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472: File a Casey Radar

 

00:00:00   Last week in the pre-show I said I had stopped following the news very closely

00:00:04   The next morning Russia started a war so you know maybe poor timing on that

00:00:11   I shouldn't laugh, I laugh with respect. I laugh at you Marco because yeah, maybe not the best timing

00:00:18   I am not at all laughing about what's going on in Ukraine. It is truly terrible

00:00:22   I'm pretty darn sure I speak for all three of us in saying we stand with Ukraine

00:00:26   We find this to be an absolutely disgusting act of war

00:00:29   And we are certainly, our hearts are with Ukraine.

00:00:34   I don't even know what to say right now.

00:00:37   It's just so stupefying that in 2022,

00:00:40   this is still a thing that's happening.

00:00:42   And I just don't even know what to make of it.

00:00:44   - Yeah, and I'll be the first to admit,

00:00:46   I know basically nothing about the politics of the region.

00:00:49   About, you know, I know there were a lot of things

00:00:51   leading up to this.

00:00:53   And I had the privilege/ignorance

00:00:56   of not really paying much attention,

00:00:58   'cause there's a lot of stuff that happens in the world

00:01:00   and I don't have time to pay attention to most of it.

00:01:02   And I've never been much of a news junkie

00:01:05   or anything like that.

00:01:05   And so I have no idea all this stuff led up to this.

00:01:09   And I've been trying to educate myself in the meantime.

00:01:12   But war is awful.

00:01:14   And this is not going to be resolved

00:01:17   probably quickly or cleanly.

00:01:20   And lots of people around the world, including Putin,

00:01:23   have looked at the US and said,

00:01:24   well, look, you guys invade stuff all the time.

00:01:26   And yeah, we have done that.

00:01:28   and we shouldn't have done it either.

00:01:30   - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:01:31   - In almost every case, I think that has proven

00:01:34   to have been the wrong move, and also has always proven

00:01:37   to be way more messy and lengthy and costly to human life

00:01:42   and everything else than we had initially expected it to be.

00:01:49   And I expect this to play out no differently.

00:01:52   I think this is going to be a mess for a long time,

00:01:56   And there is, you know, there's certainly large risks,

00:01:59   I think, of escalations.

00:02:02   And we'll talk about that a little bit.

00:02:03   But that's, you know, this is not gonna be, you know,

00:02:07   some quick thing that's out of the news in a few weeks

00:02:10   or even a few months.

00:02:11   I think this is gonna take years.

00:02:12   And it's, you know, I, yeah, it's awful.

00:02:16   Any kind of war is awful.

00:02:19   And it's not productive to try to like compete

00:02:23   and say like, oh, why didn't we care about X, Y, Z

00:02:25   happened in the past that was worse or happened to other people you know let's let's let's just get

00:02:31   that right out you know I think this is we can look at this in objective terms and say this is

00:02:35   this is awful and and we all hope it gets resolved sooner rather than later even though I know that's

00:02:41   you know unlikely but you know best wishes to the people of Ukraine and and I was wondering like

00:02:47   I mean maybe this is more of a topic once we get to that in a second but I was kind of wondering

00:02:52   like what like are we supposed to do much from here in terms of like you know not only

00:02:59   you know things like if there's good places we can send donations that might actually

00:03:03   have an impact but also stuff like you know obviously you know don't support Russia business

00:03:08   wise but like I was thinking like you know I run a podcast app that is server side based

00:03:15   like am I supposed to block Russia from accessing that like I don't even know like would that

00:03:19   that wouldn't that just hurt a lot of nerdy Russians

00:03:22   who probably don't have any say

00:03:23   over what their government's doing?

00:03:25   It's really messy to think about this stuff.

00:03:28   What kind of actions that are even within our control

00:03:32   that we even could take, first of all, that's a question,

00:03:36   and then among those that we could do,

00:03:38   what should we do that would actually have an impact

00:03:41   or have a chance of having an impact

00:03:43   without also hurting a bunch of people

00:03:45   who don't deserve to be hurt necessarily?

00:03:49   Like, you know, the US has done a whole bunch of crazy stuff

00:03:52   and it's had a whole bunch of terrible leaders over time

00:03:55   and, you know, not every American supported what they did.

00:03:59   You know, and like, so I don't know,

00:04:00   it's a hard thing to navigate.

00:04:03   - It is, it's so funny you bring this up

00:04:04   because, you know, I am releasing a new app tomorrow,

00:04:07   we're gonna talk about this later

00:04:08   and not to make this awful situation about me

00:04:11   but apparently here we go.

00:04:12   I was wondering, you know, like,

00:04:14   should I not make this available in Russia?

00:04:17   And for a couple of reasons that is not the choice I made.

00:04:22   First of all, I lived through the four years

00:04:26   that just ended a year ago.

00:04:28   So, 2016 through '20, I lived through it.

00:04:31   And suddenly, my government was doing a bunch of things

00:04:36   that I really didn't like.

00:04:38   And I'm sure that's been true most of my life,

00:04:40   if not all of it. - I was gonna say suddenly.

00:04:43   - It was abundantly obvious that my government

00:04:45   was going in a wildly different direction than I wanted.

00:04:49   And I was just along for the ride.

00:04:51   Like I did what I could to stop it and to prevent it,

00:04:54   but I was just along for the ride.

00:04:56   And I think if it wasn't for the 2016 through 2020 era,

00:05:01   I think I would have had a vastly different

00:05:03   and less sympathetic opinion about this.

00:05:08   But what I came down to is, first of all,

00:05:10   there are a lot of honest Russians

00:05:13   that are also deeply upset about this.

00:05:15   and are like, you know, going in the street and protesting

00:05:19   and doing things that I don't do in America,

00:05:23   generally speaking, and it's mostly safe to do that here.

00:05:26   Like, they're putting themselves at tremendous personal risk

00:05:28   to protest this grotesque war.

00:05:31   And so, and because my app could,

00:05:35   if you look at it in a certain angle,

00:05:37   my app could be used to kind of try to prevent them

00:05:39   from getting retaliated upon.

00:05:41   And so because of that, I thought, you know what,

00:05:43   I'm going to make it available in Russia,

00:05:45   But I had these same thoughts, and many people

00:05:48   that are doing independent app development, like you and me,

00:05:51   I've had these conversations with many of them,

00:05:54   and none of us have reached the same conclusion

00:05:57   or for the same reasons, but it is weird and wild

00:06:01   that you or I, Marco, could even have this discussion.

00:06:06   Like, it's kind of cool in a roundabout way

00:06:07   that you and I have at least enough reach

00:06:11   that this is a plausible conversation we had.

00:06:13   I'm not saying that there's more than six users

00:06:16   of my app ever, and certainly not in Russia,

00:06:18   but this is a conversation that is, on the surface,

00:06:21   a reasonable conversation to have,

00:06:22   which is really weird and kind of a cool thing about 2022.

00:06:26   Now, granted, the reason we're having this conversation

00:06:27   is, again, grotesque and awful,

00:06:29   but I don't know, it's wild, it's super weird.

00:06:31   Jon, you've been quiet, what are your thoughts?

00:06:33   - I mean, I think a good rule of thumb

00:06:35   for trying to figure out what we as individuals should do

00:06:37   is, I mean, obviously, we know we're not,

00:06:40   No individual is doing anything to affect this

00:06:44   on a geopolitical scale.

00:06:46   It's the government, the world governments

00:06:49   are doing the big moves.

00:06:51   But you're right that if it's weird that individual people

00:06:54   have international businesses.

00:06:57   In decades past, you'd be like, OK, well, I

00:06:59   run the corner store in my town, but this doesn't affect me.

00:07:02   But now, if you just make a dinky little app,

00:07:04   you put it on the app store, you realize,

00:07:06   I have customers in Russia, what?

00:07:08   It's kind of weird.

00:07:08   And so we do have some kind of decision to make.

00:07:10   And a good rule of thumb, I feel like, is for individuals--

00:07:14   this is helping me see people discuss this--

00:07:17   as an individual, you should try to do something

00:07:19   that you think will help.

00:07:20   So that would fall under the category of figuring out

00:07:23   how to send money or do like--

00:07:26   what do you have that can help?

00:07:28   You have time and you have money.

00:07:29   And you can do that on an individual basis.

00:07:31   And if a bunch of individuals do it, it can help.

00:07:32   So am I doing something to help?

00:07:34   If, on the other hand, you're looking

00:07:36   at trying to do something punitive--

00:07:38   I don't like Russia, therefore I want to do something punitive that will punish them for

00:07:42   their bad invasion.

00:07:44   That's not going to do anything at an individual level.

00:07:46   Punitive actions by individuals are probably going to be misguided, but that's just in

00:07:51   general.

00:07:52   I feel like that's not going to, you know, 300 million people doing an individualist

00:07:57   punitive thing by saying, "Well, I'm never buying anything from Russia again," or "I'm

00:08:01   going to remove all of my movies that feature Russia from my collection."

00:08:06   you can think of it to be like, I disagree with Russia,

00:08:09   therefore, like it's natural to feel like you want to do

00:08:11   something to like, fight back against it. But it's, I think

00:08:14   it's the wrong way to go. So I would say, you know, look at the

00:08:17   thing you're thinking of doing and saying, Am I trying to help

00:08:19   somebody? Or am I trying to do a thing that is punitive, because

00:08:22   I think the punitive thing for individuals is extremely

00:08:24   misguided. And for nation states, seeing how the world has

00:08:27   reacted. This is kind of interesting, because, you know,

00:08:30   for most of our lives, we've had these, we haven't had, you know,

00:08:34   Well, we have another World War III, obviously.

00:08:37   And during my whole childhood, World War III was a big thing

00:08:39   because the Cold War was a big thing.

00:08:41   And then the dissolution of the Soviet Union

00:08:43   kind of put that on the back burner for a while,

00:08:46   and we had all these smaller wars, quote unquote,

00:08:48   smaller wars.

00:08:49   It was like, oh, well, they don't have nuclear weapons,

00:08:51   so it's just a regular war.

00:08:52   Just people die the regular way, so it's OK.

00:08:54   But anyway, and now to see it like total destruction

00:08:58   of the planet is back on the table in a big way,

00:09:00   that's exciting for all us Gen X people.

00:09:03   But the way the world has reacted to it is,

00:09:06   we have such an interconnected world these days

00:09:10   that the whole world basically said,

00:09:12   well, we're not going to deal with you anymore.

00:09:15   I agree that I think it's silly for anyone

00:09:18   to withhold their apps or whatever, an individual developer,

00:09:21   but if the whole world says,

00:09:22   well, you can't use our banking system,

00:09:24   you can't fly your airplanes over our airspace,

00:09:29   we'll stop selling you parts for all your airplanes

00:09:31   'cause all your airplanes are like Boeing and Airbus.

00:09:34   Apple stopped selling its products in the country,

00:09:38   probably mostly because the ruble was massively devalued.

00:09:40   But either way, it's basically saying,

00:09:43   Russia, you might not realize how much

00:09:46   the world is interconnected, and we'll show you that

00:09:48   by the whole world turning their back on Russia,

00:09:50   the whole world except for the six other dictatorships

00:09:53   that are buddy-buddy with them, and China,

00:09:55   which is another complicated situation.

00:09:58   But I don't think that we've ever had a situation like that,

00:10:03   and I'm not a historian, so I don't know,

00:10:04   but where so many other countries have so much power

00:10:08   over this country, like non-military power,

00:10:12   what can you do that will,

00:10:15   and part of it is you don't wanna isolate them or whatever

00:10:18   and have them sort of turn inward

00:10:20   and become even more dangerous.

00:10:21   I don't know what the right thing to do is,

00:10:22   but how quickly the international banking system

00:10:26   and all these large companies like Exxon.

00:10:30   Exxon pulled out of Russia and left behind

00:10:33   billions of dollars in assets.

00:10:35   Everybody just saying, "Nuh-uh, this is not okay."

00:10:38   Essentially, you're not allowed

00:10:40   to invade your neighboring countries.

00:10:43   That's it.

00:10:44   Nevermind that Russia's done it multiple times before,

00:10:46   but apparently everyone has decided this is the line.

00:10:48   You wonder where the line was?

00:10:50   This is the line.

00:10:51   And so I don't know how Russia can continue

00:10:54   to sort of be a going concern in the long term

00:10:59   with the whole world turning its back on them like this.

00:11:02   And it's terrible because, as you pointed out,

00:11:03   the people who live in Russia,

00:11:05   they don't determine their government.

00:11:06   Putin is a dictator.

00:11:08   They don't get to vote for him every year.

00:11:10   Oh, you won again with 99% of the vote.

00:11:12   Well, that's funny. - Imagine that.

00:11:15   - So the people there, they don't want this,

00:11:16   but what choice do they have?

00:11:19   And so it's terrible that the people

00:11:20   are going to be hurt by this.

00:11:21   And that's why I think it is the correct choice

00:11:24   for people like Apple to say,

00:11:26   well, we won't sell our products to you anymore,

00:11:28   but we will keep the app store open

00:11:30   because you might need apps on your phone

00:11:32   that lets you securely communicate with other people

00:11:35   and so on and so forth.

00:11:36   You're trying to draw the line where,

00:11:37   well, we don't wanna hurt the Russian people,

00:11:39   but we do want Russia to clearly get the message

00:11:42   that this is not okay,

00:11:44   and also we don't want to all die

00:11:46   in a nuclear mushroom cloud.

00:11:49   So I don't know how to walk that line.

00:11:51   That's why I don't run this country or any other country.

00:11:53   I hope we do walk it correctly, but the reaction, the sort of international reaction of, you

00:11:58   know, I know this is such a stupid analogy, but I'm thinking of like, if you're ever in

00:12:02   kind of some kind of online community, and someone does something that's not okay for

00:12:06   that community, and the whole community lets them know that it's not okay, like that we

00:12:10   don't do that in this community, whatever it is, whatever they did, and whatever the

00:12:13   community is, that's happening in international level right now.

00:12:18   Whether or not Putin is open to the idea that what he's doing is not okay, or if he's just

00:12:22   completely off in his own world is you know thing that will keep you up at night but still it's

00:12:27   in some ways it is an interesting moment of unity among the slightly more civilized world that you

00:12:34   know the countries that ostensibly do not have dictators running them uh versus the ones that

00:12:39   definitely do um so i hope hope everything works out i hope we're all still here to keep doing this

00:12:44   podcast um and speaking of this podcast there is an apple angle on this um aside from apple just

00:12:50   like stopping selling stuff or whatever.

00:12:52   Jason Snell had a good article in Macworld today,

00:12:55   speculating about what would happen if China did something

00:12:58   like this.

00:12:59   Because what did Apple do?

00:13:00   Apple said, well, we're not going

00:13:01   to sell our products in your region anymore.

00:13:03   We'll keep the App Store open.

00:13:05   But we're basically-- this is not OK,

00:13:08   and this is how we're expressing that.

00:13:10   What if China invaded a neighboring country, which

00:13:12   is not too far-fetched, because there is a neighboring

00:13:14   country that China really, really wants to invade

00:13:16   and bring back into China.

00:13:18   And that's Taiwan.

00:13:19   And you know what else happens in Taiwan?

00:13:21   Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturing company.

00:13:23   And you know what happens in China?

00:13:25   All of Apple's products are assembled

00:13:26   except for like a handful of other ones, right?

00:13:29   So if China did something terrible,

00:13:30   and the whole world said we're going to tell China

00:13:35   that it's not okay by kicking them out of the banking system

00:13:37   and doing X and doing Y and do Z,

00:13:38   nevermind that the entirety of the US economy

00:13:40   would be crippled because of so much stuff

00:13:42   that we have as a manufacturer in China.

00:13:44   But Apple specifically, if they said,

00:13:46   okay, well, we're not doing business with China anymore,

00:13:49   It's like, well, I guess there's no more iPhones this year

00:13:51   because where are you gonna build all those, right?

00:13:53   Where are you gonna build all your products, right?

00:13:54   - Yeah, not just iPhones, like Macs, everything.

00:13:57   - But you know, and setting aside,

00:13:59   as Jason starts the article, like, you know,

00:14:01   China is a market where Apple sells

00:14:03   like $72 billion worth of stuff,

00:14:04   but setting aside selling,

00:14:05   that's the country that makes all this stuff.

00:14:07   And that's why I said, you know,

00:14:09   these so many shows ago that Apple has a China problem

00:14:11   and the world has a China problem.

00:14:13   I'm not sure which one of those is the bigger problem,

00:14:15   but like, you know, Apple's China problem,

00:14:17   could be like existential like if if Apple can no longer do business with

00:14:22   China or does not want to do business of China because China did something

00:14:25   terrible does Apple like sort of burn cash for three years to rebuild

00:14:30   manufacturing somewhere like I don't know how they would even recover and

00:14:33   then obviously the world doesn't want China to be invading other countries

00:14:38   either so yeah this is a fun topic unfortunately there is an Apple angle

00:14:44   it but like this is this really highlights that this stuff isn't all necessarily just theoretical

00:14:50   like things like this still happen countries run by countries without even remotely democratically

00:14:59   elected elected leadership can do all sorts of things that don't make sense to us in the outside

00:15:03   world but nevertheless they still happen and we have to figure out how to deal with it yeah yep

00:15:09   So our thoughts, energy, everything is with Ukraine

00:15:13   and we hope that everything reaches a peaceful end

00:15:17   sooner rather than later.

00:15:18   - And this is why, you know, which I was saying about

00:15:22   Apple and China and everything,

00:15:23   this is why this stuff matters.

00:15:25   To have such a strong dependence on a country

00:15:31   whose relationship with the US is tense is not great.

00:15:37   This is why all the Trump stuff mattered a lot

00:15:39   with how cozy he was with Putin.

00:15:41   People out there were voting for Trump

00:15:44   for a variety of reasons, many of which were stupid,

00:15:48   and they didn't see stuff like this,

00:15:50   or they were and sometimes still are

00:15:53   excusing the Trump-Russia relationship.

00:15:57   This stuff matters.

00:15:58   This is why throwing away your vote

00:16:02   in a way that is flippant or as a joke or something

00:16:06   is, you know, that's a serious matter,

00:16:09   and this kind of stuff matters a lot.

00:16:10   And, you know, who we elect as world leaders

00:16:13   and the countries that we empower

00:16:15   or that we let have power over us over time,

00:16:18   this kind of stuff is all big stakes.

00:16:20   And I think we've gotten very comfortable

00:16:22   because most of us haven't been in a major war,

00:16:25   or we haven't been alive during times of major world wars.

00:16:29   But, you know, this is strategically very risky,

00:16:33   and this is, again, why, going back to our tech show,

00:16:35   oh yeah, it's a tech podcast.

00:16:37   This is why I really am uncomfortable

00:16:40   with the level of dependence that,

00:16:42   not only Apple, but as John said,

00:16:45   as many of us, the world that we have on China.

00:16:49   Because again, China is the Russia of this century,

00:16:54   basically, in a lot of ways.

00:16:57   I'm sorry if this is a terribly flawed analogy.

00:17:00   And also, by the way, the major risk to the world

00:17:05   here is like the pile on effect. China will probably consider invading Taiwan. This kind

00:17:13   of stuff, this is serious business. This is really dark, horrible stuff that could happen

00:17:19   here including if the Russia Ukraine invasion doesn't resolve itself in some way soon,

00:17:30   Well who else is going to join that fight? And then what will happen? And if anyone starts

00:17:35   joining that fight, China, if they get involved, is much more likely to be on the Russian side

00:17:43   than the everyone else side. And that's a big problem for lots of people, including

00:17:49   us. And this is, you know, this is a big, potentially, like, horrible mess and, you

00:17:56   You know, this could get very, very bad.

00:17:58   And this is why, again, this is serious business.

00:18:01   This is, you know, we all hope for a faster,

00:18:04   cleaner resolution than that.

00:18:06   But this is real risky stuff here.

00:18:08   - That's why we talked about China in the past.

00:18:10   The dichotomy was like, do you engage with them,

00:18:12   which has been the Apple, what the Apple's been doing,

00:18:15   and Tim Cook has said it explicitly,

00:18:16   we wanna engage with China, or do you isolate them, right?

00:18:20   Russia right now is being isolated,

00:18:22   because they've crossed the line, right?

00:18:24   But up until that point, we were engaged with China.

00:18:26   Exxon was there drilling for gas.

00:18:28   We were trading with them freely.

00:18:30   They were part of the international banking system,

00:18:32   despite the fact that they were run by a dictator who

00:18:35   poisoned his enemies and does all sorts

00:18:37   of terrible assassinations and invades other countries.

00:18:41   But eventually there was a line.

00:18:42   And China, the main thing that's protecting all of us

00:18:45   is that, yeah, we get all our stuff from China,

00:18:48   and China gets all our money.

00:18:50   And so there is this relationship

00:18:52   between the US and China and China and lots of other countries that goes both ways.

00:18:58   Apple would be destroyed without China.

00:19:00   China gets a lot of money from Apple.

00:19:02   The US would lose tons of products that are all manufactured in China and China would

00:19:06   lose all the money that we pay for those products.

00:19:08   Having an interdependent world where we all trade with each other, even when we're trading

00:19:13   in an uneasy way, we're like, "We don't really like your system of government and the way

00:19:16   you do things."

00:19:17   Honestly, they could say the same thing about us and I know it's not the same.

00:19:20   They always throw that back in our face,

00:19:22   well, you do bad things too.

00:19:23   We do, but there's a matter of degree here.

00:19:25   - And also, that's not a valid counterargument.

00:19:28   Like, the thing you do can be bad even if I do bad things.

00:19:32   That's not related.

00:19:34   - But they're like, you know,

00:19:36   it's an uneasy relationship in both directions,

00:19:39   but it is mutually beneficial for us

00:19:41   to continue to have this relationship,

00:19:42   and that is, I feel like, the main thing

00:19:44   protecting us all from annihilation is that,

00:19:47   You know, the leaders in China don't want to screw up their country by becoming isolated

00:19:57   from the rest of the world and vice versa.

00:20:00   So the policy of engaging with China and both of us trying to use our leverage to make the

00:20:04   other two more what we want them to do.

00:20:06   Ben Thompson's talked about this a lot where we always thought like by engaging with China

00:20:09   we would spread democratic ideals to China.

00:20:12   But rather instead of that by engaging with China looks like China is, you know, exporting

00:20:16   fascist ideas to us by making, you know, "Oh, Apple, if you want to work here, the government

00:20:20   has to have access to your data centers and stuff." And Apple's like, "Oh, I guess so."

00:20:25   I'm not sure how that balance is being met, but I do know that I actually feel a little

00:20:29   bit safer with the world entangled with China than if they were isolated. Because you don't

00:20:35   want a country to be isolated, run by dictators, and have nuclear weapons. Like, that's bad.

00:20:41   It's better to be engaged, run by dictators, and have nuclear weapons. So, you know, it's

00:20:44   It's not, you wouldn't want either one of them really, but the engagement I feel like

00:20:48   is a thing.

00:20:49   And that's why the world turning its back on Russia is effective.

00:20:54   Because if Russia was not part of the international community, then everyone turning their back

00:21:00   would be like, "So what?

00:21:01   You haven't been helping us already anyway."

00:21:02   But it's not true.

00:21:04   Their billionaires have apartments in New York City, their yachts are parked on the

00:21:09   shores of the French Riviera.

00:21:12   The people who run that, the oligarchs that run that country, you know, engage with the

00:21:18   rest of the world and are in the rest of the world.

00:21:21   And they don't want that world to become, you know, a cinder.

00:21:24   They don't want it to be irradiated either.

00:21:26   So I hope there's enough mutual interest in not, you know, just destroying the planet

00:21:31   because, you know, anyway, it's hard with Putin and people who seem disconnected from

00:21:37   reality, it's hard to know how things actually, what's actually going on in their head.

00:21:40   But I hope there's enough people who realize that none of this is worth destroying the

00:21:45   planet over and maybe we could just all go back into our corners and stop invading other

00:21:50   countries.

00:21:51   If only.

00:21:52   I hope so.

00:21:53   Now that America is done invading everybody, let's all stop.

00:21:55   Yeah, exactly.

00:21:56   It's the obvious thing of life.

00:21:57   Oh, invading other countries and taking their territory.

00:21:58   That's how America was formed.

00:22:01   To Marco's point, it was wrong then, it's also wrong now.

00:22:04   It was wrong both times.

00:22:05   Yeah, oh yeah.

00:22:06   Right?

00:22:07   But we can't do anything else about the past.

00:22:09   trying to make progress and say, "Now we find it much less acceptable to invade the

00:22:14   neighboring country, kill the people, and take it over."

00:22:17   All right, so speaking of invading things, what's going on with your intestines, Marco?

00:22:23   Oh, well, nothing new to report. I've started the avocado testing, but it's too early to

00:22:29   say. Bananas continue to be a food in my lineup, and I'm very happy with them because it turns

00:22:36   out there delicious and pretty useful.

00:22:39   - And the funny thing is apparently they used to be

00:22:41   much, much, much more delicious and then like that species

00:22:44   died off and now we're stuck with the--

00:22:45   - Yeah, then we got the Cavendish and yeah,

00:22:47   'cause they're all clones of each other

00:22:48   and the Cavendish might go extinct at some point too, yeah.

00:22:51   It's a whole thing.

00:22:52   Anyway, so yeah, I did wanna quickly give some follow up.

00:22:56   I did it on Twitter in the show notes as well.

00:22:58   So I had mentioned with my like, you know,

00:23:01   hey, it turns out I took some colostrum

00:23:03   and it fixed my banna stomach intolerance thing.

00:23:06   and I had mentioned that I'd heard of that from some quote "celiacs" in my life who had

00:23:10   taken it and it had fixed them. Well, we got a lot of feedback from people who know a lot

00:23:15   more about celiac disease and it turns out that celiac disease, like the actual celiac

00:23:21   disease with that name tested and verified that it is that thing, and apparently you

00:23:25   need like a blood test and a biopsy to even verify that it definitely is that thing, apparently

00:23:29   that cannot be cured. And so that, so basically the people in my life who describe themselves

00:23:34   as celiacs were probably just wheat intolerant in other ways, like there are other, there's

00:23:41   other situations that could be going on in your gut that could make you gluten intolerant

00:23:46   that aren't necessarily celiac disease. So, so if, and also if you have celiac disease,

00:23:51   you actually really should not try this because not only can it not be cured, apparently even

00:23:57   testing it by having a small amount of wheat is, is potentially harmful. So, please don't

00:24:02   do that and yeah sorry for the error and apparently these people who describe

00:24:06   themselves as celiacs they were really just describing gluten intolerances that

00:24:09   maybe they were not confirmed as exactly this particular thing so once again

00:24:15   doctors go talk to them not us talk to them before you buy pills on Amazon

00:24:20   moving right along we had an ask ATP question last week about shared contacts

00:24:25   and a handful of people wrote in to say well the obvious fix for this which

00:24:29   which maybe wasn't so obvious to us anyway,

00:24:32   is to make another iCloud account

00:24:35   that everyone in your family shares,

00:24:37   and the only thing you use that for is contacts.

00:24:39   So there's a six-year-old article by Lena Schor

00:24:42   that describes this approach in pretty significant detail

00:24:44   that we will link in the show notes.

00:24:46   But basically the idea is, let's say it's Erin and me,

00:24:48   so Erin has her iCloud account, I have my iCloud account,

00:24:50   then we both log into a shared iCloud account

00:24:54   whose purpose is simply to get contacts

00:24:57   between the two of us, and that's it.

00:24:59   I mean, we discussed this very solution

00:25:00   maybe it was six years ago.

00:25:01   I think Tavi Ziri was one of the people

00:25:03   who wrote it and to tell us the solution they did.

00:25:05   And it's not great, like for multiple reasons.

00:25:09   Obviously it's weird to do that,

00:25:10   but also if you ever have to deal with like Apple support

00:25:14   or dealing, you know, just like Apple doesn't,

00:25:16   Apple expects Apple IDs to be one person, one Apple ID,

00:25:20   or like, obviously you can have more than one Apple ID

00:25:22   or all of us do, right?

00:25:23   But Apple software and Apple support

00:25:26   and everything about Apple is kind of like,

00:25:28   oh, well, you are the owner of this Apple ID.

00:25:30   And the idea that you have an Apple ID that is shared

00:25:32   amongst people because you're using it as a back door

00:25:35   to share contacts is not going to be something that

00:25:39   is potentially well supported by other software,

00:25:43   or certainly not by Apple itself if you ever

00:25:45   have a problem with it.

00:25:46   And it's just a hassle.

00:25:47   What do you call the third Apple ID?

00:25:49   And eventually, if Apple adds this feature,

00:25:52   you've got to get rid of that Apple ID.

00:25:55   It's weird.

00:25:56   I would never suggest-- this is good for someone

00:25:57   or listens to a tech podcast, if you want to do this,

00:26:00   go for it, but I would never suggest this

00:26:02   to a regular person because it's just so weird.

00:26:04   Like, this is something that people

00:26:06   shouldn't have to deal with.

00:26:07   They shouldn't be like, oh, of course,

00:26:08   if you spend all this money on Apple devices,

00:26:11   you'll be so happy, everything will work great together,

00:26:13   but if you want to have a shared library,

00:26:15   now we're gonna make a fake Apple ID

00:26:17   and we have to give it an email address

00:26:19   and it has to be the contacts sharing for the family thing,

00:26:23   but no, don't send email to it, but it's just for,

00:26:25   I don't want to have to explain that to anybody.

00:26:28   It's just awkward and strange.

00:26:29   But if you want to do it, this is one way.

00:26:31   The other way is you could just use a different system

00:26:33   for your contacts.

00:26:34   People are all on board with Google or whatever.

00:26:35   I think there's some sharing thing for that.

00:26:37   But the real way to fix this is Apple

00:26:40   needs to implement this feature in their contacts database

00:26:44   and application and API.

00:26:45   And maybe we only have a decade or two left,

00:26:48   and they'll get it done.

00:26:50   We are brought to you this week by Linode, my favorite place

00:26:53   to run servers.

00:26:54   Visit linode.com/atp to see for yourself.

00:26:57   Linode is a fantastic web host for running servers.

00:27:02   Lots of things these days need to run servers,

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00:27:11   container or running test servers or build servers

00:27:14   or game servers.

00:27:15   There's so many reasons that nerds like me

00:27:17   like to run servers.

00:27:17   And I've been with a lot of web hosts over the years.

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00:27:54   or high CPU or GPU compute plans.

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00:28:01   Kubernetes support, an upcoming bare metal release,

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00:28:08   And then what will get you there is,

00:28:10   wow, they are very good value.

00:28:13   That's what got me there.

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00:28:41   Once again, linode.com/atp, create a free account

00:28:45   to get $100 in credit.

00:28:46   Thank you so much to Linode for hosting my servers

00:28:49   and sponsoring our show.

00:28:50   (upbeat music)

00:28:53   - All right, we got a fair bit of feedback

00:28:57   that we will probably be reading for the most part

00:28:59   because it was all very interesting.

00:29:01   Last week, I made a somewhat offhanded comment

00:29:04   about how I didn't really hear much complaining or anything

00:29:08   about people who were kind of burned

00:29:10   by the Intel to Apple Silicon transition

00:29:12   and Andrus Kiss wrote in to say,

00:29:15   I was listening to this week's episode

00:29:17   and heard Casey say he hasn't heard of anyone

00:29:18   having issues with x86-64 to ARM transition

00:29:22   and the lack of ability to natively run Windows.

00:29:24   I will say that one group I know,

00:29:26   because I'm one of them,

00:29:27   is mechanical/electrical/aerospace engineers

00:29:29   or engineering students have to run CAD.

00:29:31   I'm always keeping my eyes out for reports

00:29:33   of how well our CAD software of choice,

00:29:34   which happens to be SolidWorks,

00:29:36   works using virtualization of ARM, Windows,

00:29:40   and Parallels desktop.

00:29:41   Unfortunately, thus far,

00:29:42   all the stories have essentially been,

00:29:43   quote, it doesn't work, quote.

00:29:45   If that continues to be the story,

00:29:46   In a few years when I may need to replace my work computer,

00:29:49   I might be facing no other choice

00:29:50   but a switch to PC for work.

00:29:53   If I were an engineering student starting today,

00:29:55   it would be a very tough choice

00:29:56   because while the Mac today can do 90%

00:29:57   of what I needed during my studies,

00:29:59   that last 10% is now impossible where it was once possible.

00:30:03   That really stinks.

00:30:05   I'm not sure this is a market

00:30:06   that Apple cares about, to be honest,

00:30:08   and I would hope that the people writing this software,

00:30:11   like SolidWorks, for example,

00:30:13   if they wanted to be cross-platform,

00:30:16   you know, than they would be,

00:30:17   or if their users want them to become cross-platform,

00:30:20   then you should tell them that, but it still stinks,

00:30:23   and it is an example of somebody really getting burned

00:30:25   by this transition.

00:30:26   Moving right along, we got a couple of pieces of feedback

00:30:28   with regard to accessibility.

00:30:31   Todd Shuresky wrote in with regard to the consequences

00:30:34   of iPadOS limitations.

00:30:36   Todd writes, "I agree iPadOS is lagging the hardware

00:30:38   it's running on.

00:30:40   It's not only affecting advanced users,

00:30:41   it's also affecting the physically disabled community

00:30:43   as well.

00:30:44   For example, because iPadOS doesn't allow

00:30:45   concurrent use of the microphone,

00:30:47   physically disabled users like myself,

00:30:48   who have no movement in their limbs

00:30:50   and operate their iPad solely by voice

00:30:52   using accessibility as voice control,

00:30:54   can't attend Zoom meetings

00:30:55   because after joining the meeting,

00:30:56   voice control no longer functions.

00:30:58   This prevents the user from unmuting the microphone

00:31:00   or even leaving the meeting early if they need to.

00:31:02   This is ridiculous.

00:31:03   A key accessibility component like voice control

00:31:05   should always work,

00:31:06   even if another application is using the microphone.

00:31:08   We don't have this issue on macOS,

00:31:09   we should not have this issue on iPadOS.

00:31:11   I am not 100% this is Casey Nail,

00:31:13   I'm not 100% sure this is a iPad OS issue

00:31:16   and rather a Zoom issue,

00:31:18   but no matter where the fault lies, that's really crummy.

00:31:21   - I mean, I'm assuming that Todd is saying

00:31:23   that using Zoom on the Mac doesn't have this problem.

00:31:25   So it could just be that Zoom is,

00:31:28   their iPad version isn't as good as their Mac version

00:31:30   with regards to this, but it's,

00:31:32   maybe they'll say, well, it's harder to do that on the iPad,

00:31:36   so we did it on the Mac first or whatever,

00:31:38   but yeah, that's definitely a shame.

00:31:39   And it's adding to the impression that like,

00:31:42   there are things I can do on my Mac,

00:31:44   why can't I do them on my iPad

00:31:45   that have literally the same processor, right?

00:31:48   There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to do them.

00:31:50   Then the reason people can attribute it to the OS

00:31:52   or they could attribute it to the app APIs

00:31:55   or just the app developers paying less attention to the iPad

00:31:59   but it's just one more pebble on the pile

00:32:02   for the iPad feeling a bit like handcuffs sometimes.

00:32:05   - Yeah. - A bit.

00:32:07   (laughing)

00:32:08   - Fair.

00:32:09   Then we had some feedback

00:32:10   with regard to AirTags and accessibility.

00:32:11   So before I read this feedback, which is really fascinating, and I really think does a good

00:32:15   job of riding the line between, you know, I want this for me, but I understand it's

00:32:19   not for everyone.

00:32:22   This is one of those scenarios where, where any one of you, the listener can, what about

00:32:26   this whole conversation?

00:32:29   Please just understand.

00:32:30   We're trying to have a conversation here.

00:32:31   I'm not saying that, and Kai Russell, who wrote this feedback, isn't saying that any

00:32:35   of these ideas are the best idea.

00:32:37   They're just presenting an alternative point of view.

00:32:39   So please consider that.

00:32:41   This is all in the spirit of presenting

00:32:42   an alternative point of view.

00:32:43   So Kai writes, Kai Russell writes,

00:32:45   I'd like to highlight my experience

00:32:46   as someone that heavily uses AirTags

00:32:48   as an assistive technology.

00:32:49   I am legally blind.

00:32:51   I am not completely without sight.

00:32:52   Rather, my vision is severely limited.

00:32:54   I tend to lose things a lot.

00:32:55   And when I do, it's very hard for me to find them.

00:32:57   I bought heavily into the tile, et cetera,

00:32:59   category of products as soon as they came out.

00:33:01   They were a big help.

00:33:02   Eventually these products started getting unreliable

00:33:04   for reasons that I understand to be

00:33:05   at least partially Apple's quote unquote fault.

00:33:08   As you can imagine, I was very excited

00:33:09   when AirTags were announced.

00:33:10   AirTags are a game changer for me, just as tile was when it first came out.

00:33:14   The features that are unique to AirTags, like being shown the relative direction and distance

00:33:17   of any of your AirTags, and yes, the Find My Network, make AirTags an even more valuable

00:33:21   piece of assistive technology.

00:33:23   I say this all to make the point that AirTags are not a luxury or convenience item for all

00:33:27   of their users.

00:33:28   Not to sound too much like an Apple marketing video, but AirTags significantly improved my

00:33:31   life.

00:33:32   Unless you have experienced it firsthand, you cannot truly understand the severity of

00:33:36   the feelings of frustration, helplessness, and defeat.

00:33:39   Once one experiences when they cannot function independently, especially within their own

00:33:45   home with no end in sight.

00:33:47   For me, AirTags mitigate that.

00:33:49   I am not attempting to state that my use case negates or otherwise delegitimizes concerns

00:33:54   around personal safety.

00:33:55   Those concerns are certainly valid.

00:33:57   I am certainly not saying that my use case justifies the continued existence of AirTags

00:34:02   in the current form.

00:34:03   That is not for me to decide.

00:34:04   However, in the age of fast-paced internet PR storms, where people fixate on a single

00:34:09   issue at the expense of all others, I feel that it would be remiss of me not to provide

00:34:12   my experience for the other side of the scale."

00:34:15   I'm really impressed with how well-written this was, and I'm really glad that, Kai, you

00:34:20   wrote in to tell us about this, because this was something I did not consider and is utterly

00:34:23   fascinating.

00:34:24   That's just like the general accessibility angle of new tech.

00:34:26   If you have any accessibility needs, any time a new technology comes out, you're going to

00:34:30   look at it and say, "How can this help me?

00:34:32   What can this do?

00:34:33   is now possible that wasn't before, even if it wasn't the intent of the person selling

00:34:38   the product.

00:34:39   Like I'm not sure air tags or like when their meetings are said, this will be great for

00:34:41   low vision people.

00:34:42   Like, but I don't think that was on their list because maybe they just don't even have

00:34:46   that, that, you know, understand where the person is coming from.

00:34:49   Like losing things inside your house, if you're like, ha, I can't find my keys or whatever,

00:34:53   like losing them because you literally can't see them well enough to find them and you

00:34:57   just had it five minutes ago and how frustrating that is.

00:34:59   It's, you know, and so it's like, like any of us with tech, we see new tech products,

00:35:03   product and we say, "Let me think of the ways that this can, you know, how can this

00:35:07   change my life or what could this do in my life that would be different?"

00:35:10   And everybody has a different point of view depending on what their life is and what their

00:35:14   needs are.

00:35:15   And any time there's a product that has some kind of problem like the safety issues

00:35:18   with air tags or has like a nefarious use and that the product designer has to deal

00:35:25   with that nefarious use, you're always going to end up hurting the legitimate users who

00:35:30   are helped by that technology.

00:35:32   It's a difficult balance to strike and you have to be open to the idea that maybe this

00:35:38   product has more downsides than upsides, but you also have to be open to the opposite.

00:35:42   All products have some way they can be misused, but maybe the upsides outweigh the down.

00:35:48   We are sponsored this week by Collide.

00:35:51   Collide is a new take on endpoint management that asks the question, "How can we get

00:35:55   end users more involved?"

00:35:57   This is in contrast to old school device management tools like MDM, which work more like locking

00:36:02   down your employees devices without really considering their needs or even attempting

00:36:06   to educate them about the security of their laptop.

00:36:09   Collide is built by like-minded security practitioners who in the past saw just how much MDM was disrupting

00:36:16   their end users, often frustrating them so much they would throw their hands up and just

00:36:19   switch to using their personal laptops without telling anyone.

00:36:22   And of course, then everyone loses.

00:36:24   Collide on the other hand is different.

00:36:26   Instead of locking down the device, Collide takes a user-focused approach.

00:36:31   They communicate security recommendations

00:36:33   to your employees directly on Slack.

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00:36:54   is in an insecure state.

00:36:55   This can, of course, be simple problems,

00:36:57   like the screen lock not being set correctly,

00:36:59   up to hard to solve and nuanced issues,

00:37:01   like asking people to secure two-factor backup codes that

00:37:04   are just sitting in their downloads folder.

00:37:06   And because it's talking directly to employees,

00:37:08   Collide is educating them about the company's policies

00:37:11   and how to best keep their devices secure

00:37:13   using real, tangible examples, not theoretical scenarios.

00:37:16   So that's Collide, cross-platform endpoint management

00:37:20   for Linux, Mac, and Windows devices that puts end users

00:37:23   first for teams that slack.

00:37:25   So get endpoint management that puts the user first.

00:37:29   Visit collide.com/ATP to learn more

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00:37:36   Enter your email when prompted

00:37:37   to receive your free Collide gift bundle

00:37:39   after trial activation with no credit card required.

00:37:42   Once again, that's Collide, K-O-L-I-D-E,

00:37:44   collide.com/ATP today.

00:37:47   Thank you so much to Collide for sponsoring our show.

00:37:50   (upbeat music)

00:37:53   - We have something to discuss,

00:37:55   two somethings to discuss.

00:37:56   We have an Apple event that's coming up,

00:37:58   but we have a different event that's happening beforehand.

00:38:02   As you are listening to this,

00:38:03   I have a new app in the App Store, which is exciting.

00:38:07   That doesn't happen all that terribly often,

00:38:09   but starting at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning,

00:38:12   as we record this, so 10 o'clock Thursday morning,

00:38:15   Masquerade, my new iOS app, will be available.

00:38:19   And so, what's going on here?

00:38:22   So, as my kids got older, I felt less and less comfortable,

00:38:27   and this is just for me.

00:38:28   saying anyone else feels the same way. This is just for me. But I felt less and less comfortable

00:38:32   with splashing my kids' faces across the internet. And I do from time to time. It does happen

00:38:37   from time to time. But generally speaking, I try to avoid it. And what I've decided to

00:38:42   do and I decided to do a few years ago is, generally speaking, I will put an emoji on

00:38:47   top of like Declan or Michaela's head in a picture. So you can see their body, but you

00:38:51   can't see their face. And this is just my point of view. I'm not trying to say it's

00:38:55   right or wrong, but that's what I like to do. And I was doing this not often, but often

00:39:00   enough that I was like, "Man, this is kind of a pain in the ass, and there's got to be

00:39:03   a better way for this." And it occurred to me, kind of, I just had an epiphany all of

00:39:09   a sudden, that, "Wait, there's a way to do this. Apple has an API for this." And I don't

00:39:18   remember exactly when it was, but a few years ago Apple came out with VisionKit, and one

00:39:22   of the APIs, which I don't have the actual name in front of me, but one of the APIs is

00:39:25   basically give me a rectangle or a series of rectangles in an image for all the faces

00:39:30   in that image. And so I realized, well, holy crap, I can use that API to figure out where

00:39:38   faces are in an image because goodness knows I know almost nothing about machine learning

00:39:42   and me trying to like work this out would not end well. So I could use the Apple API

00:39:47   to do that and then I can just like, you know, like slap an emoji on top of, you know, put

00:39:51   emoji where the rectangles are easy peasy and that was in September and it's

00:39:55   now March and the app is out so six months later here we are but the idea

00:40:01   behind masquerade is to make all of this easier so the idea is when you load an

00:40:06   image into masquerade just by the way is a pun if you will it's maskereid

00:40:11   maskereid and that's because you're if you're being aided in masking your kids

00:40:17   or what have you. What was the original name? The original name, which was a Casey special and truly an utterly terrible,

00:40:24   which I'm going to regret saying out loud because now it'll be the feet from fast text

00:40:27   I'm never gonna hear the end of it

00:40:28   but the original name was face splash which the thought was and just hear me out for a second the thought was I had like

00:40:34   the the image of Splatoon in my head right where you know

00:40:37   There's those little like splats of of paint and you're sort of even though I was using emoji

00:40:41   It's sort of kind of in that spirit, right?

00:40:43   and you can just like splat or splash, you know, an emoji on somebody's face.

00:40:47   It was later that it was brought to my attention, I think by one of you actually potentially, it was brought to my attention that there are

00:40:54   other connotations that one could use for that, and especially when this is an app designed to hide children's faces.

00:41:02   Wait, that's where people went with that?

00:41:04   Eventually, I didn't go there at first. I mean people just thought it was a dumb name.

00:41:08   It wasn't me either. I'm trying to blame either one of us for this.

00:41:11   - Well, my apologies, I don't remember who it was,

00:41:12   but I didn't go there.

00:41:14   - I would not have thought of that.

00:41:15   - I mean, I will say that Face Splash didn't make sense

00:41:18   to me with the purpose of the app, but go on.

00:41:21   - Well, and that's totally fair.

00:41:22   I mean, again, the name was terrible.

00:41:23   And I think you can see it peak out in like the,

00:41:27   some way, it might be the apps reverse domain thingamabob,

00:41:32   I'm drawing a blank on the name of that.

00:41:33   - The bundle ID.

00:41:34   - There, thank you.

00:41:36   But anyways, yeah, so Face Splash was a terrible name.

00:41:38   And my friend, Steve, who came up with the icon,

00:41:40   did the icons for all my apps so far. He came up with Masquerade and I freaking

00:41:43   love that name. So anyway, so the idea of Masquerade on the surface anyway is to

00:41:49   load an image. It'll put emoji on all of the faces it can detect or that really

00:41:54   Apple's code can detect in that image and then you can share it like Instagram

00:41:58   or what have you. But after a while it occurred to me and I think it was Mike

00:42:02   who said this first that wait a second this isn't really limited just to hiding

00:42:08   faces. I mean, that's what I wrote it for, but it's more than that. And what you can

00:42:12   really use it for is just annotating an image with an emoji. And suddenly that makes it

00:42:18   a much more useful tool for really anyone, whereas previously I was writing it basically

00:42:22   for the perspective of parents. And you can do all sorts of silly and ridiculous things,

00:42:28   and I think that that could be a very fun use of this very app. And in fact, I've recorded

00:42:33   an episode of analog that won't be out until Sunday where we discussed where we discussed

00:42:37   masquerade and watching the relay FM members discord going nuts trying to you know put

00:42:44   in ridiculous emoji annotations on things or stickers so to speak on things it was quite

00:42:49   funny so yeah but did the relay discord come up with facey lists as an alternate name like

00:42:56   the ATP chat room just did or faceless yeah faceless yeah faceless by corrupt pixel in

00:43:02   in the chat room, that's my winner for most,

00:43:06   best list pun name for this app.

00:43:08   And obviously--

00:43:09   - No, I'm going with Waft who said faceless.

00:43:12   Oh, actually no, ThomasB19 said it first.

00:43:15   - No, facey list, come on.

00:43:18   Anyway, these names you would never use,

00:43:20   for the chat room I know they're just coming up with names

00:43:22   or whatever, you never use these

00:43:23   because the people who buy this app

00:43:24   don't know who Casey List is.

00:43:26   - Exactly. - Yeah.

00:43:26   - And that's actually one of the interesting things.

00:43:28   So I don't know where you guys wanna go with this.

00:43:30   We can talk about the development,

00:43:32   can talk about some interesting pieces behind it. But one of the--one of the very weird

00:43:35   things for me has been marketing this because I feel like I'm going to get some pretty good

00:43:41   coverage tomorrow within our little world. And I don't know if that's because I'm me

00:43:44   and I--that sounds so gross to say that. But obviously, you know, in our little world,

00:43:48   people tend to know who I am. But I don't know if it's because it's me. I don't know

00:43:53   if it's because the app is genuinely good or maybe it's a train wreck and I just don't

00:43:56   realize it. But what's really difficult about the app is I feel like this is a more

00:44:01   broadly appealing app, not unlike WidgetSmith, for example, no, I'm not saying to that level,

00:44:07   but like in a similar spirit of WidgetSmith where it's more than just, you know, my little

00:44:13   audience. Again, I feel kind of gross saying that, but you know what I mean. And what I've

00:44:17   been trying to struggle with, or what I've been struggling with and trying to do is figure

00:44:20   out how can I get this in front of like parent bloggers, for example. So like the Scary Mommies

00:44:26   of the World, which if you're not familiar, is a really, really clever like Twitter account

00:44:30   and blog where they kind of make fun of,

00:44:32   but also give funny tongue-in-cheek parenting advice.

00:44:35   And I've emailed their press catch-all link,

00:44:38   or email address, which I'm sure nothing will come of that,

00:44:41   but I'm not a marketer.

00:44:42   I don't know what else to do.

00:44:43   - You can buy an ad on their podcast.

00:44:44   - Yeah, well, that's a fair point.

00:44:45   And actually, the next question is,

00:44:47   how much money do I wanna throw at paid marketing for this?

00:44:50   And I've put it in front of a local mom

00:44:54   who's really awesome at sharing things

00:44:58   that you can do locally here in Richmond. I haven't heard anything from her one way or the other.

00:45:02   I've sent it to a couple of, I guess they're internet acquaintances at best, but there's a couple

00:45:09   who did a lot of home renovations here in Richmond.

00:45:13   They go by Young House Love and actually Erin knew the husband in the couple back in college.

00:45:18   And I put it in front of them and you know said, "Hey, you know,

00:45:21   I know you do something vaguely similar when you post pictures of your

00:45:23   children, so I thought this might be useful to you."

00:45:26   But I don't know if I don't know what to make of this app in a happy sense because I feel like if the stars align

00:45:32   Just right like they absolutely did with widgets myth. I think I could get some decent traction now

00:45:38   Which is with Jackson, but decent traction out of this

00:45:40   But if they don't align just perfectly then it's gonna be like any other app like peak of you

00:45:46   You know made it made okay money all told but it it makes gas money at best now

00:45:52   Which is you know, that's the way of the world this way the App Store

00:45:55   But I check gas prices lately because I might not be sure anymore. That's true. Actually, it's it's under four dollars here

00:46:00   And we're an all premium family, but it's under four dollars still but not by a whole heck of a lot

00:46:04   I know in California. It's like five plus which is just bananas

00:46:07   But anyways, I I don't I don't know

00:46:11   I don't know where this is gonna go and I don't know what I'm both the episode in the app

00:46:15   But I'm pretty proud of it. I feel like the app is pretty good and it's again

00:46:20   it's a KC app in that it does one thing and does it at least reasonably alright,

00:46:23   hopefully pretty well. But-- And there's a lot of apologetic text? Yeah, and a lot of

00:46:27   apologetic text, right? But no, it's a very KC app, but I'm pretty proud of it.

00:46:31   I think it looks better than any other app I've written so far, which is a low

00:46:35   bar if I'm honest, but it looks really good, all told, and I'm pretty proud of it. I

00:46:40   think it works pretty well. So we can take this wherever you want, gentlemen,

00:46:43   and we can just move on, or we can talk about how it was developed, or we can tear

00:46:47   tear it apart and tell me everything I've done wrong. Pick your poison.

00:46:50   First of all, on the tearing apart front, I would like to apologize as your friend for

00:46:54   giving almost no feedback and doing almost no testing during this process.

00:46:58   It's fine.

00:46:59   Because that's the tradition, is we wait until on the podcast and then we give our

00:47:02   suggestions because it's much easier just to give it in person than to try to file a

00:47:07   Casey radar or something.

00:47:08   Title.

00:47:09   There you go. No, but I mean, there are obviously, I mean I would have tons of suggestions on

00:47:15   if you actually want them, but it's kind of late now.

00:47:18   I could go through every screen and be like,

00:47:19   all right, I would change this, this, and this.

00:47:21   I would make this work this way.

00:47:22   I would change this wording to this wording.

00:47:25   - That's true.

00:47:25   You didn't do your patented cut every,

00:47:29   two out of every three words of the entire app.

00:47:32   'Cause you did a really good job of that with,

00:47:33   I think it was, he was in the app,

00:47:35   but I thought it was Peak of View,

00:47:36   where you found ways that, Captain Verbose over here,

00:47:39   just I could not fathom how to cut text out of the app.

00:47:42   and you have a genuine talent for figuring out

00:47:45   how to use two words when it comes to app development anyway,

00:47:48   how to use two words when I would normally turn to 10.

00:47:52   So yeah, maybe you and I can do a pass on that another time.

00:47:56   - But anyway, I also just want to apologize

00:47:58   for not having done that because I have been so underwater

00:48:03   with my own stuff that I would get the TestFlight email

00:48:06   every time you did a new build, I'd be like,

00:48:07   "Oh yeah, I gotta check that out, I gotta check that out."

00:48:09   And then I would instantly move on

00:48:12   to other stuff.

00:48:13   And so I'm sorry, I've been a bad developer

00:48:15   friend for this app.

00:48:17   But yeah, so overall, I think you've done a pretty good job.

00:48:21   I think marketing-wise, the challenge you're going to have

00:48:26   is that this is an app that even though you did broaden it

00:48:30   to be more about just put emoji over any photo,

00:48:34   this is an app that has a narrow appeal in the sense

00:48:37   that it's very specialized for the people who

00:48:41   want to perform these tasks, you did a good job.

00:48:45   But how you find those people, that's,

00:48:49   as you mentioned, that's tricky,

00:48:50   'cause it's not gonna be that broad of an audience.

00:48:54   It's not gonna be something that,

00:48:57   you know, when you see it on your phone,

00:48:58   you show all your friends, "Hey, look at what I can do."

00:49:00   It's not gonna be that broad.

00:49:03   You know, it's gonna have to be much more specialized.

00:49:06   And I think, to some degree,

00:49:08   you're gonna have social benefits here.

00:49:11   in the sense that many people might not want to show

00:49:14   their kids' faces in photos, but might not have thought

00:49:18   to put emoji on top of them.

00:49:20   And so maybe, this is the kind of thing where like,

00:49:23   you see someone else's photo that has an emoji

00:49:26   on their kid's face, and you're like,

00:49:28   "Hey, how'd you make that?

00:49:29   "Is there like, you got a quick app to do that?"

00:49:32   And the other, I guess, competition you have

00:49:37   is using no apps to do this, and either just

00:49:41   not caring about posting photos of your kid,

00:49:43   which is gonna be a lot of people,

00:49:44   or people who use the built-in image editor on Instagram

00:49:48   to automatically, or to just type an emoji as text

00:49:52   and stick that over whatever they wanna block out.

00:49:55   So that's your main competition,

00:49:57   and that's gonna be your main marketing challenge.

00:49:58   It's like you did a good job with the task that you solved,

00:50:03   but you have to find people who want that task solved

00:50:06   and/or find people who might have a need

00:50:10   but might not have thought to look for this particular

00:50:13   solution to that need.

00:50:15   That is a challenge and unfortunately I don't have

00:50:18   a lot of advice on how exactly you find these people

00:50:21   other than just hope for some social recognition

00:50:24   and word of mouth there.

00:50:26   And I don't know, you mentioned like buying ads.

00:50:28   I wonder how, I wonder if search ads would actually

00:50:31   be useful for this.

00:50:33   I think one of the challenges you'd have is like

00:50:36   what are people searching for that might be relevant

00:50:39   search terms to this.

00:50:41   - Yeah, see, I don't know.

00:50:42   There's so much I don't know. - Like photo redaction?

00:50:44   I don't, do people use these words?

00:50:46   Like probably not, like hide faces in photos,

00:50:48   you know, that kind of stuff.

00:50:50   - When you hear people talking about software of like,

00:50:51   you know, I wanna make an app, what should I do?

00:50:53   And we do it ourselves, talk about like,

00:50:56   oh, make an app to scratch your own itch.

00:50:57   This is the other side of making an app

00:50:59   to scratch your own itch that people don't talk about

00:51:01   as much, which is if you make an app to scratch

00:51:03   your own itch, what if no one else really has an itch?

00:51:07   Right? (laughing)

00:51:08   The reason we say to do it is you'll be enthusiastic about it, you're a subject matter expert,

00:51:12   because Casey's doing this manually all the time, so he has the need for it or whatever.

00:51:17   It's a great idea, it has lots of upsides.

00:51:19   The downsides are, not that you're going to be the only one, because you're going to introduce

00:51:24   people to the concept of it, and if you start seeing these around, maybe you'll catch on,

00:51:27   but if it really is just you're rich and there's just dozens of you, that's the downside.

00:51:33   And sometimes the downside doesn't matter, because maybe I'm just doing this because

00:51:36   I wanted to learn how to program, so I made an app to scratch my own itch or whatever.

00:51:40   But if you're trying to do it as a commercial venture, you might have to make whatever underscore

00:51:45   thing 63 apps that, well, his apps don't all scratch his own itches.

00:51:48   He's scratching everybody.

00:51:49   He's looking for any itch that he can possibly scratch.

00:51:51   But...

00:51:52   I think at this point he's scratching far more people than we can ever hope to.

00:51:55   Yeah, yeah.

00:51:56   But the one that did it, though, like what about the 62 other ones?

00:52:01   Like they weren't...

00:52:02   Were those garbage?

00:52:03   No.

00:52:04   You never know what's going to actually have mass appeal versus what's not going to.

00:52:09   So this is kind of like a single-server app does one job, does it well.

00:52:12   The question is, does anyone else want to do this job or is it just Casey?

00:52:16   Yeah, and I don't have a good read on that.

00:52:18   Oh my god, there's so much text in this app.

00:52:21   I like the text.

00:52:22   See, Mark, you want to make it an app like how you would make it, but I look at this

00:52:26   app and I see Casey, for better or for worse, right?

00:52:30   I do, yeah.

00:52:31   there's so many, there's so many caseisms in this app,

00:52:33   and I mean this in the warmest way possible.

00:52:35   Like, it's almost apologetic about its own existence.

00:52:40   - It's very helpful, it's very helpful,

00:52:42   it tells you how to do stuff.

00:52:43   - Big Casey energy there.

00:52:44   - It's very apologetic that like, you know,

00:52:47   hey, sometime you might have to pay me money for something.

00:52:50   - The request or refund thing in settings

00:52:52   is the caseiest part of this app.

00:52:54   (laughing)

00:52:56   - Yeah, you gotta be. - I love it.

00:52:57   - You gotta be kidding me with this.

00:52:59   - But then he does advertise his other app,

00:53:00   so it balances out.

00:53:02   - Yes, I've also, I've never seen an app

00:53:04   use its own name so much in its text.

00:53:08   - And do it with different capitalizations each time.

00:53:10   (laughing)

00:53:12   - Almost every label includes the word masquerade somewhere.

00:53:16   - Why does the watermark not have a capital M?

00:53:18   I don't understand that.

00:53:19   - I don't know, I just like the look of it all lowercase.

00:53:21   - Why is it in mono space?

00:53:23   - It's like Mac OS, TV OS, iOS.

00:53:26   - I don't know.

00:53:27   For the watermark, I just like the look of it all lowercase.

00:53:31   I felt like it was less, you know, it's, here again,

00:53:33   it's Huge Casey Energy, right?

00:53:34   It was less shouty about what it was, you know?

00:53:37   - Huge Casey Energy being completely inexplicable

00:53:39   and indefensible, but nevertheless, it's your app,

00:53:41   so you get to do what you want.

00:53:43   - Aw, sorry, Dad.

00:53:45   - No, I mean, like, there are, yeah,

00:53:47   there are definitely things about this that I would say,

00:53:49   like, hey, tweet this, tweet this, tweet this,

00:53:51   but ultimately, I am a little bit concerned

00:53:55   that this took you, like, six months.

00:53:57   Well, that's fair, that's absolutely fair.

00:54:00   Now, consider the holidays were in the midst of that.

00:54:01   But--

00:54:02   - I mean, the functionality worked in the first beta

00:54:04   when it was called Face Splash.

00:54:05   It's like, done, ship it, but you can't ship it

00:54:07   because he wasn't happy with the UI.

00:54:08   And he did a lot of iteration on the two or three screens

00:54:11   that are here, which I can relate to,

00:54:13   but it's not like it took him six months

00:54:14   to implement the app.

00:54:15   It took him six months to make 75 passes over the UI.

00:54:19   - Right, which, and admittedly, that does take a ton of time

00:54:22   and I know from experience.

00:54:24   But this is going to be a pretty specialized app.

00:54:28   If you're looking at it as a business venture,

00:54:31   as John was saying, the difference between

00:54:33   writing it for lots of other reasons

00:54:34   versus writing it to make money,

00:54:36   I think you're gonna have a hard time

00:54:37   making six months worth of app income from this app

00:54:39   because it's too narrow of an appeal.

00:54:42   And so that's certainly worth,

00:54:45   if you wanna have that discussion of prioritizing

00:54:49   different developing needs and having something

00:54:52   that doesn't justify a super long amount of time,

00:54:55   then how do you kind of rein yourself in

00:54:57   and set limits and everything,

00:54:58   'cause that's a very hard problem

00:55:00   that most people, myself included, are not very good at.

00:55:03   But it is, again, it does actually serve the job very well.

00:55:07   - And it's a lot better than it was.

00:55:09   It's a vast improvement over the original beta.

00:55:12   Every pass did actually improve this,

00:55:13   and it depends on what you wanna use the app for, right?

00:55:16   So if this was an app to like,

00:55:17   I'm going to hone my app development skills

00:55:19   by learning how to really polish a UI

00:55:21   to get it to the point that it's way better

00:55:23   than where it started, success, you did that, right?

00:55:25   But if it was gonna try to be a business venture for you,

00:55:30   your hourly rate for making this app

00:55:32   is not gonna look good.

00:55:33   - Yes, but I don't know.

00:55:37   I take a little bit of issue with what you guys are saying

00:55:41   for a couple of very unique to Casey reasons.

00:55:43   First of all, to be completely frank,

00:55:46   like if this doesn't make money, that would be unfortunate,

00:55:49   but it's okay because this is not the way

00:55:53   in which I make money for the family, you know what I mean?

00:55:55   So I have-- - Yeah, that's what I was

00:55:56   saying, like maybe the purpose of the app was,

00:55:58   'cause I feel like you've improved your app development

00:56:01   skills during the course of making this

00:56:02   and you learn new APIs and stuff

00:56:04   that you hadn't used before, right?

00:56:05   - Yeah, and I think in that sense,

00:56:08   in keeping that set of my skills sharp

00:56:10   and not having them completely atrophy,

00:56:12   I think is also very, very important

00:56:15   because if suddenly Spotify gets its way

00:56:18   and podcasting's ruined forever.

00:56:19   Like I need to have a backup plan.

00:56:21   And the best backup plan that I can think of right now anyway

00:56:26   is to-- - Please say Bitcoin.

00:56:27   Please say Bitcoin.

00:56:28   - No, God, no.

00:56:29   Goodness, no. (laughing)

00:56:30   The best backup plan that I can think of right now

00:56:32   is to be like a Marco or an underscore

00:56:35   where I have one or more independently written apps

00:56:39   that can sustain the family.

00:56:41   And that's the best possible backup.

00:56:44   But the second best possible backup

00:56:46   is being able to say to a potential employer,

00:56:49   "Yes, I would like this job as an iOS developer, please.

00:56:51   Here's my work."

00:56:52   And you can see in the app store right now.

00:56:54   And I was writing this not two, three, four, five,

00:56:57   seven years ago.

00:56:57   I was writing this two, three, four, five, seven months ago.

00:57:01   This is all still current.

00:57:02   My muscles have not atrophied.

00:57:03   But also, I think, although I certainly was pretty focused

00:57:09   on one particular use case for the app,

00:57:12   I really do think if there was ever a time

00:57:15   that any person would desire to put an emoji in an image

00:57:20   and then share that image with someone.

00:57:23   You know, this app does that very well.

00:57:25   Now, granted, it starts from the perspective of hiding faces.

00:57:27   And I think I might actually, in a future version,

00:57:29   like flip that, or have a setting to flip that off.

00:57:32   So it won't automatically detect faces.

00:57:34   And it'll just let you add emoji as you see fit.

00:57:37   But I feel like this could be broadly appealing.

00:57:40   I mean, how funny would it be to take a picture

00:57:43   of somebody's profile and put the little,

00:57:45   I forget the actual term for the emoji,

00:57:46   but basically the little fart emoji behind them, you know?

00:57:49   Like you can use it for silly things like that.

00:57:51   If you're at a protest,

00:57:52   and this is what I was alluding to earlier.

00:57:53   - Oh my God, do they have butt detection?

00:57:55   - No, but that would be very cool.

00:57:57   But they do have body detection, I think.

00:57:59   - You can train a model to get butt detection.

00:58:01   It's a good WWDC session.

00:58:02   You just need a corpus of butt images,

00:58:04   which I'm sure you can find on the internet,

00:58:06   and then you just train that model

00:58:07   and you embed it in your app.

00:58:08   - And then you could make like, you know,

00:58:10   Fart Array that would just automatically

00:58:11   put the little fart thing on people's butts.

00:58:14   They did hot dog detection, but you know, butts.

00:58:16   It's all in the same area.

00:58:18   - Oh my gosh.

00:58:18   Anyway, focus gentlemen.

00:58:20   So, but another use case,

00:58:21   and this is what I was alluding to really

00:58:22   in the beginning of the show is, you know,

00:58:24   what if you take a picture of a protest

00:58:26   and you want to not let, you know,

00:58:29   to obscure all these faces?

00:58:30   You know, that does involve face detection,

00:58:32   but this would be a really great and easy way to do that.

00:58:34   And maybe that's a dumb idea, but I don't know.

00:58:37   I'm just trying to think of, you know,

00:58:39   ways in which this could be useful

00:58:41   beyond just hiding pictures of your kids.

00:58:43   And I feel like it's possible that it could be.

00:58:46   But the problem is, you know, how do I convince people

00:58:48   that this is a problem that they need solving?

00:58:49   And I think you said that earlier, Marco,

00:58:51   and how do I convince them that my app is the way to do it?

00:58:54   So I don't know.

00:58:55   But I think, and part of the reason that it took six months,

00:58:58   other than me just iterating,

00:59:00   is that even for a admittedly fairly simple app like this,

00:59:04   there is a lot, a lot, that goes around it

00:59:09   in modern app development.

00:59:10   There's the whole in-app purchase flow,

00:59:12   which Apple just released a new UI,

00:59:15   I almost said new UI, a new API for that.

00:59:18   There's everything in settings,

00:59:19   there's how do you manage things in settings.

00:59:21   If you're doing any sort of analytics,

00:59:23   just usage tracking,

00:59:24   you have to think about a way to do that.

00:59:26   One of the very interesting things that I tried to solve for

00:59:29   and I like to think I've successfully solved for,

00:59:31   we'll see in a week or two,

00:59:33   is what happens when there's a new batch of emoji

00:59:36   that comes out?

00:59:37   How do I handle that?

00:59:37   Do I need to release a new binary?

00:59:39   And sitting here today,

00:59:42   I think, and I've tested as best I can,

00:59:44   I think I do not have to release new binary.

00:59:47   And what I'm actually doing is using a tip from Gee Rambo,

00:59:50   where you can make a shared iCloud database

00:59:53   that everyone in the app,

00:59:54   everyone that has the app is using a shared database

00:59:57   that only has literally like one or two rows in it.

01:00:00   And that's where it will check for new emoji and see,

01:00:03   okay, do I have a new batch that I should suck in?

01:00:05   And then obviously whenever I update the binary,

01:00:07   then it will update the list of emoji that's caked into it.

01:00:11   But that was a whole rigamarole.

01:00:13   And so there's all these little things that, yes,

01:00:15   like John's right, in the span,

01:00:17   it took me from late September to late February, really,

01:00:20   to get this shipped.

01:00:22   And it wasn't in the first 24 to 48 hours

01:00:26   that I had a working version

01:00:28   that showed rectangles on faces.

01:00:30   But there's so much more than just that.

01:00:33   Like even something as silly as the drawer,

01:00:35   so when you tap on an emoji,

01:00:38   there's like a little single row of face emoji

01:00:41   that you can use to swap what emoji you would like

01:00:45   in the image, but then you can drag that up,

01:00:48   kind of like in Maps, you can drag that up

01:00:50   and then you get like this multi row,

01:00:52   something vaguely more vaguely similar to the stock picker.

01:00:57   And that drawer took me a couple of days to write.

01:01:00   Now, part of that is because I'm not great at SwiftUI,

01:01:02   this was new to me, but part of that is because

01:01:04   there's no out of the box drawer for SwiftUI.

01:01:07   And so it continues to surprise me, even if someone who thinks he does this for a living,

01:01:14   how much just administrvia and other stuff is necessary, even for a fairly simple iOS

01:01:21   app, much less something that's as involved as Overcast, for example.

01:01:25   So yeah, I agree with you, it probably shouldn't have taken me six months.

01:01:28   And part of that is because I'm slow, and part of that is because I'm not working eight

01:01:32   hours a day every single day.

01:01:34   But nevertheless, there is more to even the most simple app you can imagine than meets

01:01:41   the eye.

01:01:42   And I don't need to tell you that Marco, but you know, for people listening, even a simple

01:01:46   app, you'd be surprised how much work has to go into that.

01:01:48   No, that, believe me, that I definitely understand.

01:01:53   By the way, I'm going to send you a quick little Swift function here that dumps all

01:01:57   emoji from the Apple core emoji color emoji font in the system.

01:02:01   I had to write this for, here, I'll paste it in our Slack.

01:02:04   I don't know if it's shareable to everyone else,

01:02:07   but here, that's how to dump every emoji symbol and name.

01:02:11   Anyway, so, (laughs)

01:02:14   this is part of my crazy exploration

01:02:16   for things that take way too long that it shouldn't.

01:02:19   - Well, and actually, you bring up a great example,

01:02:21   like, how do I get access to all the emoji?

01:02:24   'Cause I can't just throw out, hmm,

01:02:26   it's not easy to just throw up the stock system emoji,

01:02:31   emoji picker because basically you need a place where you're entering text to do that.

01:02:34   And that's not really what I wanted for this app.

01:02:36   So then I've got to figure out, okay, how do I get all of the emoji?

01:02:39   And I have a mechanism for doing that and I'll check out, absolutely check out what

01:02:42   you just sent.

01:02:43   Thank you.

01:02:44   But I have a mechanism for doing that.

01:02:45   And then, okay, well, what do you, you know, so I got to figure out what are all the emoji

01:02:49   and then I got to figure out, well, some of them are represented in odd ways on Apple.

01:02:53   Like if you look at the actual Unicode list of emoji, which is what I was working from,

01:02:56   a lot of them are represented in kind of odd ways on Apple platforms, at least right now.

01:03:01   and you've got to like cull that list, and how do you present that list? And if there

01:03:05   was a simple API where Apple said, "Okay, we'll throw up, you know, a, like basically

01:03:10   a keyboard, we'll throw up an emoji picker for you," like that would have saved quite

01:03:13   a lot of time, but that doesn't exist, so now I've got to reinvent the wheel. And it's

01:03:18   silly stuff like that. As you're working on an entire app, it adds up. It adds up surprisingly

01:03:24   quickly.

01:03:25   Oh, believe me, I know. I mean, so I'll tell you, you know, I haven't, I don't think I've

01:03:29   I've shared much of this publicly yet, but it's in beta, so anyone in the beta can see.

01:03:33   So one of the features of the Overcast update that's currently in beta is that I allow you

01:03:39   to choose icons for playlists to show on the list screen. This is why I wrote this emoji

01:03:46   dumper, because first of all, I'm like, well, what if I want people to be able to choose

01:03:48   emoji to be the icon? How do I get a list of all emojis so that they could search for

01:03:54   them by keywords? So I'm like, how do I get all these Unicode descriptions of, like, you

01:03:57   know, person with hair, like, you know, how do I, how is there a list of those? How can

01:04:01   I get an API with that? And I had the same concern. What if they add to emoji, if there's

01:04:06   some way I can dump this from the system dynamically, rather than like hard coding a list somewhere,

01:04:10   or having a list on my server that to keep updated, like that's obviously better. So

01:04:14   I went through all that. And then I realized, actually, what would look better is SF symbols.

01:04:20   And for those of you who don't know, this is like Apple's standard icon set. They launched

01:04:25   a few years ago and they've been adding to it every year

01:04:27   and there's a huge library of I think about 3,800

01:04:31   of them right now of like basically stock icons

01:04:35   that there's a lot of good reasons to use them

01:04:37   and there's actually a whole Under the Radar episode

01:04:39   that we talked about, we'll link to that in the show notes.

01:04:41   Anyway, I decided let me see if I can make

01:04:44   an SF Symbol picker in the app.

01:04:46   Now, there is an app called SF Symbols that Apple makes,

01:04:52   But there's no API to do what SF Symbols does for like,

01:04:55   'cause it's not made for users to choose their own icons,

01:04:58   it's made for developers to choose icons

01:05:00   and then hard code the values that we're using.

01:05:02   So there is no index on iOS

01:05:06   that is like a list of all SF Symbols.

01:05:08   So I had to build that.

01:05:09   And that took a stupidly long time.

01:05:13   I probably spent two weeks on that.

01:05:16   Like just the index of SF Symbols.

01:05:18   Because not only do I wanna be able to know

01:05:21   that I can list them all and actually know that I have them all. But also I want to have

01:05:26   like, well, how do you search for them? You have to type in keywords. Well, where do those

01:05:30   keywords come from? How do you know what keywords associate with which symbols? And then do

01:05:34   you do things like synonyms or dictionary lookups to like, you know, if there's a symbol

01:05:38   called computer, do you also want to match PC and Mac? And like, how do you get these

01:05:44   these lists, and how do you, like, and I even,

01:05:47   I looked up dictionary, like, there's a dictionary API

01:05:50   on Mac OS, but not on iOS, and so I was like,

01:05:53   okay, what if I build the index statically

01:05:56   and build it into the binary, and use,

01:05:57   so I'll use the Mac API, dump the dictionary,

01:06:00   and then I did that, I tried, I actually built that,

01:06:02   realized the dictionary was cluttering it up

01:06:05   with way too many words that were not relevant

01:06:07   as part of the definitions and everything.

01:06:08   I tried thesaurus, that didn't work very well either,

01:06:11   like, I built all of that, I tried using different

01:06:14   linguistic stemmers to build the search index.

01:06:16   Then I'm like, well, you know how much I'm a stickler

01:06:19   for file size in my app.

01:06:21   So I'm like, I'm not gonna embed this like 400 kilobyte

01:06:25   index, how do I make this smaller?

01:06:28   And I started playing with schemes like that.

01:06:30   I think I--

01:06:31   - This is why you need someone helping you develop art.

01:06:33   'Cause when you say, I'm not gonna embed 400 kilobytes,

01:06:37   what decade is this?

01:06:38   Just standing, it's fine.

01:06:40   - No, and I think I ended up getting it down to like 30K.

01:06:43   - 30K? - Write your own

01:06:44   compression algorithm?

01:06:45   (laughing)

01:06:46   - That would be, speaking of huge casing energy,

01:06:48   that's huge Marco energy.

01:06:49   - I could just use zip, but I don't want.

01:06:52   (laughing)

01:06:53   That's so true.

01:06:54   - It didn't quite get that bad,

01:06:55   but certainly it's pretty,

01:06:59   like I spent, again, I spent two weeks on this.

01:07:01   Like just making a searchable index of SF symbols.

01:07:05   And then I spent another two weeks trying to get SwiftUI

01:07:08   to render them in a useful way on the screen

01:07:10   that wasn't loading all 3,000 at once.

01:07:13   - There's that too, but this is such a great example

01:07:15   of some little thing that doesn't seem that complicated.

01:07:19   Like there's a list of something that exists

01:07:21   somewhere on your iPhone, 'cause all these--

01:07:23   - 44K, that's what the final size, 44K, sorry.

01:07:26   - Oh my gosh. - Go on.

01:07:26   - So there's a list of all these SF symbols

01:07:29   that exist somewhere, but you didn't have access to it.

01:07:32   And what's also interesting with SF symbols

01:07:33   is certain symbols are, there's like a,

01:07:37   I don't know, what's the less gross way

01:07:39   of saying gentleman's agreement,

01:07:40   but there's like a person's agreement

01:07:43   that you can't use like the iMessage looking symbol

01:07:46   for anything except the iMessage related stuff.

01:07:50   So even though it's like just a speech bubble,

01:07:51   you're not allowed to use that for anything

01:07:53   except iMessage specific related things.

01:07:56   And so then you've got--

01:07:56   - Not allowed as an app review will reject you

01:07:58   if you try to?

01:07:59   - Correct.

01:08:00   Yeah, seriously, I'm really serious.

01:08:01   - I remember seeing stories about this

01:08:03   and it just didn't make any sense to me.

01:08:05   Remember when Apple used to reject you

01:08:07   if you put like a rounded rectangle

01:08:08   that had the same dimensions as an iPhone

01:08:10   - In your app, I sure do. - I sure do.

01:08:12   - It looks like a phone.

01:08:13   Like it looks too much like an iPhone.

01:08:14   Well, what do you mean?

01:08:15   Well, the proportions are exactly that

01:08:18   of one particular iPhone we made.

01:08:19   Or like, well, is it dot--

01:08:20   - I'm pretty sure I actually got that on Instapaper,

01:08:23   'cause I tried-- - I know it.

01:08:24   - My tilt scrolling icon, I tried using like a phone.

01:08:27   I'm pretty sure I got rejected for that.

01:08:28   - So yeah, but the point I'm driving at is,

01:08:30   you know, this data seems to exist somewhere,

01:08:33   and you should-- - It sure does.

01:08:34   - In a perfect world.

01:08:35   You should, in a perfect world, be able to just say,

01:08:37   I would like that list, please.

01:08:38   But because it isn't accessible to you,

01:08:41   you spent two weeks going through,

01:08:43   now maybe some of that was getting a little crazy

01:08:46   about the compression stuff, but nevertheless,

01:08:48   you spent a long time just getting the actual stuff,

01:08:53   the effort squared away such that it was functional.

01:08:55   And that, it seems so dumb and it seems like,

01:08:59   why would that take so long, Marco?

01:09:01   What's wrong with you?

01:09:02   But this is just the way app development works.

01:09:04   I don't say that to necessarily complain,

01:09:06   even though I think that's how it's coming across,

01:09:08   But just to say, there's so much here.

01:09:11   Like, FastText, which admittedly was a garbage app,

01:09:13   but it was an entire app, and it was, I don't know,

01:09:16   like a couple hundred lines of code or something like that.

01:09:19   I haven't done a clock on masquerade,

01:09:21   maybe I can do that while we're talking,

01:09:22   but it is not just a couple hundred lines of code.

01:09:25   Like, it is more than that.

01:09:26   And granted, you know, it perhaps shouldn't have taken me

01:09:30   as long as it did, but this is app development these days.

01:09:33   This is just how it works, is that it takes a while

01:09:37   to make something that's decent.

01:09:40   - Yeah, and I mean, I can't even tell you

01:09:42   how many of these dumb little things I've run into.

01:09:45   I mean, this is just, you're right,

01:09:48   this isn't just any one particular app or project

01:09:51   or task in an app, this is just the job.

01:09:54   I run into this dumb stuff almost every day

01:09:57   where I will, I'll have some days

01:09:59   where I just have amazing productivity

01:10:02   in getting stuff done.

01:10:04   I'll be able to check off a bunch of stuff off my list

01:10:06   and I'll be able to ship out a new build

01:10:07   and everyone's like, well, I can't believe

01:10:08   you filled this in here.

01:10:09   And then I'll have other days where I spend the entire day,

01:10:13   like I start out doing some checklist item

01:10:15   that I wanted to get done and then I realize, oh no,

01:10:19   this is not working the way I expected it to work.

01:10:21   Or to do this, I need to do something else

01:10:25   which needs to do something else

01:10:25   which needs to do something else like, oh, wait a minute,

01:10:27   now this whole thing is expanding in scope

01:10:30   because to actually achieve this.

01:10:32   And some of it was stupid stuff.

01:10:34   like for instance, that list of restricted symbols

01:10:38   and SF symbols, that is gettable information.

01:10:42   The first way I found to do it,

01:10:44   I have since found a simpler way,

01:10:45   but the first way I found to do it was,

01:10:48   I noticed that like if you open up Fontbook,

01:10:51   if you load the SF Pro fonts in Fontbook,

01:10:54   they have as part of their license text,

01:10:57   a list in the license of the symbol name

01:11:01   and then it says this symbol may not be modified,

01:11:03   you know, blah, blah, blah.

01:11:04   And so I figured out what the heck is the CT,

01:11:09   the core text API call to try to get that license

01:11:14   from the font file and then parse that text for the stream.

01:11:19   And I did eventually figure that out

01:11:21   and that probably took me two hours.

01:11:23   Like, there was so much like little stuff like that

01:11:27   that I run into all the time.

01:11:29   You know, just yesterday I'm like,

01:11:30   I wanted to get, I'm moving my notification type

01:11:34   from background update pushes to actual live alerts

01:11:39   for many reasons.

01:11:40   Basically background pushes are much less reliable

01:11:42   than I would like them to be

01:11:43   and people keep complaining

01:11:45   that they're missing the notifications

01:11:46   and so I'm just moving to live alerts

01:11:48   when the upside will be that they are much, much,

01:11:51   much more reliable.

01:11:53   The downside will be that the app will no longer

01:11:56   necessarily wake up every single time in the background

01:11:58   to start the download.

01:12:00   So starting the download is gonna be more dependent

01:12:03   on background refresh intervals or actions

01:12:05   that you take as the user rather than me being able

01:12:08   to tell the system, hey, there's content available.

01:12:10   Hey, there's content available.

01:12:11   Hey, it's content available.

01:12:13   So anyway, but to do that, I had to change

01:12:17   the way notifications are generated.

01:12:19   'Cause before, my servers, when a new episode would come out,

01:12:22   my servers would send a content available push notification

01:12:25   to the phone, the phone would download the data

01:12:28   for the new episode from the server in response

01:12:30   in a background task and then would post

01:12:33   a local notification with the episode info

01:12:36   once it got that info from the server.

01:12:38   So it was this multi-step thing.

01:12:39   But the key thing was the server was triggering

01:12:42   the app to background launch.

01:12:45   But again, the problem with that is that iOS

01:12:47   will often just say, nope, don't wanna do that

01:12:50   for whatever reason.

01:12:51   Maybe I'm low on power or my internet connection

01:12:54   isn't very good or the user has put me in low power mode

01:12:58   or you've been force quit quote out of the app launcher

01:13:02   and that used to prevent those.

01:13:03   So there's all sorts of things that prevent those

01:13:06   and so anyway, now I had to switch to the live push

01:13:09   that you get when somebody messages you or something

01:13:11   like you get the alert push that they are pretty much

01:13:14   always sent through, up to user settings of course,

01:13:17   but they're pretty much always sent and delivered,

01:13:20   but you can't include things like the artwork image in them

01:13:25   And the limit for how much text can go in there is 4K.

01:13:28   So you can't even like really cram it in.

01:13:29   And so I had to change my server side support for things.

01:13:33   Like first I had to build a system

01:13:35   where all these APNs tokens that I store,

01:13:38   well now I have to store an app build version with those.

01:13:40   Because I'm gonna communicate with the app

01:13:42   in two different ways,

01:13:43   depending on which version of the app it is.

01:13:44   If it's a version before this build,

01:13:46   I have to use the old way.

01:13:47   And if it's a version after this build,

01:13:48   then I get to use the new way.

01:13:49   So first I have to alter the server stuff

01:13:51   to support all this like distinction

01:13:54   on the APNs sending side, add new support

01:13:58   for the new types of pushes I'm trying to send,

01:14:00   then go back to the app side of things,

01:14:03   add a notification service extension

01:14:06   so that it can intercept the alert notification

01:14:08   on the way in, download the image it needs to download,

01:14:12   then modify the notification payload

01:14:16   for then further display in the other notification

01:14:19   extension, the notification content extension.

01:14:21   So like there's, and that was all to, you know,

01:14:25   to quote, make notifications more reliable.

01:14:27   But that was, the check mark item was basically like,

01:14:30   you know, fixed notifications.

01:14:32   And that like, it involved this whole day

01:14:34   of jumping between server stuff and app stuff

01:14:37   and making a whole new extension and all this other,

01:14:39   and you know, and any one of those steps,

01:14:41   if I temporarily screwed it up, that add another hour,

01:14:43   wait, why is this not working?

01:14:44   Oh, I didn't change this key over here.

01:14:46   Like, you know, it's, and that's, yeah, that's just the job.

01:14:48   And so I totally get why this took six months.

01:14:53   That makes total sense to me,

01:14:55   and especially all of the UI iteration that you did.

01:15:00   That's the worst, because UI stuff,

01:15:03   not only does it take a surprisingly long amount of time

01:15:06   to build a UI because you run into weird things

01:15:08   with SwiftUI or UIKit or your own ineptitude

01:15:11   and stuff like that, so not only does that take a long time,

01:15:14   but then, usually you have to build something

01:15:16   to see if it really works.

01:15:18   and oftentimes get it out there to people,

01:15:21   and then fix the bugs that they report,

01:15:22   and then, oh, by the way, this whole UI, this doesn't work.

01:15:25   Oh, throw it all away, start again,

01:15:26   or change this whole screen around,

01:15:27   rebuild, tear out half of this, move it around,

01:15:30   and that is incredibly time consuming.

01:15:33   I mean, this is why I've been working on,

01:15:36   basically what in Overcast is basically one screen.

01:15:39   Like this first version of my redesign,

01:15:43   there's some stuff, like font and spacing changes

01:15:46   that are kind of, impact every screen,

01:15:48   and that's a large amount of work,

01:15:49   but mostly I'm redesigning like one to one and a half screens

01:15:53   in this build and that's taken me six months.

01:15:56   So I totally get it, I totally understand.

01:16:00   - Yeah, I don't say it to complain, it's just that goodness.

01:16:03   I mean, if you had told me after day one or two

01:16:05   where I had a very, very basic proof of concept

01:16:10   that it would still take me many, many months

01:16:12   until it was released, I would have been like,

01:16:13   "Really, there's not that much here, come on."

01:16:17   But no, there's a lot here.

01:16:17   And I used clock on Masquerade,

01:16:21   and it's a little bit less than 5,000 lines of code.

01:16:24   Couple of quick fun facts,

01:16:25   just because we're, you know, a lot of developers listen.

01:16:28   There are 29 closed pull requests, all from me to me,

01:16:33   which I think is kind of funny.

01:16:35   - You make pull requests to yourself?

01:16:36   - Sometimes, sometimes.

01:16:37   - Oh, that's so cute.

01:16:39   - So if I'm doing like a major feature,

01:16:41   like the drawer, for example,

01:16:43   then I'll branch, I'll do all of that stuff in that branch

01:16:47   so I can kind of do whatever

01:16:48   and not have to worry about mucking things up.

01:16:51   And then as a final step

01:16:53   before that gets merged back into main,

01:16:56   I'll actually issue a pull request

01:16:57   'cause I love, I really do love GitHub in so many ways,

01:17:00   but I love that GitHub's pull request UI

01:17:03   does a really good job of showing diffs.

01:17:05   And I know there are other ways to do this.

01:17:06   Like I know I could do this with Kaleidoscope

01:17:08   or any number of other tools,

01:17:09   but I really like doing it on GitHub

01:17:11   'cause it lets me walk through all the files

01:17:13   and see these diffs and almost every time,

01:17:15   almost every single time I catch something.

01:17:18   And now mind you, before I check in,

01:17:20   I always look at it in tower and look at the diffs in tower

01:17:23   and make sure everything looks good.

01:17:24   But almost every time I wanna issue a pull request

01:17:26   from me to me, I have almost every time I find something

01:17:30   that I'm like, oh crap, left in a print statement

01:17:32   I didn't want to, or oh crap,

01:17:34   I hard coded something I didn't want to.

01:17:35   And so I go back and have to change something

01:17:36   before I accept the pull request.

01:17:38   So yeah, 29 pull requests, 64 closed GitHub issues

01:17:41   and 12 open ones, some of which are kind of

01:17:44   administrative stuff.

01:17:46   It is using async await in a handful of places.

01:17:49   It does use combine here and there,

01:17:51   but more async await when possible.

01:17:52   It is almost exclusively Swift UI.

01:17:55   It is exclusively Swift.

01:17:57   First commit was 21 December, 2021.

01:17:59   And the build that went to the App Store,

01:18:02   that is, as you hear this released,

01:18:05   that was built this past Friday.

01:18:07   So at the very, very end of February.

01:18:09   But yeah, go check it out.

01:18:11   I'd love it if you take a look.

01:18:12   Oh, I don't think I actually talked about the revenue model.

01:18:15   So you can use the very, very basic smiley face for free.

01:18:20   If you would like to use any other emoji under the sun,

01:18:23   then you need to pay a one time

01:18:25   as we record this $3 in-app purchase,

01:18:27   which will give you access to basically all the other emoji.

01:18:31   I haven't conquered skin tone.

01:18:35   I don't know if I'm gonna offer that or not

01:18:36   because it's a very difficult UI problem to solve,

01:18:38   but you get basically all the other emoji for one time,

01:18:41   $3.

01:18:43   So yeah, even if you're listening to this

01:18:45   and you think I'm all right,

01:18:46   just go download it and buy the in-app purchase

01:18:49   just to be nice, consider it a tip.

01:18:50   But tell your friends, tell your family,

01:18:53   tell parents, tell people who wanna put fart clouds on butts,

01:18:58   whatever you wanna do, tell people,

01:19:02   and check it out, I'd really appreciate it.

01:19:04   - My favorite thing about this app is that

01:19:06   the title bar of the in-app purchase screen

01:19:08   is titled in-app purchase.

01:19:11   - Wow, yeah, that's fair.

01:19:13   They could use the word Smith here or there.

01:19:14   I didn't get the Marco treatment

01:19:15   like I did with Peekaview, I think it was.

01:19:18   - Did you do lines of code?

01:19:20   - Yeah, it's a little under 5,000.

01:19:22   - All right, 5,000?

01:19:24   - A little under.

01:19:25   - Smaller than Switch class.

01:19:27   - Oh, see.

01:19:28   - 'Cause I was just running the same thing.

01:19:29   That's why I must have missed the number, yeah.

01:19:32   - Yep, there you go.

01:19:32   - Switch class has no windows.

01:19:35   (laughing)

01:19:36   - That's a surprising amount of code.

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01:21:36   - All right, so let's move along.

01:21:42   We have an Apple ad breaking news,

01:21:44   doo doo doo doo doo doo doo,

01:21:45   Apple event on Tuesday the 8th, it is Tuesday, right?

01:21:48   I'm not making that up.

01:21:49   It is March 8th, one way or the other,

01:21:51   or 8th of March as I should probably say,

01:21:53   peak performance, and it's spelled like peak of you,

01:21:56   thank you very much, P-E-E-K, peak performance.

01:21:59   So-- - Are you getting Sherlocked?

01:22:01   Apparently that's so I got to get a new app out there quick because the old ones getting Sherlock's apparently

01:22:06   So yeah, so peak performance. What are we getting a peek at we getting your beloved Mac Pro?

01:22:10   Are we getting something else? It's weird that they put peak in there

01:22:13   I mean, I guess they give you a peek at and some things you can't order immediately

01:22:17   So technically it's not you know

01:22:19   But like a lot of people are seeing the word peak and saying oh, maybe they're gonna show us the Mac Pro

01:22:24   But even though the Mac Pro won't be ready, they'll show us just how amazing it is

01:22:27   and they're like, and this will be ready later this year.

01:22:30   I suppose they could do that.

01:22:31   I mean, maybe it's like, it actually is ready,

01:22:33   but supply chain stuff make it

01:22:35   so they can't ship it for a long time

01:22:36   and they just want to brag,

01:22:37   but that's not an Apple thing to do.

01:22:38   It's like they'll show it to us.

01:22:40   Not that they wait until you can buy the day out,

01:22:43   but they wait until it's closer, for sure.

01:22:45   So if this is something that's supposed to ship in December,

01:22:47   I don't think we're gonna be seeing it now.

01:22:49   Like, what would be the point of that?

01:22:50   But-- - Well, also,

01:22:51   that's more of a WWDC kind of announcement.

01:22:54   Like, if, think about the audience of the event.

01:22:57   Like typically the spring event does not contain

01:23:00   a lot of pro hardware.

01:23:01   Now things might be different this time

01:23:02   in you know with the on the max side at least.

01:23:05   Yeah well first of all yeah everything's pro.

01:23:06   But like on the max side it does seem like we are likely

01:23:10   to see any remaining products that use the M1 Pro

01:23:14   and Max chips.

01:23:15   And the biggest holes in the lineup

01:23:17   that will most likely use those are a larger iMac

01:23:20   and a higher end Mac Mini.

01:23:21   And so you know it wouldn't surprise us

01:23:23   if we see those at this event.

01:23:26   that would be nice.

01:23:27   Those are two, especially the large iMac,

01:23:29   that's a pretty big hole in the lineup.

01:23:31   - If it was any other normal time,

01:23:32   I would say that, yeah, this will be the, you know,

01:23:35   the remaining M1, M1 Pro, or Max machines.

01:23:38   But because everything is weird with supply chain stuff,

01:23:43   it could be that if they had access to all the parts

01:23:46   that they expect to have access to,

01:23:48   that this would be the time,

01:23:49   but it could be they have to make some hard choices

01:23:50   about which one of these products is more important

01:23:52   'cause we only have enough like power inverters

01:23:55   to make either the iMac or the Mac mini.

01:23:57   And so we can only announce one of them.

01:23:59   That would be a shame,

01:23:59   but that's just par for the course now.

01:24:01   Lots of times you just, you know, the limiting factors,

01:24:04   we can't get enough of some part that's essential

01:24:07   for all the computers that we essentially have finished.

01:24:09   We're like, we're done, they're designed,

01:24:11   they're, everything is ready about them.

01:24:12   The packaging is ready to go, they're tested.

01:24:15   We just can't put this product up for sale

01:24:18   because if more than 10 people buy it,

01:24:19   we run out of this one part.

01:24:21   I hope that's not the case, but we never know.

01:24:24   So yeah, Mac Mini and Big iMac for sure are on the table,

01:24:29   and it would make sense for them to be released.

01:24:31   But this is like a new factor in our whole,

01:24:33   like what is Apple going to announce?

01:24:35   There's so many factors that go into it already.

01:24:36   Now all of a sudden is what if Apple would like

01:24:39   to announce this, but can't.

01:24:40   And that hasn't been a thing for,

01:24:42   basically since the Tim Cook era,

01:24:43   not when he was CEO, but when he was a COO,

01:24:46   when he was doing inventory management.

01:24:48   It used to be that Apple was not particularly good

01:24:50   at manufacturing and had a long lead time

01:24:53   between when something was made

01:24:54   and when someone actually bought it.

01:24:55   And Tim Cook added, you know,

01:24:57   more modern discipline to that

01:24:59   and not having tons of channel inventory

01:25:01   and not stuffing the channel to boost sales numbers.

01:25:03   You guys missed this era in Apple's history,

01:25:04   but one of the things they used to do is,

01:25:06   you know, it was called stuffing the channel,

01:25:07   where if the quarter is ending

01:25:10   and Apple wants to say, "We sold X number of Macs,"

01:25:13   they would say how many they sold, quote unquote,

01:25:15   into the channel, like into the place

01:25:17   where distributors get them from.

01:25:18   And so they would just sell them into the distributors

01:25:21   that would distribute them to the physical stores

01:25:23   and count those as sales.

01:25:25   Even though no person bought those Macs,

01:25:27   and then those things would just sit

01:25:29   in the distribution channel for months,

01:25:32   slowly draining out into like,

01:25:34   I don't know what it was like,

01:25:35   Egghead or Best Buy or independent Mac sellers.

01:25:38   And during that time,

01:25:39   Apple can't sell anything more into the channel

01:25:41   'cause it was full and it was just,

01:25:43   it was a nightmare, right?

01:25:45   So, but those days are long gone.

01:25:46   And now we think, okay, well, this Apple,

01:25:48   they're great at manufacturing things

01:25:50   and they can get the best, they get the best parts,

01:25:52   they get the best chips,

01:25:53   they get the best manufacturing stuff,

01:25:55   they paid all this money for these amazing factories,

01:25:58   but that shouldn't be a problem anymore.

01:25:59   But then COVID and now nobody can get anything.

01:26:02   So I really hope that doesn't squash

01:26:05   any of these computers, but if all the parts are available,

01:26:09   this would be the time for the Mac mini

01:26:10   and the quote unquote big iMac to make the debut.

01:26:14   - Well, and I gotta say like, you know,

01:26:16   throughout all of COVID and the, you know,

01:26:19   the subsequent supply chain problems that we've had.

01:26:22   Apple has done a very good job of hiding us

01:26:26   from any problems that they might be having,

01:26:29   getting supply or getting things made,

01:26:31   or getting things shipped.

01:26:33   Almost everyone else around the world

01:26:34   who makes or sells things has made those problems

01:26:38   very noticeable to their customers,

01:26:39   because they had to.

01:26:41   Apple, through logistical magic and expertise

01:26:45   and good deals and priority and good planning

01:26:48   or whatever it is, maybe just not talking about it too much.

01:26:51   Apple has really kept a lot of this out of public view.

01:26:55   And to be an Apple customer right now

01:26:58   and to be able to just, for the most part,

01:27:01   go to Apple and just order what you need

01:27:03   or buy what you need and be able to get it

01:27:05   in a pretty reasonable amount of time

01:27:07   for almost this entire pandemic,

01:27:09   that's really saying something.

01:27:11   - Apple's style of communication,

01:27:12   where they don't tell you about things ahead of time,

01:27:15   really helps here, because like, for example,

01:27:16   the Big I Mac that was actually rumored for 2021.

01:27:19   And then the rumors were, it got delayed because supply chain stuff,

01:27:22   but we don't like that. Apple never said anything about that.

01:27:24   There's no reason we should have expected it in 2021 except that we saw a rumor

01:27:28   about it. But Apple's is like, why would you know,

01:27:30   it's not late because we never told you when it was coming. Right.

01:27:32   And so any delays are completely hidden from us, you know, in that respect,

01:27:36   which is an advantage of their, you know, communication strategy. Um,

01:27:41   but I would hope that the way they build things also, you know,

01:27:46   factors into this, like you said,

01:27:47   having preferential treatment that we paid for your factory,

01:27:49   we get first choice on all of these things.

01:27:52   We're putting the same chip in a lot of our computers,

01:27:54   which helps so we don't have to have 17 different chips

01:27:56   being made and deal with the inventory.

01:27:58   Just make as many M1s as you can,

01:28:00   'cause we're gonna ship a whole line of computers

01:28:02   that have M1s in them, and now with the M1 Pro Max,

01:28:05   make as many of those as you can,

01:28:06   'cause we got like three or four different computers

01:28:08   that are gonna use them, and the fact that the M chips work

01:28:11   in all these different contexts,

01:28:13   that it's not shoehorning that chip

01:28:15   into a computer that shouldn't have it,

01:28:17   it's great in all those contexts,

01:28:18   that certainly helps as well.

01:28:20   - Yeah, but yeah, so as for what we're likely to see,

01:28:23   I mean, honestly, as part of the same reason

01:28:26   why I haven't looked much at Masquerade, sorry again,

01:28:29   I also haven't been paying much attention

01:28:30   to the tech rumors and everything this time around.

01:28:33   But I think just looking at the lineup

01:28:36   and looking at what still has to come out

01:28:39   and what's likely to happen,

01:28:40   I would say this still feels a bit early

01:28:43   to have any of the multi-chip or multi-die M1 Macs products.

01:28:48   So probably not the Mac Pro, and probably not,

01:28:53   like there were always some ideas floating around

01:28:56   that maybe a high-end iMac or slash iMac Pro

01:28:59   might have like a dual M1 Macs design.

01:29:02   If that's to come, which honestly would surprise me,

01:29:06   but if that's to come, I don't think it's gonna come

01:29:08   at this event, it feels too early to do those.

01:29:11   I'm guessing this event is the computers that historically

01:29:14   have had the guts of the MacBook Pro,

01:29:17   you know, in some version or other.

01:29:19   And that would be the large iMac and the high-end Mac Mini.

01:29:22   - Yeah, and just to do a quick recap of the,

01:29:26   we've talked about all these machines on past shows

01:29:27   and the various rumors around them.

01:29:28   But the Mac Mini, the rumor is that it's thinner,

01:29:31   that it has a glass top,

01:29:32   that it's got the magnetic power connector

01:29:34   for reasons that we could not really make sense of,

01:29:37   in fact, when we discussed this rumor,

01:29:38   and that it would come with M1 Pro or M1 Max.

01:29:41   And the big iMac, keep calling it that

01:29:43   just because it's got the bigger screen

01:29:45   than the current 24 inch one.

01:29:46   For a while we thought it might be 30 inch,

01:29:48   but now the rumors have really solidified

01:29:50   that it's just gonna be 27 inch.

01:29:52   M1 Pro, M1 Max is the rumored CPUs

01:29:54   with the possibility of an M1 Max Duo, the double thing.

01:29:58   And the reason we're calling this big iMac

01:30:00   is because is it just gonna be called iMac?

01:30:03   Is it gonna be called iMac Pro?

01:30:05   Is the iMac Pro just the one

01:30:06   that has the double M1 Macs in it.

01:30:09   These are all kind of marketing decisions

01:30:10   that it's not clear what Apple will do here

01:30:12   because it's kind of a big reset on this whole product line.

01:30:14   So we'll see.

01:30:15   And the big iMac, the rumor is that it's thicker,

01:30:18   won't come in colors.

01:30:19   We'll have 120 hertz screen and mini LED and all that.

01:30:23   And then the other products,

01:30:23   there's lots of other products that are rumored

01:30:25   just because Apple files for whatever, you know,

01:30:29   the equivalent of the underwriters, whatever,

01:30:34   I don't know, like the FCC.

01:30:36   In various countries, you have to file

01:30:38   to say, I'm going to be shipping a product that's

01:30:39   going to do radio stuff in your country,

01:30:41   and here's the code number for it,

01:30:42   and people figure out what that-- anyway,

01:30:44   there's a lot of products that are in the pipeline

01:30:46   that, in theory, might also be announced.

01:30:49   New iPad Air, just sort of spec-bumping that

01:30:52   so it's not so embarrassingly worse than the new iPad Mini.

01:30:57   A new low-end iPad that finally ditches the old thing

01:31:00   and gets the flat sides like the Air.

01:31:03   and the iPhone SE, the new iPhone SE,

01:31:05   which again would just look like the current iPhone SE,

01:31:07   but it'd have an A15 and it didn't have 5G.

01:31:09   Lots of those are products that are probably in the pipeline

01:31:12   but I don't think it makes for a coherent presentation,

01:31:16   especially when performance is highlighted in the invitation.

01:31:18   It just seems like the whole event could be Macs

01:31:22   that are faster than previous ones,

01:31:24   which shouldn't be hard because all the Macs they introduce

01:31:26   are either low-end Macs or laptop Macs.

01:31:28   And now it's time for Macs that are not low-end

01:31:31   and/or are not laptops.

01:31:32   and they should be fast and that'll be exciting.

01:31:35   And this is the event that I am most looking forward to

01:31:39   so far this year.

01:31:40   Obviously the most I'd be looking forward to

01:31:41   is the Mac Pro one.

01:31:42   If the Mac Pro comes out today,

01:31:44   this is what I'm gonna say about expectations.

01:31:47   We don't know how they're doing

01:31:49   on manufacturing these chips, right?

01:31:52   Like we don't have any,

01:31:54   the Intel would talk about their things.

01:31:56   And on Intel, we'd see PCs would always ship

01:31:58   with the thing first or whatever.

01:31:59   Even if Apple got the chip first, we knew it was coming.

01:32:02   We have no idea what Apple is even building.

01:32:04   We just have these vague rumors,

01:32:05   or what the timelines are.

01:32:06   When the M1 Pro and Max came out,

01:32:08   was that earlier than people thought,

01:32:10   later than people thought?

01:32:11   We have no yardstick for judging,

01:32:13   like how long does it take to make this stuff happen?

01:32:15   So it could be they come out on stage

01:32:18   and here's the new Mac Pro with 40 cores or something.

01:32:21   The only reason we doubt that is just because

01:32:22   it usually takes them a long time,

01:32:24   and that's usually the last one to come.

01:32:26   But I don't know, like maybe things are different

01:32:29   now that they're making their own chips.

01:32:30   Maybe the M1 Pro and Max machines were not shipping

01:32:34   because of some part that has nothing to do with this

01:32:36   as a amount of chip and that shortage is,

01:32:38   it's just, it's so hard to predict.

01:32:39   But I do like the fact that this is performance

01:32:43   and so we're getting into the good stuff now.

01:32:44   It's like the mass market computers,

01:32:46   the ones that people actually buy,

01:32:47   shipped first, good job Apple,

01:32:49   shipped the computers that people actually buy.

01:32:51   And now we're getting into the ones

01:32:52   that I'm the most interested in,

01:32:53   which are the ones that nobody buys.

01:32:55   (laughing)

01:32:58   - Including you for most years or most decades,

01:33:00   I should say.

01:33:01   I'm getting this big iMac because I was saying that my wife's got a 2015 5k iMac that just

01:33:08   today I will talk about this in the next show but just today I was fighting with her iMac

01:33:14   and some issue or whatever and I was like I can solve this problem with hardware and

01:33:18   I was about to do it and I said nope I'm not buying anything else for this computer.

01:33:21   It's a 2015 computer it's just the new and she's got a big iMac she likes it she thinks

01:33:27   there's nothing wrong with her computer I think there are things wrong with it so I

01:33:30   I'm not spending any more money on that computer,

01:33:33   and as soon as they announce that big iMac,

01:33:35   that's what I'm getting, and it'll just,

01:33:36   I said, you won't even, if you don't care

01:33:38   if you think your current computer is fine,

01:33:39   the only thing you'll notice is that

01:33:40   there'll be a skinnier border around the screen,

01:33:43   and there won't be an Apple logo facing you,

01:33:45   and other than that, it'll be a thousand times faster,

01:33:48   and will anger me less, so I'm getting that,

01:33:50   and I really hope that's announced.

01:33:53   - Yeah, I hear you.

01:33:55   Do you think there'll be displays?

01:33:56   'Cause now I feel like my display situation,

01:33:59   - I'm actually pretty happy with it,

01:34:00   so now is the time that Apple's gonna finally come out

01:34:04   and make me spend more money on stupid monitors.

01:34:06   - I haven't even seen any rumors about that.

01:34:07   I feel like we're getting greedy.

01:34:08   - Nor have I.

01:34:10   I mean, hey man, you never know what'll happen.

01:34:12   It would be kinda cool.

01:34:13   You could take a peek at that display.

01:34:14   - Yeah, I've only heard wish lists.

01:34:18   People want there to be displays.

01:34:21   I've seen nothing to suggest that there will be.

01:34:23   - Well, there's rumors that they're working on them,

01:34:25   but not that they're imminent.

01:34:27   - Yeah, exactly.

01:34:28   - Yeah, yeah.

01:34:29   - Like they still, based on the state of the rumors,

01:34:32   let's say, the current positioning of the rumors,

01:34:35   it still feels like they're a half a year to a year out.

01:34:39   - Okay, so let's look at it this way.

01:34:40   So, John, selfishly, it sounds like you're most interested

01:34:45   in a 27-inch iMac.

01:34:48   What do you think is the single most important product

01:34:52   for Apple to announce on Tuesday?

01:34:54   - All right, it probably is the big iMac,

01:34:56   'cause who buys a Mac Mini?

01:34:57   that's a very narrow interest product.

01:34:59   And the iMacs were well-received, I feel like.

01:35:02   And just to have a slightly bigger model

01:35:04   to bring people upmarket and to make a little bit more money

01:35:07   and to give people a bigger screen,

01:35:09   I think that is by far the most important,

01:35:12   well, it's the most important Mac product.

01:35:14   Depending on how the iPads go,

01:35:15   if they do actually come out with a new low-end iPad,

01:35:19   like the cheapest possible iPad and it's got the flat side,

01:35:22   that's probably the most important product

01:35:23   in terms of how many people are gonna buy it,

01:35:25   because I think they sell a lot

01:35:26   of those super low-end iPads.

01:35:27   but I don't know, that's like a late-breaking rumor,

01:35:30   who knows if there's any basis in fact at all to,

01:35:33   I mean, why would they show that

01:35:35   at a peak performance thing?

01:35:36   It's like that's the opposite of peak performance,

01:35:38   it's the lowest performing iPad you can buy.

01:35:41   It would be weird to announce it on stage.

01:35:43   It could still be announced by press release

01:35:44   or something or whatever, but yeah,

01:35:46   on stage, it's the big iMac.

01:35:48   I feel like that's gonna be the star of the show.

01:35:49   - All right, so Marco, what do you think

01:35:51   is the most important?

01:35:52   What are you personally most interested in?

01:35:54   What I'm hoping for is the new iPad Air

01:35:58   because my son is due for an upgrade

01:36:00   and his birthday's coming up soon

01:36:02   and that could be a good answer to that question.

01:36:04   What would be the most important

01:36:08   to my overall other interests?

01:36:11   Probably a big iMac.

01:36:13   Not that I would want to get one

01:36:14   because frankly I'm incredibly happy

01:36:16   with my current setup of ridiculous XDR and desktop laptop.

01:36:21   I love this setup, this is fantastic.

01:36:23   This is so fantastic that it's actually going to be

01:36:26   a question whether I get the next Mac Pro or not.

01:36:29   - Yeah, I actually, I don't think we necessarily have time

01:36:31   for it today, but I would like to explore that with you

01:36:33   because I also am in a really good computing place right now

01:36:37   and even though I had, you know, what, five, six, seven years

01:36:41   of 27-inch iMacs, and I loved that time of my life,

01:36:44   I really did, but being able to take my best computer

01:36:50   and move it wherever I want is so freaking magical.

01:36:54   It's so cool.

01:36:55   And we don't need to belabor it right now,

01:36:56   but it is so great.

01:36:57   So yeah, I have very big interest in the 27-inch iMac

01:37:02   in terms of, and I think it is probably,

01:37:04   in my opinion, I think it's the most important product

01:37:06   for Apple at this event,

01:37:08   but I don't know if I would want it,

01:37:10   because I feel like I'm back on the laptop train.

01:37:12   But anyway, I digress, I apologize.

01:37:15   - That's roughly where I feel.

01:37:16   Like I'm really, 'cause like right now,

01:37:19   I am very rarely wanting more performance

01:37:23   out of my computer now.

01:37:25   Like now that like ever since, I mean,

01:37:26   the M1 was already almost there.

01:37:29   The only reason I really wanted to expand past the M1

01:37:33   was a little more high CPU core for parallel stuff,

01:37:37   but mainly like stuff like disk space and RAM.

01:37:39   That's what like the RAM was really holding me back a lot

01:37:41   on the M1.

01:37:42   Now, like with the M1 Max and the ability to have

01:37:45   like high RAM and bigger disks and higher core counts,

01:37:49   like I am fine.

01:37:51   Like I am even doing big compilations in my app.

01:37:54   Like I'm not waiting very long for that kind of stuff.

01:37:57   Like everything is very, very fast now.

01:38:00   And so when the Mac Pro comes out, I might not get it.

01:38:04   Or at least right now I'm still in my mobile lifestyle

01:38:09   for the next probably two years or so.

01:38:13   Maybe after that things might change.

01:38:16   But for now, I'm very happy where I am.

01:38:18   So anyway, this is an event where I am mostly excited

01:38:21   about products that other people want.

01:38:24   Like I'm excited for them.

01:38:25   And in that way, I am very excited to see the new Big iMac

01:38:30   because for the most part, for a long time now,

01:38:35   we really haven't had a good recommendation

01:38:38   for developers or power users

01:38:41   who wanted a good desktop setup, except get the Big iMac.

01:38:45   because Apple has been so weird/nelegent

01:38:48   on the monitor front.

01:38:50   But the iMacs have always been great monitors,

01:38:52   and for most of their iterations,

01:38:55   pretty great computers as well.

01:38:57   So, you know, now that we had the small iMac

01:39:02   with the M1 get updated,

01:39:04   and that was seemingly a pretty big success,

01:39:06   and people seemed to like that machine a lot,

01:39:09   and now the question was just,

01:39:11   what's the big one gonna be?

01:39:13   And if this event answers that question,

01:39:14   I think that's a really big step for the lineup.

01:39:17   You know, nerd-wise, the Mac Mini is certainly interesting,

01:39:21   but I personally don't have a use

01:39:24   for a high-end Mac Mini right now.

01:39:26   - Yeah, you know, it's funny you say that,

01:39:27   'cause I don't think I do either.

01:39:30   Like, I'm rocking a circa 2012 Mac Mini as my Plex server,

01:39:34   and it does a handful of other minor things,

01:39:35   including former sponsor channels,

01:39:37   but it never seems to really complain about any of it,

01:39:42   I'm really not asking that much of it, but that's the one I am selfishly most at. Well,

01:39:48   display if it actually shows up, but I agree with you guys. It would be pretty surprising if it did,

01:39:52   but if not a display, I'm curious about a Mac Mini because even though I don't particularly need one,

01:39:58   I think that might be the next thing that I buy computer-wise. You know, obviously I'll buy phone

01:40:03   or whatever, but in terms of computer, I would like a less than a decade old Mac Mini. And since

01:40:11   Since you sold yours to Apple, you big jerk, then I'm curious to see what's announced.

01:40:17   And I don't think I need the Super Baller Mega Mac Mini.

01:40:21   I think a base Mac Mini would probably be sufficient for my needs.

01:40:25   But I'm still curious to see what it is they announce if they do so.

01:40:28   A wild card here is M.2 stuff.

01:40:31   Again, getting back to how little visibility we have in Apple's silicon process.

01:40:35   Other than the fact that M.2 will eventually come, what's the schedule on that?

01:40:40   We talked about this before, how does it overlap with the M1 type stuff?

01:40:43   Because remember the M1 is based on the A14 cores?

01:40:45   No, A15 cores, right?

01:40:47   No, A14.

01:40:48   A14 cores.

01:40:49   A14.

01:40:50   Yep.

01:40:51   Yeah, A14 cores is sort of, sort of, like it's not exact, right?

01:40:53   And then, you know, the M1 Pro and M1 Macs have lots of variations, but it's still essentially

01:40:58   the same core designs for the CPU cores in there.

01:41:01   Close to the same anyway, they're tweaked a little bit.

01:41:04   We all assume, based on our past conversations, that the big giant Mac Pro one will also be

01:41:08   M1-ish cores just because that's the way we test this on a past show the way it usually goes you make the smaller simpler chips

01:41:12   And you make them bigger and bigger and bigger

01:41:14   You don't come out right out the gate with a big one

01:41:16   But that means that the m2 which we all think is going to be in the new very skinny

01:41:21   Laptop that may or may not be called MacBook Air the m2 based color flat

01:41:26   You know the rumors for that are pretty strong that has been projected out to be well

01:41:31   That's not going to be in this event because it's not a performance computer

01:41:33   It's just sort of like you know it's a low-end low-power probably fanless computer

01:41:37   But that probably is gonna have an M2 in it, right?

01:41:39   But if the M2 is ready now

01:41:42   Would they come out with some kind of MacBook non Pro with an M2?

01:41:46   I mean it seems like the timing is all wrong because they just came didn't just they quote-unquote just came out with a new

01:41:53   M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros and those are their high-performance

01:41:58   Laptops and the initial M2 machine is not going to be high performance

01:42:03   is going to be the M2 non-Max, the M2 non-Pro, just the plain old M2, but would the plain

01:42:10   old M2 be faster than the M1 Pro and M1 Max in certain operations?

01:42:16   I feel much better once we get through all of the Max going to arm and then we get through

01:42:22   the first iteration of M2 to understand how this is supposed to go.

01:42:26   Although when we do that, actually, we probably won't even be able to extrapolate because

01:42:30   we'll say, "Well, that was all weird because it was COVID times."

01:42:33   And here we are, hopefully someday, not as crippled by supply and chain things in COVID.

01:42:40   And maybe we'll have a normal iteration, but it's all just a complete mystery because Apple

01:42:44   doesn't have to tell anyone about what they're doing and what the timelines are.

01:42:47   And so we just we know that there are machines like this in the works supposedly, but we

01:42:52   don't actually know when they might be scheduled.

01:42:54   And so the M2 is supposedly based on A15 course.

01:42:58   The A15 has been out for a while now.

01:43:01   It's not like we're expecting, oh, M2, that's not going to come out.

01:43:04   It's too soon for that.

01:43:05   It's too cutting edge.

01:43:07   The time is not, you know, 2022 is a reasonable time for an M2-based computer to ship.

01:43:12   Maybe not in March 2022, but the rumor is floating around out there.

01:43:17   And potentially, you know, let's say it was just, it was ready.

01:43:21   They had the M2-based really thin, low-power MacBook Air replacement D-kind of machine

01:43:27   coming out.

01:43:28   They could fit that into a peak performance thing,

01:43:30   'cause they would say,

01:43:31   "Look at the existing M1 MacBook Air.

01:43:33   "Everybody loves it, it's a great computer,

01:43:35   "it's super awesome, but now we can do that,

01:43:39   "but with even higher performance

01:43:41   "and even better battery life, and it comes in colors."

01:43:44   That would fit in the event.

01:43:45   I just don't think it's probably ready yet.

01:43:48   - Yeah, and that would actually be a shame,

01:43:50   because I'd actually forgotten about the M2 MacBook Air,

01:43:53   'cause that has been rumored to be a this spring release

01:43:57   for the last six months.

01:43:59   Like it's been a while.

01:44:00   - But does it get pushed like everything else?

01:44:04   - Yeah, and it certainly does seem like the rumors

01:44:06   to that effect have dried up recently

01:44:08   and have kind of been like, "Oh, maybe later in the year."

01:44:10   So we'll see. - And it might not even

01:44:12   be a MacBook Air.

01:44:12   I feel like there's been waffling on that of like,

01:44:14   "Well, they don't have to call it the Air.

01:44:16   "They could just call it the MacBook."

01:44:18   Like branding and naming is always weird.

01:44:20   - Yeah, but I mean, ultimately,

01:44:22   there has been this M2 redesigned MacBook Air

01:44:26   that's been rumored for a while that sounds awesome.

01:44:29   Like people talking about the colors of the new small iMac

01:44:34   and a design more reminiscent of that

01:44:39   and of current laptops that have no more taper

01:44:43   and more flat-sided edges and stuff like that.

01:44:47   The rumors of that, and I believe it was rumored

01:44:50   to have a white keyboard and to have the light colors

01:44:54   on top, like that sounds really cool.

01:44:57   And the existing M1 MacBook Air is so incredibly good

01:45:01   that to take that same thing forward

01:45:03   with a new industrial design that could be really awesome

01:45:05   and really breathe some new aesthetic life into it,

01:45:08   like that's fantastic.

01:45:10   That's gonna be a great thing if that comes out.

01:45:12   - Is the iMacification of the laptop,

01:45:14   which I think this is slightly before

01:45:16   both of your times as well,

01:45:17   but the iMacification of the laptop

01:45:19   the first time that happened?

01:45:21   Do you remember the original iBook, the toilet seat iBook?

01:45:23   - Yeah, yeah, the big translucent blue everything.

01:45:26   - The big poster I got from Mac World Expo in New York,

01:45:28   it said iMac to go.

01:45:29   It was literally like, take the iMac

01:45:32   and slam it into our laptop line.

01:45:34   You get the iBook, right?

01:45:36   Toilet seat iBook with a handle and it came in fun colors.

01:45:39   These rumors of this M2 laptop is basically,

01:45:42   take the 24 inch iMac and slam that into the laptop line.

01:45:46   Again, it's like history repeating itself.

01:45:48   And granted the colors are more muted now

01:45:50   and the design is very different,

01:45:51   but it's going to be what if that iMac but laptop.

01:45:55   That's what all the rumor things look like.

01:45:57   It's almost like you could take out the 24 inch iMac

01:45:59   and fold it in half and shrink it down and there you go.

01:46:01   - Yeah, yeah, so I, that, I would actually,

01:46:05   I hope that that comes out at this event,

01:46:07   but because the rumors have been so hesitant

01:46:10   on it coming out soon, like recently,

01:46:13   I'm a little hesitant too, whether that's ready yet,

01:46:15   but that would be exciting.

01:46:16   Now, you know, as for M2 versus M1 stuff,

01:46:19   I think we've already seen how this plays out

01:46:23   on the phone side with these same cores.

01:46:26   And so we can extrapolate roughly what that's going

01:46:28   to be like on the Mac side.

01:46:30   On the phone side, A14 to A15 was a fairly minor update.

01:46:35   It was still good.

01:46:39   It was more in the area of power efficiency

01:46:43   than in performance.

01:46:44   So what this means on the Mac side,

01:46:46   that's not a small thing,

01:46:48   that's still an important thing.

01:46:49   but I wouldn't expect this to be embarrassing

01:46:52   the M1 products in any benchmark or anything like that.

01:46:55   It's probably just gonna be like,

01:46:56   hey, everything got like five or 10% faster

01:46:59   and you get 10 or 15% better battery life.

01:47:01   That's a great improvement,

01:47:03   but I don't think anything's going to

01:47:05   make the M1 look bad so soon.

01:47:07   - I'm not sure, 'cause I feel like

01:47:09   the thing I don't have a good handle on is

01:47:10   how much is tweaked, right?

01:47:14   Just for the M1 versus what would have been the A14X,

01:47:17   how different are those two things from each other.

01:47:19   Probably not that different,

01:47:20   I mean they use the M1 and the iPad,

01:47:21   we're crying out loud, right?

01:47:23   But the M1 Pro and Max, the more I hear about them,

01:47:25   the more I hear about the things that are different

01:47:28   in those chips than just, oh it's an M1,

01:47:30   but with just more cores.

01:47:31   Like the Pro and the Max have other stuff,

01:47:33   possibly one of those things being multi-chip interconnect

01:47:36   for the Duo and Quad thing or whatever,

01:47:38   but also just the internal guts and however it's laid out,

01:47:41   the execution units, the cache hierarchy, all that stuff,

01:47:45   the GPU, the way it's designed.

01:47:47   So I do wonder how different the M2 might be,

01:47:51   like that maybe the M1 is very much like an A14X,

01:47:54   but the M2 is less like an A15X, you know what I mean?

01:47:59   Like, again, we don't have a precedent

01:48:01   for how much variation Apple is willing to do,

01:48:05   how much customization they're willing to do,

01:48:06   and how much they're willing to lean into,

01:48:09   you know, the power potential of the M line of chips.

01:48:13   We know a little bit with the Pro and the Max,

01:48:14   'cause those are pretty gargantuan chips

01:48:16   with a huge number of transistors,

01:48:18   and they do lots of amazing stuff.

01:48:19   But for the M2, I feel like the first one,

01:48:23   the M1, as amazing as it was,

01:48:25   Apple's target, they even said this stuff,

01:48:26   like they said, their funny line in the introduction,

01:48:28   said, "We might have overshot."

01:48:30   Like, they weren't aiming for something as phenomenal

01:48:33   as it turned out, right?

01:48:35   I think they just would have been happy

01:48:36   if it's an A14X that can run Mac stuff,

01:48:39   but it was just fantastic.

01:48:40   And maybe the M2, they actually are aiming higher,

01:48:43   and maybe they'll achieve that, but we'll see.

01:48:45   excited. I feel like there have been rumors, but I don't think that this is a known quantity and

01:48:52   I don't know, I should go back and listen to past pre-event shows and see if I've been saying this

01:48:58   for the last six events running. But I don't know, I feel like Apple's done a pretty good job of

01:49:02   keeping most of this close to the vest. And I'm excited that, you know, I find it much more fun

01:49:09   to go in kind of not really knowing what to expect

01:49:12   than knowing exactly what's coming.

01:49:15   And probably next week we'll talk about

01:49:17   the rumors of the hole punch front sensors on the iPhone 14

01:49:20   and we've seen renderings of it and that's fine and all,

01:49:23   but I don't know, I kind of like being just shocked

01:49:26   and just being completely surprised.

01:49:28   - I don't think you're gonna be shocked

01:49:29   'cause I think we've had individual episodes

01:49:30   looking at the renders of all of these rumored products

01:49:33   and discussing them in length.

01:49:34   So I don't think they're gonna, I mean,

01:49:36   the big iMac, does anyone think it's going to be

01:49:38   anything other than a scaled up version

01:49:40   of the 24 inch iMac that might be a little thicker

01:49:42   and comes in gray?

01:49:43   In terms of physical appearance,

01:49:44   I would be very surprised if it's anything but that.

01:49:47   - Well, I mean, that's an interesting question though.

01:49:48   Probably it's gonna be positioned as a pro product,

01:49:50   and so I would assume, not only is it going to be available

01:49:53   in gray, I would assume it's only available

01:49:55   in shades of gray.

01:49:56   That is, I think, a very likely direction.

01:49:59   Honestly, I think that's a sad and boring direction

01:50:01   to go in, but that's, I think, very likely.

01:50:03   But also, do you think they would do things

01:50:06   have the external power supply.

01:50:08   Is there gonna be an ethernet port internal to the Mac

01:50:10   or is it gonna be on the brick like the 13 inch?

01:50:12   The 13 inch makes a bunch of compromises

01:50:14   because it's a lower end machine

01:50:16   where aesthetics are more important.

01:50:18   The bigger one, I think customers would say

01:50:22   aesthetics are significantly less important.

01:50:24   Apple I think would say they are more important

01:50:27   than their customers.

01:50:28   - There's still a factor, yeah.

01:50:29   - Right, but to include the number of ports

01:50:34   on the big iMac has always been pretty high

01:50:36   and that's a pretty big part of its utility.

01:50:41   And to have all those ports,

01:50:43   and especially to have all those port types

01:50:45   on the big iMac will require it to have

01:50:47   significantly greater thickness than the smaller one.

01:50:50   There's also a question of like,

01:50:53   what if they don't use the chin design?

01:50:55   If they're going for something thicker

01:50:57   that maybe looks a little more like an XDR

01:50:59   but like a little bit smaller

01:51:00   and a little bit thinner than that,

01:51:01   But if you're going for a more XDR-like design,

01:51:04   or an XDR-influenced design at least,

01:51:06   what if they just make it thin bezels all around

01:51:09   and just make the back of it a little bit thicker

01:51:10   to have all the components?

01:51:12   - I think the chin is still gonna be there,

01:51:13   'cause I think that's where they're gonna put the computer.

01:51:15   It's gonna be thicker probably,

01:51:16   but it's not gonna be so much thicker

01:51:19   that they can get rid of the chin.

01:51:20   And for the external power supply,

01:51:22   I honestly don't know.

01:51:24   When I say it's gonna be thicker, it's like,

01:51:25   well, it could be thick enough to fit an ethernet plug,

01:51:29   but maybe not.

01:51:31   It's not like they're gonna ship this thing without Ethernet, so I feel like I'm leaning towards the stupid external

01:51:35   But it's not stupid the external power supply

01:51:37   I don't think it's that ridiculous because I like we talked about this one then 24 inch

01:51:40   I'm a cat it actually is kind of convenient to plug in the ethernet cable down

01:51:44   But the stupid brick the brick itself is not convenient the brick is annoying

01:51:47   But if you've got the brick

01:51:49   I'd rather plug ethernet into the brick then fish it up to my desk and

01:51:52   To through the little thing into the back of the computer because the more things you plug into the back like the damn X

01:51:58   You know the 5k Mac

01:51:59   It's got a lot of ports back there and I have things plugged in almost all of them and it's a lot of cables

01:52:03   Sneaking out the back of your computer

01:52:05   So if one of those could be on the floor that does kind of clean things up and we know Apple likes to keep things

01:52:10   Cleaned up, but yeah a little bit thicker but not a lot thicker

01:52:14   Like I don't expect an XDR type thing and a lot of this also depends on again

01:52:19   We keep calling this the big iMac. Will there be an iMac Pro or will there not?

01:52:22   Is this the iMac Pro or is it just called iMac? Right? Oh, that's an interesting question

01:52:26   I meant to talk to you about this I

01:52:28   Personally do not think we're gonna see another iMac Pro and I would love to be wrong

01:52:33   I really would because gosh did I love my iMac Pro that I just got rid of a couple of months back

01:52:38   But I don't I don't know or how about maybe a different a way to different way to approach this

01:52:44   What makes it let's assume that there is an iMac Pro what makes it better than the best 27 inch iMac

01:52:51   I mean, I guess the obvious answer is like an m1 max duo

01:52:54   But then you're potentially trampling on Mac Pro aren't you or do you think that that would be quad only?

01:52:59   It's an all-in-one. It's just like the iMac Pro like you read that

01:53:03   It's weird because like the iMac Pro as we've discussed many times was supposed to be the Pro solution

01:53:07   Before they had decided they're gonna make the Mac Pro again and once they've made the Mac Pro again

01:53:11   Do you still need to have an iMac Pro? I would say yes, because maybe some pros want an all-in-one computer

01:53:17   Why don't you make that for them?

01:53:18   But you can make different choices for that computer like that had the existence of the iMac Pro would allow the big iMac

01:53:26   That's not a pro

01:53:27   To be just what we describe a scale of 24 inch and so on and so forth a big iMac

01:53:31   You know the iMac Pro could be thicker still

01:53:34   Could be thick enough to have Ethernet ports on it could have 10 gig Ethernet on the power brick through a different connector. You know like

01:53:41   The iMac Pro would I would expect it to be just as pro as the previous iMac Pro

01:53:48   Otherwise, why even have that product?

01:53:49   But if branding says,

01:53:52   we're just gonna call the Big Mac iMac the iMac Pro,

01:53:54   that's just what we're gonna do,

01:53:56   that doesn't convince me that they're going to be

01:53:59   approaching that computer with the same mindset

01:54:01   as they approached the original iMac Pro.

01:54:04   - I'm guessing that there is no,

01:54:08   two different models of the 27 inch anymore.

01:54:11   There's gonna be one 27 inch,

01:54:13   where they might call it iMac Pro,

01:54:15   but there's only gonna be one model

01:54:17   and if we get one on the eighth, it's gonna be that model.

01:54:20   Like I am not expecting them to have a semi,

01:54:25   like a mini Mac Pro version of the iMac.

01:54:28   I think it's just, there's gonna be the 24 inch

01:54:31   that we see now, and that uses the M1 class of chips

01:54:35   and whatever that line is going forward,

01:54:37   and there's gonna be the 27 inch version of it

01:54:39   that they might call iMac Pro, although they might not,

01:54:42   I'll get to that in a second, but that's gonna use

01:54:44   the MacBook Pro X version of these chips,

01:54:47   and that's gonna be it for the iMac line.

01:54:50   - And no Duo in the iMac in that case.

01:54:52   - Yeah, I'm saying no Duo in the iMac,

01:54:54   but if you look at the website now,

01:54:57   in the header and in the titles of these pages,

01:54:59   these computers are officially called iMac 24 inch,

01:55:03   and the current, hopefully soon to be outbound,

01:55:06   Intel version is called iMac 27 inch.

01:55:08   So it's just iMac 24 and iMac 27,

01:55:10   and I think those are actually a pretty good,

01:55:13   That's a pretty good naming scheme.

01:55:14   It makes it much more like laptops.

01:55:16   And if they keep it like that,

01:55:20   that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

01:55:22   But that being said, I think the more likely outcome

01:55:26   is that they call it the Big One iMac Pro.

01:55:29   Because I think it will have many of the distinctions

01:55:33   that the MacBook Pro has.

01:55:34   I think it's gonna have the mini LED screen,

01:55:37   and of course, the Pro and Macs options on the chips,

01:55:41   it'll have the higher resources of those chips

01:55:43   and everything, so I think it's very likely

01:55:46   that it's called iMac Pro because it matches MacBook Pro

01:55:49   in so many feature distinctions

01:55:51   from the model that's below it.

01:55:53   But if they just keep calling iMac 27,

01:55:55   that wouldn't surprise me that much either.

01:55:57   - It's kinda, I would say, you know,

01:55:58   if the Duo is a real thing, and it would be kind of a shame

01:56:01   if they never put it in an all-in-one computer, you know?

01:56:04   'Cause like, even, I understand, like,

01:56:07   if they come up with a design, it's like,

01:56:08   well, the design doesn't really allow

01:56:10   for that type of cooling and the Duo is kind of

01:56:12   a pro product anyway.

01:56:13   I mean, maybe we've been spoiled by the iMac Pro,

01:56:17   but even some of the 5K iMacs, at various times

01:56:19   the 5K iMacs had the highest single, you know,

01:56:21   single-threaded CPU performance of any Mac, right?

01:56:23   - Usually, at most times they did.

01:56:25   - Because they had fewer cores, right?

01:56:27   And that they had also had the cooling capacity

01:56:28   to run them at higher clock speeds.

01:56:29   - Well, and they would get the consumer grade chips

01:56:31   so they'd be updated faster from Intel

01:56:33   and they would be updated more often by Apple.

01:56:35   So it was all those factors going.

01:56:37   So I feel like a performance iMac is not unprecedented,

01:56:41   and it would kind of be a shame to have this Duo thing.

01:56:43   It's like, well, that would be,

01:56:45   I think an M1 Pro/Max Duo is an appropriate chip

01:56:50   for a high-end iMac, and it would be a shame

01:56:54   if they chose a big iMac design that didn't allow for that.

01:56:58   It's not that bad because you've still got the Mac Pro,

01:57:00   like it's not the end of the world,

01:57:01   but I kind of got used to the idea

01:57:03   that a high performance iMac is not a contradiction in terms.

01:57:08   Even before the iMac Pro get used to that,

01:57:10   but certainly the iMac Pro,

01:57:11   it showed that that style of computer,

01:57:14   it's all in one, you get everything you need,

01:57:16   but also it's really, really fast

01:57:17   and has big cooling capacity to have powerful stuff.

01:57:20   That's a cool product,

01:57:21   and I hope someday they make that again.

01:57:23   Not instead of the Mac Pro, but in addition to it.

01:57:26   - All right, thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:57:28   Squarespace, Collide, and Linode.

01:57:31   And thanks to our members who support us directly.

01:57:33   you can join at ADP.FM/join and we'll talk to you next week.

01:57:40   Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:57:45   'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:57:50   John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:57:56   'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:58:01   And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:58:06   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:58:16   So that's Kasey Liszt M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:58:20   Auntie Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C

01:58:25   USA, Syracuse, it's accidental (it's accidental)

01:58:31   They didn't mean to accidental (accidental)

01:58:36   ♪ Tech podcast so long ♪

01:58:39   - We have to talk about Marco Christmas now, Casey.

01:58:43   - Yeah, I was just gonna say,

01:58:44   this is another example of the random thing

01:58:47   in the show notes that I do not understand.

01:58:48   - It's not random, it's Marco Christmas.

01:58:50   Did your Marco Christmas come?

01:58:52   - Oh, you're talking about the boxes I sent you

01:58:55   for my clean outs?

01:58:56   - Oh yes, oh I misunderstood, yes.

01:58:59   I did get Marco Christmas and Marco and I

01:59:01   had a conversation over text message about this.

01:59:04   My Marco Christmas was a legitimate Christmas.

01:59:06   It wasn't the school supply holiday.

01:59:09   It was a legitimately good Christmas.

01:59:11   So I found a large box on my front stoop

01:59:16   and I was very confused by it.

01:59:18   And I looked at it and I realized,

01:59:21   "Oh, this is Marco Christmas."

01:59:24   And it was very large and very heavy.

01:59:25   And so I lift it up and I bring it into the house

01:59:28   and I open it up and there's just oodles and oodles

01:59:30   of random packing material.

01:59:32   And then the first thing I saw,

01:59:34   I'm gonna try to do a little foley work here.

01:59:36   The first thing I saw was this,

01:59:37   which is a baggie of one, two, three, four, five, six,

01:59:44   seven SSDs, all of which appear to be intended

01:59:48   for internal use, and I do not have a enclosure

01:59:51   just hanging around.

01:59:52   Seven random SSDs of sizes that I didn't even bother

01:59:55   looking at, 'cause I have no friggin' idea

01:59:56   what I'm gonna do with them.

01:59:57   But-- - I can tell you the sizes.

01:59:59   One of them is 160 gigs.

02:00:01   That's the very first SSD I ever had from Intel.

02:00:03   Four of them are, or maybe five, are one terabyte,

02:00:09   and I think one of them is two terabytes.

02:00:11   - Oh, that's actually not that bad.

02:00:13   - Oh, you should send me the two terabyte one.

02:00:14   I can use that.

02:00:15   (laughing)

02:00:16   That's the hardware that I almost bought for her iMac,

02:00:19   is she's got the photo library on an external drive,

02:00:22   and it's one terabyte, and it's full now.

02:00:25   Like, oh, two terabyte would get room for that,

02:00:26   and so I started doing some research,

02:00:27   and I'm like, no, stop, don't buy anything.

02:00:29   You're just gonna buy a four terabyte big iMac, stop.

02:00:32   So I didn't buy anything.

02:00:33   - So Marco Christmas was already off to a good start,

02:00:35   but that was not the majority of the volume of the box.

02:00:39   And so I was like, what the hell is the rest of this stuff?

02:00:42   - It's all Kindles for packing material.

02:00:44   - No, you would think.

02:00:45   I genuinely was expecting a bunch of Kindles,

02:00:47   and I know that's usually your Christmas present,

02:00:49   but I wasn't sure. - Yeah, I said that's a John.

02:00:50   - Yeah, I wasn't sure if I would get some.

02:00:52   And I went rifling through the packing material,

02:00:55   and I see large, like, not boxes, but like rectangles

02:00:59   that are rectangular solids or whatever

02:01:03   that are in the box.

02:01:04   I'm very confused, I realize, oh, oh, these are speakers.

02:01:09   And then I look closer and they're the,

02:01:12   what are these called again?

02:01:13   - The Paradigm Atom.

02:01:15   - There you go, the Paradigm Speakers,

02:01:16   which appear to be very, very nice.

02:01:19   And what the listeners don't know is that

02:01:22   a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago,

02:01:24   I had said in one of the private slacks that Marco and you

02:01:26   and me all are a part of that I want a pair

02:01:30   of computer speakers that in a perfect world

02:01:32   would be self-powered, but I know that's not normally

02:01:35   much of a thing unless they're like truly garbage speakers.

02:01:38   - Oh no, yeah, it's a big thing.

02:01:39   They just, I have never found a good one.

02:01:41   - Right, exactly.

02:01:42   So I wanted a set of speakers, you know,

02:01:44   preferably self-powered, but I understand

02:01:45   that's probably not gonna work,

02:01:47   that I can use for my computer.

02:01:48   And supreme audio fidelity is not particularly important.

02:01:52   I just want something that's better

02:01:53   than the mostly trash speakers that are in this LG 5K.

02:01:57   And I do have the decent speakers on the MacBook Pro,

02:02:01   but not only is that physically to the left side of me,

02:02:03   but it's more often than not clamshelled.

02:02:05   And so, yeah, I mean, I could still hear it,

02:02:06   but it sounds like garbage. - Please don't use those

02:02:08   for music at your desk.

02:02:10   - I did briefly when I didn't have the LG 5K,

02:02:13   which had at least, well, I was gonna say passable,

02:02:15   I'm not even sure they're passable speakers,

02:02:17   but it had some sort of speakers in them.

02:02:21   So yeah, so Marco sent me these two speakers,

02:02:23   and again, I don't have an amp just laying around,

02:02:25   but I'll absolutely take a pair of really good speakers

02:02:29   where I have to supply my own amp.

02:02:30   Oh, what was me?

02:02:31   I'm gonna have to spend like 50 to $100 on an amp

02:02:33   for these like God knows how expensive they were speakers.

02:02:36   So my Marco Christmas was fantastic.

02:02:39   A plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, plus,

02:02:41   would receive unsolicited mail again.

02:02:43   John, it sounds like you did not win the lottery like I did.

02:02:47   - Oh, I totally did.

02:02:48   I had an awesome Marco Christmas.

02:02:50   And by the way, the reason I call this Marco Christmas

02:02:52   it reminds me of Alston Christmas.

02:02:53   We'll put a link in the show notes for people

02:02:55   who know what Alston Christmas is,

02:02:56   but it's basically when all the students have to move

02:02:59   and they take all their junk furniture

02:03:00   that they don't want to move with

02:03:01   and they just put it on the street

02:03:02   and you can just go through Alston,

02:03:04   which is an area of Boston, and wander around.

02:03:07   And if you want a used, unfinished wooden desk,

02:03:12   you can get one in Alston Christmas.

02:03:14   If you want a really crappy computer chair,

02:03:16   you can get one in Alston Christmas.

02:03:18   Anyway, Mark Christmas is way better than that.

02:03:20   You get much better stuff.

02:03:21   'cause when I clean out my closet,

02:03:23   I don't wanna bother with selling things.

02:03:25   Selling things is a pain in the butt,

02:03:27   and so if there's somebody in my life who can use it,

02:03:29   then great, I will much rather just give it

02:03:32   to the person who can use it.

02:03:34   - So last mark of Christmas, I did get a big pile

02:03:37   of Kindles, which are used as packing material

02:03:39   for the other items.

02:03:40   This time, I just, because they're good,

02:03:43   you can wedge them between things.

02:03:44   This time, I just got one Kindle,

02:03:46   but it's a really cool, fancy Kindle.

02:03:48   It's Kindle Oasis in a cool, I guess it's the Amazon case,

02:03:51   cool magnetic case thing.

02:03:52   - Yeah, this is actually the first Kindle Oasis.

02:03:55   They updated it shortly afterwards

02:03:56   and they made it bigger and bulkier and worse.

02:03:59   This is the very first Oasis before they made it big.

02:04:02   So it's actually, if I were still ever reading anything

02:04:05   on a Kindle, I would have kept it

02:04:07   because it's a great device for that,

02:04:08   but I haven't used it in four years.

02:04:10   And I even tried turning it on to reset it

02:04:13   and clear it off and everything,

02:04:14   and I think it was having trouble

02:04:16   even connecting to Amazon servers,

02:04:17   so maybe it was an expired certificate somewhere

02:04:20   on the chain, that's a problem, I don't know.

02:04:22   But this is your problem now.

02:04:24   And the disappointing part is that I thought

02:04:26   it would be funny if I could surround

02:04:28   whatever I was sending you with Kindles again.

02:04:30   And I can only find this one, and then literally,

02:04:33   like I dropped it off at the post office the next day,

02:04:35   and an hour after I dropped it off at the post office,

02:04:37   I found two more Kindles.

02:04:38   (laughing)

02:04:39   - They're just like cockroaches, the Kindles you see

02:04:41   are just nothing compared to the Kindles you don't see.

02:04:44   - Yeah, exactly.

02:04:45   - Yeah, so I don't read that much on Kindles,

02:04:47   I don't read that much, period,

02:04:48   but we are a Kindle household, everyone else,

02:04:50   and I was using them.

02:04:51   But I did claim this one for myself.

02:04:53   My wife's got a fancier Oasis.

02:04:54   Hers is actually nicer than,

02:04:57   newer than this one anyway.

02:04:58   But I like this one, it's got physical buttons.

02:05:00   I couldn't figure out the interface at first.

02:05:02   I had to ask my wife 'cause I opened up, it does work.

02:05:04   I logged into my thing, I downloaded a bunch of books.

02:05:06   I opened up the current book that I'm reading.

02:05:08   And I couldn't figure out how to get off

02:05:10   of the book reading screen.

02:05:11   I like, I tapped the middle, you know,

02:05:13   left and right would go page left, page right.

02:05:15   I tapped the bottom.

02:05:16   The one place I didn't tap was where you do it.

02:05:18   you gotta tap on the top.

02:05:19   Anyway, that's cool, so I got that.

02:05:21   And then I found these other two boxes,

02:05:23   they're like, these long, skinny, heavy things.

02:05:26   There's so much packing material in there.

02:05:27   They're long, skinny, heavy things,

02:05:28   and I opened them up, and they were identical.

02:05:30   There was two of them, they were like, I don't know,

02:05:33   10 inches long by two inches thick by three inches wide,

02:05:36   and they were heavy, and they were like

02:05:37   little Velcro things, and I opened them up,

02:05:39   and it's like a Velcro top, and I opened it up,

02:05:42   and there's like a flash looking at me,

02:05:44   like an external flash, like a big, like,

02:05:47   not the really giant ones, but an external flash

02:05:50   you put on a hot shoe on the top of a big DSLR

02:05:53   and rotate and bend, it has a hinge in the middle

02:05:56   so you can aim at different spots.

02:05:58   And there was two of them.

02:05:59   I'm like, what the hell, you need two flashes.

02:06:01   But then I saw they come with little stands

02:06:04   where you can mount them.

02:06:05   If you wanted to have two flashes,

02:06:07   when you go to a professional photographer,

02:06:08   they have multiple lights flashing at you at the same time,

02:06:10   you don't just want one flash,

02:06:12   and you don't want it to be on the camera,

02:06:13   you could put one on the left and one on the right.

02:06:15   - That's the key, off-camera flashes

02:06:17   are way, way better than on-camera flashes

02:06:19   if you are in a situation where you can use them.

02:06:21   - Yeah, and it's not like the big umbrella-sized thing.

02:06:23   It's still a hot shoe type thing,

02:06:25   but it came with its own little foot

02:06:26   that you could put the thing on.

02:06:27   I'm like, well, what the hell am I gonna do with this?

02:06:29   I don't even have anything to communicate with them.

02:06:31   And as far as I can tell,

02:06:32   there is nothing that communicates with them.

02:06:33   It's just two random flashes.

02:06:34   I'm like, well, Marco's getting run to his junk.

02:06:35   But then I saw the final thing,

02:06:38   the final thing in the box, and it was very exciting.

02:06:40   It was my best Marco Christmas ever.

02:06:41   Although kind of like Casey,

02:06:42   who was giving speakers but no amplifier,

02:06:46   The gift that I got is an invitation,

02:06:48   a very dangerous invitation for me to spend way more money.

02:06:52   Way more money.

02:06:54   So he sent me a camera that I didn't even know he had,

02:06:58   the Sony a7 III, which I don't, when did you get this?

02:07:02   And why?

02:07:03   Did you get this for video?

02:07:04   - I got that for my YouTube career.

02:07:05   - Oh, that must've been, I'm like,

02:07:07   why did you ever have this?

02:07:08   I know you had a bunch of series of a7R whatevers and stuff,

02:07:10   but I didn't even know you had an a7 III.

02:07:13   Now I have an a7 III, and it came with the kit lens, right?

02:07:16   And that's why this is dangerous to me.

02:07:17   This is my very first full frame camera.

02:07:18   I was super excited to get it.

02:07:20   - It's a terrible lens.

02:07:21   You don't want that lens.

02:07:22   - Yeah, well that's exactly it.

02:07:23   It's like, okay, but now my eyes are filling with stars

02:07:26   and like, I know so much about Sony lenses.

02:07:30   I have notes documents filled with potential lenses, right?

02:07:34   Just going down, I'm like, now I have a full frame camera.

02:07:37   And I was like, okay, keep it under control

02:07:39   because the A3 doesn't have as fancy of like,

02:07:45   subject detection and tracking stuff as my newer A6600.

02:07:50   It doesn't do pet eye detection,

02:07:53   it can't keep up with fast action,

02:07:55   and it can't take as many pictures per second.

02:07:57   So I'm like, I'm telling my A6600, don't feel bad,

02:08:01   you still have important purposes here,

02:08:03   and I have a lot of cool, great lenses for you.

02:08:05   And so what I'm trying to do with this one is say,

02:08:07   do not buy a full compliment of lenses to this camera

02:08:10   'cause you will bankrupt yourself.

02:08:11   'Cause the full frame lenses are so much more expensive,

02:08:14   and so much bigger and so much heavier.

02:08:16   And so I'm trying to confine myself to say,

02:08:18   what I'm gonna do with this camera

02:08:19   is I'm gonna do what this camera is good at.

02:08:21   It's got a big sensor, it's got big fat pixels,

02:08:24   it can gather a lot of light.

02:08:25   So I'm going to get a fast prime lens

02:08:28   and use this for my indoor,

02:08:32   I can't use any other camera

02:08:33   'cause I need a big sensor lens

02:08:34   'cause it's too dim in here, I think.

02:08:36   And that's it, I'm not gonna buy a long zoom for it,

02:08:38   I'm not gonna buy like an everyday walking around zoom

02:08:40   'cause this camera is big and heavy,

02:08:41   I'm just gonna buy one prime lens for this.

02:08:44   And I go to my document where I had kept track of these,

02:08:47   and I'm like, new things have come out since then,

02:08:49   I did some more research, and I'm like,

02:08:51   found the lens that I probably think I wanted,

02:08:53   and it's $2,000, and now I need to think about this.

02:08:54   - Oh my good grief.

02:08:57   - Which one, 'cause, so what I would,

02:08:59   for your intended purpose here,

02:09:01   what I would look at, having not paid attention

02:09:03   to anything they've launched in the last couple of years,

02:09:05   is the one that I actually have that I'm keeping,

02:09:07   'cause I like it so much, the 55 1.8 prime.

02:09:10   It was one of the very first FE lenses.

02:09:12   - Oh, I know about it.

02:09:13   - And it's really good.

02:09:15   And it's very fast, it's extremely sharp.

02:09:18   55 is a fantastic length on a full frame.

02:09:20   - Oh, do you have the Zeiss one?

02:09:22   - No, just the Sony 55.

02:09:23   - Yeah, no, it is Sony co-branded.

02:09:26   They make two of them.

02:09:27   Maybe the other one I'm thinking was 50.

02:09:29   Look, is your lens cylindrical shaped or does it taper?

02:09:33   - Here, it's a perfect cylinder.

02:09:34   I just pasted it in the link.

02:09:35   It's about a thousand bucks.

02:09:37   - This is a Zeiss one, yep.

02:09:38   - Yeah, the Sony 55 1.8.

02:09:39   It's fantastic.

02:09:42   Yeah, people love that lens.

02:09:43   But since that lens came out many years ago,

02:09:46   Sony's newer lenses have better focusing motors in them.

02:09:49   And they also sell a 1.2.

02:09:52   This lens is very compact and light.

02:09:54   I would expect a 1.2 would be neither of those things.

02:09:57   I know.

02:09:58   But again, for the purpose of my one lens

02:10:00   that I'm going to buy for this camera,

02:10:02   I'm like, well, I don't care about size.

02:10:04   This is not going to be my portable walking around camera.

02:10:06   I have a much smaller camera for that.

02:10:07   And that has a good do everything lens.

02:10:09   Anyway, I haven't bought anything yet.

02:10:11   I'm not buying anything now.

02:10:12   - I would also say, for whatever it's worth,

02:10:14   the lens that I have used most often on Sony cameras

02:10:18   is the 35 millimeter 2.8, because it's very small.

02:10:21   - Yeah, that's another thing I started looking into.

02:10:23   The problem with the full frame is I don't,

02:10:25   all my sense of what I like to use

02:10:28   is calibrated for APS-C cameras.

02:10:30   So I, like 35 millimeter, 'cause I went in that direction,

02:10:33   I'm like, but there's a bunch of good

02:10:34   35 millimeter primes too.

02:10:35   But I don't, like, my intuition about what sizes mean

02:10:40   and how they work in a camera are totally screwed up.

02:10:43   Because it's like, and there's all these converters

02:10:45   that say like, oh, if you wanna see, what is it,

02:10:47   this thing, this lens on an APS-C equals this lens on,

02:10:49   you know, the conversions never go the other way.

02:10:52   Because why would anyone go the other way?

02:10:54   But for me, like, I don't know if,

02:10:56   I like, I have a 50 millimeter 1.8,

02:10:59   it's my favorite lens for my APS-C cameras, right?

02:11:01   - Then you wanna get this 35?

02:11:03   - No, because the 50 millimeter on APS-C is zoomed,

02:11:06   it's more like a 70 or a 76. - Oh, it's like 85.

02:11:09   Sorry, I went backwards, yeah, it's like 85.

02:11:11   - And so, but I thought, well, if I get a 55,

02:11:13   I can always just crop in, but then like 35,

02:11:16   I've never been a fan of 35.

02:11:18   I feel like it's too far out for a prime

02:11:22   for the type of pictures I take of people.

02:11:24   - The 35 will look a lot like an iPhone 1X camera.

02:11:27   It's not quite the same, but that's more like a 28,

02:11:29   but it's like, it's in the ballpark.

02:11:31   - Yeah, and the other lens I'm looking at

02:11:32   Going the other direction, there's actually really good

02:11:35   Sony 85 millimeter prime, which is not the same as the 76,

02:11:38   which is sort of the equivalent of my 50s,

02:11:40   but it's a little bit more than that.

02:11:42   But I'm like, but indoors, I think that's too much

02:11:44   and I have to get too far away from people,

02:11:45   so I'm still leaning towards the 50 and 55s.

02:11:47   But the point is, this is incredibly dangerous,

02:11:49   'cause I love lenses and I love reading about

02:11:51   the whole bunch of reviews,

02:11:52   and I have a bunch of them already.

02:11:53   I did actually put a bunch of my APS-C lenses on here

02:11:55   just to see how it would go with the crop sensor,

02:11:57   but you know, you don't wanna go that route.

02:11:59   But it does work, like if I needed to,

02:12:02   I could just bring this into my existing lenses.

02:12:04   They are physically compatible, you just don't expose the whole sensor, which is a shame

02:12:08   because it's only a 24 megapixel sensor and doing an APS-C sized chunk of that is

02:12:13   not great.

02:12:14   But yeah, so I'm just putting this aside.

02:12:16   This thing that you have landed in my house will eventually cost me a lot of money, but

02:12:20   for now I am in research mode.

02:12:23   I have other things that I'm researching that will cost me a lot of money sooner than

02:12:26   the camera.

02:12:27   - Yeah, but I would honestly say

02:12:30   this would be a good opportunity to use lens rentals

02:12:33   or something to just rent three of these primes

02:12:35   for a weekend and just get a feel for what you actually want

02:12:40   'cause you could probably get three of them for a weekend

02:12:42   for a few hundred bucks and that could possibly affect

02:12:46   what you spend 500 to $2,000 on.

02:12:50   - There is a cheap 1.8 for 500 bucks that I could just,

02:12:54   there's a 50 to just to see if I like a 50,

02:12:56   I don't know, I've just, I spent a lot of the time

02:12:59   with a lot of tabs open, I just went around and around

02:13:01   and around and just like keep coming back through.

02:13:03   Don't, just let it stew for a while,

02:13:05   don't buy anything now.

02:13:07   - Well if you're gonna be in that range,

02:13:08   I'm telling you that 55 1.8 is so good.

02:13:11   - I know, I know, but there's newer ones,

02:13:14   the newer one they have, I don't care about the bulk

02:13:16   and the newer one, I don't even care about the 1.2,

02:13:18   that's not what I care about, I care about the fact

02:13:20   that it's optically even better and has faster focusing.

02:13:23   you will care about the bulk when it's on the camera.

02:13:27   - We'll see.

02:13:28   - 'Cause these cameras, compared to SLRs,

02:13:31   even a full-frame mirrorless is a pretty small

02:13:35   and light camera, and when you put a giant 1.2 lens

02:13:38   on the front of it, it becomes kind of weird to handle.

02:13:41   It's a very lopsided handling thing,

02:13:44   whereas the lightweight 1.8 primes

02:13:46   are significantly better balanced.

02:13:49   - I mean, and that's the other thing I have to remember,

02:13:50   is that 1.8 in full-frame is not the same as,

02:13:52   that the converters will do this conversion to you.

02:13:53   It's not the same as 1.8 APS-C.

02:13:56   You have to do sort of that conversion of like,

02:13:57   under what conditions can I take a decent picture

02:13:59   with this camera and how fast can the subject be moving?

02:14:01   I have to redo all of that math in my head

02:14:04   because it's different on these things.

02:14:06   So we'll see, I'll do something.

02:14:08   I'm gonna save it, probably won't do anything

02:14:10   until the summer, right?

02:14:11   So I go on vacation, I'm gonna take both these cameras

02:14:13   with me now and it'll be nice because when I would take

02:14:16   my first camera, my first summer, this past summer

02:14:19   with the 6600 on the beach, I had to change lenses a lot

02:14:22   because I have the big giant zoom

02:14:24   for when people are out in the waves,

02:14:26   but then when you're back on the beach towel,

02:14:28   that's not the right lens for the job.

02:14:29   So now I got to switch.

02:14:30   I don't want to switch too much

02:14:31   'cause you can imagine how fraught the experience

02:14:34   of switching lenses is for me.

02:14:35   - I'm on a beach. (laughs)

02:14:38   - I'm able to do it, but it is a stressful experience.

02:14:41   So I try to minimize the number of times I do that.

02:14:42   But if I just had two cameras,

02:14:44   one with the prime for the beach things

02:14:46   and one with the zoom for the waves

02:14:48   and the action in the bazillion frames per second.

02:14:51   Yeah.

02:14:52   - And plus, you wouldn't want a full frame giant zoom

02:14:55   because that would be so expensive and so big and so heavy.

02:14:58   - Forget it.

02:14:59   I need a tripod.

02:15:00   The white lenses that they take pictures of the servers with

02:15:03   but I'm not doing that.

02:15:06   - No, and really I would strongly suggest

02:15:09   try the 55 1.8 because,

02:15:11   so this 1.2, the 51.2,

02:15:15   I can tell you, I've shot with 50 1.2 before

02:15:18   'cause Tiff has one for the Canon system

02:15:19   that she got forever ago.

02:15:21   And actually, Gruber got it first

02:15:24   and we tried his at South by Southwest a million years ago

02:15:27   and then as soon as we came home,

02:15:29   Tiff's like, "I have to have that lens."

02:15:31   So I've shot with it a few times.

02:15:33   First of all, the 1.2s by being so much bigger and heavier,

02:15:37   usually, I haven't done the research on these,

02:15:39   usually they focus more slowly

02:15:41   because they have much more glass to move

02:15:43   and it's a much bigger thing.

02:15:45   but also, again, the handling is pretty rough,

02:15:48   but you never actually shoot at 1.2,

02:15:51   unless you're trying to do some special blur thing

02:15:54   for maybe a wedding portrait,

02:15:55   maybe you might do it for then,

02:15:57   but if that's what you're doing,

02:15:58   you wouldn't use 50 millimeter.

02:16:00   You would use a further zoomed in one to do that.

02:16:03   So yeah, whenever I have a really fast lens like this,

02:16:06   I almost never shoot at wide open,

02:16:09   or even anywhere close to wide open.

02:16:10   and usually, like that 55 does great at like 2.2 to 2.8.

02:16:15   I would almost never run it below that,

02:16:19   just because then you get into the situation

02:16:21   where the person's eyes are in focus,

02:16:23   but their nose isn't or something like that.

02:16:24   Like you're not even getting the whole subject in focus,

02:16:27   let alone like nailing it or whatever.

02:16:29   So I would say this is a really good candidate

02:16:34   for a rental.

02:16:36   You should rent the giant 50 millimeter lens,

02:16:38   and then you should also rent the smaller

02:16:39   telling you to get, see which one you actually end up liking the handling and stuff more.

02:16:44   Because I bet it won't be what you expect.

02:16:47   And if it is, then at least you can come back and say that you told me so.

02:16:51   It's the focusing speed that I'm worried about.

02:16:52   And also, I do kind of like the aperture ring on the big G one as well.

02:16:56   Like that's the fact that I don't have to use the, I always find it weird to use the

02:17:00   aperture controls with the dials on the camera and having it actually on the lens and having

02:17:04   the lens override what the camera does and having it be clicky and everything is kind

02:17:07   of appealing to me.

02:17:08   - Oh, that's a different, I didn't see that.

02:17:10   - Maybe rental, maybe I'll just talk myself out

02:17:12   of ever buying a lens this expensive for my purposes,

02:17:15   just pointless anyway, but then again,

02:17:17   I do have this Mac Pro here, so we'll see how that goes.

02:17:19   - Yeah, and even then, like what you said,

02:17:21   that's worth considering, if your alternative

02:17:24   is just having the kit lens for a whole summer

02:17:28   and missing out on a summer of good pictures with this.

02:17:30   - I'm never gonna use this kit lens.

02:17:32   - Right, you shouldn't.

02:17:33   - I mean, I've taken a bunch of pictures around the house

02:17:35   to try out the camera, but it has convinced me that, yeah.

02:17:37   No, the kit lens is garbage.

02:17:38   They always are.

02:17:40   - It's not bad for a kit lens.

02:17:41   It's actually a pretty good kit lens,

02:17:42   but all my other lenses are designed to not be this.

02:17:45   Even my zoom lens is specifically like a zoom lens

02:17:48   that actually isn't completely horrible.

02:17:50   - Yeah.

02:17:51   - So, yeah.

02:17:52   - No, trust me, get a nice light prime for it.

02:17:55   You will be very happy with it.

02:17:57   (beeping)