:40:20that little thing that lets you record an audio message
0:40:22'cause it's not in the message field anymore?
0:40:23- I did have the beta before I gave away my 12 mini.
0:40:26(laughing)
0:40:28- Whoops, the depth's these.
0:40:30How was that, by the way, running it on your carry phone?
0:40:32- No, that's the thing, it wasn't on my carry phone.
0:40:34- Oh, it was on, right, right, you said the 12 mini.
0:40:35I'm sorry, yes, it's just us.
0:40:36- So I actually asked on Twitter yesterday,
0:40:38hey, how's the beta one on your carrier phones?
0:40:41And it sounds like it's a moderately rough beta one
0:40:44from what people are saying.
0:40:45And people, it's funny, people frame this differently.
0:40:47Some people say, it's pretty rough,
0:40:50I only get half the battery life.
0:40:51Other people say, it's not that bad,
0:40:53I'm only getting half the battery life.
0:40:55It depends on your perspective
0:40:56on what you're willing to give up,
0:40:58but it seems like there's a number of problems.
0:41:01Things like, people say Apple Pay didn't work,
0:41:04and half the battery life,
0:41:06and apparently Microsoft Teams, the app doesn't work,
0:41:08which I don't use, but it's good to know.
0:41:10So it seems like, yeah, it's beta one.
0:41:13And so you're probably better off still not putting it
0:41:16on your carry phones, but to be honest,
0:41:18I'm probably gonna jump in on beta two.
0:41:20- Fair enough.
0:41:21But yeah, and the other thing is,
0:41:22I didn't have this happen often,
0:41:24but it was absolutely infuriating
0:41:26when you got a very long message in Messages,
0:41:29and you had long press, or whatever the case may be,
0:41:32in order to read it,
0:41:33And so apparently that's not a problem anymore,
0:41:35which is exciting.
0:41:36- You know what we need?
0:41:37We need desktop class iPhone apps.
0:41:39And you know why?
0:41:40So we can get the stupid attach a photo back
0:41:42to not be buried under the message area thing, right?
0:41:44So we got rid of the audio thing in the text field.
0:41:47Now there's room for another icon there.
0:41:48Wouldn't it be great if you could pick which icon
0:41:50is the one that's not buried in the application thing?
0:41:53And the one I would pick is attach picture
0:41:54from your photo library, 'cause I do that all the time.
0:41:57- Yeah, that's the one that I think people do the most,
0:41:58right? - Right.
0:42:00And I guess people just leave that little
0:42:02app bar visible for people to know you can you can hold down on whatever button
0:42:05you press and it will hide and show that app bar. I don't leave it visible because I
0:42:08don't need to see it there all the time. I just want one thing to be accessible
0:42:11and I don't want that one thing not to be record audio message. So I really wish
0:42:14they would add a a one-slot customizable toolbar to the iPhone messages app.
0:42:20Think about it Apple. You're just the idea guy. All right tell me about Stage
0:42:26Manager please. One quick tip for this for people who don't know and don't like
0:42:29the little side thing that shows all the little window groups on an angle in Stage Manager.
0:42:37In iPadOS, apparently, James Thompson says you can turn off that sidebar if you long
0:42:41press on the Stage Manager mode thing in Control Center.
0:42:45So you don't have to see that all the time.
0:42:48I think you can also hide it on the Mac too.
0:42:49I'm not entirely sure.
0:42:50I haven't spent a lot of time in venture, though I did install it.
0:42:53So I just wanted to give that quick hint for people to think, "Oh, I'm not going to run
0:42:55Stage Manager.
0:42:56I don't want those icons clogging things up."
0:42:58Also, I think on the iPad, if you make the app or one
0:43:02of the app windows wide enough, I
0:43:03think that it will also hide that thing.
0:43:05I have not installed iPad OS 16 on any devices,
0:43:09so I don't know for sure.
0:43:10Have either one of you done that?
0:43:12No, I did.
0:43:14Had to restore that one too.
0:43:17Some more experimentation there.
0:43:19We'll talk more about Stage Manager as one or both of us
0:43:23or all three of us get brave enough to put it on our iPad.
0:43:25I'll probably put it on mine, because I do have an M1 iPad.
0:43:27I'll put it on mine eventually, just maybe not beta one.
0:43:29But before we dive too much more into that, in future weeks,
0:43:32it's time to talk about the controversies surrounding
0:43:36stage manager.
0:43:38So let's start with the talk show live,
0:43:40which they did in the Apple Developer Center thing,
0:43:44John Gruber's live talk show, that had Craig Federighi
0:43:47and Greg Joswiak as guests.
0:43:50And here are just a couple of short quotes
0:43:53about what Federighi said about stage manager,
0:43:56to think about it.
0:43:58And this is mostly in the context of the Mac, right?
0:44:00It was on the last show I talked about how on the Mac
0:44:01there's tons of different ways to manage Windows.
0:44:04Apple has done lots of different things over the years,
0:44:06and pretty much all of them are still there, right?
0:44:09You've got Exposé, you've got the dock,
0:44:11you've got minimization, you've got tiling windows,
0:44:14you've got zooming, you've got plain old resizing,
0:44:16you've got spaces, and now also you have stage manager.
0:44:20And I probably forgot something in there.
0:44:21All those things are all in there at the same time.
0:44:24So Craig Federighi said, we're not telling you
0:44:27that you're doing it wrong, implying
0:44:28like if you use one of those features,
0:44:30we're not saying, hey, you shouldn't
0:44:31use minimizing to the dock.
0:44:32You shouldn't use tiling.
0:44:34You know, all that is fine.
0:44:35We're not telling you whatever it
0:44:37is that you're doing is wrong.
0:44:38And then regarding why stage manager is a useful thing
0:44:42to have on the Mac is another quote from Federighi.
0:44:44There's a sense that the Mac experience is messy by default.
0:44:48That gets into the janitor quote from Steve Jobs, right?
0:44:50That if you don't do anything, like the default experience
0:44:53on the Mac is eventually just windows appear everywhere and that feels messy to people.
0:44:58He continues, "You're constantly either living in the mess or you're cleaning up after yourself
0:45:02constantly as you go."
0:45:03So that's like the impression that some people have about using the Mac, especially if you
0:45:07used to a phone or an iPad where, you know, especially in the past, your options were
0:45:11much more limited and you didn't have to deal with that visual clutter, right?
0:45:15So that's why center stage, center stage, God, everyone's doing it.
0:45:20That's why stage manager makes sense on the Mac.
0:45:24I think we talked about it the last week,
0:45:25but we'll put a link in the show notes
0:45:26to the Purple Window widget from Mac OS X Developer Preview 3
0:45:31in the year 2000.
0:45:34The idea behind that was similar.
0:45:36Yeah, the idea behind that was similar
0:45:39is it was Steve Jobs, I should have put the link,
0:45:40someone had a tweet where they clipped out the little thing
0:45:42from the Steve Jobs segment.
0:45:43We're like, Steve Jobs seemed to feel the same way,
0:45:46that if you're using a Mac, sometimes you feel like a janitor
0:45:50cleaning up all these windows.
0:45:51Wouldn't it be nice if you could concentrate on one thing at a time?
0:45:53The iPad was truly Steve Jobs' dream computer because it just did everything that he wanted
0:45:58the Mac to do but it never quite could, right?
0:46:01In terms of simplicity and elegance or whatever.
0:46:03Anyway, in Mac OS X Developer Preview 3 there was another window widget that was purple.
0:46:09You had the stop lights, you know, red, yellow, and green.
0:46:12And then you had a purple widget.
0:46:13They were colon candy colored at that point.
0:46:16And if you hit the purple one, it went into what they called single window mode, where
0:46:19all the other windows except for the one you were looking at would hide themselves, and
0:46:24you'd just see that one window.
0:46:25And if you switched to another one, the window you were working on would disappear and the
0:46:28other window would come in.
0:46:30You can see how that would be limiting, and you can see why maybe that didn't make it
0:46:32to release, because that's so limiting.
0:46:35One window at a time, and any time I switched to anything else, the window I was working
0:46:39on, the whole point of having a big screen on a Mac is so you can do two things at once
0:46:42and maybe drag things between windows and see them both at the same time.
0:46:45So single window mode didn't quite make it.
0:46:47But that idea of like, I wish the computer would just--
0:46:51I wish the Mac would just show me what I'm working on now
0:46:53and hide everything else, that is sort of-- you
0:46:56can see that underlying stage manager.
0:46:59And I think a lot of people talked about it.
0:47:02I listened to all the podcasts talking about W3C,
0:47:03including us, like how stage manager-- and we saw that,
0:47:06like that looks like a feature that would be appropriate
0:47:08for an iPad.
0:47:08Because the iPad already does kind of do one thing at once
0:47:10with limited amounts of multitasking.
0:47:12And stage manager is a slightly fancier, slightly more
0:47:14flexible way to do that.
0:47:16Still trying to say you're concentrating on
0:47:19one small set of things at once,
0:47:20and then you switch to a different small set of things.
0:47:23Right?
0:47:24And the others, you know, you've got the stage manager thing
0:47:26where they're along the side or whatever,
0:47:28but the stuff you're working on goes off into its little home
0:47:31and a new set of stuff comes out.
0:47:32So it's like the purple window widget.
0:47:34It's like single window mode from 2000,
0:47:36but handful of window mode.
0:47:39And it's different sets of handful of windows, right?
0:47:41And so when a lot of people saw stage manager,
0:47:44They thought, that looks like an iPad feature,
0:47:46and they just happened to bring it to the Mac,
0:47:47'cause they're trying to bring everything
0:47:48to all their platforms at once.
0:47:50Well, it turns out, some people in the know,
0:47:53some people who worked on this back in, what, 2006-ish
0:47:56or whatever, said that Stage Manager is actually
0:48:00an incarnation of an idea called Shrinky Dink
0:48:03from way back in the day.
0:48:05This is, we'll put a link in the show notes
0:48:07to something written by someone who's known as Cricket.
0:48:11and they were working on the Shrinkydink feature
0:48:14when Apple was transitioning to Intel back in 2006
0:48:17and included a screenshot.
0:48:19It looks a lot like Stage Manager,
0:48:21right down to the little angled groups of windows
0:48:24on the side, and it never quite shipped
0:48:26'cause they didn't quite get it to the point
0:48:27where they wanted to have it,
0:48:28but it shows that good ideas don't necessarily die,
0:48:31that even if they don't ship, maybe wait 10, 15 more years
0:48:35and they might see the light of day.
0:48:36So I highly recommend everyone reading that.
0:48:38So basically what that shows is this is not a feature
0:48:40that was made for the iPad and eventually brought to the Mac.
0:48:43It was a feature that was made for the Mac,
0:48:44didn't make it to the Mac, and got resurrected probably
0:48:47because of its applicability to the iPad
0:48:49and then also appeared on the Mac.
0:48:51-I should note that this site or this blog post
0:48:55seems to have been taken down,
0:48:56but we will put a link in the show notes just in case.
0:48:58-Let's see. -Yep.
0:48:59-Oh, that's sad.
0:49:00-Global security must have gotten to them.
0:49:02-Right?
0:49:03But one way or another, the screenshot that was there,
0:49:07that Jon was nice enough to put in the show notes,
0:49:09It looks really similar.
0:49:11It looks really, really similar.
0:49:13- Yeah, I'm assuming that got taken down
0:49:15because this screenshot must have been an internal
0:49:17Apple-only build that never saw the light of day.
0:49:19Yeah. - I guess.
0:49:21All right, so what's the controversy here?
0:49:22- So the controversy is why is, I gotta scroll up,
0:49:26why is Stage Manager, I almost said center stage,
0:49:28why is Stage Manager only available on M1 iPads?
0:49:31Last week we talked about it right after the keynote.
0:49:33We're like, well, you know,
0:49:35they did add a virtual memory swap support
0:49:39and that might be required to have all these applications
0:49:41in memory at the same time,
0:49:42because if you're gonna be showing
0:49:44four different applications on two different screens,
0:49:48the iPads don't come with a lot of RAM,
0:49:51and if you don't have enough RAM
0:49:53to hold that amount of applications, what can you do?
0:49:55It's not like you can just sort of put a checkerboard pattern
0:49:56over some of the applications and say,
0:49:57"Sorry, this application's not in memory
0:49:59"and we don't have swaps, so if you tap on it,
0:50:03"basically wait for it to relaunch
0:50:04"and then we'll rip one of your other apps out of memory."
0:50:07So we're like, well, maybe it's M1 only because M1,
0:50:11you know, the M1 iPads have more RAM.
0:50:13Lots of people seem to be angry that Stage Manager is M1 only
0:50:16because like you two were just talking about,
0:50:18what if I have like a, what I think is a fairly recent iPad
0:50:21that I think is perfectly fine,
0:50:22the performance of it's great,
0:50:23like it's an iPad Pro maybe even,
0:50:25and you're telling me I can't do Stage Manager?
0:50:28- Well, but just for the record, just for the record,
0:50:31I am not upset that my four-year-old iPad
0:50:33cannot do Stage Manager.
0:50:34- Yeah. - I'm only upset
0:50:35because I'm cheap, not because I think it should.
0:50:37- Yeah, the only reason I was, look,
0:50:38you know I will jump at any chance to upgrade my hardware.
0:50:42Any excuse, oh, I can't run, you know,
0:50:45I can only run four windows instead of five.
0:50:47Like, I have to upgrade my hardware.
0:50:48The only reason I felt bad about doing
0:50:51this particular upgrade is that I don't really end up
0:50:53using my iPad very much outside of testing situations.
0:50:56And that's, so it was frustrating.
0:50:58Like, my kid and my wife both have M1 iPads.
0:51:02Like, they, 'cause they both use their iPads
0:51:05very heavily all the time.
0:51:07So it made sense for them to upgrade when they were ready.
0:51:09For me, it didn't make a lot of sense,
0:51:11and I'm not excited about the upgrade.
0:51:13So that's the only reason I even resisted this a little bit.
0:51:15But to also be clear, I think it's totally reasonable
0:51:19that my four-year-old iPad Pro
0:51:22does not run this cutting-edge feature.
0:51:24Because, and I think the reasons they give are valid,
0:51:27because when you look at what Stage Manager has to do,
0:51:32it clearly requires a huge jump in RAM
0:51:36to keep way more apps running invisible
0:51:38than were ever running invisible before.
0:51:40That's why they had to add virtual memory swap,
0:51:42that's why this is such a big deal.
0:51:43And when you think about swapping,
0:51:45like the old hardware, when they were designing the,
0:51:49I believe I'm running an A12Z or X,
0:51:52one of those, I think X, I don't know.
0:51:55Anyway, running-- - That just sounded like me
0:51:56at an eye appointment.
0:51:57(laughing)
0:51:58R-S-T-L-N-Y, maybe?
0:52:01- You're on Wheel of Fortune.
0:52:02- Yeah. - You're right, you're right.
0:52:04- Yeah, but anyway, when they were designing my iPad
0:52:07four years ago, this feature of having swap
0:52:12probably was either not on their radar yet
0:52:14or only in very early consideration.
0:52:16And so to add something that dramatically changes
0:52:21how the memory needs are,
0:52:24how the storage infrastructure is accessed,
0:52:26what kind of flash, what rating of storage controller
0:52:29you can put in there, how much wear and tear
0:52:31the flash is designed to take,
0:52:32those are all significant hardware constraints
0:52:35that the older hardware has.
0:52:36And so it makes total sense that only hardware
0:52:39that was designed to be a laptop, as in the M1,
0:52:43that is equipped to do this,
0:52:45because laptops always have swap.
0:52:47So it made sense like that hardware was made to have swap,
0:52:49it was designed to have that kind of bandwidth
0:52:52and SSDs and everything like that,
0:52:53and memory in the first place to avoid needing
0:52:56a swap earlier.
0:52:57Whereas the four-year-old hardware wasn't,
0:52:59it's simple as that.
0:53:00We'll see. We'll see if that's simple.
0:53:01Let's go through the complaints.
0:53:03So what I was getting at with Casey saying
0:53:04was like the people's impression is that their computers,
0:53:08their iPads don't feel slow, right?
0:53:10So it's hard for them to understand
0:53:12why they can't support this feature
0:53:13'cause as old as it may be, it doesn't feel slow, right?
0:53:16So this thing started,
0:53:18people were complaining the internet early on.
0:53:20Apple gave a statement to Renee Ritchie that said,
0:53:22quoting from a portion of it,
0:53:24delivering this experience, meaning center, stage manager.
0:53:28- Stage manager, hi.
0:53:30Delivering this experience with the immediacy users expect from iPads touch for us experience requires large internal memory incredibly fast storage and flexible external
0:53:37Display, I'll all of which are delivered by I pass with M1 chips, okay
0:53:41Later Federighi did an interview with TechCrunch
0:53:44We said building the M1 was critical as well from the start the iPad is always maintained extremely high standard for responsiveness and interactivity
0:53:50That directness of interaction and that every app can respond to every touch and insane
0:53:54Instantaneously as if you were touching the real thing underneath the screen
0:53:58And I think it's hard sometimes for people to appreciate the technical constraints involved
0:54:01in achieving that.
0:54:02This gets to what I was saying before of like, if you don't have anywhere for that, you know,
0:54:07anywhere else to put that memory, and there's not enough memory to have all those apps in
0:54:10memory at the same time, how is it going to be responding instantly to your touch if you
0:54:13basically need to be relaunching the app behind the scenes, right?
0:54:16That's why people think, oh, a swap is necessary, right?
0:54:18So Federico continues, as you add multiple apps into play and large amounts of screen
0:54:21real estate, you have to make sure that any of those apps can respond instantly to your
0:54:26touch in a way that you don't have to have the expectation with a desktop app.
0:54:29I would argue you should have the same expectation with a desktop app as well.
0:54:34Indirect manipulation gives you some slack there so it's a different set of constraints.
0:54:37Yeah, I'm not sure it's that different.
0:54:41And then Stephen Hackett who was commenting on this post says, "Federie also mentions
0:54:44that older iPads don't have the horsepower to push external displays in the way Apple
0:54:48wants."
0:54:49Right?
0:54:50So that's Apple's side of the story.
0:54:52Needs to be responsive, takes lots of RAM, external displays or whatever.
0:54:54So here's the pushback from that community.
0:54:56So first, people were pushing back against the M1
0:54:59requirement, saying, well, look, the Apple Silicon DTK
0:55:03was a Mac Mini with an A12Z in it.
0:55:05And an A12Z is not an M1.
0:55:07And the A12Z ran Mac OS, which can have more than four
0:55:10windows on the screen.
0:55:11I'm not sure if you're aware.
0:55:12And I put more than four windows on the screen of the DTK,
0:55:16and it was fine.
0:55:17So it doesn't require an M1, it seems like.
0:55:20But the DTK had 16 gigs of RAM.
0:55:24And that's-- so it wasn't an A12Z with 4 gigs of RAM.
0:55:27It had 16 gigs of RAM.
0:55:28I don't actually know if the DDK ran swap,
0:55:30and obviously I don't have mine anymore to check.
0:55:32But so there's that consideration, right?
0:55:34And then from-- this bit is from Apple's iPad OS 16 preview
0:55:40page.
0:55:41It talks about virtual memory swap.
0:55:42And it says, iPad storage can be used
0:55:44to expand the available memory for all apps
0:55:46to deliver up to 16 gigabytes of memory
0:55:48for the most demanding apps.
0:55:49And then it has a little footnote, footnote number 19.
0:55:52And if you scroll down the page and see
0:55:54what is footnote number 19, it says,
0:55:56regarding virtual memory swap,
0:55:58that it is available on iPad Air fifth generation
0:56:01with a minimum of 256 gigabytes storage.
0:56:04And then it lists a bunch of other iPads it works on.
0:56:06So the iPad Air fifth generation
0:56:09also comes in a 64 gig storage model.
0:56:12And they're saying, if you get an iPad Air fifth generation--
0:56:15- Wait, this is the current model?
0:56:17- Yeah, with 64 gigs of storage, it won't use swap.
0:56:20Presumably because it doesn't wanna hog any more
0:56:23of the storage space with swap,
0:56:24'cause swap files can get big, right?
0:56:26But the iPad Air fifth generation runs Stage Manager.
0:56:31- And it has an M1, yeah.
0:56:33- Yeah, as Steve Stratton Smith said,
0:56:34Stage Manager works on the iPad Air at all storage sizes,
0:56:38but swap only works on 256 gig things.
0:56:40So obviously swap is not,
0:56:42according to Apple's own specifications,
0:56:44swap is not technically required for a Stage Manager,
0:56:47'cause the iPad Air can apparently run it without swap.
0:56:50So that's a little bit confusing.
0:56:51Then you look, okay, but what about the iPad Air?
0:56:53So it's got an M1, right?
0:56:55It's also got eight gigs of RAM,
0:56:56so maybe that's what it is.
0:56:57Maybe, okay, well, even without swap,
0:57:00if you have eight gigs of RAM,
0:57:01they feel like Sage Manager will be able to fit in there.
0:57:04But the iPad Pro 3rd Gen that I think Casey has
0:57:08also has eight gigs of RAM,
0:57:09and in fact, they made a 16 gig RAM version of that,
0:57:11but that one can't run center stage.
0:57:14So if it's not swap--
0:57:16- It's a stage manager, you just did it again.
0:57:19- Okay, it's impossible.
0:57:20It's absolutely impossible. - It's impossible.
0:57:20- It can't be done.
0:57:21It can't be done.
0:57:22Rename your features, Apple.
0:57:24- We'll just call it Shrinky Dink.
0:57:25- Yeah.
0:57:26- Well, but hold on though, but my iPad Pro,
0:57:29and I think I might be jumping ahead here,
0:57:30it has really crummy external display support
0:57:33because I have a USB-C port, not a Thunderbolt port.
0:57:36- But the iPad Air also, the iPad Air with M1
0:57:40also only has USB-C, not Thunderbolt.
0:57:43- Yeah, so anyway, swap is not required
0:57:47because Apple's own specs say that you can run this without,
0:57:50you can run Stage Manager on swap, right?
0:57:55And it's not RAM because one of the iPads
0:57:58that can run Stage Manager has the same amount of RAM
0:58:01as iPads that can't, right?
0:58:03And so maybe it's external display report.
0:58:06So one other thing that Craig Federighi said
0:58:08is that Stage Manager is quote,
0:58:10"A total experience that involves
0:58:11"external display connectivity."
0:58:13You can imagine like being able to drive
0:58:16a big external display and having sort of the, you know,
0:58:19The video guts or GPU guts or hardware to do that
0:58:23or whatever might be a feature that only exists on the M1s
0:58:26because the M1s are designed to run
0:58:28at least one external display.
0:58:30And maybe like an A12Z wasn't, right?
0:58:33Or maybe that brings over the RAM limit, right?
0:58:36But that is very different from the idea that like,
0:58:40look, you can only run this on the M1
0:58:41for a bunch of really good reasons.
0:58:42And it seems more like to get every single feature
0:58:46that's part of stage manager probably requires an M1.
0:58:50But people might be saying,
0:58:51well, I don't care about external display.
0:58:52I don't even have an external display connected to my iPad.
0:58:54I just want to sit on the couch with my iPad
0:58:56and be able to use stage manager.
0:58:58And so we'll see what happens in this controversy.
0:59:01Maybe Apple will just stick to its guns and say,
0:59:04we'd rather just give you
0:59:05the whole stage manager experience.
0:59:07And even though you don't have an external display,
0:59:08tough luck or whatever,
0:59:09it could be that there are other things we don't know about
0:59:11because the M1 is not just an A14X with like one,
0:59:14you know, it's got a bunch of stuff that was added to it,
0:59:17basically so it could be a Mac chip.
0:59:19And maybe there's parts of that that have to do with
0:59:22variable page size, for example,
0:59:23is another thing the M1 has that a lot of other,
0:59:26the other A series chips don't,
0:59:27because it's an expectation of Mac OS.
0:59:30You know, there's lots of other things
0:59:31that the M1 could have that these things don't,
0:59:32but so far Apple hasn't cited them specifically.
0:59:35So it's still a little bit of a mystery.
0:59:37Maybe they just wanna have a unified experience.
0:59:40I'm not sure why people are raring
0:59:42to have stage managers so much,
0:59:43Maybe they just feel like, you know,
0:59:46that my iPad is newish and never feels slow to me.
0:59:49And what stage manager is doing doesn't seem
0:59:52like it's asking the iPad to do much.
0:59:54Like, oh, you mean I can see four different apps
0:59:56on the screen at the same time?
0:59:57Well, I can almost do that with like, you know,
0:59:59split screen and slide over.
1:00:01Like, what's the big deal?
1:00:02Like, are you telling me my amazingly powerful iPad
1:00:05can't handle a couple of windows on an angle
1:00:07when this shrinky dink thing in the year 2006
1:00:11was able to do it on a machine
1:00:13with like 1/15th the power of like an A12Z iPad, right?
1:00:18'Cause that's what you have to remember.
1:00:19Like Mac OS has been having millions of windows
1:00:22on the screen and expose and all this stuff for years
1:00:24with less RAM than an iPad, with slower CPUs than an iPad,
1:00:26and granted it had swap during that time,
1:00:28but like what's the hang up?
1:00:30- And it swapped like crazy.
1:00:31I mean, you know, people forget nowadays,
1:00:35you might forget the experience of using a desktop computer
1:00:38in the early 2000s, it was a lot of swapping
1:00:41onto hard drives.
1:00:42But no, I mean, it's not the--
1:00:45I'm sure that the older iPad hardware has no problem
1:00:48compositing the windows on the screen.
1:00:50It's keeping all the apps in memory.
1:00:52That's the challenge, because what the apps are doing
1:00:54is very, very different.
1:00:56But Macs had less RAM than that back then.
1:00:58Yeah, and apps used less RAM back then.
1:01:00Now everything's these crazy RAM bloat hogs.
1:01:03And everything-- you have the higher resolution screens now.
1:01:05All the image assets are bigger.
1:01:06All the video RAM needs are bigger.
1:01:08You have higher data assets being stored,
1:01:10images loading and everything,
1:01:11all that stuff is just bigger these days.
1:01:13And apps take up hundreds of megs of RAM routinely now,
1:01:18whereas back then that was significantly less common.
1:01:21So that's the big difference is like,
1:01:23yes, the old computers that did this,
1:01:25yeah, they could do it just fine,
1:01:26they can composite the windows on screen.
1:01:28Today, the GPUs have no problem throwing those windows
1:01:31around on screen, but it's the massive RAM footprint
1:01:35of these apps, that's the limiting factor I bet.
1:01:38I mean, the apps that are on iPad, like I said,
1:01:41are apps that have grown up in an environment
1:01:43where a swap is not available.
1:01:44So they are actually pretty stingy with RAM.
1:01:46Right, when you have one of them.
1:01:48But you can already get, I think,
1:01:50at least two plus one slide overs.
1:01:54Like-- Center stage.
1:01:56Stage Manager is limited to four apps, right?
1:01:59Or four windows?
1:02:00So it's not unlimited.
1:02:02It's not like it's without bound.
1:02:04There is a limitation on it.
1:02:05And I think even without Stage Manager,
1:02:07you can get almost that many different apps visible
1:02:09on an iPad screen at the same time now.
1:02:11- But it's eight if you plug in an external monitor.
1:02:13- Right, well that's what gets to the monitor thing.
1:02:14It's like, okay, but what if I don't,
1:02:16what if I don't have an external monitor?
1:02:17Let me use the stage manager,
1:02:18and I promise I wanna connect to monitor,
1:02:20and if I do, it will be disabled.
1:02:21But it could be that Apple says,
1:02:22well we don't wanna, we just wanna give
1:02:23the whole experience, we don't wanna have the special mode
1:02:25where it's like, well if you buy this iPad,
1:02:27you can get stage manager, but then as soon as you plug in
1:02:29an external display, you can't have it anymore,
1:02:30or something like that.
1:02:31- Well, and also, I mean, I think a big part of the reason
1:02:35is these technical realities for sure.
1:02:38I think a smaller part of the reason
1:02:40is market segmentation.
1:02:41Apple wants the iPad Pro to be pushed higher market,
1:02:45and they want people to pay for Pro features.
1:02:48You know, there's a lot of features where,
1:02:49like if you look at the iPhone hardware thread history,
1:02:52you know, sometimes some new feature to iOS would come out,
1:02:55maybe it's a new camera feature, whatever,
1:02:57where the older hardware might be capable of it,
1:03:00but Apple restricts it to the new hardware
1:03:02for market segmentation,
1:03:03and to give people a reason to upgrade.
1:03:05They do a pretty good job of making stuff available
1:03:08to old hardware when possible, most of the time,
1:03:11but not all of the time.
1:03:13And sometimes they just do it for that reason
1:03:15and that's their prerogative.
1:03:18When you bought your iPad in 2018,
1:03:21you didn't know about this feature
1:03:23and you didn't buy this feature.
1:03:25I don't fault them too much for restricting this
1:03:28to only the newest stuff when there is some,
1:03:32if not much, hardware justification for doing it,
1:03:35in addition to this also pretty substantial
1:03:37segmentation reason.
1:03:39- I mean, the thing, that's the underlying thing in this,
1:03:41is that people are angry because they feel like Apple
1:03:43is saying like, there's no real reason for you to do this,
1:03:45you're just doing this to make me buy another iPad,
1:03:47which is the conspiracy theory that doesn't feel good, right?
1:03:50But in many cases, the boring explanation of basically,
1:03:55from Apple saying, we implemented this,
1:03:58we tried it on the iPad that you're complaining
1:04:00can't do this, and the experience wasn't good.
1:04:04And you could say, oh, I don't believe you, or whatever.
1:04:07But that's entirely plausible, because every time anyone
1:04:10implements anything, the experience starts off
1:04:11as not being good.
1:04:12And it's a question of, how much time
1:04:14does Apple want to spend optimizing
1:04:16Stage Manager to make sure it works on A12Z or whatever?
1:04:19Like at a certain point, you could say,
1:04:21like, do we have to spend the time to say,
1:04:23we know these can't handle external displays,
1:04:25but these can.
1:04:26Or it runs fine on the M1s, but it's not running.
1:04:29It feels like kind of stuttery and janky on the A12Z iPads.
1:04:34So how much time do you want to spend optimizing it
1:04:37to get it to work on the A12Z iPads,
1:04:39even though we know going forward,
1:04:40everything's gonna be as fast as the M1 or better, right?
1:04:42Those are the type of decisions that,
1:04:44you can't really come out and explain that
1:04:46and say basically we made a business decision
1:04:48not to spend our time optimizing this so it works well,
1:04:50but you have to start from the premise
1:04:52that you believe them when they say we tried it
1:04:54and it wasn't that great on these older iPads.
1:04:57Now, Apple is responsive to customer complaints,
1:04:59and this is beta one, so it could be
1:05:01that they hear people complaining
1:05:03and what Apple decides to do is,
1:05:04okay, let's spend some time seeing
1:05:06if we can get this to work on non-M1 iPads, right?
1:05:09And so they put some engineering resources into that,
1:05:11maybe they put it on those and they say,
1:05:13well, you can't use external displays
1:05:14'cause they just don't have the extra RAM capacity
1:05:18to push all those extra pixels or whatever,
1:05:20but at least you can do it locally, right?
1:05:22But that would be Apple choosing to spend the effort
1:05:24to address that customer feedback.
1:05:27And yeah, when you bought your iPad,
1:05:29you didn't know center stage would appear,
1:05:30but Apple customers in particular have an expectation
1:05:34that when they buy hardware, it will continue to get updates
1:05:37after a certain period of time.
1:05:38And it's like, yeah, but if it's old and slow,
1:05:40and I feel like it's out of date,
1:05:41then I can't get the newest stuff.
1:05:42But people look at this and they feel like
1:05:44their iPad Pro from 2018, quote unquote,
1:05:47should be able to do this.
1:05:49And I have no doubt that Apple could make it work
1:05:51on those iPads, it just may be way more difficult
1:05:54than they think it was worth the effort to do.
1:05:56'cause again, something is missing from the A12Z
1:05:58that's in the M1 or something like that
1:06:00that we don't know about, there's some esoteric detail.
1:06:02The performance was a little hitchy,
1:06:04the SSD controller is a little bit slower,
1:06:06like it's on the ragged edge of what's possible
1:06:08because of some things we don't understand.
1:06:10So we'll see what develops in this with the next show.
1:06:13I mean, the people who are mad about it,
1:06:14they'll probably get over it, and honestly,
1:06:17maybe they'll use a stage manager and be like,
1:06:19"Oh, I don't even like it anyway, so who cares?"
1:06:21But if they remain Apple customers,
1:06:23presumably eventually they'll buy another iPad
1:06:25and I'll support it so this will take care of itself with time.
1:06:29I don't know, I really think it's a combination of everything that you guys had said.
1:06:33I think it's predominantly some legitimate problems that, or not problems, but constraints
1:06:41that this old hardware has.
1:06:43And I suspect that in a lot of cases, you know, maybe my iPad would work with it but
1:06:50you couldn't use an external display or you were only limited to six apps open at once
1:06:54or whatever the case may be.
1:06:56And I certainly don't think Apple marketing,
1:06:58whether or not the technical side of Apple,
1:07:00I don't think Apple marketing has any interest in saying,
1:07:04"Well, stage manager works on iPads as long as,
1:07:07and if, and, and, well, maybe asterisk dagger, double deck."
1:07:10Like, that's just not tenable.
1:07:13It's just not, not for a company like the size of Apple.
1:07:16And so I really would guess that it's a combination
1:07:21of there are legitimate constraints
1:07:23on older pieces of hardware, but they don't want to muddy the waters and say, "Well, if
1:07:28you have a 2018, you can do this. And if you have a 2019, you can also do this. You have
1:07:33a 2020, you can also do this." Like, if that were the case, we'd be raking them over the
1:07:36coals for just not making it consistent across everything, maybe. But I don't think, for
1:07:42all the things, for all the gross and slimy things Apple can, has, and will do, I don't
1:07:50think this is on that list for me.
1:07:51And I know that makes us just another show for Apple,
1:07:53blah, blah, blah, but I really honestly,
1:07:55I think anyone who's listened to the show
1:07:57for more than four minutes knows that we will call out Apple
1:08:00when we see them doing something gross.
1:08:02I really don't think this is one of those times.
1:08:05- And like I said, it feels like it's plausible
1:08:07that they could hear this feedback and say,
1:08:08all right, we're gonna spend some extra resources
1:08:11during this beta cycle to get it to work
1:08:13in a limited fashion on lesser iPads.
1:08:14'Cause I think it's totally technically plausible,
1:08:16it's just a question of how much time
1:08:17do you wanna spend doing that?
1:08:18And their original judgment was,
1:08:19let's not waste any time, let's just concentrate
1:08:21on making good on the M1, they can reconsider that opinion
1:08:24between now and the many months,
1:08:26or it could be a point update, 16.1, 16.2,
1:08:29like they've done a lot of big things in point updates,
1:08:30so I wouldn't totally rule it out
1:08:32that Apple won't do some limited form of this in the future
1:08:35if the feedback continues to be a thing.
1:08:37It could just be like, oh, this has to be something
1:08:39people are angry about after WWDC,
1:08:42and this will fade, but we'll see how it goes.
1:08:44Oh, and one more final tidbit,
1:08:46this is from an anonymous source.
1:08:47Apparently the virtual memory swap feature on iPadOS
1:08:52is something the engineering team is very proud of.
1:08:55In particular, one of the neat things they did
1:08:57is that none of the system demons
1:08:59or any part of the OS are ever swapped out.
1:09:02Only apps go to swap,
1:09:03which obviously is not the way it works on macOS.
1:09:07And macOS, you know, any piece of memory
1:09:09could potentially be swapped out.
1:09:11There is a concept in macOS,
1:09:13and I think most versions of Unix or whatever,
1:09:15where you can have a page of memory
1:09:17that is quote unquote wired, which basically means
1:09:20this page, this piece of memory, is not allowed
1:09:23to ever be swapped out.
1:09:25In particular, lots of parts of the kernel use wired memory
1:09:28because as you can imagine, if the part of the kernel
1:09:30that deals with virtual memory swap gets swapped out,
1:09:34you've got a real problem on your hands.
1:09:36Most parts of the kernel you probably don't want
1:09:38to swap out.
1:09:39So I do wonder how they implemented this.
1:09:41I don't think they're wiring every single page
1:09:42for every app that's not, for every app that's part
1:09:45of the OS that's not a regular app.
1:09:47So they probably did something special for this.
1:09:48But anyway, it just goes to show the lengths they're doing
1:09:50to try to still sort of eke out the,
1:09:54as Federi was saying, the sort of the responsiveness
1:09:56that people expect from iPads, right?
1:09:59Where, you know, I don't entirely buy that indirect,
1:10:03quote unquote, indirect manipulation,
1:10:04it still grinds my gears when they say that,
1:10:06but I don't know what they mean.
1:10:07Indirect manipulation with a cursor.
1:10:10You can put up a beach ball cursor,
1:10:11and we don't love that, but that's part of the experience
1:10:13when something like that happens.
1:10:14but there is no equivalent of that with touch, right?
1:10:18If you touch something and it doesn't react to your touch,
1:10:20it feels broken immediately.
1:10:22It's not an expected part of the iPad experience
1:10:25to put your finger on the screen and try to do something,
1:10:27whether you're dragging or tapping or whatever,
1:10:29and nothing moves, you think your iPad is broken, right?
1:10:33That is not, that's not an expectation, right?
1:10:36So to, you know, and not having swap was one way to do that
1:10:39because hey, swap takes a big variable out of the equation.
1:10:43You know what your memory access times are,
1:10:44You know how much RAM you have,
1:10:45you have this thing going around killing applications
1:10:48if they use too much memory, so you stay within the memory.
1:10:50It's much more predictable.
1:10:52Once you involve swap this,
1:10:54there's this huge unpredictable performance cliff
1:10:56that you may fall off of.
1:10:57So to try to hold on to the essential iPad desk
1:11:01to say, well, let's keep,
1:11:02let's not ever let any part of the system be swapped out.
1:11:06So that is everything that runs presumably like the dock,
1:11:08the Windows server,
1:11:10any OS processes that are in the background, the camera,
1:11:13Like all the demons that run all the various things,
1:11:16talking to iCloud, like who knows?
1:11:17Any part of the OS or any part of those demons,
1:11:20they do not get swapped.
1:11:21What does get swapped is one of your umpteen apps
1:11:24that you're running, right?
1:11:25Or one of your four apps that's being shown
1:11:27in Stage Manager.
1:11:29God, every time I say that, I have to pause that.
1:11:31(laughing)
1:11:32So that's neat, I'd love to know more technical details
1:11:35on that, if anyone knows, feel free to tell us.
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1:13:33(upbeat music)
1:13:36- All right, so I hear some really, really positive things
1:13:40about system preference, system settings in Ventura.
1:13:43So can you tell me all the good news about that, please?
1:13:46- Yeah, speaking of controversies that happen after
1:13:48you've seen people get mad about this is,
1:13:52for a different group of people who are mad about this,
1:13:53but a lot of people are mad about it,
1:13:55and I would put myself kind of in that category.
1:13:57So I think we complained about--
1:13:58- I mean, it looks crappy.
1:13:59- I think we talked about it in the last show,
1:14:01but at the time we were talking about it in the last show,
1:14:02we hadn't seen, because it hadn't been released yet,
1:14:05the live talk show with Federighi and Jaws.
1:14:08Did you see that live, Marco?
1:14:10- I did, yeah, it was great, actually.
1:14:12And frankly, I think it was a very, very good live talk show.
1:14:15You know, I've been to all of them.
1:14:17I really, really enjoyed all of them.
1:14:19But this was very much up there as one of the best ones
1:14:22because sometimes, depending on what's announced
1:14:27and who he has up there and what kind of people,
1:14:32what their moods are, maybe,
1:14:33Certain years, you get more little tidbits out
1:14:36of the Apple guests than other years.
1:14:39This was one of the good years, where you really
1:14:41got a lot out of them.
1:14:42And there was a lot of explanation for certain things
1:14:45that clarified certain things.
1:14:47So it was actually-- I really enjoyed this one.
1:14:49It was very good.
1:14:49Yeah.
1:14:50So we didn't have all these-- I didn't
1:14:51have those explanations.
1:14:52I had heard about them secondhand,
1:14:54but of course, I didn't get to hear them actually say it.
1:14:55So we'll put a link in the show notes.
1:14:57It's a YouTube video.
1:14:58You can watch the whole thing.
1:15:00So regarding system settings, which
1:15:02we complained about a little bit on the last show.
1:15:04And this is system settings on the Mac,
1:15:06previously called system preferences.
1:15:08People have been complaining about the interface
1:15:09because it has been totally redone
1:15:11to look a little bit more like settings on iPad OS and iOS.
1:15:16And more to the point, it looks nothing like it used to.
1:15:20You know, any preference pane,
1:15:22if you go into system preferences on your Mac right now,
1:15:24that's not running Ventura,
1:15:26none of those preference panes look like that anymore at all.
1:15:30like no pixel is shared whatsoever.
1:15:32And the app itself doesn't look like it used to, right?
1:15:34And people have been complaining about it.
1:15:35So Craig Fegury starting at,
1:15:38we'll put a timestamp link at 43 minutes and 11 seconds
1:15:40gives an explanation of why they decided
1:15:44to overhaul system preferences
1:15:46and why it looks like it does.
1:15:49And aside from the obvious reasons,
1:15:50which doesn't really go into it,
1:15:51it's like, well, you know,
1:15:52there's consistency across the platforms.
1:15:53People know what settings look like on their phone.
1:15:55They know what it looks like on their iPad.
1:15:56Why does it look so weird on the Mac?
1:15:58Mostly for historical reasons, right?
1:16:00Wouldn't it be great if they all kind of look the same?
1:16:02And with SwiftUI, you can actually
1:16:04use the same code for them, yada, yada,
1:16:05like platform unification.
1:16:06But that's not what he says in this section here.
1:16:09What he mostly talks about is, let's think
1:16:11about system preferences and why it looks the way it did.
1:16:15And I'll be the first to tell you,
1:16:16the system preferences has never been super great.
1:16:19Like, if you wander through system preferences
1:16:21on your pre-venture or Mac right now,
1:16:23you'll see some preference panes that look pretty good.
1:16:26Some of them don't look that good.
1:16:27A lot of them look very different from each other.
1:16:30The organization on some of them is not great.
1:16:33It's kind of like a tour of old controls,
1:16:36like oh, they did a custom control for this.
1:16:37So I can date them by looking at them
1:16:39and say I remember when they did that.
1:16:40That used to look new in 2008, but now it doesn't anymore.
1:16:44And this one was more recent,
1:16:45and this one uses a web view behind the scenes,
1:16:47and it looks kind of janky for different reasons, right?
1:16:49Not like system preferences was awesome.
1:16:51But that's not even what Craig says about them.
1:16:53What he says mostly is that it was made in a world
1:16:56where the expectation was that you could put
1:16:59your settings in a single window.
1:17:01System Preferences is a small window,
1:17:04and it does grow, but it mostly just grows vertically,
1:17:06I think, anyway, it doesn't grow that much.
1:17:08But the main point is there's no scrolling, right?
1:17:11It hearkens all the way back to the control panel
1:17:13on the original Mac, which if you went to
1:17:15Apple menu control panel on the original Mac,
1:17:17it brought up a single window in which you had
1:17:20every single control that was part of the control panel,
1:17:23right, in just that one window, right?
1:17:25It wasn't until later they started branching out
1:17:27into different sub settings, one for your mouse,
1:17:29for displays or whatever, the original Mac was very simple.
1:17:32But system preferences in Mac OS X and Mac OS
1:17:36and all that stuff has always just been a single window.
1:17:38There's no scrolling.
1:17:39If you have more settings that can fit on a single window,
1:17:42you can add tabs.
1:17:44Some of the preference panes have a sidebar,
1:17:46like the relatively new security and privacy one
1:17:48has a sidebar where you can scroll
1:17:50through a bunch of sub items and you click a sub item
1:17:52and it changes what's in the detail view.
1:17:54But it's not, if I re-describe them as sort of like
1:17:58hand created like bento boxes.
1:18:01If you've seen one of those bento box lunches
1:18:02like a Japanese lunch box
1:18:04where you have all the little compartments,
1:18:05carefully arranged food that just barely fits
1:18:07in this little box and it's very cute.
1:18:09Lots of, I would say some of the best system preferences,
1:18:12preference panes have been carefully hand laid out
1:18:16to jam in all the stuff that need to fit in there.
1:18:18And some of them, it just doesn't fit.
1:18:20And there's like seven tabs and within each tabs,
1:18:23there's sub-scrolling panes or whatever.
1:18:24But the whole point is the window itself doesn't scroll.
1:18:27There's just sub-regions and sub-regions.
1:18:30And it was overwhelmed, right?
1:18:32And it shows that the system purpose and interface doesn't
1:18:35really scale.
1:18:36And I feel this pain, because I'm
1:18:38going to talk about this in a little bit.
1:18:40But my dinky little app, the road
1:18:41I went down with my dinky little app is, oh, I love settings.
1:18:44I'll keep adding settings or whatever.
1:18:45But one of the features of my app
1:18:47is that it lets you change how it
1:18:50appears on each attached screen.
1:18:51And since I didn't have a secondary display readily
1:18:53available using Sidecar with my iPad--
1:18:56and the iPad's not that big.
1:18:57And so I would bring up my preference window
1:19:00while using Sidecar, and the preference window
1:19:02would fill the iPad screen from top to bottom.
1:19:05It's like, I can't add any more preferences,
1:19:08because my preference window, like system preferences,
1:19:09doesn't scroll.
1:19:11If I add one more checkbox,
1:19:13now my window doesn't fit on the screen,
1:19:14and one of the controls you wanna get at is too big.
1:19:17And so that's kind of the situation system preferences in.
1:19:19It was like, well, we don't have any more room
1:19:22for more controls on this preference pane.
1:19:24It should go here, it's part of like displays or whatever,
1:19:27but I can't make it any bigger.
1:19:28So let's add a sub-screen, let's add a tab or whatever.
1:19:31And so it doesn't really scale.
1:19:33It doesn't support scrolling.
1:19:35And every one of these things is a beautiful,
1:19:37hand-created little jeweled box or whatever, right?
1:19:41So that was Federighi's explanation of like,
1:19:43that's why we need an interface
1:19:45that's more like it is on the iPhone on the iPad,
1:19:48because in those environments and in the modern world,
1:19:51we have an expectation that it's okay
1:19:52for a thing to scroll vertically.
1:19:54Certainly settings on your phone scrolls vertically.
1:19:57That's all it does is scroll vertically.
1:19:58In fact, there's a search thing at the top of them
1:19:59because it scrolls vertically so far
1:20:02that you can never find anything, right?
1:20:03And iPad OS has the sidebar that also scrolls
1:20:06and so on and so forth.
1:20:07And so that was the explanation, right?
1:20:10That explanation makes some sense to me.
1:20:13As I think I've hinted at in describing this,
1:20:16the beautiful hand curated bento box of controls,
1:20:21it's kind of nice sometimes actually.
1:20:22It means somebody sweated over where every single little thing
1:20:24is in that interface.
1:20:27Like one of the screenshots we got up in our notes
1:20:29here shows the dock preference pane next to its incarnation
1:20:32in Ventura.
1:20:34One of the things that stands out to me is that the thing
1:20:37where you pick the position on screen of your dock--
1:20:40your choices are left side of the screen, right side
1:20:42of the screen, or the bottom--
1:20:43it's done as three widely separated radio buttons.
1:20:46The left one is on the left, the bottom one is in the middle,
1:20:49and the right one is on the right.
1:20:51You could do that as a pop-up menu.
1:20:53In fact, there are other pop-up menus in this form.
1:20:54You could have a pop-up menu
1:20:55where you pick left, bottom, or right.
1:20:57But seeing all three options vaguely arranged geometrically
1:21:01like they are on your screen is, I think,
1:21:04a little bit nicer.
1:21:05It's kind of like how in my,
1:21:07in the app that I'll keep referring to for reasons
1:21:09that will come slightly more clear later,
1:21:11in my dinky little app Switch Glass,
1:21:12you can put it on all different edges of the screen.
1:21:15And to show that, instead of just having a pop-up menu
1:21:19where you pick north, northeast, east, southeast,
1:21:22like you can pick all the cardinal directions.
1:21:24Instead of having those options in a pop-up menu,
1:21:25which I can do, I put a little picture of the screen
1:21:29and then I put little radio buttons all around the screen
1:21:31at all the different cardinal directions.
1:21:33'Cause it's just easier graphically to be able
1:21:35to just click where on the screen you want it.
1:21:36Oh, I see that's supposed to be my screen
1:21:38'cause I see my desktop picture.
1:21:39Oh, I want it in the middle of the right side.
1:21:41So I just click the little thing
1:21:41that's in the middle of the right side.
1:21:43I don't have to go to a pop-up menu,
1:21:44I don't have to read text.
1:21:46You just click where you want it to be.
1:21:48carefully laying out all of the controls and the text
1:21:52to just barely fit in this window and to be nice.
1:21:54There's an art to that.
1:21:56And I think it makes, you know, when done well,
1:22:00it is part of what makes Mac apps great.
1:22:02When done poorly, it looks terrible.
1:22:04And everyone hates it.
1:22:05And when you don't have room for any more controls,
1:22:08then you add sub-paints and it gets frustrating, right?
1:22:10So there's a little bit of something being lost there.
1:22:11But the main complaint that I have,
1:22:14and other people have different complaints,
1:22:15but the main complaint that I have
1:22:17about the new system settings app, aside from the name,
1:22:19which we'll get to in a little bit,
1:22:21is not so much that they've decided
1:22:22to overhaul this interface, and not so much that, like,
1:22:26you know, settings on the phone is crappy or whatever,
1:22:29but that this style of interface,
1:22:31with little switches and stuff that you see on your phone,
1:22:34it looks worse on the Mac than it does anywhere else.
1:22:36In fact, Apple even has a screenshot,
1:22:38this is from like one of their WWC things or whatever,
1:22:40where they're saying, "Look, you can write the same code,
1:22:43And it can manifest itself on iPhone, iPad, and on the Mac,
1:22:49the same code in all those different places.
1:22:51And in each place, it will look appropriate for the platform
1:22:53and do the thing.
1:22:54And there's a screenshot here in our Notes document
1:22:57that has a phone screen, an iPad screen, and a Mac screen
1:23:00showing similar type of UI.
1:23:04And it just plain looks worse on the Mac.
1:23:07And when I say looks worse, I don't mean like it's
1:23:09not pretty or whatever.
1:23:10Oh, it's not pretty.
1:23:12It is not, yeah, that is a thing, but that's subjective.
1:23:15You're like, well, what's pretty?
1:23:16You know, if you look at an old thing with the pinstripes,
1:23:17maybe it doesn't look great,
1:23:18but we thought it would look cool then or whatever.
1:23:19But like from a user interface perspective, you can say,
1:23:22is the text legible?
1:23:23Is it clear which control goes with which text?
1:23:26Is it clear which things are controls
1:23:27and what I can click on?
1:23:28Like basic usability stuff.
1:23:31And the Mac incarnation of this standard control,
1:23:34I forget what they call it.
1:23:35It's like a standard control,
1:23:36like an inset control or something or whatever,
1:23:40As deployed on the Mac, it just looks worse.
1:23:42There's not a lot of contrast,
1:23:44there's not a lot of visual hierarchy.
1:23:45The controls seem like they're smaller than they are
1:23:48on the iPhone and the iPad, but you can say,
1:23:49"Well, that makes sense, 'cause on the iPhone and the iPad,
1:23:51"you're using your big, meaty finger,
1:23:52"and on the Mac, you have a very precise pointing device,
1:23:55"like a mouse."
1:23:56But I don't think that's the reason
1:23:57to make the controls smaller.
1:23:59Why not make them at least the same size
1:24:00as they are on the iPad?
1:24:02No one complained that a control was too big,
1:24:03there's just so much room.
1:24:05And then finally, sort of the uniformity,
1:24:07which some people like,
1:24:08say, "Oh, it's so much easier to scan."
1:24:10But having everything to be left-justified label, right-justified control, sometimes
1:24:14the label is very widely separated from the control such that you feel like you need one
1:24:17of those straight edges that some people read with to put on your screen to say, "Does this
1:24:22switch go with that item?"
1:24:23But you have to scan back and forth.
1:24:28I don't think the usability is as good as it is on the iPad or on the phone.
1:24:35And furthermore, if you look in Apple's user interface guidelines, they have a whole section
1:24:39on when you should use these little toggle switches versus when you should use checkboxes.
1:24:43And arguably in Apple's own interface guidelines they say you should probably not have a screen
1:24:47full of these toggle switches.
1:24:49Now granted, settings is just screen full toggle switches, so obviously they've been
1:24:53violating that supposed guideline forever.
1:24:55But if you look at system preferences, when you have a list of things with checkboxes,
1:24:59the checkbox is always right next to the label.
1:25:02is you've got the checkbox label right next to it.
1:25:04No matter how long the label is,
1:25:05you can make the window wide and the labels can go long
1:25:07and the labels can wrap and everything,
1:25:09but the label is always right next to it.
1:25:10And by the way, if you click on the label
1:25:12in a good Mac app, it will activate
1:25:14and deactivate the checkbox.
1:25:16All these things are not true of,
1:25:18granted, this is just beta one.
1:25:19All these things are not true
1:25:21of this stuff in system settings.
1:25:22And I think the main root problem is
1:25:25the default standard controls for this stuff in SwiftUI,
1:25:29like whatever this is called,
1:25:30I should have looked up the name,
1:25:31but I think it's called like inset form control or whatever.
1:25:33That control has poor usability and is ugly.
1:25:38And that is not a problem with like,
1:25:40oh, you shouldn't have redesigned the settings interface.
1:25:42That's a problem with the control.
1:25:44Like we talked about this back in the very olden days
1:25:46of the iPhone.
1:25:47What if you made an iPhone app
1:25:48that just used standard iPhone controls
1:25:50back in like 2007, 2008?
1:25:52You didn't do any custom controls.
1:25:54It was just straight up table views,
1:25:55toggle switches, navigation bars.
1:25:58Like you just use the default iOS,
1:26:00it wasn't even called iOS then,
1:26:01default iPhone controls and you didn't do anything fancy,
1:26:05you'd still have an app that had good usability
1:26:08and looked okay, right?
1:26:09It wouldn't be fancy, no one would be wowed by it,
1:26:11but it would work well and it would look okay.
1:26:15That's the job of sort of the OS widgets.
1:26:17If you say, here's what you should use for a table view,
1:26:20here's what you should use for like switches,
1:26:22here's what you should use for the equivalent
1:26:23of pop-up menus, that stuff needs to look good
1:26:27and have good usability.
1:26:28you know, both of those things.
1:26:30And if you make an app with just those standard controls,
1:26:34it should be okay.
1:26:35That's not true of this SwiftUI set of controls on the Mac.
1:26:40On the phone, I think it's fine.
1:26:42You look at it on the phone,
1:26:43yeah, settings is probably too long
1:26:44and it's done that they have a search field
1:26:45and the organization is crappy, but it's okay.
1:26:47We get by, right?
1:26:48On the iPad, you get a sidebar, it's similar, it's all right.
1:26:51On the Mac, it's worse than both of those.
1:26:54The controls have poor usability and they are ugly.
1:26:57And that's not really the fault of the team writing the system settings app.
1:27:00It's the fault of the team writing these controls in SwiftUI,
1:27:04not thinking about how they're going to look
1:27:05and how usable they're going to be on the Mac.
1:27:07Maybe the system settings team should think about,
1:27:10"Is this the right control if the label is literally four inches
1:27:13from the tiny little switch that's supposedly associated with it
1:27:15and there's nothing except for a slightly darker gray line
1:27:19tracing along underneath it?
1:27:20You have to follow with your eyeballs to find out which label goes with which switch."
1:27:23So I'm still kind of upset about this redesign
1:27:27because I feel like--
1:27:28- Are you?
1:27:29- Yeah, every single one of those redesign preference panes
1:27:32or whatever the hell we're calling them now
1:27:33is worse than the thing it replaces.
1:27:36And not necessarily because it's like the wrong direction
1:27:39to be going in, but just because it's being failed
1:27:41by the standard system controls.
1:27:43And beyond that, some of those little beautiful bento boxes,
1:27:46they were really nice.
1:27:48One of them that a lot of people were highlighting,
1:27:50but I also tweeted about is the trackpad control,
1:27:52which had the cool video and everything.
1:27:53and Craig Federi said, oh, don't worry,
1:27:55those videos stuff are coming back,
1:27:56we have an even better idea,
1:27:57it's gonna look awesome or whatever, right?
1:27:59So that's just, you know, again, it's beta one,
1:28:00everything's not done yet, this will be revised, right?
1:28:03But it's not just the fact that there were little videos
1:28:05showing you the trackpad gestures
1:28:07that makes that preference paint awesome,
1:28:09look at the visual hierarchy in it,
1:28:10look how clear everything is,
1:28:12look how beautifully it's laid out, right?
1:28:14There is an art to that, and that art is 100% absent
1:28:18from beta one of the Ventura System Settings app.
1:28:21So I really hope someone does sweat over
1:28:24these individual controls.
1:28:25I hope someone does sweat over the organization
1:28:27of the things in the sidebar and maybe give us options.
1:28:30And I hope someone really does think long and hard
1:28:32about whether a long vertical list of short labels
1:28:36widely separated by white space
1:28:37with right justified toggle switches
1:28:39is the right interface to literally
1:28:40every single setting on the Mac.
1:28:42(laughing)
1:28:43- No, I am with you.
1:28:45I mean, when you look at screenshots,
1:28:48you've made these great comparisons,
1:28:50you look at the screenshots of the same screen,
1:28:52old versus new, a few things are very clear to me.
1:28:55Number one, you are absolutely right, surprise,
1:28:58you are absolutely right that it's like the default control
1:29:01style that was designed for iOS first,
1:29:05and they ported it to Mac with this SwiftUI cross-platform
1:29:08stuff.
1:29:09It doesn't look good on the Mac.
1:29:11All these controls look wrong.
1:29:13The proportions are wrong.
1:29:14The way the screen flows is wrong.
1:29:16Having everything labeled on the left,
1:29:18huge gap thing on the right, that is wrong.
1:29:21- The colors are wrong, the contrast is wrong.
1:29:23- Right, and it's very, very clear that the Mac version
1:29:28of these SwiftUI controls is absolutely not a high priority
1:29:34for the design team, or they just suck at designing them.
1:29:37And I'm assuming that, given that they work
1:29:39for the best design company in the world,
1:29:41generally speaking, I'm assuming that it's the former.
1:29:44And I hope, for their sake, it's the former.
1:29:47Because it just seems like, you know,
1:29:50when you look at the old UI,
1:29:53it does look dated to a degree.
1:29:57And I understand why the software designers
1:29:59are trying to, you know, quote, move things forward,
1:30:02you know, whether it's actually forward
1:30:03is not always the case, but they're trying
1:30:06to move things in a different direction,
1:30:07just because the previous way is dated.
1:30:10And the concerns that Federighi brought up
1:30:12on the talk show about things like, you know,
1:30:14like scaling and adding more preferences and everything,
1:30:16Those are valid concerns.
1:30:17Also, the previous system preferences app is not perfect,
1:30:21and Apple has had a very hard time,
1:30:24seemingly in recent years, adding things to it
1:30:26in a way that functions reliably and doesn't suck.
1:30:30Look at the process for approving apps
1:30:33for security preferences, where you have to grant
1:30:35this app access to record the screen or whatever.
1:30:38And the process of doing that,
1:30:40when the little lock in the corner
1:30:41that you have to somehow see and click,
1:30:43and the weird button that appears that sometimes works
1:30:45and sometimes doesn't and gotta reboot sometimes.
1:30:48The whole system preferences app is not perfect
1:30:51and the old design was dated.
1:30:55However, the new design direction of Mac OS,
1:30:59even more severely than iOS,
1:31:01is very strongly in the direction of stripping out
1:31:06every design element that makes things usable, really.
1:31:12what they're going for is very much like,
1:31:15this layout looks clean,
1:31:18like a clean magazine spread or whatever.
1:31:20I don't know what they're,
1:31:21you know, that's clearly the only,
1:31:22like the aesthetic that they're going for,
1:31:25but it just doesn't work on the Mac
1:31:28the way they've designed it right now.
1:31:30And unfortunately, I think what we've seen,
1:31:34like notifications, is that when something on the Mac
1:31:40is redesigned that's not Safari.
1:31:43Even then, I think if, like last year's Safari design hoopla,
1:31:48I think if it was only on the Mac,
1:31:51I think it would have shipped.
1:31:52And the only reason we got that changed
1:31:55was that it was on the iPhone
1:31:56and that was angering the public.
1:31:58But what we see on the Mac
1:32:00under the current design administration
1:32:03is that they dictate what they think is right
1:32:05and then never touch it.
1:32:07And so I actually don't think this is gonna get better.
1:32:10You know, what Federighi said was not that the design
1:32:13of the widgets was gonna get better
1:32:15as the beta process goes.
1:32:16It was that like, you know, some of the content
1:32:18of these panels was gonna be more fleshed out
1:32:20or more polished or whatever.
1:32:21That's very different.
1:32:22The actual design of the widgets,
1:32:24I think we're stuck with for God knows how long.
1:32:28Because what we all see, you know,
1:32:30look, the notification design, since Big Sur sucks,
1:32:35it's still very much here in Monterey
1:32:37and appears to be unchanged in Ventura as well.
1:32:40Why?
1:32:41If the design and the usability of these things on the Mac
1:32:44was being well cared for,
1:32:47that wouldn't have made it out of the big Sur beta.
1:32:49But here we are, two releases later,
1:32:51it's still like untouched on Modify.
1:32:53- It got a little better.
1:32:54- Oh it did? - With the show notes, man.
1:32:56Yeah, Mac dialog, style chosen automatically,
1:32:58display time based on content.
1:33:00So if you have a--
1:33:00- You're jumping ahead.
1:33:02- That's dialog, not notifications.
1:33:03But anyway--
1:33:04- Oh, I'm sorry, you're right.
1:33:05- Relevant to notifications,
1:33:06let me hoist up a thing from way down in the show notes.
1:33:10Speaking of notifications that haven't changed
1:33:11that people will complain about,
1:33:12you may think, what are people complaining about?
1:33:13It's a little rounded rectangle, it's in the corner.
1:33:15What's bad about the Mac notifications?
1:33:17Well, the two things people were complaining about,
1:33:19which apparently were not important enough
1:33:21for Apple to change was one,
1:33:22they hid all the controls for a supposed cleaner look,
1:33:25and you only see them when they mouse over,
1:33:27and two, and this is the one that kills me,
1:33:29all right, so it's mystery mouseover stuff.
1:33:31Nobody likes that, but yeah,
1:33:32in the end it's not that bad, right?
1:33:34There are still bugs that have been there since Big Sur.
1:33:37Please click on Dave Nadian's tweet
1:33:39where he managed to capture a video of a bug
1:33:41that I encounter all the time and drives me up a wall
1:33:43and it has been there for two major releases of Mac OS.
1:33:46If you're going to make a Mystery Meat navigation thing
1:33:50where you have a window with no controls on it
1:33:53and the controls appear when you bring your mouse over it
1:33:55for some reason because you want that cleaner look,
1:33:58when I mouse over it,
1:33:59I have to be able to use the controls.
1:34:00And what happens to me and what you'll see in this video
1:34:02is you mouse over the notification
1:34:04and you see the little X to close it,
1:34:06and you see the button that lets you do things like
1:34:08mark a task as completed, or a reminder, or whatever,
1:34:11or snooze it, or do one of those things.
1:34:12By the way, they took out some snooze options too,
1:34:14just to annoy you even more.
1:34:15Or click on the button, right?
1:34:17And you go to click the button,
1:34:18and when you bring your mouse over there,
1:34:19the button disappears.
1:34:21It's a sick little game that notifications plays
1:34:23with on the Mac.
1:34:24Two major versions of Mac OS, this bug has existed.
1:34:26And this is not a minor bug.
1:34:28You can't do the thing that you're supposed to be able
1:34:30to do from the notification if it won't let you click
1:34:32on that button because when you mouse over it,
1:34:35the button disappears.
1:34:37Two major versions of Mac OS.
1:34:39So when we say, oh the notifications on Mac are crappy
1:34:42and they need to be done, it's not just 'cause we think
1:34:43they're ugly, it's not just because we don't like
1:34:46that they hid text until you mouse over it,
1:34:48it's like they don't fulfill the job
1:34:50they're supposed to fulfill, it's like let me mark
1:34:53the reminder as complete, let me snooze this task,
1:34:56let me click the settings button, it's like ha ha ha.
1:34:58I mean, I've come up with workarounds where you can
1:35:01figure out a series of mousing gestures
1:35:03that will let you get to the button before it disappears,
1:35:05but come on.
1:35:06- As much as I love what they're doing
1:35:09with the Mac hardware recently,
1:35:11the Mac software still has a lot of issues like this.
1:35:13And I think what we see over and over again from Apple
1:35:16is that they're just not putting the resources
1:35:20into the Mac software to really keep it great.
1:35:23The Mac software, it moves forward in certain ways,
1:35:26but it also moves back in others,
1:35:28and it seems like it just never has the quality
1:35:31in both bugs and also, I mean, even, honestly,
1:35:35I think the bug side has actually gotten pretty
1:35:37well improved over the last few releases,
1:35:39but the design side is getting worse now.
1:35:42But I think ultimately though,
1:35:43what gives me some hope here,
1:35:46Apple has shown that they have not really
1:35:49been trying very hard with the old way
1:35:52of the Mac doing things.
1:35:53Like the old way, you know, using AppKit
1:35:55and using old Cocoa Controls and native stuff
1:35:59and the old design styles where things were much more clear
1:36:03and decorated and indicated visually and usable.
1:36:06However, for Apple to fix all the bugs that we had
1:36:11in those old previous releases,
1:36:13we have to hop on the new train.
1:36:15And as I said, the system settings app is full of bugs
1:36:18in previous releases.
1:36:20There's so many problems with it and limitations
1:36:23and things that are unintuitive.
1:36:24And so by moving to this new, more unified,
1:36:28Swift UI based design, I don't love the design at all.
1:36:33I think the design is a hideous step backwards
1:36:35and I think anybody who designed it
1:36:37whose title includes the word usability
1:36:39should probably be fired.
1:36:41However, it's also the path that Apple's
1:36:45actually actively working on.
1:36:47On the Mac, the path to Mac happiness as a user
1:36:52is to stay on the path they're actively working on
1:36:54because everything else is just gonna be a train wreck
1:36:57of deterioration and bugs and everything else.
1:37:00So if this helps them actively work on the Mac more
1:37:05and better and with higher quality,
1:37:07that's the price we have to pay.
1:37:09It would be great if we could have both.
1:37:11If we could have, like, you know,
1:37:13back when the Mac was their only major platform,
1:37:15if we could have the Mac being like the thing
1:37:18that got a lot of attention and was good
1:37:20and was moving forward and was pretty, you know,
1:37:23stable and high quality,
1:37:24that'd be great if we can get all of that.
1:37:26Unfortunately, Apple has shown that we can't get all of that
1:37:28right now, and that's their fault, and 100%, you know,
1:37:31that's on them because there's no reason why things
1:37:33need to be that way, but that's the reality.
1:37:36So as long as they are working on the Mac,
1:37:39and continuing to move this stuff forward,
1:37:42if the only way we can get them to keep doing that reliably
1:37:45is to use these terrible new designs that can help them
1:37:48use more cross-platform code, that's just the cost
1:37:51of being a Mac user right now in software,
1:37:53and it sucks that we have to pay that cost, but we do.
1:37:56So System Preferences, as it previously existed,
1:37:58like I said, it's kind of like a museum of UI.
1:38:02You can go through it and say, oh, this room was created
1:38:05in 1857.
1:38:06Different preference panes are dated
1:38:08by when someone created them.
1:38:10A lot of them were clearly created back in the day
1:38:12when maybe there weren't any designers assigned
1:38:14to that preference pane, and someone just
1:38:16threw something together as a developer,
1:38:18and ah, it's good enough, right?
1:38:19And the modern one is like, this preference pane
1:38:22is really a web view in disguise,
1:38:24because this came about at the time.
1:38:26It's iCloud related, and we had web interfaces for it,
1:38:28so we didn't bother re-implementing this,
1:38:30so really it's just a big web view,
1:38:31and you don't need to know that,
1:38:32but that's why it looks totally different than this one,
1:38:34and this one was made before we had a standard control
1:38:36for lists where you can add or remove items,
1:38:37so they wrote a custom control for it,
1:38:39and it's been there for 15 years now,
1:38:41and I'm not holding it up as this paragon of usability,
1:38:44but there are gems in there,
1:38:45and those gems were beautiful hand polished things
1:38:48in the old way of Mac user interfaces
1:38:50that had a lot of good qualities,
1:38:52And the new way, you know, a bunch of standard controls,
1:38:55these standard controls aren't up to snuff yet,
1:38:57but like I think a lot of it might just come down
1:38:59to disagreements, kind of like the notification thing.
1:39:00If you ask them like,
1:39:01"Why can't I see any controls on the notifications?"
1:39:04Oh, it looks better with no controls.
1:39:05The controls appear just when you need them,
1:39:06so you mouse over them,
1:39:07but why should the controls be cluttering up the interface
1:39:11when you just want to look at them with your eyeballs?
1:39:12The controls will appear when you mouse over them,
1:39:14and then I'll show them the bug and get angry at them.
1:39:15But anyway, and so an example of a disagreement,
1:39:19Craig Hockenberry has a tweet showing,
1:39:21He was trying to change the name of his computer, which is in the sharing preference pane.
1:39:24Again, I don't know what the hell we call these in a world where it's not called system
1:39:26preferences.
1:39:27The file name extension is probably still .preferencepane.
1:39:30I haven't actually checked.
1:39:31But anyway, I'm going to continue calling preferencepane.
1:39:33So he goes into sharing, and as he said in his tweet, "It took me forever to figure out
1:39:37how to change my computer name."
1:39:38And then he has a screenshot which shows the sharing preference pane with two vaguely different
1:39:43gray colors.
1:39:44Like there's a gray background and a slightly, very slightly darker -- this is testing the
1:39:49the color calibration of your monitor.
1:39:50Very slightly darker gray inset area
1:39:53with very, very slightly darker hairline gray lines
1:39:57on the border separating items.
1:39:58And on the very left side of the screen,
1:40:00it says computer name.
1:40:01Then there's three inches of white space.
1:40:03And then it says Craig's MacBook Pro.
1:40:05It's just text.
1:40:06It's just black text on a slightly darker gray background
1:40:09and a slightly lighter gray background
1:40:10within a slightly lighter gray window, right?
1:40:13And so he says, it's not the edit button
1:40:15because there is an edit button
1:40:16right below Craig's MacBook Pro.
1:40:18But that edit button does not let you edit the computer name
1:40:21'cause there's that hairline dividing it, telling you,
1:40:23see this edit button is not for that.
1:40:24And the text field doesn't highlight
1:40:26until something else in the panel gets focused
1:40:29except the edit button.
1:40:30So if you click the edit button and it gets focused,
1:40:32that thing, like what I'm saying is this is a text field,
1:40:36but it does not look like editable text.
1:40:38It looks exactly the same as the label.
1:40:40You can't click computer name, that's the label.
1:40:42You can't change the label in the thing,
1:40:45but you can change the text, Craig's MacBook Pro,
1:40:48but you don't know that until you highlight
1:40:49some other control in the thing.
1:40:51This is not rocket science.
1:40:52We're asking for a text field with a label.
1:40:55We should have that technology.
1:40:57The standard controls for SwiftUI for Mac OS
1:41:01have to be better than this.
1:41:02I'm not saying they have to look exactly like the old ones
1:41:04or work exactly like the old ones,
1:41:05but for crying out loud, you should be like,
1:41:08the label shouldn't be three inches from the thing
1:41:11that it controls, and the thing it controls,
1:41:13if it's a text field, should look like a text field.
1:41:15It shouldn't require me to focus something else.
1:41:17It shouldn't require me to mouse over it.
1:41:18Am I gonna mouse over every piece of text
1:41:20to see if it's editable?
1:41:21Like, this is not discoverable.
1:41:22This is poor usability.
1:41:24And on top of all that, it's aesthetically ugly.
1:41:26I don't think it looks nice.
1:41:27It's got nothing going for it,
1:41:29other than the fact that underneath it,
1:41:31it's the same SwiftUI code that would run everywhere,
1:41:33which is great, I endorse that.
1:41:35But there's no reason, like,
1:41:36oh, it's ugly 'cause it's cross-platform.
1:41:38There's no reason cross-platform code has to be this ugly.
1:41:42Each platform, the whole point of this cross-platform code
1:41:44is that each platform can choose to implement
1:41:47this declarative UI in a way that looks appropriate
1:41:49for the platform.
1:41:50The iPhone one looks great, the iPad one looks okay,
1:41:53the Mac one looks like garbage,
1:41:54so that's what they need to work on.
1:41:57- I think at this point, again, I don't mean to
1:42:01keep harping on their poor software design,
1:42:04but for all the great stuff they've been doing
1:42:07in hardware recently, and in some of the cross-platform apps
1:42:11and services and APIs and everything,
1:42:13Those have all been pretty great,
1:42:16but I don't think Apple's able to design
1:42:18good Mac interfaces anymore.
1:42:20And that's not even a very recent thing.
1:42:22That's been, I think we've been heading down
1:42:24that path for a while.
1:42:25We can no longer rely on Apple to design good Mac apps
1:42:30and good Mac UIs and good Mac software.
1:42:33They are great at the frameworks,
1:42:35they are amazing at that, they are great at the hardware,
1:42:37again, amazing at that, but they just don't design
1:42:41good apps anymore. And that's not that reason of a thing, and it's also not turning around
1:42:47at all. There's occasional bright spots of bright light, but that's not the norm. For
1:42:52the most part, they're not good at Mac design. They're not good at Mac app design and Mac
1:42:56UI design. And we have to rely on the community for that. The basic Windows design was always
1:43:03crap, like Microsoft Windows, it was always crap. And as a result, the ecosystem was mostly
1:43:09but you have occasional bright spots of light
1:43:12in the ecosystem.
1:43:13That's what the Mac is now.
1:43:14Apple has lost the will and the prioritization
1:43:18and the ability to make great Mac apps
1:43:20and great Mac UI designs.
1:43:23And so we're gonna have to rely on the community for that
1:43:26and greatly lower our expectations
1:43:29of what's coming out of Apple in those areas,
1:43:32which is a shame.
1:43:32Again, it doesn't need to be this way.
1:43:35There's nothing stopping them
1:43:36from getting better people in there
1:43:39and prioritizing this better.
1:43:40And there's a lot of great people in the company
1:43:42who know how to do this right.
1:43:44They're not being enabled.
1:43:45They're not winning the arguments.
1:43:48There are people there who have been there a long time
1:43:50who really have great sensibilities in these areas.
1:43:53The reason we harp on it from the outside so much
1:43:55is to hopefully help them win some arguments on the inside.
1:43:58But it just seems like we're down a really rough path
1:44:01in those areas.
1:44:02And we just can't, you know,
1:44:03Apple's no longer a leader in UI design.
1:44:05It's simple as that.
1:44:06They gave it up.
1:44:08They walked right away from it and whoever is leading the charge there can't do it or
1:44:13chooses not to, especially at the Mac.
1:44:15And again, they have great strengths in all these other areas, but that's not one of them
1:44:20anymore.
1:44:21I pulled myself off on a tangent getting angry about this computer name thing, but the point
1:44:24I was trying to make about it being a disagreement is, same idea with the notifications.
1:44:30Why should Craig's MacBook Pro, why should it look like an always visible text box?
1:44:34a big white box with your text inside it.
1:44:38When I'm not editing it, shouldn't it just look like text?
1:44:42And then when I edit it, that's when the text controls will be and a focus ring will be
1:44:46around it or whatever.
1:44:48That's the thinking, the same thinking with the notifications.
1:44:50It shouldn't have any of this visual clutter.
1:44:51I don't need to see those buttons, I just need the information notification.
1:44:54Only when I mouse over it does it appear.
1:44:56And that philosophy brought to so many parts of the Mac, you're just very interested in
1:45:00closing this, leads to a situation where you have a label and a text field which look identical
1:45:03to each other that you just have to know,
1:45:05oh, that's not just telling you what your computer name is,
1:45:08that's editable.
1:45:08And by the way, don't click the edit button below that
1:45:10because that's not the thing to edit.
1:45:12You have to mouse over the thing and then suddenly
1:45:13what looked like text on a background becomes text field.
1:45:16And that's the sort of the, they would say,
1:45:18well, we just disagree.
1:45:19It's not bad UI, we just disagree.
1:45:21I think visual clutter is the worst sin in the world.
1:45:23And you think, you know, I should have all these ugly
1:45:26controls and everything everywhere so I know
1:45:28which things are buttons and so I know which things
1:45:30are editable.
1:45:31We have this argument with iOS 7, right?
1:45:32Should buttons look like buttons?
1:45:33How can I tell what I can click on or whatever?
1:45:36And I feel like we're having all those same arguments
1:45:38over again, like we've got all this screen space.
1:45:41Visually distinguish the elements.
1:45:44Show me what is a text field, what is a button.
1:45:46Don't put everything in a pop-up menu.
1:45:48Speaking of pop-up menus, the pop-up menus
1:45:49don't look like pop-up menus anymore.
1:45:51It looks like text on a background
1:45:53with a little up and down caret,
1:45:55like a V and an upside down V next to it.
1:45:57You just have to know, by the way,
1:45:58that if you click that up and down V thing,
1:46:01that the whole thing is, you know,
1:46:02they look like actually the, what are they called?
1:46:04Like the controls where you can go,
1:46:06like there's a number in a text field
1:46:07and you can hit the up arrow and down arrow
1:46:08to change the number.
1:46:09- A stepper?
1:46:10- Stepper, exactly.
1:46:11That's what they look at, but it's not a stepper.
1:46:12That whole thing is a pop-up menu.
1:46:14It looks nothing like a pop-up menu, right?
1:46:15I'm not saying the controls need to look
1:46:17the way they used to.
1:46:18The controls have changed a lot over the years, right?
1:46:20But it needs to be clear what to control.
1:46:22The controls need to have an appearance
1:46:25that makes it obvious what they are.
1:46:27And it seems like this thing,
1:46:28it's like a golf contest.
1:46:30how few lines can I draw on the screen?
1:46:32(laughing)
1:46:32Like, I just want, like, and you win by just saying,
1:46:36gray pixels, I have gray pixels and I have text.
1:46:38How many colors of gray do you have?
1:46:39I only got two colors of gray.
1:46:40Ooh, you're winning.
1:46:41Do you have any lines?
1:46:42Very few and they're hardly visible, right?
1:46:43It's like, that's not, I don't,
1:46:46all right, I need to stop yelling about this.
1:46:48(laughing)
1:46:49Move on to the tangentially related topic,
1:46:51which we talked about this a little bit last week.
1:46:53So this used to be called system preferences
1:46:55and now it's called system settings, right?
1:46:57There is a companion to go with that.
1:47:00which is that preferences, which is command comma,
1:47:03as the keyboard shortcut traditionally on the Mac,
1:47:05that preferences menu item that is in the application menu,
1:47:08so if you go text edit,
1:47:10go to the menu that's called text edit,
1:47:11there's an item in there called preferences
1:47:13by convention on the Mac,
1:47:15that menu item is now being renamed to settings.
1:47:18There's some been rumbling about,
1:47:19like if you build against the new SDK,
1:47:21your preferences menu item
1:47:22will just be automatically called settings,
1:47:24but then you'll have to wander through
1:47:25all your help document and everything like that
1:47:27and change it to settings.
1:47:29This, you know, for the same reason system preferences
1:47:31would change to settings, unification with iPad OS and iOS,
1:47:34like it makes some sense, but boy,
1:47:36this is gonna be a short-term headache
1:47:38for people dealing with, okay, well,
1:47:40if you're on Ventura or later, go to settings menu item,
1:47:44but if you're on a previous,
1:47:45if you're writing like documentation
1:47:46on your website or something,
1:47:47but if you're on a previous OS,
1:47:48that thing is not gonna be called settings
1:47:49because it's in real preferences,
1:47:50or maybe you'll make a cult settings everywhere.
1:47:52Anyway, a naming unification, right?
1:47:55But last week I was saying, why is it called,
1:47:58Why is the application that was called System Preferences
1:48:00called System Settings?
1:48:03It's just called Settings on your phone.
1:48:04It's just called Settings on your iPad.
1:48:06But on the Mac, it's called System Settings.
1:48:08One of the attempts to explain this was, OK, well,
1:48:11if you launch TextEdit on Ventura,
1:48:15there is a menu item in the TextEdit menu called Settings.
1:48:19It used to be called Preferences,
1:48:20but now it's called Settings.
1:48:21But if you go one menu over to the Apple menu,
1:48:24in the Apple menu, there's a menu item
1:48:26called System Settings that will bring up the app
1:48:28formerly known as System Preferences.
1:48:30So you've got Settings and System Settings,
1:48:31and it's clear the Settings menu would be the settings
1:48:34for TextEdit, and the one in the Apple menu
1:48:36is the System Settings, which makes a little bit of sense
1:48:40except when you say, but the menu is called TextEdit.
1:48:43So if I go into a menu called TextEdit
1:48:45and there's an item called Settings,
1:48:46it's pretty clear these are the settings for TextEdit.
1:48:48The literal name of the menu item is TextEdit, right?
1:48:51Whereas when I go into the Apple menu,
1:48:53You could make the menu item say system settings,
1:48:57but the app that it launches could just be called settings,
1:49:00just like it is on your phone,
1:49:01just like it is in your iPad.
1:49:02So the renaming, yeah, renaming is annoying or whatever.
1:49:06We'll get used to it.
1:49:07But I would suggest to Apple, perhaps,
1:49:09call the app settings,
1:49:11make the menu item called system settings,
1:49:14and then everyone will be slightly more happy.
1:49:17This is, again, this is the least of the problems
1:49:19of everything happening in the system settings,
1:49:21and I mostly endorse the renaming
1:49:23system preferences why was it ever called that no one knows what it is
1:49:26everyone just knows setting on their phone it makes sense makes perfect sense
1:49:28everyone knows the phone nobody knows the Mac like I understand why they're
1:49:31doing it makes some sense but this you know I I think it could just be called
1:49:35settings and now the the thing with a personal that I have a personal
1:49:40connection to is again my dinky little app switch glass it's got one sort of
1:49:47setting slash preferences window that kind of grew to the point where I can't
1:49:51make it any bigger because it doesn't fit on an iPad screen.
1:49:54That's my bad, right?
1:49:55I knew I was doing it, but I'm like, ah, it's a dinky app.
1:49:57I don't need to have separate windows.
1:49:58But one of the sins I committed with the UI of my app
1:50:01is that I combine global settings that
1:50:04affect the entire application with settings just
1:50:07for that display, because I have separate per display settings
1:50:09or whatever.
1:50:11And you can get away with it and make some sense.
1:50:13The sections are clearly labeled or whatever.
1:50:15But it really should split it into two things.
1:50:16And when I was thinking about splitting it into two things,
1:50:19One menu item will bring up the global things for the app, right?
1:50:24And that would be, in the old world, called preferences.
1:50:26And it would be Command, comma if my app had keyboard shortcuts,
1:50:29but it doesn't because it's in the menu bar. Anyway.
1:50:31And the other menu item would be called settings,
1:50:35because it's the settings for the app switcher on that screen.
1:50:38But now that settings has been renamed preferences,
1:50:40what am I going to have? Two menu items called settings?
1:50:42Is one going to be called global settings, regular settings,
1:50:45app switcher settings? Do I have to look through the source
1:50:48for different words for settings.
1:50:50This is really throwing a monkey wrench
1:50:52into my planned 2.0 revision of the UI
1:50:55where I'm going to finally split the global settings
1:50:57from the app palette settings
1:50:59'cause now I can't use the word preferences anywhere
1:51:01because that's just not a thing anymore
1:51:03in Ventura in future, so I have to rethink all of that.
1:51:06Oh, and related to the renaming, by the way,
1:51:08I didn't check this but somebody said it
1:51:10and I'm inclined to believe it,
1:51:11but this is just gonna drive people more crazy.
1:51:13In system settings, the thing that was previously called
1:51:17the preference pane, whatever we're calling it,
1:51:18it was previously called security ampersand privacy,
1:51:21is now called privacy ampersand security.
1:51:24Come on, now you're just trolling us.
1:51:27Can you imagine trying to write documentation
1:51:29and explain to people, go to security and privacy.
1:51:31I don't see anything called security and privacy.
1:51:32Of course you do, it's right there.
1:51:34I see something called privacy and security.
1:51:35(groans)
1:51:37What are you doing, Apple, what are you doing?
1:51:39- You just need to be put in charge of this, Jon.
1:51:42- Well, if I was put in charge of this, I would say,
1:51:45I already said what I would say with the settings renaming thing, but like, I feel for the team
1:51:50that's working on system settings, because they don't control the whole entire Swift
1:51:53UI framework.
1:51:54They're just, they got the edict, you're going to make this with Swift UI, which I think
1:51:57is a reasonable edict, which we may or may not get to later in the show, probably not
1:52:01at this rate.
1:52:02But you know, they're doing the best they can with what they've been given.
1:52:06I feel like this needs to be a team effort to make this whole thing better.
1:52:09Starting with, as Marco pointed out, maybe starting all the way down with the design
1:52:12team who has notions that are not in keeping.
1:52:16Good. Yeah, there you go. Thank you.
1:52:18Honestly, I think that might be our show. I think we make it good now.
1:52:24We need to talk about Mac dialogues because you mentioned it before and I think it's worth it.
1:52:27Yeah, throw it in.
1:52:28Oh, yes, you're right. I'm sorry. I completely forgot about that. Yeah, so the dialogues are
1:52:34ever so slightly less bananas now in certain circumstances. So apparently there are different
1:52:40styles for NS alerts and there's now expanded alerts which basically instead of centering
1:52:46everything it makes it look like pros you know left aligned and and and pretty much what you
1:52:52would expect and it doesn't look utterly stupid which is great yeah what is it was it big so when
1:52:57they did this they changed the mac dialogue boxes to look like they do on ipad os and ios basically
1:53:03being center aligned a big long skinny vertical window um and they just did that you know system
1:53:09some control. You just say, "Give me a window modal or app modal dialog box," and you just
1:53:14tell it, "Here's the content of the dialog box. Here's what the button should be." Back
1:53:17in the old days, it would be "Okay" and "Cancel," whatever, like a dialog box, right? Like,
1:53:21"Are you sure you want to do this operation? Are you sure you want to delete this thing?
1:53:25Delete or cancel," or whatever, right? And that's, for people who don't know, from the
1:53:29program perspective, that's the API you do. You just say, "Put up a dialog. Here's the
1:53:34content. Here's what the button should be called. Here's the callbacks for them." You
1:53:36don't, for the most part, if you're doing a good job using standard controls, you don't
1:53:39draw that window yourself.
1:53:40So when Apple decides, hey, dialog boxes
1:53:43are going to look different.
1:53:43Now, instead of them being landscape,
1:53:46sort of landscape-oriented rectangles with text and buttons,
1:53:50now they're going to be portrait orientation,
1:53:52because that looks kind of like they do on the iPad
1:53:53and the phone, and they made this change,
1:53:55and a lot of people grumbled, and the text was centered,
1:53:57and it looked awkward, but most importantly,
1:53:59usability-wise, sometimes people had so much text
1:54:03that it didn't fit in the dinky iPad-sized portrait window
1:54:07anymore, because now the text is wrapping more
1:54:09'cause the window was narrow or whatever.
1:54:10So then they would make a scrollable region.
1:54:12You'd have to know it was scrollable
1:54:14because if you didn't have scroll bars visible,
1:54:15if you're lucky, one piece of text would be cut off
1:54:17by the invisible gray margin at the bottom.
1:54:20But if you're unlucky, there would be a line of text
1:54:24and then empty space, like a paragraph break,
1:54:26and you wouldn't know that there's more text.
1:54:27You'd have to know if you go over there
1:54:29and swipe on your mouse or scroll on your mouse wheel
1:54:31that you'd see more text.
1:54:32It was a terrible system.
1:54:33And by the way, it looked ugly
1:54:34'cause center align text, who wants to read that or whatever.
1:54:37Everybody can complain.
1:54:38So in Ventura, did they change it back
1:54:41to the way Mac dialog boxes have looked since 1984?
1:54:45No, they did not.
1:54:46But what they did do is say,
1:54:47well, if you put a lot of text in a dialog,
1:54:49what we'll do is instead of showing the iOS,
1:54:51iPad OS style vertical portrait mode ones
1:54:54with the scroll-y thing,
1:54:55we'll show a normal looking Mac dialog box.
1:54:57But for every other one, we're going to the other one
1:54:58because the designers are saying,
1:54:59we're actually, we're right.
1:55:00Those other ones do look better,
1:55:02but when there's a lot of text,
1:55:03we'll show the Mac style one.
1:55:04And it's like, what are you doing?
1:55:06'Cause if you're doing this for consistency,
1:55:07Now you've thrown consistency out the window
1:55:09because half of dialogue boxes are gonna be this way
1:55:11and half are gonna be that way depending on the content
1:55:13of the dialogue box.
1:55:14That's not gonna make any sense to users.
1:55:16They're not gonna know why is this one landscape
1:55:17or why is this one portrait.
1:55:18Just make them all landscape again.
1:55:20No one was confused by landscape dialogue boxes.
1:55:22It fit everyone's apps better.
1:55:24It works better for the Mac.
1:55:26Very frustrating.
1:55:26I mean, this started as a positive item.
1:55:28Like yay, they have some concessions
1:55:31on the usability of alerts.
1:55:33But the more I think about it,
1:55:34it's like why is this a concession?
1:55:35Like why are you holding onto the old style?
1:55:38No one is confused by Mac dialog boxes.
1:55:40Just make them use the format
1:55:42where there were fewer layout concerns
1:55:44and the text was more readable.
1:55:45- Yeah, that's the thing.
1:55:46Like the design team cannot accept
1:55:49that their new design from Big Sur is actually worse.
1:55:53They won't accept that.
1:55:54And so instead of reverting back to,
1:55:57or changing to a different design
1:55:59where things are wider again
1:56:00and left aligned text or whatever,
1:56:02all the old style doing things,
1:56:04They're insisting, oh no, no, no,
1:56:06we're only gonna do that when we need to,
1:56:07but other than that, our awesome new centered
1:56:11bold text iOS design, that's totally great.
1:56:14This is why I don't have high hopes for this changing.
1:56:17It's exactly this kind of thing that tells me
1:56:20that whatever design elements you don't like in the beta
1:56:23are not gonna be fixed by the time this is released,
1:56:26because the design team is misguided right now,
1:56:31and also they don't think they are.
1:56:33And that's the issue.
1:56:35- Yeah, that's the rub.
1:56:38- Thanks to our sponsors this week,
1:56:39Squarespace, Linode, and Collide.
1:56:42Thanks to our members also who support us directly.
1:56:44You can join and become a member at ATP.FM/join.
1:56:47We will talk to you next week.
1:56:49♪ Now the show is over ♪
1:56:54♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪
1:56:57♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪
1:56:59♪ Accidental ♪
1:57:00♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪
1:57:01♪ Accidental ♪
1:57:03John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him
1:57:07'Cause it was accidental (it was accidental)
1:57:10It was accidental (accidental)
1:57:13And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:57:18And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them
1:57:23@c-a-s-e-y-l-i-s-s
1:57:27So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:57:32♪ Anti-Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C ♪
1:57:37♪ U-S-A-C-R-O-Q-S-A ♪
1:57:39♪ It's accidental, accidental ♪
1:57:42♪ They didn't mean to ♪
1:57:45♪ Accidental, accidental ♪
1:57:47♪ Tech podcast ♪
1:57:49♪ So long ♪
1:57:51- So last week I went on a little bit of an adventure,
1:57:57which I didn't wanna tell you two about
1:57:58'cause I thought it would be fun
1:58:00to just kind of drop it on you tonight.
1:58:03I would like you to look at the chat room
1:58:06and click the link that I just pasted there
1:58:10because last week--
1:58:12- Why are you standing on a white Rivian?
1:58:15- Because it turns, well first of all,
1:58:16the white just happened and it really did.
1:58:18(laughing)
1:58:18But second of all, second of all,
1:58:21that is not my Rivian, I do not have that kind of money.
1:58:23But as it turns out, there's a Rivian dealer in Richmond.
1:58:28- They have dealers?
1:58:29- Yes, which I didn't know either, but yes.
1:58:33There is a Rivian dealer in Richmond
1:58:35and a very kind listener, Shaheen,
1:58:37put me in contact with the local people,
1:58:41including most particularly my new friend Peebles
1:58:44who works at Rivian and Peebles took me around
1:58:48and showed me the dealership as it is today,
1:58:52which is not a whole lot, but apparently it was
1:58:55previously owned by some other company, the building was,
1:58:58and Rivian had like an office area and little else.
1:59:01But then the previous company left,
1:59:04and so Rivian is now taking over the rest of the building
1:59:06and building it out and so on and so forth.
1:59:09And so I got to spend about half an hour, maybe 40 minutes,
1:59:13touring the building as they're doing construction
1:59:15and so on and so forth.
1:59:17And then I spent about 20 minutes driving a Rivian.
1:59:20- Oh my God, how is it?
1:59:22- I don't like pickup trucks.
1:59:25I really don't like pickup trucks.
1:59:27(laughing)
1:59:29I want one of these so freaking bad,
1:59:31I cannot even tell you.
1:59:33It is so cool.
1:59:35It is so freaking cool.
1:59:37I loved it.
1:59:39Again, I was predisposed to enjoy this
1:59:42because I was getting a little bit of like,
1:59:45not early access in the strictest sense,
1:59:47but you know, not a lot of people can just roll up
1:59:49to a dealer and get this kind of treatment.
1:59:51It was very kind of Shaheen and Peebles to do this for me.
1:59:54But I loved it.
1:59:57And I didn't, I felt like I was so overwhelmed
2:00:00by the whole experience.
2:00:02It was just, you know, it was a guy showing me around.
2:00:05He was super awesome, but it was a guy showing me around.
2:00:07Like there was nothing that should have been overwhelming,
2:00:09but I was just bowled over by the whole thing.
2:00:12And when it got to the part of the tour where, you know,
2:00:15I was looking at the truck and messing with it,
2:00:18it is so cool and so well thought out.
2:00:21Now, again, I don't really care for pickups.
2:00:24I think they're silly in most circumstances.
2:00:26There are definitely people that use them
2:00:27and actually put things in the bed from time to time.
2:00:30But so many times I feel like pickup trucks
2:00:33are more of look at me and my sweet truck
2:00:36than they are I need a utility vehicle
2:00:39with which to transport things in the bed of this truck.
2:00:42You know what I mean?
2:00:43- Oh yeah, it's very much a like,
2:00:45I want a large thing to show off my largeness kind of.
2:00:49- Yeah, exactly.
2:00:50- Far be it from me to complain about someone buying a thing
2:00:53just 'cause they like it,
2:00:54that defines my entire computer hobby, right?
2:00:57But that is why the vast, vast, vast majority
2:01:01of pickup trucks are purchased in the United States.
2:01:03And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it.
2:01:04You want a pickup truck?
2:01:06We have them and we'll sell them to you.
2:01:07And there's no reason you need to justify that
2:01:09other than saying, "I like pickup trucks."
2:01:11Why do I have a stupid computer?
2:01:12I like big, fancy computers.
2:01:14That's the only reason.
2:01:16I get a little bit angry when someone says,
2:01:17"Oh, I got this pickup truck 'cause it's really practical."
2:01:19And it's like, "No, come on, just say you like trucks."
2:01:22Like, it's fine.
2:01:23Nothing wrong with liking trucks like other than the fact that you know
2:01:26they're killing pedestrians because they keep getting taller and taller like that is wrong with it and you should think about that and
2:01:29And Rivian is probably destroying the roads because it weighs 6,000 pounds or whatever, but you know, hey
2:01:34No co2 emissions. So give a thumbs up there
2:01:36Anyway relocated
2:01:40Right exactly but reduced overall net net, right?
2:01:43But like yeah
2:01:44Like if you don't understand if you're coming from like if you're listening to us in Europe or maybe in Canada
2:01:48You don't understand like the Ford F-150 has at various times to the best-selling vehicle in America for consumers, right?
2:01:55So many people buy pickup trucks here and there's lots of weird cultural reasons for doing that and people just like trucks or whatever
2:02:01but but practically speaking just like my stupid Mac Pro is not practical in any sense of the world and is worse than if I
2:02:07Had gotten a computer that is more appropriate to my needs
2:02:10People buy pickup trucks and then try to use them like minivans and so you end up with these monstrous vehicles
2:02:16They're incredibly impractical and inconvenient and they have this huge amount of car before this tiny little
2:02:22Stupid bed at the end and they jack the thing up and it's just like this doesn't make any practical sense whatsoever
2:02:29But again aside from the pedestrian killing and and the gas mileage and the road damage
2:02:34people just like trucks and so like if you think oh, well, you know, it's a pickup truck, but only few people buy them
2:02:42It's the default car in America essentially just like the default car in many European cities
2:02:47It's like a small, you know, a tiny little hatchback that Americans can't even fit inside
2:02:50The default vehicle in many places in America is a pickup truck. And so that's why Rivian is relevant
2:02:56That's why we're even talking about this because it is not an obscure sideshow like pickup trucks are the show in America
2:03:02And well and also like this is a major
2:03:04Market segment that is to date
2:03:07Unserved by electric vehicles, but that's why like it's such a I know there's some coming out and or whatever
2:03:12but like--
2:03:13- The Ford Lightning is the other big one
2:03:14in the conversation here, which is no joke,
2:03:16'cause that the Ford F-150, the Ford Lightning,
2:03:19Ford is selling as many of those as they can make.
2:03:21- Right, but the reason this is a big deal is like,
2:03:24we're trying to get electrification of vehicles
2:03:26as much as we can, and there's been these segments
2:03:29where people will say like, "I can't," quote,
2:03:32"I can't buy electric because I have need X, Y, and Z."
2:03:37And once you get good electric pickups,
2:03:40that solves a lot of those previously unsolved needs.
2:03:43And that gets us closer to major vehicle electrification.
2:03:47And that's a very, very good thing.
2:03:49- Yeah, so I spent a little time walking around
2:03:53the outside of the vehicle with guidance.
2:03:56So press this, look at this, check this out,
2:03:58et cetera, et cetera.
2:03:59So the picture that's in the show notes
2:04:00that I've shown Marco and John is me standing on the,
2:04:04what do they call this?
2:04:05- The gear tunnel. - The gear tunnel.
2:04:07- Yeah, so the gear tunnel,
2:04:08if you're sitting in the back seat,
2:04:10Well, behind your back, there's basically empty space.
2:04:13And so with the Rivian, with the R1T,
2:04:16which is the actual name of this model,
2:04:19there's a door on either side
2:04:21and you can store a bunch of gear,
2:04:24whatever it may be or luggage or what have you
2:04:25in this tunnel, this gear tunnel.
2:04:27And the doors that flop down when you open them up,
2:04:30they support like 250 pounds of weight in and of themselves.
2:04:33Now you wouldn't drive down the road this way,
2:04:35because that'd be extremely dangerous.
2:04:36It's way outside the edge of the body of the truck.
2:04:40But just as a step, it was perfectly legitimate.
2:04:43And so again, the super nice guy who was showing me around,
2:04:47his name is Peebles, and he said,
2:04:48"Okay, here, stand here, give me your phone.
2:04:49"I'm gonna take a picture of you."
2:04:51I was like, "Yes, yes, let's do that."
2:04:52So that's the picture that I'm showing you.
2:04:55But so much about the Rivian,
2:04:57it did not strike me as a beta test kind of vehicle.
2:05:01Like so many things were really, really well thought out.
2:05:05Like the button to release the tailgate,
2:05:07which is to say, you know, the thing that closes up in the back of the truck.
2:05:12It's a very subtle button that's on the, like, I guess the top side rail of the bed of the
2:05:21truck in our little Super Secret Private channel.
2:05:23I've just dropped a few more pictures for you guys privately.
2:05:26And you can see the button very, very faintly on the left-hand side of that picture behind
2:05:31like a little tie-down mount.
2:05:34And you press that and then the tailgate lowers.
2:05:37And then the way they've set up the tailgate is such that there's like another panel that
2:05:42slides down that kind of lands in between the main bed and the tailgate to kind of bridge
2:05:47the gap.
2:05:48So if you have a piece of like lumber or what have you that's longer than the very, very
2:05:52short bed, then it'll sit cleanly on the area between the bed, well that in between area
2:06:01and the tailgate itself.
2:06:02It's a very hard thing to describe verbally, but hopefully that makes some amount of sense.
2:06:05And by the way, you mentioned the very, very short bed.
2:06:07Why is the bed very, very short?
2:06:08Well, because Rivian knows that despite the fact that people want a truck, what they need
2:06:13is a car.
2:06:15And so this thing has four doors, a front seat, and a back seat big enough for big people,
2:06:20and there's not too much room left for a bed.
2:06:23And yeah, they could put a full-size bed in there, but now the vehicle would be so long
2:06:26that people wouldn't be able to park it anywhere, and so they have to do what everyone has done,
2:06:29which is basically make a gigantic, jacked up luxury sedan for $80,000 and put a thing
2:06:35on the back that's big enough so that people see it's recognizable in a truck and distract
2:06:39them from the tiny little bed in the back by putting a huge grill on the front and knobby
2:06:43tires and, you know, making the thing be 70 feet off the ground.
2:06:47Don't bother looking at the bed that's only four feet long.
2:06:49Hey, you can lower the tailgate and now you can fit a four bay piece of plywood in it
2:06:54as long as you don't mind the fact that it's sticking four feet out of the back of your
2:06:56truck.
2:06:57I will say, all of that stuff does serve purposes, though.
2:07:00They're just specialized.
2:07:01For instance, my beach sand driving vehicle needs--
2:07:05this would be amazing, because it has better ground clearance
2:07:09and way better off-roading capabilities than almost
2:07:12every vehicle out there.
2:07:13But you would get the R1S.
2:07:14They make an SUV version of this, which doesn't even
2:07:17pretend it's a SUV, right?
2:07:19And it's like, OK.
2:07:20Well, Make is generous.
2:07:21They advertise the ability to make one.
2:07:23I don't know how many have actually gotten into customer
2:07:26sands.
2:07:26But the great thing about it is that the R1S is basically the R1T without pretending to be a pickup.
2:07:31So the part that is the bed, it's like, why don't we just make that the rest of the inside of it?
2:07:35Like it's the same platform and the platform is so much better suited to being an SUV because it's clearly not particularly well suited to being a pickup truck.
2:07:43But people don't really want a pickup truck. They just want to say they own one, but they want a sedan that's really jacked.
2:07:47Anyway, again, I'm not I'm not faulting people for this.
2:07:50I'm just saying that it's like it's been interesting to watch the bed portion portion of pickup trucks shrink and shrink and shrink to the
2:07:57Oh, yeah, it is just barely big enough so you can make sure that people still know it's a pickup truck
2:08:02You know, it's true and in the r1s
2:08:04According to people's is getting delivered for but not a ton of them at this point as far as I think pretty sure that's what
2:08:11He said I might have that wrong but coming back to the experience I had with it
2:08:14So in the bed on the left-hand side if you're looking at the back of the car, you know
2:08:18you're standing behind the car, you're looking in the back of it. On the left-hand side,
2:08:20there's a panel that has like an air pump so you can inflate and deflate not only the tires on the truck itself,
2:08:26but if you had like a motorcycle or bicycle or something like that, you can you can
2:08:30inflate or deflate the tires with the onboard air pump, which also has a pressure gauge on it, which is super cool.
2:08:37And then again, I haven't put this in the chat room. I probably won't bother putting this in the show notes. But
2:08:41for the two of you guys, if you look underneath the air pump, it's hard to see but there's like two
2:08:47round wrecked areas that if you look very closely have little like padlock
2:08:52Logos on them and what those are and there's matching ones on the other side
2:08:56they give you these special cables like really really strong cables like bike lock kind of cables and
2:09:03You can put a spare and they have like special ends on them and you stick the ends into these little
2:09:10portholes that have these padlock logos on them.
2:09:13And when the truck locks, it locks those cables in place.
2:09:18And when the truck unlocks, you can yank those cables
2:09:21right out and remove your bicycle, motorcycle,
2:09:23whatever the case, or whatever it is you have locked
2:09:25in the back.
2:09:26And it was such a satisfying feeling,
2:09:29the little chink to put it in and take it out.
2:09:32- There's a Kensington lock if you remember those.
2:09:33The Kensington lock, remember like all Macs
2:09:35you start to come with this little thing?
2:09:36Like what is this all for?
2:09:37That's for the Kensington lock.
2:09:38- Yeah.
2:09:39it's much fancier but yet the same basic idea on the other side i didn't send you
2:09:42this picture of any of the other side had to you know standard u_s_ house
2:09:46outlets you know hundred twenty volt outlets just hanging out
2:09:49uh... on the inside it has this has been publicized as a bluetooth speaker that
2:09:54lives under the center console
2:09:55it has uh... flashlight the you can actually see in the picture that i
2:09:59shared with everyone
2:10:00there's a flashlight in the doors here with the the side of the door
2:10:04of the uh... driver side door that if i'm if i recall correctly is made out of
2:10:07an individual cell of the main battery unit, which is pretty neat. The inside, I honestly,
2:10:14one of my only regrets in the time I spent with the car is I didn't really mess with
2:10:18the infotainment at all. Like, I could tell you the stereo sounded really good to me,
2:10:22but I didn't spend any time, like, pointing and clicking and scrolling and whatnot, which
2:10:26I regret. I should have done that to see if the lag was real bad, but I just, I really
2:10:30wanted to spend time driving the car. If you'll notice, again, for the two of you guys that
2:10:35I put a picture of like the dashboard, which to my eyes,
2:10:40had very, very big Tesla energy in terms of the,
2:10:43"Oh, there's a car over here,
2:10:44there's a car over there, et cetera."
2:10:46It looks very, very similar to me.
2:10:48But what's cool about this is it has different ride heights
2:10:51and different modes, and so you can lower
2:10:53and raise the truck while you're in the truck,
2:10:55which is kind of neat.
2:10:56But I don't know the number as to how many bazillion pounds
2:11:00this thing weighs, but I'm sure it's about 11 trillion pounds.
2:11:04Did you know, I think I'm mostly talking to Marco here, did you know that electric vehicles
2:11:09can kind of overcome the fact that they weigh more than the entire planet Earth? And can
2:11:14even even electric vehicles this large can actually be relatively sprightly?
2:11:18I in fact did know that. Did you? It turns out I've been driving around a giant heavy
2:11:23brick of batteries for the last five years. And I've also greatly enjoyed it.
2:11:30So the funny thing is, so obviously it's an automatic as almost every electrical electric
2:11:33vehicle is. But there were a couple times I did a standing start and I would stand on the brake
2:11:41and then I would move my right foot over to the gas and floor it. And it's like getting shot out
2:11:46of a cannon. I don't care how many times, and I've driven electric cars, I don't know, 15-20 times in
2:11:51my life. Like this is not the first time I've driven an electric car. It's the first time I've
2:11:54driven a Rivian, but not the first time that I've driven an electric car. And I'm not just
2:11:58driven Tesla's, although I've driven many Tesla's, it's still just intoxicating every time. And doing
2:12:04it in a truck that weighs more than my house, like it is bending the laws of physics, how fast this
2:12:13thing is. But at one point right before we were done, people said, "No, okay, okay, just trust me on this
2:12:19one. This time I want you to use your left foot on the brake, stand on the brake, stand on the gas, and
2:12:25and then pop your left foot off the brake.
2:12:26You know, I think we would call this power braking
2:12:28back in the day if I'm not mistaken.
2:12:29But basically, stand on both pedals
2:12:31and then pop your left foot off the brake.
2:12:34I got shot out of a cannon, my dudes.
2:12:37Like, I thought just sidestepping onto the gas was fast.
2:12:40Oh no, I got shot out of a frickin' cannon
2:12:44in this 18 gazillion pound pickup truck.
2:12:47It was unreal how fast this thing was.
2:12:50- Do you wanna guess at the weight, by the way?
2:12:51I looked it up 'cause I was wrong in my humorous estimate
2:12:54when I was prattling out about this thing before.
2:12:56- 7,000 pounds.
2:12:58- Yeah, it's 7,148 pounds according to Wikipedia.
2:13:01- Oh, look at me, that was pretty good.
2:13:02- I found another article that said it's like 8,000
2:13:03'cause it's got a huge battery pack in there.
2:13:06I think it's 180 kilowatt hours for the big battery.
2:13:09That's, I mean, it's like almost twice as big
2:13:11as Marco's battery.
2:13:11I mean, 'cause it's a truck,
2:13:13it's supposed to be able to haul big things,
2:13:15it is itself is heavy,
2:13:16and I think the 060 is four seconds-ish,
2:13:18so that's what you were feeling there, Casey.
2:13:20- Yeah, yeah, I mean, it was bananas.
2:13:22And also, you know, I took it on an interstate or highway or freeway, whatever your local parlance is, and I didn't, I wasn't being ridiculous,
2:13:30but you know, on the off-ramp or the on-ramp, this thing handled surprisingly well.
2:13:34And yes, I know it's got a huge ass amount of weight, way low in the car, like I get that, but I,
2:13:38if I'm not mistaken, they do some like really aggressive auto leveling with the suspension to keep it from feeling like you're about to roll over.
2:13:45It was stunning how well this thing handled. Again, given the fact that it's a pickup, I'm grading on a curve,
2:13:52I'll tell you right now I'm grading on a curve, but you know, it's a pickup truck. It's in the air
2:13:55It's it weighs 11 zillion pounds
2:13:58It's it's stunning that this thing handled or it went as quickly as it did the stereo sounded great
2:14:03I mean, I'm not an audiophile really but it sounded surprisingly good because you know, I'm still kovat paranoid
2:14:11You know when we were riding around I insisted on having the windows open and and even still the stereo sounded great
2:14:17It's quiet. I mean because it's an electric like this thing was so nice and and and there's so many really nice touches that were
2:14:25That were clearly well designed
2:14:27like all this the the way the buttons for like the tailgate things are hidden and they're satisfying to click and the and
2:14:34The way the tailgate flops down you have that little intermediary thing that comes down automatically like so much of it was so well done
2:14:41I would absolutely buy one of these tomorrow if I was looking to get rid of my car and had a way more money to
2:14:47spend on a car than I actually do. And they were available, which none of those things
2:14:52were true. And if you could actually get it tomorrow,
2:14:54yeah, exactly. Nobody can. Holy cow.
2:14:56Quinn Nelson got his. It's possible if you pre-ordered it back in the day.
2:14:59Yeah, I mean, it's possible. Predictably, I've seen about a bazillion.
2:15:02I watch car review videos all the time, so I've seen a bazillion reviews, reviews, everything
2:15:07you can imagine on this site, like almost every inch of it. But one of the new videos
2:15:11that came out recently that I think is actually relevant to wondering what the deal is with
2:15:14is from the, what is it called, the Monroe channel.
2:15:17They take up our cars and talk about how much they cost
2:15:20to manufacture and what techniques they use.
2:15:22They spend a lot of time on Tesla because Tesla
2:15:24obviously does lots of things very differently
2:15:26than traditional car makers and it's fascinating
2:15:27for these veterans of the car industry to look at
2:15:29how Tesla does things and scratch their head
2:15:31and be impressed by some things and horrified by other.
2:15:34Anyway, they took apart the instrument panel
2:15:36of the Rivian R1T recently in a video.
2:15:38We'll put a link in the show notes.
2:15:40And it's fun looking at a new car company, Rivian,
2:15:45with its very first car.
2:15:46Yes, it's electric,
2:15:47but we're looking at the instrument panel here,
2:15:48so it shouldn't be that much different.
2:15:50It's got a screen on it and stuff,
2:15:51but we're not looking at the drive train, right?
2:15:53What does the instrument panel look like?
2:15:55And they constantly reference Tesla,
2:15:56which is their other oddball,
2:15:57which is like a brand new car company,
2:15:59doing cars in an unconventional way.
2:16:01The most interesting thing that I found
2:16:02was when they were pulling it apart,
2:16:03they were comparing it to how Tesla constructed stuff.
2:16:06Obviously, they're talking about, oh, you know,
2:16:08they probably used some expensive materials,
2:16:10They're probably losing money on this.
2:16:11They got a little bit fancy or whatever.
2:16:13But one of the things I talk about is the,
2:16:15like the top of the instrument panel.
2:16:17Like if you put your hand right on the dashboard,
2:16:18that piece, right?
2:16:20They peel that piece off and they say,
2:16:23so there's an industry standard for most things
2:16:26in the auto industry that you have to have a fastener
2:16:28every 150 millimeters or something for panels like this.
2:16:33And, but like on the Tesla, on the Model S,
2:16:36there's like five screws for that entire piece, right?
2:16:38And what the theory was of the people who were taking this part is that Rivian hired
2:16:43a lot of people from the traditional automotive industry, like poached people from Ford, Chrysler,
2:16:48or all the other, you know, Honda, whatever.
2:16:51People in the industry said, "Hey, you come to this company, we're going to make a new
2:16:54cool electric pickup truck."
2:16:56And those people, because they've been in the industry so long, were just going to be
2:16:59like, "Oh yeah, fastener every 150 million years."
2:17:00That's how you build a car, without really questioning it.
2:17:04Whereas Tesla was not burdened by that and said, "But why do you need a fastener every
2:17:0850 million years for this piece,
2:17:09like the top of your dashboard,
2:17:11that's like it's not a structural member,
2:17:13why do we need to have so many things?
2:17:14So the Rivian has--
2:17:15- Is it for NVH?
2:17:16- No, I mean, what they were saying is like,
2:17:20if you dig into this and say,
2:17:22who came up with that rule, why is that there?
2:17:23You just keep asking down the chain, down the chain,
2:17:25and eventually you realize no one actually
2:17:26either knows or remembers why that's there.
2:17:28It just becomes part of the, you know,
2:17:30the lore of being a parts manufacturer
2:17:32for the auto industry.
2:17:33That it's like, eh, I don't know if you really need it.
2:17:36And they were saying like when you're a parts maker,
2:17:38It's kind of annoying because you'll push back and say,
2:17:41do we need to do this?
2:17:42And say, oh yeah, it's part of the spec.
2:17:43And you'll say, but why?
2:17:45And they're like, I don't have a reason
2:17:46it's just part of the spec.
2:17:47But then you'll be like, well,
2:17:48that part's gonna be too expensive then.
2:17:49So you'll just willfully ignore the spec
2:17:51and do it in a more sane way and just not say anything.
2:17:55And they will silently accept your non-spec compliant thing
2:18:00until unless there's a problem.
2:18:02Then they'll say, oh, you just didn't follow the spec.
2:18:03But anyway, Tesla chose not to put those screws in there.
2:18:07And it's probably fine, right?
2:18:09But you can tell based on how the thing is constructed
2:18:12in the Rivian that there are more people
2:18:13from the traditional audio and auto industry
2:18:15in this company because of things like how closely spaced
2:18:19the fasteners are because that's just the way you do things.
2:18:22I don't know which one of those things is better or worse,
2:18:24but it's fascinating to be able to sort of
2:18:26read the signature of the makers by tearing it apart
2:18:29and looking at how it was constructed.
2:18:32In both cases, especially early Tesla
2:18:34and also these Rivians, there's a little bit
2:18:36of a kind of a handcrafted nature to it.
2:18:38Like I know what the inside of a lot of Honda's look like.
2:18:41And you know, Honda's into, oh, does it's like,
2:18:44how, you know, how inexpensive, how few pieces,
2:18:47how reliable, like it's just honed down
2:18:49to the bare essence of like,
2:18:51if I can do something with one piece of plastic
2:18:53instead of two, I'm gonna do it.
2:18:55I'm gonna refine this arrangement over the course
2:18:57of 50 years to try to get it to be 3 cents cheaper, right?
2:19:00Or 5% stiffer or whatever, like just so ruthlessly minimal.
2:19:06And these things, it's like, it's an $80,000 electric truck.
2:19:09I'm not quite sure how to do it,
2:19:10but let's just throw materials at it.
2:19:12Let's use this expensive exotic material.
2:19:14Let's put these things on it.
2:19:15Let's put these five screws, let's do this thing.
2:19:16And in other places, they'll end up saying,
2:19:18we didn't know how to do this,
2:19:19so we have these four air ducts.
2:19:20How do we hold them together?
2:19:22How about we just drill a hole in them,
2:19:23put a wing nut on there and just twist it together?
2:19:25Eh, that'll do it, ship it, right?
2:19:27There's so much of that mixed in.
2:19:28Like, the inside of the Rivian and the inside of Teslas
2:19:31do not look like the inside of established car brands.
2:19:35especially they don't look at the inside of cars that cost you know $20,000 right because
2:19:39you know in the end these are very expensive vehicles and part of that expense is yeah they
2:19:43use exotic parts and there's a big battery in there but also part of that expense is we didn't
2:19:47have the time or the research budget to figure out how to make this car economically so we're
2:19:52going to sell it to you for 80 grand and uh there you know we we did the company would have gone out
2:19:58of business if we had spent the next 20 years figuring out how to manufacture this car for
2:20:02for $10,000 less, so we're not,
2:20:03and we'll just pass the cost on to you.
2:20:05- Well, that being said,
2:20:06and I think this particular example
2:20:09was something like 80 grand.
2:20:11There is no way this truck should cost 80 grand.
2:20:13It should cost easily 100 to 110, from what I could tell.
2:20:18It was, maybe I'm just,
2:20:20I've been price reset by Tesla.
2:20:25- It might cost that much.
2:20:26Did you ask someone how many options were on the car
2:20:28that you were looking at?
2:20:28- No, I asked him, "How much is this one?"
2:20:31and I am pretty sure he said like 80-ish.
2:20:33Maybe even been a little bit less.
2:20:34- Well then you really can't get it in time soon.
2:20:36Well I'll tell you what though,
2:20:37I have good news for you Casey.
2:20:38If you want the Rivian to cost more,
2:20:40go try to buy one now because here I'll send you one.
2:20:44Here's one right in Richmond, right near you Casey.
2:20:47(laughing)
2:20:48It's only $141,000 for a used R1T.
2:20:53- My goodness, I mean it,
2:20:58honestly I think this thing should cost closer
2:21:01to that, although I wouldn't go quite that far.
2:21:03But no, it was amazing.
2:21:05Like the frunk was huge, it had a drain spigot or spout
2:21:08or whatever so you could make it a cooler
2:21:10and then just drain it at the end of the day.
2:21:12Like a lot of this stuff,
2:21:12it was just really well thought out.
2:21:14It was very comfortable on the inside.
2:21:17Some of the stuff was a little bit silly,
2:21:19like you can't just twist the air vents,
2:21:22you have to go into the computer and ask it where,
2:21:25oh, I wanna point it right here and then--
2:21:27- 'Cause they want them to be controlled
2:21:28by the touchscreen, but if they can be controlled
2:21:29by the touch screen, you can't have manual stateful controls.
2:21:32- Yeah, and so that's like,
2:21:34the stuff like that is a little bit, eh, whatever.
2:21:36But by and large, I freaking love this thing.
2:21:39If I had my druthers, I would have already put in a deposit
2:21:42for an R1S to replace Erin's Volvo one day.
2:21:46But I don't know that she would be quite as keen
2:21:48on this idea as I am, but I loved it.
2:21:52Like, again, I only spent like 20 minutes with it,
2:21:55but I can think of no reservations.
2:21:57Like if I was spending somebody else's money,
2:21:59I would do it tomorrow.
2:22:01Like again, you can't get 'em.
2:22:03It's impossible to get 'em.
2:22:04I wouldn't get a white one.
2:22:05There's a couple of blues that were really lovely.
2:22:07There was like a deep, deep gray.
2:22:08I wanna say it was called the Granite or something
2:22:10that was really, really nice.
2:22:12They had a bunch of them there.
2:22:14- Ooh, there's a yellow one.
2:22:15- Yeah, I think there is a yellow one.
2:22:17- I can get it right now for only $135,000 in Connecticut.
2:22:20- There you go.
2:22:21No, there's-- - Lightly used.
2:22:22- I'm telling you, Marco,
2:22:23you would really, really like this thing.
2:22:26Like it was amazing.
2:22:27Apparently they're getting, like I asked Peebles and the two guys that he was working with
2:22:31at the time, the other two I think were more on the delivery side of things, and they said
2:22:36they're getting trucks like every day and they're delivering them to North Carolina,
2:22:39to Virginia, I think as far up as Maryland.
2:22:43Of course they're flatbedding them on internal combustion flatbeds because they're going
2:22:47to like North Carolina and stuff and they don't want to just drive the truck because
2:22:51then you're getting a truck with like 300 miles on the clock.
2:22:54But anyways, but no, they're getting them daily,
2:22:57from what I understand.
2:22:58And it was such a cool experience
2:23:01and it was so kind of them to spend an hour with me,
2:23:04you know, who they don't, nobody cares who I am,
2:23:07but nevertheless, they spent an hour with me
2:23:09and never were upset about it,
2:23:11never check their watches, wondering when it would be done.
2:23:13Like it was such a lovely experience
2:23:16and the truck was so nice.
2:23:18I would absolutely buy one tomorrow
2:23:20if I thought I could get away with it.
2:23:22It was so great.
2:23:23Looking at their configurator, it's kind of like when you add RAM to the Mac.
2:23:26So you go to the configurator and it comes with 8 gigs of RAM.
2:23:3016 gigs of RAM, add $400.
2:23:3124 gigs of RAM, add $600 or whatever.
2:23:35Well so you go to the Rivian and you've got the standard battery pack.
2:23:37And if you want the large packets, add $6,000.
2:23:40And if you want the max packets, add $16,000.
2:23:42If you're wondering why these cars cost so much money, it's not because they're using
2:23:45exotic materials and fancy stuff on the inside, it's because they have a huge battery in it
2:23:50and those batteries are really expensive.
2:23:51So yeah, add $16,000, that's a hell of an option.
2:23:54Still not Porsche option because probably $16,000
2:23:56gets you like the cool black paint on the Porsche,
2:23:58but you know.
2:24:00- Yeah. - Different strokes.
2:24:01[door closes]
2:24:03[BLANK_AUDIO]